“First, They Came for…”

Two facts about Curmie:

1. He lived in Kansas for seven years, working on his doctorate and staying on for another year when a full-time teaching gig didn’t materialize.  At the time, the state legislature was more conservative than Curmie would have preferred, but it wasn’t controlled by wackadoodles. 

2. He’s friends with (at least) six trans people, one of whom is also his nephew.  None of them, thankfully, live in Kansas.

Yes, it’s true that the lead story of the past few days is yet another reckless act by the Sociopath-in-Chief.  Were Curmie of a cynical disposition, he might suggest that killing little girls is a rather bizarre (and ineffective) means of trying to divert attention away from credible evidence that one has raped little girls.  But that was an act of desperation perpetrated by a single person (well, and his sycophantic minions) and whose victims committed the grievous ethical failing of being born in a different country.  What happened this week in Kansas was, in its own way, even worse.

No, there won’t be any Kansans buried under the rubble of their elementary school, but the level of bigotry disguised as piety and of quite intentional cruelty perpetrated for its own sake by the Kansas legislature is startling, even when compared to other examples of GOP malevolence towards their own constituents.  If you haven’t been following the story, Gentle Reader, Kansas Republicans overrode a gubernatorial veto and essentially disenfranchised trans voters, while causing the maximum amount of disruption in their lives in other ways, as well.  This was made easier for the bigots by circumventing the standard opportunity for the public to weigh in on an issue: a tactic called “gut and go,” by which the contents of a bill are “replaced” by, well, whatever the hell some jackass wants, thereby bypassing the public.  It’s now the “House Substitute for Senate Bill 244.”

A letter dated February 23 informed trans people that as of February 26, their state-issued driver’s licenses would no longer be valid because such identification, according to K.S.A. 77-207, must show the sex of the individual at birth.  Moreover, “the Legislature did not provide a grace period for updating credentials.  This means that once the law is officially enacted, your current credential will be invalid immediately, and you may be subject to additional penalties if you are operating a vehicle without a valid credential.”  Oh, bloody hell.

But wait!  That’s not all!  Recipients of that letter are “directed to surrender [their] current credential to the Kansas Division of Vehicles.”  A “new credential reflecting the gender identification consistent with statutory requirements” would then be issued.  OK, all this is annoying enough simply at face value.  But the real devil, and here Curmie really does mean the physical manifestation of evil, is in the details.

Where to begin?  First off, who cares whether that one letter on a license is an M or an F, since both are acceptable?  The best argument is that it helps identify the driver.  More than a photo does?  Anyway, the more important thing is that things change over time.  Curmie used to have a Kansas driver’s license.  It listed his hair color as brown and his weight at 155 pounds.  Both of those descriptions were accurate 30-something years ago when Curmie moved to Kansas.  Today, however, while there are still a few brown strands in there, the hair is grey (well, maybe “silver” if someone wanted to get on my good side) and the weight was about three inches of waist size ago.  More to the point, those things can change over just the duration of the license.  Other folks change their names: they get married or divorced, for example.  The world changes, except in what passes for a brain in a Republican pol, and we ought to try to keep up as best we can.

There are some areas in which reasonable people can disagree.  There are legitimate fairness arguments that trans women ought not to be playing women’s sports, for example.  Perhaps, although Curmie knows of not a single case in which a trans woman, or even someone pretending to be a trans woman, harassed cis women in a rest room, there’s a scintilla of honest, paranoia-free, argumentation in favor of bathroom bills.  (Needless to say, Curmie disagrees with that perspective, but at least there’s the potential for a rationale.)

But what the hell has “sex at birth” to do with ability to operate a car?  Men can drive; women can drive.  So can murderers, rapists, thieves… even (gasp!) “illegal aliens,” all legally.  Oh, and pedophiles, too; mustn’t forget them.  So even if being trans were to be regarded as unlawful (alas, there have been attempts, including in Curmie’s adopted state of Texas, to make it so), that shouldn’t prevent someone from having a driver’s license.  And there’s certainly nothing about being trans that translates (Curmie apologizes; he couldn’t resist) into being a danger on the road.  People who are, like those with multiple DUI convictions, can still have a driver’s license.  But trans folks who legally had their “M” changed to an “F” or vice versa: nope.

Oh, and if you’re trans, you need a new ID, even if your old one does show your sex at birth.  Andrea Ellis legally changed her name in December, then updated her driver’s license in January.  But, she “saw the writing on the wall after listening to [Attorney General] Kobach’s testimony for H.B. 2426” (the bill that would eventually morph into SB 244 and its demon spawn).  She therefore didn’t change the gender marker on her license, but got the same letter as other transgendered folks.  Yes, she had to change out her old license for one that was literally identical.  She’s trans, after all.

Then we add on the timing.  Apparently these letters were sent by mail no sooner than a Monday, and recipients had only until Wednesday to follow the dictates, as the law would go into effect on Thursday.  Of course, the morons on SCOTUS have decided that it’s OK for the postal service to intentionally not deliver mail, so that potentially complicates things even more.  Chances are very good that some people didn’t even know about what they were required to do until it was literally too late.  What if they were on vacation, for example?  

And then they were expected to turn in their old “credential.”  In person, of course, and you know damned well there will be no extended hours.  So that means taking time off work on short notice, finding a way to the office because you aren’t allowed to drive there, waiting in line, paying $46 (according to one source) for a new ID (poll tax, anyone?), and apparently waiting up to 45 days for a new license (N.B., Curmie isn’t completely convinced about the legitimacy of this claim), without which you’re not allowed to drive: not to work, not to the grocery store, not to visit a friend or relative in the hospital (or hospice), nowhere.

It is, of course, self-evident that new licenses could be created with considerably more alacrity than that—the technology exists to do so in no more than a few minutes—but the powers-that-be will slow-walk the process as much as they can, for no other reason than that, for them, cruelty is fun.  There is no rationality for this law, just bigotry and hatred.  Oh, and they’re handing out $1000 bounties for today’s variation on narcs, i.e., those who report folks they decide are peeing in the wrong restroom.  For a group that thinks “communists” (anyone to the left of Jesse Helms, in other words) are worse than, say, pedophiles, these asswipes sure do like to emulate the Stasi.

Well, actually, the disenfranchisement might be the rationale, as it obviously is for the SAVE Act: identify a group likely to oppose the Reich-wing zealots, and make it harder for them to vote.  That’s the argument raised by real-life Friend of Curmie Will Averill, in a Substack post that also suggests that GOP pols are particularly interested in “Bein’ Hicks and Checkin’ Dicks.”  Will doesn’t say this outright, but Curmie will: this obsession with examining specific body parts is perilously close to the prurient if not the perverse.  But that’s OK, you see, because they’re “protecting our women and children.”  <Sigh.>

There is no lack of posturing on this issue.  Lyft, for example hastened to the rescue, promising half-price rides… which are limited to $10 and expire early next week, long before there’s any reasonable solution.  That’s not help; that’s a scammy marketing campaign. 

The ACLU is filing suit on behalf of two transgendered Kansans, and it appears that there might be some other litigants, as well.  That’s a start, but the suit names only folks like the state Attorney General and Director of Vehicles, not the legislators who are directly responsible for this travesty.  Curmie’s no lawyer, so maybe that’s the appropriate tack, but it still seems insufficient.

Curmie is not, as a rule, given to “thin edge of the wedge” arguments, but with various federal agencies not merely admitting, but bragging about, compiling files on, say, people photographing ICE abuses with the goal of labeling such folks as domestic terrorists, the thought that one violation of Constitutional rights might lead to another becomes foregrounded.  And that famous passage by Martin Niemöller referenced in the title of this piece floats to the surface.

One thing is clear.  Even if we were to buy the spurious argument that trans women in particular are just pretending to be something they’re not, such a subterfuge would pale in qualitative significance in comparison to these… erm… individuals of Oedipal predilections masquerading as Christians.  Curmie has pondered whether every single pol who voted for this heinous bill should, in a just universe, be horse-whipped or sent to the stocks for a week to be pelted with rotten vegetables. 

¿Por Qué No Los Dos?

Having the Right People Vote: A When They Make Me Tsar© Solution

I suspect I’m not the only one who has managed to allow some important item received in the mail—a bill, a reminder to take the cat to the vet, a jury summons—to find its way to the bottom of the stack of detritus on some table. It happened to me recently: I ended up calling my bank because I hadn’t received my new debit card, and the old one is due to expire this month. The nice woman I talked to suggested I check the stack of mail on the kitchen table (she didn’t know it was the kitchen table, but I did) again before contacting them again if the card wasn’t there. Sure enough, there it was.

This episode becomes relevant because my adopted state of Texas appears to be next in line to purge the voting rolls. And, if the example of Florida holds true, my chances of being disenfranchised increase dramatically because I’m registered as a Democrat. (I’d always registered Independent prior to the last couple of years, but there’s nothing like the Texas Republican Party to turn any sane person into a card-carrying Democrat.) And I was born in New Hampshire, making me a Yankee, which around here is about two steps worse than a Mexican. So I’d better keep my eyes open for that official document that accuses me of being a non-citizen and gives me a month to prove otherwise or I’ll be dropped from the voting list.

As for Florida, well, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, but amidst all the bluster and the lawsuits and the counter-suits, a few things are clear. First, Governor Rick Scott set a priority on disenfranchising a lot of people who had been voting. A disproportionate number of those people, shock of shocks, were minorities and/or Democrats. Ari Berman of Rolling Stone writes, “Florida Hispanics, who voted 57 percent for Obama in 2008, are only 13 percent of the state's electorate but make up 58 percent of the non-citizens list. Whites, by contrast, account for 68 percent of registered Florida voters but only 13 percent of alleged non-citizens. Democrats outnumber Republicans on the list by two to one.” Scott, in other words, has precisely zero credibility on this issue.

Side note: during the 2008 election, I had exactly two students tell me they had to verify something about their registration status or they’d be stricken from the voting rolls. Both are African-American males; both are registered Democrats. Ours is, for better or worse, a largely Caucasian progam; there were only about five black guys in the department. So we’re talking perhaps 40% of the black male population got this kind of notification. I can’t say that none of the 90+% of our students who are white weren’t notified of some “irregularity” that would have to be fixed before they could vote, but I never heard of any. This happened, of course, in Rick Perry’s Texas. Coincidence? Perhaps. The sample pool is pretty small. But if I were a betting man…

Remember, too, that these procedures are all about red tape. Just as insurance companies wear you down by making you file the same form repeatedly to collect your perfectly justifiable claim, so do bureaucrats make the citizen pay for government corruptness and/or incompetence. One more trip to city hall, one more legalistic form to be filled out and sent in, one more copy of your birth certificate from across the country to be ordered (and paid for)… there comes a time when getting to vote, to be the person who makes the election decided by 114,273 votes instead of 114,272 or 114,274, just doesn’t seem worth it. And there are far too many on the right who think that’s just fine.

That said, the most intriguing sentence in all the coverage I’ve read is this one, from Judd Legum of the reliably leftie Think Progress: “In short, an excess of 20 percent of the voters flagged as “non-citizens” in Miami-Dade are, in fact, citizens.” The article explains that, as of the time of the writing, 385 of 1638 people, or about 23.5%%, of those identified as ineligible to vote because they aren’t citizens have already demonstrated their citizenship. That suggests a completely unacceptable level of governmental sloppiness.

OK, but those numbers could also be interpreted as follows: “over 76% of those challenged have thus far failed to demonstrate American citizenship.” Ay, there’s the rub. I think we can take as given the fact that somewhere in that 76% is someone who just hasn’t yet submitted the appropriate documentation. But it’s not too big of a stretch to suggest that perhaps there are a few folks in that 76% who haven’t submitted proof of citizenship because they can’t. And there are far too many on the left who think that continuing these people on registration lists is perfectly acceptable. James O’Keefe may be a lying weasel, but you may recall, Gentle Reader, that my last piece about him suggested that the real problem with his campaign against voter fraud is that his mendacity obscured the fact that he sort of has a point.

This all boils down to a simple illustration: if someone named Carlos Martinez, a registered Democrat, shows up to vote, too many Republicans want to say “no,” and too many Democrats want to say “yes.” The correct answer, of course, is “yes, if…”: if you’re a citizen, if you’re registered in this district and nowhere else, if you have some sort of reasonable proof that you are who you say you are.

Which brings us to another GOP initiative, requiring a photo ID to vote. Such a hurdle seems to me to fall far short of “suppression,” and the integrity of the democratic system really is important. But it is also true that people without what is now considered sufficient identification, like those removed from the voting lists, are disproportionately poor, urban, and minorities. Funny thing: it’s the GOP who have their collective skivvies in a twist about the need for photo ID. Democrats argue that the number of allegations, let alone convictions, of voter fraud is infinitesimal. They’re right. But this is like the kind of cheating that happens on the SAT: it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that incidents are anything but isolated, even if a specific accusation against a specific person for a specific crime may be difficult to demonstrate.

What to do, then, given the fact that the ACLU’s and the Justice Department’s suits against Florida (for violating federal voter registration laws) and Florida’s suit against the Department of Homeland Security (for not cooperating in identifying non-citizens) all probably have merit?

Well, here’s what should happen, independent of what relevant laws say. The following analysis brought to you by When They Make Me Tsar©.

1. We need to establish some system of presumption. You can’t register to vote unless you can prove citizenship; once registered, however, the government must prove you should be removed. None of this reliance on motor vehicle registrations or jury exemption lists: they’re notoriously unreliable. And the presumption rests always with the status quo. Once you’re registered, the burden of proof shifts to the government to demonstrate to a high standard of proof that you shouldn’t be.

2. This does not mean, however, that states should not be diligent. The federal authorities, whoever is in charge, need to cooperate with state authorities, whoever is in charge. It is a reasonable expectation that the federal government should do the majority of the heavy lifting on matters concerning citizenship. So, do it, feds.

3. Penalties for voter fraud need to be severe. Federal felony level severe. Penalties for vote suppression ought to actually happen.

4. A system for establishing the identity and legitimacy of voters needs to be established. With absentee balloting, voting by mail, etc., this becomes more complicated, but it’s not an insurmountable problem. As regards increased demand for appropriate identification, perhaps requiring a photo ID: yes, by all means, if and only if there is a full-scale, well-funded campaign to make sure that prospective voters know not only that the laws have changed, but how they’ve changed, and how to secure, without undue hassle, a legally sufficient, free, identification card. They need to know, too, that (for example) a Social Security card might work in one state, but you need a photo ID in another. Ideally, there would be a federal statute that certain forms of ID are always sufficient: driver’s license, passport, military or Veterans Administration ID, that kind of thing; states could add other means of acceptable identification but must honor those.

Above all, no, you shouldn’t be offered an ID for $28 when you can get one for free (indeed, charging for such an ID would be illegal), and no, you shouldn’t be fired for telling people that they don’t need to pay. Indeed, the person doing the firing in that situation should be the one out of work in a heartbeat.

And as for those who are too willing to disenfranchise legitimate voters or to defend illegitimate ones:

5. A plague o’ both your houses.