The Sorensen Monologues

Corporate Suffrage

This eyebrow-raising story came to my attention via Common Cause, which has been fighting a bill that would allow LLCs and other corporate entities that own property in Seaford, Delaware to vote in that city’s municipal elections even if the business owners are non-residents. Adding to the extremely problematic nature of this proposal is the fact that only 300-600 voters typically participate in local elections, and this bill would make 200 LLCs and other “artificial entities” eligible, more than enough to affect the outcome. I consider this a sign of the times, part of the larger juggernaut of corporate interests steamrolling actual human beings.

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Negotiating to Nowhere

Trump demolished the budget with tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and R’s raised the ceiling three times without a peep. And yet, after saying they wouldn’t negotiate over the debt ceiling, it appears the Dems are very much negotiating. Biden has been insisting that these are parallel budget negotiations, but they are, as Joan McCarter of Daily Kos notes, actually about the debt limit. Could this be merely a strategy to appear bipartisan before the Dems unilaterally invoke the 14th Amendment, as many legal scholars argue they are Constitutionally authorized to do? Perhaps. But given Obama’s precedent of caving to extortion in 2011 and the Dems’ long history of squishiness on all matters, I’m not holding my breath.

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Return of the Selective ‘Free Speech’ Warrior

There’s a certain cadre of pundits who get a lot of mileage out of posing as open-minded defenders of ideas and debate, but in reality they are stuck in the right-wing narrative that the threat is from the left rather than overwhelmingly from the right. It should now be obvious to anyone with half a cortex that the right’s screeching about “wokeness” and free speech is disingenuous, part of a larger strategy to impose their own radical ideology on America and undo all social progress of the 20th century. Creating a moral panic about public schools and universities is all part of the plan. Somehow these useful idiots (as depicted by the above cartoon character) tend to overlook the fact that today’s GOP is openly looking to the illiberal dictatorship of Hungary as a model. Orban has seized control of that country’s universities and cultural institutions to promote what he calls “Christian” values and “national identity.”

For more on the subject, I highly recommend this excellent essay from Dave Karpf.

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Sun’s Out, Guns Out

It seems we have crossed some sort of threshold — a critical mass of gun ownership, paranoia, and anger that is spilling over into ordinary life at every turn. For all the rhetoric around the Second Amendment invoking “liberty,” guns are limiting our freedom. So many situations now involve a small but plausible risk that someone could lose their temper and start firing at you.

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