Since young voters discovered they could friend Barack Obama on Facebook during the 2008 election, social media has become ingrained in the way we think about political discourse. Politicians and tech evangelists alike see it as the key to a new type of politics: Campaigns and candidates can better engage citizens, facilitate grassroots organization, and craft legislation with the direct input of a Tweeting electorate. The inevitable results, optimists argue, will be a sort of "digital democracy," defined by a closer, more coherent relationship between the elected officials and their constituents.
But social media, like any tool, can be used to erode democratic practices as well.
The Atlantic by Jared Keller: A few days before the special election in Massachusetts to fill Senate seat formerly held by the late Edward Kennedy, the conservative American Future Fund (AFF) conducted a "Twitter-bomb" campaign against Attorney General Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate.
The Texas Legislature approved a bill Monday that would both compel the state to push the Obama administration to convert Texas’ Medicaid program into a block grant and defund Planned Parenthood.
The omnibus health bill also includes a number of other controversial provisions, including plans to save $400 million over the next year by increasing the use of Medicaid managed care.
The legislation now goes to the desk of Gov. Rick Perry, who has been generally supportive of both the Medicaid reforms, as well as anti-abortion language.
When previously asked about Senate Bill 7, Perry spokeswoman Lucy Nashed would not speak specifically to pending legislation, but did comment on the governor’s broad support for block grants.
Governors like Rick Perry (R-TX), Rick Scott (R-FL), Scott Walker (R-WI) and Haley Barbour (R-MS) are touting block grants — capped allotments of money — as the solution to cut spending on their respect state Medicaid programs. However, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) shows that block grants come with financial risks and costs to the states, as well as cuts to Medicaid eligibility and benefits. Additionally, providing states with block grants for Medicaid would fundamentally change how the program is funded and would ultimately undermine the Affordable Care Act.
Block Grants Fundamentally Change How Medicaid Is Funded
Pollution and global warming are pushing the world's oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists warned Monday.
Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water "dead zones," toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of big fish stocks -- all are accelerating, they said in a report compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world's top ocean experts.
NYTimes: ALBANY — Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the sixth and largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed. Just five states currently permit same-sex marriage: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia.
The NY State Senate approval was the final hurdle for the same-sex marriage legislation, which was approved last week by the Democrat-led NY State Assembly. The Republican-controlled state Senate passed the bill by a 33-29 vote. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the measure at 11:55 p.m., and the law will go into effect in 30 days, meaning that same-sex couples could begin marrying in New York by late July.
The marriage bill, whose fate was uncertain until moments before the vote, was approved 33 to 29 in a packed but hushed Senate chamber. Four members of the Republican majority joined all but one Democrat in the Senate in supporting the measure after an intense and emotional campaign aimed at the handful of lawmakers wrestling with a decision that divided their friends, their constituents and sometimes their own homes.
Passage of the NY bill reflects rapidly evolving sentiment about same-sex unions. In 2004, according to a Quinnipiac poll, 37 percent of NY state’s residents supported allowing same-sex couples to wed. This year, 58 percent supported same-sex marriage.
Supporters of the measure described the victory in New York as especially symbolic — and poignant — because NY is considered the home of the "Stonewall movement’s" foundational moment in June 1969. A riot erupted outside the Stonewall Inn, a bar in the West Village, on June 28, 1969 after police raided the tavern frequented by gay patrons. (see history of movement below.)
The Stonewall Inn was a seedy, mob-owned bar on Christopher Street in New York City's Greenwich Village, a place where gay men and lesbians could drink and dance among themselves at a time when the city was cracking down hard on gay bars and homosexual life. There had been little protest against the harassment, but a bust at the Stonewall in the early hours of June 28, 1969 — and reports that customers were being beaten by cops — provoked a sympathetic crowd into two days of rioting. The movement was born.
Seeing what he called “an enormous amount of disinformation about Social Security” in the media, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joined with activist filmmaker Robert Greenwald to produce a video that attempts to explains why.
The video shows how the Koch’s create the myth that Social Security is in crisis by funding prominent think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, pundits on Fox News and CNBC, and politicians like Paul Ryan.)
Sanders claims that campaign contributions and hundreds of millions in think tank funding from billionaire industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch help create an “echo chamber” for “misinformation” on the hugely popular federal safety net, like suggesting it is about to go broke or claiming the retirement age must be raised in order to prevent economic collapse.
“Social Security is not going broke,” Sanders insisted. “Social Security has a $2.2 trillion surplus… The Koch brothers want to invest your retirement funds on Wall Street, and you may lose all of your retirement savings when you get old.”
Documents and interviews unearthed in recent months by Brave New Foundation researchers illustrate a $28.4 million Koch business that has manufactured 297 commentaries, 200 reports, 56 studies and six books distorting Social Security's effectiveness and purpose.
Together, the publications reveal a vast cottage industry comprised of Koch brothers' spokespeople, front groups, think tanks, academics and elected officials, which have built a self-sustaining echo chamber to transform fringe ideas into popular mainstream public policy arguments.
The Koch brothers' echo chamber has successfully written the messaging for the AARP, a traditional defender of Social Security for all generations, which recently opened the door to cutting benefits.
The Koch echo chamber begins with think tanks like the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Reason Foundation, which owe their founding and achievements to Koch backing. These think tanks take their $28.4 million in Koch funding and produce hundreds of position papers distorting the long-term health of Social Security.
TPM: On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office released its updated long-term budget forecast, which looked surprisingly like the previous version of its long-term budget forecast.
It showed, as one might expect, that if the Bush tax-cuts remain in effect and Medicare and Medicaid spending isn't constrained in some way, the country will topple into a genuine fiscal crisis -- not the fake one the Congress is pretending the country's in right now.
Republicans, of course, seized on that particular projection, and claimed (a bit ridiculously) that it proved the government must adopt their precise policy views: major spending cuts, particularly to entitlement programs.
While all this -- from the findings to the politicization of them -- is perfectly expected, the forecast also presents another opportunity to remind people that the medium-term budget outlook is perfectly fine if Congress adheres to the law as it's currently written. That means no repealing the health care law, for one, but more significantly it means allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, and (unfathomably) allowing Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors to fall to the levels prescribed by the formula Congress wrote almost 15 years ago. In other words, no more "doc fixes."
Helpfully, CBO juxtaposed these two alternative futures in a pair of graphs and, just as last time, it projects that deficits will disappear entirely by the end of President Obama's second term (if he gets a second term) if Congress were to just sit on its hands and do nothing.
Pew Research Center: More Americans believe Republicans in Congress, rather than the Obama administration, would be mainly responsible if the two sides cannot agree on a plan to increase the federal debt limit.
About four-in-ten (42%) say Republicans would bear the most responsibility if the debt limit is not raised and the government is unable to borrow more money to fund its operations.
A third (33%) say the Obama administration would be mainly responsible, according to the latest survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and The Washington Post conducted June 16-19 among 1,003 adults.
As Vice President Joe Biden holds budget and debt-reduction talks with lawmakers, partisans express strong opinions about which side would be most responsible if no agreement is reached before the limit is hit as soon as early August.
About seven-in-ten Democrats (72%) say Republicans would be mainly responsible. Nearly six-in-ten Republicans (58%) say the Obama administration would be mainly responsible.
But independents are divided: 36% say Republicans would be mainly responsible, while 34% say the Democratic administration would be. Another 17% say the two sides would share responsibility if the debt limit is not raised.
Recent polls have shown that the voters are not really enamored with the Republican Party anymore. Americans think they would be worse off under House Republicans' Medicare overhaul by an overwhelming margin of 57 percent to 34 percent, according to a new Bloomberg National Poll.
Adding to Republicans' woes, 58 percent of Independents — a critical voting block — share those concerns. The House voted in April to replace Medicare with subsidies for private insurance starting in 2022, but the proposal is going nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The poll, Bloomberg points out, is likely to encourage Democrats to continue to use Medicare to bash the GOP ahead of the 2012 presidential election. Republicans, however, are urging for bipartisan cooperation on cutting Social Security and Medicare even as they reject any tax increases.
If Democrats go along with Republicans on cutting Social Security and Medicare the GOP echo chamber will blame Democrats for the cuts, just as they did during the 2010 mid-term elections.
(See - The GOP Bait And Switch On Social Security And Medicare Democrats need to stay positioned to run exactly the same Social Security and Medicare messaging campaign in 2012 against the GOP that the GOP used against Democrats in 2010.)
Unemployment
42%
Government spending
17%
Federal deficit
13%
Health care
10%
Afghanistan
5%
The new Bloomberg National Poll (conducted of 1,000 adults between June 17th and June 20th) show movement toward Democrats and away from the Republicans. Here are the top five issues with the public.
The people know that the most important issue facing America is the massive unemployment -- an issue the Republicans are ignoring.
The recession will not truly be over until most Americans are back to work.
And most Americans see the corporations outsourcing of jobs as the biggest impediment to job creation (78%) -- something the Republicans in Congress have voted to support.
And then there's this question on the poll. What scares you the most about the upcoming election? Here's what the voters said:
49% said the Republicans getting control of government and damaging or abolishing Medicare.
40% said the Democrats getting control of government and resuming their spending.
Medicare is still turning out to be a really bad mistake for Republicans (who want to abolish it and throw the elderly to the mercy of private insurance companies). About 57 % in this poll said the Republican plan would be bad for them, and 55% say supporting the privatization of Medicare would make them likely to vote against a presidential candidate.
President Obama's favorability rating was 54%, with 42% saying they viewed him unfavorably.
Among other presidential candidates, 43% of Republicans viewed Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) favorably and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty had a 29% favorability rating.
From Florida to Ohio, Wisconsin to Arizona, the bloom is fading from the GOP's blushing rose very quickly and very badly for Republican Governors who surfed into their respective state capitols on the tea party electoral wave last November.
Newsweek: Fourteen million Americans remain out of work, a waste of our greatest resource. The 42nd president has more than a dozen ideas on how to attack the jobs crisis.
Next week in Chicago, the Clinton Global Initiative will focus on America for the first time, inviting business and political leaders to make specific commitments in support of the former president’s jobs blueprint, which he details below.
He humorously invokes “Popeye” cartoons, quoting, “I’ve had all I can stand! I can't stands no more!” and encourages attendees to stand up to the smears and hate-mongering spewed daily by Fox News.
Jones, who joined the White House Staff in March 2009 as Pres. Obama's environmental adviser on green jobs development, resigned in September 2009 after the rightwing media and blogosphere echo chamber ginned up calls for his ouster in over his past statements and activism.
Jones issued two public apologies in the days preceding his resignation, one for signing a petition in 2004 from the group 911Truth.org that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war" and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said of Jone's resignation on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual." The president does not endorse Jones's past statements and actions, "but he thanks him for his service," Gibbs said.
A former Cameron County Judge and current party chair for Cameron County is seeking to become the Lone Star State’s top Democrat when Boyd Richie, the current Texas Democratic Party Chair, leaves office next year.
Brownsville-based attorney Gilberto Hinojosa last month filed with the Texas Ethics Commissions to become an official candidate for Chair of the Texas Democratic Party. (website | Facebook)
The next Texas Democratic Party Chair will be elected at the June 2012 Texas state Democratic Convention. Boyd Richie announced at a State Democratic Executive Committee meeting in April that he would not seek re-election in 2012.
Hinojosa named Houston Attorney Cris Feldman treasurer for his Texas Democratic Party Chair campaign. It was Feldman who sued the treasurer of Texans for a Republican Majority on behalf of four Democratic House candidates who were defeated in the 2002 election with the help of "clandestinely funneled illegal corporate cash into the [Texas] elections" by then House majority leader Tom DeLay and his aides. In a 2010 trial DeLay was found guilty on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the scheme to illegally funnel corporate cash to Texas Republican candidates running in the 2002 election.
Judge Hinojosa commented on his State Chair campaign:
Many people do not remember that the purchase and use of birth control products, even by married couples, was against the law in many states until 1965. Use of birth control products may again be criminalized in many states controlled by conservative lawmakers. There are those who, for the last 46 years, have worked to reverse the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court finding that Americans have a fundamental right of privacy to make family planning decisions, which includes the right to use birth control contraceptives. This year conservative lawmakers in many states are again close to making the use of birth control products a crime through "personhood" legislative initiatives.
Late in the regular 2011 82nd Texas legislative session, the Senate passed SB 100. The bill, originally submitted by Texas State Senator Van de Putte, brings Texas in compliance with the federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. The MOVE Act, passed by Congress in 2009, requires that vote by mail ballots for federal elections and local elections held in conjunction with federal elections must be available to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before each election day and run-off election day.
Election dates specified in the Texas election code did not allow 45 days between the dates candidates were qualified to be listed on primary election ballots and the uniform primary election dates. SB 100 adjusts legally prescribed primary election dates such that Texas comes into compliance with the MOVE Act.
The Nation - Villarreal and his Democratic colleagues [in the Texas House of Representatives] protested in vain [in early April] as the House passed perhaps the most radical state budget bill in US history.
[The Texas Legislature — which Molly Ivins aptly called “the national laboratory for bad government” — infused with Tea Party zeal to eliminate government after the 2010 election,] voted to balance the ledger without raising revenues, axing $23 billion from current spending levels—about one-fourth of the state’s current spending, and some of the deepest cuts contemplated anywhere in the country.
Spending cuts to public schools, already among the nation’s most poorly funded, could mean some 100,000 teacher layoffs, pre-K programs decimated and schools closed. Huge cuts to Medicaid could push an estimated 60,000 senior citizens out of their nursing homes. “We’re already as a state fiftieth in per capita spending,” said another young San Antonio Democrat, Representative Joaquin Castro. “So you’ve got to ask yourself…at what point is this budget akin to asking an anorexic person to lose more weight?”
The fiscal crisis caught most Texans unawares. For the better part of a decade, they’d had their collective egos puffed up by BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, The Economist and CNBC proclaiming Texas as the economic miracle of the nation. Governor Rick Perry, a friend and disciple of Grover Norquist, had just won re-election by extolling the wonders wrought by tax-cutting, deregulation and the aggressive courting of jobs from higher-tax states like California, Michigan and Illinois.
[For the last decade] Perry has been the chief mad scientist in Texas’ bad-government lab, seizing every opportunity to gut social spending, pander to the culture-warriors and enrich his high-rolling corporate sponsors. In 2003, with a conservative legislature feloniously purchased by Tom DeLay and associates, Perry led a revolution to deregulate, privatize and tort-reform nearly everything. “Texas is open for business,” his campaign happily proclaimed when the dust had settled.
Three years later, with the lawmakers deadlocked over a school finance plan that would somehow meet State Supreme Court standards, Perry engineered a massive “tax swap,” slashing property taxes and replacing them with a modest business tax that left the state with a $5[-$7] billion annual “structural deficit” going forward—and a handy excuse to keep cutting programs to make budgets balance.
This year, when the massive debt was announced, Perry’s right-wing allies could not contain their glee. “The bottom line is there are no excuses now,” exclaimed Republican Senator Dan Patrick, a talk-radio host and founder of the Tea Party Caucus. “It’s a perfect storm, in a positive way, for conservatism.” In his inaugural speech, David Dewhurst, three-term lieutenant governor, turned it into a cheer: “We pronounce the word C-R-I-S-I-S as ‘opportunity.’”
Dan Patrick and David Dewhurst were referring to the "Starving the beast" strategy. This is a fiscal-political strategy adopted by American conservatives in the 1970's to create or increase existing budget deficits via tax cuts to force future cuts and eventual privatization of Medicare, Social Security, Public Education and every other public service.
Texas has long been as politically and culturally influential as California. If that’s not often recognized, it’s for a valid reason: the influence Texas exercises pulls other states backward. “People used to say that the future happens first in California,” Krugman writes, “but these days what happens in Texas is probably a better omen. And what we’re seeing right now is a future that doesn’t work.”
Governor Rick Perry (R) signed SB14 into law this morning requiring voters to present unexpired government issued photo identification to qualify to vote in Texas elections. Photo IDs must be current or must have expired within the last 60 days. They include:
Texas DPS driver’s license or personal identification card,
Personal identification card called an “election identification certificate;”
US passport;
US military ID;
Texas concealed weapons license; and
US citizenship papers containing a photo.
For those who have none of these unexpired government issued photo IDs the law contains a provision that requires the Texas Driver's License Bureau to issue special "election identification certificates" free of charge to citizens. Of course, a person seeking a free "election identification certificate" at the Driver's License Bureau must present a their birth certificate. The election identification certificates will have an expiration date for people under 70 years of age, suggesting that voters who acquire and use this ID to vote will have to renew the identification certificate just as driver's licenses are renewed. Voters age 70 and older will not have to renew their election identification certificate.
The original version of SB14 passed last January exempted voters age 70 and older from the photo ID requirement, but the House version passed in March stripped the senior photo ID exemption from the bill. The election identification certificate expiration exemption for voters age 70 and older is a compromise reached in joint committee to resolve differences between the Senate and House version of the bill. Voters age 70 and older must present photo identification to election clerks, just like everyone else.
Voters who show up to polls with only their voter registration cards will be allowed to vote a provisional ballot, but then they must present a photo ID in person at the office of their county's election authority within six days, or their provisional ballot will not be counted.
Voter education efforts will begin in fall 2011, but photo ID requirements will not take effect until January 1, 2012.
Texas Voter Photo ID Summary
Effective Dates (Pending U.S. Dept. of Justice clearance)
Starting September 1, 2011 the Secretary of State, and the voter registrar of each county shall provide notice of the ID requirements for voting in each language in which voter registration materials are available. Required government issued photo identification must be presented to polling place election clerks for all elections occurring after January 1, 2012.
Photo IDs Permitted
All IDs must be unexpired or expired no earlier than 60 days before the election. Acceptable identification includes:
A driver’s license, election ID certificate, or personal ID card issued to the person by the Department of Public Safety (i.e., an election certificate issued to a person 70 years or older does not expire);
U.S. military ID card that contains the person's photograph;
U.S. citizenship certificate issued to the voter with their photograph;
U.S. passport; or
A license to carry a concealed handgun.
*Student IDs are not accepted in Texas for purposes of identification for voting.
Exceptions Available
A person may obtain an exemption from the ID requirement on the basis of disability if they produce a statement in a form determined by the SOS that the applicant does not have any of the prescribed forms of identification, and they have an:
U.S.S.S.A. determination of disability, or
U.S.V.A. disability rating of 50%.
Affidavit Alternative
A voter without a photo ID may cast a provisional ballot, which will count if she signs an affidavit attesting to the fact that she:
has a religious objection to being photographed, or
does not have an ID as a result of a natural disaster declared by the U.S. President or Texas’ Governor no earlier than 45 days before the election and that disaster caused the inability to access the voter’s ID.
The affidavit may be signed at the time the provisional ballot is cast or at the time the voter appears before the voter registrar within 6 days following the election to have the provisional ballot counted.
Early/Absentee Voting ID Requirements
The photo ID requirement does not apply to absentee voting, including early voting by mail. Photo ID requirements apply to all in-person or curbside early voting.
Free IDs
Texas will issue an Election Identification Certificate (EIC) to persons who do not have another qualifying ID for purposes of voting. The applicant must present a voter registration card or register to vote at the time of applying for an EIC. There is no fee for an initial or duplicate EIC.
Public Education Requirements
The Secretary of State, and the voter registrar of each county that maintains a website, shall provide notice of the ID requirements for voting in each language in which voter registration materials are available. The Secretary of State shall prescribe the wording of the notice to be included on the websites, and shall also conduct a statewide effort to educate voters regarding the identification requirements for voting. The county clerk of each county shall post in a prominent location at the clerk’s office a physical copy of ID information in each language in which voter registration materials are available.
Citizenjournalists have attended those town halls and recorded video of that voter backlash on smartphones. Those citizen journalists then published their reports, with video, on the Internet, allowing others who couldn’t attend in person to see the event. Those videos have often been picked up and broadcast by national cable news outlets. The GOP does not like the exposure because it puts a lie to their claim that they are doing only what the people elected them to do.
The Texas Democratic Party today released a new video in its continuing "GOP Price Tag" series that chronicles recent headlines from print and broadcast media outlets around Texas. The headlines chronicled in the video include the following:
“The Texas GOP Chose to Decimate Our Educational System” - $9.8 Billion Cut From Public Schools - Texas Tribune
"Starving the beast" is a fiscal-political strategy adopted by American conservatives in the 1970's to create or increase existing budget deficits via tax cuts to force future cuts and eventual privatization of Medicare, Social Security, Public Education and every other public service. [see Forbes and the video left.]
Paul Krugman, columnist for The New York Times: For readers who don't know what I'm talking about: Ever since Ronald Reagan, the GOP has been run by people who want a much smaller government.
About four-in-ten (42%) say Republicans would bear the most responsibility if the debt limit is not raised and the government is unable to borrow more money to fund its operations.
