Election Connection – Book Banning/Challenge Update

This is specific to a Texas school district, but challenges are happening across the country.

A federal judge has ruled that the books in question be returned to the library within twenty-four hours and left accessible while the case is ongoing. They are prohibited from removing any books while the case is in litigation.

According to this CNN article, while the Texas school said the books were removed as part of their normal weeding procedures it is clear that there were outside influences at play based on the subjects removed, including topics of race and LGBT+.

Disagreeing with the subject matter is not a reason to remove the books from the library. I also disagree with the comment in the article that pastors should be involved. Absolutely not. The separation of church and state is critically important both to the founding of this country and its ongoing evolution of welcoming all, despite the recent contradictions to that.

Part of the problem is the ignorance of those complaining about the books. They call many LGBT+ books pornographic when they are not sexual in nature and simply talk about feelings and gender as any adolescent character in a book would do. They are also trying to restrict CRT (critical race theory) which none of these books teach despite perhaps being written by a person of color or are about a person of color. As has been explained over and over again, CRT is not something that is taught in the schools, not even at a high school level. It is typically a subject in post-graduate and law schools.

As a writer, I understand that not all books are for everyone, and I agree that parents can determine the appropriateness of books for their children within reason (as I have done for my children without banning books for everyone), but I expect that we should trust in the schooling and expertise of librarians and teachers who have studied this field for a number of years.

I am also concerned about a random group of uneducated people coming in and removing books rather than letting individual parents and children make the determinations for their families on what is age-appropriate.

I hope the country steps back from the abyss; we are well beyond the slippery slope, and we need to offer modern books with timely subject matter while also encouraging the reading of classics while explaining the reasons that some of the material isn’t appropriate, and maybe never was.

Times change. We should change with them.

Transgender Day of Visibility

I struggled with what to write for today. As a cis person, I’m appalled at the anti-trans rhetoric and bills being passed across this country. I’m appalled with the lies being told by one party (Republicans) to frighten and influence parents into denying life-saving care for their children and to subject supportive parents and trans children to bigotry and violence. My husband said something to me about something related to this issue that he’d heard in a news story that was completely untrue, and I had to correct his misconception. It’s important that for cis people in addressing trans issues that we listen to trans voices and learn what we can do as allies from reliable and trans-centric sources. Media and politicians need to be called out when they entirely make stuff up and twist truths into nonsense and they need to be called out in the moment; immediately.

I wanted to talk about my trans friends, of whom I have several, but they are not a monolith. Each person is about as different as they can be and to be honest, this day of visibility isn’t about my relationship with specific people; it’s not about me.

Instead I decided to share what President Biden said today in proclaiming today Transgender Day of Visibility. I let his words speak for me.

Graphic of The White House on a blue oval.

MARCH 30, 2023

A Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility

Transgender Day of Visibility celebrates the joy, strength, and absolute courage of some of the bravest people I know — people who have too often had to put their jobs, relationships, and lives on the line just to be their true selves. Today, we show millions of transgender and nonbinary Americans that we see them, they belong, and they should be treated with dignity and respect. Their courage has given countless others strength, but no one should have to be brave just to be themselves. Every American deserves that freedom.

Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul — proudly serving in the military, curing deadly diseases, holding elected office, running thriving businesses, fighting for justice, raising families, and much more. As kids, they deserve what every child deserves: the chance to learn in safe and supportive schools, to develop meaningful friendships, and to live openly and honestly. As adults, they deserve the same rights enjoyed by every American, including equal access to health care, housing, and jobs and the chance to age with grace as senior citizens. But today, too many transgender Americans are still denied those rights and freedoms. A wave of discriminatory State laws is targeting transgender youth, terrifying families and hurting kids who are not hurting anyone. An epidemic of violence against transgender women and girls, in particular women and girls of color, has taken lives far too soon. Last year’s Club Q shooting in Colorado was another painful example of this kind of violence — a stain on the conscience of our Nation.

My Administration has fought to end these injustices from day one, working to ensure that transgender people and the entire LGBTQI+ community can live openly and safely. On my first day as President, I issued an Executive Order directing the Federal Government to root out discrimination against LGBTQI+ people and their families. We have appointed a record number of openly LGBTQI+ leaders, and I was proud to rescind the ban on openly transgender people serving in the military. We are also working to make public spaces and travel more accessible, including with more inclusive gender markers on United States passports. We are improving access to public services and entitlements like Social Security. We are cracking down on discrimination in housing and education. And last December, I signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law, ensuring that every American can marry the person they love and have that marriage accepted, period.

Meanwhile, we are also working to ease the tremendous strain that discrimination, bullying, and harassment can put on transgender children — more than half of whom seriously considered suicide in the last year. The Department of Education is, for example, helping ensure that transgender students have equal opportunities to learn and thrive at school, and the Department of Justice is pushing back against extreme laws that seek to ban evidence-based gender-affirming health care.

There is much more to do. I continue to call on the Congress to finally pass the Equality Act and extend long-overdue civil rights protections to all LGBTQI+ Americans to ensure they can live with safety and dignity. Together, we also have to keep challenging the hundreds of hateful State laws that have been introduced across the country, making sure every child knows that they are made in the image of God, that they are loved, and that we are standing up for them.

America is founded on the idea that all people are created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout their lives. We have never fully lived up to that, but we have never walked away from it either. Today, as we celebrate transgender people, we also celebrate every American’s fundamental right to be themselves, bringing us closer to realizing America’s full promise.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2023, as Transgender Day of Visibility. I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination against all transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-seventh.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

Making Waves at Spoutible

On February 1st, a new social media site opened for business: Spoutible.

I’ve been using it since then and it has been smooth sailing, more or less. It’s still in beta and it can be a bit slower than you might be used to on Twitter, and it glitches a little, but the team behind the scenes keeps us in the loop as things progress. The soft opening let people really find their pods, their like-minded people. I’ve found some of the political accounts I followed elsewhere, but my most positive experience thus far has been getting to know the writing community there.

I’d recommend giving it a try, kicking the tires and take a deep breath because the whale puns abound.

The biggest difference that I see on Spoutible is my timeline is filled with the people I actually follow as opposed to Twitter which has been giving me Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, Lauren Boebert and others whose drivel I really don’t need in my life. I would understand if what I’m seeing was newsworthy, but it’s trolling by our Congresspeople. It’s sad and depressing.

Do I expect Spoutible to be perfect? No, of course not, but I kind of like the Nazi- and conspiracy theory-free zone.

You can find me at kbwriting.

I’d also recommend Post, which has been going along for a couple of months (I think) now. It’s more newsie and political, although I expect Spoutible to pick up on those topics as more new voices join up. I can be found at Post under the same handle, kbwriting.

Follow the links.

I do believe I’m done looking for more microblogging sites though.

Election Connection – Just Say NO to a 30% Sales Tax

I’ve been seeing and hearing quite a bit about a new proposal from House GOP members about abolishing the IRS and implementing a 30% sales tax*. On its face it is an absurd prospect filled with scare tactics talking points and falsehoods, or as we like to call them: LIES.

I’m including three links as well as a great video that explains exactly what’s in the bill at the end. First, I’m glad to give you my opinion on this as someone who pays the bills for my household and is soon-to-be preparing our taxes and who spent the weekend shopping with my family for our household needs.

A 30% tax increase is CRAZY. It’s as simple as that. We’re an average family of five, one of whom lives on his own (but who often comes to dinner). We are still materially supporting two other children (regardless of their ages), feeding, clothing, entertaining. We live paycheck to paycheck, and some months we don’t have anything at all until the next paycheck. It varies.

This weekend we went to several places and took our daughter to breakfast on Sunday. I’m going to round up what we spent:

Breakfast out: $63

Department Store: $68 (this included groceries, medicine, and clothing)

Walmart: $6 (groceries)

McDonald’s: $3 ($1 drinks)

Sally’s Beauty Supply: $24 (school supplies)

Target: $164 (personal care/hygiene, toilet paper, school supplies, groceries, toy on clearance)

All of these purchases include state and county sales tax, which in (our part of) New York is 8%.

New totals based on an additional 30% federal sales tax (on goods and services):

Breakfast: $81.90
Dept. Store: $88.40
Walmart: $7.80
McDonald’s: $3.90
Sally’s: $31.20
Target: $213.20

For a grand total increase of: $98.40 for one day’s shopping. ONE DAY.

Republican House Members claim that this will abolish the IRS and eliminate 87,000 “weaponized” IRS agents who were increased in a recent bill that President Biden signed last year. This is a falsity that they’ve continued to lie about. Those 87,000 IRS agents will not be armed (as they’ve claimed) and they will not be coming to your house, but increasing the assistance the IRS gives to its clients every day. I’ve been on the phone with them previously and have always felt helped. They’re also supposed to help reduce the backlog to avoid situations like we experienced in 2021 when we filed in May and didn’t receive our refund until the end of December.

This National sales tax will be on goods AND services, where the current state formula is on primarily good with only a few services paying sales tax. This tax on services would include babysitters, which is explained in the video. This will also be on top of the state and local taxes paid on goods currently.

One of the things they claim is that 40% of households pay no form of income tax, and for those family’s eligible, there will be a monthly rebate based on a formula in relation to the poverty line and family size, but you would still have to pay it upfront at the time of purchase. If you’re eligible for the rebate, that is.

This creates an enormous burden on the poor and middle-class working families. The rich will always find ways to get around this tax, simply by leaving the country to do their shopping. Plus the fact that they can afford the increased pay out.

If it wasn’t obvious yet, I am definitely against this bill, and will be contacting my Congressman’s office to let him know he has my support to vote NO when this comes to the floor.

*Republicans claim that it isn’t a 30% increase, that it’s a 23% increase. That is because of how they are doing the math: $30 out of $100 is 23%. The video does an excellent job of explaining this.

Don’t Buy the Sales Tax (from the Brookings Institute)

TaxVox: Federal Budget and Economy

SNOPES: Is GOP Freedom Caucus Pushing for a 30% Sales Tax in US? [SPOILER ALERT: YES]

Video from Brian Kim of Clear Value Tax:

Adding Politics Girl’s Take here:

Roe v. Wade Today

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that gave women the right to an abortion. More specifically, and importantly, they found the right to an abortion under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment that we all have a fundamental “right to privacy”. Any laws that prohibited an abortion would be subject to strict scrutiny by the Courts.

Much has been made of the plaintiff, Roe expressing her regrets for her abortion. She had gone back and forth on this issue, and honestly I feel that she was taken advantage of by both sides. She was paid by the right to recant her wish for an abortion, and stated in the 2020 documentary, AKA Jane Roe that she hadn’t ever supported the antiabortion movement.

Roe’s holding was reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in 1992 while at the same time overruling the trimester framework established in the Roe decision and moved from “strict scrutiny” to “undue burden”.

In 2022, the Supreme Court overruled Roe with their ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the right to an abortion was not “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history or tradition.”

This is false, and it is simply Justice Alito (and his cohorts) grasping at straws and making law whole cloth from their beliefs which violate the Constitution as well as basic human rights of women to their own bodily autonomy. In the ruling, they also included questioning rights now recognized as to contraception, interracial marriage, and marriage equality (same-sex marriage). Some on the right are suggesting we take another look at those rights already enshrined in law (and common sense, to be quite honest).

Abortions have been happening for as long as there’s been pregnancy. The real value of legal abortion is safety. When abortions are illegal, women are less safe. In addition, many, if not all of the proponents of eliminating legal abortion have no idea how pregnancy and birth works. They throw out terms that they don’t understand, pass laws, and criminalize medical care for women under the guise of stopping abortion.

Since Dobbs, women have died from miscarriages that weren’t treated; ectopic pregnancies that were left to fester. Women have lost the ability to have more children because of doctors waiting for the last minute to help women, afraid that anything they do to save the woman will create a liability for themselves and their facilities.

The right set up pregnancy centers who lie to women and scare them and do not give them all of their options as far as family planning and abortion. If their way is the right way, why do they need to lie?

This is horrifying, and it needs to end.

Women need to be able to make informed decisions on their family planning, their pregnancies, their terminating or continuing of pregnancies. My daughter has less rights than her grandmother had.

In addition to our activism and raising our voices, we need to contact our Congresspeople and especially Leader Jeffries, and have them bring a bill to the floor and pass it to make the Supreme Court more modern. The last time the Supreme Court was changed with respect to number of justices was with the Judiciary Act of 1869 during the Grant Administration. We currently have nine justices and thirteen circuit courts. We should have 13 justices to correspond to the circuits. For those saying that this is packing the Court, it is unpacking the Court that Mitch McConnell gave us by blocking President Obama’s duly chosen nominee in 2019 and then reversing his “logic” and pushing through Amy Coney Barrett while we were in the middle of an election. Literally while voting was happening.

We can’t stop speaking out.

The only way we can solve this disparity and reproductive health crisis is by reinstating Roe, expanding it, and codifying it into law.

Election Connection – Speaker’s Edition

House Clerk, Cheryl Johnson and CSPAN earned their accolades this week. They are both in thankless jobs until something like this happens and they become household names.

Finally, on the fifteenth round of voting, six thousand, five hundred ten names called over three days, Rep. Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House by Republicans. All Democrats (212), in every round, voted for NY’s Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. In my opinion, he would have made an excellent Speaker, and one day, he will.

I’d like you to watch a portion of his first speech as Minority Leader. He thanked Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi for her service and her job as the first woman Speaker of the House. She really is remarkable. She has stepped down from leadership for the next generation, but she remains in the House of Representatives as the Congresswoman from her California district.

This video of Rep. Jeffries is just superb, and I look forward to hearing from him more and more. This is only a small part (A-Z), but it’s also worth finding the full 15 minutes of his speech.

Election Connection – Year End Wrap

What a Year from Vote Save America

Let’s look at the list of the races we were following here for the 2022 Election, and see how we fared:

Senate Races
AZ – Mark Kelly
CO – Michael Bennet
CT – Richard Blumenthal
~~FL – Val Demmings~~
GA – Rev. Raphael Warnock
HI – Brian Schatz
NH – Maggie Hassan
NV – Catherine Cortez-Masto
NY – Chuck Schumer
~~OH – Tim Ryan~~
PA – John Fetterman
WA – Patty Murray
~~WI – Mandela Barnes~~
~~Also, keep an eye on Iowa and Kentucky~~

House of Representatives
AK – Mary Peltola
MI – Elissa Slotkin
~~NY – Matt Castelli~~
~~NY – Sean Maloney~~
VA – Abigail Spanberger

Governors
CA – Gavin Newsom
CO – Jared Polis
~~FL – Charlie Crist~~
~~GA – Stacey Abrams~~
MI – Gretchen Whitmer
NY – Kathy Hochul
PA – Josh Shapiro
~~TX – Beto O’Rourke~~

Mayor
Los Angeles – Karen Bass

Looks like the majority of them won their races. Beto and Tim Ryan were close. We need to keep pushing in Ohio and Texas. In that endeavor, follow Olivia Julianna on Twitter (while there’s still a twitter). She is a Gen Z political activist, doesn’t back down, and speaks her mind.

Have we learned anything from the last several years?

Blessed are the Peacemakers

I was out this weekend for some breakfast and holiday shopping, and I saw a man wearing a dark hoodie with an American flag on it, although it was black and white with a blue stripe for the middle stripe. I recognize this as a call out in support of law enforcement. I don’t disagree with supporting law enforcement when it’s called for, however there is a lot to be done to improve their strategies, especially when it comes to working with people of color and the mentally ill and people not necessarily mentally ill but in crisis in the moment they meet up with LEOs.

I am certainly not going to solve this problem in one blog post.

On the back of this hoodie, above and below the black, white, and blue flag was the phrase:

Blessed are the peacemakers,

For they will be called the children of G-d.
Matthew 5:9

I was drawn to it in a negative way. It bothered me. It bothered me enough to start writing about it here. Part of that is some of the study I’ve been doing this Advent season through readings and a couple of faith enrichment and scripture classes throughout the month of December.

I recognized that phrase as from Scripture, although my initial thoughts were incorrect in assigning it to Isaiah (his readings are quite prominent during Advent) rather than where it actually comes from: Matthew 5:9; the Beatitudes.

The entirety of the Beatitudes is contained in Matthew 5:3-11

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

I won’t relay them here. You can google or open any Bible and read all of them. There is also an addition that Pope Francis expressed on an Ecumenical trip to Sweden in 2016 that can be read here.

Reading through this part of Chapter 5 of Matthew and getting to verse 9, it is clear to me that this Scripture is entirely misinterpreted by the people who created (and wear) that hoodie. The implication that law enforcement and military are the peacemakers is inconsistent and contradictory.

I also found it ironic that I saw this on the hoodie during Advent when we are reading the Book of Isaiah who prophesizes an unlikely peace among foes: the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, calf and lion, cow and bear, children and snakes (reversing Adam and Eve’s punishment in the Garden of Eden). (Isaiah 11:6-8)

When I see these types of scriptures on hoodies that promote law enforcement and military soldiers as peacemakers it just fills me with exasperation and even a touch of anger. The misinterpretation that soldiers are peacemakers and not warriors first is simply wishful thinking. This isn’t to say that all soldiers are bad; I don’t believe that, and I understand the need for a military. I understand that when the UN sends its soldiers they are called peacekeepers, and I get that too. Peace is the goal. The UN tries to be neutral despite arguments of its futility and the presence of its flaws. I think that neutral isn’t the objective though as much as fairness and the desired overall good of society.

Are the peacemakers the ones with guns? Or are they the ones with food? With books? With pens and clothes and shelter? The pen is mightier than the sword is it not? That aphorism (as wella s many others) credited to author Edward Bulwer-Lytton has been known similarly as far back as before Biblical sources including an Assyrian sage in 7^th century BCE and Greek playwright Euripides using different words in place of pen: word, tongue. Talmudic and Islamic sources also reference words, both oral and written, a means of knowledge and peace as being stronger than the strength of the sword, a means of war. The implication being that with the pen/word being mightier, peace is also mightier than war.

It’s important that we call out these misuses of words and reclaim our Scriptures that have been corrupted and used in opposition to what they actually say.

War is sometimes necessary, but it shouldn’t be considered inevitable, nor should it be considered the path to the kingdom of heaven and to the discipleship of G-d.

Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are those who mourn; blessed are the meek; blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; the merciful; the pure in heart; those who are persecuted; those who are reviled and persecuted falsely on the account of Jesus.

And blessed are the peacemakers; those who make peace. They don’t force something they call peace on others; they create a lasting peace, an eternal peace.

Those are the peacemakers; they are the children of G-d.

Election Connection

Why This Election is Like No Other

If you’ve watched this space for any length of time, you have seen the call to vote in this once in a lifetime, critical election several times since 2016. It is hard to believe that all of these elections are the most important one in your life. I am sad to say that they are.

For many people, more than you may realize, the outcome of this election is important not only to their well-being, but to their very lives.

Dramatic, I know.

But tell that to kids who are being taught BOTH SIDES of the Holocaust.
Tell that to kids trying to read The Diary of Anne Frank in Oklahoma, but being told it’s banned due to its being a “graphic” novel. The folks doing the banning think it’s graphic, as in adult when it’s actually really a bound comic book.
Tell that to transgender youth who see no way apart from suicide.
Tell that to women who have and will die IN HOSPITALS (with doctors beside them) from treatable emergencies because of new anti-abortion/anti-women laws.
Tell that to kids and adults with rheumatoid arthritis who can’t get their medication because regardless of their future plans, they are of child-bearing age and can’t get their regular medicine because it MIGHT cause a miscarriage.
Tell that to married couples who can’t get birth control because a pharmacist doesn’t agree with contraception. This has already happened recently.
And all of this is in addition to the Insurrection on January 6th that this country as yet to come to grips with. Many of the insurrectionists are still SERVING in Congress.

Video was released just last week of Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi on the phone with then-Vice President Pence discussing what was going on in the Capitol. She was telling him to be safe while the President of the United States was encouraging a mob to “find” him. In the room witnessing this were GOP (Republican) leadership who subsequently went out and denounced her for not doing enough. I’m speaking specifically of Rep. Steve Scalise of LA and others. He knew she was taking care of business and lied, trying to blame her for not calling the National Guard, which she is legally not authorized to do.

That is the real problem with today’s elected Republicans. They lie. They’ve lied about things they’ve witnessed, things we’ve seen on video, things we know to be true. If this is their demeanor when we see the lies, what are they saying about things we don’t know first hand?

Have you watched the debate between Georgia Senator, Rev. Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker? It is no exaggeration to say that Walker is barely intelligible. His past and his lies about his past are disqualifying. And in polls, they’re tied.

The hit-job they’re doing on John Fetterman against carpetbagger, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania is reprehensible. Yes, Fetterman had a stroke and is in recovery, but anyone can see that his cognitive function (and physical for that matter) is equal to what it was before. They refer to his accommodation of using closed captions during interviews as if they don’t use teleprompters or that perhaps they feel the deaf and hard of hearing should be excluded from running from office.

The Supreme Court is outdated, and that’s the least of its problems. It would not be hyperbole to say that two of the nine justices are sitting in stolen seats. Three of those Justices were appointed by a man who tried to and fortunately failed to stage a coup and overthrow the government. This has been painfully shown over and over again through witness testimony under oath to Congress. Most of those witnesses are lifelong Republicans.

I’m begging you: Vote Democratic across the board, from dog catcher to US Senator. We need to hold the House and expand the Senate, not to mention Governors and local legislatures.

We need to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which would protect elections from voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the continuing sabotage of insurrectionists.
The bipartisan January 6th committee showed us how things could be if honest people work together.

Visit Vote Save America and see what you can do in your region to help save America. Everything begins with voting and free and fair elections.

Other sites to visit and support include:
Fair Fight
Democracy Docket
ACLU
When We All Vote
Vote dot Org

We have 20 days to get it done. Let’s get it done!

Election Connection – Opinion

Vote ALL Republicans out! All of them! From Dog Catcher to US Senate. Let conservatives start their own legitimate party and earn America’s trust (if they can ever get it back). We need to purge these do-nothing, pro-death politicians.

They claim the pro-life mantle, but they are pro-death, especially women and children. If you’re a fetus, they want you born. Once you’re born, you’re on your own. Schools can’t protect you. Grocery clerks can’t protect you Police can’t protect you. And Republican politicians certainly can’t AND WON’T protect you.

Griffins and Ginger Snaps

-I write, and I have a blog because of course I do-

opinion