Monday, June 13, 2022

Texas is a top target for gun rights lobbying and political contributions

photo credit:urluko

Texas representatives in the 117th Congress took more money from gun rights groups than lawmakers in any other state, a new OpenSecrets analysis found. 

Senators and House members representing Texas have received more than $14 million in contributions from gun rights interests over the course of their careers, with much of that coming from the National Rifle Association.

Texas also ranks second among the 19 states tracked by OpenSecrets for state-level lobbying by gun rights groups with more than $3 million in spending from 2015 through 2021. During that period, the NRA spent more on state-level lobbying in Texas than any other state in the 19 states tracked by OpenSecrets with over $2.5 million in spending. 

The influence gun rights groups exert in Texas is also evident in grassroots organizing and advocacy efforts spearheaded by the NRA. 

BOOK REVIEW: Walter Rodney's Intellectual and Political Thought, Reviewed by L.V. Gaither

WALTER RODNEY’S INTELLECTUAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT
Reviewed by L.V. Gaither
Walter Rodney, born in British Guiana in 1942, was one of the most outstanding historians within the radical, international Caribbean tradition. Largely remembered for his Marxist reading of the underdevelopment of Africa, Rodney possessed that rare capacity to take theory and situate it into practical politics; to push liberating ideas beyond the limits of one’s imagination into concrete reality. Although Rodney’s life, and correspondingly his course of revolutionary activity, ended when he was assassinated at the young age of 38, his intellectual production continues to resonate in the international arena.

Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa: The Continued Relevance of a Landmark Book


The Covid-19 pandemic has both illustrated and dramatized the ongoing North/South divide on planet Earth. The question of who has been able to obtain the vaccine and who has not; who is able to produce the vaccine, and who is constrained by corporate patent restrictions.

It is not that people in the so-called Global North—Canada, the United States, the European Union, Japan—have been able to defy the pandemic and secure health. Within the Global North, there are stark divisions over who is able to get access to the vaccine and who is not, not to mention which populations are sickening and dying disproportionately—divisions that are particularly rooted in oppressions based on class, race, and nationality.