Citizen Snowden

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Former NSA consultant, Edward Snowden, has been living in Russia since fleeing the US after leaking highly classified information about US surveillance programs.

In a move that’s likely an attempt to thumb his nose at the US, Vladimir Putin has now given Snowden Russian citizenship.

Of course, Putin also just instituted a draft to replenish his army that’s taken heavy losses from their invasion of Ukraine.

So, careful, Snowden, something else might be coming along with that citizenship: a draft notice.

Back Downtown

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Salesforce is hosting its big Dreamforce conference in downtown San Francisco. For a city that has struggled to bring back workers to the offices - with many opting instead to keep working from home - this might be the first time in a long time that many have been back downtown! We’ll see how people feel about going to the office after the conference.

Fear Mongering

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Everything old is new again. Whether it’s remakes of old horror movies like Friday the 13th and Scream, or rehashing old irrational panics.

According to polls by the non partisan Public Religion Research Institute, ~1/4 of Republicans believe Satan-worshipping pedophiles running a global sex-trafficking operation control the U.S. government, media and financial institutions. It’s not just a replay of the old 1980s “Satanic Panic,” it’s a core tenet of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

But not just that- we’re also getting an encore of the 80s fear mongering that some stranger will slip drugs into your kid’s Halloween candy! This time it’s fentanyl in brightly colored pills, called “rainbow pills” or skittles. While the rainbow fentanyl pills are real, we’ve yet to see drug dealers or users eager to give it all away at the front door. But that didn’t stop RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel from stoking those fears.

The Satanic Panic and Drugs in the Halloween Candy fears have come before and they weren’t true. But a lot of people were tricked into believing they were true.

There are things to watch out for in the world. But all told, the vast majority of people are good and America is a much safer place than it was 30 years ago (crime statistics support the trends).

Don’t give in to these fears. They’re no more threat to you than Jason or Ghostface. They’re all equally fictional.

Dumb

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Today is Constitution Day, commemorating the day our US Constitution was signed in 1787.

But many won’t know that. Because US knowledge is sorely lacking.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s annual, nationally representative survey showed that less than half of US adults could name all three branches of the US government.

Less than 1/4 of people could cite Freedom of Religion as one of the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment. While over half incorrectly believed that the First Amendment requires Facebook to allow them to express themselves freely on its platform.

https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-civics-knowledge-drops-on-first-amendment-and-branches-of-government/

Education, knowledge, and expertise are under attack in our country. Whether it’s untrained parents who feel they should decide school curriculum over trained educators. Or the Michigan town threatening to defund the library because they don’t like certain books there. Don’t even start on the pushes to ban books across several states and towns.

Many people have long said that America would not be defeated by outside enemies, but rather threatened from internal strife and divisions.

Unfortunately, I fear America is just going to dumb itself to death.

Shameful

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis chartered airplanes to fly immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. People on the fights say they were told they were going to Boston, and were lured from a shelter in San Antonio with food, promises of help and expedited papers.

None of that help was waiting for them. No notice was given to Martha’s Vineyard or Massachusetts to prepare help for these people.

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/15/1123109768/migrants-sent-to-marthas-vineyard

It’s a despicable move to use human beings as props and pawns in a political stunt. People who fled their homelands. Policy disagreements are one thing. But toying with human lives for attention is disgusting. Instead of helping people, DeSantis used them and lined up no help for them.

DeSantis should be ashamed. But I’m not sure he’s capable of that.

States Rights? Yeah, Right.

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I thought it was about States rights?

Apparently not, according to Lindsey Graham, who is working to introduce a nationwide federal law to ban abortion past 15 weeks of pregnancy.

So much for letting the States decide.

Once upon a time, the Republican Party stood for narrowly defined laws, minimizing federal intervention in people’s lives, putting the power to legislate at the State level.

Then again, several of the Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn Roe v Wade said at their confirmation hearings that Roe was settled law.

So don’t be surprised when the GOP starts to rally around a federal ban.

Russian Windows

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It seems like falling out of windows is becoming one of the leading causes of death in Russia. At least for anyone who opposes or questions Vladimir Putin.

The Chairman of the Board for Lukoil, one of the largest oil producers in Russia, died after falling from a hospital window. Of course that happened after he had criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Newsweek has a good overview of the many times this keeps happening.

https://www.newsweek.com/russians-keep-mysteriously-falling-windows-deaths-1738954?amp=1

In the meantime, stay away from windows in Russia.

Feelings

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In a speech set against a fiery backdrop, President Biden called out Trump and the MAGA extremism as a threat to US democracy.

It was a sharp rebuke of the extreme faction within the Republican Party and their unwavering loyalty to Trump.

And I can’t disagree with Biden. This week Trump was on his Truth Social platform calling for the 2020 election to be overturned and Trump to be installed as President. Or at least to toss out the 2020 election and immediately have another election.

If you don’t see that as the totalitarian and anti-democratic move that it is, you’re kidding yourself.

Of course, several Republicans and MAGA devotees decried the speech.

But when they’ve spent the past 6 years wearing shirts, flying flags, and tossing comments saying, “Fuck Your Feelings,” I don’t feel too badly if their feelings are hurt.

Stop Voting for Stupid People

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Let’s be honest, in the upcoming midterm elections I have one goal to promote: getting people to stop voting for stupid people.

And now you, too, can support that goal. Get your very own t-shirt or stickers to tell people whom you support: the not-stupid candidates!

This and much more political merchandise available at http://www.garthtoons.com/shop

Bad Parenting

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So the veiled threats begin. Trump taking to his Truth Social platform with thinly disguised insinuations of what will happen if he’s prosecuted. Lindsay Graham was more direct, warning of riots in the streets.

I don’t know if there’s enough of a case to prosecute or not. But there’s clearly something to investigate. And we should. But the GOP doesn’t want us to.

It’s the GOP continuing its strategy of not holding Trump accountable for anything, saying that accountability will be worse than letting Trump do what he wants.

Any parent knows, that’s a terrible strategy.

Student Loan Debt

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President Biden announced his plan for student debt relief, canceling up to $10,000 in government backed student debt per individual (or up to $20k for Pell grant recipients).

While I don’t think this is any long term answer to our student debt problems, it’s going to help millions of people. Estimated to help up to 43 million borrowers, with 90% of the debt relief dollars going to people earning under $75k.

At the same time, Biden put a definitive end to the freeze on student debt payments.

Moody’s Analytics estimates the combined effects will largely be a wash on GDP growth, unemployment, and inflation.

I don’t think it’s the real solution we need to the soaring costs of higher education. We should address the underlying issues of the cost and not just one time fixes for some. It’s not like we should expect to do this every ten years or so. I understand people feeling it sets a bad precedent for others, so let’s address the bigger issue. But it’s hard to ignore the huge number of people who will have immediate, real, life altering benefits from this.

For those not getting debt canceled, it will likely result in no noticeable change. And projected to have no large negative effect on the macro economy.

Hard to argue against a move that won’t affect most people in any real material way, but will improve the lives of up to 43 million people.

Teacher Shortage

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America’s schools are facing a huge shortage of qualified teachers. There’s no clear data on how many teacher shortages we have nationally, but it’s massive.

The Nevada State Education Association estimated that roughly 3,000 teaching jobs remain unfilled across the state. Illinois reported in January >2,040 teacher openings were either empty or filled with a “less than qualified” hire. And in the Houston area, the largest five school districts are all reporting 200-1,000 open teaching positions.

To combat this, counties and states are trying different approaches. Rural school districts in Texas are switching to four-day weeks this fall due to lack of staff. Florida is asking veterans with no teaching background to enter classrooms. Arizona is allowing college students to step in and instruct children.

And who loses in all this? Obviously the kids, who won’t benefit from experienced and skilled teachers.

Teaching is hard. And under immense scrutiny these days. Few other professions have so many people who seem to think they know how to do the job better than those who’ve studied and gained hands on experience. Because teaching isn’t just about subject knowledge, but how to help others learn, how to build curriculum, how to adapt learning styles, how to engage different students, and a huge amount of empathy.

But it’s not just the kids who will suffer.

To compete in the economy of tomorrow, we need educated citizens. Education has long been one of the things that attracts people to the US. And yet again we are failing our kids and ourselves.

It’s time we learn to invest more in ourselves and our communities to build better for tomorrow. Starting with investing more in our teachers and our schools.