#state government

[writing-with-olive]

hey all

so in a more practical application of the "larp a republican if you're gonna call them" post that got huge, North Carolina is about to have abortion access slashed if nothing's done about it.

SB20 got passed and went up to Gov. Cooper who vetoed it, but there's very very slight veto-proof supermajority in the legislature. Unless at least one Republican breaks ranks the veto will be overridden.

I made a google doc to organize, and you don't have to be a North Carolinian to participate:

Even if you can't participate, please share. A lot of people might lose yet more of their rights very soon.

[tomorrowusa]

When you put Republicans in total control of a state, here's what happens after they've banned books, banned abortion, and persecuted the LGBTQ+ community.

The Idaho legislature, with GOP supermajorities, is taking up a bill dealing with cannibalism. The bill was proposed by Republican (of course) State Rep. Heather Scott who was motivated by a satirical Tik-Tok video which she took to be real.

A preoccupation of mine is that we need to pay much more attention to state government and especially state legislatures. Check now to see who represents you in your state legislature.

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

If you are represented by a brainless MAGA Republican like Heather Scott, contact your state or county Democratic Party and ask how you can help elect more Democrats to the legislature.

[jbfly46]

In the United States, the primary antagonistic actor against the working class is the circuit court system, which runs amok violating federal law and the constitution on a daily basis, while also laundering money for drug cartels and other actors tied to foreign intelligence.

The U.S. federal court system is supposed to be able to be used by the working class as an enforcement mechanism against unlawful lower court and corporate actors, but there is an entity preventing that from occurring.

At the individual state level, the U.S. government is run by quasi-government affiliated and government adjacent entities that actively sabotage the daily lives of the working class.

Whether the federal government is tied to the quasi-state foreign intelligence affiliated actors or not, they have the information available to realize what is happening and are doing nothing about it.

U.S. state and local internet connected systems have the fingerprints and the financial trail of being sourced from Israeli intelligence.

[fuggnuckets]

For anyone who lives in Colorado and doesn’t want to pay an annual tax on each you own.

This is the bitch that wants to tax your pets

And this is her contact information:

regina.english.house@coleg.gov

Tell her to resign and fuck off to Hell

[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.

[woc-f4t]

County Deputy arrested after fight

It seems that Pottawatomi County, Oklahoma, has a serious problem when it comes to their law enforcement agencies. Over the past few years, we have brought attention to the Earlsboro police, the Shawnee police, and for the third time, we’re bringing attention to the Pottawatomi County Sheriff’s department. This time, however, we have their officers assaulting employees. Last Tuesday, Commander…

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Democrat Aaron Rouse appeared to clinch the special election for Virginia’s 7th state Senate district on Tuesday in yet another victory for his party, which was already riding high from a better-than-expected midterm election.

The race was a nail-biter, with Rouse scraping by over Republican opponent Kevin Adams with less than 1% of the vote, according to unofficial election results. Still, the flip will be seen as a major win by the party and will expand its majority in the commonwealth’s state Senate. The split in the chamber will now stand at 22-18.

Rouse declared victory shortly after the unofficial vote tallies were counted.

“THANK YOU!” he tweeted Tuesday night. “With your support, and the support of voters from across Virginia Beach and Norfolk, we have won this Special Election. No rest for the weary – tomorrow, we head to Richmond to get to work for Virginia families.”

His party also hailed the victory, with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee tweeting Tuesday night that it “will help Dems defend our majority in the VA Senate this fall!”

Rouse, a Virginia Beach city council member and former NFL player, will replace Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) in the seat that she vacated after she defeated former Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) in the November U.S. congressional elections.

The seventh state Senate district includes much of the Virginia Beach area and parts of Norfolk. Rouse’s victory is significant due to the district’s Republican lean. Kiggans won the seat by just less than a point in 2019, while Biden won the district by 10 points in 2020. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) won the seat during the state’s 2021 gubernatorial campaign. And in 2022, Kiggans trailed Luria by four points in precincts within the state Senate district, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.

Rouse’s victory is also significant because it provides Democrats with an extra vote against any measure that could restrict abortion access in the commonwealth. The issue featured heavily in the race and underscored its viability for Democrats as they look toward the November general elections and the 2024 presidential election.

[antimony-ore]

If the federal government isn't working due to bipartisanship, maybe focusing on individual state governments and laws at a state level would actually help the states be more united... longterm

[b0bthebuilder35]

Children should not have to pay for things at a place they are required to be for more than 4 hours a day.

[cnu-newurbanism]

What does government support for highway removal look like?

Freeways Without Futures highlights the efforts of local campaign organizers and activists seeking to revitalize their communities by dismantling the city highways that burden them with the significant health hazards of vehicle exhaust, a loss of local businesses and services, and streets that are hostile to pedestrians.

Now, city and state officials are also recognizing the importance of replacing aging highways that damage communities with assets like city streets, housing, and green space. This is further supported by the federal government’s acknowledgement of historic harms with financing through the federal Reconnecting Communities program. While the 2023 report features several highways that are getting support from the federal government, the highways featured in this article have also received government support on a more local level.

Read more.

[eterniitea]

No one is gonna see this and I think that just kind of proves my point but… Man since I got my new job I started to hate it when people insist your elected officials don’t care about you. Maybe it’s because I’m super progressive working in a progressive environment… but guys… oh my god they care so much.

So fucking much. For every little nonsense law that gets passed, there’s hundreds—thousands more put forward just to try to help you. There were 4000+ bills put forward by my state senate this year, and that’s just the senate! It’s over 5000 from the house iirc. But they do things to help you.

They care so much that they run themselves ragged securing funding for parks, libraries, bike lanes, road improvements, there’s so much and there’s so few of them but they try.

None of them are perfect, far from it really, but they do their fucking best. Yea yea we know about corruption etc. they’re human. I’m in one of the most corrupt states in the fucking United States and fuck man. The amount of running ragged I did this week for just one senator’s press conference was nuts. But you know what? It was small, it wasn’t much, but he secured funding to replace a neighborhood’s lead pipes. It doesn’t effect me, but no matter how many households that is… that’s someone’s kid who’s gonna grow up healthier. That’s someone’s grandparent who won’t be poisoning themselves into an earlier grave. That’s going to help people, not everyone but it’s going to improve lives.

Guys they care so much. It’s just… you can’t always hear them when they do things to help. That’s part of why I do my job, but there’s only so many people I can reach. There’s only so many people who want to hear.

Yea, I’m mega emotional because we lost one of our senators very suddenly yesterday. I never even met him but I sobbed for hours. I still have the tension headache from it. Fuck, I’m crying now. While I may not have known him, I know he fought like hell for his constituents. Everyone at work is mourning him. I’m sad because he won’t be able to be there for his family. I’m sad because people I worked with were friends with him. But part of what makes me so sad is that so many people don’t know how hard he fought for them.

And that there are people who would ever say that he didn’t care about them. He did. He always did.

So I wanted to share the one time I was able to watch him speak on the senate floor, it was the last time he ever did.

I won’t give a direct quote, but during the debate, Republicans were shouting quite incoherently for close to half an hour. He requested the floor, and when granted, he chastised all of them. He called out every single one of the people screaming and reminded them that they are policy makers. If they’re not happy with how things are, they should introduce legislation to fix what they see as being wrong in the world. Then he paused and said, well, actually, now that I’m thinking about it, I know all of your legislative records.

You were a great man, and I’m so sorry that you’re gone.

TL;DR: your elected leaders care about you. Don’t let people tell you otherwise.

[indizombie]

Around 600 employees from 122 government-run dialysis units across Karnataka are now on strike, affecting nearly 4,000 patients. The employees gathered at the Freedom Park in Bengaluru — the second time in three months — on Thursday, 20 October, protesting against the mismanagement of the centres by the state government and Sanjeevani. The protesters said they had not been paid for the past three months. The authorities have now promised to meet their demands at the earliest. The protesters, however, refused to budge. “We don’t want fake promises and those that would remain only on paper. Last time, health minister Sudhakar met us and promised to fulfill the demands, but nothing happened. So this time, we will not call off the strike until our demands are met,” he said.

Chetana Belagere, ‘Undergo dialysis at your own risk in state-run units in Karnataka. Here is why’, South First

[tomorrowusa]

I also keep my eyes on the South because the Republican strategy of disenfranchisement is a state-by-state strategy. It looks like judicial rule where they cannot win. Where they cannot win by judicial rule, they will rule by procedural theft. Where they cannot convince voters to vote for them, they will convince the candidate they voted for to become one of them.

Tressie McMillan Cottom at the New York Times.

A great summing up of the GOP strategy to cling to power at all costs. And this strategy is certainly not limited to Southern states.

She’s quite right about this being a state-by-state battle. Keep up with state government. Start by learning who your state legislators are.

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

[jbfly46]

The United States Empire can be brought to its knees by crippling a few key low level targets in relatively quick succession of each other.

The National Guard and the U.S. Military are incapable of being organized in any intelligent capacity quickly enough to be relevant factors to an intelligent adversary.

The FBI is incapable of investigating any entities except for low-level mentally ill lone wolf and militia actors, and very sparingly at that.

[gettothestabbing]

Two months before [four-year-old James] Dunklee’s death, the police and CYFD were brought to urgent care where Dunklee was found with multiple bruises and injured genitals, Albuquerque News reported. Dunklee told police and CYFD officials he was being touched inappropriately by one of his mother’s boyfriends.

It was not the first time child services came across strong evidence of abuse. When Dunklee was three, according to the lawsuit reviewed by Albuquerque News, “CYFD found him living barricaded in his room and bruised.”

“When he was four, APD and CYFD were called again, finding James was bruised and not potty trained. James would tell police his mother’s boyfriend was hitting him,” the local paper reported.

“CYFD time after time after time, referral after referral failed to take custody of James,” Sara Crecca with the Law Firm of Alexander D. Crecca, P.C. Attorneys told Albuquerque News.

Crecca and her colleagues are now accusing CYFD of a cover-up. The agency managers “directed the investigator to erase her notes before entering them in the official CYFD system,” Crecca said, believing critical evidence of government misconduct is now gone.

It remains unclear whether the CYFD was using the encrypted messaging app Signal at the time, which allows for automatic deletion of messages after 10 days. In May of last year, the agency terminated a pair of senior employees who raised concerns about the app’s use in the agency. The employees complained that the policy kept staff communications concealed from Inspection of Public Records (IPRA) requests.

The two firings became a scandal for Grisham, up for re-election this November, as her office directed state agencies to use the encrypted messaging service. The CYFD stopped using Signal following the initial controversy, but still reportedly used Microsoft Teams, which also features the automatic deletion of encrypted messages, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.

[nando161mando]