“In the Public Interest” is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that advocates on behalf of the common good, an increasingly scarce resource these past four years.
Here is the good news that ITPI has gathered. Add to it by contacting them directly.
Even in defeat, Trump is doing it again—sucking up all the attention with aimless lawsuits and absurd tweets about voter fraud and the “Fake News Media.”
But there’s plenty of good news coming out of last week.
Voters passed a host of ballot measures in states and localities that make government work for all of us, not the wealthy few who rig the rules in their favor. They voted to raise revenue for education, transit, and libraries; expand family leave; reject the failed war on drugs; give workers a raise; and much more.
- Florida voters passed Amendment 2, which will raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026. The Florida Policy Institute estimates this will lift pay for 5 million Floridians.
- In Colorado, voters approved Proposition 118, providing workers in the state 12 weeks of paid family leave and 16 weeks for the birth of a child. Reasons to Be Cheerful pointed out how in Iceland, paid family leave has helped contribute to the country’s high rate of gender equality.
- Arizona voters passed Proposition 208, increasing taxes on high-income earners to raise funding for teachers and schools. Despite big business opposition, the tax increase was likely bolstered by teacher strikes in recent years and long-term organizing by organizations like LUCHA and unions like UNITE HERE.
- Louisiana voters (thankfully) rejected Amendment 5, which would’ve allowed localities to give special property tax breaks to manufacturing corporations. The state already gives one of the largest tax breaks for industrial property in the nation. The Louisiana Budget Project writes, “If industrial property tax breaks were the key to a vibrant, thriving economy, Louisiana would be Silicon Valley. But it’s not.”
- In Nebraska, voters passed Initiative 428, capping predatory payday lenders’ rates at 36 percent annually.
- California voters approved Proposition 17, which will allow people with felonies on parole to vote.
- In every state where a ballot measure asked voters to turn back the war on drugs, people approved decriminalization.
- In Nevada, voters passed Question 6, requiring all utility providers to acquire half of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
- Colorado voters rejected a ban on most abortions at 22 weeks or later in pregnancy, protecting the right to choose.
- Voters in Multnomah County, Oregon, passed Measure 26-214 to provide universal tuition-free preschool for Portland’s three- and four-year-olds by taxing high income earners.
- Portland, Maine, voters passed Question A, increasing the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and requiring time-and-a-half pay during emergencies. They also approved Question C, what was deemed a “Green New Deal for Portland,” and Question D, rent control and tenant protections.
- Over 80 percent of Philadelphia voters approved the ban of the use by police of “stop-and-frisk” tactics, which disproportionately target people of color.
- Voters in San Francisco passed Proposition L, raising taxes on corporations that pay their CEO 100 times or more than the median of its local employees.
- Voters in San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Columbus (Ohio), and several other jurisdictions adopted measures to rein in the power of police.
- Atlanta voters approved a ballot measure to give property tax breaks to homeowners who live in permanently affordable housing sponsored by the Atlanta Community Land Trust.
- As EveryLibrary reports, voters in 17 states approved 28 measures supporting public libraries. This includes at least $728 million for new construction and renovation of library buildings and hundreds of millions of dollars for collections, programs, and staffing.
- As the Economic Policy Institute reports, multiple cities passed measures creating new dedicated revenue for public transit, including Austin, San Antonio, Denver, San Francisco, Seattle, and Fairfax, Virginia.
There are plenty more, especially at the local level.
Did anything “pro-public” happen in your neck of the woods?
This was also a great year for drug laws.
The big news is that Oregon decriminalized all drug possession, an incredibly sane move that Portugal made way back in 2001, with extraordinarily beneficial consequences. Drug laws, ofc, are simply jobs programs for drug cartels and other criminal gangs, and they are disproportionately applied to blacks and Hispanics and so extraordinarily racist. They also create criminal records that make it difficult for people, thereafter, to participate in the legal economy, and they deter people with drug problems from seeking treatment. And, certainly, the War on Drugs has been a ridiculously expensive and counterproductive boondoggle. That money, billions a year, could be used for treatment programs and to tackle our enormous homelessness problem. So, thanks to Oregon, we now have at least one state with sane drug policy.
New Jersey, Arizona, and Montana joined many other sane states in adopting full legalization of marijuana, thus joining Washington, Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, California, Nevada, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Illinois in allowing personal recreational use. 35 states now have legal medical marijuana, and 15 have legalized recreational pot. See also the note about South Dakota, below.
Mississippi adopted a medical marijuana program.
South Dakota legalized medical marijuana and possession and cultivation of small amounts of pot.
Oregon and Washington, DC, lifted restrictions on psilocybin mushrooms, allowing cultivation for personal use. Of course, these have important uses for treatment of PTSD, OCD, depression, addiction, and anxiety.
Oregon’s decriminalization of addiction was a smart move in my opinion. There is nothing to be gained locking up addicts. Put the funds into treatment. Dealers are a different story. They should continue to be arrested.
Read about the Portuguese legislation and its consequences here. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/portugal-drug-decriminalization/
On that note of good news, I read this morning that state legislatures controlled by the Republican party cannot change their laws to overrule the popular vote and appoint electors that would cast their votes for Trump instead of Biden who won the popular vote in their states. Those state laws were in place before the election and had not been changed. Now that the election is over, new laws cannot be legally passed to overule what existed before.
I should have copied the link but didn’t. I think I read it in The Washington Post.
I just found this thought that explains the same thing.
“Can a state legislature substitute its judgment for the will of the people by directly appointing their preferred slate of electors after Election Day?
“The answer? No.
“State Legislatures Are Prohibited by Federal Law from Usurping the Will of the Voters After the Election”
https://campaignlegal.org/update/can-state-legislature-overturn-presidential-election-results
That doesn’t mean Trump and the Trumplican Fascist Party (the MAGA TFP) formerly known as the Republican Party will not try this illegal end run to pull off a coup and steal the election, but according to established law, such an attempt will fail in the courts.
If that built-in protection fails because the TFP is totally corrupt ( and it is), then the last resort would be the military stepping in to uphold the Oath they took to defend the U.S. Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies. At that point, every elected representative in the TFP that supported Trump’s illegal attempt to pull off a coup becomes an accomplice/traitor and may end up in federal prison waiting for trials after the military steps aside and lets the Biden administration take over leadership of the United States.
It’s my understanding that some states have statutory laws against this and others do not. However, a VERY strong argument can be made from precedent. The peoples of the states have long expected their electors to reflect their will. A change, there, tosses out the basic democratic principle of one person, one vote.
That is good news. It prevents Trump lawyers from following that path to get electoral college votes.
An interesting thought experiment would be to imagine what the population in majority Biden places would do if such an unprecedented coup were attempted.
Those on the right have suggested that the right is respectful of the law, whereas those on the left are bent on burning down city blocks. Nonwithstanding the exaggerated nature of this argument, it is interesting to watch the powerless confront the powerful in history.
People without power have often reacted with violence toward their antagonists. I think of the Parisians who dug up the cobblestones and piled them up,as barriers to the inevitable cannons brought against them in their revolutions.
If the Republican Party were intent on throwing this country into chaos to bring about military (or para-military) rule, no better way would exist than to change this vote.
Given the way things are going, none of this is going to happen.
Three of the four anti-privatization candidate for the Oakland Unified School Board, though heavily outspent by Bloomberg, et.al, won.
YAY!!!!
Ah, but in Missouri… after legislators wrote a law overriding a previous state vote to clean up gerrymandering of legislative districts, they put it on the ballot again worded to “clean up elections controlling lobbying” – – – and hid the part that CHILDREN would not be counted to determine representation. It won. The Farm Bureau sponsoring organization gloated while urban centers will face more bizarre boundaries to insure white, conservative legislators.
And, as reported in the NYT, new Congresswoman Cori Bush (St. Louis), wearing her Breonna Taylor mask was confronted by other freshman unaware who Ms. Taylor is and thinking that was Ms. Bush’s name was.
Wait, what? Seriously? [Facepalm.]
With television and internet, people should at least know who Breonna Taylor is. 🤔☹️
One would think, Eddie!!!!