Mid-Morning Reads for Festival of Life in the Cracks Day (March 10)
It’s Festival of Life in the Cracks Day. Y’all know I had to look that one up as soon as I saw it. What it is is the celebration of the first signs of spring weather, like grass sprouting up through the cracks in the sidewalk. As a gardener, I can get on board with this, as I am so looking forward to weather warm enough to put plant starts in the ground. So, happy Festival of Life in the Cracks Day to all of you! May your world turn greener by the day.
On a different note, U2’s “With or Without You” was released as a single 34 years ago this week. Patrick Dexter, who has a YouTube Channel all about playing his cello in his gorgeous yard in Western Ireland, celebrated by playing the song on his cello, of course. I’m posting it here, because it’s beautifully done and needs a wider audience.
And now let’s get on to the news.
Pat Conroy
- Former President Jimmy Carter has spoken out against the Georgia voting restriction bills, saying they “turn back the clock.” (Alternate link.)
- In 2014, Georgia voters approved P3s by constitutional amendment. In light of the university system’s ongoing horror story with Corvias, we might want look at ending them ASAP.
- Jury trials can resume in Georgia with appropriate precautions.
- Lowndes County is reopening the investigation into Kendrick Johnson’s death. Eight years ago, his body was discovered rolled up in a gym mat at Lowndes County High School.
- The Federal Aviation Administration will be delayed in releasing their environmental impact study on Spaceport Camden, which was originally expected this month.
- Angela Moore won the runoff yesterday to represent District 90 in the state House. (Alternate link.)
Alice Walker
- Today, President Biden will announce that the U.S. government has bought an additional 100 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine.
- Yet, 1 in 4 Americans refuse to get the COVID vaccine, according to a Monmouth University poll.
- The House should pass the final version of the stimulus bill today, leaving some lawmakers worried about implementation of some of the provisions that will trigger sweeping changes to the tax code. (Alternate link.)
- Here’s a run down of what’s in the bill.
- Former President Trump is trying to wrest fundraising away from the GOP. (Alternate link.)
- Lawmakers are looking at finally repealing the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which approved the Iraq War.
- The FBI has released new video of the person who left bombs at the RNC and DNC the night before the January 6th insurrection.
- The National Guard troops stationed at the U.S. Capitol will now be there through May.
- Unprecedented flooding in Hawaii is causing extensive damage.
- Alaska has become the first state to open COVID vaccination to everyone over the age of 16.
- South Korea has agreed to pay more for hosting American troops in 2021.
- Russia has slowed upload speeds for Twitter due to a dispute over banned content. (Alternate link.)
Flannery O’Connor
- A couple who had a meteorite land in their driveway in the Cotswolds were told it may contain “the ingredients for life” by the scientists who retrieved it.
About Author
Holly Croft
Holly is an archivist at one of Georgia's institutions of higher learning. In a past life, she was a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill. She cares a lot about records management, open records laws, and privacy laws. Political persuasion? It's complicated. What's not complicated is that she's proudly equal parts Bulldog and Tar Heel.
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This is interesting.
“In 2005, the year that Republicans gained control of state government after decades of Democratic domination, HB 244 was a 59-page bill that contained nearly 70 revisions of state election code, including two major changes: adding a photo ID requirement for in-person voting and allowing Georgians to vote by mail without an excuse, and without an ID.
At the time, Democrats and voting rights groups adamantly opposed both measures. Lawmakers compared the photo ID requirement to Jim Crow laws and warned that Georgia would have some of the country’s most restrictive voting procedures. The addition of no-excuse absentee voting did not reassure Democrats, either. In an eerie inversion of today’s positions, they argued that it would introduce a system ripe for abuse.
“By removing restrictions related to mailed absentee ballots, HB 244 opens a greater opportunity for fraud,” former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, then a Democratic state senator, wrote in an op-ed. “Skeptics might point out that absentee voters have historically voted for Republicans in higher numbers.”
Among the lawmakers who voted for the bill were Gov. Brian Kemp (then a state senator), House Speaker David Ralston, Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, Majority Leader Jon Burns, Senate Rules chairman Jeff Mullis, Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer (then a state senator) and Reps. Terry England, Sharon Cooper, Ed Setzler, Lynn Smith and Barry Fleming, author of the current House omnibus which is one of the bills that would add an ID requirement to absentee ballots and applications.
Democrats who opposed the 2005 bill included current Sen. Minority Leader Gloria Butler, Sens. Ed Harbison, Horacena Tate, Kasim Reed and Reps. Debbie Buckner, Roger Bruce, MARTOC chair Mary Margaret Oliver, and Calvin Smyre, currently the longest-serving member of the House, among others.
Democrats said at the time that requiring photo ID to vote in person would disenfranchise lower-income, older and non-white voters, while pressing the idea that expanded no-excuse absentee voting without an ID requirement was an invitation to fraud.
“This bill would actually open the door wide to opportunities for voter fraud because it allows voting by mail where you present no identification whatsoever,” Democratic Secretary of State Cathy Cox said in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article. “So those parts of the bill really don’t jive in my mind in terms of any real effort to crack down on what someone perceives to be voting fraud.”
https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/03/07/16-years-later-georgia-lawmakers-flip-views-on-absentee-voting
Times change, don’t they?
The stimulus bill passed and will be signed Friday.
A lot in it besides the checks.
United Airlines and American Airlines just sent out letters canceling layoffs scheduled in the near future. 13,000 workers for American and 14,000 for United.
And
First, the bill devotes $30.5 billion to public-transit agencies. “COVID has really decimated transit ridership, and that has eaten a huge hole in agencies’ budgets,” Ben Fried, the communications director at the think tank TransitCenter, told me. Including the latest bill, Congress has spent $60 billion on transit over the past year, money that has been key to keeping the agencies solvent, Fried said. “If they didn’t get funding, then transit would have faced existential peril at the end of last year.” In Washington, D.C., for instance, the local Metro system was contemplating eliminating weekend service and permanently closing 19 stations. The new bill is enough to support agencies’ daily operations into 2023, he said.
Second, the rescue bill has quietly become an infrastructure bill. It devotes $350 billion to supporting state and local governments. These funds, initially proposed to plug COVID-19-created holes in public budgets, in many cases now exceed those holes. So the Senate has allowed states, cities, and counties to spend that money on improving services such as water, sewage, and broadband. Because many water systems are vulnerable to climate change and must be adapted, this is de facto climate funding. The bill also contains $31 billion for tribal governments and Indigenous communities, including line items for new infrastructure, housing, and language preservation.
Barry Fleming needs to give last year’s salary back to the county . What a jerk.
The Hancock County Board of Commissioners voted 4-0 Wednesday to ask Rep. Barry Fleming (R-Harlem) to resign as county attorney after pressure from citizens opposed to his work on proposed voting law changes.
Fleming is currently the House Special Committee on Election Integrity Chairman and primary sponsor of HB 531, a 66-page voting omnibus that would make sweeping changes to voting in Georgia, including limiting access to drop boxes and curbing larger counties’ ability to offer a full slate of weekend voting.
Hancock has one of the highest proportions of Black voters in the country and has been the center of several voting controversies in recent years, including an episode in 2015 when a fifth of the voters in Sparta — all Black — had their voter registrations challenged.
One of those was Johnny Thornton, a retired DEA agent who lives and works on a catfish farm.
Thornton was among several people protesting in Sparta before the commission’s vote, and said that the pushback came after years of Fleming, who represents a multi-county stretch of east Georgia that includes Hancock County, being a “suppressor” instead of an advocate.
“He’s been part of strategic voter suppression, but this year he went all the way over the top with this House bill that he introduced,” Thornton said. “Your attorney is supposed to be an advocate, not an adversary. You can’t advocate for me and vote to suppress me at the same time.”
https://www.gpb.org/news/2021/03/10/state-rep-ousted-hancock-county-attorney-after-sponsoring-voting-changes