Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Yeah, Your State Sucks, Too, But Not As Much As Arizona, Oklahoma, or Louisiana Today:
1. So let's say, and why not, that you fucking hate the family in the house next door. You don't like the smell of the food they cook, the way they play their music too loud, their bratty kids, the way they mow their lawn. Sure, when you can, if a party gets boisterous, you call the cops, but ultimately that's treating a symptom, not the problem. Finally, you reach that breaking point, when you can actually hear the electric crackle of synapses firing off in your deranged brain. After a good dousing with gasoline, you set the house on fire. And you stand outside with a shotgun and shoot each family member as they come running out, but you keep one alive, just one, say, the oldest son. You shoot him in the leg to make sure he can't run away. You make him witness while you burn the house to the ground. And then, just as the cinders are cooling, you tell him, "Watch this," and you walk into the center of the ruins and piss on the ashes.

It's essentially what Governor Jan Brewer and the Arizona legislature have done with their string of anti-immigrant bills. And the one she signed yesterday? It was a steamy piss on the wreckage she has already created. Yep, now Arizona has an unnecessary fuck-you of a law that says schools can't teach any ethnic studies classes "that promote the overthrow of the United States government or promote resentment toward a race or class of people."

So, if, say, you're teaching a Native American history class in a Tucson high school, you better say that God killed all those Indians, not white people.

2. Oh, just, fuck you, Oklahoma.

3. As viscous doom from underneath the sea floor begins to engulf the coast of Louisiana, the results of the rank avarice of the various multimultimultibillion dollar corporations involved, the state legislature is really and truly considering a bill right now that would prevent the law clinic of any university that receives state funds from filing "a petition, motion, or suit against any individual, business, or governmental agency seeking monetary damages." The bill is targeting environmental law clinics and some of the potential lawsuits from the Gulf of Mexico oil geyser, as well as challenges to permits for new oil platforms (among other polluting industries).

A month ago, pre-rig-conflagration, cocksucker of the first order and Louisiana Chemical Association President Dan BornĂ© said of the clinics, "We’re going to tell legislators all over the state, if they want to play hardball by trying to kneecap industry in Baton Rouge, then we should play hardball and kneecap them with their state appropriations." Apparently, some legislators in the state know who they should listen to, even now, after the ruin being caused to the livelihoods of the very people who might need a law clinic assisting them with recovering damages.

By the way, this bill was originally a reaction to the Tulane law clinic's successful lawsuit that prevented a plastics plant from being built in a town filled with poor people. Convent is already part of Cancer Alley in the state. So, really, if you think about this from a polluters' point of view, those people had it coming.