In my state the voters approved a reform, but the state congress thinks we really don’t know what we want. This has happened with essentially every one of these, especially with them constantly trying to ream right to work through, with the exception of the medical weed bill because they realize they can make money off that.
Here’s how the votes break down:
That’s my state’s new freshman anti-technology senator. I actively dislike the guy.
That said, I think we do need to make some changes to deal with “digital property rights” and that does butt up into the notion that these things can well be a form of gambling. I don’t think Hawley is the right guy to bring anything forward on that, but it is something we have to consider. It took bitcoins being used to actively launder money for the government to at least take a look. I know a guy I was in a guild with years ago that bought a ton of wow accounts to essentially hide his inheritance (at a huge loss) from the courts. Just because there are one or two levels of abstractions in between real money and whatever goes on doesn’t mean they should be completely unregulated. It also all ties into notions like digital property rights after death and what should companies actually be able to dictate with their EULAs, etc.
I found this perspective interesting. I always considered the Senate preferable because you don’t have to constantly be campaigning like the house.
I want to hear someone hammering coalition building every time Mitch blocks a vote. They can change senate leaders for a day for all I care, even to a different R, just to show some kind of willingness to actually vote. Hiding behind Mitch needs to be brought up constantly.
Senate Republicans LIKE what McConnell is doing. They would never work with Democrats to form a coalition to pick a new Senate leader.
And that should be brought up in their faces every time they go anywhere or do anything.
Here’s the most recent attempt I’ve seen to fix the democracy.
As I watched it I was like, this smells like Lawrence Lessig, then yep, he pops up halfway through.
So regarding this most recent abortion ban-thing hitting my state and Alabama at the least:
Is it the dog catching the bus?
A couple steps here. I always felt like the abortion thing was the bus, you don’t actually want to catch it, but you want to bark at it, chase it, put on a good show (as a republican). It’s not about catching the bus, catching the bus has consequences. The bus is bigger and doesn’t give a fuck that you “caught” it. You always want to bark at the bus, you always want to pretend to be angry, but don’t catch the bus: that’s where you get hurt.
(1) Is the analogy wrong? Are they better served by catching the bus? Will republicans actually be better served in elections to actually pull off this supreme court decision before the election? It seems intuitively galvanizing to me, and as the bones roll, if everyone is incensed to vote actually vote they lose.
(2) Is there sufficient external reason to catch the bus? Is this either a distraction sufficient to let something else fly under the radar that is somehow more important or is this necessary to galvanize the base for this specific election for some reason? You’re basically spending your one time to catch the bus here, if you actually enforce it. It has to serve the overall metagoals of the GOP right? Because most of the politicians actually don’t give a shit, this is just a tool in their repertoire to create their coalition, and they’re relatively expending it?
(3) Does it even go very far? I re-read both opinions on Roe v Wade today, and I’m sure others know better, but it does seem like they intentionally kicked the can down the road. It was ALWAYS about having another fight later. The republicans are choosing some specific assumptions to hold up around today, but it could have been years ago or years from now, you’re just picking a line in the sand and trying to force the court to decide a definition. But to me, from a casual understanding, even if they get what they want the ruling here would equally decide someone could legally declare the opposite of what they want in a different state. If we require laws to be based on the constitution and we decide this is enforceable under the “police article” essentially, we are also opening the door to every other policy in this regard (forced vasectomies, eugenics, etc) relatively similarly. Not an attorney, just how I follow all of that. And I mean, yeah, sure, that’s possible. But that seems like the dog catching the bus.
Regardless of its legality, cultural/social pressures are what really determines if abortion is ok or not in the state. It’s not like Alabama was a bastion for pro-choice already. They’re gonna get a lot of flak but ultimately it just seems like they’ve lost a talking point. Now they’re gonna be on the defensive trying to justify the ban, which is not a strong position for the Republican’s modus operandi.
Republicans actually want to ban abortion. This is why they have focused for so long on judges and state legislators. They want it overturned, and then basically every red state bans it overnight.
It won’t change the electoral calculus. Instead of “banning abortion” it will simply move to “keeping abortion banned.”
This isn’t a political tactic. Thanks to Trump and McConnel, they’re actually closer to their goal than they have been in a long long time.
I actually strongly disagree. It is very much a political tactic. Republicans have demonstrated very much that they don’t give a shit about children whatsoever, seeing their aversion to sensible gun legislation even in the wake of tragedies that mostly harm children, their refusal to fund proper education and their refusal to fund nutrition programs in schools etc.
The political aspect comes in when you consider the talking points around abortion. What they want is to brand their opposition as “baby murderers”, a quick and easy, morally reprehensible label which they can attach to their political opponents, and which they can elevate themselves over. It is a long, drawn out ad hominem argument largely, but these are the necessary pretexts to make such an argument work. They just want to demonize their political opponents, rubberstamp them as “baby murderers”, and simply become the default to vote for because “at least they’re not baby murderers”.
There’s also the potential for abortion bans to become prison-felony-disenfranchisement pipelines for uter-havers, esp poor ones with limited health care access. (Especially if they are worded poorly and unscientifically enough)
I think this is more the point than anything else. Also the states that advocate this are all former Confederate states and I read an interesting thread recently that the goal of much of this legislation is to strengthen what is basically a shadow-confederacy that has existed since reconstruction; basically keeping wealthy whites in power and getting as close to slavery as possible for non-whites as a literal explicit goal.
I think they want both of those things.
As it is, slavery still legal in prison.
That is also a big and important point.
And was explicitly instated as a solution to the loss of slaves by the southern confederate gentry. All the slaves were freed but the 13th amendment stated that involuntary servitude was acceptable as punishment for a crime. This was key to getting it passed because the states of the former confederacy simply made tons of minor crimes felonies in order to arrest and convict black people, sentence them to hard labor then lease their forced labor to the landed gentry.
