Politics

Sam Smith - People who complain about the welfare state remind me of the man from Virginia who went to college on the GI Bill and bought his first house with a VA loan. When a hurricane struck, he got federal disaster aid. When he got sick, he was treated at a veteran's hospital. when he was laid off, he received unemployment insurance and then got a SBA loan to start his own business. His bank funds were protected under federal deposit insurance laws. Now he's retired and on Social Security and Medicare. The other day he got into his car, drove the federal interstate to the railroad station, took Amtrak to Washington, and went to Capitol Hill to ask his representative to get the government off his back. ~ Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual.

WhoWhatWhy - If Americans of color had voted at the same rate as white citizens, nearly 10 million additional ballots would have been cast in 2020. This turnout gap is steadily on the rise… likely because of policies that make it more difficult for minorities to vote, especially in parts of the country with a history of discrimination, according to a new study.  “If the United States wants to make good on its foundational claims of a democratic system of governance open to all citizens, it must find ways to close the racial turnout gap,” the study, conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice, concluded. “Wider now than at any point in at least the past 16 years, the gap costs millions of votes from Americans of color all around the country.” To demonstrate the potential impact of this gap, the researchers state that, if it had not existed in the last presidential election, an additional 9 million ballots would have been cast. That is a figure exceeding President Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the popular vote of 7 million votes.