Tuesday, May 3, 2016
Monday, May 2, 2016
How America’s Worst Governor And An Ultra Conservative Ideology Wrecked An Entire State
By Marcel Harmon
It’s safe to say that if Kansas’s Gov. Sam Brownback or any of the state’s ultraconservative legislators had been in fictional astronaut Mark Watney’s place (“The Martian“), they would have never survived the 543 sols that Watney spent stranded on Mars before being rescued. It’s doubtful they would have even made it back to the Hab in the first place after inadvertently being left for dead in the middle of the fateful sandstorm that drove the crew to abandon their mission. Survival depended on logically assessing the situation at hand and subsequently deciding on a course of action based on empirical evidence, sound scientific, engineering and even economic principles, and best practices.
These aren’t key strengths of Brownback or ultraconservative legislators.
And in this case they would have essentially been responsible for creating the sandstorm that forced the astronaut team to flee Mars to begin with. Kansas is experiencing a massive “lack of revenue” storm created by the income tax cuts of 2012 and 2013, seriously jeopardizing the state’s future and quality of life for Kansans across the state. Everything from transportation infrastructure to public education are struggling to stay upright in the gale-force winds of the income tax cuts. Some Kansans are fleeing the state as if having been given the order to abandon the mission, though most fight to survive in this increasingly hostile environment.
For Kansas, a better protagonist would be the Kansas Center for Economic Growth (KCEG), a nonpartisan organization with a much better grasp of economics and the use of empirical evidence to guide their policy recommendations. Executive director Annie McKay, senior fellow Duane Goossen and others at the KCEG are far better prepared to “science the shit out of this,” rescuing themselves and the rest of us from the desolation of the Kansas economic landscape being wrought by the “lack of revenue” storm.
In their recent report, “Kansas Public Education: The Foundation for Economic Growth,” the KCEG effectively demonstrates a) the short- and long-term benefits of a strong public education system (everything from reduced public healthcare costs to the attraction and retention of workers/businesses), b) that K-12 education is an economic driver in Kansas with a significant return on investment and c) that K-12 public education is currently underfunded (and under threat) in the state of Kansas.
To address this, KCEG makes the following two policy recommendations to provide better support for Kansas public education and subsequently provide broader economic prosperity across the state:
Of course if one assumes the goal is to significantly reduce the role and size of state government, and to correspondingly increase a) the burden on the individual (subscribing to the myth of the self-made “man”) as well as b) privatization, particularly for public education which composes the majority of the state’s budget, then the tax cuts are working. Unfortunately, they’ll eventually turn Kansas’s economy into a something resembling the desolate Martian landscape.
KCEG’s report partially demonstrates from one economic perspective why such a view of the world, when actualized into public policy, doesn’t work, except for those at the top of the financial food chain. KCEG rightly points out that the tax revenues devoted to state-provided services, such as transportation infrastructure, public education and healthcare, to name a few, are in actuality investments in some very “powerful economic development tools” available to Kansas (and other states).
Looking just at public education, according to KCEG’s analysis, “[e]ach dollar invested in public schools reaps a $2.62 return…” that benefits all Kansans in terms of the quality of our workforce, the earning (and spending) power of graduates, reduced healthcare costs, reduced crime control costs and reduced welfare costs. The return on investment we all receive from the taxes that generate these much-needed revenues, regardless of whether one receives a direct or indirect benefit (i.e., people without children or who were home-schooled also benefit from a well-educated citizenry) doesn’t fit the ultraconservative narrative of a free market utopia with little government involvement and individuals solely responsible for their successes and misfortunes.
And the wealthy do typically gain more than everyone else under such a system – they keep more of their wealth with reduced taxes and are able to supplement with their own resources any reduction in government services, such as sending their kids to private schools. They often benefit from the increased privatization that occurs if they are financially involved in the private entities who provide the services. Those investments relative to business growth are also focused on their own interests, and therefore the greater economic benefits are more localized and smaller relative to the benefits and services that were displaced through shrinking government. Trickle-down is an apt term – it typically is just a trickle (if that) relative to the population at large.
Research in other disciplines strongly support this as well. Continuing with the theme of wanting to “science the shit out of this,” let’s take a look at what research from the intersection of biology, behavior, economics and the social sciences have to say (see “Evolution: This View of Life” as well as the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Special Issue on Evolution as a General Theoretical Framework for Economics and Public Policy for a jumping-off point into this research).
Free market principals and associated economic models are built in part around the view of humans as Homo economicus, making “rational” decisions based on a narrow, relatively short-term cost/benefit analysis and pursuing their self-interests relentlessly at the near exclusion of all other factors. While it’s true such “selfish” behavior (selfish relative to other individuals or the groups one is a part of) exists and manifests under a variety of conditions, it by no means fully defines human behavior.
Our evolutionary history has also designed us to be extremely social creatures who love to congregate. In contrast to selfish behavior, “pro-social” actions benefit the larger, encompassing groups one is a part of (sometimes at the expense of the individual or smaller group). Selfish behaviors tend to be locally advantageous, particularly for the individual or smaller group conducting the behavior, and more relevant in the short term, while pro-social behaviors tend to be globally advantageous to the larger encompassing group and society, and more relevant in the long term.
Pro-social behaviors also tend to enhance cooperation among group members. And our social/cultural norms act as a kind of “glue,” binding together unrelated individuals within larger groups and providing a measure of uniformity in their behavior. From an evolutionary perspective, cooperation and a measure of uniformity are hallmarks of successful groups.
And so individual decisions often are made to conform with social/cultural norms and rules of interaction, typically benefiting the larger group as much as or more than the individual. There also is the potential for such decisions and actions to be a detriment to the individual relative to other group members. Paying taxes benefits the larger group structures themselves – the institutions of the state and subsequent services provided; it also benefits individual citizens to varying degrees relative to the “services” provided by the state. It may benefit the individual paying the taxes directly and immediately or it may be an indirect benefit in that group longevity, stability and prosperity are all contributed to by payment of taxes.
Individuals (and businesses) who avoid paying their fair share of taxes (selfish behavior relative to the larger group), either illegally or through legal loopholes, put themselves at an advantage compared to their fellow group members who pro-socially pay their fair share. And wealthier individuals (and businesses) who support drastically reducing or eliminating taxes also put themselves at a benefit relative to their fellow citizens who depend to varying degrees on state services. Such actions in effect shift the level of selection from the larger group down to the level of individuals and smaller groups (including communities and businesses), creating more intragroup competition and decreasing group uniformity and cooperation.
Our pro-social and selfish natures, and their differing manifestations relative to the dominant level of selection, developed over the course of our evolutionary history spent as hunter-gatherers living in more egalitarian groups. Social/cultural mechanisms and processes, such as transparency of behavior, public shaming, gossiping and ostracizing evolved to minimize selfish behaviors and maximize pro-social behaviors in groups that are smaller and less complex than the ones we live in today.
Those same social/cultural mechanisms and processes can be effective in modern society. However, the much greater number of individuals and subgroups, often competing and cooperating on different levels at the same time and often hierarchically nested within each other, require additional social mechanisms to help maintain the level of selection primarily at the larger group level. Formal laws, regulations and governing structures, including those requiring taxes be paid to adequately fund services provided by the state, are examples of such mechanisms. A few years ago, David Sloan Wilson, Elinor Ostrom and Michael E. Cox provided a more detailed overview of the application of these mechanisms in modern society.
This was a simplified discussion of the literature, but it summarizes some of the limitations of Homo economicus as the only important aspect of human behavior to consider in economic models as well as the fallacy of a free market utopia where individual freedoms and responsibility reign supreme. It also ends in the same place as the conclusions of KCEG’s report: public services, including a strong, equitable public education system, benefit us all and therefore require adequate and fair taxation as a source of revenue.
Despite all of the evidence against the governor and ultraconservative legislators clinging to a free market utopia, despite being put on a credit watch by Standard and Poor’s, despite many previous ultraconservative legislative allies now jumping ship as the fall elections approach, the governor is standing by the tax cuts. And he continues to receive support (and likely pressure) from the Kansas Policy Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other similar groups as they persist in whipping up a sandstorm of misinformation and spin.
As David Sloan Wilson, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University, has previously stated, “[Ideological] zealots are famously immune to experience, scientific evidence, logic and common sense… Perverse [policies] with ruinous consequences make sense to the economic true believer. If they fail, then the solution is to practice them even more assiduously. The only solution to this problem is to break the spell by changing the story to one that is more in tune with reality.”
And that’s what I’ve tried to do here (as well as KCEG and others elsewhere), but I’ve little hope it will break the free market spell holding sway over the governor. Nor should Kansans be fooled by those ultraconservative legislators now calling for some degree of tax cut repeal. A term-limited governor who continuously threatens to veto any legislation repealing or reducing the tax cuts serves as great cover for those ultraconservative legislators with the same goals, who are also seeking re-election.
Ultimately, the real hero in this story will be Kansas voters if they recognize what it takes to “science the shit out of this” and use their voting power to change the legislative landscape this fall.
It’s safe to say that if Kansas’s Gov. Sam Brownback or any of the state’s ultraconservative legislators had been in fictional astronaut Mark Watney’s place (“The Martian“), they would have never survived the 543 sols that Watney spent stranded on Mars before being rescued. It’s doubtful they would have even made it back to the Hab in the first place after inadvertently being left for dead in the middle of the fateful sandstorm that drove the crew to abandon their mission. Survival depended on logically assessing the situation at hand and subsequently deciding on a course of action based on empirical evidence, sound scientific, engineering and even economic principles, and best practices.
These aren’t key strengths of Brownback or ultraconservative legislators.
And in this case they would have essentially been responsible for creating the sandstorm that forced the astronaut team to flee Mars to begin with. Kansas is experiencing a massive “lack of revenue” storm created by the income tax cuts of 2012 and 2013, seriously jeopardizing the state’s future and quality of life for Kansans across the state. Everything from transportation infrastructure to public education are struggling to stay upright in the gale-force winds of the income tax cuts. Some Kansans are fleeing the state as if having been given the order to abandon the mission, though most fight to survive in this increasingly hostile environment.
For Kansas, a better protagonist would be the Kansas Center for Economic Growth (KCEG), a nonpartisan organization with a much better grasp of economics and the use of empirical evidence to guide their policy recommendations. Executive director Annie McKay, senior fellow Duane Goossen and others at the KCEG are far better prepared to “science the shit out of this,” rescuing themselves and the rest of us from the desolation of the Kansas economic landscape being wrought by the “lack of revenue” storm.
In their recent report, “Kansas Public Education: The Foundation for Economic Growth,” the KCEG effectively demonstrates a) the short- and long-term benefits of a strong public education system (everything from reduced public healthcare costs to the attraction and retention of workers/businesses), b) that K-12 education is an economic driver in Kansas with a significant return on investment and c) that K-12 public education is currently underfunded (and under threat) in the state of Kansas.
To address this, KCEG makes the following two policy recommendations to provide better support for Kansas public education and subsequently provide broader economic prosperity across the state:
- Repeal the unaffordable income tax changes to generate revenue and invest in schools.
- Replace the inadequate block grant with an equitable school funding formula that accounts for what it actually costs to educate and prepare students for life after high school.
Of course if one assumes the goal is to significantly reduce the role and size of state government, and to correspondingly increase a) the burden on the individual (subscribing to the myth of the self-made “man”) as well as b) privatization, particularly for public education which composes the majority of the state’s budget, then the tax cuts are working. Unfortunately, they’ll eventually turn Kansas’s economy into a something resembling the desolate Martian landscape.
KCEG’s report partially demonstrates from one economic perspective why such a view of the world, when actualized into public policy, doesn’t work, except for those at the top of the financial food chain. KCEG rightly points out that the tax revenues devoted to state-provided services, such as transportation infrastructure, public education and healthcare, to name a few, are in actuality investments in some very “powerful economic development tools” available to Kansas (and other states).
Looking just at public education, according to KCEG’s analysis, “[e]ach dollar invested in public schools reaps a $2.62 return…” that benefits all Kansans in terms of the quality of our workforce, the earning (and spending) power of graduates, reduced healthcare costs, reduced crime control costs and reduced welfare costs. The return on investment we all receive from the taxes that generate these much-needed revenues, regardless of whether one receives a direct or indirect benefit (i.e., people without children or who were home-schooled also benefit from a well-educated citizenry) doesn’t fit the ultraconservative narrative of a free market utopia with little government involvement and individuals solely responsible for their successes and misfortunes.
And the wealthy do typically gain more than everyone else under such a system – they keep more of their wealth with reduced taxes and are able to supplement with their own resources any reduction in government services, such as sending their kids to private schools. They often benefit from the increased privatization that occurs if they are financially involved in the private entities who provide the services. Those investments relative to business growth are also focused on their own interests, and therefore the greater economic benefits are more localized and smaller relative to the benefits and services that were displaced through shrinking government. Trickle-down is an apt term – it typically is just a trickle (if that) relative to the population at large.
Research in other disciplines strongly support this as well. Continuing with the theme of wanting to “science the shit out of this,” let’s take a look at what research from the intersection of biology, behavior, economics and the social sciences have to say (see “Evolution: This View of Life” as well as the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Special Issue on Evolution as a General Theoretical Framework for Economics and Public Policy for a jumping-off point into this research).
Free market principals and associated economic models are built in part around the view of humans as Homo economicus, making “rational” decisions based on a narrow, relatively short-term cost/benefit analysis and pursuing their self-interests relentlessly at the near exclusion of all other factors. While it’s true such “selfish” behavior (selfish relative to other individuals or the groups one is a part of) exists and manifests under a variety of conditions, it by no means fully defines human behavior.
Our evolutionary history has also designed us to be extremely social creatures who love to congregate. In contrast to selfish behavior, “pro-social” actions benefit the larger, encompassing groups one is a part of (sometimes at the expense of the individual or smaller group). Selfish behaviors tend to be locally advantageous, particularly for the individual or smaller group conducting the behavior, and more relevant in the short term, while pro-social behaviors tend to be globally advantageous to the larger encompassing group and society, and more relevant in the long term.
Pro-social behaviors also tend to enhance cooperation among group members. And our social/cultural norms act as a kind of “glue,” binding together unrelated individuals within larger groups and providing a measure of uniformity in their behavior. From an evolutionary perspective, cooperation and a measure of uniformity are hallmarks of successful groups.
And so individual decisions often are made to conform with social/cultural norms and rules of interaction, typically benefiting the larger group as much as or more than the individual. There also is the potential for such decisions and actions to be a detriment to the individual relative to other group members. Paying taxes benefits the larger group structures themselves – the institutions of the state and subsequent services provided; it also benefits individual citizens to varying degrees relative to the “services” provided by the state. It may benefit the individual paying the taxes directly and immediately or it may be an indirect benefit in that group longevity, stability and prosperity are all contributed to by payment of taxes.
Individuals (and businesses) who avoid paying their fair share of taxes (selfish behavior relative to the larger group), either illegally or through legal loopholes, put themselves at an advantage compared to their fellow group members who pro-socially pay their fair share. And wealthier individuals (and businesses) who support drastically reducing or eliminating taxes also put themselves at a benefit relative to their fellow citizens who depend to varying degrees on state services. Such actions in effect shift the level of selection from the larger group down to the level of individuals and smaller groups (including communities and businesses), creating more intragroup competition and decreasing group uniformity and cooperation.
Our pro-social and selfish natures, and their differing manifestations relative to the dominant level of selection, developed over the course of our evolutionary history spent as hunter-gatherers living in more egalitarian groups. Social/cultural mechanisms and processes, such as transparency of behavior, public shaming, gossiping and ostracizing evolved to minimize selfish behaviors and maximize pro-social behaviors in groups that are smaller and less complex than the ones we live in today.
Those same social/cultural mechanisms and processes can be effective in modern society. However, the much greater number of individuals and subgroups, often competing and cooperating on different levels at the same time and often hierarchically nested within each other, require additional social mechanisms to help maintain the level of selection primarily at the larger group level. Formal laws, regulations and governing structures, including those requiring taxes be paid to adequately fund services provided by the state, are examples of such mechanisms. A few years ago, David Sloan Wilson, Elinor Ostrom and Michael E. Cox provided a more detailed overview of the application of these mechanisms in modern society.
This was a simplified discussion of the literature, but it summarizes some of the limitations of Homo economicus as the only important aspect of human behavior to consider in economic models as well as the fallacy of a free market utopia where individual freedoms and responsibility reign supreme. It also ends in the same place as the conclusions of KCEG’s report: public services, including a strong, equitable public education system, benefit us all and therefore require adequate and fair taxation as a source of revenue.
Despite all of the evidence against the governor and ultraconservative legislators clinging to a free market utopia, despite being put on a credit watch by Standard and Poor’s, despite many previous ultraconservative legislative allies now jumping ship as the fall elections approach, the governor is standing by the tax cuts. And he continues to receive support (and likely pressure) from the Kansas Policy Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other similar groups as they persist in whipping up a sandstorm of misinformation and spin.
As David Sloan Wilson, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University, has previously stated, “[Ideological] zealots are famously immune to experience, scientific evidence, logic and common sense… Perverse [policies] with ruinous consequences make sense to the economic true believer. If they fail, then the solution is to practice them even more assiduously. The only solution to this problem is to break the spell by changing the story to one that is more in tune with reality.”
And that’s what I’ve tried to do here (as well as KCEG and others elsewhere), but I’ve little hope it will break the free market spell holding sway over the governor. Nor should Kansans be fooled by those ultraconservative legislators now calling for some degree of tax cut repeal. A term-limited governor who continuously threatens to veto any legislation repealing or reducing the tax cuts serves as great cover for those ultraconservative legislators with the same goals, who are also seeking re-election.
Ultimately, the real hero in this story will be Kansas voters if they recognize what it takes to “science the shit out of this” and use their voting power to change the legislative landscape this fall.
Ring of Fire: Jane Sanders: “We Are Not Spoiling The Democratic Race”
By Sydney Robinson
During an interview this week, Senator Bernie Sanders’ wife Jane Sanders made an appearance to defend the senator’s continued presence in the race in the face of a changing tide which is shifting toward Clinton.
Jane dismissed the idea that Sanders’ continued presence in the race was damaging to the Democratic party, saying that Sanders’ campaign wants every person who supports him to be able to cast a vote in his favor. Mrs. Sanders told the reporter that the Sanders campaign intends to stay in the race and allow the remaining states to vote for the candidate, and agenda, they believe is best.
Jane also said this week that even if Sanders doesn’t become president, the truth of his “revolution” will fight on, and that we won’t have seen the last of Sanders or his message.
During an interview this week, Senator Bernie Sanders’ wife Jane Sanders made an appearance to defend the senator’s continued presence in the race in the face of a changing tide which is shifting toward Clinton.
Jane dismissed the idea that Sanders’ continued presence in the race was damaging to the Democratic party, saying that Sanders’ campaign wants every person who supports him to be able to cast a vote in his favor. Mrs. Sanders told the reporter that the Sanders campaign intends to stay in the race and allow the remaining states to vote for the candidate, and agenda, they believe is best.
Jane also said this week that even if Sanders doesn’t become president, the truth of his “revolution” will fight on, and that we won’t have seen the last of Sanders or his message.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Unreal Engine 4.11.2 Hotfix/4.12 Preview 1
Start your journey into game development or take it to the next level with
Unreal Engine.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
The Blacklist - The Artax Network S3 E20
Reeling with grief, the task force hunts the organization behind Liz's
failed abduction - who is Solomon working for and why was Liz the
target? Meanwhile, Red confronts a man from his past. Brian Dennehy
guest stars.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Why Bernie Will, Should And Must Stay In The Race
Actually, he already has.
Sanders' vivid populist vision, unabashed idealism and big ideas for restoring America to its own people have jerked the presidential debate out of the hands of status quo corporatists, revitalized the class consciousness and relevance of the Democratic Party, energized millions of young people to get involved, and proven to the Democratic establishment that they don't have to sell out to big corporate donors to raise the money they need to run for office.
Bernie has substantively—even profoundly—changed American politics for the better, which is why he's gaining more and more support and keeps winning delegates. From the start, he said, "This campaign is not about me"—it's a chance for voters who have been disregarded and discarded to forge a new political revolution that will continue to grow beyond this election and create a true people's government.
From coast to coast, millions of voters have been "Feeling the Bern." That's the campaign slogan grassroots supporters created to express their passion for the unconventional presidential run being made by Bernie Sanders.
Yes, passion—an outpouring of genuine excitement that is (as we say in Texas) "hotter than high school love." All this for a 74 year old democratic socialist who is openly taking on the corporate plutocracy that's been knocking down the middle class and holding down the poor. Sanders is the oldest candidate in the race—yet politically, he's the youngest candidate, exuberantly putting forth an FDR-sized vision and agenda to lift up America's workaday majority. And guess what? It turns out that workaday Americans really value democracy over plutocracy, so that's where his passionate support comes from.
Need I mention that the moneyed powers—and the politicians hooked on their money—hate this affront to their cozy politics-as-usual/ business-as-usual system? Especially shocking to them is that Sanders' supporters have found their way around the usual Wall of Big Money that the establishment always throws us to thwart populist campaigns. This time, though, a counter-force of common folks has created a widely successful campaign fund of their own to support their Bernie rebellion. How successful? A whopping $182 million has been raised in millions of small donations that average $27 each.
That's a revolution, right there! Every revolution needs a slogan, so here's one that used to be on the marquee of a vintage, locally owned motel just down the street from where I live in Austin: "No additives, no preservatives, corporate-free since 1938." That perfectly sums up the unique people's campaign that Bernie-people have forged for themselves.
The keepers of the Established Order fear this grassroots uprising by no-name "outsiders," and they know that this year's Democratic nomination is still very much up for grabs, so they're stupidly trying to shove Sanders out before other states can vote. But Bernie and the mass movement he's fostering aren't about to quit—they'll organize in every primary still to come, be a major force at the Democratic convention, and keep pushing their ideals and policies in the general election and beyond.
As Sanders puts it: "I run not to oppose any man or woman, but to propose new and far-reaching policies to deal with the crisis of our times... It may be too late to stop the billionaire class from trying to buy the presidency and Congress... But we owe it to our children and grandchildren to try...We need to face up to the reality of where we are as a nation, and we need a mass movement of people to fight for change."
That's what real politics should be—not merely a vacuous campaign to elect a personality, but a momentous democratic movement fighting for the common good.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
How Winning The Nomination Could Be Trump’s Worst Nightmare
By Adele M. Stan
We had been promised something of a new candidate, one more “presidential” in demeanor than we’re accustomed to seeing in the ostentatious settings at which he stages his post-primary speeches.
But when Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential front runner, stepped up to the mic in Manhattan’s Trump Tower to celebrate of his epic sweep of Tuesday night’s GOP nominating contests in all five of the states in play, what we saw was a Trump more subdued in tone but as misogynist in substance as ever.
After declaring himself to be “like, a very smart person,” Donald J. Trump made an astonishing claim: If Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton—who won four of Tuesday’s five Democratic primaries—were a man, he said, “she’d be at 5 percent” in the polls. As if being a woman granted the female politician some great advantage. Were that the case, each chamber of Congress, one might assume, would be a body in which women represented 80 percent of the membership, rather than the other way around. Surely, given such great gender privilege, the 50 states might muster more than a grand total of six female governors among them.
Trump appeared to be grasping at some explanation for why, in general election match-up polls, he trails behind a woman. (It must be because she’s a woman! The system is rigged!)
“I’ve always been very good at math,” Trump told us, though apparently that prowess ended before the probability exam began.
The only thing that Clinton had going for her, Trump said, was “the women's card,” perhaps failing to notice that in the 2012 presidential election, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, 71.4 percent of women reported voting, while only 61.6 percent of men did. Add in the fact that there are more eligible female voters than male voters, one might see that very card maligned by Trump as something of a trump in and of itself.
“Women don’t like her,” Trump said of Clinton, apparently not aware of the fact that in all but three states since the beginning of the presidential campaign season, Clinton has won the majority of the women’s vote. Meanwhile, Gallup reports, 7 in 10 women have an unfavorable view of Trump.
The ancient Greek philosophers saw misogyny as evidence of fear of women. Whatever the original roots of the showman’s misogyny, the polls would indicate he has good reason to fear women in November—those, at least, who turn up at the voting booth. Which may explain Trump’s urging, in his latest victory speech, of Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s flagging Democratic challenger, to run as an independent in the general election. An independent progressive would presumably peel off votes that would have otherwise gone to the Democrat.
But then Trump went on to echo Sanders’s allegation that Clinton is “unqualified” for the presidency, an attack that many women, including this writer, heard as distinctly gendered in nature. (Sanders has since walked back that claim, which he said was based on the fact that, while serving in the Senate, Clinton had voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq during the presidency of George W. Bush.) But given Trump’s free-associative invocation of that particular Sanders attack on Clinton, coupled with the Bernie Bro phenomenon and Sanders’s dismissal of Planned Parenthood as an “establishment” organization, one could wonder whether an independent Sanders candidacy might just peel off misogynist voters from Trump.
Before the night’s end, the Sanders campaign issued a statement that suggested the U.S. senator from Vermont was no longer in it to win it, but would instead stay in the contest in the hope of injecting his campaign’s driving issues—income inequality and the break-up of big banks—into the Democratic Party platform at the national convention in Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, pundits were once again using such words as “unstoppable” to describe Trump’s march to his party’s nomination, what with the establishment types who had once seemed so vehemently opposed to him on moral ground now submitting, between sighs, to what suddenly seemed inevitable.
(Both U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich fared poorly in Tuesday’s contests—in the Eastern states of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Maryland—and the non-aggression pact they had forged for next week’s contests unraveled soon after it was announced.)
As Clinton’s nomination became all but sealed on Tuesday night, the pundits barely seemed to register the historic nature of it. For the first time, a woman was almost certain to be the standard-bearer of one of the two major political parties in a presidential election. But Donald Trump surely noticed.
With his male challengers falling away, Trump is now faced with two outcomes he likely once deemed improbable, if not impossible: that he could win the nomination of the Party of Lincoln, and that he could lose the biggest game of his life—to a woman.
(Photo: AP/Julie Jacobson)
GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a news conference Tuesday, April 26.
We had been promised something of a new candidate, one more “presidential” in demeanor than we’re accustomed to seeing in the ostentatious settings at which he stages his post-primary speeches.
But when Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential front runner, stepped up to the mic in Manhattan’s Trump Tower to celebrate of his epic sweep of Tuesday night’s GOP nominating contests in all five of the states in play, what we saw was a Trump more subdued in tone but as misogynist in substance as ever.
After declaring himself to be “like, a very smart person,” Donald J. Trump made an astonishing claim: If Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton—who won four of Tuesday’s five Democratic primaries—were a man, he said, “she’d be at 5 percent” in the polls. As if being a woman granted the female politician some great advantage. Were that the case, each chamber of Congress, one might assume, would be a body in which women represented 80 percent of the membership, rather than the other way around. Surely, given such great gender privilege, the 50 states might muster more than a grand total of six female governors among them.
Trump appeared to be grasping at some explanation for why, in general election match-up polls, he trails behind a woman. (It must be because she’s a woman! The system is rigged!)
“I’ve always been very good at math,” Trump told us, though apparently that prowess ended before the probability exam began.
The only thing that Clinton had going for her, Trump said, was “the women's card,” perhaps failing to notice that in the 2012 presidential election, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, 71.4 percent of women reported voting, while only 61.6 percent of men did. Add in the fact that there are more eligible female voters than male voters, one might see that very card maligned by Trump as something of a trump in and of itself.
“Women don’t like her,” Trump said of Clinton, apparently not aware of the fact that in all but three states since the beginning of the presidential campaign season, Clinton has won the majority of the women’s vote. Meanwhile, Gallup reports, 7 in 10 women have an unfavorable view of Trump.
The ancient Greek philosophers saw misogyny as evidence of fear of women. Whatever the original roots of the showman’s misogyny, the polls would indicate he has good reason to fear women in November—those, at least, who turn up at the voting booth. Which may explain Trump’s urging, in his latest victory speech, of Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s flagging Democratic challenger, to run as an independent in the general election. An independent progressive would presumably peel off votes that would have otherwise gone to the Democrat.
But then Trump went on to echo Sanders’s allegation that Clinton is “unqualified” for the presidency, an attack that many women, including this writer, heard as distinctly gendered in nature. (Sanders has since walked back that claim, which he said was based on the fact that, while serving in the Senate, Clinton had voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq during the presidency of George W. Bush.) But given Trump’s free-associative invocation of that particular Sanders attack on Clinton, coupled with the Bernie Bro phenomenon and Sanders’s dismissal of Planned Parenthood as an “establishment” organization, one could wonder whether an independent Sanders candidacy might just peel off misogynist voters from Trump.
Before the night’s end, the Sanders campaign issued a statement that suggested the U.S. senator from Vermont was no longer in it to win it, but would instead stay in the contest in the hope of injecting his campaign’s driving issues—income inequality and the break-up of big banks—into the Democratic Party platform at the national convention in Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, pundits were once again using such words as “unstoppable” to describe Trump’s march to his party’s nomination, what with the establishment types who had once seemed so vehemently opposed to him on moral ground now submitting, between sighs, to what suddenly seemed inevitable.
(Both U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich fared poorly in Tuesday’s contests—in the Eastern states of Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Maryland—and the non-aggression pact they had forged for next week’s contests unraveled soon after it was announced.)
As Clinton’s nomination became all but sealed on Tuesday night, the pundits barely seemed to register the historic nature of it. For the first time, a woman was almost certain to be the standard-bearer of one of the two major political parties in a presidential election. But Donald Trump surely noticed.
With his male challengers falling away, Trump is now faced with two outcomes he likely once deemed improbable, if not impossible: that he could win the nomination of the Party of Lincoln, and that he could lose the biggest game of his life—to a woman.
Black woman responds to Megyn Kelly's claim that Jesus is white—and it's stunning
By kpete
With incredible passion, poet Crystal Valentine responds to Megyn Kelly’s statement that Jesus is a white man. The Fox News anchor caused an outrage with the claim back in 2013. Holding nothing back, Valentine’s voice begins to shake from what appears to be her outrage as she rebukes Kelly.
Here is the full video/poem transcript below:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/26/1520269/-Black-woman-responds-to-Megyn-Kelly-s-claim-that-Jesus-is-white-and-it-s-stunning
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/12/megyn-kelly-jesus-and-santa-were-white-179491
“How can she says Jesus was a white man when he died the blackest way possible?
With his hands up, with his mother watching."
With incredible passion, poet Crystal Valentine responds to Megyn Kelly’s statement that Jesus is a white man. The Fox News anchor caused an outrage with the claim back in 2013. Holding nothing back, Valentine’s voice begins to shake from what appears to be her outrage as she rebukes Kelly.
Here is the full video/poem transcript below:
And the News Reporter Says “Jesus is White”
She says it with a smile
Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world
So sure of herself
Of her privilege
Her ability to change history
Rewrite bodies to make them look like her
She says it the same way politicians say racism no longer exists
The same way police officers call dead black boys thugs
The same way white gentrifiers call Brooklyn home
She says it with an American accent
Her voice doing that American thing
Crawling out of her throat
Reaching to clasp onto something
That does not belong to her
I laugh to myself
What makes a black man a black man?
Is it a white woman’s confirmation?
Is it her head nod?
Is it the way she’s allowed to go on national television
And auto correct the bible and God himself,
Tell him who his son really was?
What makes a black man a black man:
The way reporters retell their deaths like fairytales
The way their skulls split across pavement
The way they cannot outrun a bullet
How can she say Jesus was a white man
When he died the blackest way possible?
With his hands up
With his mother watching,
Crying at his feet
Her tears nothing more than gossip
For the news reporters or prophets to document
With his body left to sour in the sun
With his human stripped from his black
Remember that?
How the whole world was saved by a black man
By a man so loved by God,
He called him kin
He called him black
Now ain’t that suspicious?
Ain’t that news worthy?
Ain’t that something worth being killed over?
Thank you, Crystal Valentine. There is nothing more for more to say other than thank you.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/26/1520269/-Black-woman-responds-to-Megyn-Kelly-s-claim-that-Jesus-is-white-and-it-s-stunning
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/12/megyn-kelly-jesus-and-santa-were-white-179491
Voters Report Suspicious Irregularities In Three Different Primary States
By Nathan Wellman
In what is becoming an outrageously predictable trend, Hillary Clinton supporters have been caught breaking election laws again and other voting irregularities have been reported across three of today’s five primary states.
Pennsylvania voters have reported on Reddit that the following campaign advertisements for Clinton were being distributed inside polling locations in clear violation of electioneering law.
Pennsylvania’s electioneering laws clearly state that “No person, when within the polling place, shall electioneer or solicit votes for any political party, political body or candidate, nor shall any written or printed matter be posted up within the said room… ”
The law then goes on to specifically mention that solicitations “must remain at least ten (10) feet distant from the polling place during the progress of the voting.”
And yet, the following video shows these Hillary Clinton slips inside the North Temple Baptist Church polling location on 1628 Master Street in Philadelphia, with the poll worker refusing to throw them away even after being confronted.
The worker admits at the beginning of the video that “Whoever’s supposed to be giving these out is supposed to be outside.”
Videographer Daniel Laufer rightly points out that this is against the law, and politely asks if he can remove the offending slips from the polling station. The worker says “No you can’t have these,” blatantly admitting that “They have to hand them out as people come in.”
Again, Laufer tries to remain calm as he explains: “This is trying to sway
people and you’re not supposed to do that according to the law.”
“It’s not swaying anybody,” the poll worker replies. “You have your own mind, you vote for whoever you want to.”
“The law is the law, and this is against the law.”
“I understand that, but are you a lawyer?”
“I don’t need to be a lawyer to know that.”
From here out, the poll worker just keeps repeating that voters can “vote for whoever they want to” without directly responding to the fact that these advertisements are a textbook case of electioneering, which is banned under state law within the polling place.
Laufer told US Uncut that in addition to the Clinton campaign literature inside the precinct, the polling place was plagued by other irregularities, like two broken voting machines that weren’t replaced for hours and the precinct being closed to early voters.
“Polls were supposed to open at seven,” Laufer said in a phone interview. “I got there at 7:30, and it wasn’t open yet.”
To test the reaction of poll workers, Laufer tried handing out pro-Sanders campaign literature more than ten feet away from the polling precinct, and poll workers threatened to call the police on him.
Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, a voting machine wasn’t allowing a voter to select Bernie Sanders.
Brooks Bell posted video of himself on Instagram trying to press Sanders’ name on an electronic voting machine, which failed continuously to record his selection. New York Daily News columnist Shaun King tweeted the video, which garnered thousands of retweets in a matter of hours — though it was later revealed that the machine simply wasn’t turned on:
This happened on a large scale in the Arizona primary, with the Secretary of State admitting in a public hearing that staffers in her own office had their party affiliations changed without their consent. Voters’ party affiliations were changed in New York as well, with some voters showing proof that the signatures on the documents in question were forged.
Election irregularities are also being reported in Rhode Island, as voters are having to drive around for hours to find their polling place after the state closed 66 percent of voting precincts last week. Only three out of seventeen polling places in North Providence were open for Tuesday’s primary, leading to some confusion among voters.
“Someone should be making an announcement or something,” voter Nick D’Amico told the Providence Journal. “Otherwise you could be standing in line for 30 minutes before you realize you’re in the wrong place.”
This continues a string of election debacles which always seem to favor Clinton, from Bill Clinton campaigning for Hillary with a megaphone well within the boundaries of the polling station in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to 126,000 Brooklyn voters mysteriously being purged from the list of registered Democrats.
And although the fiasco in Maricopa County, Arizona, was largely the result of Republican officials, it seems to have favored Clinton’s campaign, as the early voting swayed overwhelmingly her way, while election day voting trends suggest that those disenfranchised by the mishandling of polling stations would have reduced Clinton’s margin of victory over Sanders had they been allowed to vote properly.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been amended to remove an incorrect paragraph claiming Rhode Island has closed primaries. Rhode Island’s primaries are semi-closed, meaning unaffiliated voters can vote in either party’s primary.)
Nathan Wellman is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author, and playwright. Follow him on Twitter: @LightningWOW
In what is becoming an outrageously predictable trend, Hillary Clinton supporters have been caught breaking election laws again and other voting irregularities have been reported across three of today’s five primary states.
Pennsylvania voters have reported on Reddit that the following campaign advertisements for Clinton were being distributed inside polling locations in clear violation of electioneering law.
Pennsylvania’s electioneering laws clearly state that “No person, when within the polling place, shall electioneer or solicit votes for any political party, political body or candidate, nor shall any written or printed matter be posted up within the said room… ”
The law then goes on to specifically mention that solicitations “must remain at least ten (10) feet distant from the polling place during the progress of the voting.”
And yet, the following video shows these Hillary Clinton slips inside the North Temple Baptist Church polling location on 1628 Master Street in Philadelphia, with the poll worker refusing to throw them away even after being confronted.
The worker admits at the beginning of the video that “Whoever’s supposed to be giving these out is supposed to be outside.”
Videographer Daniel Laufer rightly points out that this is against the law, and politely asks if he can remove the offending slips from the polling station. The worker says “No you can’t have these,” blatantly admitting that “They have to hand them out as people come in.”
“It’s not swaying anybody,” the poll worker replies. “You have your own mind, you vote for whoever you want to.”
“The law is the law, and this is against the law.”
“I understand that, but are you a lawyer?”
“I don’t need to be a lawyer to know that.”
From here out, the poll worker just keeps repeating that voters can “vote for whoever they want to” without directly responding to the fact that these advertisements are a textbook case of electioneering, which is banned under state law within the polling place.
Laufer told US Uncut that in addition to the Clinton campaign literature inside the precinct, the polling place was plagued by other irregularities, like two broken voting machines that weren’t replaced for hours and the precinct being closed to early voters.
“Polls were supposed to open at seven,” Laufer said in a phone interview. “I got there at 7:30, and it wasn’t open yet.”
To test the reaction of poll workers, Laufer tried handing out pro-Sanders campaign literature more than ten feet away from the polling precinct, and poll workers threatened to call the police on him.
Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, a voting machine wasn’t allowing a voter to select Bernie Sanders.
Brooks Bell posted video of himself on Instagram trying to press Sanders’ name on an electronic voting machine, which failed continuously to record his selection. New York Daily News columnist Shaun King tweeted the video, which garnered thousands of retweets in a matter of hours — though it was later revealed that the machine simply wasn’t turned on:
In Connecticut, where 55 pledged delegates are up for grabs, one voter recorded his father’s party affiliation mysteriously changing from “Democratic” on April 23 to “Unaffiliated” on April 25. In Connecticut’s closed primary, voters not identifying as Democrats or Republicans aren’t allowed to vote.Philly voters saying polls won't let them vote for Bernie.This is from: https://t.co/ZaptIgocQ1 pic.twitter.com/uyRRFo8zD7
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) April 26, 2016
This happened on a large scale in the Arizona primary, with the Secretary of State admitting in a public hearing that staffers in her own office had their party affiliations changed without their consent. Voters’ party affiliations were changed in New York as well, with some voters showing proof that the signatures on the documents in question were forged.
Election irregularities are also being reported in Rhode Island, as voters are having to drive around for hours to find their polling place after the state closed 66 percent of voting precincts last week. Only three out of seventeen polling places in North Providence were open for Tuesday’s primary, leading to some confusion among voters.
“Someone should be making an announcement or something,” voter Nick D’Amico told the Providence Journal. “Otherwise you could be standing in line for 30 minutes before you realize you’re in the wrong place.”
This continues a string of election debacles which always seem to favor Clinton, from Bill Clinton campaigning for Hillary with a megaphone well within the boundaries of the polling station in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to 126,000 Brooklyn voters mysteriously being purged from the list of registered Democrats.
And although the fiasco in Maricopa County, Arizona, was largely the result of Republican officials, it seems to have favored Clinton’s campaign, as the early voting swayed overwhelmingly her way, while election day voting trends suggest that those disenfranchised by the mishandling of polling stations would have reduced Clinton’s margin of victory over Sanders had they been allowed to vote properly.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been amended to remove an incorrect paragraph claiming Rhode Island has closed primaries. Rhode Island’s primaries are semi-closed, meaning unaffiliated voters can vote in either party’s primary.)
Nathan Wellman is a Los Angeles-based journalist, author, and playwright. Follow him on Twitter: @LightningWOW
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
PROBLEMS INSIDE PA POLLING STATION 4/26/16 Philadelphia Democratic Primary Bernie Sanders
Hillary Clinton Handout and Machines not working at polling place in
Philadelphia PA - 4/26/2016 Democratic Primary - Bernie Sanders
At my voting location, which is a church with bibles on the voter sign-in tables in North Philadelphia (National Temple Baptist Church at 1628 Master St, Philadelphia, PA 19121), there was "Vote for Hillary Clinton" campaign advertisement at the front door as people enter, which is against the law. The voting station worker states that the "MACHINES WEREN'T WORKING" and that the person who is "SUPPOSED to be handing them out" wasn't here. This polling station is obviously not even attempting to remain unbiased, and is pressuring voters to vote Hillary Clinton, not Bernie Sanders. I'd guess that this issue is prevalent at more Philadelphia polling locations than just one.
The PA law states:
"a) No person, when within the polling place, shall electioneer or solicit votes for any political party, political body or candidate, nor shall
any written or printed matter be posted up within the said room, except as required by this act. All persons, except election officers,
clerks, machine inspectors, overseers, watchers, persons in the course of voting, persons lawfully giving assistance to voters, and peace
and police officers, when permitted by the provisions of this act, must remain at least ten (10) feet distant from the polling place during
the progress of the voting. (Pa. Consol. Stat. Ann. § 3060 (c); (d))"
At my voting location, which is a church with bibles on the voter sign-in tables in North Philadelphia (National Temple Baptist Church at 1628 Master St, Philadelphia, PA 19121), there was "Vote for Hillary Clinton" campaign advertisement at the front door as people enter, which is against the law. The voting station worker states that the "MACHINES WEREN'T WORKING" and that the person who is "SUPPOSED to be handing them out" wasn't here. This polling station is obviously not even attempting to remain unbiased, and is pressuring voters to vote Hillary Clinton, not Bernie Sanders. I'd guess that this issue is prevalent at more Philadelphia polling locations than just one.
The PA law states:
"a) No person, when within the polling place, shall electioneer or solicit votes for any political party, political body or candidate, nor shall
any written or printed matter be posted up within the said room, except as required by this act. All persons, except election officers,
clerks, machine inspectors, overseers, watchers, persons in the course of voting, persons lawfully giving assistance to voters, and peace
and police officers, when permitted by the provisions of this act, must remain at least ten (10) feet distant from the polling place during
the progress of the voting. (Pa. Consol. Stat. Ann. § 3060 (c); (d))"
Dear Hillary Voters: It's Not Bernie's Fault She's Terrible
Instead of blaming Bernie supporters, Hillary Clinton supporters need to be honest about the flaws that plague their candidate.
Jimmy Dore breaks it down.
Jimmy Dore breaks it down.
Southern Illinois University leader condemns racist video
CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) — Racial tension on the Southern Illinois University
in Carbondale campus is high after a series of recent incidents that
include an anonymous video posted on YouTube that called for the
lynching and beating of black students.
The video drew condemnation from the university's leader, and YouTube removed it Monday for violating the company's policies on hate speech.
In an email to students Sunday night, interim Chancellor Brad Colwell asked students to not distribute the two-minute video, which features altered dialogue from the animated film "A Bug's Life" and a speaker wearing a Guy Fawkes mask who promotes campus violence. The unidentified speaker, whose voice is distorted, attributes the "SIUC White is Right" video to the campus' Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. The fraternity denied involvement in a statement issued by its national office in Indianapolis.
"Individuals who use the power of social media to spread hate and fear must not be allowed to be the voice of our community," Colwell wrote in his email to students.
Colwell threatened unspecified legal action against the video's creator, though campus spokeswoman Rae Goldsmith said the university doesn't know who is behind it.
"We have no reason to believe the fraternity is responsible," she said.
The video follows a black student's complaint that student supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump used a racial slur and said black students should "go back to Africa" at a recent Carbondale campus residence hall forum. The school is investigating that incident, which prompted another open letter from Colwell, in which he called on students to uphold "values of respect for individuals, diversity and inclusion."
In between the two Colwell letters, someone drew a swastika on a residence hall chalkboard next to a message to "Build That Wall," an apparent reference to Trump's calls to curtail illegal immigration from Mexico.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment Monday.
http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/SIU-Carbondale-chancellor-condemns-racist-video-7317362.php
The video drew condemnation from the university's leader, and YouTube removed it Monday for violating the company's policies on hate speech.
In an email to students Sunday night, interim Chancellor Brad Colwell asked students to not distribute the two-minute video, which features altered dialogue from the animated film "A Bug's Life" and a speaker wearing a Guy Fawkes mask who promotes campus violence. The unidentified speaker, whose voice is distorted, attributes the "SIUC White is Right" video to the campus' Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. The fraternity denied involvement in a statement issued by its national office in Indianapolis.
"Individuals who use the power of social media to spread hate and fear must not be allowed to be the voice of our community," Colwell wrote in his email to students.
Colwell threatened unspecified legal action against the video's creator, though campus spokeswoman Rae Goldsmith said the university doesn't know who is behind it.
"We have no reason to believe the fraternity is responsible," she said.
The video follows a black student's complaint that student supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump used a racial slur and said black students should "go back to Africa" at a recent Carbondale campus residence hall forum. The school is investigating that incident, which prompted another open letter from Colwell, in which he called on students to uphold "values of respect for individuals, diversity and inclusion."
In between the two Colwell letters, someone drew a swastika on a residence hall chalkboard next to a message to "Build That Wall," an apparent reference to Trump's calls to curtail illegal immigration from Mexico.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment Monday.
http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/SIU-Carbondale-chancellor-condemns-racist-video-7317362.php
Monday, April 25, 2016
Mike Malloy - New York Election Theft Is Just The Beginning
Buckle up, America. The voting demolition derby that was the New York
primary on Tuesday was merely the crash test for the coming voting
wreckage in November: a carefully planned pile up.
Voter purgeFirst, live from New York….
Francesca Rheannon, whom you may know as the host of Writers’ Voice radio, did the civic thing by volunteering to work the polls in a town east of New York City.
“I just got off my 17 hour shift as an election official. In my election district, out of 166 Democratic voters, 39 were forced to file affidavit ballots. The last [election] I worked in, exactly ONE voter needed an affidavit ballot.”
That’s nearly one of four voters. Why? Their names had gone missing from the voter rolls.
http://www.gregpalast.com/new-york-voting-fiasco-just-the-warm-up-for-the-november-game/#sthash.DLw8r7MY.dpuf
Voter purgeFirst, live from New York….
Francesca Rheannon, whom you may know as the host of Writers’ Voice radio, did the civic thing by volunteering to work the polls in a town east of New York City.
“I just got off my 17 hour shift as an election official. In my election district, out of 166 Democratic voters, 39 were forced to file affidavit ballots. The last [election] I worked in, exactly ONE voter needed an affidavit ballot.”
That’s nearly one of four voters. Why? Their names had gone missing from the voter rolls.
http://www.gregpalast.com/new-york-voting-fiasco-just-the-warm-up-for-the-november-game/#sthash.DLw8r7MY.dpuf
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Democratic Party spurns Joe Sestak who almost won in 2010
By MARC LEVY
FILE - In this March 28, 2015, file photo, former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak passes a sign marking the Pennsylvania-Ohio state border as he completes his "Walking In Other Pennsylvanian's Shoes" walking tour across Pennsylvania in Ohioville, Pa. Sestak, 64, is one of four candidates campaigning for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania's primary on Tuesday, April 26, 2016, seeking to challenge Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey's bid for re-election. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)
The former two-term congressman and retired Navy rear admiral is wearing his outsider status as a badge of honor as he seeks the nomination to take on Republican Sen. Pat Toomey this fall in a race that could tilt control of the Senate.
He has said that he is fighting "for the soul of the Democratic Party," and that political party leaders "aren't in it for people any longer, they're in it for power and themselves."
"I'm not a politician," he said when the candidates were asked at a Friday debate if they would represent a break with the status quo. "Four-and-a-half million dollars — half of it by my own Democratic Party — has been put in against me," he said.
Party-endorsed candidate Katie McGinty focused instead on the Republican incumbent. "I'll do something very different from what Pat Toomey has done. Pat Toomey has sold out the middle class," she said.
McGinty, a former state and federal environmental policy official, has trumpeted the broad range of support she has received, from President Barack Obama to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid to former Gov. Ed Rendell. At the same time she has sought to tap anti-establishment sentiment by looking to the general election.
Sestak's frosty relationship with party leaders dates to 2009 when he was recruited to challenge then-Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, then was asked to step aside when Specter switched parties to the delight of Democratic Party leaders. But Sestak refused to drop out — even after former President Bill Clinton was recruited to dangle a government job offer in front of him.
Sestak went on to beat Specter in the primary and lose to Toomey by only 2 percentage points in the 2010 general election, upsetting the Democrats' plans for regaining the seat in a state where they outnumber Republicans 4-to-3.
Sestak again doesn't figure into the Democrats' plan.
The resulting tension has shaped a race in which McGinty's side has outspent Sestak's two-to-one.
She has been aided by nearly $2 million from a national party committee and $1.75 million from Washington-based Emily's List, which backs female candidates who support abortion rights.
Sestak spent the last six years as a regular on the local party event circuit around Pennsylvania, earning loyalty from rank-and-file activists. He also walked across the state last year to kick off his campaign.
The party's search for an alternative candidate ended last summer when it tapped McGinty, 52, a member of Gov. Tom Wolf's administration who had also worked for Al Gore, Bill Clinton and former Gov. Ed Rendell.
She has run a radio ad voiced by Obama and Vice President Joe Biden made a campaign stop for her in Pittsburgh. McGinty said in one TV ad that Obama endorsed her "because he knows I'm a fighter."
She has drummed out that theme in her ads, presenting herself as a champion for the middle class and women's causes, the 9th of 10 children of a Philadelphia cop and a diner waitress. In recent days, her campaign and Emily's List have also aired attack ads against Sestak.
Sestak has leaned on his military service and touted endorsements by two of the state's largest newspapers, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He has also told the story of his young daughter's successful fight with brain cancer as his motivation for running for Congress in 2006 and backing Obama's signature 2010 health care law.
One wild card is how a third candidate, John Fetterman, will affect the race, even though he trails badly in the polls and fundraising.
He's best-known in western Pennsylvania, where he is the 46 year old mayor of the impoverished steel town of Braddock, about 10 miles outside Pittsburgh. He is 6-foot-8, scowling, bald and tattooed, and his liberal and unconventional campaign — he has dropped in on bars, rock music venues and hookah lounges — has won over some younger voters.
A semi-retired owner of a spring manufacturing shop, Joe Vodvarka, was also added back on the ballot in recent days after a dispute in court over whether he had submitted enough signatures. His family has run his low-profile campaign.
FILE - In this March 28, 2015, file photo, former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak passes a sign marking the Pennsylvania-Ohio state border as he completes his "Walking In Other Pennsylvanian's Shoes" walking tour across Pennsylvania in Ohioville, Pa. Sestak, 64, is one of four candidates campaigning for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania's primary on Tuesday, April 26, 2016, seeking to challenge Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey's bid for re-election. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)
HARRISBURG,
Pa. (AP) — Democrat Joe Sestak came tantalizingly close to winning a
seat in the U.S. Senate six years ago and is hoping Tuesday to secure a
rematch, but the party establishment wants nothing to do with him,
pouring millions into the campaign of his chief rival.
The former two-term congressman and retired Navy rear admiral is wearing his outsider status as a badge of honor as he seeks the nomination to take on Republican Sen. Pat Toomey this fall in a race that could tilt control of the Senate.
He has said that he is fighting "for the soul of the Democratic Party," and that political party leaders "aren't in it for people any longer, they're in it for power and themselves."
"I'm not a politician," he said when the candidates were asked at a Friday debate if they would represent a break with the status quo. "Four-and-a-half million dollars — half of it by my own Democratic Party — has been put in against me," he said.
Party-endorsed candidate Katie McGinty focused instead on the Republican incumbent. "I'll do something very different from what Pat Toomey has done. Pat Toomey has sold out the middle class," she said.
McGinty, a former state and federal environmental policy official, has trumpeted the broad range of support she has received, from President Barack Obama to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid to former Gov. Ed Rendell. At the same time she has sought to tap anti-establishment sentiment by looking to the general election.
Sestak's frosty relationship with party leaders dates to 2009 when he was recruited to challenge then-Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, then was asked to step aside when Specter switched parties to the delight of Democratic Party leaders. But Sestak refused to drop out — even after former President Bill Clinton was recruited to dangle a government job offer in front of him.
Sestak went on to beat Specter in the primary and lose to Toomey by only 2 percentage points in the 2010 general election, upsetting the Democrats' plans for regaining the seat in a state where they outnumber Republicans 4-to-3.
Sestak again doesn't figure into the Democrats' plan.
The resulting tension has shaped a race in which McGinty's side has outspent Sestak's two-to-one.
She has been aided by nearly $2 million from a national party committee and $1.75 million from Washington-based Emily's List, which backs female candidates who support abortion rights.
Despite
the fundraising disadvantage, the 64-year-old Sestak has led nearly
every independent poll.
But a large bloc of undecided voters — nearly one in three, according to a new Franklin and Marshall College poll — is adding uncertainty to Tuesday's election.
But a large bloc of undecided voters — nearly one in three, according to a new Franklin and Marshall College poll — is adding uncertainty to Tuesday's election.
Sestak spent the last six years as a regular on the local party event circuit around Pennsylvania, earning loyalty from rank-and-file activists. He also walked across the state last year to kick off his campaign.
The party's search for an alternative candidate ended last summer when it tapped McGinty, 52, a member of Gov. Tom Wolf's administration who had also worked for Al Gore, Bill Clinton and former Gov. Ed Rendell.
She has run a radio ad voiced by Obama and Vice President Joe Biden made a campaign stop for her in Pittsburgh. McGinty said in one TV ad that Obama endorsed her "because he knows I'm a fighter."
She has drummed out that theme in her ads, presenting herself as a champion for the middle class and women's causes, the 9th of 10 children of a Philadelphia cop and a diner waitress. In recent days, her campaign and Emily's List have also aired attack ads against Sestak.
Sestak has leaned on his military service and touted endorsements by two of the state's largest newspapers, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He has also told the story of his young daughter's successful fight with brain cancer as his motivation for running for Congress in 2006 and backing Obama's signature 2010 health care law.
One wild card is how a third candidate, John Fetterman, will affect the race, even though he trails badly in the polls and fundraising.
He's best-known in western Pennsylvania, where he is the 46 year old mayor of the impoverished steel town of Braddock, about 10 miles outside Pittsburgh. He is 6-foot-8, scowling, bald and tattooed, and his liberal and unconventional campaign — he has dropped in on bars, rock music venues and hookah lounges — has won over some younger voters.
A semi-retired owner of a spring manufacturing shop, Joe Vodvarka, was also added back on the ballot in recent days after a dispute in court over whether he had submitted enough signatures. His family has run his low-profile campaign.
___
Associated Press writer Errin Haines Whack in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
No, Jon Favreau: We Will Not Learn To Love Hillary Clinton
By Dan Wright
The moment has arrived. That moment when the establishment’s sniggering apologists tell those damn idealists that it is time to get with the program and settle for the latest shabby party product or risk going home empty-handed. Hear the eternal refrain: Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.
There has been a slew of these strident come to Jesus jeremiads from the usual suspects after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s win in the New York primary. But the latest sermon on submitting to destiny from former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau both perfectly encapsulates the mindless DNC Hillary Clinton Campaign talking points, while attempting to provide a how do you do fellow kids credibility because he was part of the 2008 primary fight against Hillary Clinton.
See? Even former rivals for power with future career interests tied to the Democratic Party support Hillary Clinton, you guys.
The substance of the screed is as tired as it is tiresome. Favreau makes a number of claims that fail basic scrutiny when he counsels supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, or “Berniacs” as they are called by The Daily Beast. For instance:
Favreau supports his previous point by claiming Sanders supporters should essentially declare victory because “Guess what? Bernie Sanders helped make that happen. He helped push Hillary Clinton to the left. And he should keep pushing her if she becomes president.”
Guess what? She’s bullshitting and even her most ardent supporters acknowledge she plans to move rightward for the general election. So, no, she has not been pushed anywhere, she is just saying what she thinks Democratic primary voters want to hear, just as she will change the tune and say what she thinks 51% of the general electorate wants to hear should she become the party’s nominee. That’s not taking a progressive position, Jon, that’s pretending to take progressive position.
But if you bought Favreau’s claim that former Secretary Clinton has really evolved in real time, maybe you will buy his larger analysis of not just this primary race, but all primary races:
More to the point, there are substantial policy differences between the candidates, as was pointed out in a thorough piece by Professor Matt Karp over at Jacobin, called, “Against Fortress Liberalism.”
Karp notes that “It’s not just the policy differences that separate Sanders’s blunt social-democratic platform from Clinton’s neoliberal grab bag. The two candidates embody clashing theories of politics — alternative visions of how to achieve progressive goals within the American political system.”
Senator Sanders not only offers a progressive platform that he has a well-demonstrated commitment to, but his theory of change is vastly different than former Secretary Clinton’s. Sanders sees change as coming from social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement he participated in, which uses people power to pressure government officials into making concessions. Clinton claims that she will use her extensive experience in politics and government to personally work the gears of the state apparatus from the inside on behalf of the causes and people she states she cares for.
Say what you will about either approach, but they are far from identical. No magnifying glass necessary, Jon.
Now we move to perhaps the most insidious and oft-repeated argument of all, the trump card if you will:
In her highest foreign policy related post, secretary of state, she was an unmitigated disaster, championing the cause in Libya that even President Obama laments as his biggest foreign policy mistake. The parallels between the intervention in Libya and Iraq are stunning.
If Jon Favreau should remember anything about the 2008 campaign, it is the decisive role Hillary Clinton’s support for the Iraq War played in winning Democrats over to supporting then-Senator Barack Obama, who stood up to the DC bipartisan consensus and spoken out against the Iraq War.
That is not to take away from the innovative and disciplined campaign he ran or his virtues as a candidate, but it would be manifestly dishonest to pretend that the Iraq War issue was not responsible for his rise, and provided him both a sword and shield to use against Hillary Clinton’s (eerily familiar) attacks against him in 2008 based on his foreign policy inexperience.
What is so amazing about Libya is how little Hillary Clinton learned from Iraq, repeating some of the same exact mistakes, along with making new ones.
Ultimately, the decision was President Obama’s, but by all reports it was Secretary of State Clinton leading the charge. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told The New York Times that US involvement in the war was a 51-49 decision, and Clinton made the difference.
The analysis of former Secretary Clinton’s actions on Libya reveal another inconvenient truth: Clinton really does not regret her vote for the Iraq War outside of the political headaches it caused.
She appears, from Iraq to Libya to Honduras and beyond, to genuinely believe in regime change as a perfectly legitimate and acceptable foreign policy tool.
When former Secretary Clinton was confronted on the regime change issue on MSNBC by anchor Chris Matthews she embraced the tool citing the Rwandan genocide and Nazi Germany, where regime change could have saved lives. That she was citing counter-factual examples while Matthews offered real ones from recent history did not appear to have any impact on her reasoning or worldview.
So, yes, if Hillary Clinton becomes president, expect more Iraqs and Libyas and a doubling down on all forms of warfare (drone, cyber) across the board. She is, without question, the war candidate in the Democratic Party and in no way an alternative to a war candidate in the general. If you want four more years of the wars we have going now, plus some new faceplants thrown in, Hillary Clinton is your candidate.
In summation, for those who genuinely support a progressive platform on domestic and foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is not qualified. Her record shows her approach to domestic policies is to run to the right while throwing up progressive rhetoric to cover her escape, and her foreign policy would be a return to Bush-era belligerence and incompetence.
In other words, no Jon, we won’t learn to love her, though maybe some of us will hold our noses and vote for her in November if she is the nominee to prevent an even worse candidate from taking over the empire.
Then again, maybe not.
The moment has arrived. That moment when the establishment’s sniggering apologists tell those damn idealists that it is time to get with the program and settle for the latest shabby party product or risk going home empty-handed. Hear the eternal refrain: Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.
There has been a slew of these strident come to Jesus jeremiads from the usual suspects after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s win in the New York primary. But the latest sermon on submitting to destiny from former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau both perfectly encapsulates the mindless DNC Hillary Clinton Campaign talking points, while attempting to provide a how do you do fellow kids credibility because he was part of the 2008 primary fight against Hillary Clinton.
See? Even former rivals for power with future career interests tied to the Democratic Party support Hillary Clinton, you guys.
The substance of the screed is as tired as it is tiresome. Favreau makes a number of claims that fail basic scrutiny when he counsels supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders, or “Berniacs” as they are called by The Daily Beast. For instance:
“Maybe you don’t believe that she’s different from the caricature we’ve all helped perpetuate. But she is running a campaign with a policy platform that’s more progressive than her husband’s administration, her 2008 campaign, and—in a few cases—Barack Obama’s administration.”The problem, of course, is not that Hillary Clinton is not taking progressive positions. The problem is that, given her record, the best analysis of her policy platform is that she is lying about those positions. Now, lying is a strong word and given her profession (politician) let us use a nicer word, bullshitting. Hillary Clinton is bullshitting people on what she will do in office and a large slice of the Democratic Party base knows it.
Favreau supports his previous point by claiming Sanders supporters should essentially declare victory because “Guess what? Bernie Sanders helped make that happen. He helped push Hillary Clinton to the left. And he should keep pushing her if she becomes president.”
Guess what? She’s bullshitting and even her most ardent supporters acknowledge she plans to move rightward for the general election. So, no, she has not been pushed anywhere, she is just saying what she thinks Democratic primary voters want to hear, just as she will change the tune and say what she thinks 51% of the general electorate wants to hear should she become the party’s nominee. That’s not taking a progressive position, Jon, that’s pretending to take progressive position.
But if you bought Favreau’s claim that former Secretary Clinton has really evolved in real time, maybe you will buy his larger analysis of not just this primary race, but all primary races:
“Primaries are often a clash of personalities and magnified policy differences.”Once again, no. There is no clash of personalities. The antipathy to Hillary Clinton is based on her record. Unless Favreau means to couch Clinton’s notorious dishonesty as a personality difference, which I doubt is what he was implying.
More to the point, there are substantial policy differences between the candidates, as was pointed out in a thorough piece by Professor Matt Karp over at Jacobin, called, “Against Fortress Liberalism.”
Karp notes that “It’s not just the policy differences that separate Sanders’s blunt social-democratic platform from Clinton’s neoliberal grab bag. The two candidates embody clashing theories of politics — alternative visions of how to achieve progressive goals within the American political system.”
Senator Sanders not only offers a progressive platform that he has a well-demonstrated commitment to, but his theory of change is vastly different than former Secretary Clinton’s. Sanders sees change as coming from social movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement he participated in, which uses people power to pressure government officials into making concessions. Clinton claims that she will use her extensive experience in politics and government to personally work the gears of the state apparatus from the inside on behalf of the causes and people she states she cares for.
Say what you will about either approach, but they are far from identical. No magnifying glass necessary, Jon.
Now we move to perhaps the most insidious and oft-repeated argument of all, the trump card if you will:
“A campaign against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz won’t just be a mission to save our country from something terrible, it will be an opportunity to elect a progressive majority and a progressive president who could tip the balance of the Supreme Court for a generation.”And here is a key point: electing Hillary Clinton as president would be something terrible for our country. To be clear, Hillary Clinton has continually proven to be both malevolent and incompetent while serving in public office (also, arguably, venal).
In her highest foreign policy related post, secretary of state, she was an unmitigated disaster, championing the cause in Libya that even President Obama laments as his biggest foreign policy mistake. The parallels between the intervention in Libya and Iraq are stunning.
If Jon Favreau should remember anything about the 2008 campaign, it is the decisive role Hillary Clinton’s support for the Iraq War played in winning Democrats over to supporting then-Senator Barack Obama, who stood up to the DC bipartisan consensus and spoken out against the Iraq War.
That is not to take away from the innovative and disciplined campaign he ran or his virtues as a candidate, but it would be manifestly dishonest to pretend that the Iraq War issue was not responsible for his rise, and provided him both a sword and shield to use against Hillary Clinton’s (eerily familiar) attacks against him in 2008 based on his foreign policy inexperience.
What is so amazing about Libya is how little Hillary Clinton learned from Iraq, repeating some of the same exact mistakes, along with making new ones.
Ultimately, the decision was President Obama’s, but by all reports it was Secretary of State Clinton leading the charge. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told The New York Times that US involvement in the war was a 51-49 decision, and Clinton made the difference.
The analysis of former Secretary Clinton’s actions on Libya reveal another inconvenient truth: Clinton really does not regret her vote for the Iraq War outside of the political headaches it caused.
She appears, from Iraq to Libya to Honduras and beyond, to genuinely believe in regime change as a perfectly legitimate and acceptable foreign policy tool.
When former Secretary Clinton was confronted on the regime change issue on MSNBC by anchor Chris Matthews she embraced the tool citing the Rwandan genocide and Nazi Germany, where regime change could have saved lives. That she was citing counter-factual examples while Matthews offered real ones from recent history did not appear to have any impact on her reasoning or worldview.
So, yes, if Hillary Clinton becomes president, expect more Iraqs and Libyas and a doubling down on all forms of warfare (drone, cyber) across the board. She is, without question, the war candidate in the Democratic Party and in no way an alternative to a war candidate in the general. If you want four more years of the wars we have going now, plus some new faceplants thrown in, Hillary Clinton is your candidate.
In summation, for those who genuinely support a progressive platform on domestic and foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is not qualified. Her record shows her approach to domestic policies is to run to the right while throwing up progressive rhetoric to cover her escape, and her foreign policy would be a return to Bush-era belligerence and incompetence.
In other words, no Jon, we won’t learn to love her, though maybe some of us will hold our noses and vote for her in November if she is the nominee to prevent an even worse candidate from taking over the empire.
Then again, maybe not.
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Pat Boone Can’t Take A Joke, Thinks The FCC Should Punish Blasphemy
By Sam Reisman
Pat Boone continues his crusade against satire that offends his sensibilities, asserting that the government should punish those who blaspheme against God.
Speaking to Alan Colmes on his radio show Friday, the 81 year old singer/actor/Obama birther was still sore about the SNL parody of the Christian movie God’s Not Dead 2, which Boone appears in.
The sketch skewers the film’s premise — that Christians in America are persecuted — by depicting an evangelical baker who is sued by a gay couple and their Jewish ACLU lawyer because she refuses to admit that “God is gay.”
Speaking to Colmes, Boone rhetorically asked SNL producer Lorne Michaels if he would be all right with a sketch that called his mother a “diseased whore.”
“I mean, that’s just his mom,” Boone said. “What about the God of all creation?”
“You can mess around with Christians and Christianity but when you
start calling God names, God and the Holy Spirit are one and blasphemy
is the unforgivable sin,” he said Wednesday on Fox News
On Colmes’ show, Boone went a step further and said that the sort of mockery that impugns God should be punishable by law.
Pat Boone continues his crusade against satire that offends his sensibilities, asserting that the government should punish those who blaspheme against God.
Speaking to Alan Colmes on his radio show Friday, the 81 year old singer/actor/Obama birther was still sore about the SNL parody of the Christian movie God’s Not Dead 2, which Boone appears in.
The sketch skewers the film’s premise — that Christians in America are persecuted — by depicting an evangelical baker who is sued by a gay couple and their Jewish ACLU lawyer because she refuses to admit that “God is gay.”
Speaking to Colmes, Boone rhetorically asked SNL producer Lorne Michaels if he would be all right with a sketch that called his mother a “diseased whore.”
“I mean, that’s just his mom,” Boone said. “What about the God of all creation?”
Boone has been making the media rounds, expressing his moral outrage at the parody. He told the Hollywood Reporter that the SNL skit was “diabolical” and “outright sacrilege.”
On Colmes’ show, Boone went a step further and said that the sort of mockery that impugns God should be punishable by law.
COLMES: Would you like the FCC to declare a show like Saturday Night Live or any other show can’t do that kind of humor?
BOONE: You cannot do blasphemy, yes.
COLMES: You would like the FCC to make that deceleration?
BOONE: Yes!
COLMES: And be punished and fined in some way if they did that kind of humor?BOONE: I sure do, I do. And I would say at least 90% of the American public would say “Yes, I agree.” And if the public doesn’t have any say about it, it’s the public airwaves.
COLMES: So what should be the punishment then if the FCC says we’re not going to allow this, what would be the proper punishment?
BOONE: Lose license, just like any other law. If you disobey the law, you’re punished for it. And you lose the ability to keep doing it.
COLMES: Well, the show doesn’t get a license, but broadcast stations do. So it’s the stations that would suffer.BOONE: It’s the network, or whoever is responsible for the shows there should be regulations that prohibit blasphemy. It’s hard to determine exactly what obscenity is, what blasphemy is. But to call God by some profane name, I think that anybody with a rational mind would agree that’s blasphemy.
COLMES: So for calling God a “boob man,” there should be a punishment for that, or “God is gay.”
BOONE: I certainly do.
God’s Not Dead 2, released by the independent Christian studio Pure Flix, has been in theaters for three weeks. It is the eighth worst-reviewed movie of 2016 so far, according to Metacritic.
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