Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: Hog Tied

Friday, May 27, 2016

Hog Tied

The House is tied up over LGBT rights and amendment was passed in the House on a military spending bill that ordered federal contract not to discriminate against LGBT employees.

An argument over transgender rights has killed a major spending bill in Congress
Business Insider
By David Morgan, Reuters
May 27, 2016

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The rancorous political debate over sexual identity unexpectedly prompted the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to rejected an energy and water spending bill on Thursday after Democrats attached an amendment to protect the rights of transgender people.

The legislation, which would have funded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Energy in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, failed on a 112-305 vote, with 130 Republicans and 175 Democrats opposing the legislation.

The vote outcome was such a surprise that the House Appropriations Committee initially announced that bill had passed and was forced to retract the statement.

Democrats blamed Republicans for opposing a Democratic amendment to bar federal contractors from government work if they discriminated against the lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual (LGBT) community. Democrats were unable to attach the same measure to a separate House spending bill last week.

So the Republicans feel that it is OK to discriminate against people as long as they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

The Democrats said that they voted against the bill because,

The White House had already threatened to veto the legislation, and Democrats said on Thursday that it contained a number of "objectionable riders" including three provisions that they said would undermine the Clean Water Act and another that would allow people to carry arms on Army Corps of Engineers land.

Yup, we need to carry our guns when we go on a picnic at an Army Corps of Engineers site and we want companies to be able to pollute the waterways… the nerve of the government telling us that we can’t dump chemicals into the brook on our property! Just because the brook flows into our neighbor’s property and eventually into another state or ocean and making the water unusable for everyone else they are taking away my right to poison the brook.

No comments:

Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Friday, May 27, 2016

Hog Tied

No comments:

Post a Comment