Dear Bari: I never thought this would happen to me, but if Jesse Helms had been president we never would have had any of these problems lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/04/dear-b…
If not for Bari's finance bro, where else would we be able to read about Martin Luther King, the uncontroversial figure whose entire career consisted of one speech that contained one sentence, except for every conservative publication that has ever existed?
It's the Chris Rock "you're not racist if you didn't literally shoot Medgar Evers" routine, but unironically:
Finance bro who has already dropped more than 200 large on his daughter's elementary school education wants you to know that he is not *especially* deep-pocketed, and wishes that Upper East Side private schools could return to their roots as engines for social equity:
Bari's correspondent is not merely an anti-vaxx troofer, he's an Alex Berenson reply guy, the only thing in the world more pathetic than being a Bari Weiss reply guy:
I wish I could tell you that this wasn't about to become Republican orthodoxy but
Ah yes, the antebellum and Jim Crow South, legendary for their commitment to majoritarian democracy
Say this for Bill Buckley: unlike his National Review successors who have carried on his magazine's support for vote suppression, he at least understood how Jim Crow worked
Also, while of course nobody (including Chait) thinks that democracy means "pure majoritarianism," I would love to hear one of these NRO guys explain specifically how disenfranchising minorities will result in increased protections for their tights
I don't disagree with everything in @Nate_Cohn analysis of the potential effects of the law, but this argument that it actually expands day-of access is way too charitable:
In terms of the early voting provisions, as the more detailed analysis that appeared in the Times yesterday makes clear, it will be irrelevant to the urban areas with the biggest lines, since they already had these early voting days: nytimes.com/2021/04/02/us/…
This is a VERY good analysis of why the Georgia vote suppression law is, in fact, very bad nytimes.com/2021/04/02/us/…
The bill cuts the time frame for requesting absentee ballots in half. (Note -- and this will be a theme -- this is just pure vote suppression, with no even remotely colorable connection to fraud)
Compare how vote suppression apologist Rich Lowry poo-poos the dramatic cutback in ballot drop boxes with what the statute actually does. (Again, pure vote suppression -- there is zero evidence of fraud at drop boxes.)
Higher ed is a real microcosm for the American political economy. Revenues -- mostly tuition -- have skyrockted (these are inflation-adjusted numbers): lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/03/univer…
But despite what the Republican nominees on the board of trustees might like to believe faculty compensation has actually *declined* during this period:
Mean salaries for full-time faculty have increased modestly, although far less than the growth in revenue, but far less faculty are full-time, and part-time faculty are generally compensated with starvation wages.
When Republican elites write stuff like this about their vote suppression laws, you wonder if they're lying to their readers or to themselves:
Does the Georgia law expand access to the ballot on net? Evaluating this requires looking at provisions that will be ignored if you're an NRO reader, and the answer is straightforward: slate.com/news-and-polit…
The NRO defending indefensible vote suppression efforts targeted at minority voters is inevitable -- they have a brand going back to 1957 to protect, after all -- but this would-be gotcha is hilarious stuff nationalreview.com/2021/03/joe-bi…
Biden said the law forbids providing water to voters standing in line, and that's exactly what it does. It's true that the law does not forbid bringing your own water but since Biden didn't say that it did I have no idea what the point is supposed to be.
Also, genuine LOL at the idea that the state will step in to alleviate the long lines in urban areas that Republicans have INTENTIONALLY MADE LONGER by eliminating both polling places and now drop boxes (the latter of which, needless to say, goes unmentioned.)