mcmaster, h gov
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">the south shall rise again!</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">pow libtard?
</font><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/greg-gianforte-henry-mcmaster/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/greg-gianforte-henry-mcmaster/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Residents in South Carolina and Montana next month will <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/south-carolina-montana-declining-federal-unemployment-funds-huge/story?id=77553102&cid" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">lose access to federal unemployment benefits</a> over what those states' Republican governors call a "severe workforce shortage." Experts say the move by Montana's Gov. Greg Gianforte and South Carolina's Gov. Henry McMaster is a "huge mistake."</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As ABC News reports, South Carolina and Montana are the first states "to end participation in the unemployment enhancement programs.</b>" That program offered <a href="https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/careers/unemployment/602410/american-workers-get-enhanced-unemployment-benefits-as" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">U.S. workers access to extra unemployment funds</a> as part of the American Rescue Plan signed by President Joe Biden in March.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a<a href="https://governor.sc.gov/news/2021-05/south-carolina-return-pre-pandemic-unemployment-program-address-workforce-shortages" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"> statement announcing South Carolina's "return to pre-pandemic unemployment program,"</a> McMaster complained: "In many instances, these payments are greater than the worker's previous paychecks."
"What was intended to be a short-term financial assistance for the vulnerable and displaced during the height of the pandemic has turned into a d<b>angerous federal entitlement,"</b> he said.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In an effort to incentivize Montanans, Gianforte is offering a one-time "'return-to-work bonus' of $1,200 will be paid to people who rejoin the labor force and maintain employment for at least one month," according to ABC News. That money will also come from the federally-funded American Rescue Plan.</span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But Economy Policy Institute senior economist Heidi Shierholz says McMaster and Gianforte are making "a huge mistake."</span>
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"The idea that states are just going to forego that and allow all that money to be sucked out of their economy is just terrible economics," Shierholz told ABC News. "I just deeply hope that you don't see more states following this path because it's a huge mistake."</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shierholz said the narrative of a "severe workforce shortage" driven by increased unemployment benefits is based on a false premise. Currently, federal unemployment benefits offer laid-off workers an additional $300 per week, down from $600 at the end of last of July. According to Shierholz, if money was the motivator, that decrease from $600 to $300 would have made a marked difference in the unemployment rate last year.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"You should have seen a bump up in employment, and you can't see that in the data so it just points to that it wasn't really causing the labor supply effect," Shierholz said. "It's just difficult to imagine that something half that big is having any effect now."</b>
And Shierholz is far from the only expert who warns that hiring issues in South Carolina and Montana won't be solved by depriving residents of enhanced unemployment benefits.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ABC News reports:</font></p><blockquote style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; width: 602.543px; background: rgb(245, 245, 245);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>William E. Spriggs, an economist and professor at Howard University, said in an interview with ABC News that there is no data to prove that unemployment checks are preventing Americans from returning to work.</b>
"There's no job shortage, in terms of workers. There's a wage shortage," said Spriggs, adding that research shows many employers "want to pay rotten wages and have rotten hours."</font></blockquote><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last week, the <em>Washington Post </em>published an analysis that likewise <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/is-there-really-a-labor-shortage-wapo-analysis-reveals-a-deeper-problem/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">dispelled the framing of a "worker shortage"</a> based on enhanced unemployment. "At the most basic level, people are still hesitant to return to work until they are fully vaccinated and their children are back in school and daycare full-time," the Post analysis declares.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many Americans, the Post reports, are "re-assessing what they want to do and how they want to work, whether in an office, at home or some hybrid combination."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, McMaster and Gianforte are blazing ahead with plans to reopen their respective economies by depriving citizens (and their states) of extra funding during the worst public health crisis in a century. As ABC News reports, experts say "declining to take federal money is going to have a deep effect on the living standards of residents and their families, and likely will worsen those states' overall economies."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But for all the hand wringing about disincentivized workers by those states' Republican governors, Shierholz said the bottom line is <b>"employers are just angry that they are unable to find workers at relatively low wages."</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"The jobs being posted are more stressful, more risky, harder jobs than they were pre-COVID," she added. " ... When the job is more stressful, then it should command a higher wage."</b>
</font></p><div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</font></div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><li class="around-the-webitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article251215674.html" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">McMaster orders SC pull out of federal unemployment program | The ... ›</a></font></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/south-carolina-montana-declining-federal-unemployment-funds-huge/story?id=77553102" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">South Carolina, Montana declining federal unemployment funds 'a ... ›</a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-get-vaccinated-and-back-to-work/2021/05/07/3b9401b6-af6d-11eb-b476-c3b287e52a01_story.html" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; font-weight: lighter; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;">Opinion | America is suffering a shortage of people willing to work ... ›</a></li></ul></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/south-carolina-governor/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/south-carolina-governor/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sound like neo-confd soviergty states rights? ~ HR 1</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>Republicans aren't making any secret of their approach to winning future elections. It has nothing to do with coming up with better positions. Nothing to do with expanding their base. It has everything to do with restricting the number of people allowed to vote and creating those restrictions in such a way that they favor the rural white population that is increasingly the only stronghold of the Republican Party.</div><div>
</div><div>The structure of both the Senate and the Electoral College already gives Republicans an unwarranted advantage by discounting voters in more populous states and elevating the votes of those who live in the least populous states. With each passing year, that lopsided valuing of voters grows. However, it's clear that Republicans are completely aware that this is not enough to save them. In order to preserve any chance of Republican victory, not just at the national level, but in a growing number of states, they need a system that makes in-state voting as unequal as federal voting. And then some.</div><div>
</div><div>That's why, as of April 1, there were 361 bills spread across 47 states with the pure intention of making it harder for Americans to vote in local, state, and federal elections. That's why conservative magazines are openly making a plea for "fewer, better voters." And it's why South Carolina's governor is using language that's lifted straight from not just the era in which men like him fought openly against extending voting rights in the 1960s, but from the time men like him fought against freedom in the 1860s.</div><div>
</div><div>On Tuesday afternoon, the all-too-appropriately named Gov. Henry McMaster delivered a speech in which he threatens to defy federal law in order to uphold the "constitutional sovereignty" of South Carolina because the federal government is seeking to protect equal rights for Black citizens. Sometimes history doesn't just rhyme, it recycles.</div><div>
</div><div>The direct target of McMaster's ire is House bill H.R. 1, also known as the For The People Act. The legislation is designed to provide more uniform access to the polls, and to prevent Republicans from throwing up the kind of voting roadblocks enshrined in the new Georgia law. It also happens to be the subject of Sen. Raphael Warnock's first floor speech.</div><div>
</div><div>Republicans have no illusion about H.R. 1. They know it represents a substantial threat to exactly the sort of suppression that is absolutely necessary for them to long maintain any semblance of power. But the card that McMaster is playing is something beyond Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp making false claims about the legislation passed there.</div><div>
</div><div>Here is McMaster explaining his position (and I encourage you to spent a minute listening to it).</div><div>
</div><div><b>"This bill, H.R. 1, threatens the constitutional sovereignty of the state of South Carolina.</b> And those are not just words. That's very important. This country, our state, is built on the sovereignty of the states. This bill takes that away. Like others, I have sworn an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of this state, and the United States. An oath, 'So help me God.' Many of you have taken such an oath. As long as I am governor, I will stand against those who seek to infringe or deny South Carolinians their Constitutional protections, freedom, and liberty."</div><div>If that language tickles something deep, compare it to this 1956 article from The Asheville Citizen.</div><div>
</div><div>"South Carolina was today one step away from interposing its claimed constitutional sovereignty between its schools and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling against their segregation. The general assembly ordered final action on the resolution which should reach Gov. Timmerman for his promised signature next Tuesday. Thus South Carolina becomes the third state to resort to this old, but never completely tested, doctrine that the federal government cannot enforce acts a state claims are unconstitutional."</div><div>
</div><div>And it that doesn't completely silence the "where have I heard that before" buzzer, how about this:</div><div>
</div><div>"In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise its separate sovereignty; … expressly declaring, in the first Article 'that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence..."</div><div>
</div><div><b>That's from the statement issued when South Carolina become the first state to officially secede from the United States on December 20, 1860. The language it cites isn't actually from the Constitution, but the 1777 Articles of Confederation—a name that was soon to be recycled.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 1956, Gov. Timmerman actually signed that "imposition" bill. He then joined the governors of Mississippi, Georgia, and Virginia to promote federal legislation that would prevent "federal encroachment" on state sovereignty. That included not just segregation of schools, but sustaining segregations in other public facilities. Timmerman also signed a law which barred members of the NAACP from holding any public job in South Carolina.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The language Gov. McMaster is using is a deliberate callback to those previous statements. South Carolina used the concept and language of "state sovereignty" to keep Black Americans in bondage. They used that same language to defend segregation. They're using it now to deny voting rights. McMaster could not have been more clear in his racist intent had he made his speech while aiming a canon at Ft. Sumter.</div><div>
</div><div>It's easy to believe that Donald Trump had no accomplishments in his four years, unless the needless death of hundreds of thousands of Americans and the shattering of trust around the world counts as an "accomplishment." But for Republicans, Trump actually did provide them with a gift. His unabashed willingness to embrace racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia has provided them with a certain, noxious version of "freedom." One in which they are free to drop their dog whistles for bullhorns and to say "the quiet things" out loud.</div><div>
</div><div>In response to the decision to secede, former South Carolina state Attorney General James Petigru famously said this of his state: <b>"South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum."</b> McMaster may not be quite at the point of testing the former, but his statements certainly come close to challenging the latter.</div><div>
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/south-carolina-governor-requested-exemption-allow-foster-care-agency-discriminate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an unusual move, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, a long-standing ally of President Donald Trump, has personally intervened with the Department of Health and Human Services to<b> secure a religious exemption from federal nondiscrimination laws for a Christian foster-care-placement agency in his state. Without the exemption, the placement agency, Miracle Hill Ministries, of Greenville, is at risk of losing its license because it refuses to place foster children with non-Christian families.</b> Like other such agencies that participate in state foster-care programs that receive federal funds, Miracle Hill would normally be barred from discriminating on the basis of religion.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">McMaster, a Republican who is running for reelection, acted in February after his own state agency, the Department of Social Services (DSS),<b> warned </b>Miracle Hill that its license as a child-placing agency (CPA) was at risk after it had given regulators “reason to believe” that it “intends to refuse to provide its services as a licensed Child Placing Agency to families who are not specifically Christians from a Protestant denomination,” according to documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a public-records request and shared with <em>The Nation</em> and the Investigative Fund. In addition to requesting federal intervention, McMaster issued an executive order exempting faith-based CPAs from state laws that prohibit religious discrimination.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The possibility that the federal government would permit a taxpayer-funded program to allow a participant to use “religious eligibility criteria” in order to make it a “Christian-only program” is “pretty stunning,” said Leslie Cooper, deputy director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project. Such an exemption would be akin to the government itself using religious criteria to discriminate against participants in federal programs.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div></div></div>