Missouri is now in the news for its blatantly racist Republican-controlled state legislature. I see this legislature as representative of the Republican Party nationally at state level scale. The Republican legislators threw out the two young Black men only to have them reappointed by the communities that had elected them in the first place. But that is just a piece of what the Republican legislators are up to. A handful of Republican voters complained about books in the public libraries that offended them, and the response of the Republicans was to cut all funding for the state's public libraries as described in this report. And this is going on in Red states all over the country. In Florida, a Republican voter objected to a book about Anne Frank and it was removed. Do you remember how important your local public library was to you when you were young? I certainly do.
Missouri library
ST. LOUIS — Despite a multi-billion-dollar surplus in the budget, Missouri House Republicans recently passed a plan to defund local libraries in an apparent act of spite against librarians who spoke out against censorship.
The Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association, together with the ACLU, sued to block a recent state law that threatens to jail librarians if kids find “explicit sexual material” on their shelves.
When Missouri passed a new law last year outlawing “explicit sexual material” in school libraries, books like ‘Batman: White Knight’ were removed from school library shelves in Rockwood, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ was removed in Webster Groves, ‘The Walking Dead’ in Lindbergh, and in Kirkwood, the graphic novel depiction of George Orwell’s ‘1984.’
Rep. Cody Smith (R-Carthage), the top budget negotiator for House Republicans, reportedly said libraries shouldn’t be able to use tax dollars to sue and oppose censorship. However, libraries and their lawyers at the ACLU said they weren’t using public funds for this legal battle.
Free speech and human rights groups described the proposed budget cuts as vengeful political payback against libraries that […]
Republican state lawmakers in Missouri have threatened to defund all of the state’s public libraries in a drastic budget proposal that has magnified the accelerating state-level campaigns against libraries over books and materials with LGBT+ people and themes.
The state’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted on a state budget proposal last week that sets the library’s budget at zero, eliminating millions of dollars for the state’s libraries.
Lawmakers in Missouri’s state Senate, however, plan to put $4.5m back into the budget proposal that was stripped out of the House version of the spending plan.
Missouri’s legislative debate over library funding follows a recently enacted state law that broadly bans educators from “providing sexually explicit material” to students, punishable by up to a $2,000 fine or a year in jail.
That language has had a chilling effect in schools and libraries across the state, where officials preemptively removed titles over fears that right-wing activists would mount money-draining legal challenges against them, according to civil rights advocacy group PEN America. Between August and November, state authorities banned more than 300 books in at least 11 school districts, the group found.
In February, the ACLU of Missouri, the Missouri Association […]
You don't have any problem with someone marrying their 12-year-old daughter off to some man, because he likes little girls, do you? Seems a normal thing to do, right? I read this report about Missouri Republican state senator Mike Moon and thought it had to be some kind of satire. But no, this really is where Missouri state Senator Mike Moon is mentally. So my question is, Who would vote for such a person?
MAGAt Republican Missouri State Senator Mike Moon Credit: Missouri state government
Missouri State Sen. Mike Moon (R) this week defended the rights of parents to marry off children as young as 12 years old.
The Springfield News-Leader reports that Moon made the remarks during a contentious debate over banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors in which Democratic State Rep. Peter Meredith accused him of hypocrisy for supporting the bill despite positioning himself as a champion of parents’ rights.
“I’ve heard you talk about parents’ rights to raise their kids how they want,” argued Meredith. “In fact, I just double-checked, you voted no on making it illegal for kids to be married to adults at the age of 12 if their parents consented to it!”
Meredith went on to accuse Moon of making it legal for a 12-year-old to be “raped by an adult” as long as their parents agreed to let it occur, which prompted an angry response from Moon.
“Do you know any kids who have been married at age 12?” he asked Meredith. “I do. […]
Here is some good news, and from a Fox television station. While Republican-controlled Red states like Texas and Florida are passing legislation authorizing anyone to carry a concealed weapon like an AR-15 with no training, and no license, Democrat-controlled states are going in the exact opposite direction. As an example: both houses of the Washington State legislature have voted to ban assault weapons altogether, require background checks, weapons training, and the storage of weapons in secure approved storage. Governor Jay Inslee has announced he will sign the bill as soon as it is sent to his desk. Inslee also authorized the purchase of three years of the abortion drug, which the state will make available to women, while next door Idaho has passed a law to block any person from helping a minor to go to another state to get an abortion. Inslee has openly invited women from Idaho to come to Washington. I see all of this as a furtherance of The Great Schism Trend. Living in a Red state is going to become increasingly unattractive.
Washington State SenateCredit: Northwest News Network
OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON – The Washington state Senate on Saturday approved an assault-weapons ban, a measure long sought by gun-control advocates.
HB1240 passed the Senate in a 27-21 vote, with one excused. The measure will go back to the House since it was amended by the Senate before it is sent to Gov. Jay Inslee.
If the bill is signed into law, Washington would join nine other states that have enacted laws generally banning the sale, manufacture and transfer of assault weapons, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Attorney General Bob Ferguson praised the move saying that “The Senate put public safety above the interest of the gun lobby.”
Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee watched the House vote in the chamber last month and called it very important.
“It is something that I’ve believed in since 1994 when I voted to make this federal law,” said Inslee, who served in Congress before becoming governor.
Some more good news. For many years I have been saying that Industrial chemical monoculture is a failing agriculture system, that should be changed to sustainable agriculture because such a transition would have many benefits. It would help communities generally by eliminating the dangerous toxins used in chemical agriculture, and result in great improvement in the health of people who work in farming, as well as the health of the soil in which plants are grown. Slowly it is happening, and here is a report on what is going on.
Credit: Politico
With the rising global population expected to reach nearly 10 billion in the next 30 years — up from about 8 billion today — the world is grappling with an unprecedented challenge: how is it possible to feed everyone, without further devastating a planet reeling from climate change?
Agriculture, while it nourishes the world, does so at an environmental cost: The industry accounts for 11 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to the World Resources Institute. It’s a conundrum that’s on the minds of government officials, researchers and scientists, and business leaders up and down the supply chain, as they commit to making lasting changes.
The Way Forward
To meet those priorities, food producers like JBS USA, one of the nation’s largest, are working with partners in business and academia to transform the ways we use the land and make sustainable agriculture a priority.
JBS USA is the first company in its sector to pledge to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. Because the majority of greenhouse gasses associated with the business come […]
