Tag: GOP

Librarians could be jailed and fined under a proposed censorship law

A bill pending in Missouri’s legislature takes aim at libraries and librarians who are making “age-inappropriate sexual material” available to children.

The measure, championed by Ben Baker, a Republican lawmaker, calls for establishing review boards who would determine whether materials in libraries contain or promote “nudity, sexuality, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse.” In addition, the boards, which would be comprised of parents, would root out materials lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Librarians who defy the review boards by buying and lending such materials would be subject to misdemeanor charges, fines upward of US$500, and a potential jail sentence up to one year. Continue reading.

Republicans growing nervous about 2020 economy

The Hill logoRepublicans who have been counting on a roaring economy to power President Trump and GOP congressional candidates on Election Day are growing nervous because of the economic havoc wreaked by the coronavirus.

Earlier this month, GOP senators were riding high after Trump’s acquittal on impeachment charges in the Senate. Now they’re wrestling with predictions of an economic slowdown that could upend the political calculus for 2020.

“There’s a potential to really affect the economy, not only this country negatively, but throughout the world,” said Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), adding that GOP colleagues discussed the potential fallout from the coronavirus at an all-day retreat in Washington on Wednesday. Continue reading.

How ‘conservatism’ could kill us all

AlterNet logoNothing confirms the human need for strong, honest and competent government like a looming pandemic. The possibility that thousands, or even millions, could die from a randomly transmitted virus reminds us of our species’ vulnerability — and why society cannot exist without institutions that can protect us from such staggering existential threats.

Only government can impose quarantines and precautions when necessary. Only government can trace contacts, control transportation and monitor communities. Only government can ensure that drugs, medical devices and care will be adequately distributed — and that sufficient resources will be directed toward production of a vaccine as soon as possible, without regard to profit.

At a moment like this, it suddenly becomes clear that every problem — indeed, the most pressing problems — cannot and will not be solved by “the private sector.” If that seems blazingly obvious, please inform the Republicans who constantly tell us they want to “shrink government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Facing a potential catastrophe, those old jeers from the right sound utterly mindless. Continue reading.

How conservatives rigged our politics: Republicans are beating Democrats at a game they don’t even know they’re playing

AlterNet logoAccording to Gallup polling, more Americans identify as Democrats than Republicans. On average, roughly 29 percent of Americans identify as Democrats, 27 percent as Republicans, and 41 percent as independent. It’s close, but the edge is enough that one would expect our legislatures, courts, and governorships to reflect that advantage.

They don’t. Despite being the less popular party, Republicans have controlled the majority of our state legislatures and governorships for the past decade. In twenty-two states, Republicans control both branches of government, compared with only sixteen for Democrats. A majority of Supreme Court justices have also been appointed by Republican presidents. And Donald Trump won the presidency despite losing to Hillary Clinton by almost three million votes. How have Republicans pulled this off?

In The Democracy Fix, Caroline Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society (and a regular writer for this magazine), gives a detailed and often demoralizing account of how Republicans seized political power that vastly exceeds the public support for their ideas. Tracing the origin story back to Lewis Powell’s memo—in which the then corporate attorney who would later become a Supreme Court justice outlined a plan for conservative dominance of public policymaking—Fredrickson shows how the GOP used gerrymandering, voter suppression, dubious scholarship, and dangerous media outlets to rig the system in their favor. And although she offers a plan for Democrats to fight back, it feels like Republicans have already won a game Democrats didn’t realize they were playing. Continue reading.

Trump’s budget steps on GOP’s new climate message

As Republican lawmakers take tentative steps forward on climate change, Trump’s budget would drag them back.

Most GOP voters support climate action, recent polls show, and Republican lawmakers want to shed the party’s reputation for rejecting the scientific consensus on global warming.

But the White House budget proposal released this week would eliminate or cut funding for climate, clean energy and efficiency research, even as Republican lawmakers on Wednesday offered the first pieces of what they say will be an effective legislative response to global warming.

While Congress will almost certainly disregard the cuts pushed by the White House, the proposal nevertheless reflects President Donald Trump’s priorities as leader of the Republican Party. That’s likely to mute and confuse the message House Republicans are trying to send, said Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman who now leads an organization, RepublicEN, advocating for free-market climate solutions. Continue reading.

U.S. would plant billions of trees annually under GOP bill

Finally, there’s one climate initiative that the Trump administration is willing to get on board with. Republicans are working on a bill that would commit the U.S. to planting billions of trees annually. On the surface, it looks like a great move, but experts are weighing in with their concerns.

Tree-planting campaigns aren’t unique to President Trump. The topic came up last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as world leaders sought ways to combat climate change. There, Trump committed the U.S. to joining the One Trillion Tree initiative, which seeks to combat deforestation while committing to protect and restore forest cover by planting trees.

“We’re committed to conserving the majesty of God’s creation and the natural beauty of our world,” Trump said. He went on to add that the U.S. “will continue to show strong leadership in restoring, growing, and better managing our trees and forests.” Continue reading.

Republicans want to either rule America — or destroy it for everyone else: political scientist

AlterNet logoIn a scorching column for the Daily Beast, David Rothkopf writes that the refusal of the Republican-controlled Senate to agree to hear witnesses in the impeachment trial of the Donald Trump is one of the darkest moments in U.S. history — ranking up with the start of the Civil War.

Getting right to the point, he wrote, “Jan. 31, 2020, was the worst day for democracy in America since April 12, 1861, when South Carolina forces opened fire on Fort Sumter. Both days represented a moment when an old guard representing a dying way of life placed their own survival ahead of that of the United States and our Constitution,” before adding, “It is an irony that the GOP was founded as an anti-slavery party, a harbinger of the changes to come in the mid-19th century, and today has become a reactionary force surviving by stoking fears of the massive U.S. social transformation that is already well underway.”

Focusing on the Senate impeachment trial that is expected to culminate with the acquittal of the president along party lines, he explained, “What took place in the Senate on Friday when it voted not to hear witnesses in the trial of Donald Trump— when witnesses such as John Bolton were available who could corroborate his guilt—may have been the most damaging blow of all. Because this decision effectively ensured that Trump would not only be acquitted of crimes he certainly committed, it also ensured a number of key points made by Trump and his defenders would in months and years to come be supported by the precedent of the momentous Senate action. These include a virtual ratification of the idea that anything a president might do to win reelection would be acceptable.” Continue reading.

The Trump Campaign is Deplying Phone Location-Tracking Technology

President Donald Trump’s reelection effort has retained the services of a technology company that specializes in the mass collection of smartphone location data, which can be used to track voters for political targeting purposes.

Phunware, an Austin, Texas-based firm, announced the connection in a little-noticed press release in October, touting “new and existing customer wins including American Made Media Consultants,” the consulting firm set up this year by Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale to handle advertising services for a variety of official Trump reelection PACs. The release noted that the deal was signed in conjunction with the Trump-Pence 2020 reelection effort.

A growing subset of advertising firms rely on data brokers that use third-party apps — from popular mobile games to apps used for checking the weather, perfecting a selfie, and online banking — to harvest vast troves of information about potential voters. Phunware, in a section of its website, discusses the company’s ability to obtain GPS location data and the Wi-Fi network used by an individual, as well as user data that can infer an “individual’s gender, age, lifestyle preferences” — potential tools for identifying and influencing voters. Continue reading.

Judge once again blocks Wisconsin GOP from purging over 200,000 from voter rolls

Republicans want to kick hundreds of thousands of registered voters off the rolls, mainly in Democratic areas.

A Wisconsin appeals court on Tuesday put on hold an order to immediately remove up to 209,000 names from the state’s voter registration rolls, handing Democrats who had fought the move a victory in the battleground state.

The appeals court sided with the bipartisan state elections commission in putting the brakes on removing any voters while the court fight continues. It also put on hold a ruling from Monday in which a judge found the commission and its three Democratic members in contempt for not proceeding with removing the voters.

The orders came as the commission was meeting in a closed session with attorneys from the state Department of Justice to discuss the case. Continue reading.