Tag Archives: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

A Tale Of Two States

Posted on by under Election 2024, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary, voting rights

Back in 1980, Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich told a group of Republicans working on the Reagan campaign …

“Now many of our Christians have what I call the ‘goo-goo syndrome.’ Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

Today, it seems that many, especially in the Republican Party, live by his creed of reducing the number of voters to leverage elections, and they have pulled many a stunt toward that end, such as gerrymandering; strict voter ID laws; shuttering polling places in predominantly Black, Hispanic and poor neighborhoods; disallowing postal voting in some states; and other laws that make it harder for people to register and to vote.

Only 59 miles (95 km) of water (Lake Michigan) separate the states of Michigan and Wisconsin, but oh what a difference between those two states!  Two stories about voting rights in each state highlight the differences.  Starting with the better of the two …

On November 30th, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a voting rights expansion bill intended to “ensure every eligible voter can participate in our democratic process.”  The bill will allow 16-year-olds to register before they can legally vote at 18 and will automatically register individuals to vote when they are released from incarceration.  Earlier in November, Whitmer signed a bill to no longer make it a misdemeanor for individuals to pay for rides to polling locations through apps such as Uber and Lyft. Michigan election law had previously stated that “a person shall not hire a motor vehicle” to take them to vote unless they could not walk.

Additionally, the package will further protect election officials by criminalizing acts of intimidation during an election. An individual who intimidates an election official “with the specific intent of interfering with the performance of that election official’s election related duties,” could be punished with a misdemeanor for the first two violations and a felony for the third violation, according to the law.

The goal in Michigan is to ensure that every eligible voter can participate in the democratic process of voting.

And then, 59 miles across the lake to the west, in the state of Wisconsin …

Brett Galaszewski, a member of the right-wing youth group Turning Point Action and also serves as vice chair of the Milwaukee County GOP, recently appeared on a talk show where he advised viewers to do three things: join the county party’s newly formed “Election Integrity Committee,” become a poll worker, and push to get the state’s top elections official removed from office.  In a normal world, the phrase “Election Integrity” wouldn’t throw up red flags, but after the Big Lie surrounding the 2020 election, our world is far from ‘normal’ and it sets off alarms. 🚨

Galaszewski told his host that his group has set out to recruit “upwards of 2,000 poll workers in Milwaukee County to make sure that we have our eyes and ears in all facets of next year’s election.” The purpose of this effort, he explained, is to “just shave off a small percentage of liberal votes” in order to shift the statewide outcome, because “the left is going to try everything that they can to mess with this again.”

2,000 poll workers in a county of less than a million people … to “just shave off a small percentage of liberal votes.”  He doesn’t even bother to hide the real goal.

Two states … so close in distance and yet so far in ideology, in their views of ‘democracy’, of civil rights.  Let us hope that more states are like Michigan than Wisconsin.  Better yet … let’s make sure that no matter what obstacles or hurdles are thrown in front of us, we VOTE and help our neighbors, family members, young people and senior citizens to VOTE!

A “Civil” Society? I Have Doubts

Posted on by under Election 2020, Election 2024, Law and justice, Political commentary, Social commentary

In my view, reasonably intelligent people with consciences do not resolve their differences with violence, but rather with words.  Listening to others’ views and reasons for their views is just as important as sharing your own views.  Most differences between such people – adults – are resolved peacefully and include some give-and-take, some compromise.  Such things as screaming, ranting, name-calling and bullying have never accomplished much of anything except to create hard feelings and leave issues unresolved, festering, only to resurface one day.  Violence has no place in a truly civil society.

Which begs the question, is the U.S. truly a “civil” society?

A woman in Texas was arrested for threatening to murder Judge Tanya Chutkan, the Washington D.C. judge who is presiding over the pending trial of Donald Trump on charges of attempting to overthrow the 2020 election on January 6th.  Her threats were particularly vile and extremely racist.

Every single prosecutor who has charged Donald Trump, from Alvin Bragg to Jack Smith to Fani Willis, has been threatened with violence and even death, as have their families!  Now, some might say that it’s just people blowing off steam, expressing their anger, but I beg to differ.  Remember last year when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was brutally beaten by a man who had a bone to pick with Speaker Pelosi?  Remember seeing Shay Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman testify to the January 6th committee about the violent threats they had received after Trump and Giuliani told lies about them?  Remember the plot to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer?

This week, the names of the grand jurors in Georgia who voted to indict Trump and 18 others on numerous charges pertaining to the attempt to override the vote and change the election results in 2020, were made public, as is dictated by Georgia law.  What happened?  From an article in NPR …

On a far-right website, where the QAnon conspiracy theory originated, an anonymous user on Tuesday shared a list of the 23 grand jurors with their supposed full names, ages and addresses. Amid a torrent of other posts speculating on the race and religion of the jurors, and rife with derogatory slurs, the implication was clear: This was a target list.

The United States was founded as a democratic republic, meaning that people have a right to voice their opinions and to try to bring about change through their vote.  It does not mean that people have a right to threaten or to do harm to others in order to get their way!  Those who would use threats and violence as a means to an end prove only that they are incapable of civil discourse, incapable of expressing their views without threatening everyone who disagrees with them.  This is a nation of 330 million people, not a grade school playground!

Sadly, some elected officials in the Republican Party seem to think that it’s okay for them to stir up the violence in their constituents, to encourage it and treat it as “normal”.  After the terrible violence of January 6th, some politicians deemed it “normal political discourse”.  The very people who ought to be doing everything in their power to calm the people, to discourage violence, are instead egging it on.  This is the behaviour I would expect in some third-world country … perhaps that’s what the formerly ‘united’ states are becoming.

A Few Words Found …

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Environmental Issues, Global Issues, Political commentary, Rants

You’ll remember yesterday afternoon when I told you I couldn’t find my words … I think I found some of them, but it seems this batch is smaller than I had on Sunday.  At any rate … I shall see what I can make with the words I do have and perhaps by tomorrow the rest will turn up somewhere.

On a personal note …

My granddaughter Natasha, aka Miss Goose, gave me her Christmas list last week and the very first thing on the list was … a donation to Black Lives Matter.  This kid … she’s 25 now … she just makes me so damn proud of her.  I feel tears welling every time I look at that list.  The next item on the list, of course, is a new computer (that I just ordered, but don’t tell her), followed by a couple of shirts and a long list of books.  But how many people do you know who start their wishlist with a donation to anybody, let alone such a worthy cause?  I just had to give some kudos here to a young woman with a heart of pure gold.

Oil.  Alaska.  Wildlife.  Asshole.

It would appear that Donald Trump plans to leave as his ‘legacy’ a 21st century “scorched earth” policy as he leaves the White House, hopefully forever.  Numerous things have come onto my radar that he and his nasty band of cronies are attempting to enact prior to January 20th.  For starters, the “Trump administration”, aka Donald Trump, announced yesterday that they are planning to rush through the sale of leases to oil companies that would achieve Trump’s long-sought goal of allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

The Wildlife Refuge … REFUGE, defined by Merriam-Webster as “a place that provides shelter or protection”.  Animals, some on the brink of extinction, would be murdered in order for oil companies to make more profit!  According to Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League …

“This lease sale is one more box the Trump administration is trying to check off for its oil industry allies.  But it is disappointing that this administration until the very end has maintained such low regard for America’s public lands, or the wildlife and Indigenous communities that depend on them.”

Disappointing?  No, it goes well beyond disappointment.  Disappointment is when your favourite restaurant is out of fish ‘n chips … this is infuriating, unconscionable, rage-inducing!

The Arctic refuge is one of the last vast expanses of wilderness in the United States, 19 million acres that for the most part are untouched by people, home instead to wandering herds of caribou, polar bears and migrating waterfowl. It has long been prized, and protected, by environmentalists, but Trump has boasted that opening it to oil development was among the most significant of his efforts to expand domestic fossil fuel production.

We. Don’t. Need. The. Damn. Oil.  Somebody please, turn a few dozen polar bears loose on this moron and let them have him for supper!  Truth is, it isn’t and never was about the U.S. needing that oil – it is and always was about the fossil fuel industry and their profits … men who already sit on billions of dollars of wealth, while some of us struggle to put food on the table.  DAMN you, Donald Trump … just DAMN YOU.

How to make the pandemic even worse … hire Scott Atlas!

In just under a week, the United States went from 10 thousand cases to over 11 thousand, and we are on track to hit 12 thousand within a few days.  Yesterday, we had 162,149 new cases, the day before 146,544.  We lead the world in both coronavirus cases and deaths.

Scott Atlas, who I have mentioned before, is the highly un-qualified senior advisor on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, a position that was once occupied by the very well-qualified Dr. Anthony Fauci.  Whereas Dr. Fauci’s entire career has been dedicated to the study of viruses and immunology, Atlas is a neuroradiologist … nothing to do with communicable diseases. Whereas Dr. Fauci cares about human life, Atlas cares only about licking Trump’s boots.

bootlicker

In the absence of federal guidance, states’ governors are taking the virus seriously and doing what needs to be done to keep the people in their state safe … or as safe as is reasonably possible.  One such governor is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer who, concerned by the recent spike in cases announced Sunday a three-week pause on indoor dining, in-person learning and several other activities.  So, what did Scott Atlas do?  Rather than support the governor in her effort to keep people safe, he tweeted …

“The only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept. #FreedomMatters #StepUp.”

Freedom matters … indeed it does, but somehow, being free once your dead, or lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a multitude of machines, somehow pales in comparison to being alive.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Monday that Atlas’ call to action represented a “grave concern” and warned that it could provoke violence in the state …

“These public health orders are absolutely necessary to preserve human life.  But once again, here you have members of the Trump administration that are so much more hurtful than they are helpful.”

Atlas, a physician with no expertise in infectious diseases or epidemiology, has won favor in the White House in recent months by advocating against coronavirus restrictions and downplaying the disease’s threat.  He has also publicly attacked Anthony Fauci, accusing the nation’s top infectious disease expert of stoking fears about the pandemic for political purposes ahead of the presidential election earlier this month.  One of Trump’s worst choices, one who did not require Senate confirmation, and one who ought to be stoned in the public square for his hideous disregard of our lives, along with his boss!

Well … puff puff puff … it seems I found enough words to make a post, yes?  And now, I think to soothe my own jangled psyche, I will go find a song for this morning’s music post.