U.S. Politics

[Rick Plant]

Patrick De Haan @GasBuddyGuy

Today, Americans will be spending ~$115 million less on gasoline than we did 24 days ago. #GasPrices have fallen an average of 30c/gal since then.

Yesterday's 2.6c/gal decline in the national average tied for the FOURTH largest single day drop in the last decade, just after seeing the second largest single day drop the day before. National average now $4.722/gal, down 11 cents in a week.

https://twitter.com/GasBuddyGuy/status/1545389165826678787


After hitting all-time highs, gas prices are finally coming back down

Oil prices are tumbling amid fears of a global recession.

Fears of a global economic slowdown have sent oil prices tumbling recently, less than a month after the national average price of gas in the U.S. reached $5 a gallon for the first time.

Since they hit the milestone the week of June 13, average weekly gas prices have fallen to about $4.75, according to AAA.

The price of worldwide benchmark Brent crude oil fell to about $104 a barrel Thursday, down from nearly $115 last week and well off the highs of nearly $140 briefly reached in March.

Central banks around the world, led by the U.S. Federal Reserve, have been seeking to curb inflation by aggressively raising interest rates. Monetary policy officials hope the higher rates will help cool demand by making it more expensive to borrow money — all while avoiding a recession, an outcome observers say is far from guaranteed.

"All this talk of [higher] interest rates and recession — that's fear, the oil market is reacting on fear," AAA.com spokesperson Andrew Gross said. "It's kind of like the stock market: You have these incredible swings, when it sees rising rates or talk of recession, a global recession, that means an economic slowdown, which means less oil is being consumed. That's bad news for the oil industry. And that’s why prices have been dropping.”

Some analysts expect prices to fall further. Patrick De Haan, a vice president at the gasoline price tracking website GasBuddy.com, tweeted Thursday that recent oil price plunges could bring gasoline prices down to as low as $4.50 per gallon.

Oil industry analyst Andy Lipow said in a note to clients this week that gas prices could go even lower, at the cost of an overall economic slowdown. That's assuming a hurricane doesn’t affect oil markets, he said.

"I have been through six oil price crashes during my career in the oil industry, a recession could trigger a seventh," he wrote.

Because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, oil traders aren’t accessing Russian oil supplies, creating a shortage that has helped push prices higher this year. A recession, Lipow said, could reverse the trend.

"The consumer would get cheaper gasoline at the expense of a slowing economy," Lipow said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/hitting-time-highs-gas-prices-are-finally-coming-back-rcna37107


After the Biden and Bezos war of words, gas prices really are coming back down to earth

After hovering near the $5 mark for a while, the average price of gas could fall to $4 per gallon by mid-August, analysts predict.

Gas prices have been retreating from their highs last month for a couple of weeks now. AAA reports the average price per gallon currently stands at $4.75 nationwide, a 16-cent drop from a month ago. Wednesday’s drop of 2.8 cents per gallon was the second largest single-day drop in the last decade.

The decline comes on the heels of a Twitter feud between Jeff Bezos and President Joe Biden. Four days ago, the Amazon founder slammed Biden for his tweet calling on gas companies to lower prices at the pump.

That spat, of course, wasn’t the catalyst for the dip in prices. Nor was Biden’s tweet, which read, “My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.”

Patrick De Haan, an analyst with GasBuddy, said Wednesday he expects most stations will see drops of one to two cents per gallon every couple of days for the next two to three weeks, possibly longer. If “things do hold steady,” he says, “the national average could drop to $4-$4.25/gal by mid-August.”

As of Thursday morning, GasBuddy found over 2,500 stations that were already charging less than $4 per gallon, a figure which could grow exponentially in the coming days.

The wild card, of course, is oil prices. Those have been falling fairly steadily since reaching recent peaks on June 8. On Wednesday, the price of WTI Crude fell below $100 for a brief period, though it has jumped back above that level today.

A hurricane in the Gulf or a sharp rise in oil prices tied to the stock market’s volatility could endanger the ongoing decline of the price at the pump. And another surge in demand could endanger the price drop. (July, says AAA, is typically the heaviest month for demand.)

If those obstacles are avoided, though, things could be a bit more manageable this fall, though they’ll still be higher than last year’s low- to mid-$3 range. DeHaan says stations in several states, including South Carolina, Georgia and Texas, could see prices fall below $4. (Indeed, some stations in those states are already below that point. At least one location in South Carolina is currently charging $3.80 per gallon.) And California will likely fall back under $6 per gallon, with some stations in that state dropping below $5 per gallon.

AFP

[Rick Plant]

Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio who claims to be a big "pro life" and "family values man" wrote this cruel and evil bill. He is up for re-election this year.

"In Rubio’s bill, when someone dies before reaching old age, all of the parental benefits they received during their life are deemed overpayments and the SSA makes their estate pay them back.”

Wow.

Same guy who wants to eliminate Social Security and Medicare for seniors. 






Late last month, Marco Rubio released what he described as a “pro-family framework following the Dobbs decision.” The actual content of the framework is recycled policies Rubio put out many years ago, but they perhaps deserve a second look, especially in light of Rubio’s new framing of them as pro-life benefits.

The Rubio framework has two main welfare benefits in it, the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and a parental leave program, which I will discuss in order below.

Child Tax Credit

Unlike the proposed Biden CTC or the child benefit proposed by Members Tlaib and Jones, the Rubio CTC is specifically designed to exclude poor families from the full CTC benefit and to ensure that the poorest families receive nothing at all from the program.

Rubio accomplishes this by making his CTC phase in based on family income, meaning that the more money you earn, the more CTC benefits you receive, up to a certain point. Because of this phase-in, new parents earning less than $29,412 per year are not eligible for the full $4,500 benefit and new parents with no earnings are eligible for absolutely nothing.

It is hard to understand how creating a child benefit that excludes the most desperate families is meant to be a “pro-life benefit” aimed at helping people who, post-Dobbs, are unable to receive abortion services. Abortion is most prevalent among young women with very low or no earnings, including many young women who are still in education. To these women, Rubio offers little to nothing. As is typical with supposedly pro-family Republicans, Rubio’s desire to crush the poor far exceeds any supposed interest he has in an “expansive” pro-life politics.

Parental Leave

Rubio’s parental leave program provides 3 months of leave benefits for new parents with the catch that any parent that claims them will have to undergo a reduction in their Social Security old-age benefits to offset what they received for parental leave. Specifically, the Rubio bill states that a parental leave beneficiary will, at retirement, be required to choose between paying those benefits back by having their Social Security check docked for 60 months or paying those benefits back by having every Social Security check docked until they die.

Requiring parents to pay back their leave benefits through lower old-age pension payments is bizarre for a lot of reasons. The benefits in question would cost very little and could almost certainly be funded by increasing the payroll tax by 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points. Is Rubio really so afraid of such a tiny tax bump that he’d rather concoct a complicated clawback scheme that reduces parental retirement income in direct proportion to the number of children a person has?

In 2014, Rubio used to talk a lot about something he called the “parent tax penalty,” which he said justified the creation of family welfare benefits:

It would also take aim at another pernicious distortion—the parent tax penalty—that is more prevalent, if less understood, even by its victims.

Today, parents are, in effect, double charged for the federal senior entitlement programs. They of course pay payroll taxes, like everyone else. But unlike adults without children, they also shoulder the financial burden of raising the next generation of taxpayers, who will grow up to fund the Social Security and Medicare benefits of all future seniors.

The “parent tax penalty” framing of this is a bit goofy, but the underlying idea here is obviously correct. Old-age benefits like Social Security and Medicare are kept afloat by the creation of future generations of workers, i.e. by having and raising children. This means that everyone who uses those programs, including those that never have children, benefit from the costs parents undertake to raise children. It stands to reason, then, that at least some of the costs of raising children should be socialized by the creation of benefit programs, like parental leave, that we all pay into.

But now eight years later, Rubio is proposing a parental leave program that only parents pay into and in which parental payments are literally assessed as reductions in old-age benefits! The very same old-age benefits that parents make possible for everyone by having and raising children are the ones Rubio wants parents, but not non-parents, to forego in order to finance parental leave. He is literally proposing a “parent tax penalty” collected through the old-age benefit system!

The funding mechanism for Rubio’s parental leave program has gotten the most attention, but there are other aspects of it that are even more odious and obviously at odds with the “pro-life” branding he’s now attached to it. Most glaringly, Rubio’s parental leave program excludes from eligibility anyone who has worked for less than two years. Parents who are still in education or just joined the workforce, which also describes many people who have abortions, will get absolutely no money from this program.

Lastly, buried in the bill text is another curious detail that so far nobody has noticed. In order for Rubio’s proposal to truly be budget-neutral, he needs the Social Security Administration (SSA) to be able to recover all of the parental leave benefits it pays out. For people who live long enough to claim Social Security, this is easy enough: the SSA recovers the leave benefits by docking their Social Security checks.

But what about people who die before they retire? How do you get the money back from them? In Rubio’s bill, when someone dies before reaching old age, all of the parental benefits they received during their life are deemed overpayments and the SSA makes their estate pay them back. So when mom or dad tragically dies a few years after having their third kid, the surviving spouse will have to send a big fat check to the SSA.

To me, this seems cruel.

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2022/07/07/in-rubios-plan-your-estate-must-repay-your-parental-leave-benefits-if-you-die-early/


Rubio Parental Leave Proposal Would Weaken Social Security

In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Senator Marco Rubio has renewed his deeply flawed proposal that would force parents to choose between the paid leave they need to care for new babies and their future Social Security benefits. That proposal, which he and Senator Mitt Romney originally introduced in 2019, would undercut Social Security’s benefits and structure, weakening the retirement security it offers workers. The United States needs paid leave, but it shouldn’t be financed by cutting Social Security benefits.

Under the Rubio proposal, parents opting for parental leave would face permanent cuts to their Social Security retirement benefits that ultimately would far exceed their parental leave benefits. The cuts would amount to their parental leave benefits plus decades of interest, as well as an additional reduction to cover the cost of the parental benefits provided to other parents who die or become disabled before they reach retirement and can’t repay their own leave benefits.

For example, parents with moderate incomes would receive about $5,300 in benefits on average for each three months of parental leave they take — but would then lose about $15,100 in lifetime retirement benefits (measured in 2018 dollars) for those three months of leave, according to the Urban Institute.

All told, this amounts to losing about 3 to 4 percent of lifetime Social Security retirement benefits for each three months of leave. So parents who take three periods of parental leave (after three births or adoptions) would lose roughly one-tenth of their lifetime Social Security retirement benefits.



The proposal would treat parental leave benefits like loans that accrue interest. For a typical worker who has her first child at age 27 and claims Social Security retirement benefits at the full retirement age of 67, interest would accrue for 40 years. Over such a long period, the amount of interest would ultimately exceed the amount of the benefit; in fact, the Urban Institute estimates that leave-takers would eventually pay back nearly four times as much as they received in leave benefits, on average. These cuts would weaken retirement security and impose the greatest hardship on women and workers of color, as they already face less secure retirement than others.

Using Social Security partly as a piggy bank rather than an insurance policy is central to the design of the Rubio proposal. Carrie Lukas, president of the Independent Women’s Forum — which first developed this approach — has written that getting workers to see Social Security as assets “to be used now or at retirement” is a first step toward partially privatizing Social Security.

At a time when many workers face shaky finances in retirement, policymakers shouldn’t weaken Social Security, which is most workers’ only source of guaranteed retirement income. Policymakers can provide paid leave without asking parents to sacrifice some of their retirement security. In fact, that’s what every existing state program does, by financing benefits with modest payroll tax contributions. It’s also what the overwhelming majority of workers prefer: when polled about the best funding mechanism for a national paid family and medical leave policy, just 3 percent of voters preferred drawing from the Social Security trust funds.

Parents should never be forced to choose between the paid leave they need and their hard-earned retirement security. Instead, we need a national, comprehensive paid family leave policy that is responsibly financed.

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/rubio-parental-leave-proposal-would-weaken-social-security

[Rick Plant]

Radical right wing Republicans on the courts are doing everything possible to make it harder for Americans to vote as they push insane conspiracy theories to justify their unconstitutional decisions.

We now just received an unconstitutional and insane ruling from the right wing radical Wisconsin state Supreme Court calling official election drop boxes "illegal" while calling blue U.S mail boxes "legal" as both are official mail boxes.     

So, what we have is an official election ballot drop box that these radical right wing extremists are falsely calling "illegal". These ballot drop boxes are a mail box for ballots only, where a voter can drop their absentee ballot inside to be collected by county clerk election officials. There is nothing illegal about that at all. Any Green, Independent, Democrat, or Republican voter can drop their absentee ballot inside to be collected. It makes it convenient for the voter to mail their ballot in an official election ballot drop box, instead of having to drop it in a blue mail box which then goes to the post office to be sorted and then sent to the county election site to have the ballot counted.   

These right wing radicals voted that the election ballot drop box is "illegal", but get this, it's perfectly ok to drop your ballot inside of a blue U.S. Mail mail box to be collected by a mail carrier.

What is the difference? Absolutely nothing. A person is still dropping their ballot inside a mail box to be collected, except the election ballot drop box is a mail box for ballots only, instead of a blue mail box that has other letters in the U.S. Mail.

So, how can an election ballot drop box be deemed "illegal" by the radical right wing Wisconsin Supreme Court and a U.S. Mail box be deemed perfectly ok? It's the same thing except the ballot drop box is a ballot mail box only.

This is just another attempt by radical right wing Republicans to disenfranchise voters and to push bogus election fraud conspiracies to favor the Republicans.

If you remember back in 2020, Trump installed his unqualified stooge Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General. This corrupt crony DeJoy has zero qualifications to hold this position. The only reason he was appointed to this position was that he donated millions of dollars to Trump and the Republican party and would be a "Yes Man" for Trump to help him steal the election.

And a "Yes Man" he was, as DeJoy got right to work dismantling the efficiency of the Post Office. He made drastic cuts on purpose, dismantled sorting machines in major Democratic districts so it would take longer for mail to arrive and be sorted, and ripped up blue mail boxes from the ground in heavy Democratic cities so people had no mail boxes to mail their ballots.         

You remember back in 2020 how long it took to receive mail and how long it took for your package to arrive to its destination. That was all done on purpose by Louis DeJoy trying to steal the election for Criminal Donald.

During the 2020 election we had a pandemic, and it was no secret that Democratic voters were going to vote absentee so they didn't have to risk their health battling a pandemic to wait in line to vote. For years, Republican voters voted absentee and not one of them ever challenged those votes or called them "illegal". But as soon a Democratic voters decided to vote absentee, then Republicans started pushing all these bogus election fraud lies and conspiracies as a ploy to gin up phony controversy to steal the election.           

By targeting heavy Democratic cities and districts by dismantling mail sorting machines, it will take longer for the ballots to arrive at the official county election headquarters to be counted.     

By removing blue mail boxes from major cities, it makes it harder for people to mail their ballots. That's why counties installed official election ballot drop boxes to make it convenient for voters to mail their ballots. But the right wing radicals call those election mail boxes "illegal" and ordered those to be removed.

So, with right wing radical Republicans slowing the mail and making it harder to mail ballots, they are effectively disenfranchising Democratic voters.

So, what does all these right wing shenanigans do? It raises the possibility that ballots won't be counted in time which gives Republicans an advantage while Democrats lose votes that should have been counted. In a close race and in swing districts, those uncounted ballots could be the deciding factor for a Republican win. And that's why these right wingers on state Supreme Courts are disenfranchising Democratic voters to give their own Republican party the edge. We are all supposed to have a free and fair election, but Republicans are doing everything possible to prevent that from happening.

How is that possible, you say?

Since DeJoy slowed the mail in major Democratic districts by dismantling mail sorting machines, it takes longer for mail to be sorted and will take longer for mailed absentee ballot to arrive at the county election precincts to be counted.

Then we witnessed right wing state Supreme Courts change established election laws because of an increased amount of Democratic absentee voting. The new election laws now requires that a ballot must arrive on election day at a certain time or otherwise it's not allowed to be counted. Before, ballots had to be postmarked by election day to be counted. So, with the slow mail taking longer to be handled, sorted, and delivered those Democratic ballots won't arrive in time to be counted before the new imposed deadline. That means thousands of Democratic votes have the chance of being thrown out favoring Republicans. And that's exactly why right wingers changed established election laws and deemed official election ballot drop box "illegal" so Democratic ballots have a good chance of not being counted in time. With the official election ballot drop boxes, the ballots goes right to the county election site to counted. And that's what Republicans don't want, they want Democratic ballots to be in the slow mail having a good chance of not being counted. The GOP wants to control our elections and to cheat Democrats out of votes.       

And mail is slow both ways. Once you mail the ballot, it will take several days for the ballot to arrive to the post office. Then with less sorting machines, it will take longer for the ballot to leave the mail facility. And by the time all the backed up regular mail is included with the ballots to be delivered, we are talking several days both ways which is over 7-10 days. And with thousands of ballots to be sorted in major cities and swing districts, it could take even longer. So a ballot mailed well before the election deadline could still arrive 2 or 3 days after the election, due DeJoy purposely slowing the mail, and it won't be counted because of right wingers on the Courts changing the election laws requiring ballots arrive an hour two after the precinct closes. That's what these right wingers are counting on and It's why they changed laws making it more difficult for people to vote, because they want to control our elections to give themselves the advantage.             

With the official election ballot drop boxes all of that is avoided. The voter drops their ballot inside the box and the official election county clerk collects the ballots each day and before the deadline arrives. There is no slowing of the mail where ballots are in danger of not arriving in time. It's easy, simple, fast, and convenient. That's why these right wing radical Republicans are preventing election ballot drop boxes from being used because they won't be able to disenfranchise voters by slowing the mail. Then they push insane conspiracy theories that election drop boxes are "fraudulent and illegal". It's all a right wing scam for Republicans to disenfranchise voters they don't want voting so they can steal more elections.               

Here are two mail boxes: One is a U.S. Mail box and the other is an official county election ballot drop box.       

What is the difference? Absolutely nothing. Both boxes requires ballots to be collected. The blue U.S. Mail box has mail collected by a mail carrier. The official election ballot drop box has the ballots collected by a certified county election clerk. How can the election ballot drop box be deemed "illegal" and the blue U.S. Mail box be perfectly ok to drop your ballot inside to be collected? People are still dropping their ballots in a box to be collected. With the official election ballot drop box, all the Post Office mess is avoided and that's what Republicans don't want, they want the mess and a chance of Democratic ballots not to be counted.     

That's why this insane ruling by the radical right wing Wisconsin Supreme Court is just another attempt to help Republicans in the November midterm elections.

A Blue U.S. Mail box and an official county election ballot drop box. There is no difference. The radical right wing Wisconsin Supreme Court is calling the official election ballot drop box "illegal" while calling the same blue mail box perfectly ok to use. A total right wing scam.



                                           

[Rick Plant]

We now have more PRIVATE sector jobs than we did before the pandemic started -- more than any time in history.

We've fully recovered all the private sector jobs we had pre-pandemic. And despite a much deeper hole, we did that a lot faster than any other recovery in the last 30 years.

Even AFTER adding a record number of jobs in President Biden's first 15 months, the US added an additional 1 million jobs the past three months.

1 million jobs in a quarter.

That never happened, not even once, under ANY of POTUS' predecessors in the past 22 years.

This is truly historic.

[Rick Plant]

Florida needs to be led by a governor, not a wannabe authoritarian

Make no mistake: Florida's freedoms are at risk

By Charlie Crist 



School is out, summer is here and the state Capitol is empty.

Florida’s political world is taking a collective breath after legislative sessions and before months of non-stop campaigning for the November election. Families are focused on escaping the heat, summer camps for kids and vacations.

But make no mistake: The damage Gov. Ron DeSantis is inflicting upon Florida continues to impact us all as he keeps consolidating power and punishing anyone who disagrees with him. It threatens our economy and our democracy, and the repercussions of the governor’s extremism are just beginning to play out.

Across the state, women are hurt and terrified as they wait for this governor, who praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, to completely strip them of their right to choose.

In Orlando, The Walt Disney Co. recently postponed plans to bring 2,000 jobs from California to Florida. The disappointing announcement comes after DeSantis punished Disney for criticizing his discriminatory “Don’t Say Gay’’ law and abolished its special governing district – leaving taxpayers on the hook for $1.7 billion in debt.

The lawsuits challenging the governor’s assault on our freedoms are also piling up. Recently, a Tallahassee circuit judge thankfully ruled against the governor’s cruel abortion ban that offers no exceptions in the case of rape or incest. But with the governor's promise to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, there is still a tough fight ahead.

Another lawsuit is challenging DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay’’ law that discriminates against LGBTQ students. And yet another lawsuit is challenging DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE Act’’ that could silence civil rights teaching and training at schools, universities and businesses.



Additionally, there are lawsuits challenging a DeSantis law that makes it harder to vote, and a DeSantis map for congressional districts that eliminated Black representation in Congress.

Because of these lawsuits, DeSantis is forcing taxpayers to pay for ridiculous legal fees to defend the indefensible: currently, the fees total more than $4.4 million (and rising fast).

The governor’s continued assault also risks lives and defies common sense. DeSantis made Florida the only state that failed to preorder COVID vaccines for young children, creating chaos and leading to delays for families eager to protect their kids. This from a governor who constantly invokes parental rights to defend his fight over masks in schools. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

So is the bullying. DeSantis is seeking to take over local school boards by coaching and electing like-minded supporters. He is also trying to take control of the state Senate by endorsing candidates in Republican primaries who are not backed by Senate Republican leaders – a tactic out of the Trump playbook that no other Florida governor has so brazenly pursued.

Meanwhile, DeSantis is recruiting members for an elections police force and a state militia that only he will control. The potential for abuse of law-abiding citizens should chill every Floridian.

The governor’s thirst for absolute power knows no boundaries. Published reports say he even floated legislation aimed at forcing every public university to reflect his warped reality. Big universities hire dozens of faculty members every year, but the governor wants every one of these hires to be approved by each university’s board of trustees that he controls. That would kill intellectual independence, which appears to be DeSantis’ intention.

In normal times, Floridians could count on checks and balances woven into the fabric of our state to limit an authoritarian-minded, power-hungry governor. Not anymore.

The legislative branch is subservient to DeSantis. The judicial branch is stacked with his right-wing ideologues, the news media has been demonized and shut out of his press conferences, and local governments have been stripped of powers to act in the best interests of their residents.

This regime is not a Florida that I recognize, but it is one imagined by the likes of dictators. They seek total control, tolerate no dissent and silence those who disagree.

Take a breath. Take a vacation. Enjoy your summer. But be prepared to engage during election season and to vote in the Aug. 23 primary and the Nov. 8 general election. Our freedoms, our institutions and the very future of our state are at stake.

U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist is a Democrat from St. Petersburg. He served as governor from 2007-11 as a Republican and is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor.

https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2022/07/07/florida-needs-led-governor-not-wannabe-authoritarian/7829198001/

[Rick Plant]

Here's more on the radical right wing Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Wisconsin Supreme Court pushes Trump's 'Big Lie' in new ruling



Political observers on Friday were alarmed by a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling restricting the use of drop boxes for absentee election ballots—not just because the decision will make it harder for many residents to vote, but also because the high court's right-wing majority openly embraced in its ruling former President Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election.

In the 4-3 decision, the court's conservative justices argued that the use of ballot drop boxes is unlawful because the boxes are not explicitly mentioned in the state's laws, which allow for absentee ballots to be returned to a municipal clerk.

"After the GOP lost Wisconsin in 2020, the GOP decided that the issue wasn't that they couldn't convince voters to support them—it was that people who didn't support them were able to vote."

The return of a ballot "does not mean nor has it been historically understood to mean delivery to an unattended ballot drop box," wrote Justice Rebecca Bradley in the majority opinion.

Bradley continued that the state's longtime use of hundreds of drop boxes "directly" harmed Wisconsin voters in 2020, when President Joe Biden won the state by about 20,000 votes, beating former President Donald Trump.

Trump and his allies took aim at the drop boxes after the election, saying their use is not explicitly allowed under state law and filing a number of lawsuits.

Bradley suggested that anyone who used a drop box for an absentee ballot did not qualify as a "lawful" voter and said their method of voting "weakens the people's faith that the election produced an outcome reflective of their will."

"The Wisconsin voters, and all lawful voters, are injured when the institution charged with administering Wisconsin elections does not follow the law, leaving the results in question," she wrote, adding that "throughout history, tyrants have claimed electoral victory via elections conducted in violation of governing law" and comparing Biden's win to that of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern called the language used in Bradley's opinion "outrageously irresponsible."

Mark Joseph Stern @mjs_DC

The Wisconsin Supreme Court decision prohibiting ballot drop boxes includes outrageously irresponsible language
questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election results and drawing comparisons to elections in North Korea and Syria. https://wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.pdf?content=pdf&seqNo=542617

https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1545401931383939072

With the ruling, said journalist John Nichols, the right-wing majority "is not acting as a court. It's a political cabal with a partisan agenda."

The Wisconsin Democrats called the ruling "a slap in the face to democracy itself" and warned that the absence of ballot drop boxes that many voters have used for years will "impact people with disabilities, seniors, people living in rural communities, people with limited means, few transport options, and inflexible work schedules, who are disproportionately young people and people of color."

"For decades throughout Wisconsin, municipal clerks have used drop boxes to collect documents like tax returns, municipal bills—and absentee ballots," said Ben Wikler, chair of the state Democratic Party. "It's always been safe, secure, and convenient. Drop box use expanded dramatically in 2020, in red and blue areas alike."

"But then after the GOP lost Wisconsin in 2020, the GOP decided that the issue wasn't that they couldn't convince voters to support them—it was that people who didn't support them were able to vote," he added.

The three justices who dissented in the ruling denounced Bradley's claims of rampant illegal voting in 2020 as "nonsense."

"There is no evidence at all in this record that the use of drop boxes fosters voter fraud of any kind," they wrote. "None... But concerns about drop boxes alone don't fuel the fire questioning election integrity. Rather, the kindling is primarily provided by voter suppression efforts and the constant drumbeat of unsubstantiated rhetoric in opinions like this one, not actual voter fraud."

The court's right-wing justices also ruled in November that a new redistricting plan should make the least amount of changes possible to maps drawn by the Republican-led Legislature in 2011, ensuring a map that will favor GOP majorities in Wisconsin for at least another decade.

Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman is also overseeing an investigation into the 2020 election and has suggested that state lawmakers should try to decertify the results.

Friday's ruling came "from what might be the most rogue and vehemently anti-democratic state court in the nation," said Daniel Nichanian, editor-in-chief of Bolts.

https://www.rawstory.com/how-wisconsin-became-ground-zero-for-the-big-lie/

[Rick Plant]

President Biden @POTUS

We cannot and we will not allow an out of control Supreme Court working in conjunction with Republican officials pushing an extremist agenda to take away our freedoms and our personal autonomy.



https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1545529943399997441

[Rick Plant]

Patrick De Haan @GasBuddyGuy 

We're in the midst of one of the steepest declines in #gasprices ever. The national average tied for its second largest single day drop in the last decade yesterday. The national average is now $4.699/gal, every day Americans are spending $125 million less on gas vs 25 days ago.

https://twitter.com/GasBuddyGuy/status/1545770714183106560