#IL Legislature

[jennifermnhi]

UAW members at Chicago ford assembly plant could go on strike NBC Chicago [Video]

[sieclesetcieux]

Saint-Just's letter to Camille Desmoulins in (May?) 1790

He mentions the Assemblée de Chauny, which took place in May 1790 according to this site.

ORIGINAL FRENCH

Monsieur,

Si vous étiez moins occupé, j'entrerais dans quelques détails sur l'Assemblée de Chauny, où se sont trouvés des hommes de toutes trempes et de tout calibre. Malgré ma minorité, j'ai été reçu. Le sieur Gellé, notre confrère au bailliage de Vermandois, m'avait dénoncé. On l'a chassé par les épaules. Nous avons vu là vos compatriotes MM. Saulce, Violette et autres, dont j'ai reçu beaucoup de politesse. Il est inutile de vous dire (car vous n'aimez pas la sotte louange) que votre pays s'enorgueillit de vous.

Vous avez su avant moi que le département était définitivement à Laon. Est-ce un bien, est-ce un mal pour l'une ou l'autre ville ? Il me semble que ce n'est qu'un point d'honneur entre les deux villes, et les points d'honneur sont très peu de chose presqu'en tout genre.

Je suis monté à la tribune, j'ai travaillé dans le dessein de porter le jour dans la question du chef-lieu : mais je ne suivis rien ; je suis parti chargé de compliments comme l'âne de reliques, ayant cependant cette confiance qu'à la prochaine législature je pourrai être des vôtres à l'Assemblée nationale.

Vous m'aviez promis de m'écrire, mais je prévois bien que vous n'en aurez pas eu le loisir. Je suis libre à l'heure qu’il est. Retournerai-je auprès de vous ou resterai-je parmi les sots aristocrates de ce pays-ci ?

Les paysans de mon canton étaient venus, alors de mon retour de Chauny, me chercher à Manicamp. Le comte de Lauraguais fut fort étonné de cette cérémonie rusti-patriotique. Je les conduisis tous chez lui pour le visiter. On nous dit qu'il est aux champs et moi cependant je fis comme Tarquin ; j'avais une baguette avec laquelle je coupai la tête à une fougère qui se trouva près de moi, sous les fenêtres du château, et sans mot dire nous fines volte-face.

Adieu, mon cher Desmoulins. Si vous avez besoin de moi, écrivez-moi. Vos derniers numéros sont pleins d'excellentes choses. Apollon et Minerve ne vous ont point encore abandonné, ne vous en déplaise. Si vous avez quelque chose à faire dire à vos gens de Guise, je les reverrai dans les huit jours à Laon où j'irai faire un tour pour affaires particulières.

Adieu encore, gloire, paix, et rage patriotique. Saint-Just.

Je vous lirai ce soir, car je ne vous parle de vos derniers numéros que par ouï-dire.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

I found a translation here, which I used as a basis for mine, but there are some mistakes I corrected and I made some stylistic changes.

Monsieur,

If you were less busy, I would give you more details about the Assembly of Chauny, where one can find men of considerable calibre and quality. I was received in spite of my minority. Sieur Gellé, our compatriot from the bailliage of Vermandois had denounced me. He was grabbed by the shoulders and thrown out. We saw your compatriots, M. Saulce, M. Violette and others, by whom I was received with great courtesy. There is no point telling you (because you don't like foolish praise) that your region is proud of you.

You have known before I did that the département is definitely fixed at Laon. Is that good or is that bad for one or other of the towns? It seems to me that it is no more than a point of honour between the two towns and points of honour are of little importance.

I took the tribune; I worked with the intention of carrying the [order of the] day on the question of the chef-lieu: but I did not follow on; I left, weighed down with compliments like the donkey burdened with relics (1), having however the confidence that at the next legislature I could be among you at the National Assembly.

You had promised to write to me, but I can well anticipate that you had no such leisure. I am free as of now. Should I return to you or remain amongst the foolish aristocrats in this part of the country?

The peasants from my canton came, when I returned from Chauny, to look for me at Manicamp. The Comte de Lauraguais was greatly astonished by this rustico-patriotic ceremony. I led them all to his home for a visit. They said that he was out in the fields and I, however, did like Tarquin, I had a cane [baguette (2)] with which I cut off the head of a nearby fern, beneath the windows of the castle, and without a word we left and returned.

Farewell, my dear Desmoulins. If you have need of me, write to me. Your latest issues are full of excellent things. Apollo and Minerva have not yet abandoned you, whether you like it or not. If you have anything to say to your people in Guise, I will be seeing them again within the next eight days in Laon where I will be going for particular matters.

Farewell again, glory, peace and patriotic rage.

Saint-Just

I will read you this evening, since I only tell you about your recent issues from hearsay.

(1) This is a reference to a fable by La Fontaine.

(2) The baguette (direct translation: stick - the word existed before the bread style!) was a very thin cane, very fashionable to carry at the time. You can see some examples here. I'm not sure how he managed to cut a plant with it though... I've never tried to do that lol. So I don't know if it implies it was a sword-cane or if it was thin enough to do it on its own.

He compares his gesture to that of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus who, according to Livy, silently cut off the heads of the tallest poppies as a demonstration to what his son had to do.

(This is, by the way, the scene we see reproduced at the beginning of Saint-Just et la force des choses, and why they changed the fern to poppies - so the allusion would be clearer.)

[covid-safer-hotties]

Your Rights to Wear a Mask in Public in Nassau County - Published Aug 14, 2024

Follow the link to help or take action!

Politicians across the country, including Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams, have voiced support for enacting mask bans under the guise of stopping crime. On Long Island, Nassau County has already enacted a broad, overreaching mask ban. This comes as COVID-19 continues to surge and protestors face continued, unrelenting doxxing and targeted surveillance.

Here’s what you need to know.

Are there mask bans currently in effect in New York State? Nassau County’s “Mask Transparency Act” was signed into law on August 14, 2024 and went into effect immediately. Ballston Spa, a village near Albany, has passed its own mask ban targeting protestors. It remains legal to wear a mask or other face covering elsewhere in New York State.

Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul have both publicly expressed support for enacting mask bans, and New York Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz introduced a statewide mask ban in May, but the bill has not yet proceeded through the legislature and is not in effect.

What types of face coverings or masks will be affected by this law? Nassau County’s mask ban language is vague and does not differentiate between medical masks like N95s, KN95s and surgical masks, and other types of masks or “facial coverings” including niqabs, burqas, wrapping a scarf or bandana around your face, and costume masks.

What is the penalty if I am arrested for wearing a mask? Violating Nassau County’s mask ban is considered a misdemeanor, and those arrested can be subject to a $1,000 fine, one year imprisonment, or both.

Is there an age restriction in the Nassau County mask ban? No, a person wearing a mask or other face covering of any age, including children, can be charged with a violation of Nassau County’s mask ban.

Can I be stopped by a police officer just because I am wearing a mask? In Nassau County, yes.

Officers are supposed to have “reasonable suspicion” that you are engaging in, or intend to engage in, criminal activity in order to stop you. However, Nassau may try to apply this broadly to include wearing a mask while driving, wearing a mask while gathering in a public place – such as a bus stop, block party, or protest – or knowingly allowing or helping people who are masked to gather in a public place.

Do I have to remove my face covering if an officer asks me to? Police cannot force you to take off your mask unless you are stopped in a vehicle or they have reasonable suspicion that you are engaging in or intend to engage in a criminal activity in Nassau County.

Can I be arrested just for wearing a mask in Nassau? Law enforcement officers need probable cause to arrest you – meaning they must have solid evidence based on objective circumstances that you have committed, are committing, or are about to commit a crime. However, Nassau’s broad bill language could allow police to interpret probable cause to include something as banal as wearing a mask while gathering in a public place – such as a bus stop, block party, or protest – or knowingly allowing or helping people who are masked to gather in a public place.

Are there exceptions for people wearing masks for health or religious purposes? Yes. The Nassau legislation states that it:

“…shall not apply to facial coverings worn to protect the health or safety of the wearer, for religious or cultural purposes, or for the peaceful celebration of a holiday or similar religious or cultural event for which the wearing of masks or facial coverings are customarily worn.”

The “health and safety” exception applies only to those who are masking to protect their own health and safety, and does not apply to those who wear a mask solely to protect others. For example, someone who wears a mask for the sole purpose of protecting a family member who is immunocompromised from exposure to illness is not legally permitted to wear a mask in public under Nassau County’s mask ban. It also doesn’t allow those who are sick – with a cold or flu, for example – and may be contagious to wear a mask to protect others and prevent the spread of illness.

Law enforcement must respect the religious practices of everyone they come into contact with. If you wear a niqab or burqua, you should not be required to remove your religious garb unless absolutely necessary – for instance, should you be arrested, law enforcement can mandate your face is unencumbered if your photograph must be taken. If you are made to remove your niqab or burqa, you can request that you be able to do so in a private room with female officers, and where male officers are not present. Currently, Nassau County does not have codified policies governing how law enforcement must engage with people wearing religious garments such as niqabs and burqas, and decisions about religious head and face coverings are left to the discretion of the police department and sheriff’s office.

Do I have to prove my religious or health reasons for wearing a facial covering to law enforcement? No. Law enforcement cannot make you provide a doctor’s note proving your health reasons for wearing a mask, nor force you to disclose private health information.

They also cannot make you provide evidence of your religious affiliation or religious practices.

How can I fight back against mask bans? Get Involved and learn more:

Disability Rights NY Mask Bloc Long Island COVID Advocacy NY Jews for Mask Rights Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Find your local mask bloc Take Action No New Yorker should not have to fear that leaving home in a mask or face covering – whether for health, religious, or privacy reasons – could lead to harassment, intimidation, or arrest.

Tell lawmakers to reject mask bans and protect New Yorkers’ health, religious, and privacy rights.

[anchesetuttinoino]

Oltre a essere stato presidente della RAI e deputato dem per 3 legislature, Roberto Zaccaria è il presidente del Consiglio Italiano per i Rifugiati (CIR), il quale è stato finanziato dalla fondazione di Soros.

Nel 2022, la onlus di Zaccaria ha gestito un budget di 3.238.570 euro, dei quali 2.120.387 euro provenienti da contributi pubblici.

Francesca Totolo

[isfjmel-phleg]

@inklings-challenge for yesterday's prompt, "Newspaper," here are a few letters to the editor of the Loriston Lamplight from shortly before Elystan starts school in Book 3.

Reportedly, Elystan's mother forbade him to look at newspapers during his convalescence before school. Here's why.

(Obnoxious opinions are those of the original writers, not mine, and, I am sorry to say, are typical of the rhetoric of the day.)

3 September 1908

To the Editor of the Loriston Lamplight.

Sir:

His Majesty King Delclis is a bright, promising young man, and I commend him on his and his ministers’ handling of the recent attempted uprising. The late Duke of Gorchester proved himself a traitor indeed; it is best that Corege eradicate such blights on society as speedily as possible, lest they spread and further contaminate our great nation. In this matter, our King, our Prime Minister, and our honored judicial system acted wisely. 

However, it was with concern that I learned that the present Duke of Gorchester not only received no penalty for his role in betraying his monarch but also is being permitted to attend school, and no less than a respectable institution like Hollingham College. I am shocked that Hollingham, a school which I had previously believed to have standards, would accept as a pupil the offspring of a convicted traitor and allow the likes of him to mingle with the noblest young men of Corege and her neighbors. No son of mine will attend school alongside a traitor and son of a traitor. Her Majesty the Queen Dowager can be forgiven for her weakness in permitting Gorchester to walk free, for we cannot expect the tender sentiments of a mother to see reason in such circumstances, but His Majesty cannot allow such lenience. If he is the intelligent, thoughtful young man that I believe him to be, he would be wise to recall that the apple does not fall far from the tree and to keep a close eye on Gorchester, who has proven himself unworthy of trust. It is tragic that one so young would succumb to depravity so soon in life, but such is the natural outcome of unfortunate breeding and a poor upbringing. Let this be a lesson to the parents of Corege.

Yours truly,

Gearalt, Earl of Tholforth

#

3 September 1908

To the Editor of the Loriston Lamplight.

Sir:

The admission of the present Duke of Gorchester to the hallowed halls of Hollingham College is only further indication of what the world is coming to these days. When I attended Hollingham forty years ago, there was never any question of permitting undesirables to mix with the sons of the nation’s finest families. But in this permissive, degenerate age, there is no concern for the well-being of our children as long as we may present ourselves as “broad-minded,” I suppose! If by “broad-minded” it is meant that the mind is spread so far it no longer exists, then they are not far wrong. Gorchester’s immediate parentage is a sure indication of his natural wickedness, and his descent from the House of Liddick further proves it, for it is well-known that that line is descended from a lawless marriage to an Otionovian female. Does not Gorchester himself possess the dark hair and features of an Otionovian? He is no true son of Corege, and I cannot understand why Sir Jowan has not arranged for him to be returned to the land of his ancestors’ origin.

Let me not hear that Gorchester is but a child; he is thirteen years old, old enough to know right from wrong, and he has willfully betrayed his king and his country. We must not coddle such a criminal and permit him to lead a life of leisure and luxury at the expense of the Coregean taxpayer but rather hold him accountable for his crimes. The best place for a traitor is the end of a rope; the second best is in prison. Perhaps Parliament should have realized that before they passed the legislature of a few years ago that has allowed so many wicked souls lenience on the grounds of something as trivial and irrelevant as their deceptive youth.

Sincerely yours,

Ilar Erwerth Crakehill, Esq.

#

4 September 1908

To the Editor of the Loriston Lamplight.

Sir:

Allow me to extend my sympathy to Her Majesty the Queen Dowager. She is indeed a saint, a true “angel of the kingdom,” in her womanly forbearance with such a trying circumstance as the waywardness of her younger son. Of course, such conduct as his is the fruit of an upbringing lacking in the discipline and instruction that molds the young into men who bring their families no shame, but the Queen deserves our pity rather than our censure. It cannot be entirely her fault that the present Duke of Gorchester has wasted his substance with riotous living. Even the most prodigal of sons can seek repentance; it is my prayer that Gorchester come to his senses and realize how much hurt he is causing the woman who bore him. The Queen and His Majesty have been exceptionally forgiving of this erring boy in according him privileges that many upstanding Coregean lads can only dream of enjoying. Let us hope that he will be grateful. Perhaps Her Majesty may find that such lessons may be better learned at some humbler school than lofty Hollingham—at an establishment of removed locale and no renown, which would supply ample opportunity for reflection and solitude.

Yours very truly,

U. J. Sneaton

[uboat53]

New laws coming into effect as of the New Year!

In Idaho and Louisiana, bans on gender affirming care for minors will come into effect. West Virginia also has a ban, but it allows access with parental consent and a medical diagnosis. Meanwhile, in Maryland, gender affirming care will be covered by Medicaid and Hawaii is requiring that new marriage certificates be issued on request to people who change their gender and is replacing "mother" and "father" with "birthing parent" and "non-birthing parent" in state law. In Colorado, buildings that are at least partly owned by government entities will be required to have at least one gender-neutral bathroom on any floor that has public restrooms.

Washington state will make new or renewing insurance plans will no longer be allowed to charge deductibles or copays for abortions. California will protect both abortion and gender affirming care from out-of-state litigation.

Indiana will make it easier for parents to challenge books in school libraries while Illinois will block state funding to public libraries that ban or restrict books.

In Illinois, police will no longer be able to pull over drivers because of something hanging from their rear-view mirrors (this is jokingly being referred to as the "fuzzy dice" law). Also, Illinois will be banning high-powered rifles and high-capacity magazines. It is also allowing victims of deepfake pornography to sue.

Minnesota has a new Red Flag law that will allow police to take guns away from people deemed to be an imminent threat. Colorado is banning ghost guns. Connecticut is requiring online dating operators to adopt policies to prevent harassment. North Carolina is requiring porn sites to confirm that users are 18 years old by using commercial databases and allows parents to sue if their kids access porn.

Twenty-two states will increase their minimum wage. If you live in AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, ME, ML, MI, MN, MO, MT, NE, NJ, NY, OH, RI, SD, VT, WA, or DC, minimum wage will be going up. In addition to these, NV and OR will increase the minimum wage in July and FL will see an increase at the end of September.

In federal news, as of the New Year, your employer may be able to make a matching contribution into your 401(k) retirement account when you make student loan payments.

Finally, the FAFSA is getting shorter and easier to fill out. This should mean a lot more low-income borrowers getting federal assistance.

Here's my sources which have more details on all of these if you're interested in checking them out:

[tomorrowusa]

David Hogg is one of my heroes. He is a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida who went on with several classmates to organize the March For Our Lives.

He is now encouraging young people not just to vote but to run for federal and state office. He co-founded an organization called Leaders We Deserve to help younger progressive candidates.

This is not an attempt at generational or institutional war. As David explained, Leaders We Deserve (LWD) wants to create an intergenerational coalition for change within the progressive community. LWD furthers this by supporting younger progressive candidates who wish to run against older rightwingers. The advisory board of LWD includes veteran progressives such as Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL-09) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD-08).

One of many reasons to support LWD is that much of the emphasis will be on state legislatures. The LWD site says, "At least 80% of the candidates we support will be running for State Legislative seats.". I have frequently encouraged people to take a lot more interest in their state legislatures. Until recently, liberals have badly neglected state politics – and we've seen the results of such neglect in states like Florida.

For more information about Leaders We Deserve, check out their site. Leaders We Deserve | Invest in Young People

To make a contribution, you do so via ActBlue. Leaders We Deserve — Donate via ActBlue

Surprisingly, one of the biggest success stories ever for electing young people to office is Joe Biden. He had not yet reached his 30th birthday when he upset incumbent Republican J. Caleb Boggs for US Senate in Delaware. Get involved now and you could go way far.

BONUS TRACK: Consider running for state legislature in your state this decade. In some states the minimum age is 18 – though 21 and 25 are more common. Look up the eligibility requirements for your state.

Eligibility Requirements to Run for the State Legislature

[kneedeepincynade]

The sino russian alliance today rappresents the most resilient core of the multipolar order and a secure bastion against western imperialism

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

🥰 新时代中俄全面战略协作伙伴关系 | PROMUOVERE IL PARTENARIATO STRATEGICO SINO-RUSSO NELLA NUOVA ERA 😘

🇨🇳 Ieri, 22 novembre, il Presidente Xi Jinping ha accolto, nella Grande Sala del Popolo di Pechino, Vjačeslav Volodin - Presidente della Duma di Stato della Federazione Russa 🇷🇺

🐲 Durante l'Incontro, il 领袖 ha osservato che, nel corso degli anni, i partiti politici nella Duma di Stato si sono impegnati attivamente per promuovere le Relazioni Sino-Russe, contribuendo ad approfondire l'Amicizia tra i due Paesi 💕

🥳 A ottobre, il Governo Cinese ha ospitato il Terzo "Belt and Road International Cooperation Summit Forum", dal Tema 高质量共建‘一带一路’，携手实现共同发展繁荣 - ovvero: Costruire congiuntamente una Nuova Via della Seta di Alta Qualità (高质量), per raggiungere uno Sviluppo Comune (共同发展) e la Prosperità (繁荣) 💕

🥳 Durante l'evento, a cui hanno partecipato Capi di Stato e Delegazioni di 150 Paesi e 30 Organizzazioni Multilaterali, il Presidente Xi Jinping e il Presidente Putin hanno elaborato insieme nuovi progetti per rafforzare la Cooperazione Sino-Russa 🤝

😍 Nel 2024 ricorrerà il 75° Anniversario dell'Istituzione di Relazioni Diplomatiche tra i due Paesi, e la Repubblica Popolare Cinese è pronta a collaborare con la Russia per approfondire le Relazioni Bilaterali, secondo lo Spirito del Buon Vicinato, la Collaborazione Strategica e il Principio di 合作共赢 - Cooperazione a Mutuo Vantaggio 🤝

💬 «Onorevole Compagno Presidente, la ringrazio molto per averci dedicato del tempo. Prima di tutto, vorrei portarle i cordiali saluti del Presidente Putin. Grazie alle relazioni amichevoli tra lei e il Presidente Putin, i nostri Paesi sono diventati non solo partner strategici, ma anche "amici strategici" - le nostre relazioni si sono sviluppate, e ciò ha portato benefici a tutti noi» - ha dichiarato Volodin 🇷🇺

🤔 Il Partenariato Strategico tra Cina e Russia continua a rafforzarsi, e il Coordinamento tra Organi Legislativi svolge un ruolo importante nel garantire lo sviluppo stabile, e a lungo termine, delle relazioni tra i due Paesi 🤝

🇨🇳 Pertanto, il Presidente ha espresso la speranza che l'Assemblea Nazionale del Popolo e la Duma di Stato promuovano ulteriormente gli scambi di esperienze in materia di governance, sfruttando i Comitati e i Gruppi d'Amicizia Sino-Russi, per:

一 Garantire un miglior supporto giuridico per la Cooperazione Bilaterale 🤝

二 Promuovere la Sinergia tra 一带一路 - Nuova Via della Seta e l'Unione Economica Eurasiatica 🤝

三 Approfondire la Comunicazione e il Coordinamento nei meccanismi multilaterali, quali: 🌐 上海合作组织 - l'Organizzazione per la Cooperazione di Shanghai, BRICS e G20 🤝

🇷🇺 Durante l'Incontro, Volodin ha dichiarato che le Relazioni tra Russia e Cina hanno raggiunto il miglior livello della Storia dei due Paesi sotto la Guida Strategica dei due Presidenti, e che tutti i partiti della Duma di Stato detengono un elevato grado di consenso nel sostenere lo sviluppo delle relazioni amichevoli con la Cina 💕

🇷🇺 La Russia sostiene con fermezza il Principio dell'Unica Cina, così come sostiene la Cina nella salvaguardia della Sovranità Nazionale e dell'Integrità Territoriale, ed è disposta a rafforzare gli scambi e la cooperazione tra legislature e partiti politici, per:

一 Attuare il Consenso raggiunto dai due Capi di Stato 🤝

二 Approfondire l'Amicizia e la Fiducia Reciproca tra i due Popoli 💕

三 Fornire una forte garanzia giuridica nello sviluppo duraturo del Partenariato Strategico 🤝

🔍 Zhao Leji - Presidente del Comitato Permanente dell'Assemblea Nazionale del Popolo, incontra Volodin 🤝

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan 😘

🥰 新时代中俄全面战略协作伙伴关系 | PROMOTING SINO-RUSSIAN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP IN THE NEW ERA 😘

🇨🇳 Yesterday, November 22, President Xi Jinping welcomed Vyačeslav Volodin - President of the State Duma of the Russian Federation in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing 🇷🇺

🐲 During the Meeting, the 领袖 noted that, over the years, political parties in the State Duma have actively worked to promote Sino-Russian Relations, helping to deepen the friendship between the two countries 💕

🥳 In October, the Chinese Government hosted the Third "Belt and Road International Cooperation Summit Forum", with the theme 高质量共建'一带一路'，携手实现共同发展繁荣 - that is: Jointly Building a High-Quality New Silk Road (高质量), to achieve Common Development (共同发展) and Prosperity (繁荣) 💕

🥳 During the event, which was attended by Heads of State and Delegations of 150 Countries and 30 Multilateral Organizations, President Xi Jinping and President Putin jointly developed new projects to strengthen Sino-Russian Cooperation 🤝

😍 2024 will mark the 75th Anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the two countries, and the People's Republic of China is ready to cooperate with Russia to deepen bilateral relations, in accordance with the Spirit of Good Neighbor, Strategic Collaboration and the Principle by 合作共赢 - Mutual Benefit Cooperation 🤝

💬 «Honorable Comrade President, thank you very much for dedicating your time to us. First of all, I would like to bring you warm greetings from President Putin. Thanks to the friendly relations between you and President Putin, our countries have become not only strategic partners, but also "strategic friends" - our relations have developed, and this has brought benefits to all of us" - said Volodin 🇷🇺

🤔 The Strategic Partnership between China and Russia continues to strengthen, and the Coordination between Legislative Bodies plays an important role in ensuring the stable and long-term development of relations between the two countries 🤝

🇨🇳 Therefore, the President expressed hope that the National People's Congress and the State Duma will further promote exchanges of experiences in governance, taking advantage of the Sino-Russian Committees and Friendship Groups, to:

一 Ensure better legal support for Bilateral Cooperation 🤝

二 Promote Synergy between 一带一路 - New Silk Road and the Eurasian Economic Union 🤝

三 Deepen Communication and Coordination in multilateral mechanisms, such as: 🌐 上海合作组织 - the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS and G20 🤝

🇷🇺 During the Meeting, Volodin declared that relations between Russia and China have reached the best level in the history of the two countries under the strategic leadership of the two Presidents, and that all parties in the State Duma have a high degree of consensus in supporting the development of friendly relations with China 💕

🇷🇺 Russia firmly supports the One China Principle, as well as supports China in safeguarding National Sovereignty and Territorial Integrity, and is willing to strengthen exchanges and cooperation between legislatures and political parties, to:

一 Implement the Consensus reached by the two Heads of State 🤝

二 Deepening Friendship and Mutual Trust between the two Peoples 💕

三 Provide a strong legal guarantee in the lasting development of the Strategic Partnership 🤝

🔍 Zhao Leji - Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, meets Volodin 🤝

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collectivoshaoshan 😘

[msternberg]

Someone wrote this as a factual historically backed response to the claim that somehow Democrats and Republicans changed sides.

June 17, 1854

The Republican Party is officially founded as an abolitionist party to slavery in the United States.

October 13, 1858

During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) said, “If you desire negro citizenship, if you desire to allow them to come into the State and settle with the white man, if you desire them to vote on an equality with yourselves, and to make them eligible to office, to serve on juries, and to adjudge your rights, then support Mr. Lincoln and the Black Republican party, who are in favor of the citizenship of the negro. For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any and every form. I believe this Government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity for ever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians, and other inferior races.”. Douglas became the Democrat Party’s 1860 presidential nominee.

April 16, 1862

President Lincoln signed the bill abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. In Congress, almost every Republican voted for yes and most Democrats voted no.

July 17, 1862

Over unanimous Democrat opposition, the Republican Congress passed The Confiscation Act stating that slaves of the Confederacy “shall be forever free”.

April 8, 1864

The 13th Amendment banning slavery passed the U.S. Senate with 100% Republican support, 63% Democrat opposition.

January 31, 1865

The 13th Amendment banning slavery passed the U.S. House with unanimous Republican support and intense Democrat opposition.November 22, 1865

Republicans denounced the Democrat legislature of Mississippi for enacting the “black codes” which institutionalized racial discrimination.

February 5, 1866

U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-PA) introduced legislation (successfully opposed by Democrat President Andrew Johnson) to implement “40 acres and a mule” relief by distributing land to former slaves.

March 27, 1866

Democrat President Andrew Johnson vetoes of law granting voting rights to blacks.

May 10, 1866

The U.S. House passed the Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the laws to all citizens. 100% of Democrats vote no.

June 8, 1866

The U.S. Senate passed the Republicans’ 14th Amendment guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the law to all citizens. 94% of Republicans vote yes and 100% of Democrats vote no.

March 27, 1866

Democrat President Andrew Johnson vetoes of law granting voting rights to blacks in the District of Columbia.

July 16, 1866

The Republican Congress overrode Democrat President Andrew Johnson’s veto of legislation protecting the voting rights of blacks.

March 30, 1868

Republicans begin the impeachment trial of Democrat President Andrew Johnson who declared, “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government of white men.”September 12, 1868

Civil rights activist Tunis Campbell and 24 other blacks in the Georgia Senate (all Republicans) were expelled by the Democrat majority and would later be reinstated by the Republican Congress.

October 7, 1868

Republicans denounced Democrat Party’s national campaign theme: “This is a white man’s country: Let white men rule.”

October 22, 1868

While campaigning for re-election, Republican U.S. Rep. James Hinds (R-AR) was assassinated by Democrat terrorists who organized as the Ku Klux Klan. Hinds was the first sitting congressman to be murdered while in office.

December 10, 1869

Republican Gov. John Campbell of the Wyoming Territory signed the FIRST-in-nation law granting women the right to vote and hold public office.

February 3, 1870

After passing the House with 98% Republican support and 97% Democrat opposition, Republicans’ 15th Amendment was ratified, granting the vote to ALL Americans regardless of race.

February 25, 1870

Hiram Rhodes Revels (R-MS) becomes the first black to be seated in the United States Senate.

May 31, 1870

President U.S. Grant signed the Republicans’ Enforcement Act providing stiff penalties for depriving any American’s civil rights.

June 22, 1870

Ohio Rep. Williams Lawrence created the U.S. Department of Justice to safeguard the civil rights of blacks against Democrats in the South.

September 6, 1870

Women voted in Wyoming in first election after women’s suffrage signed into law by Republican Gov. John Campbell.

February 1, 1871

Rep. Jefferson Franklin Long (R-GA) became the first black to speak on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

February 28, 1871

The Republican Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 providing federal protection for black voters.

April 20, 1871

The Republican Congress enacted the Ku Klux Klan Act, outlawing Democrat Party-affiliated terrorist groups which oppressed blacks and all those who supported them.

October 10, 1871

Following warnings by Philadelphia Democrats against black voting, Republican civil rights activist Octavius Catto was murdered by a Democrat Party operative. His military funeral was attended by thousands.

October 18, 1871

After violence against Republicans in South Carolina, President Ulysses Grant deployed U.S. troops to combat Democrat Ku Klux Klan terrorists.

November 18, 1872

Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting after boasting to Elizabeth Cady Stanton that she voted for “Well, I have gone and done it — positively voted the straight Republican ticket.”January 17, 1874

Armed Democrats seized the Texas state government, ending Republican efforts to racially integrate.

September 14, 1874

Democrat white supremacists seized the Louisiana statehouse in attempt to overthrow the racially-integrated administration of Republican Governor William Kellogg. Twenty-seven were killed.

March 1, 1875

The Civil Rights Act of 1875, guaranteeing access to public accommodations without regard to race, was signed by Republican President U.S. Grant and passed with 92% Republican support over 100% Democrat opposition.

January 10, 1878

U.S. Senator Aaron Sargent (R-CA) introduced the Susan B. Anthony amendment for women’s suffrage. The Democrat-controlled Senate defeated it four times before the election of a Republican House and Senate that guaranteed its approval in 1919.

February 8, 1894

The Democrat Congress and Democrat President Grover Cleveland joined to repeal the Republicans’ Enforcement Act which had enabled blacks to vote.

January 15, 1901

Republican Booker T. Washington protested the Alabama Democrat Party’s refusal to permit voting by blacks.

May 29, 1902

Virginia Democrats implemented a new state constitution condemned by Republicans as illegal, reducing black voter registration by almost 90%.

February 12, 1909

On the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, black Republicans and women’s suffragists Ida Wells and Mary Terrell co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

May 21, 1919

The Republican House passed a constitutional amendment granting women the vote with 85% of Republicans and only 54% of Democrats in favor. In the Senate 80% of Republicans voted yes and almost half of Democrats voted no.

August 18, 1920

The Republican-authored 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote became part of the Constitution. Twenty-six of the 36 states needed to ratify had Republican-controlled legislatures.

January 26, 1922

The House passed a bill authored by U.S. Rep. Leonidas Dyer (R-MO) making lynching a federal crime. Senate Democrats blocked it by filibuster.

June 2, 1924

Republican President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill passed by the Republican Congress granting U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans.

October 3, 1924

Republicans denounced three-time Democrat presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan for defending the Ku Klux Klan at the 1924 Democratic National Convention.

June 12, 1929

First Lady Lou Hoover invited the wife of black Rep. Oscar De Priest (R-IL) to tea at the White House, sparking protests by Democrats across the country.

August 17, 1937

Republicans organized opposition to former Ku Klux Klansman and Democrat U.S. Senator Hugo Black who was later appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by FDR. Black’s Klan background was hidden until after confirmation.

June 24, 1940

The Republican Party platform called for the integration of the Armed Forces. For the balance of his terms in office, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D) refused to order it.

August 8, 1945

Republicans condemned Harry Truman’s surprise use of the atomic bomb in Japan. It began two days after the Hiroshima bombing when former Republican President Herbert Hoover wrote that “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.”

May 17, 1954

Earl Warren, California’s three-term Republican Governor and 1948 Republican vice presidential nominee, was nominated to be Chief Justice delivered the landmark decision “Brown v. Board of Education”.

November 25, 1955

Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration banned racial segregation of interstate bus travel.

March 12, 1956

Ninety-seven Democrats in Congress condemned the Supreme Court’s “Brown v. Board of Education” decision and pledged (Southern Manifesto) to continue segregation.

June 5, 1956

Republican federal judge Frank Johnson ruled in favor of the Rosa Parks decision striking down the “blacks in the back of the bus” law.

November 6, 1956

African-American civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy voted for Republican Dwight Eisenhower for President.

September 9, 1957

President Eisenhower signed the Republican Party’s 1957 Civil Rights Act.

September 24, 1957

Sparking criticism from Democrats such as Senators John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, President Eisenhower deployed the 82nd Airborne Division to Little Rock, AR to force Democrat Governor Orval Faubus to integrate their public schools.

May 6, 1960

President Eisenhower signed the Republicans’ Civil Rights Act of 1960, overcoming a 125-hour, ’round-the-clock filibuster by 18 Senate Democrats.

May 2, 1963

Republicans condemned Bull Connor, the Democrat “Commissioner of Public Safety” in Birmingham, AL for arresting over 2,000 black schoolchildren marching for their civil rights.

September 29, 1963

Gov. George Wallace (D-AL) defied an order by U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson (appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower) to integrate Tuskegee High School.

June 9, 1964

Republicans condemned the 14-hour filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act by U.S. Senator and former Ku Klux Klansman Robert Byrd (D-WV), who served in the Senate until his death in 2010.

June 10, 1964

Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) criticized the Democrat filibuster against 1964 Civil Rights Act and called on Democrats to stop opposing racial equality. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was introduced and approved by a majority of Republicans in the Senate. The Act was opposed by most southern Democrat senators, several of whom were proud segregationists — one of them being Al Gore Sr. (D). President Lyndon B. Johnson relied on Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, the Republican leader from Illinois, to get the Act passed.

August 4, 1965

Senate Leader Everett Dirksen (R-IL) overcame Democrat attempts to block 1965 Voting Rights Act. Ninety-four percent of Republicans voted for the landmark civil rights legislation while 27% of Democrats opposed. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, abolishing literacy tests and other measures devised by Democrats to prevent blacks from voting, was signed into law. A higher percentage of Republicans voted in favor.

February 19, 1976

President Gerald Ford formally rescinded President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s notorious Executive Order 9066 authorizing the internment of over 120,000 Japanese-Americans during WWII.

September 15, 1981

President Ronald Reagan established the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities to increase black participation in federal education programs.

June 29, 1982

President Ronald Reagan signed a 25-year extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

August 10, 1988

President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, compensating Japanese-Americans for the deprivation of their civil rights and property during the World War II internment ordered by FDR.

November 21, 1991

President George H. W. Bush signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991 to strengthen federal civil rights legislation.

August 20, 1996

A bill authored by U.S. Rep. Susan Molinari (R-NY) to prohibit racial discrimination in adoptions, part of Republicans’ “Contract With America”, became law.

July 2, 2010

Clinton says Byrd joined KKK to help him get elected

Just a “fleeting association”. Nothing to see here.

Only a willing fool (and there quite a lot out there) would accept and recite the nonsensical that one bright, sunny day Democrats and Republicans just up and decided to “switch” political positions and cite the “Southern Strategy” as the uniform knee-jerk retort. Even today, it never takes long for a Democrat to play the race card purely for political advantage.Thanks to the Democrat Party, blacks have the distinction of being the only group in the United States whose history is a work-in-progress.

The idea that “the Dixiecrats joined the Republicans” is not quite true, as you note. But because of Strom Thurmond it is accepted as a fact. What happened is that the **next** generation (post 1965) of white southern politicians — Newt, Trent Lott, Ashcroft, Cochran, Alexander, etc — joined the GOP.So it was really a passing of the torch as the old segregationists retired and were replaced by new young GOP guys. One particularly galling aspect to generalizations about “segregationists became GOP” is that the new GOP South was INTEGRATED for crying out loud, they accepted the Civil Rights revolution. Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter led a group of what would become “New” Democrats like Clinton and Al Gore.

There weren’t many Republicans in the South prior to 1964, but that doesn’t mean the birth of the southern GOP was tied to “white racism.” That said, I am sure there were and are white racist southern GOP. No one would deny that. But it was the southern Democrats who were the party of slavery and, later, segregation. It was George Wallace, not John Tower, who stood in the southern schoolhouse door to block desegregation! The vast majority of Congressional GOP voted FOR the Civil Rights of 1964-65. The vast majority of those opposed to those acts were southern Democrats. Southern Democrats led to infamous filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.The confusion arises from GOP Barry Goldwater’s vote against the ’64 act. He had voted in favor or all earlier bills and had led the integration of the Arizona Air National Guard, but he didn’t like the “private property” aspects of the ’64 law. In other words, Goldwater believed people’s private businesses and private clubs were subject only to market forces, not government mandates (“We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”) His vote against the Civil Rights Act was because of that one provision was, to my mind, a principled mistake.This stance is what won Goldwater the South in 1964, and no doubt many racists voted for Goldwater in the mistaken belief that he opposed Negro Civil Rights. But Goldwater was not a racist; he was a libertarian who favored both civil rights and property rights.Switch to 1968.Richard Nixon was also a proponent of Civil Rights; it was a CA colleague who urged Ike to appoint Warren to the Supreme Court; he was a supporter of  Brown v. Board, and favored sending troops to integrate Little Rock High). Nixon saw he could develop a “Southern strategy” based on Goldwater’s inroads. He did, but Independent Democrat George Wallace carried most of the deep south in 68. By 1972, however, Wallace was shot and paralyzed, and Nixon began to tilt the south to the GOP. The old guard Democrats began to fade away while a new generation of Southern politicians became Republicans. True, Strom Thurmond switched to GOP, but most of the old timers (Fulbright, Gore, Wallace, Byrd etc etc) retired as Dems.Why did a new generation white Southerners join the GOP? Not because they thought Republicans were racists who would return the South to segregation, but because the GOP was a “local government, small government” party in the old Jeffersonian tradition. Southerners wanted less government and the GOP was their natural home.Jimmy Carter, a Civil Rights Democrat, briefly returned some states to the Democrat fold, but in 1980, Goldwater’s heir, Ronald Reagan, sealed this deal for the GOP. The new “Solid South” was solid GOP.BUT, and we must stress this: the new southern Republicans were *integrationist* Republicans who accepted the Civil Rights revolution and full integration while retaining their love of Jeffersonian limited government principles.

Oh wait, princess, I am not done yet.

Where Teddy Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dinner, Woodrow Wilson re-segregated the U.S. government and had the pro-Klan film “Birth of a Nation” screened in his White House.

Wilson and FDR carried all 11 states of the Old Confederacy all six times they ran, when Southern blacks had no vote. Disfranchised black folks did not seem to bother these greatest of liberal icons.

As vice president, FDR chose “Cactus Jack” Garner of Texas who played a major role in imposing a poll tax to keep blacks from voting.

Among FDR’s Supreme Court appointments was Hugo Black, a Klansman who claimed FDR knew this when he named him in 1937 and that FDR told him that “some of his best friends” in Georgia were Klansmen.

Black’s great achievement as a lawyer was in winning acquittal of a man who shot to death the Catholic priest who had presided over his daughter’s marriage to a Puerto Rican.

In 1941, FDR named South Carolina Sen. “Jimmy” Byrnes to the Supreme Court. Byrnes had led filibusters in 1935 and 1938 that killed anti-lynching bills, arguing that lynching was necessary “to hold in check the Negro in the South.”

FDR refused to back the 1938 anti-lynching law.

“This is a white man’s country and will always remain a white man’s country,” said Jimmy. Harry Truman, who paid $10 to join the Klan, then quit, named Byrnes Secretary of State, putting him first in line of succession to the presidency, as Harry then had no V.P.

During the civil rights struggles of the ‘50s and ‘60s, Gov. Orval Faubus used the National Guard to keep black students out of Little Rock High. Gov. Ross Barnett refused to let James Meredith into Ole Miss. Gov. George Wallace stood in the door at the University of Alabama, to block two black students from entering.

All three governors were Democrats. All acted in accord with the “Dixie Manifesto” of 1956, which was signed by 19 senators, all Democrats, and 80 Democratic congressmen.

Among the signers of the manifesto, which called for massive resistance to the Brown decision desegregating public schools, was the vice presidential nominee on Adlai’s Stevenson’s ticket in 1952, Sen. John Sparkman of Alabama.

Though crushed by Eisenhower, Adlai swept the Deep South, winning both Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas.

Do you suppose those Southerners thought Adlai would be tougher than Ike on Stalin? Or did they think Adlai would maintain the unholy alliance of Southern segregationists and Northern liberals that enabled Democrats to rule from 1932 to 1952?

The Democratic Party was the party of slavery, secession and segregation, of “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman and the KKK. “Bull” Connor, who turned the dogs loose on black demonstrators in Birmingham, was the Democratic National Committeeman from Alabama.

And Nixon?

In 1956, as vice president, Nixon went to Harlem to declare, “America can’t afford the cost of segregation.” The following year, Nixon got a personal letter from Dr. King thanking him for helping to persuade the Senate to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Nixon supported the civil rights acts of 1964, 1965 and 1968.

In the 1966 campaign, as related in my new book “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority,” out July 8, Nixon blasted Dixiecrats “seeking to squeeze the last ounces of political juice out of the rotting fruit of racial injustice.”

Nixon called out segregationist candidates in ‘66 and called on LBJ, Hubert Humphrey and Bobby Kennedy to join him in repudiating them. None did. Hubert, an arm around Lester Maddox, called him a “good Democrat.” And so were they all – good Democrats.

While Adlai chose Sparkman, Nixon chose Spiro Agnew, the first governor south of the Mason Dixon Line to enact an open-housing law.

In Nixon’s presidency, the civil rights enforcement budget rose 800 percent. Record numbers of blacks were appointed to federal office. An Office of Minority Business Enterprise was created. SBA loans to minorities soared 1,000 percent. Aid to black colleges doubled.

Nixon won the South not because he agreed with them on civil rights – he never did – but because he shared the patriotic values of the South and its antipathy to liberal hypocrisy.

When Johnson left office, 10 percent of Southern schools were desegregated.

When Nixon left, the figure was 70 percent. Richard Nixon desegregated the Southern schools, something you won’t learn in today’s public schools.

Not done there yet, snowflake.

1964:George Romney, Republican civil rights activist. That Republicans have let Democrats get away with this mountebankery is a symptom of their political fecklessness, and in letting them get away with it the GOP has allowed itself to be cut off rhetorically from a pantheon of Republican political heroes, from Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass to Susan B. Anthony, who represent an expression of conservative ideals as true and relevant today as it was in the 19th century.

Perhaps even worse, the Democrats have been allowed to rhetorically bury their Bull Connors, their longstanding affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, and their pitiless opposition to practically every major piece of civil-rights legislation for a century.

Republicans may not be able to make significant inroads among black voters in the coming elections, but they would do well to demolish this myth nonetheless.

Even if the Republicans’ rise in the South had happened suddenly in the 1960s (it didn’t) and even if there were no competing explanation (there is), racism — or, more precisely, white southern resentment over the political successes of the civil-rights movement — would be an implausible explanation for the dissolution of the Democratic bloc in the old Confederacy and the emergence of a Republican stronghold there.

That is because those southerners who defected from the Democratic Party in the 1960s and thereafter did so to join a Republican Party that was far more enlightened on racial issues than were the Democrats of the era, and had been for a century.

There is no radical break in the Republicans’ civil-rights history: From abolition to Reconstruction to the anti-lynching laws, from the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, there exists a line that is by no means perfectly straight or unwavering but that nonetheless connects the politics of Lincoln with those of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

And from slavery and secession to remorseless opposition to everything from Reconstruction to the anti-lynching laws, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, there exists a similarly identifiable line connecting John Calhoun and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Supporting civil-rights reform was not a radical turnaround for congressional Republicans in 1964, but it was a radical turnaround for Johnson and the Democrats.

The depth of Johnson’s prior opposition to civil-rights reform must be digested in some detail to be properly appreciated.

In the House, he did not represent a particularly segregationist constituency (it “made up for being less intensely segregationist than the rest of the South by being more intensely anti-Communist,” as the New York Times put it), but Johnson was practically antebellum in his views.

Never mind civil rights or voting rights: In Congress, Johnson had consistently and repeatedly voted against legislation to protect black Americans from lynching.

As a leader in the Senate, Johnson did his best to cripple the Civil Rights Act of 1957; not having votes sufficient to stop it, he managed to reduce it to an act of mere symbolism by excising the enforcement provisions before sending it to the desk of President Eisenhower.

Johnson’s Democratic colleague Strom Thurmond nonetheless went to the trouble of staging the longest filibuster in history up to that point, speaking for 24 hours in a futile attempt to block the bill.

The reformers came back in 1960 with an act to remedy the deficiencies of the 1957 act, and Johnson’s Senate Democrats again staged a record-setting filibuster.

In both cases, the “master of the Senate” petitioned the northeastern Kennedy liberals to credit him for having seen to the law’s passage while at the same time boasting to southern Democrats that he had taken the teeth out of the legislation.

Johnson would later explain his thinking thus: “These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days, and that’s a problem for us, since they’ve got something now they never had before: the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this — we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”

Johnson did not spring up from the Democratic soil ex nihilo.

Not one Democrat in Congress voted for the Fourteenth Amendment.

Not one Democrat in Congress voted for the Fifteenth Amendment.

Not one voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

Dwight Eisenhower as a general began the process of desegregating the military, and Truman as president formalized it, but the main reason either had to act was that President Woodrow Wilson, the personification of Democratic progressivism, had resegregated previously integrated federal facilities. (“If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it,” he declared.)

Klansmen from Senator Robert Byrd to Justice Hugo Black held prominent positions in the Democratic Party — and President Wilson chose the Klan epic Birth of a Nation to be the first film ever shown at the White House.

Johnson himself denounced an earlier attempt at civil-rights reform as the “nigger bill.” So what happened in 1964 to change Democrats’ minds? In fact, nothing.

President Johnson was nothing if not shrewd, and he knew something that very few popular political commentators appreciate today: The Democrats began losing the “solid South” in the late 1930s — at the same time as they were picking up votes from northern blacks.

The Civil War and the sting of Reconstruction had indeed produced a political monopoly for southern Democrats that lasted for decades, but the New Deal had been polarizing. It was very popular in much of the country, including much of the South — Johnson owed his election to the House to his New Deal platform and Roosevelt connections — but there was a conservative backlash against it, and that backlash eventually drove New Deal critics to the Republican Party.

Likewise, adherents of the isolationist tendency in American politics, which is never very far from the surface, looked askance at what Bob Dole would later famously call “Democrat wars” (a factor that would become especially relevant when the Democrats under Kennedy and Johnson committed the United States to a very divisive war in Vietnam).

The tiniest cracks in the Democrats’ southern bloc began to appear with the backlash to FDR’s court-packing scheme and the recession of 1937.

Republicans would pick up 81 House seats in the 1938 election, with West Virginia’s all-Democrat delegation ceasing to be so with the acquisition of its first Republican.

Kentucky elected a Republican House member in 1934, as did Missouri, while Tennessee’s first Republican House member, elected in 1918, was joined by another in 1932.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the Republican Party, though marginal, began to take hold in the South — but not very quickly: Dixie would not send its first Republican to the Senate until 1961, with Texas’s election of John Tower.

At the same time, Republicans went through a long dry spell on civil-rights progress.

Many of them believed, wrongly, that the issue had been more or less resolved by the constitutional amendments that had been enacted to ensure the full citizenship of black Americans after the Civil War, and that the enduring marginalization of black citizens, particularly in the Democratic states, was a problem that would be healed by time, economic development, and organic social change rather than through a second political confrontation between North and South.

As late as 1964, the Republican platform argued that “the elimination of any such discrimination is a matter of heart, conscience, and education, as well as of equal rights under law.”

The conventional Republican wisdom of the day held that the South was backward because it was poor rather than poor because it was backward.

And their strongest piece of evidence for that belief was that Republican support in the South was not among poor whites or the old elites — the two groups that tended to hold the most retrograde beliefs on race.

Instead, it was among the emerging southern middle class.

This fact was recently documented by professors Byron Shafer and Richard Johnston in The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South (Harvard University Press, 2006).

Which is to say: The Republican rise in the South was contemporaneous with the decline of race as the most important political question and tracked the rise of middle-class voters moved mainly by economic considerations and anti-Communism.

The South had been in effect a Third World country within the United States, and that changed with the post-war economic boom.

As Clay Risen put it in the New York Times: “The South transformed itself from a backward region to an engine of the national economy, giving rise to a sizable new wealthy suburban class.

This class, not surprisingly, began to vote for the party that best represented its economic interests: the GOP. Working-class whites, however — and here’s the surprise — even those in areas with large black populations, stayed loyal to the Democrats.

This was true until the 90s, when the nation as a whole turned rightward in Congressional voting.” The mythmakers would have you believe that it was the opposite: that your white-hooded hillbilly trailer-dwelling tornado-bait voters jumped ship because LBJ signed a civil-rights bill (passed on the strength of disproportionately Republican support in Congress). The facts suggest otherwise. There is no question that Republicans in the 1960s and thereafter hoped to pick up the angry populists who had delivered several states to Wallace.

That was Patrick J. Buchanan’s portfolio in the Nixon campaign.

But in the main they did not do so by appeal to racial resentment, direct or indirect.

The conservative ascendency of 1964 saw the nomination of Barry Goldwater, a western libertarian who had never been strongly identified with racial issues one way or the other, but who was a principled critic of the 1964 act and its extension of federal power.

Goldwater had supported the 1957 and 1960 acts but believed that Title II and Title VII of the 1964 bill were unconstitutional, based in part on a 75-page brief from Robert Bork.

But far from extending a welcoming hand to southern segregationists, he named as his running mate a New York representative, William E. Miller, who had been the co-author of Republican civil-rights legislation in the 1950s.

The Republican platform in 1964 was hardly catnip for Klansmen: It spoke of the Johnson administration’s failure to help further the “just aspirations of the minority groups” and blasted the president for his refusal “to apply Republican-initiated retraining programs where most needed, particularly where they could afford new economic opportunities to Negro citizens.”

Other planks in the platform included: “improvements of civil rights statutes adequate to changing needs of our times; such additional administrative or legislative actions as may be required to end the denial, for whatever unlawful reason, of the right to vote; continued opposition to discrimination based on race, creed, national origin or sex.”

And Goldwater’s fellow Republicans ran on a 1964 platform demanding “full implementation and faithful execution of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and all other civil rights statutes, to assure equal rights and opportunities guaranteed by the Constitution to every citizen.” Some dog whistle.

Of course there were racists in the Republican Party. There were racists in the Democratic Party. The case of Johnson is well documented, while Nixon had his fantastical panoply of racial obsessions, touching blacks, Jews, Italians (“Don’t have their heads screwed on”), Irish (“They get mean when they drink”), and the Ivy League WASPs he hated so passionately (“Did one of those dirty bastards ever invite me to his f***ing men’s club or goddamn country club? Not once”).

But the legislative record, the evolution of the electorate, the party platforms, the keynote speeches — none of them suggests a party-wide Republican about-face on civil rights.

Neither does the history of the black vote.

While Republican affiliation was beginning to grow in the South in the late 1930s, the GOP also lost its lock on black voters in the North, among whom the New Deal was extraordinarily popular.

By 1940, Democrats for the first time won a majority of black votes in the North. This development was not lost on Lyndon Johnson, who crafted his Great Society with the goal of exploiting widespread dependency for the benefit of the Democratic Party.

Unlike the New Deal, a flawed program that at least had the excuse of relying upon ideas that were at the time largely untested and enacted in the face of a worldwide economic emergency, Johnson’s Great Society was pure politics.

Johnson’s War on Poverty was declared at a time when poverty had been declining for decades, and the first Job Corps office opened when the unemployment rate was less than 5 percent.

Congressional Republicans had long supported a program to assist the indigent elderly, but the Democrats insisted that the program cover all of the elderly — even though they were, then as now, the most affluent demographic, with 85 percent of them in households of above-average wealth.

Democrats such as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Anthony J. Celebrezze argued that the Great Society would end “dependency” among the elderly and the poor, but the programs were transparently designed merely to transfer dependency from private and local sources of support to federal agencies created and overseen by Johnson and his political heirs.

In the context of the rest of his program, Johnson’s unexpected civil-rights conversion looks less like an attempt to empower blacks and more like an attempt to make clients of them.

If the parties had in some meaningful way flipped on civil rights, one would expect that to show up in the electoral results in the years following the Democrats’ 1964 about-face on the issue.

Nothing of the sort happened: Of the 21 Democratic senators who opposed the 1964 act, only one would ever change parties.

Nor did the segregationist constituencies that elected these Democrats throw them out in favor of Republicans: The remaining 20 continued to be elected as Democrats or were replaced by Democrats.

It was, on average, nearly a quarter of a century before those seats went Republican. If southern rednecks ditched the Democrats because of a civil-rights law passed in 1964, it is strange that they waited until the late 1980s and early 1990s to do so. They say things move slower in the South — but not that slow.

Republicans did begin to win some southern House seats, and in many cases segregationist Democrats were thrown out by southern voters in favor of civil-rights Republicans.

One of the loudest Democratic segregationists in the House was Texas’s John Dowdy.

Dowdy was a bitter and buffoonish opponent of the 1964 reforms.

He declared the reforms “would set up a despot in the attorney general’s office with a large corps of enforcers under him; and his will and his oppressive action would be brought to bear upon citizens, just as Hitler’s minions coerced and subjugated the German people.

Dowdy went on: “I would say this — I believe this would be agreed to by most people: that, if we had a Hitler in the United States, the first thing he would want would be a bill of this nature.” (Who says political rhetoric has been debased in the past 40 years?)

Dowdy was thrown out in 1966 in favor of a Republican with a very respectable record on civil rights, a little-known figure by the name of George H. W. Bush.

It was in fact not until 1995 that Republicans represented a majority of the southern congressional delegation — and they had hardly spent the Reagan years campaigning on the resurrection of Jim Crow.

It was not the Civil War but the Cold War that shaped midcentury partisan politics.

Eisenhower warned the country against the “military-industrial complex,” but in truth Ike’s ascent had represented the decisive victory of the interventionist, hawkish wing of the Republican Party over what remained of the America First/Charles Lindbergh/Robert Taft tendency.

The Republican Party had long been staunchly anti-Communist, but the post-war era saw that anti-Communism energized and looking for monsters to slay, both abroad — in the form of the Soviet Union and its satellites — and at home, in the form of the growing welfare state, the “creeping socialism” conservatives dreaded.

By the middle 1960s, the semi-revolutionary Left was the liveliest current in U.S. politics, and Republicans’ unapologetic anti-Communism — especially conservatives’ rhetoric connecting international socialism abroad with the welfare state at home — left the Left with nowhere to go but the Democratic Party. Vietnam was Johnson’s war, but by 1968 the Democratic Party was not his alone.

The schizophrenic presidential election of that year set the stage for the subsequent transformation of southern politics: Segregationist Democrat George Wallace, running as an independent, made a last stand in the old Confederacy but carried only five states.

Republican Richard Nixon, who had helped shepherd the 1957 Civil Rights Act through Congress, counted a number of Confederate states (North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee) among the 32 he carried.

Democrat Hubert Humphrey was reduced to a northern fringe plus Texas.

Mindful of the long-term realignment already under way in the South, Johnson informed Democrats worried about losing it after the 1964 act that “those states may be lost anyway.”

Subsequent presidential elections bore him out: Nixon won a 49-state sweep in 1972, and, with the exception of the post-Watergate election of 1976, Republicans in the following presidential elections would more or less occupy the South like Sherman.

Bill Clinton would pick up a handful of southern states in his two contests, and Barack Obama had some success in the post-southern South, notably Virginia and Florida.

The Republican ascendancy in Dixie is associated with several factors: The rise of the southern middle class, The increasingly trenchant conservative critique of Communism and the welfare state, The Vietnam controversy, The rise of the counterculture, law-and-order concerns rooted in the urban chaos that ran rampant from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and The incorporation of the radical Left into the Democratic party.

Individual events, especially the freak show that was the 1968 Democratic convention, helped solidify conservatives’ affiliation with the Republican Party. Democrats might argue that some of these concerns — especially welfare and crime — are “dog whistles” or “code” for race and racism. However, this criticism is shallow in light of the evidence and the real saliency of those issues among U.S. voters of all backgrounds and both parties for decades. Indeed, Democrats who argue that the best policies for black Americans are those that are soft on crime and generous with welfare are engaged in much the same sort of cynical racial calculation President Johnson was practicing. Johnson informed skeptical southern governors that his plan for the Great Society was “to have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.” Johnson’s crude racism is, happily, largely a relic of the past, but his strategy endures.

[ross-nekochan]

Penso tu sia un po' troppo idealista. Spazzare via riforme e decreti non è come spazzare via la polvere dal pavimento. Ci sono iter da rispettare. La politica è fatta di giochini, di accordi, ricordati che il vitalizio ai parlamentari è tornato perché qualcuno si è politically correct astenuto anziché votare "no". Che tutti pensavamo che il fascismo non sarebbe mai tornato dopo il 1946, eppure. E Berlusconi al confronto di questi era grigio sbiadito. Per questo semmai è da augurarsi che non facciano troppi danni, mica che ne facciano così tanti che poi nessuno li vorrà più, non funziona così, i danni li fanno a noi, a qualcuno vicino a noi, prima di raccogliere i cocci dovranno passare chissà quante legislature.

Sarò pure idealista, ma anche tu sei troppo più pessimista di me (ed è raro eh).

Prima di tutto: il fascismo non c'è ancora, quindi calmati. Le premesse non sono buone, perché questi sono chiaramente fascistoni, lo vedo anche io con i miei occhi, ma per favore rimaniamo con gli occhi vigili piuttosto che cominciare a gridare al lupo che poi quando viene il lupo nessuno ci crede.

Non ho parlato di spazzare via le leggi né ho detto che sia facile, ma se l'opposizione alle prossime elezioni si mostra compatta come lo è stata la destra a questo turno, prendendo gran parte del parlamento e del senato, non vedo dove sia la grande difficoltà a rimuovere le leggi nello stesso tempo in cui sono state approvate ste scemità di leggi contro la carne coltivata e la GPA. Ti faccio notare che farlo il prima possibile sarebbe anche una forma di pubblicità politica che sicuramente si metterebbero a sciacquarsi la bocca di belle frasi condite come:"Finalmente abbiamo eliminato queste leggi assurde e dato finalmente ai cittadini la possibilità di esercitare i propri diritti blablabla". Quindi ci sarebbe tutto l'interesse a farlo, senti a me.

Questo, ovviamente, se l'opposizione si mette a fare quello che deve fare piuttosto che continuare a fare stronzate come hanno sempre fatto.

[arcobalengo]

A Palazzo Madama si lavora sull'ipotesi di far entrare cani e gatti con i senatori | ANSA.it

No dai!! State rubando il lavoro ai comici!! 😂😂

Due pensieri:

È dalla costituzione della repubblica che ci sono dei cani (bipedi però) in parlamento, il cui numero tende ad aumentare di pari passo con le legislature

Secondo: ai cani si permette l'accesso ma ai parlamentari non vaccinati è stato inibito. Evidentemente per la casta politica il cane ha più dignità di una persona che ha rifiutato una terapia genica sperimentale

[jennifermnhi]

Activist, former Illinois State Sen. Alice Palmer dies at 83 [Video]

[beardedmrbean]

Parliament opens for a new four-year term on Thursday, and the media is covering the comings and goings, while also welcoming newcomers to the legislature.

In one story Ilta-Sanomat asks (siirryt toiseen palveluun) two first-term MPs what they make of the pay and perks on offer in their new job. Pinja Perholehto (SDP) and Joakim Vigelius (Finns) were both a little surprised at the taxpayer's generosity.

They both criticised the decision to raise MPs' pay at the start of this parliamentary term from 6,614 euros to 7,137 euros. That's for those who have served less than twelve years — longer-serving legislators will get 7,494 euros a month.

Perholehto waited tables before she was elected to parliament, and says she's become used to an income of less than 2,000 euros. As such she thinks this raise was unnecessary. Vigelius too says that parliament would still find people to serve even with a smaller compensation.

Expenses are another issue. Each month MPs get between 986.81 euros and 1809.15 euros, depending on the location of their official residence, and the money is tax-free.

Perholehto finds that a little strange, especially for MPs who live close to Helsinki. In addition MPs have broad rights to compensation for transport used, and get travel cards for use in the Helsinki region.

Finns Party x National Coalition

Iltalehti looks ahead (siirryt toiseen palveluun) to the formation of the next government, which is the biggest task for National Coalition leader Petteri Orpo right now.

The paper claims that the NCP's first preference is for a right-wing government in coalition with the Finns Party, the Christian Democrats and the Swedish People's Party (SPP).

That would give the government a slim majority, with just 109 seats in the 200-member parliament. As that includes the non-voting Speaker of Parliament, there is little room for manoeuvre.

The parties have different views on work-based immigration, with the Finns Party strongly opposed and the NCP and SPP both looking to increase numbers.

European policy is another issue that could derail talks, with the NCP and SPP strongly pro-EU and the Finns Party looking to leave the union in the long run.

IL says that the alternative is a Blue-red government including the NCP, the SDP, the Greens and the Swedish People's Party, but that there has been little contact with the Social Democrats to explore that option.

Finnair's Bulgarian customer service

Helsingin Sanomat reports (siirryt toiseen palveluun) on Finnair's cost-cutting drive, which has seen their online chat services concentrated at a service centre in Bulgaria.

None of the staff there speak Finnish, and they rely entirely on machine translation. The service has been based at the Bulgarian service point since January, and Finnair says there have been a few translation mistakes but overall they are satisfied with the service.

The company points out that they still offer Finnish-language assistance by phone, although neither Finnair nor HS note the cost of actually calling the company compared to using an online chat service.

The company believes that artificial intelligence will rapidly improve the service, and reduce the number of mistranslations.

[siciliatv]

Cominso. Dimissioni dell'assessore Arezzo: sintomo della crisi finanziaria

Le dimissioni di Giuseppe Arezzo, assessore al Bilancio del Comune di Comiso, hanno sollevato preoccupazioni riguardo alla grave crisi economico-finanziaria che affligge l'amministrazione comunale. Sebbene Arezzo abbia ufficialmente lasciato l'incarico per motivi personali e professionali, la sua decisione arriva poco dopo l'approvazione di un bilancio consuntivo che evidenzia un disavanzo di 5,5 milioni di euro e oltre 20 milioni di fatture non pagate. Il capogruppo del Pd al Consiglio comunale, Gigi Bellassai, ha sottolineato che, sebbene Arezzo abbia svolto il suo ruolo con serietà e impegno, le sue dimissioni rappresentano un segnale evidente della situazione critica in cui versa il Comune. Il Partito Democratico di Comiso, attraverso le parole del consigliere comunale Gaetano Scollo, ha espresso rispetto per la decisione di Arezzo, ma ha anche ribadito le sue preoccupazioni per il contesto in cui queste dimissioni sono avvenute. La crisi economica è stata denunciata più volte dal partito durante entrambe le legislature dell'attuale amministrazione, e l'approvazione dell'ultimo bilancio consuntivo ha confermato un quadro estremamente preoccupante. Anche il gruppo consiliare della Lista Spiga, composto da Gaetano Gaglio ed Erica Adamo, ha evidenziato come le dimissioni di Arezzo fossero prevedibili, considerata la difficoltà nel controllo dei conti del Comune. I continui ritardi nell'approvazione degli strumenti finanziari, i commissariamenti regionali e i debiti verso i fornitori sono solo alcune delle problematiche che hanno caratterizzato la gestione economica dell'ente. Infine, il capogruppo di Coraggio Comiso, Salvo Liuzzo, ha commentato che le dimissioni di Arezzo non sono state una sorpresa, riconoscendo l'onestà intellettuale dell'ex assessore nel tentare di gestire una situazione estremamente difficile. Liuzzo ha inoltre sottolineato come la decisione di Arezzo rappresenti un distacco dalla gestione fallimentare del Comune, evidenziando ulteriormente le difficoltà che l'amministrazione dovrà affrontare. Read the full article

[cerentari]

Ma quanto ci costi!!! 716 (attenzione questo articolo potrebbe turbare animi sensibili, se lo aprite lo fate a vostro rischio e pericolo)

No, bossi non è schiattato, la notizia si era diffusa ieri mattina ma poi è stata smentita da una seduta spiritica promossa dal suo epigono servino, dove si è presentato soltanto bobo maroni. Lo chiamano senatur, ma non ha mai lavorato un giorno in vita sua, allora a quanto ammonta il patrimonio di costui? Ha servito, si fa per dire, per sei legislature alla Camera e per tre al Senato, inclusa…