Apparently now our government is tracking journalists and refugee advocates with a secret database run by the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic), which of course doesn't have the legal authority to do such things. A Customs and Border Protection spokeshack says they're targeting these folks because of alleged violence at the border in November, and how do you know that's bullshit? Because that wasn't what they told NBC7 a mere five days earlier. Tha Bush Mobb would have given us the bullshit explanation right away, which is yet another reason they're worse than this clown car of an Administration.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy offers "Fairness Matters," a chart book showing who pays state and local taxes these days. Long story short: lower-income working families pay a bigger share of their income in state and local taxes than the rich do, and states that call themselves "low-tax" because they don't have an income tax tend to fill revenue shortfalls with the kind of regressive taxes and fees that hit working families a lot harder. Some rich folks think that's the way it should be, because they think they're better than you. But they don't get all the say in America.
Here's some good news: big banking corporation JP Morgan Chase has announced it will no longer underwrite bonds and loans for private prison corporations. If you have agitated for this very thing, go reward yourself a Buffalo chicken cheese steak, or what you will. (Also, too, you think this might have had something to do with Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's call for oversight hearings on the relationship between banksters and private prison corporations? Of course it did, and there's another lesson in the importance of pushing to get people in office who'll do good, rather than merely settle for people who won't literally burn down your house.)
Kenawha County (WV) judge rules that West Virginia's "right to work" law actually violates workers' First Amendment rights to free association. It's similar to the Dane County (WI) judge's decision against Wisconsin's "right to work" law in 2016, which the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court reversed because of course they did -- and, lo and behold, the Republican-dominated West Virginia state legislature is at this moment trying to impeach every member of the Democratic-leaning state Supreme Court. It's like they can't win unless they set everything on fire. Why do we, as civilized people, tolerate such insanity?
Finally, when you hear Sen. McConnell (E-KY) suggest that the now-passed-in-the-House For the People Act is a "radical" and "socialist" bill, you are reminded that all they can do now is call what they don't like "radical" and "socialist." And when Mob Boss Mitch has to call it that -- rather than farm out the remarks to some hungry youngster like, say, Tom Cotton -- that means the forces of evil are even more desperate. I'd call that good news, except that we all know what desperate people are like -- they're the kind of people who throw nukes at Venezuela and Iran to keep power.