The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Ohio Issue 1

Tomorrow, Ohio citizens will vote on Issue 1, which would amend the state constitution to protect reproductive rights. But if you read the state Board of Elections explainer—the language that will actually appear on the ballot—you might not know WTF the amendment does. That is by design; Republican-ruled state legislatures have learned the hard way that an issue with 65% support will probably pass if people know what they're voting for.

Here's the actual proposed amendment, which would become Section 22 of Article 1 (the Ohio Bill of Rights):

A. Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on:

  1. contraception;
  2. fertility treatment;
  3. continuing one’s own pregnancy;
  4. miscarriage care; and
  5. abortion.

B. The State shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against either:

  1. An individual's voluntary exercise of this right or
  2. A person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right,
    unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means to advance the individual's health in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based standards of care.

However, abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability. But in no case may such an abortion be prohibited if in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician it is necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health.

C. As used in this Section:

  1. “Fetal viability” means “the point in a pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient's treating physician, the fetus has a significant likelihood of survival outside the uterus with reasonable measures. This is determined on a case-by-case basis.”
  2. “State” includes any governmental entity and any political subdivision.

D. This Section is self-executing.

That's about 200 words of plain English. Here's what the Board of Elections decided to put on the ballot:

Issue 1
A Self-Executing Amendment Relating to Abortion and Other Reproductive Decisions

Proposed Constitutional Amendment

Proposed by Initiative Petition

To enact Section 22 of Article I of the Constitution of the State of Ohio

A majority yes vote is necessary for the amendment to pass.

The proposed amendment would:

  • Establish in the Constitution of the State of Ohio an individual right to one's own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion;
  • Create legal protections for any person or entity that assists a person with receiving reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion;
  • Prohibit the State from directly or indirectly burdening, penalizing, or prohibiting abortion before an unborn child is determined to be viable, unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means;
  • Grant a pregnant woman's treating physician the authority to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether an unborn child is viable;
  • Only allow the State to prohibit an abortion after an unborn child is determined by a pregnant woman's treating physician to be viable and only if the physician does not consider the abortion necessary to protect the pregnant woman's life or health; and
  • Always allow an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability if, in the treating physician's determination, the abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant woman's life or health.

If passed, the amendment will become effective 30 days after the election.

Shall the amendment be approved?

So what was wrong with the actual text of the amendment? And why did the Republicans in the Board of Elections want this text instead? One of the authors of the amendment, Dr David N Hackney, explains:

The clear lesson from 2022, when six states cast votes for reproductive rights, as well as the results of the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court race, is that voters vote in favor of abortion rights. Every straight up or down vote on reproductive freedom since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has gone in favor of defending or expanding access to abortion. So the strategy of anti-abortion activists has become to pull any available political, messaging or legal levers to prevent that.

[S]tate law allows our ballot board to substitute a summary, as long the initiative is reflected fairly — or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. This is sensible for amendments excessively long or thick with legalese, making an unadulterated replication on paper ballots impractical. Issue 1, by contrast, consists of only 205 words (including numeration), in plain English. The 193-word summary written by the ballot board rescues voters from reading a total of 12 words.

Perhaps the most egregious change between the Issue 1 language and the summary written by the ballot board is the substitution of “unborn child” for “fetus.” “Fetus” is the unequivocally accepted medical term used in textbooks, lectures and research publications.

Ohio’s leaders have formally argued that “unborn child” is valid because it’s written into our existing anti-abortion statutes. This reasoning is circular, as “unborn child” is inappropriate in those contexts as well. Our attorney general’s office stated in a merit brief that “ballot language including the term ‘fetus’ has the potential to confuse voters, who may not know or understand the term’s varying definitions.”

This is, of course, just one of the tactics the Christianist Right uses all the time. They know they can't win on the merits, so they obfuscate, hoping to confuse or demoralize the people who would vote against their positions. Let's hope it once again fails tomorrow.

Don't sell your streets

Climate advocate Rollie Williams looks at the legacy of the 2008 Chicago parking meter deal:

Contra Williams, many Chicagoans, including The Daily Parker, saw the problems with the deal at the time, and how it just got worse over a very short time.

But spend 25 minutes with Williams' video. He takes you through all the immediate problems as well as how it prevents Chicago from adopting more climate-friendly and pedestrian-friendly changes to its streetscape.

For once, not all is gloom and doom

Today's roundup includes only one Earth-shattering kaboom, for starters (and I'll save the political stuff for last):

  • Scientists hypothesize that two continent-sized blobs of hot minerals 3,000 km below Africa and the Pacific Ocean came from Theia, the Mars-sized object that slammed into the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, creating the Moon in the aftermath.
  • October was Illinois 31st warmest and 41st wettest in history (going back to 1895).
  • National Geographic looks into whether the freak winter of 1719—that never really ended that year—could happen again.
  • The world's last Beatles song, "Now and Then," came out today, to meh reviews all around.
  • University of London philosophy lecturer Rebecca Roche extols the virtues of swearing.
  • Charles Blow warns that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who grew up in the same place, won't register for most people as the bomb-throwing reactionary MAGA Republican he is because "unlike Trump’s, Johnson’s efforts to undermine American democracy are served like a comforting bowl of grits and a glass of sweet tea. ... It’s not just good manners; it’s the Christian way, the proper Southern way. And it is the ultimate deception."
  • At the same time, New York Times editorial board member David Firestone calls Johnson "deeply unserious." And Alex Shepherd shakes his head that Johnson has "already run out of ideas." And Tina Nguyen thinks he hasn't got a clue.

Finally, Asia Mieleszko interviews Jake Berman, whose new book The Lost Subways of North America reveals, among other things, that the Los Angeles electric train network used to have direct lines from downtown LA to Balboa Beach and Covina. ("I think that the original sin of most postwar cities was not in building places for the car necessarily. Rather, it was bulldozing large sections of the old city to reorient them around the car." Amen, brother, and a curse on the souls of 1950s and 1960s urban planners.)

Winter in the air

We officially had our first freeze last night as the temperature at O'Hare dipped to -1°C. At Inner Drive Technology World HQ it only got down to 0.1°C, barely above freezing, but still cold enough to put on ear muffs and gloves taking Cassie to day camp this morning. It'll warm up a bit this weekend, though.

Meanwhile, I'm writing a longer post about propaganda, which I may post today or tomorrow. And that's not the only fun thing happening in the world, either:

  • Ukraine has had a lot of success blowing up $2 million Russian tanks with $400 drones. Good.
  • The XPOTUS keeps making fun of the President's age, which, like everything else he does and says, turns out to have a pretty large element of projection. (Remember: to figure out what the XPOTUS wants to do, listen to what he says our lot are doing.) Bad.
  • Chicago house prices have risen faster than in any other major US city lately, but only because they still lag almost every other US city. Mixed.
  • BlueTriton, the parent company of Poland Springs-brand bottled water, not only sells one of the worst products for degrading our natural environment, but also has engaged in ballsy corruption to "persuade" the Maine legislature to let it continue doing so. Bad.
  • HackRead reports a 587% increase in "quishing" attacks, where bad guys get you to scan bogus QR codes to steal your credentials. Very bad.
  • Paleontologists have published evidence that the dust layer kicked up by the Chicxulub impact 66 million years ago may have persisted for 15 years, shutting down photosynthesis entirely for up to 24 months. Bad for the dinosaurs, good for the paleontologists.

Finally, as you sniffle and snort this winter, it might not comfort you to know that you have two noses that can get congested and runny. Bad.

How is it Friday already?

I spent way too much time chasing down an errant mock in my real job's unit test suite, but otherwise I've gotten a lot done today. Too much to read all these articles:

OK, assuming this build works, I'll have closed 4 story points today—with 4 very small 1-point stories. The harder ones start Monday morning.

Speaker Johnson

House Republicans have (finally) elected a Speaker, far-right Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), an election denier who tried to popularize the "independent state legislature" malarkey after the 2020 election:

Elected to Congress in 2016, Mr. Johnson is the most junior lawmaker in decades to become speaker.

He may also be the most conservative. An evangelical Christian, Mr. Johnson is the former chairman of the Republican Study Committee and sponsored legislation to effectively bar the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity at any institution serving children younger than 10 that receives federal funds.

He served on former President Donald J. Trump’s impeachment defense team, played a leading role in recruiting House Republicans to sign a legal brief supporting a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election results and was an architect of Mr. Trump’s bid to object to certifying them in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

Josh Marshall has links to Speaker Johnson's podcasts, just in time for Hallowe'en. They're scary.

Election day is 376 days away...

Why am I indoors?

It's 22°C and sunny right now, making me wonder what's wrong with me that I'm putting together a software release. I probably should fire off the release, but I'm doing so under protest. I also probably won't get to read all of these things I've queued up:

Finally, Stan's Donuts will open a new store just three blocks from the apartment I moved out of one year ago today. I might have to stop in soon. I will not, however, wash them down with CH Distillery's latest abomination, Pumpkin-Spice Malört.

The cargo cult of happiness

Writing in the current Atlantic, Joe Pinsker points out that emulating the pastimes of happy cultures won't actually create a happy culture:

With the release of each [World Happiness] report, which is published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the question is not which country will appear at the top of the rankings, but rather which Northern European country will. Finland has been the world’s happiest country for four years running; Denmark and Norway hold all but one of the other titles (which went to Switzerland in 2015).

The rankings are reliably discouraging for Americans, who have never cracked the global top 10. We are merely in the upper middle class of happiness—respectable, but underwhelming for a country with our level of wealth and self-regard.

Taking forest walks and foraging for berries do sound delightful, but a focus on activities and habits reduces entire cultures to individual lifestyle trends and obscures the structural forces that make people satisfied with their lives. No quantity of blankets or candles is going to make up for living in an unequal society with a weak social safety net. The folly of fixating on local customs becomes even clearer if you consider the poverty and violence that are common at the bottom of the rankings: No lifestyle blogger is studying Afghanistan, the least happy country in this year’s report, and recommending that readers avoid Afghan pastimes and customs such as flying kites and going to communal bathhouses.

Of course, we Americans have always tried to create happiness from fantasy, so perhaps missing the entire point of the World Happiness Report comes as naturally to us as a trip to Disneyland. I, personally, would experience more happiness if the United States had universal healthcare and more American cities had fast, frequent, and reliable public transit, but hey, I have nothing against your favorite professional sports team getting more points than the other teams they play.

The UN has made the World Happiness Report 2023 available free online, just in case you want to see which 14 countries ranked higher than the US in this year's report. Only one of them is an active war zone right now.

Chicken soup with rice

Last weekend I made approximately 5 liters of chicken soup due to an unfortunate decision midway through the process to add more salt. Given the saltiness of the soup I put in mason jars, I recommend a 3:2 ratio of soup to water, meaning I effectively made 8 liters of soup. Most of it is in my freezer now, in convenient 250 mL jars, one serving apiece.

Suffice it to say I have had chicken soup for lunch 3 times this week. It is, however, very delicious. Except for over-salting it (which is easily corrected and preventable in future), I know what I'm doing.

Elsewhere in the world, things are not so delicious:

Finally, today is the 50th anniversary of both the Sydney Opera House opening and Nixon's (and Bork's) Saturday Night Massacre. One of those things endures. The other does too, but not in a good way.

Sure Happy It's Thursday

I'm iterating on a UI feature that wasn't 100% defined, so I'm also iterating on the API that the feature needs. Sometimes software is like that: you discover that your first design didn't quite solve the problem, so you iterate. it's just that the iteration is a bit of a context shift, so I'm going to read for about 15 minutes to clear my head:

  • Kevin Philips, whose 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority laid out Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" and led to the GOP's subsequent slide into authoritarianism and ethnic entrepreneurialism has died, but unfortunately his ideas haven't.
  • The US and Qatar have agreed not to release any of the $6 billion of Iran's money that Qatar currently has in escrow for them, which will no doubt make Iran yet another country demanding to know why Hamas attacked Israel just now.
  • The Chicago Tribune digs into Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson's $16.6 billion budget.
  • In the wake of huge class-action settlements, two major Chicago real-estate brokers have changed their commission policies, but we still have to see if they'll change their actions.
  • The History Channel blurbs the origins of Oktoberfest, which started in 1810 and ends for this year today. Und nächstes Jahr, ich möchte nach München zum Oktoberfest gehen!
  • Jacob Bacharach says the core problem with Michael Lewis's recent biography of Sam Bankman-Fried is that SBF is just too boring to be the subject of a biography.

Finally, Chicago's heavy-rail operator Metra formally proposed simplifying its fare structure. This will cut my commuting costs by about 11%, assuming I use the day passes and individual tickets correctly. It will have the biggest impacts on suburban riders who commute into the city, and riders whose travel doesn't include the downtown terminals.