Friday Homestead Dispatch
Elastic Ergonomic Echocardiogram
There was a deep stupidity in ambition, a blindness in it, the way it was so serious, so unplayful. It failed to value the ringing feeling that had come over him, as when he saw a proof, or on that first night with Marina, or sometimes on the dawn barges back over the lagoon to terra-firma. These were the moments that mattered. — Galileo’s Dream, Kim Stanley Robinson
"At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" — Joseph Nye Welch
1.
A month or so ago I wrote about the Comstock Act, the 19th-century anti-vice law named for the crusading bluenose Anthony Comstock, who persecuted Margaret Sanger, arrested thousands and boasted of driving 15 of his targets to suicide. Passed in 1873, the Comstock Act prohibited the mailing of every “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article,” including “every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing” intended for “producing abortion.” Until quite recently, the Comstock Act was thought to be moot, made irrelevant by a series of Supreme Court decisions on the First Amendment, contraception and abortion. But it was never repealed, and now that Trump’s justices have scrapped Roe, his allies believe they can use Comstock to go after abortion nationwide.
An article published this week in Mother Jones digs deep into the history of Anthony Comstock with the headline, A Nationwide Abortion Ban Could Really Happen. You Can Thank Anthony Comstock’s Suitcase Full of Dildos. I mean, now you have to read it, right? It includes references to both Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman who famously said, “When a law has outgrown time and necessity, it must go, and the only way to get rid of the law is to awaken the public to the fact that it has outlived its purpose. And that is precisely what I have been doing and mean to do in the future.”
It was recently that District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas cited the Comstock Act to challenge the FDA’s 24-year-old approval of mifepristone. That case is now before the Supreme Court, where Justices Thomas and Alito brought Comstock up in oral arguments.
Once again, NOW is the time to awaken the public, 100+ years later, that this ancient puritan law has outlived its purpose.
2.
Speaking of ancient puritan laws, volunteers across the state of Arizona have been relentless in getting signatures to to restore abortion rights and overcome restrictions put in place by Arizona Republicans. Yes, Republicans. There are now more signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot but having more signatures than necessary under the law just helps to seal the deal.
Now, according to Bolts, the GOP is now pushing a separate constitutional amendment that would multiply those hurdles, and make future citizen-led initiatives prohibitively difficult. Republican lawmakers have placed a measure on the November ballot that would severely restrict direct democracy in Arizona by imposing strict geographic requirements on where organizers must gather signatures. Arizonans will vote on it this fall, likely alongside the abortion measure. Did I say Republicans are doing this? To make it much more difficult, and expensive, to gather signatures for citizen led initiatives? Well, shut my mouth.
The GOP in Arizona has tried other measures before, including adopting a law in 2017 that made it easier for signatures to be challenged in court. Republican state Senator J.D. Mesnard sponsored that bill as well as the new one on the front burner, SCR 1015.
While we’re on the subject of Republicans making lives more difficult, how about that GOP dominate Louisiana House approving a bill Tuesday that would add two medications commonly used to induce abortions to the state’s list of controlled dangerous substances, making possession of the drugs without valid prescriptions a crime punishable by fines, jail time or both. And the Republican-leaning Supreme Court just cleared the way on Thursday for South Carolina to keep using a congressional map that a lower court had deemed an unconstitutional racial gerrymander that resulted in the “bleaching of African American voters” from a district. Robert Reich said the real news is that Alito and the five other Republican justices have made it much harder, if not impossible, to challenge racial gerrymandering.
I can barely keep up but here’s some more…Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies plead not guilty in Arizona. He and 17 other Republicans face felony charges related to their alleged efforts to subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state.
And Republicans are going to boot camp! The Guardian reports that a powerful, rightwing lobbying group is promoting a hard-right policy agenda and cementing ties between the Republican party and the far right at at least 21 events involving senators, members of Congress, and both junior and senior political aides. The documents offer previously unreported details of Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) trainings and “bootcamps” for congressional staff at CPI’s sprawling Maryland ranch, and lavish, star-studded retreats for members of Congress – mostly members of the far-right Freedom caucus – at a string of Florida resorts. Oh boy! A camp where they encourage racism, bigotry and hate! CPI’s chairman is Jim DeMint, former congressman and a guy who couldn’t keep his job as president of the Heritage Foundation. Mark Meadows, one of the other Republicans indicted in Arizona along with Rudy, is a senior partner in this charade.
And for the cherry on top, Rebecca Solnit posted on Facebook yesterday; just another little reminder that we're looking at fascism, which would like to take over this country. Rubio and Cruz both refuse to say they'll support the election outcome unless it's the one they like; Alito is flying the flags of the coup attempt; Trump and his posse are testing how far their "unified reich/vermin" rhetoric can go and spreading a new conspiracy theory/lie that Biden tried to assassinate him. And of course the Putin-cuddling continues.
3.
I don’t have children and if I did, they would most likely be adults by now. You, however, may have children, grandchildren, or great-grandkids, that are of school age. I don’t really keep up with the voucher system vs. public education but my friend Cinthia T. sent along a comprehensive article about the rise of ESAs (Educational Savings Accounts) which are the latest type of vouchers available to all or most families who forego public schools.
The states adopting ESAs are also structuring this emerging, publicly funded, dual system so that private schools and homeschooling remain free of almost all regulations, academic standards, accountability, and oversight. These sorts of rules and regulations are always imposed by state legislatures on public schools and are understood as essential to protect students and to advance learning. Even as legislatures are adding restrictive laws on how local public schools teach topics involving race, sex, ethnicity, and gender they are providing new state funding for private schools and home-schooling that will enable racist, sexist, and other bigoted teaching.
The article goes on to say that Arizona, along with Indiana, are the leading states for voucher programs outside the South. For you Kansans reading this, by 2027, approximately 86 percent of Kansas families could be eligible for a voucher. Princeton sociologist Jennifer Jennings found in 2024 that “Arizona’s school vouchers are subsidizing its most fortunate families, reinforcing existing disparities rather than mitigating them.”
Digging deeper in the article it’s worth noting that many of the folks pushing for the voucher system are faith-based Republicans and the ultra-wealthy. Last year, in a closed meeting of Christian millionaires, one attendee declared that the goal was to “take down the education system as we know it today.” Michael Farris, the Virginia lawyer who has become a prominent leader of the modern home-schooling movement, told the group, “We’ve got to recognize that we’re swinging for the fences here, that any time you try to take down a giant of this nature, it’s an uphill battle,” according to a recording obtained by the Washington Post.
Some voucher-supported private schools instruct students exclusively about a biblical story of creation. Some require students to pledge allegiance to religious flags and to memorize and recite school-chosen Bible verses. Some teach that homosexuality is a sin. Some expel LGBTQ+ students or even those who associate with LGBTQ+ people.
Some use textbooks that belittle the significance of slavery and ignore or downplay the role of Black leaders and the civil rights movement. There is nothing in the ESA laws, enacted or pending, that restricts a private school teacher, or home-schooling parent from engaging in a lesson plan of indoctrination on the inherent superiority of the white race, the heroism of John Wilkes Booth and James Earl Ray, the need to exterminate LGBTQ+ people, or to punish any woman who seeks an abortion.
4.
More than two dozen wells in the Tucson area have been taken offline because of PFAS since 2021, and the city has spent millions to remove the chemicals, according to an NPR interview with KJZZ’s (Phoenix) Alisa Reznick, Tucson is one of the first places in line for money allotted by the EPA to clean up so-called forever chemicals (PFAS) in drinking water supplies across the country.
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a large, complex group of synthetic chemicals that have been used in consumer products around the world since about the 1950s. They are used in making things like firefighting foam, stain repellants, and non-stick cookware. Most of the wells in the Tucson area that have been shut down are from firefighting foam from Tucson International Airport and Davis-Monthan runways.
The Tucson area is receiving $12,000,000 from the new fund EPA has set aside to clean up PFAS contamination. That's on top of another 30 million from the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in 2021. Perhaps one bit of good news is that charcoal based granular activated carbon seems to work to remove PFAS from water, and is now being used in Tucson.
5.
And now…
