#state and local government

[cometrose]

trump may be a lying felon and biden a foot away from death but my fellow americans don’t forget to vote for your senators and representatives they’re important!!!

[reasonsforhope]

"After a year of the statewide fee on single-use plastic bags, the Eco-Cycle recycling center in Boulder estimates between 1.5 billion and 1.8 billion fewer plastic bags were used in Colorado in 2023.

The center anticipates a greater reduction in use in 2024 as businesses phase out the use of single-use plastic bags in most cases.

Eco-Cycle calculated its estimate by taking the number of plastic bags each American uses per year on average — 365, according to National Geographic— and factoring Colorado’s population, along with reduction estimates from several local communities.

Randy Moorman, Eco-Cycle’s director of policy and community campaigns, said the reduction is crucial because single-use plastic bags are the number one contaminant found in Colorado’s rivers and streams. They also are not able to be fully recycled and instead have to be “down-cycled” into other products...

Businesses in Colorado have until June to use whatever single-use plastic bags they already have while still collecting the 10-cent fee. The collected fees are divided between the business and the local government to fund green initiatives. Denver, for example, has collected $5 million for its special revenue fund since its fee was implemented in 2021.

Becky Goyton, an education coordinator with Denver’s Office of Climate Action, Sustainability, and Resiliency, said the money has funded many environmental initiatives, including the purchase of reusable bags for residents and sustainable products for small businesses. Unlike most budgetary matters, Goyton celebrates the decline in revenue to the fund.

“Having some revenue to do some great projects and reinvest in the community is wonderful, but it’s not our goal,” Goyton said. “Our goal is to see that fee go down and that revenue go down because that means more people are bringing their own bag and less disposable bags are being put out into the community.”

In addition to single-use plastic bags, Colorado businesses are also required to phase out Styrofoam containers this year. Like with plastic bags, businesses are permitted to use already-purchased Styrofoam products but cannot obtain any more."

-via ABC Denver7, January 11, 2024

--

And further progress just kicked in at the beginning of this year:

"[On January 1, 2024], the next phase of Colorado's plastic bag ban takes effect. The next step for HB21-1162 is that stores will no longer have plastic bags at all. They will only offer recyclable paper bags which will still be 10 cents each. Stores that already have stock of plastic bags already, can use those up before making the transition...

Businesses that don't comply can face up to $500 in fines for a second violation and up to $1,000 in fines for a third and subsequent violation."

-via ABC Denver 7, December 25, 2023

[tishinada]

US politics and history time for a moment...

The people who want to claim that voting for Biden would mean they supported genocide remind me a great deal of the people in the 1830s - 1860s in the North who wanted immediate abolition because they believed slavery was a sin and God would hold them guilty of that sin if they didn't oppose slavery. This sometimes resulted in them supporting 3rd party candidates that, SURPRISE!, did nothing but push the election toward the most rabid pro-slavery candidates.

You know what most of those moral anti-slavery people didn't care about? What happened to Black Americans. They were concerned only about their own guilt, not Black Americans' welfare.

None of these people making this a moral issue now show any signs of caring what happens to Palestinians OR to all of the other groups that will suffer if the dumpster wins instead.

Biden can't wave his hand and make it go away because the US doesn't have unilateral power worldwide (though some Americans seem to believe that, sigh.) There are limits on his powers, especially since he has to negotiate with a hostile House of Representatives. He has chosen what is actually a pretty effective route and fought for at least some aid to get to Palestinians. And currently he has *some* leverage with the Israelis.

The question you should be asking yourself if you really care about genocide is which choice will do the most to help the Palestinians? Do you really think the dumpster would do even as much as Biden? Or would he be actively helping them and every other imperialist country (*cough*Russia*cough*)? And who else will suffer if he wins that would not under Biden?

If that isn't what matters most to you, then you're no different from the moral abolitionists and other Northerners who wanted slavery restricted (because it depressed wages for free white men) but also wanted to make it illegal for African Americans to move into new states like Ohio and Indiana and Illinois (racism and fears of wage competition.) Or to ship them to Africa, no matter how many generations had been in the US?

It's not idealism. You're self-centered and egotistical and actively choosing evil if you think "punishing" Biden is the result of not voting.

Vote pragmatically. Vote strategically. Vote with the welfare of the most people possible in mind.

[tomorrowusa]

Beware of the MAGA Republican Gestation Police!

The overturning of Roe v. Wade by the GOP US Supreme Court made reproductive freedom a state responsibility – for now.

Pay more attention to your state government and especially the state legislature.

Find out exactly who is representing you in your state capital.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

If you're represented by Republicans, work to defeat them by supporting the Democratic candidates for your districts. Contact your county or state Democratic Party to find out how. Involvement in legislative races is an excellent way to get your feet wet in political activity. It's very grass roots.

If you're represented in the legislature by pro-choice Dems – then cool! You can still support a group dedicated to electing more Democrats to state legislatures.

Volunteer Opportunities, Events, and Petitions Near Me · DLCC on Mobilize

Even slackers can help by getting mech from the DLCC.

Democracy begins at home – in your home district.

[atopvisenyashill]

okay just a lil psa here, i don’t normally do this on this blog bc i’m a person who likes to keep the different facets of my personality very compartmentalized (that’s the disorder babee) and this is gonna be a long ass rant but i don’t have the palestinian flag in my pinned post for funsies.

i’m saying this bc someone i was moots w on twitter started randomly raging about “oh we’re showing those ungrateful far left palestinian foreign agitators that-“ fuck off. i’m serious. fuck all the way off. this is a genocide that has been going on for decades, that got ramped back up to extreme, horrific levels last october and palestinians refusing to endorse kamala without a more concrete plan on pushing for a ceasefire - which isn’t even the bare minimum, it’s tangoing under the fucjing bar - or protesting so that their families aren’t massacred at schools and hospitals aren’t foreign ops or agitators or picking on kamala as if people didn’t have the exact same issue with biden And Trump And obama, are not agitators or ops or whatever. and before anyone is like “do you a support a one or two state solution” i support a solution that allows the complete right of return and self determination for all palestinians across the globe and an end to the apartheid state of israel. however palestinians want that to look is what i support. i have an IDEA of what it will ultimately look like, but i support the right of palestinians to decide what happens in their ancestral home, from the river to the sea. “but what about the hostages” yeah you’re right what about the palestinian hostages big hoss???? also - indiscriminate bombing campaigns have never once actually worked to do anything but revitalize an insurgent population, and you’re dense as hell if you think what’s been happening is going to do anything but make it clearer to palestinians that their only chance of survival is through more attacks & hostage campaigns!!

you wanna call me some sort of foreign agitator when EYE am the one whose family weren’t allowed to be citizens until the 60s despite living on this continent for thousands of years, that i’m out of line for being outspoken & having a hard line on the genocide of another indigenous group?? go right ahead! hope the door bruises your ass on the way out folks! and if you agree that “genocide is bad” great you’re gonna have a bang up time following me!

[tanadrin]

put it this way: when donald trump raises an army and the midwest forms its own de facto government of which he is the head, the federal government’s control is restricted to california, the east coast, and scattered urban enclaves, and florida declares its independence (but isn’t recognized by any UN member states), and the army doesn’t have the ability to force it back into the union, and the US gdp collapses because the dollar lost all its value and is no longer the world’s reserve currency, then we can talk about the US being a failed state. 30% of federal government employees being forced to take a monthlong unpaid vacation is shitty and embarrassing as hell for the US government, but it’s not collapse of the central government.

[e77y]

Guy from my student newspaper just emailed me to ask what hot-button legislative issues young people are concerned with so he can ask a local politician about it??? At a political internship interview???? In this deep red county????????? I am the WRONG guy to ask buddy

[harpuiaa]

death to america and to the west bloc if im being honest

[jbfly46]

Federal law enforcement could enforce federal law on local law enforcement, but they don’t, local law enforcement could enforce local laws on federal law enforcement, but they don’t, and any federal or circuit court judge can request one government agency to investigate another, but they don’t. The reason for this is that ever since our government expanded to such a high degree during WWII, the fact that law enforcement and federal agencies can exploit this to do literally whatever they want has been implied in communications between government employees, and they can just claim that it’s a part of their official duties to get anyone to stop asking questions. If one agency investigates another then this all falls apart, and this is a part of how our government filters to hire the most selfish, biased, and sociopathic individuals.

[cuckweeds]

i really need white liberals to stop telling people who's loved ones are actively being murdered in a genocide funded by joe biden that they still need to vote for him because "trump is worse". I know we are all afraid of what could happen to things like reproductive rights and the lgbtq+ community under trump, that we think that is the worst nightmare to live through, but consider what palestinians are living through RIGHT NOW. they are living through their worst nightmare. and it's being funded and approved by joe biden himself. I know how scary it is to think about losing your rights and privileges to safety, but that is literally already happening to people right now on joe bidens dollar. he will not save us.

[numetalkids]

*inhales*.....................DEEP SIGH

[rotzaprachim]

the thing about Hawai’i politics is that. You absolutely need to criticize the local government. But you also need to stand the economic and political politics of living in a place where the local government doesn’t have an iota of the power of the mega corporations like Hilton and Sheraton that run mega resorts here, nor the billionaires like mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, or Jeff bezos that run second homes here or have quasi-feudal estates or exert far far more power than the relatively progressive county and state governments

like. You have to clock what it is that a man worth over 100 billion dollars purchased 98% of an island. What that’s like. What power does a city councilman who represents that island in a council have over a man worth over 100 billion who both owns the land people live on AND the hotels they work at

[i-think-in-metaphors]

A lot of people, even in Oklahoma don’t know that breaks are not mandatory in here. Personally, I think that should change.

[wearytaco]

when are we gonna talk about the fact that in the United States you get taxed for not having health insurance?

[vanilla-voyeur]

I don't agree with defund the police or ACAB

Or at least I don't agree with the terms. The underlying message is good. The problem with these terms is that they obscure what we really mean in a way that makes us look more unreasonable than we really are.

Take "defund the police". What we really mean is "fund social services". @theabigailthorn made a video on policing in the UK that shows that regardless of whether the police budgets are cut under Austerity or whether police budgets balloon out of proportion like in the US, the outcome is a shitty system so long as funding for social services is low. Without funding to social services, the police wear too many hats. There is no possible way that one single group can handle all the different problems we place on the heads of the police. And that's completely ignoring that they're a white supremacist agent of state violence. Tbh when I first heard about "defund the police" I mistakenly thought that it was supposed to be some sort of punishment for the police being racist. On its surface, that sounds like the wrong approach. I'm pretty confident that that reading is what many conservatives take away when they hear "defund the police".

And then there's "ACAB". What we really mean is that "all cops are complicit" or "good cops don't last". I can't stand when people smugly say that of course ACAB is obviously not literal. If you expect the group that thinks we're all batshit insane and wholly divorced from reality for the most common sense takes to parse the nuance behind the blanket statement then you're batshit insane and wholly divorced from reality.

This is not even a bad optics argument. This is why in the heck are we spreading misinformation about our own dang beliefs that make us sound completely unreasonable.