politics

SB 244, which Republican supermajorities in the Kansas Legislature voted last week to enact into law over Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto, will go into effect on Thursday upon the publication of the Kansas Register. The legislation provides no funding to help people who need to replace their licenses. Kansas driver’s licenses typically cost around $30.

This is incredibly fucked up—it’s also why we need to pay more attention to local elections. The people of Kansas voted overwhelmingly against an abortion ban and I have to think (hope) those same people wouldn’t want their neighbors being arrested for merely existing and driving.

If you’re in Kansas and your representative voted for this, I urge you to do everything in your power to vote these bigots out this November.

Actual criminals are absolutely loving what’s happening right now. ICE isn’t going after the (extremely small population of) undocumented immigrants that are in gangs because those people would actually fight back and have criminal attorneys on retainer and the idiot goons of ICE want nothing to do with that. Instead they go after people with disabilities, children, and people at court houses “doing it the right way” so they can hit their outrageous quotas. Not only that, local police and prosecutors are now jammed up with all of this nonsense and dedicating less time to going after and building cases against actual criminals and fraud.

It’s absolutely devastating to watch this. I’d love to echo the sentiment I’ve seen on social media and say, “how could anyone watch this and not be devastated?” But I’ve become too jaded. The people doing and celebrating this terrible shit are the people who tortured their pets like Sid from Toy Story as kids. This is exactly what the “anti-woke” folks want—they want to be able to laugh at people with disabilities after they illegally arrest them without reading them their rights or giving them their phone call.

There is no empathy from these people.

I started thinking, “When did this country lose all of its empathy?” But the truth is—and it’s a truth we all know—there never was any empathy to begin with in this country, and we continue to show our true colors as a country more and more every day.

We aren’t a democracy or a republic; we aren’t capitalists or socialists; we live in a corporatocracy, and no action or decision is made based on the will of the people or what’s good for the people—only what provides corporations the most profits.

Because if America actually cared about people—even just a little bit—this shit wouldn’t happen to anyone, citizen or otherwise. Instead, we are a barbaric, third-world, fascist corporatocracy. And we pray to one god.

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