13066

Yea that’s the first mover thing the GOP is slouching towards. Notice that the letter says “according to the Attorney General”; ie, someone else took the fall and made the first step, and now I can follow through. There’s nothing I can do, my hands are tied.

13067

That’s so disgusting on Abbott’s part.

This Twitter thread had some useful information.

I don’t know if Abbott’s goal here is “trans people are icky so I don’t want to think about them” or “depopulate Texas of trans voters and future voters – likely Democrat – by forcing them to flee to another state or watch them die by suicide.”

13068

Remember that Texas’ attorney General is Ken Paxton, who is a criminal.

13069

The real issue you see as here increasing with the GOP is this legal weaponizing of public service licensure against the public by turning anyone on government payroll into an enforcement arm of the culture war.

13070

I’m sure small goverment conservatives will have a major problem with the idea that an attorney general can just declare things child abuse and have parents arrested and their children taken from them.

13071

That’s what I’ve been saying, the GOP can’t really back down, they’re going to go all in.

The image I have in my head is the GOP grabbing the rest of the country by the ears, pulling them out of their chair until they’re inches away, and screaming in its face until hoarse.

13072

Abbott is up for re-election this year. He and his opponents are trying to out deplorable each other.

13073

Pretty sure that the number of trans voters is going to be statistically insignificant, so I cannot see pushing out the actual trans voters as any kind of electorally meaningful goal.

It seems far more likely that this is just a continuation of the culture war trash, motivating GOP voters by creation of an imaginary “other” to be enraged about.

13074

I truly believe the GOP’s goal is to stick transfolks in concentration, conversion, or extermination camps.

13075

Well said.

And Abbott appears to be losing. I saw some clip where he got booed pretty hard at some conservative rally and the only way he could stop the verbal abuse was to change “Donald Trump” repeatedly. It amazed me.

13076

Don’t worry guys, Beto is running and will totally beat Abbott.

13077

the current book is 1:6 in abbot’s favor, but thats better than most elections here.

13078

It’s a moral panic setoff by the book “Irreversible Damage”, where the author talks about case after case of girls being convinced by classmates and social media groups that the reason they’re feeling depressed and out of sorts is because of gender dysphoria, that they are trans. The stories sometimes are set in Blue States where it’s illegal for the doctor to question that because it would be considered conversion therapy, and they ok surgery to cut off their breasts, and then once they’ve had changes to their bodies done, that’s when they realized that they didn’t really have gender dysphoria. And then they are treated like pariahs by the Trans community as well instead of getting support from them.

At least, that’s what I’ve been told (I haven’t read the book myself) by multiple conservatives here who have read the book and are convinced that everyone’s daughters are in danger and why won’t politicians do something to protect their daughters?

13079

The reality is 99% of folks who take the first step are trans, and the 1% who aren’t, tend to experience dysphoria themselves if they start HRT, and stop very very quickly. Detransitioners are very rare.

For kids, they usually get prescribed hormone blockers , which have no real side effects other than delaying transition, and maybe losing a bit of height.

Generally, the trans community tends to believe detransitioners are doing it because of outside pressures (and that is by far the main reason folks stop transition).

Informed consent makes it easier for those 18 to start, under 18 it requires more. It beats the 3 years of gatekeeping non-rich transfolk get in the UK.

Also, the earlier you start a transition, the easier it is, for many reasons. It’s a lot easier to start at 18, then it is at say 43 years old (there’s plenty of valid reasons for folks to start accepting it then, even if they’ve known it for years)

I don’t give a shit about someone’s moral panic when these folks are going to snatch away kids from good parents and hand them over to conversion camps where they’ll get abused and tortured.

13080

I’d go further. The real ideologues want to go back to the Gilded Age, with no workers comp, unemployment insurance, etc.

As to the idea that it’s some kind of outrage that 47% of Americans don’t pay federal income tax, Rick Scott should try to live on what the vast bulk of those people make. The fact that almost all of those people live in states with regressive state tax regimes (sales taxes most notoriously, but even non-progressive income tax tiers in blue states like Oregon*, which has no sale tax) doesn’t help either.

*I mean, woohoo, we have two tiers, which were set up in the 1930s I think, when you were making bank if you were bringing in 10k/year.

13081

Company scrip, no minimum wage, no working age restrictions, no age of consent, no environmental protections.

For them a return to 17th century serfdom sounds like a great plan.

13082

This exemplifies what I’ve been calling the “extremism ratchet” - extreme beliefs have their own internal logic and momentum, regardless of actual logic, and will compel their believers to increasing extremes. Although the wheels of the GOP skid into severe extremism was greased by “cynical manipulators” looking to protect wealthy interests, the momentum of extremism has now taken over the bobsled and it’s a long fast glide path to hellish political extremes. At this point, the GOP money men can’t put the brakes on even if they wanted to.

13083

People joke about Republicans wanting to take us back to the '50s, but it’s not the 1950s they’re shooting for, it’s the 1850s.

13084

When you look at that table, the total taxes paid are roughly in line with the percentage of total income of the country that the respective slice of the population makes. The very poorest up through the middle 20% get a tiny break, that’s it. But as a percentage of individual income the rate rises to over 25% for the people making quite modest livings (the middle 5th).

13085

My parents try to get me outraged at Dems because I pay 25% or so in tax. I get outraged over the rich folks paying less, and they say nothing can be done about that, and they make America work.

I just get angrier at what they’ve done to my parents.

And I suspect this is why Abbott did it now. Basically he ordered the Texas power companies to pricegouge to the max during that winter storm last year.