Gaza, North Carolina, Wisconsin: 3 Stories You Should Read 11/6/2018

December 6, 2018 Confluence

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In the category of: The even darker side of partisanship.

Wisconsin Republicans are trying to erase their 2018 loss

Earlier this week, the Republican-held state legislature passed a series of measures aimed at tying the hands of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general. Among them, from CNN’s report:

“Wisconsin is now expected to reduce its number of early voting days, restrict gubernatorial influence over a powerful economic agency [Democratic Gov-elect Tony] Evers sought to disband, and require legislative backing for certain decisions traditionally made by the attorney general and governor — a move that would likely block [Democratic Attorney General-Elect John] Kaul from pulling the state out of a federal lawsuit against Obamacare. The legislature will also be able to hire its own lawyers to defend state law in court, diminishing the attorney general’s power.”

Make no mistake about what’s happening here: Republicans in Wisconsin are trying to undo the results of the 2018 election. They don’t like the idea of Democrats being given the same power over the state they enjoyed when they won the governorship and the attorney general’s office so they are acting in a lame-duck session to take away those powers.

It’s literally the opposite of the democratic process.

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In the category of: Makes perfect obvious sense to me.

Nancy Pelosi On North Carolina Election Fraud: We Can Refuse To Seat That Congressman

Any newly elected House member can object to the swearing-in of Republican Mark Harris amid his election scandal.

WASHINGTON ― House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that election officials in North Carolina have a few options for responding to what appears to be an egregious case of election fraud in the state’s 9th Congressional District.

Members of Congress have an option, too: They can refuse to seat the current leader of the race, Republican Mark Harris.

“The House still retains the right to decide who is seated. That is one of the powers of the House of Representatives,” Pelosi told reporters. “Any member-elect can object to the seating and swearing-in of another member-elect. We’ll see how that goes.”

Pelosi is referring to the scandal unfolding in two North Carolina counties where investigators are trying to figure out whether there’s a nefarious reason so many absentee ballots were never mailed back. In Bladen County, which has a large black population, 40 percent of absentee ballots were never returned. A whopping 62 percent of absentee ballots were not mailed back in nearby Robeson County, which has a Native American majority.

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In the category of: Things that work.

We Shouldn’t Lie to Ourselves: Nonviolent Resistance Is Alive and Powerful in Gaza

It’s time for the international community to recognize and support it.

For the people of Gaza, this suggests that once Gaza takes the initiative to abide by international demands for tranquility, the sense of urgency within the Israeli and international communities—the commitment to take further actions that permanently de-escalate the situation and assuage the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Gaza—disappears completely. In the quiet that follows, the Gazans’ cries for rescue fall on deaf ears.

The international community justifies its idleness during these periods by maintaining a strict no-contact policy towards the authorities in Gaza. “We can’t talk to Hamas,” the Europeans and Americans insist. But reality reveals the opposite: they obviously can and do talk to Hamas, but only when a war or an armed escalation is taking place, or when Hamas captures Israeli soldiers. Then the international community hastens to Gaza, one after the other, to restore stability.

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