11 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. WOTD: "Global Warming Fun with Maps"

   Sacrificial New Orleans, and Davis, CA becomes a seaport. 

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2. Vaccine-preventable diseases kill and maim kids.  The only protection against them is a sufficiently vaccinated population.  People who oppose vaccination know this, but they're too wrapped up in medical and ideological fantasies to care.  Vaccination isn't an individual right, it's a societal necessity.

   You don't get to choose which side of the road to drive on, whether you can or can't murder people, or whether someone saying "no" to sex is optional for you to follow.  You don't get to decide that other people's kids die, either.

   People like Jared Polis would rather see kids die than force folks to do something that's both medically and societaly necessary.  Fuck them straight to hell.

   A push to fix Colorado’s lowest-in-the-nation vaccine rates has an unexpected critic: Jared Polis

   The objection in Polis’ mind is similar. The former five-term congressman from Boulder opposed mandatory vaccinations at the federal level, even though he immunized his two children and thinks it’s the best course. And now he objects to efforts to tighten the exemptions in Mullica’s bill.

   “I am concerned about low vaccine rates and how low rates can affect public health,” Polis said in a statement issued by his office. “I think there are strategies we can employ to foster greater vaccination rates, through smart policymaking and greater public awareness, but I worry that a restrictive or top-down approach may actually backfire.”

   The Democrat is making his opposition clear from the start, and the governor’s office initially told the state’s public health agency not to help lawmakers with the legislation, an extraordinary move even for a hands-on governor.

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   1. Seems like a typical tech person mistake. "Surely the problem is just that we have not explained how good and right this is and we can get the 95% of people on board with the idea with a better chart."

      In reality the problem in a society with near absolute freedom of speech there will always be a significant level of dissent. The change from centralized media with high levels of respect for institutions like government and universities over the last 30 years means that without a law mandating compliance people will opt out.

      In a more cynical frame of mind one might suspect he is making the politically easy choice. Until people die in Colorado due to low vaccination rates does not feel urgent that we do something about it. Also, preventing a problem gets very little credit. All sorts of people prevent forest fires and are never celebrated. Only people fighting out of control blazes are hailed as heroes.

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      1. It has nothing to do with being in tech.  It has to do with valuing the individual over society.  Jared's also a libertarian.  It doesn't always show, but this is a sincerely held belief.  That it's also terrible is part of the package we voted for.

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   2. While delivered with Sudafed's trademark blow-it-out-your -ass lack of finesse, this screed is fundamentally accurate.

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3. As long as we're posting links this morning, I picked this up from the Denver Democrats women's FB page. It explains the origins of the Tea Party, voter suppression efforts and so much more about the creeping takeover of the country by the ultra-wealthy elite. It's a bit of a long read, but worth the time.

   https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america

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   1. Thank Cook — that is a startling, revelatory read.

      MacLean describes how the economist developed a grand project to train operatives to staff institutions funded by like-minded tycoons, most significantly Charles Koch, who became interested in his work in the ‘70s and sought the economist’s input in promoting “Austrian economics” in the U.S. and in advising the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

      Koch, whose mission was to save capitalists like himself from democracy, found the ultimate theoretical tool in the work of the southern economist. The historian writes that Koch preferred Buchanan to Milton Friedman and his “Chicago boys” because, she says, quoting a libertarian insider, [Friedman] wanted “to make government work more efficiently when the true libertarian should be tearing it out at the root.”

      With Koch’s money and enthusiasm, Buchanan’s academic school evolved into something much bigger. By the 1990s, Koch realized that Buchanan’s ideas — transmitted through stealth and deliberate deception, as MacLean amply documents — could help take government down through incremental assaults that the media would hardly notice. The tycoon knew that the project was extremely radical, even a “revolution” in governance, but he talked like a conservative to make his plans sound more palatable.

      Also explains how Mitch McConnell is the Koch's "inside man" dismembering our democracy from within.

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4. Third reading (final passage vote) in the House today:

   SB19-042 National Popular Vote
   Aye: 34 No: 29 Other: 1

   The bill will now go to Polis, who has indicated he will sign it.

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5. Score one for defeating GOP voter fraud:

   N.C. elections board orders new race in disputed House district

   The disputed 9th Congressional District will have a new election this year after testimony detailed a fraud scheme during the 2018 midterms.

   The board’s vote came an hour after Harris called for a new election and then declined to finish his own testimony, citing health reasons.

   Yet on Thursday, Harris reversed weeks of GOP resistance to a new North Carolina race, hours after state officials said that Harris’ campaign attorney withheld documents relevant to the investigation.

   Harris may have an allergic reaction to the inside of a jail cell.

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   1. Score one for defeating GOP voter election fraud

       

      Better.

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6. Double whammy next week?

   Michael Cohen Agrees to Testify Next Week, Setting Stage for a High-Stakes Hearing

   The Mueller Report Is Coming. Here’s What to Expect.

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