>. Would be a dumb deal to buy flood insurance for a locale with < a foot annual rainfall, right?

Surprisingly enough, I can get a good idea to have good insurance in an area like that. Depending on the terrain, really dry places can have flash flooding issues when it does rain.

I can see why they voted against it. Although the article is talking about people walking down the street in town, banning all carrying of guns in public would also ban hunting.

This looks more like a bill designed to create misinformed outrage than to actually accomplish anything. Write a bill banning hunting, market it as if you're addressing something in the city, outrage ensues when it is voted down.

I like how the city is trying to blame the rain. Ohh, it was a combination of a water pipe leak and the rain.

No, it was the water pipe leak. They just don't want to pay to fix this guy's yard.

That depends on what the government asked for and what the contractor promised. You need some number to do field tests. If they meet the development milestones, it works but needs some refinements, then I can see doing the initial purchase. Look at where they are going: recruiting and subs training units. It appears that they are going to places where they identified process problems aren't an issue.

Are they charging more than it costs to change? I don't think so. I think the industry will complain, but they will pay because it's easier, faster, and cheaper.

Those are arguments that will be made at the appropriate time. SCOTUS didn't decide that, they only decided if they should stay its enforcement while those arguments happen. Considering the administration has nothing to replace it with, and doesn't plan to replace it anytime soon, theres no reason for a stay since the stay would have little to no effect.

This gets into a cost benefit question. Pantone air carefully calibrate their prices to keep them just below where it's worthwhile to switch.

Eventually they will get too greedy, but that may take decades.

We'll see

How did they do it without any interruptions to plumbing, power, or gas?

You have a high risk of it turning out like Cabrini Green.

The Alabama voters did educate themselves on the proposed changes, and they felt their opinion on actual policies was more important than symbolic changes to wording that had no legal impact.

I'm not sure why you think a federal election controversy is relevant to a single state's policy discussion. Do you understand the federalist organization of our country?

You're conflating federal and state levels of government.

Additionally, at the federal level, SCOTUS is supposed to be anti-majoritarian. Laws have to both 1) get enough support to be passed and 2) be constitutional. One of the primary roles of the SCOTUS is to check popular legislative and executive actions.

Even further, abortion never gained enough support to get any federal legislation passed, so it didn't even meet that hurdle. Even Ginsburg admitted that Roe's legal foundation was poorly reasoned. If it was actually as popular as you claim then it would have been easy to pass the legislation. But you 2/3s support is common of disinformation. 2/3s support abortion in some way, but it is normally presented as 2/3s support abortion in all instances. The reality is that most states will implement abortion restrictions in line with what the population actually supports: limits starting around 15-20 weeks. Which is pretty close to what most of Europe has had for decades.

In a democracy you have to build political support for your policies to get it passed. Regardless of the specific policies, trying to dishonestly end run the democratic process by lying to the electorate is antithetical to our system of government.

Seriously, this BS again? You can call anything racist with this logic. Every policy will disproportionately affect some minority group in some way.

Previous attempts to remove racist language from the Alabama Constitution have actually been Trojan horses for handouts to teachers unions, abortion policy, and tax changes.

Each one of those is their own policy discussion with advantages, disadvantages, and trade offs. Including any of them in something sold as "removing racist language" is blatant dishonesty. You want to make those changes? Put them before the voters as what they really are and have the discussion about the policy. Trying to sneak your preferred policy, that you know you isn't supported by the voting public, undermines the democratic system of government.

Every time this had been proposed previously there were extra changes that they tried to sneak through beyond just removing the racist verbage. Things like making it much easier to raise taxes or significant policy changes.

If they kept it to just removing racist leisure it would have passed decades ago.

Edit: From the article: "However, it does not make the policy changes that some reformers have sought"

So maybe this is a clean proposal for once. I'd be surprised if it is since this had normally been an excuse to paint opposition to tax increases and other policies as "racist"