The weakness of businessmen was their belief that money was the point of the game; they worked 14-hour days in order to earn enough of it to buy cars with leather interiors, they thought it was a sensible recreation to play around with it in casinos–idiots, in short.
— “Red Mars” Kim Stanley Robinson
"No. No. Other than day one.” — The Orangethugman
1.
It’s a strange world where we even have to consider that this is now necessary but U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) unveiled legislation Tuesday to combat a nationwide surge in book bans. U.S. Democratic Reps. Pete Aguilar of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida, Greg Casar of Texas and Shontel Brown of Ohio voiced support for the legislation.
Under Frost’s legislation, the Department of Education would help cover book ban-related expenses up to $100,000 for each school district, Frost said. He said the total appropriation for the program would be $15 million over five years. “There are a lot of school districts where they just don’t have the money to defend themselves against these efforts to ban books,” Raskin said.
Three of the most banned authors during the 2022-23 school year are Toni Morrison, Ellen Hopkins, and John Green. Sheesh. PEN America counted school book bans in the 2022-2023 school year, and found 3,362 book bans affecting 1,557 unique titles, with more than 40% of the bans occurring in Florida.
PEN America has also gathered a list of ways your activism can help organizations fight this academic abomination.
2.
Those wacky Republican power/poser couples are at it again. Florida GOP Chair Christian Ziegler and Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, staunch advocates for morality and conservative principles in Florida political circles, are once again proving out the hypocrisy of the GOP and the Christian Right movement. Christian has been accused of sexual battery by a woman who previously had sex with both Zieglers, according to police documents. The affidavit says both Zieglers made plans to have sex with the alleged victim, who canceled after Bridget Ziegler couldn't make it. Christian Ziegler showed up anyway and was standing outside the alleged victim's apartment when she went to walk her dog. "Christian entered the apartment, bent the victim over the bar stool," a detective wrote in the affidavit. The alleged victim – who has known Ziegler for 20 years – says he then sexually assaulted her. The affidavit also detailed subsequent conversations between Ziegler and the alleged victim where she confronts him and he denies sexually assaulting her. The document says Ziegler told detectives the sexual encounter was consensual and that he took video of it, which he deleted but later uploaded to a Google Drive.
Hey, I’m totally OK with consenting adults participating in 3, 4, 18 way sex if it floats their boats. My problem with this is how these people are pushing their fake morals on everybody else. And what Florida Republicans are most worried about is not the rape itself, it’s how it could threaten the party’s dominance heading into the 2024 election. Nice.
3.
Even some Republicans in Texas are sick of Republicans. After the Republican Party of Texas Executive Committee voted down a proposal by a vote of 32-29 to have no association whatsoever with any individual or organization that is known to espouse anti-Semitism, pro-Nazi sympathies, or Holocaust denial, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) called the vote "despicable" and lamented that the Texas GOP "can’t even bring themselves to denounce neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers." He said the vote was evidence of an "anti-Semitic rot festering" in the Republican Party.
Just so you know, the Texas Republican Party has continued to collect large contributions from prominent corporations which include Chevron ($50,000), Charter Communications ($45,000), Anheuser-Busch ($10,000), CenterPoint Energy ($15,000), Las Vegas Sands Corporation ($10,000), Frontier Communications ($5,000), and Oncor ($5,000). The donations came not from company PACs but directly from corporate treasuries, which is permitted under Texas law.
Some mixed news out of Texas is that yesterday a Texas judge, Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County district court, granted a request to allow an abortion despite the state’s strict bans, ruling in the case of a pregnant woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition. She sided with the woman, Kate Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, and issued a temporary restraining order to permit her doctor to perform an abortion without facing civil or criminal penalties. The judge said, “The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be pregnant, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability, is shocking, and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice. So I will be signing the order, and it will be processed and sent out today.” In response, Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton (a very white male) said any doctor who performs an abortion in Texas will be prosecuted, even if a woman is granted a court exception to the state's strict abortion ban. Beto O’Rourke chimed in on X with Texas AG Ken Paxton says he’ll throw a woman’s doctors in prison for life if they perform a *court-granted* abortion on a *nonviable* pregnancy that risks causing her permanent infertility and death. Still think the GOP is pro-life? How ya gonna vote?
4.
And in the thugs and extremists department, NPR is keeping track of every criminal case stemming from the ‘party’ at the U. S. Capital building on Jan. 6, 2021. An overview of the cases so far:
• Number of people charged, federal: 1,201
• Number of people who have pleaded guilty: 719
• Number of individuals who have had jury, bench, or stipulated bench trials: 168
• The number with mixed verdicts: 46
• The number convicted on all charges: 119
• The number acquitted on all charges: 3
• Number of people sentenced: 728
• The percentage of people sentenced who have received prison time: 64
• The median sentence for those who received prison time, in days: 150
• The number of cases dismissed: 8 federal
Check out this link for more information on the particular actors involved.
5.
This seems pretty cool. Portland International Airport is remodeling their airport with a massive timber roof. One of the best parts about the project is that all the timber for the project came from sustainably managed forests that are located less than 300 miles away...they came from the ancestral lands of the Coquille Indian Tribe in Southwestern Oregon.
Most said it couldn’t be done, mostly people and companies involved in the timber industry, but Ryan Temple, founder and owner of Sustainable Northwest Wood, was one of a handful of people who said that not only was it possible, it might even help redefine the timber industry — by making timber more traceable. He saw the project as a chance to identify and celebrate the people who are sustainably managing their forestland.
Temple said, “They had a bunch of blow-down trees, being cut into quarter-inch strips and pressed onto the cross laminated plywood, which is being used for the airport roof.” Even the white oak flooring in this new wing of the airport will be from local regeneratively managed forests: Zena Forest, 70 miles away, west of Salem, and a handful of neighboring forests that are also carefully managed. For over three decades, Zena Forest’s 1,300 acres have been cared for by the Deumling family, who believes that a mixed-species and mixed-age forest creates greater resilience.
6.
The 2023 BICAS Art Auction is happening today and tomorrow in Tucson (Dec 8 & 9), 5-9pm. This year it’s not at the BICAS location…instead it will be at the Splinter Collective at 901 N 13th Ave. One hundred percent of the proceeds go towards their unique community-driven programs throughout the year and the event will include food, drinks, live entertainment, and crafts.
7.
You need this today:
And now…
Please consider becoming a free subscriber…and, if you’re reading this, I appreciate that you made it to the end of my post!
I did need that, just didn't know it. Thanks again Gary. kw