The goal of Death Star is simple. The deeply conservative Texas Legislature wants to effectively deny cities—the state’s large Democratic-leaning cities, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin in particular—the ability to pass local laws and regulations in eight major policy areas: agriculture, business and commerce, finance, insurance, labor, natural resource law, occupational law, and property law. And it does all this in a bill that is 10 single-spaced pages long, nearly one page of which is legislative findings, not actual law. Which is where the problems begin.

Death Star does not aim to affirmatively lay out regulations at the state level; it simply attempts to thwart local regulations. Thus, the entirely of the provision that denies local governments the ability to regulate the insurance industry is just this: “Unless expressly authorized by another statute, a municipality or county may not adopt, enforce, or maintain an ordinance, order, or rule regulating conduct in a field of regulation that is occupied by a provision of this code. An ordinance, order, or rule that violates this section is void, unenforceable, and inconsistent with this code.” That’s it. It then repeats this language across all the various other fields, although in a few cases it adds an extra clause or two to identify specific subfields it really wants to make sure are preempted.


The party of small government strikes again!

  • Furbag@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The tone-deafness of calling their shitty law “Death Star” is so funny that it’s un-funny.

    edit: I guess I didn’t read it carefully enough. My bad, y’all.

      • Turkey_Titty_city@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        The empire is just trying to bring order to a chaotic galaxy of stupid aliens who just need to be taught how to be better, like the white-skinned humans.

        • Zorque@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          The most telling thing about the sequels is that they decided to make the Empire new order less racist and sexist than in the EU.

          Gotta make sure the megalomaniacal fascist states are inclusive!

          • _cerpin_taxt_@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            They’re literally meant to be space Nazis haha. Right down to the uniforms and flags. TLJ when Donal Gleason’s character is giving a speech was very heavy-handed with it. These guys sided with the space Nazis!

              • _cerpin_taxt_@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Oops haha. Accidentally merged his name with Donal Logue. Yep, Domhnall played Bill! Him and his dad were in HP. Brendan is such a great actor, too. In Bruges is easily a top 10 movie for me! Domnhall killed it in Ex Machina and Black Mirror, as well.