Red States. Climate Change. What Next?
(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)
Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done, and where it’s sugar for sugar, and salt for salt, and if you go down in the flood, it’s going to be your fault.
We are going to leave all hurricane-related laboratory experiments to their own spaces in the shebeen. Except to point out that Houston was drowned and it looks like south Florida’s next, and Barbuda’s pretty much gone, and the Southern California hills and the Pacific Northwest and Montana are all burning down. So, maybe, it’s time for one of the only two major political parties we’ve allowed ourselves as a nation to get with the damn program on climate change. States are going to go broke here. You can’t “leave it to the states” on this one. Especially not the states, like Florida and Texas, who have crackpot Republican governors. Doesn’t anybody read this semi-regular weekly feature every week? Yeesh.
(Also, as Bill McKibben pointed out on the electric Twitter machine, maybe Wednesday wasn’t the best day for Heidi Heitkamp to share a stage with the president* at an oil refinery in the newly formed petro-state of North Dakota. Optics, people.)
We begin in Indiana, where a local school is falling all over itself trying to live by the Supreme Court’s decades of whittling away at Tinker v. Des Moines. From WIBC:
"I'm for what they believe in. I'm for the south,” said senior Peyton Bannon. “They succeeded from the north for tax reasons and they just didn't want to be pushed around anymore so they left." Superintendent of the Frankton-Lapel school district, Bobby Fields, said the emblem was banned to “protect the sanctity and integrity of the learning environment.” Administration officials said around 75 students complained. “They've had these flags every year,” said Elliotte Burton, one of 25 students who planned to wear black lives matter t-shirts. “They would just take them down, but now that the situation has been brought up that kids were going to do the black lives matter shirts, they'll literally ride around the school with them flying then they'll leave the parking lot and drive around this whole town with them." Bannon said he understands why people would be offended by the flags, and that the students are not wearing them for racist purposes.
Do they teach history in this school? And do we attribute “succeeded from the north” to the student or to the reporter writing this story? (A later version was posted that suggests the reporter was at fault.) We continue.
"In this particular instance our administration stopped this small number of students from exercising their First Amendment Rights upon school property, because the students exercise of the right of free speech and free expression were outweighed by the reasonable likelihood that the continued exercise of such rights would undermine the learning atmosphere at Lapel High School," said Fields, in a prepared statement.
Do they teach civics here, too?
(Enthusiastic h/t here to shebeen regular John Schorg for hipping us to this.)
Let’s head north to Wisconsin where, glorioski, the state legislature finally produced a budget. The major sticking point was a fight over financing the state’s transportation policy between the state legislature - and its Republican majorities - and Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage this particular Midwest subsidiary. The deal that finally was cut might as well have an automobile company logo stuck on it. From the Capital-Times:
Walker has refused to support any increase in the state's 32.9 cents-per-gallon gas tax or its $75 registration fee. Under the GOP plan, owners of electric vehicles would pay an additional $100 fee, while owners of hybrid vehicles would pay a $75 fee. That's designed to create "parity" with drivers who are funding roads by purchasing gasoline, Walker has said. The fees are expected to generate about $8.4 million over the biennium.
And, because this is a Republican package, and because the Republicans are well known for their commitment to local government, this deal disenfranchises all of Wisconsin’s cities and towns on certain quality of life issues, because freedom.
A significant portion of the 19-page omnibus motion is dedicated to limiting local regulation of quarries where nonmetallic materials are mined for transportation projects. Limits would be placed on local governments' ability to regulate noise, blasting, water and air quality standards, the depth and quantity of materials being mined, truck traffic and hours of operation.
Does labor law take a hit? Do you even have to ask? Scott Walker would be a county commissioner in a graft-ridden office in Milwaukee if it weren’t for union-bashing.
The package completely eliminates the state's prevailing wage law, which sets minimum pay requirements for construction workers on public projects, would be completely eliminated. Opponents of the move say it will lead to lower wages and unsafe work conditions. A Democratic amendment to remove the provision was defeated.
Public transit? You’re kidding, right?
The plan also directs the state Department of Transportation to spend $2.5 million studying the implementation of tolling, instructs DOT study its ability to "swap" a portion of federal funds with state dollars for some roads projects and places limits on public dollars that can be spent on a streetcar project in Milwaukee.
It all comes down to Walker’s fanatical opposition to raising taxes on anyone who might eventually contribute to one of his campaigns. Who the hell fights a gas tax while he knuckles people who own hybrids? God, what a sublet this man is.
And we conclude, as is our custom, with the great state of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Sinkhole Spelunker Friedman of the Plains brings us the latest chapter in the continuing saga of Oklahoma’s seismic anomalies. From Oklahoma NPR:
In a newly published paper in the journal Science Advances, a team of scientists from University of California Santa Cruz and the Oklahoma Geological Survey agree the number of small earthquakes has diminished, but their analysis shows Oklahoma is twice as likely to experience a 5.0-magnitude or greater earthquake in 2017 than previously predicted. Earlier research put the odds at around 37 percent; the new research suggests the probability is 80 percent... The new research also suggests the time delay between injection activity and earthquakes in central and northwestern Oklahoma could be much longer: Up to 14 months instead of 5 months. The researchers say the risk of potentially damaging shaking could have been underestimated.
Actual scientists disagree here. But actual scientists disagree about a sudden increase in earthquakes in…Oklahoma. Fracking is forever.
This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.
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