6 min readThis Week in the Laboratories of Democracy
(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to This Post)
Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done and where a cold coyote calls.
We begin in West Virginia. Like the people in all of the states that long ago sold their souls to the extraction industries, West Virginians have sought to buy their souls back through elections, but the state’s owners always manage to block the sale. Usually they do this by protecting their fundraising advantages, which are already considerable. (This was why, historically, Montana had some of the toughest anti-corporate campaign-finance laws in the country—until Citizens United blew the whole damn thing up. Thanks again, Justice Anthony Kennedy.) Similar shenanigans are now afoot in West Virginia. From Mountain State Spotlight:
West Virginia lawmakers passed legislation this year redacting employer information from registered political donations more than $250. Previously, if a dozen employees of “Rick’s Pork” donated to politicians who later awarded a lucrative bacon contract to the business, each donation would list the company. Under the new law, the public would only know that the donations came from various butchers.
Supporters argue that they are making the change to address a rise in political violence and harassment. In debate, they’ve told anecdotes of harassment they’ve received or heard about from others. “We’re not hiding anything,” said Sen. Mike Azinger, a Republican from Wood County and the bill’s lead sponsor, adding that the internet makes it much easier for people to find and misuse personal information. “We’re trying to protect employers from harassment that happens in horrible ways, often that 30 years ago wasn’t even contemplated,” he said.
Well, this sounds like predominantly bullshit, and it’s completely off-key with West Virginia’s history. After all, 105 years ago, at Blair Mountain, the last serious gun battle between Americans broke out in Logan County. But the age-old effort to keep West Virginia an oligarch’s playground goes on and on.
The public would be able to see that consultants are funding a particular politician, but not that they work for a pharmaceutical or power company. “I don’t think it’s necessary to have that information of where they work,” said Del. Mike Hornby, R-Berkeley, during a committee meeting last month while debating a House version of the new law. The legislation has been passed by wide margins in both the Senate and House and was signed by the governor. It takes effect after the general election later this year.
Del. Sean Hornbuckle, D-Cabell, said, “This is going to allow, again, yet more money to be put into politics and make it harder for it to be traced.”
You don’t say.
We move along to Tennessee, where a state legislator decided to throw long in his assault on reproductive rights. Not even the Tennessee legislature was willing to catch the pass. From the Nashville Banner:
Last week, a bill by [Senator Mark] Pody and Rep. Jody Barrett (R-Dickson) was amended by Barrett to include that “all preborn children should be protected with the same criminal and civil laws protecting the lives of born persons by repealing provisions that permit prenatal homicide and assault.” Practically, that would mean that someone who terminated a pregnancy—which is already broadly banned under Tennessee’s punitive abortion ban that went into effect shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022—could face the death penalty if they were convicted of “prenatal homicide.”
It looks as though Barrett submarined his cosponsor, Pody, with this amendment. It caused Pody to pull the plug not only on the amendment but also on the bill itself.
“I am a pro-life individual, so I don’t want to back down from that position in any way,” Pody told the Banner. “But in this case, this happens to be an amendment that came from the House; I didn’t write this amendment. … So my options are, is this an amendment that I would run, that I feel like would pass in the Senate, and at this point, based on the conversations I’ve had with my colleagues, I just don’t have the votes to pass it,” Pody explained.
It will be back, and not just in Tennessee either. You can bank on that.
We journey north to Wisconsin, where the town of Verona received a swift kick in the ass. From our friends at Bolts:
At the meeting where the Verona Common Council voted on the city’s contract with Flock Safety to operate the cameras, community members testified that the safety benefits of the cameras were not worth the risk. But in the months after the city chose to end its agreement with Flock, Mayor Luke Diaz noticed that the cameras were still up. City officials reached out to Flock to demand they take down the three cameras placed around the small town, a suburb of the state capital of Madison. But, Diaz told Bolts, the company effectively ignored their request, while at the same time a sales team contacted them to try and sell them a new contract. “They didn’t have enough time to send a technician out here for the cameras, but they did have sales people reaching back out to us,” Diaz said. … “The fact that they didn’t take the cameras down shows that we are the product,” Diaz said. “They were never really selling to us in the first place. What they are doing is selling to much bigger agencies the ability to spy on a ton of people.”
Diaz points out that there are larger forces at work in Verona, a suburb along Route 18 southwest of Madison, where over 16,000 people live. He’s right, too.
Since its founding in 2017, the Atlanta-based Flock Safety has seen a massive growth in its network of surveillance cameras in Wisconsin and across the country. According to the company’s own estimates, more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide now contract with Flock for its searchable camera network, which uses AI technology to read license plates and identify other vehicle features—such as make, model, color, and even minor details like dents and bumper stickers.
But this proliferation has been met with widespread outcry by residents and advocates fearful of how the footage and precise geolocation capabilities could be used—especially by the federal government. Verona’s success in ending its contract with Flock coincided with a larger push by activists to retire the cameras to ensure federal immigration authorities cannot access its data to track people amid President Donald Trump’s escalation of immigration raids—something they fear is already happening. Cities from Denver to Evanston, Illinois, have ended their contracts in the last year, while continued revelations about how police use the company’s network has ignited heated debates in other cities that are reconsidering the surveillance technology.
“The ability to spy on us is being sold to much bigger players, and to me, that’s another indication of the cameras need to come down,” Diaz said. “The whole point of Flock is that it’s a network, and the more people you have in the network, the more people you have accessing and using it, the stronger it gets.”
More and more, I’m beginning to think that Philip K. Dick should be mandatory reading in all political-science curricula.
And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, whence Blog Official Chula nova instructor Friedman of the Algarve brings us the tale of civilized political rhetoric. From KFOR4:
Experts say scammers increasingly target vacant homes listed for sale online, reposting them as fake rental listings and pressuring would-be tenants to send deposits or personal information before realizing the property is not actually available to rent. “You get out of—the f***—out of the property, or someone put a trigger on your forehead now,” the man behind the listing said during a phone call with News 4. “If you like your life you leave the property,” the man added. The man identified himself as “George” when communicating with News 4 about the property.
I hope this George character at least won the set of steak knives.
This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.
