Most liberals don't give two shits about the Oscars, but I'm not going to be lectured by Mother Jones about how people are exaggerating what's happening in Flint or about how there's a huge problem with over incarceration or that Republicans are outright rigging elections or that welfare isn't constantly under attack.
Human beings in an American town are getting lead poisoning in 2016. That's insane. What's worse is that this has shed a light on this happening in more places than just Flint. Children have lead poisoning, and it was all just to save some money. Progressives have been fighting tooth and nail against deregulation for decades to prevent situations just like this. Austerity doesn't fucking work. If you have to poison people to save money, you need to be in jail.
And the old statistic that progressives have been trotting out since time immemorial about the US having the world's highest incarceration rate, higher than China or Iran, is still true. And if you don't think the 1994 crime bill has contributed to and exacerbated the problem, you don't know what you're talking about. No one is saying it's the one and only cause, but it was an experiment in how to fight crime, and the result of that experiment is mass incarceration.
Democratic turnout drops by an estimated 8.8 percentage points in general elections when strict photo identification laws are in place,” compared to just 3.6 percentage points for Republicans.
I've had it with this incredibly stupid "both sides do it" mentality. If it were simply untrue, I probably wouldn't care, but it spreads a false narrative that gives the right cover when they do unspeakable things. Poisoning people is wrong. Our recidivism rate is all the proof we need our mass-incarceration system has jack shit to do with rehabilitation or justice. And elections are being stolen, which is how many of these terrible things and more are allowed to continue.