State Senates thread

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, RoseWilder said:

Sometimes reading political news makes me feel like my head is going to explode. This is one of those moments. 

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/iowa-gop-abortion-bill-will-grant-parents-of-unmarried-women-rights-to-control-adult-daughters-bodies/

WTF? Parents now have legal rights over the bodies of their ADULT unmarried daughters. Has Bill Gothard taken over the Iowa state senate? 

Is Iowa going to change its name to Iowaistan? It certainly seems so.

[Childless]

2 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

Sometimes reading political news makes me feel like my head is going to explode. This is one of those moments. 

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/iowa-gop-abortion-bill-will-grant-parents-of-unmarried-women-rights-to-control-adult-daughters-bodies/

WTF? Parents now have legal rights over the bodies of their ADULT unmarried daughters. Has Bill Gothard taken over the Iowa state senate? 

What a waste of time and money.  The courts will rule against this right out of the gate.  Jesus, you would think Iowa has more important things to do.

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

Sometimes reading political news makes me feel like my head is going to explode. This is one of those moments. 

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/iowa-gop-abortion-bill-will-grant-parents-of-unmarried-women-rights-to-control-adult-daughters-bodies/

WTF? Parents now have legal rights over the bodies of their ADULT unmarried daughters. Has Bill Gothard taken over the Iowa state senate? 

I did some digging and found this https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=87&ba=SF471.  Can I start kicking the wall again?

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

Sometimes reading political news makes me feel like my head is going to explode. This is one of those moments. 

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/iowa-gop-abortion-bill-will-grant-parents-of-unmarried-women-rights-to-control-adult-daughters-bodies/

WTF? Parents now have legal rights over the bodies of their ADULT unmarried daughters. Has Bill Gothard taken over the Iowa state senate? 

So, will this mean that IVF is illegal in Iowa if this passes, since they consider it a baby when egg meets sperm? If I remember right, someone at the fertility clinic looks at the fertilized embryos, then chooses a couple of the most viable embryos to implant. 

Also, what happens to the adult daughter if her parents are deceased? Who will control her then? If she's a widow ( does happen) would care revert to her parents or his? Who would be responsible for the woman if the unintended pregnancy was the result of an affair? Could the woman be ordered to have the baby, then give it up to the man and his wife?

 

Will this be carried further, as in parents must give permission for an adult daughter to live alone or accept a job?

In no way do I agree with this legislation. I think it is completely ridiculous. I am strange- whenever a hear a ludicrous law proposal, I like to thoroughly question it.

[Destiny]

Seriously Iowa, what the shit fuck did I just read? Fucking hell.

[Childless]

What irks me is that these laws are enacted for the sole purpose of punishing the poor.  A rich or middle class woman would have the means to get herself to another state or even Canada to get the procedure done without hassle.  It's only those without the means to get to even Illinois who would suffer.

[sawasdee]

NC has just repealed the bathroom bill! Is some sense filtering dowwn to the states - that with this wazzock in the WH, they have to at least appear to be sensible if they are not to see a wipeout in the next elections?

[GreyhoundFan]

9 minutes ago, sawasdee said:

NC has just repealed the bathroom bill! Is some sense filtering dowwn to the states - that with this wazzock in the WH, they have to at least appear to be sensible if they are not to see a wipeout in the next elections?

The main reason NC moved to repeal the bathroom bill is economic. There was quite a bit of backlash, from the NCAA basketball tournament, to major concerts, to companies who decided not to open offices in the state.

"North Carolina lawmakers vote to repeal law restricting bathroom use for transgender people"

Quote

...

Since H.B. 2 was signed, North Carolina has watched as companies abandoned plans to expand in the state, entertainers canceled shows and sports leagues pulled some games and vowed to keep out more. The most recent such threat, coming from the NCAA, gave lawmakers until Thursday to change the law if North Carolina wants to host any college sports championships through 2022.

...

Possible repeal efforts gained new steam this week in the face of the NCAA’s deadline. The potential loss of all of those collegiate events would add to the already sizable damage North Carolina has faced since enacting the bathroom bill. Companies such as PayPal and Deutsche Bank have abandoned expansions in the state, the NBA and the NCAA already have moved games elsewhere, and entertainers have canceled concerts and other shows.

These moves have taken a toll: A new estimate from the Associated Press this week said that over a 12-year period following enactment of the law, H.B. 2 would cost the state at least $3.7 billion due to these losses.

...

It doesn't seem to really be a full repeal, but something that puts lipstick on a pig. I think there will be quite a bit coming out about it this afternoon.

[sawasdee]

@GreyhoundFanThanks! I did realise that this was probably driven by economic concerns, but didn't realise that the implications were quite so impactful financially. Will be watching - as I'm sure the NCAA and others will - to see if they try to fudge it.

[VelociRapture]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The main reason NC moved to repeal the bathroom bill is economic. There was quite a bit of backlash, from the NCAA basketball tournament, to major concerts, to companies who decided not to open offices in the state.

"North Carolina lawmakers vote to repeal law restricting bathroom use for transgender people"

It doesn't seem to really be a full repeal, but something that puts lipstick on a pig. I think there will be quite a bit coming out about it this afternoon.

It's pure bullshit. The ban is repealed, but state legislators have the power to decide bathroom policy. And no new non-discrimination protections can be introduced until 2020.

Hey! North Carolina! It's not that hard to do the right fucking thing!

[fraurosena]

The United Nations is worried at what's happening in America:

U.N. experts see 'alarming' U.S. trend against free speech, protest

Quote

Nineteen U.S. states have introduced bills that would curb freedom of expression and the right to protest since Donald Trump's election as president, an "alarming and undemocratic" trend, U.N. human rights investigators said on Thursday.

Concerns for free speech in the United States have risen in part because of the Republican Trump's antagonistic relations with prominent U.S. media, which he has branded "the enemy of the American people" as it has reported on policy missteps and dysfunction in his administration.

The push for stricter laws on expression has come as Trump's liberal foes have pursued public protest against his policies on issues ranging from immigration to abortion and climate change.

Maina Kiai and David Kaye, independent U.N. experts on freedom of peaceful assembly and expression respectively, said in a statement that the state bills were incompatible with international human rights law.

"The trend also threatens to jeopardize one of the United States’ constitutional pillars: free speech," they said in a statement, calling for action to reverse such legislation.

As to the 'leader of the free world' status: sorry America, you lost it. Bigly.

[sawasdee]

@fraurosenaThat is seriously fucking scary! I am loath to invoke Godwin, but this does echo the rise of fascism in many countries, particularly in the inter war period of the 20th century. I wrote one of my undergraduate theses on the rise of Hitler...

When I went into a quite scary depression after the election of tRump, all my friends said I was overreacting. I now think I was probably underreacting. An assault to free speech/demonstration is the first step to suppressing opponents.

[47of74]

21 hours ago, Destiny said:

Seriously Iowa, what the shit fuck did I just read? Fucking hell.

Shoving a goddamn C note in the swear jar....

Jesus Fucking Christ Iowa, what the fuck is wrong with you?  Are you trying to drive everyone with an IQ above goddamn 50 out of the fucking state already?  At the rate you're fucking going I might not even wait until I'm done with school to high tail it up to Minnesota. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"New Arkansas Law Requires Doctors to ‘Investigate’ Women Seeking Abortions"

Quote

Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson on Wednesday signed a law requiring doctors to investigate women seeking abortions before they can actually receive the procedure. The measure purports to block abortions that are based solely on the sex of the fetus, but actually bans women from getting the procedure until their physician has put in an unspecified amount of “time and effort” obtaining her pregnancy-related medical records.

House Bill 1434 — which creates the “Sex Discrimination by Abortion Prohibition Act” — was passed by the Arkansas House of Representatives and Senate this month, and will go into effect in January 2018. It forces doctors to ask a woman if she knows the sex of the fetus and, if she does, they must then gather all medical records pertaining to her “entire pregnancy history.” Under the law, doctors are prohibited from providing a woman with an abortion until they’ve taken a “reasonable” amount of time to get the records — which could potentially result in an indefinite waiting period, the Center for Reproductive Rights noted in a statement.

“Health-care providers should never be forced to investigate patients for the reasons behind their personal, private decisions,” Lourdes Rivera, a senior vice-president at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said. “When a woman has made the decision to end a pregnancy, she needs high-quality health care, not an interrogation.”

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, this new law makes Arkansas the first state to require doctors to not only investigate a woman’s reasons for getting an abortion, but also to force them to look at her entire pregnancy-related history. The bill includes some language about sex-selection abortion and states that it mostly affects female fetuses, and briefly cites other countries that have taken steps to end the practice (India, Great Britain, and China). However, it doesn’t provide any data about such abortions in the United States. Under the new law, any doctor that performs an abortion based on the sex of the fetus will be found guilty of a class A misdemeanor.

Seriously? The doctor has to "investigate" the woman's history?

[Childless]

2 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"New Arkansas Law Requires Doctors to ‘Investigate’ Women Seeking Abortions"

Seriously? The doctor has to "investigate" the woman's history?

This is the dumbest waste of time yet and there have been some winners so far.  Over 90% of all abortions are done in the first 12 weeks before anyone knows gender.  Furthermore, there's been zero evidence that gender based abortion is a thing in the U.S.  Arkansas is creating a problem where none exists just to justify restrictions on abortion (and Repubs say they want small government  ).  And as I said earlier, these restrictions target the poor.  Middle and upper class women will never have a issue accessing abortion services (they never had trouble accessing them when it was illegal in this country).

[47of74]

26 minutes ago, Childless said:

This is the dumbest waste of time yet and there have been some winners so far.  Over 90% of all abortions are done in the first 12 weeks before anyone knows gender.  Furthermore, there's been zero evidence that gender based abortion is a thing in the U.S.  Arkansas is creating a problem where none exists just to justify restrictions on abortion (and Repubs say they want small government  ).  And as I said earlier, these restrictions target the poor.  Middle and upper class women will never have a issue accessing abortion services (they never had trouble accessing them when it was illegal in this country).

You could not pay me enough to live in Arkansas.  There isn't enough money left on Earth to make me to want to live there.  Arkansas government likes to fuck over the poor all while singing the praises of Jeeeezus.

[onekidanddone]

3 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

You could not pay me enough to live in Arkansas.  There isn't enough money left on Earth to make me to want to live there.  Arkansas government likes to fuck over the poor all while singing the praises of Jeeeezus.

One of my best friends moved to Little Rock a few years ago. She says Little Rock is purple, her place of employment blue, and the rest of the state...ewww.  

2 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Shoving a goddamn C note in the swear jar....

Jesus Fucking Christ Iowa, what the fuck is wrong with you?  Are you trying to drive everyone with an IQ above goddamn 50 out of the fucking state already?  At the rate you're fucking going I might not even wait until I'm done with school to high tail it up to Minnesota. 

 

Ah do what I did.  I changed my direct deposit from my checking to the jar.

[47of74]

1 hour ago, onekidanddone said:

One of my best friends moved to Little Rock a few years ago. She says Little Rock is purple, her place of employment blue, and the rest of the state...ewww.  

Ah do what I did.  I changed my direct deposit from my checking to the jar.

I'll probably have to change my tax refund to go to the jar as well at the rate these fuck head Republicans are going.

[PsyD2013]

I should just withdraw everything from my savings account and stuff it in the swear jar- what the ever loving fuck is going on in Iowa?????   

The Iowa General Assembly just keeps sinking to new lows.  Just a few highlights- gutting collective bargaining for public workers, cutting the minimum wage, funding for public schools 1.1% increase, cut funding for the department of human services,  and gutted workman's comp.  Now one of the most draconian abortion bills is being debated.  Welcome to Iowa!  We love the preborn and life!  But screw a livable wage, education, healthcare, and social services for that unborn child.  Almost forgot, that unborn child will be protected with the changes in gun laws coming out of the General Assembly.  

 

[Cartmann99]

Do they make swear jars large enough to live in? I can't afford to pay the mortgage and the swear jar each month. 

[Audrey2]

Trying to avoid the swear jar, but it's a good thing Free Jinger doesn't charge per visit. I check Quiver Full of Politics as much as possible throughout the day because I'm afraid I'll miss something on the news. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Our Democratic Governor here in VA is pushing for us to expand medicaid. Unfortunately, the teabaggers in the red parts of the state are giving a big nope. "Virginia Republicans’ position on Medicaid expansion is indefensible"

Quote

FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND more Virginians could get health-care coverage, quickly and at minimal cost to the state. All that’s needed is for anti-Obamacare dead-enders in the General Assembly finally to put the well-being of their people over partisanship, as Republicans in a variety of deep-red states now are doing.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), not for the first (or 10th, or 50th) time, is making the argument for this totally reasonable expansion of health-care coverage to people who desperately need it. Some analysts suggest he knows he still can’t win in the legislature and is only teeing up the issue for the coming gubernatorial election. If so, that will be the fault of intransigent Richmond Republicans, whose position on the issue is now even less defensible than it used to be.

The Affordable Care Act extended the state-federal Medicaid program to cover a swath of low-income people, but the Supreme Court ruled that each state could decide whether to accept this expansion. Despite the fact that the federal government has offered to pay nearly the entire cost of covering newly eligible people, only 31 states and the District have taken the bargain. Because of GOP opposition in the General Assembly, Virginia has been one of the holdouts.

...

The Medicaid expansion was only temporary, Republicans used to argue; Congress would repeal it or federal budget constraints would require rollback. So, the logic went, state leaders should not risk expanding Medicaid only to pull the rug out from under vulnerable people when congressional Republicans unraveled the program. This argument never made much sense: It is better to cover people for some time than none at all. With a swift repeal off the table, it is now thoroughly discredited. Indeed, more than ever, Medicaid looks like a sure bet. Protecting the program turned out to be a priority for moderate congressional Republicans in the House and Senate alike.

If the failure of the repeal-and-replace bill diminished Republicans’ policy case against expansion, it decimated their strategic rationale. Fighting Medicaid expansion across the country was a central part of the GOP plan to resist Obamacare, limiting the number of people who benefited from the law and therefore making it easier to tear up once Republicans took control of Washington. But the ACA proved too hard to eliminate anyway.

It is unsurprising that the week after the repeal-and-replace bill failed, the Kansas state legislature voted overwhelmingly to expand Medicaid in that ruby-red state. Kansas is unlikely to be the last place where GOP opposition softens as Republicans process the reality that Obamacare is the law of the land. The benefits are so clear, the costs to states are so low, the reasons to continue resisting are so insubstantial. It is time Richmond Republicans admitted as much.

Sadly, some of the fossils from the rural parts of the state won't budge.

[47of74]

1 hour ago, PsyD2013 said:

I should just withdraw everything from my savings account and stuff it in the swear jar- what the ever loving fuck is going on in Iowa?????   

The Iowa General Assembly just keeps sinking to new lows.  Just a few highlights- gutting collective bargaining for public workers, cutting the minimum wage, funding for public schools 1.1% increase, cut funding for the department of human services,  and gutted workman's comp.  Now one of the most draconian abortion bills is being debated.  Welcome to Iowa!  We love the preborn and life!  But screw a livable wage, education, healthcare, and social services for that unborn child.  Almost forgot, that unborn child will be protected with the changes in gun laws coming out of the General Assembly.  

 

And before any Iowa Republican starts spewing horseshit about how they're not intending to target adult women, wrong.  Not according to the plain language of the legislation here.   They're saying OR so it's saying all women under the age of 18 and all unmarried women regardless of age.  (H/T criminal law class).

[47of74]

And it figures  that Vander Plaats would be down their trying to get the legislature to impose his own brand of sharia on the women of Iowa;

kcrg.com/content/news/Anti-abortionists-make-final-push-for-reform-before-end-of-session-417726003.html

Quote

Republicans control the House, Senate and have a governor that's not running for reelection. If prolife supporters want to make a substantial change to abortion law-- now is the time.

That was the message a group of hundreds brought to the statehouse, Thursday. Packing the rotunda, they urged lawmakers to waste their remaining weeks in the session.

"This is the time to do it,” said Bob Vander Plaats, head of social conservative group The Family Leader. “That's why we're saying seize the day, seize the opportunity. What we would like to do is have this be the most prolife session since Roe v. Wade happened."

To date, Republicans have fallen short of that goal. A "personhood" bill establishing life at conception died earlier this year. The GOP also couldn't get enough votes to support an amendment banning abortions at the sound of a heartbeat. It was dropped in a house committee fewer than 24 hours before the rally.

Fucking ugh.  These people make me feel stabby.  These people don't give a fuck about human life once it's born, and you can take that to the goddamn bank too.

[clueliss]

I'm too lazy to find the sources at the moment - but Brownback vetoed the Medicaid expansion (because he's a jerkwad that way) in Kansas.  I remember reading that the KS house might have had enough votes to override but the Senate likely did not.

Meanwhile in Missouri the State Senate is up on the effort to get us in compliance with federal ID Standards (or I need to get a passport so I can get on a plane).