It sure seems that way. Minnesota has been thriving under Democratic leadership for the last several years, and we had a bit of moderate progressive legislation passed…but the Republicans got a majority in the last election, and are bound and determined to eradicate all the successes of the past. It’s as if they just don’t like people.
Progressive policies enacted in Minnesota’s largest cities in recent years are at risk from Republicans who control the state Legislature as they seek to block, undo or change local ordinances on everything from sick leave and the minimum wage to plastic bags and bike lanes.
Sick leave? Minimum wage? Bike lanes? They don’t like bike lanes?!?! They don’t have any kind of positive intent or agenda, so they’re just going to tear down what previous legislators accomplished. Their justification is also as racist as fuck.
“Clearly the cultural values of Minneapolis are drastically out of alignment with greater Minnesota, so there’s going to be conflicts,” said Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, author of a bill that would block cities from passing their own labor rules.
Key words there: “greater Minnesota” is a phrase that refers to all of the state except for Minneapolis/St Paul. To put it in words more familiar to out-of-staters, he wants to block any support for the cultural values of those urban people, hint hint, nudge nudge.
He’s wrong, of course. There are a lot of us out here in “greater Minnesota” who have progressive values, and find these damned dumb regressive yokels to be an embarrassment.
We’ve got to work to kick these slugs out of office in the next election.
Try the Watergate manta “Follow the money!”?
Are all Republicans just hateful scoundrels who like to hurt people?
Look’s like we’ve found an exception to Betteridge’s law of headlines!
This particular douchebag is not just a rethuglican, but the state chair for ALEC. He has been involved with every piece of shit legislation put forward in the last 90 days.
Of course they like people! They like people so much they wanted to make corporations people.
No they don’t want to hurt people. No, instead, they are the Party Of Narcissism, where everything must be done to benefit themselves and no others. If others get hurt, no big deal; as long as Rethugs benefit.
Balance of scales, donchano. As in Cost/Benefit, as long as GOP benefit more than it cost Others, WIN!
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my brain hertz.
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This is all in full conformance with The Gospel According to Ayn Rand.
I live in one of those rare areas of the US where the split between GOP and Democratic affiliation is relatively close. Which means that I find myself, way too often, conversing with right-wing religious authoritarian alt-fact neo-fascist racist bigots. And over the past few years (well, it only really hit me in the last six months) I have noticed that modern post-conservatism seems to be composed almost totally of “If the commie Democrat likes it we must get rid of it!” The modern post-conservative movement is reactionary nihilism — an aversion to all ideas that liberals/progressives/non-conservatives!
And the sad part is, the voters who have had a big glass of the Tang are going to be hurt by this reactionary nihilism. Somehow, the GOP has managed to convince so many voters that, as long as it hurts minorities/women/LGBT individuals, it doesn’t matter if it hurts them.
Not all republicans! Some are craven partisans and shameless opportunists. Of course the latter are “no true republicans.”
Americans would know better, but from what I’ve read Susan Collins seems fairly decent.
Especially #5-slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) and #7-Ogvorbis: A bear of very little brains, your are absolutely correct. Years ago I saw a description of Republicans that only seems to be becoming more true with time — “They don’t care if the whole world burns to the ground, as long as they’re in charge of the ashes”.
Republicans fit the descriptions of true psychopaths rather than sociopaths. If they were sociopaths, they wouldn’t be able to function well enough to hide in society — they’d probably just be in jail. They simply are overwhelmingly short-term selfish and lack all other forms of conscience. It’s personally humiliating for me to have grown up in the same country. /Rant
Y’know…for a bunch of small government conservatives they really seem to hate the idea of local self-determination in governance. They kvetch about the Federal government and then turn around and do the exact shit they purport to hate to local governments.
It’s almost like their small government rhetoric is cover for deregulation to benefit monied interests rather than any true ideal about liberty.
The bike lanes thing is because modern American regressives have become convinced that bike and pedestrian infrastructure are the thin edge of the wedge in the war against cars. Allowing bike lanes, walkable infrastructure, and traffic-calming measures will, in the regressives’ worldview, somehow ultimately lead to the banning of motor vehicles. Because, as we all know, if we don’t cater exclusively to the dominant *whatever*, it’s the same as completely destroying it.
Bike lanes are evil socialist Agenda 21 communist UN-lead efforts to cram us all into cities and live without cars, doncha know?
The Republicans in charge of our legislature (Nebraska) want to do away with funding for community colleges. Their reasoning? Community colleges are doing such a great job. The governor seems to think that we will continue to do just as great a job without any funding.
Do they even listen to themselves? Or are we the only ones stuck with listening to them?
Texans hate bike lanes. I’ve seen rants by some local Texans who claim that the only people on bikes must not have a license to drive because they are either “illegal” or they have committed a crime. This makes the poor biker a target for being run off the road or worse. My husband regularly rode his bike when we lived in California. Now that we’re back in Texas, he feels that he can’t safely ride his bike.
In Abingdon, Virginia the local township passed an ordinance to allow people to have rock quarries on their private property. Then, in the SAME SESSION, they passed another ordinance to limit the size of any solar panel installation on private property because “they cause too much dust and noise.” True story.
They also said that they liked the quarries because they are pro-small business. I know about this because I have a relative who works for a small solar business that is now stymied by the other ordinance. Wonder what the real reason for the solar ban might be?
So let me guess: they’re getting rid of sick leave, the minimum wage, and bike lanes, and they’re instituting a Soak-The-Poor Greenwashing Plastic Bag Non-Actual-Ban?
Depends on a person’s definition of people. US Republicans may have their own.
Yeah, the bike lane thing so typical. It has nothing to do with political economy, and everything to do with Jackbooted-Lockstep-Enforced-Fox-Tribalism. The same reason Libertarians go beserk when they see a Prius: “how dare anyone have the liberty to drive an electric car that costs them less to operate than my Hummer!” Or the Texas dudes who remove their exhaust controls and blow black clouds out of their F-150s, just to piss off liberals. In Boston, the conservative Irish and Italian enclaves refuse to recycle — it’s a Jew thing, they believe. I have several conservative friends who believed in Big Bang Cosmology and Plate Tectonics and Evolution 20 years ago, they’re engineers with science degrees, but now, they’re all merely THEORIES. The only possible reason Priuses and recycling and bike lanes bother you (because nobody is forcing you to use ANY of them) is because they have some vague whiff of being better for the environment. And we can’t have that, because, um, we might find ourselves in agreement with liberals. Heaven for-fucking-fend.
Pat Garafalo drives a Tesla. I am more bothered by his claim that the values of Minneapolis are somehow different than people who live outstate, and his hate for innocous things that mostly white urban people use every day, like bike lanes. Minneapolis has lots of people who commute daily by bike and dedicated bike lanes, because proximity between work and home is a CLEAR advantage to living in the city.
I live about 200km north of PZ. Well, actually, I live a fair bit south-east of him, but the closest border is about due north.
Where the blases do you get these idiots? We have some slightly weird conservatives but nothing like these.