At Project Veritas, according to a former employee with direct knowledge of his employment, Mr. Wise used the code name Bendghazi and trained at the Prince family ranch in Wyoming with other recruits. Mr. Wise took part in an operation against a teachers’ union and apparently left Project Veritas in mid-2018, the former employee said
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“ISIS, the Taliban and al Qaeda. Those are the folks who discriminate,” state Rep. Jeff Holcomb said Monday. “Our terrorist enemies hate homosexuals more than we do.”
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Cross-posting, because this effort to expand child labor (and fight against fair wages/wages in general) is coming from the GOP:
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Gotta suspect that
and
would pretty much be identical.
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free to read
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The GOP in Florida passes more legislation that enables discrimination:
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Putting this here, since the GOP has controlled Alabama’s legislative and gubernatorial branches for more than a decade - and this is how they treat people living in poverty:
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As long as we’re posting this kind of stuff. . . .
This piece of legislation would have originally cut Alabama’s sales tax on groceries by half with no strings.
That sounds like a great idea, until you realize that the food tax helps fund the school system. Two years ago, after much wrangling and a massive battle, Montgomery raised its ad valorem tax for the first time since desegregation. The tiny increase would have given some relief to Montgomery’s criminally-underfunded school system. This is a system where the current school superintendent is notable for being the first school superintendent in Montgomery since 1967 to put his kids in the public schools. When I came here for a job interview and was given a driving tour of the town, I pointed to a bombed-out looking building and asked what happened. After an uncomfortable silence, the answer was “that’s actually one of the high schools.”
So, this cut in the food tax isn’t some lovely effort to reduce the cost of food for those in need. It’s a targeted effort to cut funding to Alabama’s public schools. And by extension Montgomery’s. Why is Montgomery more interesting than the rest? Because Reedy-Creek-type areas have sprung up around Montgomery County, and have been given the power to tax themselves and run their own school systems. And they draw a lot of people to their new homes because of their great schools. Guess who favors the no-strings cuts? People in those regions, of course. And the people who send their kids to one of the many, many private schools.
The current proposal includes a proviso that the tax cuts would happen “provided there is more than enough state revenue to offset the loss to the education budget, which relies on sales and income taxes.” But what does “loss” mean? Fewer actual dollars? Fewer dollars pegged to inflation? Fewer dollars spent? And what if the budget is simply lowered, so that the revenue offset disappears? Could the tax cuts continue?
“Spent” becomes relevant in the context of these stories, which highlight how our current Republican majority regards education in the state:
and a proposal to divert money from the state education budget to a whitewater river kayaking project
So even when the system has enough money, it doesn’t get spent on what it’s supposed to get spent on.
One statistic that probably explains things: The population of Alabama is around 31% non-White. The schools, though, are a bit more than 47% non-White.
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Over here on my side of the border, while we had a budget surplus, they cut funding to the USG system, and Kemp magnanimously decided to give us all another tax rebate… 
I’m sure that K-12 teachers would love more than just a minor pay bump…
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Follow the money hurt.
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The number of stories I’ve been seeing lately about the housing crisis fueled by private equity firms buying houses, apartment complexes, and mobile home parks led me to wonder how the decision to make housing unaffordable benefits those real estate investors. It seemed even more odd that the GOP keeps fighting to make sure wages won’t keep pace with the cost of living. Some commenters pointed out the threat of homelessness is used to motivate people to work for less.
They are following through on that threat, though. Reports show increasing numbers of people in poverty, evicted, or unhoused before and during the pandemic (including evictions from nursing homes). The press is pointing out growing numbers of encampments as the population affected increases in multiple states.
The GOP is leaning into criminalization (expanding the ranks of the millions of formerly incarcerated people already disenfranchised) through anti-camping laws they claim are being drafted to address the problem. However, the origins of those laws reveal they were designed to spread misery and assign blame to the opposition. Of course, 45 expressed his support for an extreme version of a tent city plan, too:
What concerns me is that in addition to the cruelty being the point, this could also effectively disenfranchise millions more people - especially seniors, who are known for having high voter turnout.
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Two LGBTQ+ students were recently crowned prom king and queen at Kettering Fairmont High School, which reportedly sparked Moore’s threat.
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Media Matters President Angelo Carusone released the following statement to Deadline to “clarify any misunderstanding” after the organization received the letter.
“Reporting on newsworthy leaked material is a cornerstone of journalism. For Fox to argue otherwise is absurd and further dispels any pretense that they’re a news operation. Perhaps if I tell them that the footage came from a combination of WikiLeaks and Hunter Biden’s laptop, it will alleviate their concerns.”
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