Are you exhaling after a week of civil protest, hand wringing, folks posting desperate cries of despair, other's ready to run for the hills of other states and all manner of reactions and political maneuvering I can stand.
It's O-V-A at least for now as the smoke clears, and we come away with a lopsided victory with HB 1228 morphed into HB975 to appease those lawmakers beholding to the evangelicals and none of the that far reaching language that spurred all the outrage yet still no human rights language specifically addressing the LGBT community and we could only hope that we could talk about the impact of HIV Criminalization in our efforts to decrease new infections in Arkansas.
So where do we go from here? Well it's anybody's guess. Here's a few possible next steps to kick around....
1. Most likely there will be some type of debrief about "what had happen both good and bad." Check this box, its happening Sunday 4/12/15, 4pm at AEA building in Little Rock.
2. A community assessment might be ordered as an action item of a probable and already proposed statewide community meeting.
3. One would hope that there would be a massive "voter registration drive," in preparation for the next election cycle. But of course after this flames out, will their be any fire in the belly to remember that the ballot box is essential in matters such as this.
4. Money...need I say more.
5. Watch COP 24/7 where we will have any and all of what's really going on...
Now with that out of the way, let us not forget that very little of the outrage this week seeped over into the fact that the legislature gave themselves a nice pay raise, tax breaks for there wealthy supporters but no such luck for low income citizens, decided to drug test folks seeking social services and the Senate voted 22-7 to give final passage to House Bill 1489 by Rep. Lane Jean, R-Magnolia, which would reduce the maximum period of time that a person can collect unemployment benefits from 25 weeks to 20 weeks.
The bill also would require benefit amounts to be calculated based on the recipient’s average wages over the past four quarters. Currently, benefits are based on the recipient’s highest-earning quarter in the past year. And so it goes....
And Now the Friday Video...
No comments:
Post a Comment