This one is long, even by Curmie’s standards. Buckle up.
The four updates Curmie wants to write about today all
concern recent news. We’ll get to them
in a moment, but let’s start with the “half an update.” Curmie wrote “Questions. Curmie’s Got Questions.”
three days after the (alleged?) assassination attempt on then-ex-President
Trump in Butler, PA, in July of 2024. He
expressed some doubts about the official version of events, asking a series of
questions, most of which remain unanswered nearly two years later.
There’s no question that there were shots fired, that Thomas
Michael Crooks fired them, or that rally attendee Corey Comperatore was killed
and two other onlookers were wounded. That’s as far as Curmie would go then, and
it’s as far as he’ll go now. No scenario
matches what we know: those events sure as hell look staged, but such a
scenario would require active collusion from multiple members of both the FBI
and the Secret Service, and that’s asking a bit much. On the other hand, Trump’s injured ear sure
did heal fast and without a scar, there’s no reasonable explanation for why
he’d have abandoned his shoes, and this little B-movie excerpt certainly helped
his campaign. Oh, and substitute
“incompetence” for “collusion” in the bit about the FBI and Secret Service a
couple of sentences back.
More importantly, there really hasn’t been a lot of new
information forthcoming, task force recommendations notwithstanding. Curmie remains
skeptical, but is well short of being a full-fledged conspiracy theorist. What’s the update? Well, it used to be that those who were most
vocal in their insistence that it was all a fraudulent publicity stunt were
almost exclusively anti-MAGAs. Now, that
seems to be changing.
Well, sort of.
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson aren’t exactly the elected
spokespeople for the MAGA movement. To
suggest, as one headline does, that “MAGA now thinks Trump’s assassination attempt was actually a hoax”
is obviously misleading, and it should come as no surprise that the majority of
articles making the claim are on left-leading sites. Also, of course, it’s not so much that those
folks who are changing their minds aren’t really doubting the authenticity of
the events at Butler; they’ve just come to realize that Dear Leader doesn’t
really care about them, and that his seemingly miraculous escape just might not
have been specifically ordained by God Himself.
It’s half an update, in other words.
OK, on to the other stories, in decreasing order of the
likelihood that you, Gentle Reader, know about this stuff. We start, then, with the re-naming of the
Kennedy Center. Back in December, Curmie
described it as “Dear Leader’s Latest Vanity Endeavor.” As you are probably aware, U.S. District
Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled that “the Kennedy Center Board’s decision to rename the Center, along with its
decision to affix President Trump’s name to the building’s façade, violate
Congress’s unequivocal mandate. As stated at the outset, Congress gave the
Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.” As for the board’s vote to close the Center
for two years, he writes, “The trustees might have assessed the propriety of
closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one.” That’s a pretty fair rebuke.
In a follow-up order,
Cooper gave the board two weeks to “remove all physical signage on the Kennedy
Center building and grounds, including the front portico, that purports to
rename the Kennedy Center after President Trump or any other individual besides
President Kennedy.”
Dear Leader’s response was depressingly predictable,
displaying a level of unhinged petulance seldom seen in anyone over the age of
three. Standard operating procedure for
the Trump administration is two-fold: 1). Go ahead with whatever unauthorized activity
floats your boat at a particular moment in time because it’s likely to be
irrevocable by the time the rest of the country knows about it (demolition of
the East Wing, painting the reflecting pool so it no longer reflects,
etc.) and 2). simply disobeying any judicial order they don’t like (e.g.,
the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case). Oh, come
to think of it, there’s a #3: whine about how abused you are that you’re
expected to follow the rules.
#1 becomes relevant in terms of the shut-down, as the people
who’d be scheduling acts for the future have all been sacked, and the Center
has been winding down since the announcement (by Trump, without board approval,
by the way) in March. #2 is likely; the
board, all but the ex officio members of which are gutless sycophants, is
likely to appeal the ruling. And, of
course, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is already equivocating about whether he’ll actually enforce the order. To be fair, the headline of the Time article
linked here—“Trump’s Name Won’t Be Coming off the Kennedy Center Just Yet,
Despite Court Order”—is misleading.
Burgum is quite possibly simply anticipating the possibility of an
appeal and waiting to see if the order still holds. Removing the name is at most a two-day
operation, after all.
#3, of course, has already happened. Dear Leader, bratty toddler that he is,
hurled abuse at Cooper, and is seemingly washing his tiny hands of the Center. If he can’t put his name on it, it isn’t
important to him. Well, duh.
We’ll see where this one goes. One thing is certain: there’s more to come.
Next up: This one got at least a little publicity when it
happened. Last November, Curmie wrote
about the case of Larry Bushart. He’s the retired Tennessee cop who was
charged with a felony for posting a meme in the aftermath of the shooting of
Charlie Kirk. Curmie granted that
Bushart, a self-described “asshole,” posts a lot of memes, some of them not in
the best of taste. Still, it’s beyond
absurd that anyone could believe that the meme constituted any kind of threat,
let alone of “mass violence at a school.”
(The meme showed Donald Trump declaring that “we have to get over it” in
response to a school shooting at Perry High School in Iowa. Coincidentally, the local high school in
Tennessee is Perry County High School.
Not the same place, and no threat even if it were.)
Curmie noted at the time that FIRE had gotten involved, and
that they were assisting Bushart in a lawsuit against the county, the sheriff,
and the sheriff’s investigator. On May
20, FIRE announced an out of court settlement for $835,000. Frankly, that seems a
little low, given that Bushart spent 37 days in jail, lost his post-retirement
job, and missed the birth of his grandchild, all over a meme the sheriff now admits he knew was about a different school.
But that’s a sizable enough chunk of change that perhaps, just perhaps, the
next idiot cop might pause before so blatantly and stupidly violating someone’s
1st Amendment rights. At the very least,
prosecutors and judges might exercise a little judgment; it might be asking to
much to expect small-town cops to do so.
Along similar lines is a more recent case involving the
censorship of a composition the Watertown (WI) Wind Ensemble was to have played
at their spring concert. The brouhaha
was over a piece dedicated to Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans activist who
participated in the Stonewall uprising in 1969, and that was enough to have the
pearl-clutchers of the school board forbid playing the piece. When Curmie wrote about the situation on May 20, there was a concert (actually just that one short song) scheduled
for that night at a local church, conducted by the composer, Omar Thomas. You can see the video of that event here. There are a lot of speeches, which you’re
welcome to watch, of course, but you might like to know that Thomas is
introduced shortly before the 58-minute mark, and the band starts at about 1:09:56.
The other part of the story was the involvement of the
Minocqua Brewing Company in the person of owner/proprietor Kirk Bangstad. He’s a controversial figure, to say the least
(check out Curmie’s post for some details), and there was some concern that his
invitation for the band to play at his establishment (in Madison, 40-ish miles
from Watertown) might be longer on self-promotion than on bona fide
support for the band.
Curmie wondered at the time, “Is it possible that this whole
business is a scam, that there will never be a concert at the Minocqua Brewing
Company, or that few if any of the musicians will be high school kids?
Could the tens of thousands of dollars raised for a still not finalized 501(c)3
find their way into Bangstad’s pocket, instead?” Well… no, there was not a concert at the bar,
or even outside in the parking lot, nor was there one Saturday the 23rd. But there was a concert, the 501(c)3 now does
exist, and a fair amount of money seems to have been raised. Allow Curmie to explain.
We start with the exchanges between Bangstad and band booster club president Jay Sandvick. NB: these are Bangstad’s recollections,
paraphrased. Are they still
accurate? At least largely, one
suspects. Anyway, there seems to have
been an attempt in Watertown to poison the well, whether this resulted from
legitimate fears, distrust of Bangstad, or garden variety cowardice. Interestingly, Sandvick seemed convinced that
the antagonism was coming from progressives rather than MAGAs. If he was right, and Curmie is fully prepared
to believe that he was, it just shows that there are idiots at every spot on
the political spectrum.
A lot of musicians dropped out, and cancellation of the
event seemed very likely. Luckily (as it
happens), the departures were framed as safety issues regarding the parking
lot. That problem was solved by moving
the time and place: from Saturday in the bar’s parking lot to the following
Thursday at Madison’s Barrymore Theater.
There’s video of that event here. Speeches start at about the 4:05 mark; the
band starts playing at about 20:12. Be
warned: the sound quality of the recording isn’t the best, and there’s some
background conversation.
There are two other issues: First off, how many student
musicians were there? Curmie is old
enough that anyone younger than 35 looks like a teenager, and even he suspects
that the number of actual high-schoolers playing at either event could probably
be counted on one hand. Does that
matter? Well, sort of. One would have hoped that more of the people
directly affected by the censorial machinations of the school board would have participated,
but Curmie isn’t going to assign blame, individually or collectively.
The larger issue is whether the fund-raising event worked. It did.
As noted in Curmie’s earlier piece, it would be hard to pull off any
chicanery in an event so publicly accessible.
Bangstad presented an over-sized check for $82,000; the real check will apparently
be for $85,188.12. A cynic might argue
that Bangstad actually collected more than that; that’s possible, one supposes,
but Curmie doubts it. Curmie does take
issue with the “check number,” 8647. First
off, that’s just a little too cute. More
importantly, it takes away from the purpose of the event: this isn’t about
national politics; it’s about demanding constitutional enforcement at the local
level. These cases continue: it was
stupid for an Alaska high school to shut down a performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody” 15 years ago; it’s stupid to shut down a performance of “A Mother of a
Revolution” today. The most important
battles are often the most seemingly insignificant ones. Some hills are worth dying on… metaphorically
only, please.
And so we move on to the story that you, Gentle Reader, are
least likely to have heard about. It
may, in its own way, be more troubling than any of the others. A little short of four years ago, Curmie
wrote a post titled “Changing Voter Eligibility: Four Really Stupid Ideas.” Curmie described one of them this way: “whereas
this is the worst idea in a contest of plenty horrible ideas, it’s also the
only one with a chance of becoming law.”
You see where this is going, don’t you, Gentle Reader?
Back then, the small town of Seaford, Delaware (population
about 8,000) changed its charter to allow businesses to vote in local
elections. Quoth the idiot mayor, David
Genshaw, “These are folks that have fully invested in their community with the
money, with their time, with their sweat. We want them to have a voice if they
choose to take it.” Needless to say, not
only is the policy stupid on its face, but Genshaw’s argument is barely
coherent. That doesn’t mean that other
towns aren’t going to join in the stupidity, or that courts aren’t going to
suck up to where the economic and therefore political power is (Citizens
United, anyone?).
One of the other Delaware burgs to join in the fun is
Fenwick Island, located about an hour ESE of Seaford. They, too, decided to let companies
vote (apparently they had done so for a long time). Their mayor, Natalie
Magdeburger, makes Genshaw look positively Solomonic by comparison. She actually argues that the majority of properties
in her town are owned by family or marital trusts, and that therefore “our
voting system is just, fair and gives everyone a voice. As a town, we believe
that a property owner who pays taxes and is subject to our ordinances should
have a say in who represents them on our Town Council.” By this reasoning, Curmie could have voted in
New Hampshire between inheriting his father’s house there in 1999 and selling
the property in 2022, despite not having lived there since 1994. Of course, Curmie
is actually a human (and not an obscenely rich one), so he probably couldn’t
get away with that nonsense.
Significantly, if voting franchise is even slightly linked
to property ownership, then we’re one step closer to oligarchy, with the next
logical step being the disenfranchisement of apartment-dwellers and other
renters. And if your name isn’t on the
deed—if, for example, the house is in your spouse’s name, or you’re a college
kid living at home—then too bad, so sad.
No, Curmie isn’t predicting this, but despite his comment from 2022, he didn’t
think the whole corporations-can-vote scam would stand up to a legal challenge. But it just did.
The ACLU sued to ensure that voters should necessarily be of
the flesh-and-blood variety. They lost,
because Judge Craig Karsnitz would lose a battle of wits with an anvil. He argues that granting franchise to
non-human entities doesn’t dilute the political power of actual residents. That’s not just counter-intuitive; it’s
insane. The only reason to support the preposterous
idea that corporations, LLCs, and trusts ought to have voting rights is precisely
to reduce the suasion of actual residents.
Politics is a zero-sum game in this regard: if we allow X to
vote, then the power of not-X is concomitantly reduced. We can disagree about who should have franchise—whether
the voting age should be adjusted, or whether legal immigrants should be
allowed to vote in certain types of elections, for example.
And if the mayors of tiny towns in Delaware and the idiots who
elected them want to cede power to non-human moneyed interests, presumably with
the hope of attracting even more of such entities to a state that already has over
twice as many corporations as registered (human) voters, then we can at least
find our way to something that looks like a rationale.
These people are stupid, but they’re not as stupid as the
judge who thinks there will be no likelihood of non-human “voters” overturning
the will of actual human residents.
Indeed, the only people who cannot vote on behalf of a trust or a
corporation or whatever in which they have an interest are those who actually
live there, as that, you see, would give them more than one vote. Curmie would also like to see a corporation
show up at a polling place. Tailgate East12 pretty much nails it: “Corporations cannot vote. A human has to place that
vote on behalf of said corporations essential[ly] giving a Delaware voter more
than [one] vote or giving an out of state owner of a corporation an illegal
vote or giving a foreign owner of a corporation a vote which he or she is not
entitled to.” A group called Demand Justice argues, quite reasonably, that “Corporations aren't people. They don’t have
kids in local schools, they don’t drink the water, they can’t be jailed for
crimes, and they shouldn’t get a vote.”
It’s also worth noting, as pointed out by Jacob Owens on spotlightdelaware.org, “there are no limits on the number of
artificial non-human entities eligible to vote based on their ownership
interest in any single property parcel nor is there a minimum share of a
property required to register. That means if several LLCs jointly own a beach
home in Fenwick Island, all of the owners can register to vote, regardless of
how little a stake.” Curmie will trust
you to understand the implications, Gentle Reader.
The good news, such as it is, is that a couple of Delaware legislators intend to introduce legislation that would end this inane practice. Curmie wishes them luck.
So, the count for the 4 1/2 updates: three positive, at least in the short term, one negative, one-half pretty much neutral.
