Struck Down
Ballot Amendments
Good news - Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected attempts by the state legislature to restrict abortion rights:
In Kansas, there was hardly a contest to speak of. The "No" coalition -- which opposed a measure that would have removed abortion rights from the state constitution -- appears to be on track to win in a landslide. And it's no low-turnout fluke. The overall vote count on the amendment eclipsed 869,000 at around 1 a.m. ET.
That figure exceeded Kansas' general election turnout in the midterm year of 2010 and was approaching the 2014 total overnight. And overall primary turnout in the state two years ago -- in the midst of a presidential campaign -- clocked in at just over 636,000. In the 2018 midterm primary, the figure was lower: 457,598.
It’s estimated over 160,000 people turned out purely to vote against abortion restrictions, which is impressive in a state that anti-choice forces had considered an ideological ally. It was a loud repudiation of right wing attempts to put abortion on the ballot this year, and a rare triumph for direct democracy.
The good news ends there, unfortunately, because elsewhere in the country state legislatures have often disregarded or overruled the will of the people. Mississippi’s Supreme Court said the state’s ballot initiative process was ‘unworkable’ when it looked like marijuana legalization, Medicaid expansion, early voting, and term limits might make it to the ballot. Missouri fought Medicaid expansion for nearly two years before giving in. South Dakota legislators tried to raise the vote threshold for constitutional amendments when it appeared their residents wanted to expand Medicaid, though that was also defeated by voters.
The state vying to be the most punitive and cruel towards the will of its voters is Florida. What feels like a long time ago, I worked on the campaign to pass Amendment 4, restoring voting rights to over a million people, and overturning a Jim Crow-era law preventing citizens with past felony convictions from taking part in democracy. Floridians also voted for a $15 minimum wage, and legalizing medical marijuana. In response, the legislature raised the threshold to pass an amendment to 60% of the vote and made acquiring signatures much more difficult:
Look no further than the efforts by gambling interests to make the 2022 ballot. Two separate groups pushing amendments revolving around casinos and sports betting spent a jaw-dropping $116 million and were still unable to make it in time. There are only three amendments on this year’s ballot — and all of them were put there by the Florida Legislature, not outside groups.
Not content to simply make new amendments nearly impossible for outside groups to propose, Florida spends significant time and resources going after the people an overwhelming majority of the state believes should have the right to vote:
But the state’s dominant Republican lawmakers quickly installed a financial hurdle to those new rights. The following year, they passed a law to clarify that people convicted of felonies could only vote if they first paid off any money they owed for committing their crimes. The penalty for registering or voting without doing so: a felony charge for voter fraud.
Supporters of the law spin it as an assurance that formerly incarcerated citizens are ‘paying their debts’ to society, but the truth is the state makes it unreasonably hard to figure out what those debts are:
Florida has no centralized database to allow people to figure out what legal financial obligations they owe to the state. Instead, its 67 counties and various state agencies each maintain their own databases. The state also does not track information for federal or out-of-state convictions, which people are also required to pay off before voting.
What sorts of fines and fees might someone in the Florida system encounter?
Florida charges those convicted of crimes with an array of fines and fees, some of which statutorily cannot be eliminated or reduced. Defendants facing felony charges are assessed $100 to use a public defender, as well as a $100 prosecution fee.
A prosecution fee, huh? The onus is on the returning citizen to navigate the maze of local government to get them paid:
An analysis led by Traci Burch, a political science professor at Northwestern University, tried to determine the legal financial obligations owed by a random sample of 153 Florida residents convicted of felonies and found consistent information for only three of them. Counties often keep poor records, have cumbersome websites and employ unhelpful clerks.
What’s more, it can cost money merely to find out how much money you owe. Four in 10 Florida counties charged either a payment or processing fee to look at their databases, and 15% charged a fee to access certain records, according to Burch’s research.
Three! Out of one hundred and fifty three! Come on! Floridians trying to clear their preposterous debts to the legal system which punished and imprisoned them have less than a five percent chance of getting accurate information from the counties, which they may have to pay to access.
The price of confusion can be steep - ten individuals in the ProPublica story were told by a county election official they could register to vote while they were still incarcerated:
During three visits to the jail, the official helped sign up at least 10 inmates, including John Boyd Rivers, Dedrick Baldwin and Bolton.
You’ll never guess what happened next!
In all, 10 of the men who the official helped register to vote have been charged with voter fraud on the grounds they were ineligible.
Their alleged illegal voting was first spotted by a citizen who analyzed Florida’s voting rolls and then shared the information with the state. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement subsequently launched an eight-month investigation, after which it identified the 10 inmates.
Ahhhhh, yes. Okay. What an excellent use of state resources. Four of the ten men pleaded guilty and received between one and three additional years in prison, and those who go to trial could be looking at five years plus thousands in fines.
So, a ballot measure passed by two-thirds of Florida voters to re-enfranchise over a million voters resulted in a mere 85,000 new registrations in the last cycle, and is sending Floridians back to jail for the inability to navigate the hurdles the state has thrown up to prevent voting.
When I worked on Amendment 4, it was optimistically bi-partisan in nature - more than half the state’s disenfranchised were white, and we had support from Republican groups who saw an opportunity to expand their base in suburban and rural areas. But the reactionary legislature, terrified of losing their heavily gerrymandered lock on state politics, wasn’t willing to take any chances, and now spends its time and money putting people in jail for the crime of trying to vote.
School Lunch
America has a complicated history feeding students in public schools. Back in 2019, ‘lunch debt’ gained national attention when the media began to cover stories of students being mistreated and shamed:
These practices have included stamping a child’s hand with “I need lunch money,” throwing a child’s meal away after it has been served, giving him or her a sunflower butter and jelly sandwich instead of a hot lunch, barring students from participating in extracurricular activities, and even threatening to put children with outstanding school meal debt in foster care.
Last month, a child had his lunch meal thrown in the trash on his birthday because he accrued $9 in unpaid school meals fees while the school district was still processing his free school meal application.
In a country as unequal as ours, it’s no surprise many children need food assistance at school - we have some of the highest levels of child poverty in the developed world. For many kids, school is their primary food source during the day - you may have read stories about schools staying open during the pandemic to offer meals to students.
A major obstacle to delivering meals to children who need them is the country’s patchwork state, county, and local systems. The federal government subsidizes schools with high rates of poverty with free meals through the Community Eligibility Provision, but thousands of schools have not opted in. The USDA - who we’ve talked about before - tried to establish guidelines for school meal debt, but did so in a typically USDA way:
The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to examine the issue of school meal debt and ultimately required school districts to establish a policy for unpaid school meals fees. The USDA did not, however, establish any national standards for what districts or states must include in their policies, and did not provide any baseline protections for children and families.
Well, great. However! In 2020, Congress gave waivers to schools to allow them to provide free meals to students, regardless of income. Universal waivers work great, studies show:
A report from the Food Research and Action Center analyzed how these provisions benefited 62 large school districts across the country. Ninety-five percent of the districts said meal waivers decreased hunger among their students, 89 percent said the waivers made it easier for parents and guardians, and 85 percent said they erased the stigma associated with free school meals.
Thanks to Republicans, the waiver will expire this school year, and we’re back to the status quo, with each school forced to individually monitor and decide which students should qualify for aid:
Universal free meals don’t just benefit students, according to the School Nutrition Association. As school nutrition departments face supply chain and personnel shortages, free meals relieve them of the responsibility of determining which students qualify for free, reduced or full-priced meals.
Plus, free meals for all students mean that schools don’t have to work to collect lunch debt from families who have not provided their children with enough money to cover meal costs.
“It is a lot of pressure on the school districts, because they have to absorb those fees if they don’t get paid,” FitzSimons explained. “So it’s not an ideal situation for anybody involved, and being able to offer meals to all kids is critical.”
It’s good for schools to not have to waste time and resources on figuring out which kids qualify, and ensuring those who do actually apply. Often, families are unaware it’s an option, or don’t sign up due to fear of social stigma for their kids:
Low-income families, especially those enrolling their children in school for the first time, may not realize that they need to apply for free meals. Other eligible families, due to stigma, fear or language barriers, don’t apply, only to struggle to cover the cost of lunch. Parents with household incomes that qualify their children for reduced-price meals but not free ones often find it hard to keep up with lunch fees as well.
Some states have moved to offer universal free lunch to all kids, and Biden recently signed the Keep Kids Fed Act, which gives additional funds to nutrition programs at schools, but stops short of a universal free meal mandate. Despite these efforts, it’s virtually certain millions of children will stop receiving critical meal assistance and access to healthy food when they return to school in the fall.
Alex Jones
We are, unfortunately, still talking about Alex Jones, toxic conspiracy theorist who’s spent the last two decades peddling snake oil and insane rants to his millions of followers. He’s been found guilty by default in two defamation lawsuits brought by the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, and one of the civil damages trials is currently happening in Texas. Jones has tried to declare bankruptcy and been accused of stashing money in trusts and offshore banks to avoid what will undoubtedly be a large jury award. Thus far, judges haven’t fallen for his antics, and the jury is currently in deliberations to hand down the first of two financial penalties against Jones.
It looked like the case would be a side show - Jones took the stand and at least pretended to be contrite. And then:
The ongoing deliberations come a day after an extraordinary courtroom moment in which it was revealed that Jones’s legal team inadvertently sent the contents of his cellphone to opposing counsel, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said in court Wednesday.
The apparent blunder, revealed by attorney Mark Bankston as Jones was on the stand in the damages phase of his defamation trial, unearthed previously undisclosed texts about the massacre and financial information about Infowars. Bankston, who represents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, told the far-right purveyor of conspiracy theories that his attorneys had “messed up and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cellphone.”
“And that is how I know you lied to me when you said you didn’t have text messages about Sandy Hook,” Bankston said.
Ohhhhhhh snap. Yes, Alex Jones’s attorneys accidentally sent the entire contents of his phone going back two years to the opposing counsel, a day before the jury was set to deliberate on his fate. Jones summed it up:
“This is your ‘Perry Mason’ moment,” Jones responded, a reference to the fictional lawyer famed for his stunning 11th-hour courtroom reveals. “I gave them my phone.”
Bankston noted that Jones had testified under oath that he personally searched his cellphone for Sandy Hook text messages and was unable to find any. Bankston asked: “You know what perjury is, right? I just want to make sure you know before we go any further.”
Jones denied lying, saying, “I’m not a tech guy.”
Listen, it is not great when your legal team sends documents you testified under oath did not exist to your accusers:
Bankston also asked about Jones’s emails. He noted that Jones had testified that he did not have any about Sandy Hook because he doesn’t use email. Jones said in court: “Yes. I personally do not get on the internet and sit there and use email. I’ve never sent emails myself. Because I don’t like it. I can’t stand it. There’s too many of them.”
The attorney then displayed emails he said Jones had sent to lawyers, staff and others about business operations.
Not great! Also probably not great for the lawyers, who were apparently covering up their client’s perjury? I don’t know.
Also! The phone contents are of extreme interest to our friends at the January 6th Committee, who have already requested them. Really, a truly excellent development in the quest to hold one of the most poisonous right-wing media personalities accountable for the damage he’s done to American society.
Ivana Trump
Ivana Trump’s adult life was not an easy one - she was publicly cheated on, and credibly sexually assaulted at least once by said ex-husband. She also had to raise her three deeply unpleasant children, who’ve done their best to make American society as corrupt and cruel as possible, in their father’s image.
It was a little odd that Ivana, who was estimated to be worth $100 million dollars at the time of her death, was dumped unceremoniously into a weird pauper’s grave on the first hole of Trump’s New Jersey golf course:
Odd, that is, until you realize that her pile of dirt represents a potential tax windfall for her husband:
The location of Ivana Trump's grave — near the first hole of the golf course at Trump National Golf Club — may have tax implications for the business owned by the former president.
Under New Jersey state tax code, any land that is dedicated to cemetery purposes is exempt from all taxes, rates, and assessments. Cemetery companies are also specifically exempt from paying any real-estate taxes, rates, and assessments or personal property taxes on their lands, as well as business taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, and inheritance taxes.’
Trump has long sought to designate his properties as cemeteries:
Trump has planned for at least a decade to build variations of a cemetery on the course. NPR reported in 2012 that his intention was to build a mausoleum to one day be buried in himself. He later amended his proposal to create a cemetery on the property to suggest building more than 1,000 possible graves.
As callous as it may be to use your dead ex-wife for a tax break without springing for the upgraded headstone package, what did we really expect from the world’s stingiest grifter?
Short Cons
ProPublica - “Forty members of Congress on Monday asked the IRS and the Treasury to investigate what the lawmakers termed an “alarming pattern” of right-wing advocacy groups registering with the tax agency as churches, a move that allows the organizations to shield themselves from some financial reporting requirements and makes it easier to avoid audits.”
WaPo - “Many of the creators who signed deals with Triller say they have been left deep in debt, and are facing eviction and skipping meals to make ends meet.”
SciAm - “The nation’s wastewater is laden with the leftovers from protein digestion: nitrogen compounds that can feed toxic algal blooms and pollute the air and drinking water. This source of nitrogen pollution even rivals that from fertilizers washed off of fields growing food crops, new research suggests.”
Gizmodo - “A Gizmodo investigation into some of the nation’s biggest data brokers found more than two dozen promoting access to datasets containing digital information on millions of pregnant and potentially pregnant people across the country.”
Wired - “According to a report published today from the Center for Democracy and Technology, 89 percent of teachers have said that their schools will continue using student-monitoring software, up 5 percentage points from last year.”
Reuters - “Tyson Foods Inc, one of the largest U.S. meat producers, is refusing to comply with a subpoena for a civil probe into possible price gouging during the COVID-19 pandemic, New York's attorney general said on Wednesday.”
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