Gaythia Weis @Gaythia@qoto.org

I get the argument that this is politically disastrous for the Tennessee GOP: A pyrrhic victory at best, elevating Democratic politicians to national stardom. But I find little solace in that. This is so dangerous - the Republican Party fully in the hands of anti-democratic extremists.

Why did inequalities of income and wealth begin to widen so dramatically in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and continue widening since? We'll start to explore that very question in Class 1 of my Wealth and Poverty course, now available to the public. https://tinyurl.com/4kwcjfh4

Exxon in the classroom: how big oil money influences US universities https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/27/fossil-fuel-firms-us-universities-colonize-academia

Must watch 👇🏼 ✊🏼

Rep. Justin Jones' full speech:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5065426/user-clip-rep-justin-jones-speech

#Tennessee #GunProtest #politics #fascism #racism

On today's expulsion of the two Black representatives, but not the white rep, Elie Mystal summed it up pretty darn well: "Tennessee has now given the entire country an object lesson in critical race theory better than any AP history course ever could have. Everybody sees it now. Everybody knows it now. Everybody gets exactly what is going on."
#Racism #SystemicRacism #WhiteSupremacyInAction

Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, was directly involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Just thought I should remind everyone of that today.

Outrageous story about New York City dismantling low cost community broadband in order to bring in big cable companies. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/new-york-city-dismantling-low-cost-community-broadband-2

A new study has found that climate scientists, especially those that are women, are facing increasing death threats and attacks online.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5ybw3/climate-scientists-online-abuse
#News #worldnews #climatechange #scientists #SEXISM #Gender

I remember when Aaron Swartz was criminally prosecuted for downloading too many academic journal articles, but, sure, it's totally cool to scrape everyone's personal photographs as part of a commercial effort to market discriminatory surveillance tech to police departments.

https://www.businessinsider.com/clearview-scraped-30-billion-images-facebook-police-facial-recogntion-database-2023-4

⚠️ Via Sherrilyn Ifill:

This is a VERY SERIOUS situation unfolding in #Nashville. Reps who stood w/their constituents who came to state house to demand #guns safety are facing expulsion from the House. Their Member ID badges have already been turned off. This is how #democracy ends.

Olivia Julianna:

...The Tenn. legis is planning to expel lawmakers who stood w gun control advocates today.

They've been stripped from committee assignments & their member ID’s shut off

THIS IS NOT DEMOCRACY.

Yes, I think this risk is all too real. From @DrOinFLA (ht @StillIRise1963):
https://lounge.town/@DrOinFLA/110131101490330820

But it may not be obvious, even •after• it’s happened. We’re not going to see an outright repeal of the 19th amendment. Instead, the GOP would keep women from voting the same way they keep Black people from voting: obliquely, indirectly, probabilistically, by nickels and dimes.
1/2

No one is above the law, even those who can't spell the word "indicted."

U.S. judge rules insurers don’t have to cover many free preventive health services https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/033023_insurers_preventive_care/us-judge-rules-insurers-dont-have-cover-many-free-preventive-health-services/
Health insurance companies may no longer need to cover a wide swath of preventive health care services that were required by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, under a federal judge’s ruling issued Thursday in Texas.
#Tucson #Arizona

Union of Concerned Scientists: The Hidden Costs of #IndustrialAgriculture

Published Jul 11, 2008 Updated Aug 24, 2008

Industrial farming is bad for the health of workers, eaters, and downstream neighbors. Here are some of its costly health impacts:

• #Pesticide toxicity. #Herbicides and insecticides commonly used in agriculture have been associated with both acute poisoning and long-term chronic illness.

• Water #pollution from #fertilizer runoff contaminates downstream drinking water supplies, requiring costly cleanup measures with an annual price tag of nearly $2 billion.

• Loss of mid-sized farms. Once the backbone of US agriculture, medium-sized farms are a dwindling breed, which means that fewer and fewer people make their living as farmers—a trend that has been bad for the economies of rural communities and farm states.

• Harm to neighboring and downstream economies. Industrial agriculture can pack an economic wallop hundreds of miles from its origin—just ask local governments and utility managers who must install expensive equipment to remove fertilizer by-products from public drinking water supplies. Or ask people who make their living from fisheries or tourism on the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, where "dead zones" and toxic #algae blooms caused by farm runoff do damage with an annual price tag in the billions. CAFOs, too, create pollution problems that reduce livability and depress property values in surrounding communities.

#ClimateCrisis #Pollutants #Pesticides #ClimateChange #RedTide #Sargassum #BigAg #Runoff #WaterIsLife #Biodiversity #RedTide #Sargassum #DeadZones

Read more: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/hidden-costs-industrial-agriculture

Republicans will force a 10-year-old to carry her rapist’s baby to term, let a 6-year-old carry a gun, permit a 12-year-old to work an 8-hour shift in a meat packing plant and allow a grown man to marry a 14-year-old with a Judge’s consent, all while telling us that the reason they’re banning drag queens, gender-affirming care and books about Rosa Parks is that they want to "protect our kids."

A Utah parent says the Bible contains porn and should be removed from school libraries. Here’s their full challenge. The parent writes that the book should be considered indecent under Utah’s new book banning law, after seeing the other titles that have been pulled.

“Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide,” the parent wrote in their request, listing topics they found concerning in the religious text. “You’ll no doubt find that the Bible, under Utah Code Ann. § 76-10-1227, has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition.” https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2023/03/22/utah-parent-says-bible-contains/