Month: February 2019

Cities take the lead on Election Day holiday

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A while back I did a post on ‘The Enemy of The People’ opposes an election day federal holiday to vote that apparently got lost in the transition to our new blog format, but it still exists in the ether of the internet.

Shorter version:

Yesterday “The Enemy of The People” took to the floor of the Senate to condemn H.R.1, the For the People Act, a comprehensive package of election reforms and the first major bill of the 116th Congress.

Specifically, McConnell mocked the idea that election day should be a federal holiday that everyone gets off in order to go exercise their franchise to vote in a democracy. Oh, the horror! Mitch McConnell: making Election Day a federal holiday is a Democratic “power grab”.

Our Trump Troll state Sen. John Kavanagh commented, “With 80% of Arizona voters casting mail ballots, exactly why do we need an election day holiday?”

I explained the obvious point that almost half of all eligible voting age adults in Arizona do not vote, for various reasons. That 80 percent is from the half of eligible voting age adults who do vote. Zachary Wolf also made this point at CNN:

The 2018 midterm election saw a higher portion of Americans participate than any midterm election in decades. More than 116.7 million people cast ballots. But that’s only about 46% of the voting age population, according to data from Edison Research.

More people will vote in next year’s presidential election, but not even close to everyone who can.

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Border deal agreed to ‘in principle’ (don’t hold your breath) (updated)

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Monday night, House and Senate negotiators on Monday night agreed in principle to provide $1.375 billion for fencing and other physical barriers at the Mexican border, part of a broader agreement that would stave off another partial government shutdown without funding President Trump’s wall. Border Deal Is Reached ‘in Principle’:

The agreement would allow for 55 miles of new bollard fencing, with some restrictions on location based on community and environmental concerns, according to two congressional aides, who requested anonymity to disclose details of the private negotiations. This is only a fraction of the more than 200 miles of steel-and-concrete wall that Mr. Trump demanded — and 10 miles less than negotiators agreed on last summer, before Democrats took control of the House.

The agreement “in principle” must still pass the House and the Senate, and secure President Trump’s signature.

Good luck with that. The racist polemicists of the alt-right who make up Trump’s unofficial “kitchen cabinet” of advisers and who were responsible for the Trump Shutdown last month are already trashing this agreement “in principle.”

Trump’s minister of propaganda at Fox News aka Trump TV, Sean Hannity, the man whom Trump talks to most nights before going to bed, was already trashing the deal Monday night. ‘Garbage compromise’: Hannity warns Republicans not to back spending deal:

President Donald Trump’s most ardent cable news defender cut away briefly from the president’s Monday night rally in El Paso, Texas, to issue a warning to Republican lawmakers: Don’t back congressional negotiators’ latest border deal.

“On this new, so-called compromise, I’m getting details,” said Fox News host Sean Hannity, referring to the tentative agreement reached by a bipartisan conference committee that would allocate roughly $1.375 billion for physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“1.3 billion? That’s not a — not even a wall, a barrier?” Hannity said.

“I’m going to tell this tonight and we will get back into this tomorrow,” he continued. “Any Republican that supports this garbage compromise, you will have to explain.”

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Send Sen. Eddie Farnsworth a Valentine message, requesting a hearing on the ERA

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With Valentine’s Day this week, it’s a good time to catch up on what is happening with the status of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) on behalf of the women in our lives.

37 states have now ratified the ERA, just one short of passage. In January, the Virginia Senate passes federal Equal Rights Amendment:

The GOP-led state Senate voted Tuesday to make Virginia the 38th and final state to ratify the federal Equal Rights Amendment.

The measure passed with bipartisan support, with seven Republicans joining Democrats on a 26-to-14 vote. The measure faces tougher odds in the House of Delegates[.]

Bow howdy, did it ever! The ERA got caught up in a concurrent ugly fight over abortion rights in the Virginia House of Delegates, where it was derailed in the House Privileges and Elections subcommittee on a party-line vote. Now the state of Virginia is embroiled in a constitutional crisis with demands for its top three elected officials to step down over scandals.

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