Kentucky's state legislature aims to take up SB 211, which would, dig this, hand out a jail sentence of up to three months for anyone who "accosts, insults, taunts, or challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words," or indulges in "gestures or other physical contact that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person." Gosh, you'd never know there were assault laws on the books! Also, what a bunch of snowflakes, the people who wrote this bill. They are Sen. Danny Carroll (R-2), whom you may reach at 502.564.8100, ext. 712, and Sen. Michael J. Nemes (R-38), whom you may reach at the same phone number, ext. 662. For a retired police officer, Sen. Carroll sure seems to have quite a thin skin -- apparently he can't spell "your" correctly when under pressure. Maybe he learned that at Donald Trump's knee! Anyway, I'm sick and tired of people who try to turn all free speech they don't like into "violence" and everyone who protests racism into a criminal. I'm so old-fashioned I think we should only treat protestors as criminals if they, you know, do something criminal. Like try to stage a coup to nullify the results of the 2020 election! And Danny Carroll sounds like the kind of guy who'd make excuses for those folks.
Meanwhile, Public Citizen helps you tell your Senators to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, whenever that gets introduced again. Yesterday was the 56th anniversary of the day Mr. Lewis nearly got himself beaten to death leading civil rights marchers across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama; not too long thereafter, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, which our Supreme Court blew a hole in with its Shelby County v. Holder ruling, which asserted, essentially, that the Voting Rights Act discriminated against certain Southern states by pre-clearing voting law changes from those states. The Voting Rights Advancement Act named for Mr. Lewis would address that assertion by letting our Justice Department pre-clear voting law changes from any state or locality that has demonstrated a record of suppressing votes. And I've listed most of the good things about the For the People Act many times, but the bill would also mandate paper ballots and institute such conditions on "interstate crosscheck"-type systems -- i.e., actually making states match full names and Social Security numbers -- that no enterprising vote suppressor will bother with them. So give your Congressfolk what-for, and don't brook any stupidity.
In other news, Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1459/S. 510, the Ultra-millionaire Tax Act. The bill would impose what's commonly knowns as a "wealth tax" by imposing a 2% annual tax on net wealth over $50 million, and that rate would go up to 3% on wealth over $1 billion. (Folks with, say, $1.5 billion in net worth would pay 2% on net worth between $50 million and $1 billion and 3% on that $500 million of wealth over $1 billion. Too many politicians and "liberal" media members pretend not to understand how tax brackets work, which is why I feel compelled to explain it all the time.) The wealth tax could raise as much as $300 billion annually, which in the context of a $4 trillion annual budget is not exactly chump change. And the bill would also invest $100 billion to hire and train IRS workers -- who, as you know, tend to go after little tax avoiders rather than big ones because they don't have the resources to go after the big ones! -- and impose a 40% "exit tax" on rich folks who renounce their citizenship so they can avoid paying taxes here. These would all be good works, but our Congressfolk won't do them, unless we make it impossible for them not to do them. Like civilized people -- not like Trumpholes who think violence is OK if it feels right.
Finally, People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to pass the H.R. 5, the Equality Act, which our House passed last week. Unlike the COVID relief bill and the For the People Act, the Equality Act actually got three Republican votes! Why, it's a veritable explosion of bipartisanship! Of course, when Republicans refuse to do anything but stoke rage and give corporate welfare to their big donors, no "bipartisanship" is possible, a fact I presume makes Joe Biden sadder than it does me. In any case, don't believe the rubbish about the bill "attacking religious freedoms," because you do not have a "religious" freedom to fire someone because they're gay, or deny a transgender person a loan. Even Justice Gorsuch said the Civil Rights Act prohibits workplace discrimination of gay and transgender folks because, hey, discriminating against them is obviously discriminating against them "on the basis of sex"! So, yeah, don't believe that, and also don't believe the rubbish that passing the Equality Act would "injure women's sports." Anyone who thinks a boy would change into a girl just to get an athletic advantage doesn't know the first thing about boys. Or life.