Angry Mobs At Town Halls

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Feb 232017
 

Where were these people when the Democrats scuttled socialized healthcare and gave us the capitalist abomination that is the ACA?

I think they were busy calling me a communist for suggesting that for-profit enterprise was intrinsically incompatible with a universally required service like “preventing people from dying on the streets.” But economic eugenics is ok — those poor undesirables really should have had a better lineage if they wanted healthcare after all — until the petit-privileged classes find out they too get to die on the streets as inequality rises.

And yet they still fight for their privileged capitalist healthcare (we just want the leeches to die, not proper middle class wage slaves, get it?) instead of fighting for something that would be unassailable when the forces of regression rise to attack again.

155 Lines

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Feb 032017
 

The CCFL backlight on my six year old monitor started having problems cold starting this week and I need my monitor to live so a new one was ordered. This was surprisingly cheap, QHD, and the included stand rotates which is neat for pdfs and viewing a ton of code at once (actual readable size here, could knock it down one point of I got around to getting new glasses). A few hours later I realized I could also play pinball on it… how did I live before?

code
catalogs
pinball

Open Letter to Senator Thom Tillis: Kindly Go Fuck Yourself

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Feb 032017
 

Thom Tillis is a total asshole and should probably go fuck himself. His current views represent a disdain for democracy and education and I hope that he loses re-election and is banished from the public sphere for all of time when his seat comes up.

Here is a letter I wrote to him on the topic of the DeVos nomination after hearing he was on the fence and wanted the input of his constituents. Not that I thought it would do anything — I’ve far too good an education to think something like lobbying your representatives will result in representation, unless that lobbying comes with cash money or a promise of a lavish consulting gig later.

Greetings,

I recently read in the Charlotte Observer that you were seeking the input of North Carolina citizens in order to make your decision on the confirmation of DeVos for Secretary of Education. Since you asked — here’s my two cents:

Our public education system has been under attack by regressive anti-intellectual forces for decades, and her appointment represents their ultimate victory in their quest to build a compliant, uneducated populace. It would be a great tragedy to see our public education system completely dismantled for a system of second-rate charter schools (as can be seen from the many scandals with poor performance, grade inflation, and outright noncompliance with state education standards here in North Carolina), wherein only the privileged few may receive a good education while the rest languish in ignorance and the resulting lack of economic and social opportunity. It could very well result in the dissolution of the already tenuous social fabric itself in ten or twenty years time when the children of today take the helm of society. Now is the time to rebuild our failing system, not to encourage it to completely fail.

As representative democracy is based upon an informed and educated electorate, this would represent a great tragedy and an acceleration of our descent into status as a failed democracy. I exhort you to vote against her confirmation.

Georgia Ballot Access Laws (Mostly) Overturned

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Feb 022017
 

One thing that bothers me about Democrats and their self-praise in regards to voting rights is that they have done more than the Republicans to suppress ballot access by third parties. Not that the Republicans haven’t done their fair share (it benefits both ol’ boys after all). There’s some good news on that front today: The 11th Circuit of Appeals upheld that Georgia’s Egregious and Unconstitutional Ballot Access Laws Are Indeed Unconstitutional:

The one-sentence ruling, by a unanimous three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, adopted the “well-reasoned opinion” issued last March by U.S. District Judge Richard Story in Atlanta. Story had significantly lowered the number of signatures required for third-party candidates to petition to get on Georgia’s presidential ballot — from tens of thousands [approximately 51k] to 7,500.

The ruling has a nice side-effect in that it lifts restrictions in Florida as well that curiously enough went unenforced from 2011 until August of 2016, just in time to keep “…Gloria La Riva, Evan McMullin, and Thomas Hoefling off the Florida ballot, with no warning.”

Georgia appears to be planning an appeal; my hope is that the Supreme Court will take up the case and strike down absurd ballot access restrictions across the country so that we can have freer elections in 2018. I mean, who cares if you can vote, if you have no options at the ballot box?