Morning Links
by Douglas

Morning Links for August 22, 2014.

If you have not done so already, check out my debut at Jacobin Magazine: Love Me, Ferguson, I’m A Liberal.

The South.

  1. Fayetteville, Arkansas has approved a non-discrimination measure that encompasses LGBTQ people in the city, reports the Arkansas Times. The vote was 6-2. Interestingly enough, the vast majority of Fayetteville residents that spoke were in favor of the measure (49 of 73), while most of the people who were from out of town were against the measure. Too bad for Michelle Duggar that she can only vote in her home of Tontitown, relegating her bigotry in Fayetteville to weak robocalls only.
  2. Katherine Helms Cummings at Rural and Progressive issues a Call to Action urging readers to call the Georgia General Assembly, Gov. Nathan Deal, and the Department of Community Health and tell them to make insurance more affordable for the state’s schoolteachers. This is, honestly, extraordinarily sad to see: people who give our children knowledge and context to the world they live in being unable to afford quality medical care for themselves. What kind of country do we live in?
  3. NC Policy Watch reports on the rulemaking hearings for fracking in the state at their Progressive Pulse blog. New worries about the fracking fluid and waste water has environmental campaigners concerned that the regulations will not go far enough to protect the state’s water supply. If you want a great documentary on this topic, check out GasLand and GasLand 2.
  4. Lisa Starbuck reports at KnoxViews about the controversy underway with regards to charter schools in Nashville, and their ability to, under a new state law, go around the school board and appeal directly to the state in asking for funds in the event of a rejection of their application to operate. Republicans are so united in their zeal to destroy public education that they would violate a key principle of their party’s ideology (handing control over public policy and administration to local authorities) in order to fulfill the wishes of their donors. It would be hilarious if it was not so sad.

America.

  1. Polls show a broadening racial divide in America. This report has been brought to by Duh Magazine The New York Times.

The World.

  1. The Venezuelan government is considering the implementation of a fingerprinting system for shoppers at the nation’s supermarkets, NPR reports. This is to prevent the smuggling of food out of the country into Colombia, where the smugglers sell the food at profit. It is sad that this is something that has to be done, but then it is also sad that capital would rather see people starve than to make a little less money. Up against that, it is worth it.
  2. Russian aid convoys have entered the Ukraine without official permission in order to deliver goods to people in the east of the country, reports The Christian Science Monitor. This crisis feels like the Space Mountain ride at Disneyland: nothing but darkness, and you keep rising higher and higher and higher, expecting a great drop, and it just never comes; rather it lets you down easy and gradually. Somehow I have a feeling that that is the projected ending.
  3. Over 1 million people have signed the petition supporting the Scottish government’s efforts to win independence from the United Kingdom in a vote this September, reports The Guardian. First Minister Alex Salmond, of the pro-independence Scottish National Party, predicted when the petition was unveiled in 2012 that if 1 million Scottish citizens signed it before the independence vote, it would prove that Scotland would vote yes in the referendum. I urge a Yes vote because I think that the Scottish will elect more progressive and leftist governments than the rest of the United Kingdom, but I do not know that this petition is some harbinger for the future. We can only hope at this point.