It looks like I went .500 yesterday in voting for mayor and alderman.
Rahm Emanuel won his runoff against Chuy Garcia:
With near-complete totals in, Emanuel had just under 56 percent of the vote, narrowly topping the 55.28 percent he received four years ago in first winning the office. He had 315,545 votes to 250,773 for Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, who got enough in February to force Emanuel to a runoff. Emanuel's 55.72 percent of the vote may rise slightly in coming days as thousands of mail ballots arrive and are counted.
My alderman, Michele Smith, also appears to have won her runoff, but it's very close and not all the ballots are in yet:
With about 96 percent of the precincts reporting,Smithwas leading with 50.4 percent compared to Caroline Vickrey with 49.6 percent.
That left two remaining precincts whose votes were not in as of late Tuesday as well as absentee ballots that will be counted in the coming weeks.
No surprises, then, though I suspect Smith might feel a little jittery. Ward races rarely go to runoffs, let alone to runoffs decided by 100 votes. I'll keep my eye on this.
Today is the runoff election in Chicago between Rahm Emanuel and Chuy Garcia:
"This is a big election, with clear choices," Emanuel told reporters at a Lakeview campaign office, with a backdrop of volunteers calling potential voters. "There's a lot at stake for the city of Chicago."
Defending his Democratic credentials, Emanuel pointed to backing from some elements of organized labor, his support for raising the minimum wage and having real estate developers set aside money for affordable housing.
"That is what people are voting for, they're voting for the basic things that they want for their families, their neighborhoods and their communities," said Emanuel, who added, "Yes, my name's on the ballot. That's also true, 'Chuy's' name is on the ballot. But what's on the ballot is Chicago's future. That's what's on the ballot."
I was in and out of my polling place in six minutes. It took five minutes and 30 seconds to check in, get my ballot, and go to a booth; 3 seconds to make two marks on the ballot (one for mayor, one for alderman); and the remaining 27 seconds to slide my ballot into the ballot box. Remarkably, I didn't have an undervote this time: I actually voted for 100% of the offices on the ballot. (Sometimes, though it pains me to say it, I skip the dozens of judicial retention votes.)
I'll have an update tomorrow. I don't think the election will surprise anyone, though.
It appears that not everyone realized yesterday's post about RFRA was an April Fool, possibly because shortly after I posted it both Mike Pence and Asa Hutchinson backpedaled:
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson told lawmakers on Wednesday to revise a bill that rights activists and U.S. businesses said allowed discrimination against gays, and home-state corporate giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc praised his action.
Indiana's governor a day earlier said lawmakers should fix a similar Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). After it was enacted last week, the state was hit with protests, threatened boycotts and warnings from powerful U.S. firms of pending economic damage for being seen as standing against U.S. ideals of inclusion.
Note that both Hutchinson and Pence were upset with the political response to their states' bills, not to the obvious discriminatory aspect to them following Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. Both the SCOTUS decision and the RFRA bills (as a collective) passed since then are bad law. But read the GOP's backpedaling carefully: to them, that's a feature, not a bug. They're just surprised anyone objected.
Well, this surprised me this morning:
Surprising critics and supporters alike, Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson (R) announced today he plans to veto the religious freedom bill passed yesterday by the state legislature. The bill in Arkansas is similar to an Indiana law passed last week, with both diverging in certain respects from the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That act was passed in 1993 and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, Arkansas’s most famous political son.
Both bills allow for larger corporations, if they are substantially owned by members with strong religious convictions, to claim that a ruling or mandate violates their religious faith, something reserved for individuals or family businesses in other versions of the law. Both allow religious parties to go to court to head off a “likely” state action that they fear will impinge on their beliefs, even if it has not yet happened.
Citing concerns that the language of the Arkansas bill could allow companies to discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation, Hutchinson said he realized the bill "wasn't really about religious freedom."
"Clearly this is an effort of a small group of small-minded people to enforce their narrow religious beliefs on society as a whole," Hutchinson said at a press conference at the governor's mansion. "It's exactly the kind of thing that makes people think Republicans are trying to drag the country back to the 19th Century."
"Look, we're the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower, men of great vision and talent who worked hard to protect Americans of all stripes. It demeans us to keep passing this kind of divisive, negative legislation that has no purpose other than to express the outrage some religious bigots feel that the world has moved on from their medieval world-view," Hutchinson said.
"I'm a God-fearing Christian, but if I sign this law, I'm no better than those Taliban idiots who really believe the 11th Century was a better time. Giving in to this gay-baiting crap isn't in line with what Jesus taught us, and that it was sent to me during Holy Week just underscores how petty and bigoted some people in the Arkansas legislature really are," Hutchinson said.
"It's time for real leadership in this state so we can get out of 45th place in education, 45th place in poverty, and 48th place in per-capita GDP. It's embarrassing. As governor, I'm not going to stand for this bread-and-circuses nonsense when there's real work to be done," Hutchinson said.
In other news, Britain's University of Leicester will be changing its name to King Richard University, according to the Independent. According to the newspaper, "The proposal will be debated by the university’s senate next month. It is expected to agree to the institution formally being rechristened as King Richard University from September 2016."
...sort of. But that's not important right now. I'm just spiking some articles to read later:
OK, time for a vendor phone call...
My catching-up on the Netflix version of Michael Dobbs' House of Cards has taken a brief hiatus as the friend in question has actual work and family obligations. I'm taking advantage of the pause to go back to the original BBC miniseries with Ian Richardson in the role of F.U.
You know what? It'ts better. It has a faster pace, more sharply-drawn characters, it's funnier, and it isn't sanctimonius—it's an actual satire. Francis Urquhart is evil, and doesn't care that we in the audience know it. Francis Underwood wants us to like him. That may be the difference between the UK and the US in a nutshell.
Still, in three hours of the BBC miniseries, I find myself laughing out loud at Urquhart's deviousness and at the lampooning of British political archetypes (that, granted, require some context about British politics post-Thatcher). The Netflix series just seems so...sanctimonious. Melodramatic. Long.
The British understand satire. Americans, not so much. Comparing the two versions of House of Cards side by side has been an education.
Under international treaties, German flag carrier Lufthansa could face huge compensation claims after one of its pilots apparently intentionally crashed an A320 into the Alps on Tuesday:
Under a treaty governing deaths and injuries aboard international flights, airlines are required to compensate relatives of victims for proven damages of up to a limit currently set at about $157,000 — regardless of what caused the crash.
To avoid liability, a carrier has to prove that the crash wasn't due to "negligence or other wrongful act" by its employees, according to Article 21 of the 1999 Montreal Convention.
That would be a difficult argument to make when a pilot intentionally crashes a plane into a mountain, and one that Lufthansa would likely avoid as it could further damage the brand, [German aviation lawyer Marco] Abate said.
Abate said that in German courts, damages for pain and suffering typically don't exceed 10,000 euros ($11,000). However, Lufthansa could face much bigger claims for loss of financial support. If the breadwinner of a family was killed in a plane crash, the survivors can sue for years of lost income, Abate said.
The difference between U.S. and European procedures might be a problem for Lufthansa. In the U.S., pilots are never left alone in the cockpit; in Europe—at least until this week—there was no comparable practice.
Sigh. I just don't have the slacker skills required to read these things during the work day:
Continuing, now, with a database migration...
Yah, Utah, for finding yet one more way to take us back to the 19th Century:
In 2011, the European Union banned the export of lethal injection drugs to the United States in an effort to save America from itself. The reasoning behind the embargo was queasily naïve: Without the drugs, European legislators reasoned, American officials would be at a loss to carry out executions, and the practice would perhaps come to an end. Though the ban did slow the rate of American executions, it now seems Europe’s humanitarians underestimated old-fashioned American ingenuity. On Monday, Utah’s governor Gary Herbert signed a bill into law that will allow firing squads to be used in place of lethal injections should the drugs be unavailable.
Comfort does not come any colder. It is the year 2015, and we Americans are idly musing about what particular methods kill people most harmlessly. There probably are, as Stroud and McCoy suggest, only miniscule differences in suffering when most viable methods are carried out precisely, because life is fragile and relatively easy to snuff. The bizarre reality, then, is that we are content to argue about the last two or three minutes of a person’s life, when the entire procedure of a death sentence is an experiment in torture.
The debate over particular death penalty methods obscures the cruelty of the entire scheme.
Capital punishment is, to me, a prima facie violation of the 8th Amendment. Unfortunately it's not unusual in the U.S. We're the only country in our peer group—the most advanced and powerful nations on the planet—who kill prisoners and children. It needs to stop. I'm glad Illinois ended the practice years ago, but it's not enough.
With meetings and a new developer on the team occupying almost all my time today, I've put these things aside for the half-hour I have at 6:30 to read them:
Now to jot down some policies on our new Microsoft Surface setups...