Back in May Georgia gov Nathan Deal signed HB 87, sweeping and draconian immigration "reform", into law. A couple weeks later, Deal ordered an investigation into the impact of said law. Apparently forethought is for suckers. Anyway, results were such:
Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.
So Deal came up with the idea that farmers hire people who are on probation and are currently unemployed. That idea? Not working so well, either:
The first batch of probationers started work last week at a farm owned by Dick Minor, president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association. In the coming days, more farmers could join the program.
So far, the experiment at Minor’s farm is yielding mixed results. On the first two days, all the probationers quit by mid-afternoon, said Mendez, one of two crew leaders at Minor’s farm.
“Those guys out here weren’t out there 30 minutes and they got the bucket and just threw them in the air and say, ‘Bonk this, I ain’t with this, I can’t do this,’” said Jermond Powell, a 33-year-old probationer. “They just left, took off across the field walking.”
Well.
In protest of HB 87, the ACLU and others sued the state and received an injunction on two parts this past Monday: one that would authorize police to arrest immigrants and take them to jail and the other that punished people who knowingly transport or harbor immigrants. However, the rest is still scheduled to go forward as of now--and it starts tomorrow. Here, courtesy of the AJC, are the details:
Taking effect Friday:
* People who use fake identification to get a job in Georgia could face up to 15 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.
* A seven-member Immigration Enforcement Review Board will be established to investigate complaints about local and state government officials not enforcing state laws related to immigration. Spokesmen for Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and House Speaker David Ralston said this week that their offices were working on appointing people to this panel.
* Government officials who violate state laws requiring cities, counties and state government agencies to use the federal E-Verify work authorization program could face fines up to $10,000 and removal from office.
* The state Agriculture Department will be directed to study the possibility of creating Georgia's own guest-worker program. Some Georgia employers have complained that the federal government's guest-worker program is too burdensome and expensive.
There are other parts taking effect at later dates.
Yesterday and this morning I read two articles that dovetail nicely with this topic--one very directly related. First (FYI: it's nine pages long): Republican mayor in the South becomes unlikely advocate for immigrants. As Mayor Bridges said: "When I became mayor, I decided I was going to be the mayor for everybody, including people who have no voice otherwise." Second is Slacktivist's Amnesty at the DMV, who notes: "But despite doing something illegal, something against the law, I was never in danger of arrest, because while driving a car with expired inspection stickers is “illegal,” it is not criminal. It’s a civil violation. It’s fashionable these days to pretend that this distinction doesn’t exist — at least when the subject is immigration — but it’s a significant and essential distinction."
The court battles are far from over on HB 87 as both sides promise to keep fighting.
Last Friday Judge Tanya Walton Pratt ruled that Indiana cannot defund Planned Parenthood and also suspended part of the recently-passed law that stated that doctors must tell patients that fetuses (at any gestational age) feel pain. Judge Walton Pratt has temporarily upheld the part of the law that said doctors are required to tell patients "life begins at fertilization".
The Indy Star became curious, after the ruling, about just how much input doctors had when it came to drafting the legislation & its subsequent passage. They found what they call "startling answers". Though I'm not particularly startled myself.
Doctors were not entirely shut out of the legislative process. The Indiana State Medical Association chose to pass up its chance to publicly weigh in on the abortion bill and took no position on it. And doctors did have some influence on the bill. After hearing testimony from an oncologist with the IU Simon Cancer Center, lawmakers removed a provision requiring doctors to tell patients that abortion is linked to breast cancer.
The Star found strong evidence, however, that medical considerations were secondary at best. In interviews last week, the lawmaker who drafted the fetal-pain clause admitted she had consulted no scientific studies.
Of course she didn't! Rep. Sue Ellspermann (R-Ferdinand) who wrote the fetal pain bit said outright that she did not consult any doctors, scientific studies, or scientists. She said that "she had seen video footage 'of the baby (in the womb) shying away from the needle'" and THAT was all the proof she needed. Who needs accurate scientific information when drafting legislation that affects an untold number of women? Not Indiana! And WAY TO GO Indiana State Medical Association. Nice of you to sit this one out. Really.
There is, of course, more:
Since the law took effect six weeks ago, The Star has learned, doctors at IU and Wishard hospitals stopped offering to terminate pregnancies for about 70 patients, including many with complications that put the patient's health at serious risk or where there was no possibility the fetus would survive. The IU School of Medicine's faculty practice determined that its doctors had to take that step to comply with the law, despite the fact that the law exempts hospitals.
The IU doctors are part of a private practice not technically employed by the hospitals, and therefore they do not fit under the language of the exemption.
These doctors -- and likely many others -- had to choose from a limited range of treatment options or send patients out of state for terminations after the law took effect May 10.
The law was aimed at cutting off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood of Indiana. But the IU doctors feared that if they continued to terminate pregnancies -- even in cases where it was medically advisable -- they would also lose the ability to treat Medicaid clients, who make up a substantial portion of their cases.
[...]
Elizabeth Ferries-Rowe, chief of obstetrics and gynecology for Wishard, said in a letter to The Star that the legislature and Daniels had "tied the hands of physicians attempting to provide medically appropriate, evidence-based care in the setting of routine obstetrics and gynecology" in "a politically motivated move to de-fund Planned Parenthood."
Ferries-Rowe, who described herself as a Catholic, said Wishard continued treating women in mortal danger, such as those suffering from ectopic pregnancies -- when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus.
But she said she would be unable to terminate the pregnancy of a woman whose amniotic membranes had ruptured at 16 weeks with complete loss of fluid. Under those circumstances, Ferries-Rowe said in an interview, the baby would likely be born so early that it wouldn't survive, and a woman who chose not to terminate the pregnancy would run the risk of sepsis, which can cause permanent organ damage, loss of limbs, brain damage or death.
She said no IU School of Medicine doctor was able to give a patient the option of abortion even in the case of congenital fetal anomaly incompatible with life -- in other words, zero chance of survival.
The consequences of the defunding law were particularly significant for IU School of Medicine doctors because they treat women with high-risk pregnancies who have been referred by other health providers across the state.
The Family and Social Services Administration is "taking steps" to clarify the hospital exemption but it will take months. Those months are time that women DO NOT HAVE.
When made aware of these consequences, Sen. Scott Schneider (who wrote the defunding amendment) said:
"This was not the intent."
This. Was. Not. The. Intent. I'm sure you, Sen. Schneider, thought you had "good intentions" when coming up with that dreadful legislation (though I profoundly disagree). Well, you know what they say about good intentions, don't you? The road to hell--but you aren't the one being forced to walk down the road you created now are you?
Am currently listening to my governor, Mitch Daniels, talk about what a great success privatizing the Indiana Toll Road has been.
An economic success, obviously. For the state.
The Hoosiers who actually use the Indiana Toll Road and now have to pay three times as much for the privilege of getting to work in Chicago because there are no jobs in Indiana can go fuck themselves. Obviously.
What is a little thing you do to bring yourself comfort?
When I was a kid, I used to rub the corner of my pillow with my thumbnail; this would lull me to sleep almost immediately. These days, it's usually something warm to drink at night.
It's hard out there for the uber rich. Sure, Obama may be keeping Dubya's tax cuts for the wealthy, and sure, you can fill your coffers while still fucking over the American people, and sure, your money gives you access to an obscene amount of political power, but doggone it, those darn whiny poor people just can't stop picking on you about your grossly huge salary. Can't someone make krajillions of dollars without everyone sticking their nose where it doesn't belong? Huh? Huh? Won't someone help the poor wealthy?
Here’s one financial figure some big U.S. companies would rather keep secret: how much more their chief executive makes than the typical worker.
Now a group backed by 81 major companies — including McDonald’s, Lowe’s, General Dynamics, American Airlines, IBM and General Mills — is lobbying against new rules that would force disclosure of that comparison.
The lobbying effort began more than a year ago. It involved some of the biggest names in corporate America and meetings with members of both parties on the House Financial Services Committee and Senate banking committee.
The companies and their Republican allies in Congress call comparisons between the chief and everyone else in the company “useless.”
Of course, this has nothing to do with unchecked greed and smokescreening gross inequality.
Disclosing such comparisons “can mislead or confuse investors,” said Rep. Nan A.S. Hayworth (R[edonkulous]-N.Y.), who filed the bill to repeal the disclosure. “It creates heat but sheds no light.”
Ah, I see, it's so we don't get our widdle bwains all confused.
Posting will be lighter than usual the next two days, as I'm going to be attending the Clinton Global Initiative's CGI America, which is the Clinton Global Initiative's first conference focusing on the US' economic needs.
I'm really excited to be going. I may do some live-blogging and/or live-tweeting, but I'm probably more likely to take a lot of notes and then do a follow-up post afterward. I'm expecting to be absolutely overwhelmed with information, which is pretty much my favorite thing in the world.
In any case, you can follow the happenings on Twitter, or watch the plenary sessions live at the CGI America webcast. Highlights, news, and photos from CGI America will also be shared on the CGI Facebook page.
My governor, Mitch Daniels, is one of the speakers on Thursday. That should be fun. I can't wait to hear about ALL HIS GOOD IDEAS to help the US economy!
This started out as a comment on Kate's post, but it got really long, so…
One of the real problems with feminist policing of expressions of traditional femininity (among many problems, which also include looking suspiciously like a thingy that polices from the other direction), is that it effectively ignores the reality that many feminist women (almost like real humans! wheeeeee!) tend to go through stages where they have different personal relationships with the accouterments of traditional femininity as they move through life accumulating experience and knowledge, and their feminist philosophy changes, deepens, broadens.
Many years ago, I rejected certain expressions of traditional femininity because I was a misogynist, raised in a misogynist culture to hate women (including myself). I was socialized to have axiomatic contempt for the feminine and all its associations with weakness and frivolity and being less than.
I was born into a world in which, given my particular set of personal circumstances and privileges, I was told that I was equal to men from the day I was born—and it was a real shock to me to find out that not everyone agreed. In theory, I was equal. In practice, I was decidedly not.
And the way I first learned to navigate that ego-rattling disparity was to assert myself as an Exceptional Woman. Not like those other women. Certainly not like those radical feminists. I wasn't like them. I laughed at dirty jokes and didn't take three hours to get ready and liked baseball. I was practically one of the boys.
Ugh. Embarrassing stuff.
I thought I was a feminist, but I only understood feminism in the most cursory way.
Then I was exposed to proper feminist theory for the first time—and suddenly I started REALLY LIKING being a woman, and other women, and all things feminine, in a way I had never liked any of those things before. It made me voraciously desirous of feminine things, many of which I'd always liked, deep down, but had rejected, shoving my affections to dark vaults at the bottom of my psychological sea. There they could be forgotten, or at least denied.
But feminism gave me permission to love the feminine, which I'd never had before. And I wanted to wear pink—not ironically—and to be pretty.
I lived on—and my perspective on the world changed, and I changed, and my feminism changed. Some of the expressions of traditional femininity I had embraced started to seem problematic to me. I didn't exactly ricochet back in the other direction, but I certainly felt less disposed toward, less fond of, certain expressions of femininity. Some of them felt, when on my body, on my skin, in my mouth, in my thoughts, like an artifice behind which I was hiding.
I lived on. Change. Etc. My life is not static. My thinking is not static. I interact with new people who introduce me to new ideas all the time. I am influenced by the world around me, which itself changes in ways that affect my thinking. I am influenced by the parts of myself that continue to emerge, and sometimes surprise me.
There has not been any point at which my personal feminism is/was "right" with regard to my expressions and/or rejections of femininity, according to every other feminist on the planet. It is a moving target, even for me, finding some balance between my feminism and my femininity.
All I have learned is not to judge, not to audit—because I have no idea where any other feminist is on her journey. I don't even know where I am on my own.
I don't want to be the police, and I don't want to be policed. What I want is the presumption I'm fumblefucking my way through this thing in good faith, that I don't want to make life any harder for any other person during my time on this rock.
What I want is the freedom to fuck up, and the right to be wrong.
For some reason, after spending the first 37 years of my life relatively indifferent to pineapple—I mean, I liked it and all, but I never craved it and never went out of my way to eat it—I am suddenly desperate to eat fresh pineapple like it's going out of style.
Whoops, CNN! Your article is about how companies "must proactively work to create a workplace culture that matches their workplace policies" and create a workplace environment that is LGBTQI-friendly not just "by policies but by the attitudes and behaviors of mid-level managers and co-workers."
The brilliant Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) on the floor of the Senate yesterday. To read the full text of the 90-minute speech, go here. To sign the letter (please sign the letter!), go here.
Mr. President, this is a pivotal moment in the history of our country. In the coming days and weeks, decisions will be made about our national budget that will impact the lives of virtually every American in this country for decades to come—and the time is now for the American people to become significantly involved in that debate and not leave it to a small number of people here in Washington.
Mr. President, at a time when the wealthiest people and the largest corporations in our country are doing phenomenally well, and in many cases have never had it so good, while the middle class is disappearing and poverty is increasing, it is absolutely imperative that any deficit-reduction package that passes this Congress not include the horrendous cuts, the cruel cuts, in programs that working people desperately need, that are utilized every day by the elderly, by the sick, by our children, and by the lowest income people in our country, that the Republicans in Congress, dominated by their extreme rightwing, are demanding.
America is not about giving tax breaks to billionaires and attacking the most vulnerable people in our country. We must not allow that to happen.
In my view, the President of the United States needs to stand with the vast majority of the American people and say no to the Republican leadership and make it clear that enough is enough! No, we will not balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable people in this country—on our children, on our seniors, on the sick. No, we will not do that. Working families in this country have already sacrificed enough in terms of lost jobs, lost wages, lost homes, lost pensions. The working families of this country are hurting right now. Enough is enough.
But, Mr. President, now is the time to say to the millionaires and the billionaires in this country, and to the largest corporations, who in many ways have never had it so good, that they must participate in deficit reduction—that there must be shared sacrifice, that deficit reduction cannot be based on cutting back on the needs of working families and the middle class, but the rich and large corporations have also got to participate in this process.
Furthermore, it is absolutely necessary, if we are talking about a sensible deficit-reduction package, that we take a hard look at unnecessary and wasteful spending at the Pentagon.
And, Mr. President, let us make it very clear that we will not be blackmailed again by the Republican leadership in Washington who are threatening to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States government so that, for the very first time in our nation's history, we might not pay the bills we owe. That is their threat. We will destroy the record of always paying our bills, never failing to do that, unless they get everything they want.
Instead of yielding to the incessant, extreme Republican demands, as the President in many respects did in last December's tax cut agreement and this year's spending negotiations, the President has got to get out of the beltway. He has to connect with the needs of working families and ordinary Americans, and rally the overwhelming majority of our people who believe that deficit reduction must be based on shared sacrifice, that the wealthy and the powerful and the large corporations cannot continue to get everything they want while we wage a cruel and unprecedented attack on the most vulnerable people in this country.
It is time for President Obama to stand with the millions who have already lost their jobs, their homes, their life savings, instead of the millionaires, who in many cases have never had it so good.
Unless the American people in huge numbers tell the President not to yield one inch to Republican demands to destroy Medicare and Medicaid while continuing to provide tax breaks to the wealthy and the powerful, unless the American people rise up and say enough is enough, I am afraid that what will happen is the President will yield once again, and the wealthy and the powerful will laugh all the way to the bank, while working people will be devastated.
So, today, I am asking the American people that, if you believe deficit reduction should be about shared sacrifice; if you believe the wealthiest people in our country and the largest corporations should be asked to pay their fair share as part of deficit reduction; if you believe that, at a time when military spending has almost tripled since 1997, that we begin to take a hard look at our defense budget; and if you believe the middle-class and working families have already sacrificed enough, I urge you to make sure that the President hears your voice—and he needs to hear it now.
I would urge the American people to go to my Web site, sanders.senate.gov, and sign a letter to the President letting him know that enough is enough…
The Ohio House is currently in session (which you can watch live here). Within the past hour, they've passed two oenerous pieces of legislation, HB 78 (I believe was 64Y - 33N, but I didn't record it) and HB 79 (62Y - 35N).
HB 78 is an appalling, hideous bit of legislation (underlines & strike-outs theirs, not mine):
(A) "Fertilization" means the fusion of a human spermatozoon with a human ovum.
(B) "Gestational age" or "gestation" means the age of an unborn humanchild as calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of a pregnant woman.
[...]
(F) "Medical emergency" means a condition that a pregnant woman's physician determines, in the physician's good faith and in the exercise of reasonable medical judgment, based upon the facts known to the physician at that time, so complicates the woman's pregnancy as to necessitate the immediate performance or inducement of an abortion in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to avoid a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman that delay in the performance or inducement of the abortion would create.
(G) "Physician" has the same meaning as in section 2305.113 of the Revised Code.
(H) "Pregnant" means the human female reproductive condition, that commences with fertilization, of having a developing fetus.
(I) "Pregnancy" means the condition of being pregnant.
(J) "Premature infant" means a human whose live birth occurs prior to thirty-eight weeks of gestational age.
(J)(K) "Serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function" means any medically diagnosed condition that so complicates the pregnancy of the woman as to directly or indirectly cause the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function, including, but not limited to, the following conditions:
(1) Pre-eclampsia;
(2) Inevitable abortion;
(3) Prematurely ruptured membrane;
(4) Diabetes;
(5) Multiple sclerosis.A medically diagnosed condition that constitutes a "serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function" includes pre-eclampsia, inevitable abortion, and premature rupture of the membranes, may include, but is not limited to, diabetes and multiple sclerosis, and does not include a condition related to the woman's mental health.
(K)(L) "Unborn humanchild" means an individual organism of the species homo sapiens from fertilization until live birth.
[...] (B)(1) It is an affirmative defense to a charge under division (A) of this section that the abortion was performed or induced or attempted to be performed or induced by a physician and that the physician determined, in the physician's good faith medical judgment, based on the facts known to the physician at that time, that either of the following applied:
(a) The unborn child was not viable.
(b) The abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.
(2) No abortion shall be considered necessary under division (B)(1)(b) of this section on the basis of a claim or diagnosis that the pregnant woman will engage in conduct that would result in the pregnant woman's death or a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman or based on any reason related to the woman's mental health.
Read the full text here. There are many hoops a doctor must jump through to even do an abortion to save the life of a women--not to mention a shitload of tracking paperwork to be submitted to the Dept of Health.
You can read the text of HB 79 here, though it simply says: [A]ny qualified health plan as defined in section 1301 of the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," 42 U.S.C. 18021, offered in this state through an exchange created under that act" will not offer abortion coverage for "non-theraputic" abortion.
The House has not yet moved onto the notorious HB 125, the so-called "heartbeat bill". Will keep you updated if/when there is any news on that.
ETA:They did already vote and HB 125 passed 54 - 43. As a reminder: SCOTUS has deemed it is unconstitutional to pass laws preventing abortion before viability.
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