You see, if you don’t count their attitudes towards black and brown people, they aren’t racist at all!
“About a third of our population is African American; African Americans have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. So, if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear. Now, I say that not to minimize the issue but to focus the issue as to where it would be. For whatever reason, people of color have a higher incidence of maternal mortality.”
We could flip that argument around. The aggregate maternal mortality rate for white and black people is so bad that Louisiana is one of the worst states to be pregnant in…and if you don’t count the privileged white people, the rate is even worse, and tells us that Louisiana is a hell hole for black women.
Charming fellow. It’s almost but not exactly like he doesn’t care. He cares just enough to wish people would stop pointing it out.
“For whatever reason”.
Such a shame nobody knows what the reason for that is, eh? No studies have ever been done. No historical evidence has ever been brought to bear. Nobody has ever even asked these poor, benighted people what their problems are and where they come from. It’s a complete and sacred mystery!
Somehow, I don’t like the sound of that.
To be certain, any attempt to allocate extra funds to specifically reduce African-American maternal mortality would be reverse-racist, CRT replacement theory.
These are the worst people.
Instead of ruling out black women, providing them with better maternity care will fix the problem.
He has a punchable face.
Am I wrong in suspecting that this guy is part of the group that made sure Louisiana is a shithole?
@ 6
Oh, I want to do something far more permanent to this chud than a simple right-hook can accomplish.
It isn’t like Black people are really people now, right. (This is what Cassidy is saying.)
He shouldn’t be focusing the issue to where it is, he should be focusing the issue to where it should be. Which is high Black maternal mortality and fixing it. He is after all, a high government official. That is his job.
This wouldn’t have anything to do with racism, poverty, low education levels, and lack of access to health care now, would it.
It is all just a big mystery that we all knew about a century ago and could easily fix with reasonable expenditures of tax payer money.
This seems rather similar to the sort of “reasoning” that if π = 3, then maths would be easy; or that the Global Heating Crisis can be avoiding by banning consideration of rising sea levels in coastal planning (as happened in N.Carolina); or that forest fires occur because the forests weren’t raked; or…
Instead of fixing the problem, Louisiana is on track to make it worse. A whole lot worse.
Louisiana just had a bill in their legislature that would make abortion a death penalty offense. There were 8,000 abortions in Louisiana last year. Which means 8,000 potential dead women.
They did take that out when they passed the bill outlawing abortion though.
Outlawing abortion is still going to make their maternal mortality rate go up, even if they aren’t hanging or shooting women.
But look. If you take out the women who die from pregnancies gone wrong, women who die from illegal back woods abortions, and women who get executed for abortions, then Louisiana’s female death rate doesn’t look so bad.
In fact, if you just focus on white xian women over 45 years old , their maternal mortality rate is very low.
Won’t be surprised to find that all these racists pigs don’t mind seeing black and brown women abort their own babies in spite of them claiming to be anti-abortionists. Hypocrites.
Republicans are only racist if you pay attention to what they actually say.
Not that I really miss that disingenuous “All Lives Matter” retort Repubs used to make before the pandemic, but it can be fun to throw it back in their faces when called for.
@ microraptor : .. or do.
This is evil. He is admitting he knows the problem but has no motivation to actually help because these folks aren’t white.
So he’s just throwing out the numbers he doesn’t like? That’s not how statistics work. That’s cherry picking. Here’s what’s really going on.
1: Poor people have higher infant mortality
2: POC have higher rates of poverty than white people
3: POC have higher rates of infant mortality
It’s that simple. You want to fix it, start working on poverty.
Is that in any way related to black people tolerating more pain? It’s a medical “fact!”
https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-we-fail-black-patients-pain
If we discount Republicans there would be a higher proportion of decent people.
He probably wants to count Black maternal deaths as 3/5 of White maternal deaths.
I’m pretty sure that Louisiana is a hellhole for white women too. It’s just less of one for white women than it is for women of color. Or femme-presenting people.
@14 “All Lives Matter”? Clearly not if you are POC… or a woman. What makes you think this asshole actually cares about women of any color?
If black embryos were implanted in the uteruses of white women, would their lives matter then? What about when they reach the fetus stage?
Would it be acceptable for white women who were carrying nonwhite fetuses to get abortions then?
All fun things to throw back in the faces of misogynist Republicans.
@11 “Some supporters, however, said they were overjoyed at the prospect.”
Only some?
Asking because it seems like a lot more than “some”.
“In fact, if you just focus on white xian women over 45 years old , their maternal mortality rate is very low.”
Well, sure. In a state already known for corruption, graft & low life expectancy already, it’s easy-peasy lemon squeezy to pass off maternal mortality as something else. Any state that has a Cancer Alley can surely find some way of p-hacking those numbers or at the very least, misclassifying the maternal mortality as something else.
Keep in mind that Louisiana, the only state in all 50 that allows the drilling of injection wells for toxic AND hazardous waste is also the state where you can’t bury people below the ground, because the water table is so close to the surface. Which makes perfect sense. Water table close to surface; just drill 50 feet down and bury anything you like, just as long as it isn’t a biodegradable human body.
And maternal mortality used to be a major cause of death for women of any color over the age of 40 who found themselves pregnant. For that matter, pregnancy and childbirth used to be THE reason that women did not have longer lifespans than men, right up until the cotton gin was invented and cotton cloth (and cheap, disposable bandages) became cheaper and therefore disposable. Before that, cloth was EXPENSIVE and a hand-loomed product. You didn’t use bandages once and throw them away. You used them over and over again.
But it looks as if Louisiana is nostalgic for the good old days and is right on track to bring them back.
If Republicans were not counted, Louisianans’ average IQ would more than quadruple to reach the national average.
I’ve lived in La. for almost 50 years, for family reasons. Lots of good, decent people here. Unfortunately, not enough to vote out Rethuglicans, so we remains one of the states with the worst social statistics.
The united states has the worst maternal death rate of the ‘industrialized’ nations
The higher maternal death rate for minorities is strictly due to the impoverishment of minorites by the CRAPITALIST system in the united states. (as is the fact that the united states has the WORST, deadliest healthcare system of the ‘industrialized’ nations
He, obviously, racistly, thinks that by eliminating all minorities we would ‘make america great again’
(if I remember correctly from the info I’ve gathered)
and you wonder why I have NO RESPECT for these rtwing xtian terrorists?
Going off on a tangent to another country that has suffered under the rule of the thief/Uruk-hai/ utter dregs of humanity party*: Australia.
The Labour party did not get an absolute majority. This is a good thing as they will have to cooperate with smaller parties pushing for an election system with proportional representation. Once this is done, the thief /monster/ zombie party* will never regain a majority.
Australia actually has more than one party fulfilling this role, but för comparison with the Republican party I am using the singular. The former Australian PM was technically a “liberal”. .
birgerjohansson@24 claims, “The Labour [in Ozland] party did not get an absolute majority.”
Eh? According to the Sydney Morning Herald about ten minutes ago, Federal election 2022 results, Labor currently has 72 seats, 76 are needed for a majority, and 14 seats are still undecided. So whilst Labor currently doesn’t have a majority, it is mathematically possible for them to obtain a majority. In addition, according to that link, all of those 14 seats are still “too close to call”.
@#10
You said
“This seems rather similar to the sort of “reasoning” that if π = 3, then maths would be easy; or that the Global Heating Crisis can be avoiding by banning consideration of rising sea levels in coastal planning (as happened in N.Carolina); or that forest fires occur because the forests weren’t raked; or…”
Believe it or not, the State of Montana is being sued by the EPA for changing (republican legislature) numeric standards for water quality to so called “narrative and descriptive” standards.
Why? Because the numeric standards are too complicated and hard to meet.
pick@26, Thanks for that example! After some quick Generalisimo Google™ to confirm (sorry, it just seemed so stooopid), yeah, appears to be very much like that same sort of “reasoning”…
More layers of awfulness from the maternal mortality report this story is drawn from:
Lousiana’s maternal mortality rate steadily increased from 3.3 to 22.2 deaths per 100,000 births over the astonishingly short timeframe of 2011-2016. This is probably due to better data collection…but why was the figure so implausibly low early and how can we know if it’s getting close to the real figures? For reasons I won’t go into here, I believe even those later figures underestimate the mortality rate. It’s probably worse than it looks.
Around 45% of those deaths were considered preventable, mostly due to failures at the provider/facility level, and for non-Hispanic Blacks the rate is 54% compared to only 9% for White women.
the amount of I don’t care expressed is truly astounding. Not surprising really but saying it out loud exposing his bigotry so openly, what a dolt.
birgerjohannson@34–
I too am disappointed that the Liberals weren’t wiped to extinction in the election, but it’s too early to say that Labor won’t get a majority. As blf says, there are enough seats still in doubt. Using the ABC election guide, Labor is only 4 seats short of an outright majority. There are 12 seats in doubt, of which five are leaning to Labor, and the odd case of Brisbane which will almost certainly go to either the Greens or Labor despite both parties vying for second place! Some of these margins are razor-thin (50.2%:49.8%) so we won’t know the outcome for some time.
Why, if you just correct the population for trust fund babies, then there are no poor people who can’t afford food, housing, or health care. I say this not to minimize the issue, but to focus the issue were it would be: time for another round of tax cuts for the wealthy!
Yes, if only the black and brown people would just disappear, then everything would be okay. LOL
Blf@25
My bad, I read what had been confirmed as the final labour score.
But the important thing is the assholes who keep political refugees in prison are gone.
The Republicans are so base, dishonest and stupid ordinary satire fails.
I am reminded of “The New Statesman” where the late Rik Mayall played Alan b’Stard, an utterly corrupt tory member of parliament.
The TV series was deliberately lowbrow and vulgar, because the era of subtle satire (like Yes, Minister) was gone.
I liked the episode where they buried toxic waste in a schoolyard.
Re: birgerjohanson @ #24…
As for Tolkien references… BBC has a segment of their “Live” article set about Ukrainian forces referring to Russian troops as “orcs” and–sometimes–Russia as “Mordor.” Russian forces sometimes refer to Ukrainian troops as “elves”. The Russians seem to have overlooked that the elves were on the winning side and that the elvish enclaves (Rivendell and Lothlorien) successfully repulsed attacks.
It’s all neatly explained by defining racism properly. “Racism”, you see, is the unreasonable belief that one racial type is meaningfully superior to another. But these people “know”, for a “fact”, that black/brown people are inferior to white people. Nothing unreasonable about it. So, stating and acting on that ‘fact’ is not racist at all, it’s ‘telling it like it is’. Being called racist over it is incorrect and unfair. What is racist, by this definition? A black man who thinks they are the equal of a white one.
Very nice and neat.
Related to whheydt@35, Le Monde, Ukrainian and Russian Tolkien fans battle over the legacy of ‘The Lord of the Rings’, “In 2016, Google’s translation tool was hacked to yield ‘мордор,’ Mordor, when translating the word ‘Russia’ from Ukrainian.” As the paywalled article points out, Mordor for Russia, etc., predates the invasion, going back to at least 2015.
@25 – “proportional representation” – well that is sort of what the Australian Senate is. And the House of Reps is elected by preferential voting. Both systems are infinitely better than first past the post systems of America and Britain, and gerrymandering isn’t a thing either because the independent electoral commission draws boundaries by a mathematical formula. It’s a pretty good system The conservative a**eholes have been in power for 9 years not because of the system but because of Murdock’s News Ltd, and an electorate that tends conservative. The result this time is excellent, but already Fox is saying that “Resistance starts now” (on the night of the election).
Sort of like if you only count White votes Republicans can always win, oh, wait, that’s not a metaphor…
Re: blf @ #37…
While the naming back and forth is being quite pronounced during the current war, at least some of it was the result of the fights that started in 2014 with the attempts to form break-away regions in the eastern part of Ukraine and the Russian seizure of Crimea.
birgerjohansson@33
Would that that were so, they’ve simply been replaced by a marginally less odious group of arseholes who also want to keep political refugees in prison for the most part. Labor broadly supports “immigration detention” which is the prison you refer to.
The only practical difference between them and the coalition is that Labor wants to abolish temporary protection visas (TPV). As the name suggests these are temporary visas granted to those who made an unauthorised entry to Australia but have since been recognised as genuine refugees. It’s a cruel limbo that means refugees have to reapply to stay in the country every few years. The reasoning behind it was that if conditions in their home country changed we could send them back. Basically it was just another way for the Australian government to wriggle out of it’s international law obligations to vulnerable people. Labor will be replacing it with permanent protection visas. It’s a step in the right direction, closing down our version of concentration camps is next.
Also it now seems likely but not certain that Labor will reach the 76 seats required for majority.
nomdeplume @ 38
yes I too read that the pundits on Murdochs reich-wing echo station are saying the “resistance starts now’. Their reasons are of course not based on facts. They think that the LNP “lost” to the Labor party. Wrong. The vote for Labour decreased too (compared to 2019). The LNP therefore actually lost to…….
…strong independent women who campaigned on the platform supporting women’s rights, climate action, and anti-corruption.
Swinging further to the right will not attract these voters back the the LNP base.
tuatara @42
It’s bizarre. I’ve seen a number of right wing politicians & commentators say the reason the LNP lost seats to independents campaigning on climate change & women’s rights is that they didn’t double down hard enough against those issues. They won’t be happy until the antipodean MAGA movement moves from the fringe into mainstream conservatism.
It seems Rupert Murdoch is a perfect specimen of evil- he is promoting corruption in Australia, Britain and USA, and since the english-speaking world has so much influence he is dragging down much if the remaining world.
And Tucker Carlson is a perfect specimen of liar-for-money.
Off topic but friends of his I’m sure: the SBC has aired some dirty laundry. Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, kept secret database, report says. And this is the report paid for by the SBC. Not a pretty smell.
The next thing Republicans have up their sleeve, in case vote suppression, gerrymandering, and outright fraud doesn’t work out, is to take the Electoral College model to the states. Where votes are apportioned by county based on % voter turnout rather than by one person-one vote. It sounds like a crackpot idea, which is why it will be enthusiastically embraced by Republicans.
https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/lopez-gop-candidate-colorado-governor-eliminate-one-person-vote-electoral-college/73-2caf357d-aa42-4cef-abae-ac5795bb46c6
^ It’s basically the same sort of thinking as Cassidy’s: the vote isn’t representative of Colorado because we’re counting all those votes for Democrats. For whatever reason, people keep voting for Democrats, but if we correct our population for party and we only count Republican votes, or properly weight those votes, we’d focus the election as to where it should be be.
Re: robro @ #45…
There was a vote at one of their conventions that forced them to pay for an outside consultant to investigate. Those running the SBC didn’t want to do, but their hand was forced. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. They have an actual list of all their people who have been accused of sexual misconduct, but it’s been kept secret.
Earlier today I learned that Louisiana has a prison built from an old plantation, they still call it a plantation, and they force prisoners (mostly Black) to labour under inhumane conditions.
The prison has a prison rodeo marketed as the “Wildest Show in the South” where prisoners with no training are sent out with horses and bulls. There have been, of course, countless injuries and many gruesome deaths.
https://twitter.com/fodderyfodder/status/1528378956109463553
What I’m saying is Louisiana needs to be rebooted. Send all the white people away and only let them return in a few decades if they’ve learned to act like decent human beings.
whheydt@40, Yeah, I guessed that based on the naming apparently appearing (or at least being noticed) about that time.
In today’s Tory Party, he’d be a shining example of principle and integrity. As in many places, reality has outrun satire.
nomdeplume@38,
i have to disagree that preferential voting is better than FPTP, when it comes to electing representatives to a parliament or assembly. It’s good for electing a single executive such as a president or mayor, but for a parliament or assembly, the results tend to be even less representative than from FPTP, making it even harder for a party duopoly to be brought to an end once one exists*. It is quite remarkable that Australians seem to have gone at least some way towards doing that – for the first time since the 1940s.
*I’m counting the Liberal and National parties as one element of a party duopoly with Labor, because that’s how they have behaved.
@51 Not sure why you think that. Preferential voting allows you to choose your least worst options/next best options – most people have 2 or 3 candidates they would be happy with, 2 or 3 they are neutral aagput, and 2 or 3 they consider the worst demons from the seventh level of hell. The cumulative effect of all those choices by say, 80,000 voters accurately reflects their combined wishes. FPTP doesn’t.
KG, I’m with nomdeplume on this one. Obs, I’m also Australian.
Clearly, not everyone thinks that.
Why do you think it’s somehow different for an assembly than for an individual, when the assembly is composed of a selected set of individuals?
[OT]
For reference, this is the system in Oz:
https://www.aec.gov.au/learn/files/poster-counting-hor-pref-voting.pdf
and
https://www.aec.gov.au/learn/files/poster-count-senate-pref-voting.pdf
—
Vaguely on-topic, we here in Oz have a history of aping USA, but hopefully Trumpism doesn’t take root here. I’m vaguely hopeful after our recent election.
Tabby Lavalamp @ 49
Is this Angola prison? Or is it something even worse?
John @54: Is a voter required to rank all the candidates on the ballot?
James Lee Burke has written many books about a detective living and working in Louisiana. The picture of the state that emerges is NOT flattering. Having read all those novels, this politician and his beliefs do not surprise me one bit.
I was about to add La seems like the worst of the states, but then I recalled Alabama and the other Southern states.
The rural south did not have time to benefit from Lyndon Johnsons “great society” initiative before the Vietnam war drained all the resources.
“John @54: Is a voter required to rank all the candidates on the ballot?”
For the House of Reps, yes. For the Senate, you can do weird shit above and below some line, and the ballot paper is as big as a small car.
The effect of preferential voting is that a candidate who gets 30% of primary votes can still win against a candidate who gets 38% because they get preferences from others, you can like that or not. For the Oz election we just had, the Greens preferences saved many a Labor candidate, and Labor/Greens prefs got Independents over the line. Personally, I’m not a fan, especially when you have compulsory voting. How many people make themselves familiar with the candidates before they number their preferences?
I k new John Kennedy. I served with John Kennedy. John Kennedy was a friend of mine. You, Senator, are no John Kennedy.
rorschach @58: I really wish we had ranked balloting in Canada. The Conservatives have a ceiling of about 40% of the vote, but left-leaning votes are split between Liberal, NDP and Green.
“Rishi Sunak blowing away our money again as government pleads poverty”
https://youtu.be/7c-4umMwUwA
Wrong digit! Here we go.
https://youtu.be/8c-4umMwUwA
Re. @61, 62
It is funny, the tories are even more open and blatant about stealing funds, especially during the pandemic.
birgerjohansson @55 It’s Angola.
@58 Not “compulsory voting” – compulsory turning up at polling booth to get your name crossed off. Then you can stuff blank voting papers into the ballot box if you so desire. And I suspect more people than you think know who the candidates are or at least what the parties represent, and almost everyone takes how to vote cards from party reps at the gate.
@56. Rob Grigjanis :“John @54: Is a voter required to rank all the candidates on the ballot?”
& @58. rorschach :
All boxes on the green House of Reps – electorate – paper which in my case was 10 boxes but varies depending on seat.
Minimum of at least 6 above the line or 12 below the line on the white Senate ballot paper although you can continue to number a smany of themk as you choose incl allof them if you wish..This has changed from the past where if memory serves it was one above the line with the party then allocating preferences and every box bvelow but that’s no longer the case.
Its an exaggeration to say the senate ballot is the size of a small car tho’ it might cover the bonnet of one!
Senate syetm reformed a bit after “preference whispering” tactics & shennagins got some rather odd and unrepresentative people elected including Fraser Anning, a pretty much open nazi running for an “unwinnable” spot onteh One Neuron ticket..
Rob Grigjanis @ 60
Hopefully the Canadians will learn from Australia, and later from Britain if they get their stuff together and change the system.
Not sure why you’re not sure why I think that, since I explained why! But see below.
What’s relevant is whether it is actually the case (although admittedly whether people think it is the case can affect whether it actually is). I consider that the long-established duopoly in Australian politics is strong evidence that it is.
In the case of an individual executive, it’s probably about the best you can do to give everyone a reasonably equal chance of making a difference to the outcome. In the case of an assembly, it resembles FPTP in that voters in the small number of marginal constituencies usually have a much greater chance of doing so than anyone else; and on top of that, it encourages, even more than FPTP, a bland “try to offend as few voters as possible” approach in an attempt to garner second or third preferences, and makes it even more difficult for a party duopoly to be ended once established, since almost everyone will have some preference for one or other of the two dominant parties, and so will put whichever they prefer high in their preference order, reinforcing the duopoly.