The children were bickering at the kiddie table last night

There was a Republican debate last night. Who cares?

To my surprise, I do. The Republicans are reduced to a cadre of climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, anti-science loons, opportunistic parasites, and Trumpkins. They are irrelevant. Their only strategy for electoral victory is to be as outrageously flamboyant as possible and get votes by fueling the worst elements of society. It’s fine if the loons want to flush themselves down the toilet — it could be a way to concentrate the bad guys before purging the political process.

Sounds great…except what’s happening on the other side. The Democratic choice is now and forever going to be an apparatchik anointed by the party and advances to confront the shambling horde. This is not a way to run a democracy. It’s how you run a bureaucracy. We need change, deep structural change, but you know the Democrats aren’t going to bring it, while the Republicans are going to bring looney autocracy and theocracy.

Sympathy for the state next door

Oh, Wisconsin. The Republicans want to strangle their university system.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers had proposed a $305 million increase for the UW System over the next two school years.

Republican lawmakers instead cut state funding for campuses by $32 million in an effort to defund diversity offices, which they see as a waste of money.

UW-Madison will bear the brunt, losing $7 million, or 44%, of this year’s $16 million cut. The university enrolls about one-third of UW System students. UW-Madison declined to comment on the cut.

Diversity offices are a waste of money? Only if you think only wealthy and middle class white people deserve a university education…which, I will admit, is true to the Republican ethos. Don’t worry, though, they’re dangling a carrot with the promise of restoring the money. All the university has to do is focus on vocational programs and cut all the diversity and equity programs. This is

UW System has a chance to recoup the $32 million budget cut. Officials must present a plan to the Republican-controlled budget-writing committee on how campuses would spend the money on workforce development.

The Regents will receive a preview of the plan in October, said UW System chief finance officer Sean Nelson. Spending will focus on engineering, data, science and nursing programs.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said the UW System won’t get its money back unless it eliminates diversity and equity programs — an idea UW officials have previously shot down.

“Let’s hope these campuses start by eliminating their unnecessary (diversity, equity and inclusion) positions,” he said in a statement responding to the latest furlough news. “It would be a first step in showing they’re serious about cutting wasteful spending, shoring up their deficits, and working with the Legislature to develop sustainable long-term funding solutions.”

Well, great. My daughter is currently on the job market, and the kinds of jobs she’s looking for are in biomedical computing — so those positions aren’t in immediate danger. But a healthy workplace in academia or industry requires a good balance, and also requires diversity, so this is a long-term threat.

Another long-term problem is that we’ve been starving the universities in Minnesota as well as Wisconsin.

Ten of the 13 universities are projecting deficits this year, too, and many are taking significant action to rein in spending. UW-Oshkosh is laying off 200 employees and mandating furloughs for all other staff. UW-Parkside and UW-Platteville are considering similar measures.

Most campuses are using money from a tuition increase to offset their deficits. The Regents voted earlier this year to increase in-state undergraduate tuition across all 13 universities by about 5%. It was the first time since 2012.

Many campuses are also tapping tuition balances, which is what campuses carry over as their main source of reserves. They’ve been spending down their reserves for more than a decade. UW-Oshkosh, for example, said it expects to deplete its balances by the end of this school year.

“This is not sustainable,” Rothman put it plainly.

Again, this is the Republican agenda. Diversity programs are just the latest crack in the system that they’re hammering on, but make no mistake: the ultimate goal is the destruction of all of higher ed.

All we’ve got are bones

History is ugly. You can dig up things that will horrify you.

Archaeologists in Poland have unearthed the 400-year-old skeleton of a young child buried face-down with an iron padlock on its foot – seemingly to stop its rising from the dead.

The child was buried in the 17th century in the village of Pień near Poland’s northern city of Bydgoszcz, in what seems to have been a graveyard for “abandoned souls” and the poor who could not afford to be buried in a churchyard.

The archaeologists estimate the child was between 5 and 7 years old at death.

OK, dead child who was demonized and buried with a symbol of mistrust. I have to wonder about the pain the family must have felt…although they also found more bodies buried with various vampire accoutrements. Maybe it was a whole blighted family cursed by the religious abuses of their culture?

Thank you, Georgia

The whole carpet began to unravel with a call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensberger, asking him to find 11,780 votes to overturn the presidential election in his state. The carpet was woven well before that, though, with plans made even before the election to cast doubt on any results that went against the desired result of Trump’s victory. These people knew it, they conspired to replace legitimate votes with fraudulent ones, and now they’ve been called to court over it.

  • Donald Trump, former US president
  • Rudy Giuliani, Trump lawyer
  • Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff
  • John Eastman, Trump lawyer
  • Kenneth Chesebro, pro-Trump lawyer
  • Jeffrey Clark, top Justice Department official
  • Jenna Ellis, Trump campaign lawyer
  • Robert Cheeley, lawyer who promoted fraud claims
  • Mike Roman, Trump campaign official
  • David Shafer, Georgia GOP chair and fake elector
  • Shawn Still, fake GOP elector
  • Stephen Lee, pastor tied to intimidation of election workers
  • Harrison Floyd, leader of Black Voices for Trump
  • Trevian Kutti, publicist tied to intimidation of election workers
  • Sidney Powell, Trump campaign lawyer
  • Cathy Latham, fake GOP elector tied to Coffee County breach
  • Scott Hall, tied to Coffee County election system breach
  • Misty Hampton, Coffee County elections supervisor
  • Ray Smith, Trump campaign attorney

They’ve been indicted on racketeering charges by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (quick — has Trump been medically tested for syphilis? That’s how they got Al Capone, you know.)

These charges represent many serious felonies, and it’s not just a pattern of criminal behavior — it’s an overt attempt by the chief executive to undermine the rule of law and commit treason against the Constitution. Invoke the 14th Amendment and kill this guy’s campaign to run for re-election again.

Although, to be sure so far these are just more charges against these awful people, and we’ll have to see if he actually gets convicted. I grew up seeing Nixon getting off scot-free so my confidence isn’t high.

Brace yourself for the flurry of disingenuous defenses to come.

Aw, shucks, I missed it

The Iowa state fair happened this past weekend, and it was a disgusting spectacle. Iowa has an oversized political reputation, solely because it has the first primary in the presidential election, so every Republican candidate shows up to shake hands and kiss babies and pretend they care about a small farm state, rather than because they enjoy fried-cheese-onna-stick or want to weigh in on the qualities of prize pigs.

There were two spectacles worth noting. One was the way the press fawned over this event, comparing the size of the crowds for various candidates and acting as if this was meaningful. A good healthy journalism wouldn’t care about the opinions of a self-selected mob of yokels and how many corn dogs they ate, they’d be talking about policies and records and, in one case, criminal history. But no, this was a celebrity spectacle with no weight at all.

The second was…Trump is back to lying again and hyping the imaginary size of his crowds.

I don’t think I can take another year of this bullshit. Narcissistic serial liars are so 2020.

By the way, the Stevens County Fair took place here last week — I couldn’t go, I’m trapped in a small room in our house cultivating chronic pain, but Mary went, and she said there was less knee-jerk MAGA nonsense and fewer Trump flags waving than last year, so that’s a slightly positive development. Also, Trump didn’t show up.

Jesus Christ, impeach him already

Clarence Thomas is a shameless crook. Yet again, ProPublica has done the legwork and exposed the corruption.

During his three decades on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has enjoyed steady access to a lifestyle most Americans can only imagine. A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to fetch him — including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737. It’s a stream of luxury that is both more extensive and from a wider circle than has been previously understood.

Like clockwork, Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence. Their gifts include:

At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.

This accounting of Thomas’ travel, revealed for the first time here from an array of previously unavailable information, is the fullest to date of the generosity that has regularly afforded Thomas a lifestyle far beyond what his income could provide. And it is almost certainly an undercount.

I see the words “luxurious paid vacation” and I have to scramble to the dictionary to figure out what they mean. Clarence Thomas takes for granted that a billionaire will charter a 737 for him.

It doesn’t matter how blatant or extravagant it gets, the other members of the Supreme Court will defend the lack of ethical oversight and the Republicans in congress will close their eyes. American “justice” is a joke.

That’s Texas logic

A new announcement from the Holy Republic of Texas:

The largest school district in Texas announced its libraries will be eliminated and replaced with discipline centers in the new school year.

Yep. They’re shutting down the school libraries. And what, you may wonder, is a “discipline center”? It’s where you send the troublemaking students to get them out of your hair.

Teachers at these schools will soon have the option to send misbehaving students to these discipline centers, or “team centers’” – designated areas where they will continue to learn remotely.

This is getting worse and worse. Now you might be curious about what has prompted this sudden decision to eliminate libraries and turn them into detention camps? It’s Texas, so it could just be cussedness and a love of ignorance. But no, they have a specific excuse.

News of the library removals comes after the state announced it would be taking over the district, effective in the 2023-24 school year, due to poor academic performance. Miles was appointed by the the Texas Education Agency in June.

That’s Texas logic. You’ve got a school system with poor academic performance, so you step in to improve it by preventing the kids from reading books.

Think it will work?

A natural experiment in policing

Golden Valley is a wealthy suburb of Minneapolis, 85% white, and mostly liberal. They decided to do something about the racial discrimination that’s been making so much news in the Minneapolis region, and made a commitment to diversifying the police force.

The first hire was Officer Alice White, the force’s first high-ranking Black woman. The second was Virgil Green, the town’s first Black police chief.

“When I started, Black folks I’d speak to in Minneapolis seemed surprised that I’d been hired,” Chief Green said when I spoke with him recently. “They told me they and most people they knew avoided driving through Golden Valley.”

Great! A good start, you might say. Except that one demographic, the police force itself, was not happy.

Members of the overwhelmingly white police force responded to both hires by quitting — in droves.

An outside investigation later revealed that some officers had run an opposition campaign against Chief Green. One of those officers recorded herself making a series of racist comments during a call with city officials, then sent the recording to other police officers. She was fired — prompting yet another wave of resignations.

Oh. So the problem wasn’t the citizens, it was the police force itself!

Those resigning police probably expected the town to learn a hard lesson, about how they need to respect and appreciate the hard working, but rather racist, police officers. Except…

The interesting thing is that according to Chief Green, despite the reduction in staff, crime — already low — has gone down in Golden Valley. The town plans to staff the department back up, just not right away. “I’ve heard that the police union is cautioning officers from coming to work here,” Mr. Harris said. “But that’s OK. We want to take the time to hire officers who share our vision and are excited to work toward our goals.”

Maybe Golden Valley is weird and unique. Or maybe not:

When New York’s officers engaged in an announced slowdown in policing in late 2014 and early 2015, civilian complaints of major crime in the city dropped. And despite significant staffing shortages at law enforcement agencies around the country, if trends continue, 2023 will have the largest percentage drop in homicides in U.S. history. It’s true that such a drop would come after a two-year surge, but the fact that it would also occur after a significant reduction in law enforcement personnel suggests the surge may have been due more to the pandemic and its effects than depolicing.

Has anyone considered that maybe the people who want to work as police are the real undesirable element in our communities?