abortion

The Guardian vs. the Goon: PA’s Most Important Governor’s Race

stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Credibility, Data, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Gun Control, Guns, Harrisburg, Healthcare, history, immigration, Local Control, Mass Shooting, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Politics, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Teachers, Uncategorized, voter suppression, voting, Voting Rights , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The choice for Pennsylvania Governor could not be more clear in November.

On the one hand, we have Josh Shapiro – an Attorney General who fought for Commonwealth citizens’ rights for six years.

On the other, we have Doug Mastriano, a former US Army Colonel and 3-year state representative who supported a literal coup against the United States government.

In any sane world, that would be all you’d need to know.

Shapiro, the state’s chief law enforcement officer, vs. Mastriano, a traitor who actively worked to overturn the votes of the very citizens who elected him to office.

This should not be an election – it should be a rout.

However, Commonwealth voters will need to come to the polls and make it clear that they reject Mastriano’s fascism and that they instead support their own right to determine who governs in Pennsylvania and beyond.

That sounds extreme. I wish it weren’t also true.

Following the last Presidential election when it became clear Donald Trump had lost the vote, Republican Mastriano helped organize large rallies pushing false claims of election fraud. He chartered buses to take protesters to the Capitol on January 6. He personally crossed police barricades at the Capitol during the riot, and attempted to submit “alternate” (i.e. fake) pro-Trump electors to the official count. And he even coordinated all this with Trump when he was invited to the White House to discuss the “stop the steal” strategy.

If Mastriano somehow wins the governors race, he will be in a position to basically call off Democratic rule in the state. As governor, he would choose the secretary of state — the official in charge of administering the 2024 presidential election. This would effectively allow him to pick the winner, himself.

This is not just conjecture. Mastriano has gone on record that as governor he would decertify voting machines in some precincts – making it hard to count votes there. He has even alluded to the independent state legislature doctrine, which holds that state legislatures can name whoever they want as the recipient of a state’s electoral votes, regardless of who voters select.

This is not conservatism. It is not protecting American values or law and order. It is the opposite.

By contrast, Shapiro, the Democrat in the race, is a model of exactly those qualities usually associated with sobriety and efficiency.

As Attorney General, he fought federal government overreach including Trump’s travel ban. He filed a lawsuit to stop religious organizations denying health coverage including contraceptives to employees. He joined a lawsuit against for profit colleges resulting in a $168 million settlement. He reached an agreement with federal officials to prevent the distribution of blueprints for 3D printed firearms. He launched an investigation of allegations of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church including a Grand Jury report alleging the sexual abuse of more than a thousand children at the hands of more than 300 priests.

In short, he worked hard to protect the people of this Commonwealth.

And the difference is stark on so many other issues when compared head-to-head.

Shapiro supports increasing public school funding. Mastriano wants to cut it in half.

Shapiro wants to increase security and gun regulations to prevent school shootings. Mastriano wants to give teachers guns and let them do the shooting.

Shapiro has fought to protect women’s reproductive rights against the state. Mastriano supports the state telling people what to do with their own bodies.

And on top of all that – Mastriano has ties to White Supremacists!

Until recently, his campaign paid consulting fees to Gab, a white nationalist social media site owned by anti-Semite Andrew Torba. Gab was the site that helped inspire the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue mass murder in 2018. Torba and others on the site that Mastriano was explicitly looking to for support commonly champion Great Replacement theory and support Vladimir Putin.

No skeletons of this type have been found in Shapiro’s closet.

The worst anyone has found so far is a $100,000 donation from Students First PA, a charter school advocacy group, which he took money from when he was running for Attorney General in 2016. However, Shapiro made no effort to hide the donation and his voting record when he was a state representative was not pro-charter. In 2011, for example, he voted against a measure to provide tuition vouchers of charter schools, and he has been a vocal critic of the industry for years. Moreover, neither Students First PA nor any other pro-education privatization organization that I can find has made any significant donations to him this election cycle so far.

The way I see it, this is a simple – if terrifying – election.

Shapiro is not perfect, but if elected, he would function similarly to current Governor Tom Wolf. He would be a guardian against the overreach and bad decisions of the gerrymandered Republican legislature.

One can hope voters throughout the Commonwealth would take back their individual voting districts from the extremists, but given the still uncompetitive lines of these districts, this seems unlikely.

So we need a Wolf, we need a Shapiro, standing on the battlements stopping the goons like Mastriano from taking advantage of the majority of us.

Shapiro would certainly do that. He might even go farther and fight to find ways to get real change through the legislature. But even if he can’t do that, voting for him is essential.

Mastriano may simply be the worst candidate for governor in the Commonwealth’s history – and that’s saying something!

We need Shapiro. We need Austin Davis as Lt. Governor. And we need John Fetterman as Senator.

That would make a huge difference both nationally and throughout the state.

It would set us up with a firm foundation and at least keep people safe from the worst.

I know it is depressing to be put in this situation constantly. Every election cycle seems to be the most important because the country is falling apart. Maybe we can find a way to turn things back and reach some level of sanity. But we can’t do anything unless we elect Shapiro, Davis and Fetterman.

We need the guardians against the goons.

Like this post?  You might want to consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. This helps me continue to keep the blog going and get on with this difficult and challenging work.

Plus you get subscriber only extras!

Just CLICK HERE.

Patreon+Circle

I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

 

Overturning Abortion Rights is Fascism – Pure and Simple

stevenmsinger Accountability, Civil Rights, Democrat, Education, Feminism, Gun Control, Healthcare, Junk science, Local Control, Parents, Philosophy, Politics, Prejudice, protest, Republican, School Funding, Schools, Sexism, Social Justice, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

The US Supreme Court is a fascist organization.

Let me cut right to the chase to explain why.

This week the conservative majority (I won’t call them justices) overturned Roe v. Wade – the landmark 1973 decision that expanded access to abortion nationwide.

This is on top of decisions deeply wounding state’s rights to make gun regulations, to hold police civilly accountable for reading suspects their Miranda rights, and even the separation of Church and State in regard to public funding of parochial schools.

Let me be very clear – this is not about consistency based on legal precedent or interpretation of the law. It is ideology – pure and simple.

In the case of abortion, these four men and one woman did it because they wanted to. That’s all.

And they wanted to for a while now. They each lied to Congress during their confirmation hearings.

Maybe money exchanged hands. Maybe they were influenced by powerful pundits, politicians and ideologues.

But their rulings were certainly not based on logic. After all, in the same week they decided states CAN’T regulate guns but states CAN regulate women’s bodies.

This is inconsistent and irrational.

The right to an abortion is one of the most fundamental rights a person can have.

It is central to the very idea of personal freedom and autonomy.

And no argument based on the rights of the unborn can support this travesty of justice.

Look at the facts.

At the beginning of pregnancy, a fetus is nothing but a cluster of cells.

This cluster is alive but so is cancer. So are insects. So are bacteria.

Being alive is not enough to give it rights over-and-above the person these cells are clustered inside.

Electrical impulses in these cells do not constitute a heartbeat. Nearly every cell has such electrical impulses – the brain, muscles, organs, etc. That doesn’t make them separate organisms.

Your belief that a cluster of cells is a person is not a compelling argument for anything.

There are no facts behind it.

It is purely a matter of a faith.

There is no way to prove either position right or wrong. It is definitional.

It is purely something you believe without any evidence.

It is religion, and in a free society one person’s religion cannot compel someone of another faith or someone of no faith whatsoever.

Catholics can’t make Jews attend midnight mass before Christmas. Jews can’t make Baptists refrain from eating pork. Muslims can’t stop atheists from drawing cartoons of religious figures.

Doing so would be theocracy.

So using your belief as a justification to force people who do not share it to take that cluster of cells to term is a textbook example of fascism.

It clearly violates the First Amendment establishment clause of the Constitution. It forces others to be compelled by your faith-based claims.

Moreover, it violates a person’s right to bodily autonomy.

If you have a right to anything, it is to do whatever you want with your own body. After all, that is you at its most essential.

Without this right, you are the same as livestock or an enslaved person.

No one should be able to force you to do anything with or to your body that you don’t want.

Obviously that right has limits – for example if you intend to use your body to hurt or kill someone else.

But we’ve already established that a fetus – a glob of cells – cannot be assumed to be someone else.

Doing otherwise would be absurd.

So someone has beliefs about what’s happening inside your body. So what?

Imagine if some cult thought your kidneys have souls and must be kept inside you at all costs. Should they be able to pass a law forbidding you from removing one if it gets infected? If you want to donate it to save another person’s life?

They’re your kidneys. And that fetus is your cluster of cells. You can do with it what you want.

Eventually, if you let that cluster of cells develop long enough, it may become something else. It may become viable to live on its own and what almost everyone would agree is a person. But it is not a given at all that this conglomeration of tissue is one yet.

And your insistence that your beliefs about it must compel my actions violates my rights.

Moreover, this argument has been predicated on the believer in the personhood of a clump of cells acting in good faith.

In point of practice, we do not even see that.

The same people in favor of repealing a person’s right to abortion may be in favor of the knot of tissue developing through birth, but they do not support doing anything to help it once it has unequivocally reached personhood.

No universal healthcare. No universal daycare. No neonatal care. No robust education funding. And no protection against gun violence.

This shows that most people professing this belief in the personhood of something inside your body is pure balderdash.

It’s not about that mass growing inside a woman. It’s about the woman, herself – controlling her actions, making her bend to your will, making it harder for her to exercise her autonomy and benefit from her own economic power.

It is about upholding patriarchy. It is about subjugating women – especially poor women and women of color who are more likely to be impacted.

Make no mistake.

This is fascism.

Our Supreme Court is fascist.

And whether you are likely to ever have an abortion or not is beside the point.

Every woman, every man, every person is impacted.

We must fight this kangaroo court and the political power behind it.

We must make them regret such blatant autocracy and totalitarianism.

This is everyone’s fight.

Every PERSON. Everywhere.

 

Like this post?  You might want to consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. This helps me continue to keep the blog going and get on with this difficult and challenging work.

Plus you get subscriber only extras!

Just CLICK HERE.

Patreon+Circle

I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Back to the Past with the US Supreme Court 

stevenmsinger Accountability, Bernie Sanders, Civil Rights, Compassion, Congress, Democrat, Feminism, Healthcare, history, Local Control, Parents, Politics, Prejudice, protest, Racism, Republican, Sexism, Social Justice, Uncategorized, voting , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Daddy, are gay people not allowed to get married?” 

My daughter was looking at me in confusion as we sat together on the couch watching an old episode of “Top Chef.” 

In Season 6, episode two, the chefs were asked to cook for a bachelor party. One of the contestants, Ashley, was indignant that she had to participate in a challenge centered on  marriage when she, herself, couldn’t marry another woman.  

I was surprised.  

It hadn’t occurred to me that the show was so old. It first aired in 2009. Was that really so long ago? 

We’ve only had marriage equality in all 50 states since 2015. That’s just seven years ago.  

So I explained to my daughter that gay people can marry today, but that it wasn’t always the case.  

My 13-year-old thought the idea that people couldn’t marry whoever they wanted to was just too crazy to be believed. And I agreed. 

It was later that night that I read the article in Politico about Roe v. Wade.  

Apparently, the landmark 1973 decision that expanded access to abortion nationwide is about to be overturned by the Republican majority on the Supreme Court. 

Some folks are even speculating that this could mean the roll back of similar rulings such as ones allowing same sex marriage and even interracial marriage.  

What the heck!?  

Did I just sleep through a monologue by Rod Serling?  

I’m still seeing things in color but they’re starting to feel very black and white.  

These are issues of settled law.  

Roe v. Wade is older than I am. Women have been able to terminate unwanted pregnancies for my entire life and the world hasn’t come to an end. In fact, if you read about what life was like before this decision, things have improved.  

Women have freedom over their own bodies. They aren’t trapped by the Catch 22 of whether to submit to a forced birth or risk their lives with a back alley procedure.  

I remember having a similar moment of cognitive dissonance as my daughter did when I was in high school.  

I read the book “An American Tragedy” by Theodore Dreiser and was shocked at what life was like in the 1920s before women had such freedoms. In the book, a couple get pregnant and have to choose between an unwanted marriage while raising an unwanted child or a black market abortion and the freedom to move on. When they can’t agree, the protagonist, Clyde, murders the poor woman.  

At the time, the whole situation seemed entirely quaint. It was a series of arguments, examples, and counter examples on an issue that had been decided long ago.  

That anyone could think differently struck me as absurd.  

In my high school public speaking class, we debated the issue. I argued in favor of reproductive rights, and a girl I had a crush on argued against them. 

She was certainly passionate about the rights of the unborn. But she seemed startlingly unconcerned with the rights of the already born.  

She wasn’t concerned about the child’s welfare or even the rights of a woman to make decisions about her own body – assuming those decisions were different than those my crush might make for herself.  

As I got older, I met others who felt the same way. For them the guiding principle was a religious fairy tale that didn’t even connect with the Bible but instead some fundamentalists view of gender politics.  

That’s fine if you want it to be the deciding factor in your own life, I guess. But leave the rest of us out of your faith-based world view. 

That such folderol is actually being considered by the highest court in the land is hard to believe. 

This is not the future I imagined back in high school when it occurred to me that I’d probably live into the sci-fi era of the 2000s.  

It’s more like getting stuck in Doc Brown’s Delorean and sent back to the past.  

And that’s exactly what it is.  

So-called conservatives want to return us to a mythical time when all was good with America.  

It says so on their precious red hats.  

But things were never that good in America for most people – unless you were white, Protestant and male. 

Let’s cut to the chase. None of this really is about stopping abortions. (If that was the concern, we’d be talking about free birth control, neonatal care and making a better world to raise children in.) Nor is it about safeguarding marriage between a man and a woman – or a white man and a white woman.  

It’s about strengthening white supremacy. It’s about bolstering the patriarchy.  

This is politics – pure politics.  

And there is a political solution.  

As Sen. Bernie Sanders has already suggested, Congress can codify reproductive rights into the law. There’s nothing the courts could do about it then.  

Democrats have a majority in both the House and the Senate and we have the Presidency.  

If we can’t get 60 votes in the Senate (and we probably can’t) we can end the filibuster and pass it with 50 votes. 

I hope with all my heart that we do this.  

I will push and organize and protest and electioneer. But I fear it will not be enough. 

Just making it to this regressive moment in time seems to indicate that our system is too broken to be fixed that way. 

This is not the world I wanted for my daughter. I fear it is the world she will have to fight to overcome.  

The battles of our grandparents have become our inheritance to our posterity.  

They deserve a much better world.  

But all we seem to have for them are reruns. 

Like this post?  You might want to consider becoming a Patreon subscriber. This helps me continue to keep the blog going and get on with this difficult and challenging work.

Plus you get subscriber only extras!

Just CLICK HERE.

Patreon+Circle

I’ve also written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

 

Brett Kavanaugh is the Link Between Rape and Abortion

stevenmsinger Accountability, Civil Rights, Compassion, Congress, Credibility, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, Election Reform, Feminism, Healthcare, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, Propaganda, protest, Republican, Schools, Sexism, Social Justice, Students, Supreme Court, voting , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

brett-kavanaugh-blasey-ford-1538096510

 

I think I will always associate Brett Kavanaugh with the taste of vomit in the back of my throat.

 

I couldn’t watch his sham of a confirmation hearing without my gag reflex going into overdrive.

 

Here was one of the most privileged of people on the planet alternatively weeping and raging that he was being denied his due.

 

Here was a man bemoaning that no matter what happened, his reputation forever would be ruined, but who likewise refused to call for an investigation to exonerate himself.

 

At least three separate women have accused him of sexual assault, yet Congressional Republicans are still planning to ram through his nomination to the Supreme Court – a lifetime appointment where he will almost certainly be the tie breaking vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

 

How fitting.

 

What perfect symmetry.

 

You couldn’t have planned it any more poetically.

 

A man accused of multiple attempted rapes who is doing everything in his power to make abortion illegal.

 

An overgrown frat boy crying into his beer that we can’t take away his God given right to take away women’s rights.

 

A confederacy of almost exclusively male lawmakers ready to discount women’s reports of violence so that they can limit women’s freedom to make decisions about their own bodies.

 

If there is one good thing to come from this farce, it is the spotlight it has shown on the relationship between rape and the movement to recriminalize abortion.

 

These two things are essentially intertwined.

 

On the one hand, we have sexual intercourse carried out under threat of violence, sex without consent or in direct violation of consent – a crime invariably perpetrated by men on women.

 

On the other hand, we have the removal of female consent from the birthing process.

 

They are almost the same thing, or at least two sides of the same coin.

 

In both cases, we’re removing or ignoring female permission, agreement, approval, agency. We’re saying it doesn’t matter what the woman wants. It only matters what men or a patriarchal society wants.

 

And the justification is an ancient text – the New Testament – that doesn’t mention abortion once. And the Old Testament actually gives instructions on how to conduct an abortion (Numbers 5:11-31).

 

Not that it really should matter. The United States is not a theocracy.

 

But it IS a patriarchy.

 

That’s what this is – an attempt by the most insecure, power hungry men to control women.

 

It is about keeping and strengthening a caste system where men are allowed to be fully realized people and women are allowed only secondary status.

 

It is about dehumanization clothed in piety and false morality.

 

All those people crying for the lost lives of a cluster of cells in female uteruses care not a wit about the thousands of women who will die from unsafe abortions once safe procedures become unlawful.

 

We’ve been here before. Abortion was illegal in the US from the early 1800s until 1973, and we know what will happen. There is actual history on this – back alley procedures conducted by quacks using sharp implements to pierce the womb – and there is no reason to think it won’t repeat itself.

 

Changing the law won’t stop abortions. It will just make them unsafe for everyone except rich women who can afford doctors willing to take a chance on going to jail for a big payday.

 

If these people really wanted to stop abortions, they’d support handing out free contraception. They’d turn every orphanage into a palace. They’d each adopt as many children as they could. They’d make neonatal care free, expand services to help women raise children, increase maternity leave, pay for free childcare, expand education funding.

 

But they don’t do any of that because despite their crocodile tears, their objection has nothing to do with unborn children.

 

It has to do with mature women making decisions for themselves. It has to do with conceptualizing them as people equal to men and with minds capable of consent.

 

It’s about allowing women the right to choose – choose whom to have sex with and what exactly the consequences of that sex will or will not be.

 

I am so thankful that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward with her testimony. What bravery! What grace under pressure!

 

To be able to share with an entire nation her personal trauma at the hands of Kavanaugh. Such courage boggles the mind almost as much as those who refuse to accept her story as genuine.

 

They say that this is political. That it’s a hit job. Yet they pound their fists onto their ears to drown out Kavanaugh’s words in self-defense where he makes it entirely clear how partisan he is and will be once he takes the bench:

 

“This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election. Fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons. And millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.”

 

These are not the words of a fair arbitrator. They are the ravings of someone with an axe to grind.

 

But they do well to point out the elephant in the room – Donald Trump.

 

The man who nominated Kavanaugh has had at least 19 women accuse him of sexual assault. He even admitted to it on video in the infamous Access Hollywood tape.

 

Yet a minority of Americans elected him President through a legislative loophole kept open by centuries of neglect, apathy and moneyed interest.

 

I don’t know how this all will end. The FBI will conduct a limited investigation this week – probably stymied as much as possible by the Trump administration.

 

But the road that lead us here is achingly clear.

 

This is a tantrum of the patriarchy.

 

It is the weakest, most twisted men and their Stockholm syndrome suffering accomplices.

 

It is not about defining when life begins.

 

It’s about defining who gets to count as fully human – who gets the freedom to choose.

 

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

WANT A SIGNED COPY?

Click here to order one directly from me to your door!

book-4