This Week in Statehouse Action: Bad Medicine version

Posted On May 19, 2020 By admin With Comments Off

Greetings, stay-at-home squad!

Another week, another batch of Republican state legislators deciding that “peoples lives” are expendable in the name of … uh … supposedly helping the economy by spend money we don’t have because coronavirus-related job losses are north of 26 million?

Yeah, I don’t actually follow, either.

I too struggle to comprehend the pro-coronavirus rallies that are continuing to pop up across the country.

I planned, I don’t struggle to comprehend how they’re happening.

It’s well established at this point that there’s nothing “grassroots” about these dangerous demonstrations.

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FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots–national right-wing organizations that too organized and funded the conservative “Tea Party” dissents in the long-ago time of 2009–have developed as two extending makes behind the small but noisy groups tumbling on various state capitols to wave their Trump pennants, carry their abuse rifles, and generally infringe social distancing and face-covering specifications.

And the biggest Facebook groups propagandizing these asserts that aren’t confined to these well-funded national groups are actually the work of four brothers who are already established republican scam artists.

Chris, Ben, Aaron, and Matthew Dorr have been running anti-gun safety and anti-reproductive rights online radicals that bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

How? By

Antagonizing conservative groups and politicians they regard as insufficiently right-wing and

Bilking their followers through paid bodies or selling the email schedules they build in the process.

The Dorr brothers are organizing pro-coronavirus protests in Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Fun fact! Earlier this year, Minnesota Republicans went so fed up with the Dorr brothers’ antics that the state party, House caucus, and Senate caucus launched a seam website–mnscammersexposed.com–seeking to draw attention to the men’s ongoing grift.

One capital city upon which these pro-coronavirus ghouls sunk the coming week was Richmond–just as Virginia lawmakers returned to town for the annual veto session.

Even as the disease demonstrators circled the capitol, bawling and honking their tusks and being generally unsafe and repulsive, government House and Senate representatives managed to convene, debate, and cast votes while observing social distancing guidelines.

The 100 -member House of Delegates met in a large tent set up on capitol sand.

The 40 -member state Senate see couple of miles away in a large event space at the Science Museum of Virginia.

One specially salient concern was the fate of Virginia’s minimum wage increase, which was slated to increase from $7.25/ hour to $9.50/ hour on Jan. 1, 2021.

Northam helped the statute to delay the increase to May 1, 2021 — a move that frustrated many Democrats and extorted entitles from Republican to eliminate the hike wholly, never mind that countless employees regarded “essential” in this crisis earn at or scarcely above minimum wages.

But, worried that Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam would veto the increase outright if they didn’t capitulate, most Democrats eventually supported the change over some growls within their caucus.

Future increases in the mood minimum wage–it’s set to increase to $15/ hour by 2026–won’t be affected by the change.

One evaluate Democrat corroborated taking accomplish sooner than originally planned was a 36% cover on payday lends.

Virginia currently has notoriously weak consumer lending laws, giving triple-digit interest rates.

The effective time for the detonator( and other reforms) was moved up six months, from July 1, 2021, to Jan. 1, 2021, in an effort to protect consumers previously facing potential financial gloomy straights-from-the-shoulder because of the fiscal the consequences of the coronavirus crisis.

Some Republican balked and expressed concern that payday lenders may be forced to shut their entrances, but of course Republicans would be sympathetic to what’s effectively permitted loan-sharking.

One of the grosser the various aspects of these astroturfed pro-coronavirus declarations is the rising capacity Republican lawmakers are playing in them.

Sometimes they participate.

Sometimes they express their support from the statehouse.

Sometimes they indicated their support as other citizens who also only happens to be people who make laws.

Take Virginia, for example, since we’re talking about it.

Two GOP state senators have registered a lawsuit challenging Northam’s authority to close gyms and fitness centers as “nonessential businesses” to fight the spread of COVID-1 9.

Republican Sens. Ryan McDougle and Bill Stanley are representing the owner of Virginia’s Gold’s Gym( … of course) facilities.

But certainly they’re use the dres as a vehicle to proclaim that Northam surpassed his constitutional power by publish the executive order that shuttered dine-in eateries, theaters, barbers, salons, gyms, theaters, bowling alleys, and other nonessential facilities.

This director require also closed schools across the commonwealth and prohibited musters of more than 10 people.

Ignoring the widely-known and well-established science concerning the extreme communicability of COVID-1 9, McDougle and Stanley claim that Northam transgressed existing territory rule regarding the quarantine and seclusion of people is considered to be carrying a “communicable disease of public health threat.”

Up in Wisconsin, GOP lawmakers aren’t even applying a crabby republican business owned as coating. They’re only straight-up suing to suspend Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ stay-at-home order.

Citing a believed “public outcry” over the line-up as the number of COVID-1 9 instances in the country “decrease or remain flat, ” Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald eagerly elided the facts of the case that the Wisconsin’s coronavirus illnes proportion has dropped as a result of the ongoing implemented to the stay-at-home order they’re trying to toss.

But we can’t caused the ongoing coronavirus crisis distract us from what Republicans are ultimately trying to accomplish with this lawsuit to invalidate an manager tell: further corrosion of the governor’s authority.

As we already know from their willingness to use a deadly pandemic as a voter quelling tactic earlier this month, Wisconsin Republican don’t seem to mind putting innocent people’s lives and health at risk in their ongoing efforts to undermine democracy.

Republican lawmakers in Montana are calling on Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock to lift the state’s stay-at-home order and make district authorities ensure its implementation, should they choose to.

But Bullock can point to next-door South Dakota’s far higher number of cases per capita to indicate what would happen without such a statewide prescribe.

In Pennsylvania, where the GOP-controlled legislature recently tried to overturn Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home order via legislation, a number of Republican lawmakers were among pro-coronavirus demonstrators at the capitol this week.

After supposedly supporting little regard for social distancing or protective facewear while participating in the risky proof, the GOPers proceeded to their respective chambers, where they carelessly attached the few lawmakers not to take part remotely.

And because there is no bottom, Idaho Republican state Rep. Heather Scott compared proletarians deemed “nonessential” to Jews in Nazi Germany, announcing Republican Gov. Brad Little “Little Hitler.”

… any pots on which state’s lawmakers prepare the next Nazi comparison?

Welp, that’s a fold for this week.

Congrats on becoming it through another one!

Just think of all the people you didn’t get infected by or didn’t infect by has become a responsible human and staying home this week as much as possible. I( and all the other Not Irresponsible Assholes) are immensely grateful to you for it.

And yeah, I know it’s hard-handed. I know it’s weird. I know it’s lonely. I know it sucks a little more each day.

But don’t give up. We need you.