The New York Times' David Brooks Scapegoats Transgender People's Civil Rights

[Shana A]

The New York Times' David Brooks Scapegoats Transgender People's Civil Rights
by: Autumn Sandeen
Wed Sep 29, 2010 at 07:00:00 AM EDT

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/17470/the-new-york-times-david-brooks-scapegoats-transgender-peoples-civil-rights

Leave it to conservative pundit David Brooks, writing for the New York Times, to identify the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community's 2003 push for transgender civil rights as a reason and/or byproduct of the dysfunctional state government in California. You know, because the California state budget is a huge mess.

snip

So far, there's some truth to what he says. But then he makes this comment in his piece (emphasis added):

    Meanwhile, the political set is an embarrassment. As jobs disappear, legislators are fixated on transgender rights and deals for lobbyists. Legislators are polarized and gridlocked. The pension system is $300 billion in the red, and the state hops from one fiscal crisis to the next...

[spacial]

Eighty-two percent of Californians say they believe their state is heading in the wrong direction, according to this week's University of Southern California/Los Angeles Times survey.

If that is the case then 82% of Calafornians can vote for another government. It's called democracy. Which leaves the question, what the need for the rhetoric?

Meanwhile, the political set is an embarrassment. As jobs disappear, legislators are fixated on transgender rights and deals for lobbyists. Legislators are polarized and gridlocked.

I'm a bit stung by a response to a previous use of nazism to describe similar behaviour, but highlighting this issue along with a load of very negative rhetoric sounds like this guy is attempting to line up one group as the scapegoat.