Last month the good folks of Louisiana elected Republican Jeff Landry to be their next governor. Landry is a MAGA conservative and Trump admirer, with all the right-wing baggage that goes along with that. But here's something I didn't know. Apparently Landry is at war with his state's biggest city, New Orleans:
He has threatened to withhold state funding for the city’s water infrastructure until the DA agrees to prosecute women who violate the state’s abortion ban by seeking the procedure.
There was a time when Republicans almost went berserk if you suggested they wanted to prosecute women who got abortions. Slander! They wanted to go after doctors and clinics but not the women themselves, who were victims almost as much as the aborted fetuses. How dare we liberals misrepresent them so deceitfully?
But guess what? This is what they wanted to do all along. They were just afraid to say it during the period when they were trying to seem sort of moderate and non-scary. Now that they've finally gotten the power they wanted, however, there's no need for the charade any longer.
Conservatives are the real victim here.
They're basically Hamas.
"Conservatives are the real victims here."
Well, recent elections would seem to bear that out!
They deserve revenge!
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Yep, although in this case it's also part of that ALEC push to strip as much jurisdiction as possible from cities in Republican-controlled states. That Texas law is basically their ideal: cities stripped down to the point where they're basically just administrators and parking ticket enforcers, with no ability to regulate safety or the environment for their inhabitants.
This sounds right. And New Orleans is the city the rest of Louisiana loves to hate, so it won't have much support on this.
Trumpism-- it's all about the high-handed autocratic peremptory rule that most of the country hasn't seen since we kissed the 19th century goodbye.
I'm really waiting for these guys to fully realize that cities and counties are, in many states, pure administrative units that can be created or destroyed via the lawmaking process.
I'm frankly surprised Texas hasn't appointed Moffs to directly govern Austin and Houston already.
What you say about counties etc being administrative subdivisions and creations of the law is true, but it threatens a serious wingnut sacred cow. All those "constitutional sheriffs" are supposed to derive their supreme legitimacy-- a legitimacy so perfect it's even *more* legitimate than any other position in state or federal government and certainly more legitimate than any damn old constitution-- because they're directly elected at the most fundamental, bedrock natural constituency level.
Seems like a contradiction there. Calling John Eastman!
Contradictions are a problem only for rational people, so they will not have any problem that.
Red states aren’t going to dissolve cities anytime soon. If they did, state legislatures would have to actually do real work. Cities can’t just kick everything down the road forever: people actually notice if the trash contractor hasn’t had their contract renewed, or if the water stops running because a pipe burst, or if a piece of land is having its building permit held up for decades. States would need to replicate every department of the city if those cities are to still offer the panoply of services that everyone has expected from them for the last century. (I am aware of a handful of cities that contract everything out, like Sandy Springs, GA. But you still need administrators to oversee the contracts. And not everything can be contracted out: like “do we want a new zoning update for this piece of land?” or “should we host a convention?” Even places like Sandy Springs have local councils making decisions like that.)
They did exactly that to some place in Michigan.
It was something to the effect that Republicans didn't like the successful Democratic administration, found the most feeble pretext to dis-incorporate the city and run it by a viceroy who immediately larded up the town with an incredible debt they couldn't pay back and defaulted on it, the Republicans then decided they didn't want anything to do with this fiscally irresponsible city, recalled their viceroy and sternly instructed the hapless to get it's own mess in order.
Ok. Was this an internationally-recognized successful place, like Austin or Houston, and not just some random place doing “well”under a Democrat but doing terrible compared to other places of equal size? Cause I can’t imagine a state govt doing that to a city that multinational businesses actually depend on getting services from, like water, trash, building permits, etc. And the original post was about Texas doing it to successful places that just happen to be run by Democrats, not just state legislatures ganging up on dying or stagnant places and kicking those when they’re down.
Otherwise, I agree with you: Michigan also basically does the same thing to Detroit, Flint, etc every so often - dissolves its school board or whatever and then manages it directly through an appointee and then discovers it can’t fix anything either and it’s not as much fun actually running a failing local govt as much as it is to laugh at it from afar… and quietly hands it back to locals after a few years. But very few multinational businesses are depending on the cities of Detroit, Flint, etc for anything. Maybe the car industry (which goes through its own periodic bankruptcies needing govt bailouts) and Delta (although they depend solely on the airport which I think is run by the county)?
To be more precise, I can imagine Texas or another red state doing this, rapidly discovering it’s not fun to adjudicate every zoning change or schedule every utility repair or renew every contracted service, especially with a legislature that famously only meets once every 2 years for a few weeks, and then quietly handing it back to the county or some newly created local entity (let’s call it a municipality!) later on. Like every other attempt any state blue or red has had with dissolving local govt without a realistic idea of how to deal forever with day to day issues local govt has evolved to deal with. Running local govt is nowhere as much fun as state or federal govt, and fcking that up is the most likely to get middle and upper class people out with pitchforks looking for you.
The actual name of the place in Michigan I am trying to remember continues to escape me, and also escapes Duck Duck Go, but I did come across this,
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/03/rick-snyder-plan-is-it-legal-for-michigan-and-other-states-to-take-over-local-governments.html
Something we never think about, but apparently not that uncommon.
Flint. Snyder's appointed gauleiter decided to draw the city's water from a different source for money reasons, iirc, and because of the new water's different composition, it took off deposits on the pipe walls that had kept flowing water out of contact with the actual pipe. Most of the system was old and a lot of the pipes were lead, which the new water picked up and distributed to residents as a kind of Snyder bonus.
If you remember the Flint lead scandal, this is approximately the backstory.
Benton Harbor, MI is the town you are trying to remember.
That may be it. Trying to look it up there seem to be several places in Michigan that have flirted with discorporation in the recent past.
That was an appropriate position at the time. But women have had more than a year to moderate their previous promiscuous lifestyles in the knowledge they can no longer kill the tiny humans growing inside them. God is not mocked. If a woman continues to defy His will, His agents here on earth have a duty to punish her.
I hope you forgot the "/snark" tag.....
It is obvious enough that it is snark.
It is, but it’s so spot on that it’s hard to tell.
You sound like you're gunning for the Speaker of the House job. 😉
This is a quote from the trial of Joan of Arc, right?
Louisiana governor wants to see his state flip blue in 2024.
Political tribalism is so hardwired now in places like Louisiana that there's basically nothing a politician with an R next to their name can do that will turn off their base voters as long as they toss them the red meat like this.
That is certainly true, but as I mentioned back when Roe v Wade was overturned, there are certain drivers of high turnout that favor Democrats. This is one of them. Since the Jackson Health decision, Democrats have been winning the vast majority of contests, even in very red districts.
Never mind that. Let's talk instead about all those shrill, wild-eyed, shrill people who said the GOP would do...well, this. They were all entirely overwrought, weren't they?
👍👍👍👍👍
To be fair, I think a lot of people underestimate the righteous zeal of the anti-abortion wing of the GOP. On the surface, anyone with a brain could guess exactly how the repeal of Roe would turn out - with voters putting protections into their state constitutions and such. Pissed off women and the men who love/respect them are a potent force at the ballot box. But they have to overcome the gerrymandering and urban/rural divide on the issue that puts more conservatives in seats of power at the state level.
Finding ways to get around the voters is the new game, which started when Trump lost.
As I watched Christian right-leadership strive to be the most 'righteous', I argued with my moderate republican friends that eventually they would prosecute women, stop them at the borders of states, invade their medical lives and they would say 'naw'....once the rats start pushing that bar for the dopamine hit from self-righteous godliness (small-g), one needs bigger and bigger doses.
What do these fash you associate with have to say these days?
Well, its a hard conversation to have these days. Most mod republicans are now 'independents'. Or they ignore or don't believe it is going to happen.
My best friend is a very conservative Evangelical Christian. In 2016, and again in 2020, he voted for some 3rd-party presidential candidate who had no chance. He reasoned that no Republican could vote for Hillary/Biden, and no Christian could vote for Trump.
I don't share his beliefs, but he is at least sincere.
Well, I realize it's horrible to say, but: The earlier formulations of holding only the doctors accountable for performing "murderous" abortions was a statement that the woman had no agency, no role, not even when she requested the procedure. Or maybe that she could not have possibly "requested" the procedure!
In other words, women were as young children, or imbeciles. Mere victims! Not responsible!
On the other hand, jailing and punishing women should get us voters even more angry than the assault on the medical profession. So that's another step forward. You catch the car, you own it. Buh-bye, Republicans.
Going after doctors sounded better than going after women. It was Trump talking about "punishing women" who get abortions that made it ok to talk about in public.
This will not end well for the GOP and most of them know it, the super far right ones don't care because they're on a mission from god.
It’s not necessarily inconsistent to hold a highly trained professional licensed by the state to a different standard than a common citizen.
why does it always seem to be men who want to get into women's business....We do very well on our own. It's interesting that these same men, don't want women to have abortions but also deny health care, day care, food and housing for these children that they "seem" to want. Surprise, it takes a man and a woman to create this being. What is wrong with this picture?
As I think Barney Frank said, republicans are only pro-life until birth. And republicans believe that only men have the ideas.
The cruelty is the whole point. As many have been noting over the last several years. If I subscribed to Freudian-style theories, I'd blame "womb envy."
The statistics show that anti-abortion sentiment is evenly distributed between men and women. But men tend to be in the positions of power to move it forward.
This has been my observation.
There was an abortion clinic not far from where I live and until recently I would frequently see small groups of anti-abortion protesters outside. I noticed two thing about them:
-They were around 90 percent male.
-They were at least 80 percent well past normal child-bearing age.
Why don't we just fire everyone in government at every level, and just hire every former NFL player to fill all those spots. That'll fix things.
File under gambling in Casablanca.
As Republicans discover that their position on abortion is way out of step with the average voter (even their own voters), they won't ditch their position to appeal to more people, they'll just ditch democracy.
They already ditched democracy by supporting Trump.
If he actually wins, they will find that they also don't like the result, but it will be too late to change it.
True, but unnecessary in this case. We're talking about Louisiana. The voter backlash to this policy will be small enough that it won't be anything like a real threat to the governor's electoral prospects, no more than it would in any other state of the Deep South.
"until the DA agrees to prosecute women who violate the state’s abortion ban by seeking the procedure."
I'm unclear on what this even means. Since the abortions are not being performed in Louisiana, these women must be traveling out of state. Are the New Orleans police and DA supposed to be tracking all the women of the city to make sure they aren't going out of state for an abortion? I'm sure those resources could be better used for other things in NO.
Don't have any details so I'm just guessing, but before Roe, back-alley providers were where women had to go in most states; now that LA has outlawed abortions, the back alleys might be opening up again because legal abortions are a long way away if you live in NO. Or, because most early-term abortions now are done by medication, the state may want DAs to track and charge anybody involved in providing or using the meds. All of them could be vulnerable to conspiracy charges too. Or, as you say, anyone involved in taking a woman out of state for an abortion, who could likewise be exposed to conspiracy charges.
Of course there are plenty of better ways to use the money and personpower. Pre-emption, aka big-footing by the state, is there to take away the option of deciding, so the governor's voters can feel all nice and self-righteous and superior.
I think the Washington Post reporter just got this wrong. Coverage elsewhere (nola.com, wwltv.com) says nothing about prosecuting women. In 2022, an antiabortion bill in the Louisiana state legislature included a provision that would have made a woman who had an abortion guilty of murder, but the bill was amended to eliminate that provision. Even among Republicans elected to the Louisiana state legislature, the idea that a fetus is a person is a minority position.
If you consider legalized abortion to be mass-murder as many of these folks sincerely do, then the ends can justify the means. I mean, what would you do to stop mass murder, you know? There will almost certainly be more and more efforts along these lines.
As such, the only way for people like me (and apparently the vast majority of the commentators here) who favor legalized abortion is to outvote those who oppose it. It's political war.
Prosecuting women who get abortions and anyone who helps them in anyway is the only logical response if you think abortion is murder, which is what anti abortion people are always claiming. In fact, it is a premeditated conspiracy to commit murder which is a capital offense in many jurisdictions. I sincerely hope that every GOP politician adopts that position because I'm sure it's a big winner with voters.
Make Trump own this. His social media this year:
Get Out and Vote for Jeff Landry for Governor tomorrow—He has my Complete and Total Endorsement!
LOUISIANA, VOTE BIG FOR JEFF LANDRY TODAY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
A very BIG VOTE in the GREAT STATE OF LOUISIANA for A.G. Jeff Landry, who will now become the Governor. Despite many people running, Jeff was easily able to get a majority, meaning that there will be NO RUNOFF. This is an amazing victory for a man who will be a truly GREAT GOVERNOR. Congratulations to all! DONALD J. TRUMP
With my strong Endorsement, Jeff Landry made history by flipping the seat of Louisiana’s 2-term Democrat Governor without a runoff — Jeff will be a great Governor!
Republicans lie
Who knew?