President Ronald Reagan in his first Inaugural Address proclaimed: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Conservative humorist P. J. O'Rourke often quips, "The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." Here is another example of the absolute truth of O'Rourke's quip.
If you watch Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program you know she has devoted a great deal of time to reporting about "emergency managers" appointed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and the Flint, Michigan water crisis, created by that city's emergency manager. If you haven’t heard Rachel's reporting on this on this scandal, it’s important to get up to speed.
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
2016 Iowa Brown & Black Democratic Presidential Forum
The Iowa Brown & Black U.S. Presidential candidate Forum was founded in 1984 by Co-Chairs former Iowa State Representative Wayne W. Ford and Mary E. Dominguez Campos. Rep. Ford is the Founder and Executive Director of Urban Dreams, a United Way agency located in Des Moines, Iowa. Ms. Campos is a prominent member of the Des Moines Latino community. It is recognized as the oldest non-partisan forum for Presidential candidates in the nation addressing issues of concern to the minority community. It is the fourth oldest, established forum for presidential candidates in the nation.
On Monday, January 11th, Clinton, O'Malley and Sanders took this year's Forum stage to discuss where they stand on the issues that matter to young, diverse America. Including: social justice, immigration, education, health care, and the economy. The Forum was moderated by FUSION anchors Jorge Ramos and Alicia Menendez as well as FUSION contributor Akilah Hughes and New York Magazine Writer-at-Large Rembert Browne. watch the video now.
On Monday, January 11th, Clinton, O'Malley and Sanders took this year's Forum stage to discuss where they stand on the issues that matter to young, diverse America. Including: social justice, immigration, education, health care, and the economy. The Forum was moderated by FUSION anchors Jorge Ramos and Alicia Menendez as well as FUSION contributor Akilah Hughes and New York Magazine Writer-at-Large Rembert Browne. watch the video now.
Monday, January 11, 2016
DNC Chair Wasserman-Schultz Blames Voters for Failures of Democratic Party
Rarely do politicians appear to go out of their way to alienate their core constituencies. It is even more rare that they do so in the course of an election cycle in which they play a critical role, and in which turnout will be key to winning. Nonetheless, that is exactly what Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) did, in what was an otherwise very brief interview published by the New York Times Magazine on January 6.
It’s a doozy. Wasserman Schultz is also chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and ostensibly working to elect more Dems in 2016. Yet in a few short paragraphs, she insulted an entire demographic of female voters, made misleading statements about medical marijuana and the heroin epidemic, and suggested that drug addiction was not a problem “in the suburbs.”
The interview has caused a firestorm among progressive groups and advocates, including CREDO Action, which has launched a petition calling on her to resign. Wasserman Schultz calls herself a progressive, but that appears more an effort to ally herself notionally with a growing political movement than a reflection of her actual politics, positions, or actions.
It’s a doozy. Wasserman Schultz is also chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and ostensibly working to elect more Dems in 2016. Yet in a few short paragraphs, she insulted an entire demographic of female voters, made misleading statements about medical marijuana and the heroin epidemic, and suggested that drug addiction was not a problem “in the suburbs.”
The interview has caused a firestorm among progressive groups and advocates, including CREDO Action, which has launched a petition calling on her to resign. Wasserman Schultz calls herself a progressive, but that appears more an effort to ally herself notionally with a growing political movement than a reflection of her actual politics, positions, or actions.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Primary Challenger For DNC Chair Wasserman-Schultz
Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), the controversial chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has a progressive primary challenger in her bid for re-election in Florida’s 23rd Congressional district. Tim Canova, a little-known liberal economist and law professor, announcedThursday that he would challenge Wasserman-Schultz, who has aroused the ire of progressives for her perceived supplication to corporate interests, outdated policy beliefs, and mishandling of the primary election season.
Saturday, January 9, 2016
U.S. Was Hit With Seriously High Temperatures In 2015
2015 was the second hottest on record in the United States since data collection began in 1895, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday. Last year was also the 19th consecutive time that average temperatures in the U.S. exceeded the 20th century average.
Everyone born after 1996 has only known warmer than normal temperatures. NOAA also reported that December was record warm for the contiguous United States, with temperatures at 6°F above average. Twenty-nine states had their warmest December on record, while no state was record cold.
Mounting evidence behind man-made climate change doesn’t mean that skeptics are backing down, however.
Read the rest of the story at Think Progress: U.S. Was Hit With Seriously High Temperatures In 2015
Everyone born after 1996 has only known warmer than normal temperatures. NOAA also reported that December was record warm for the contiguous United States, with temperatures at 6°F above average. Twenty-nine states had their warmest December on record, while no state was record cold.
Mounting evidence behind man-made climate change doesn’t mean that skeptics are backing down, however.
Read the rest of the story at Think Progress: U.S. Was Hit With Seriously High Temperatures In 2015
Friday, January 8, 2016
The Best Economic Plan For The 99 Percent
The Democratic presidential campaign – unlike the Republican circus – has actually produced a debate in which each candidate’s economic agenda has gotten better and more populist. But as you can see at CandidateScorecard.net, there are also big differences.
Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders agree that America’s long period of stagnant wages and growing inequality has been due to chronic slow growth and high unemployment. InClinton’s words, “getting closer to full employment is crucial to raising wages.” Both are committed to some amount of increased public spending on infrastructure and investments in “green industries.” But the differences between the two candidates on public investment are a matter of scale.
Clinton wants $275 billion more in infrastructure investment over the next five years.
Sanders would increase the public investments in jobs-creating infrastructure by $1 trillion over the same five-year period – creating one million new jobs, while helping to retool the U.S. economy to reduce carbon emissions.
Limited Taxes, Limited Ambitions
Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders agree that America’s long period of stagnant wages and growing inequality has been due to chronic slow growth and high unemployment. InClinton’s words, “getting closer to full employment is crucial to raising wages.” Both are committed to some amount of increased public spending on infrastructure and investments in “green industries.” But the differences between the two candidates on public investment are a matter of scale.
Clinton wants $275 billion more in infrastructure investment over the next five years.
Sanders would increase the public investments in jobs-creating infrastructure by $1 trillion over the same five-year period – creating one million new jobs, while helping to retool the U.S. economy to reduce carbon emissions.
Limited Taxes, Limited Ambitions
Thursday, January 7, 2016
BlogTalkUSA: Eyes Wide Open / DemBlogTalk - 01/05/2016
On our Tuesday evening program, my co-host Rheana Nevitt Piegols and I talked about gun safety, among other topics.
Each year: More than 100,000 people in America (all ages) are shot in murders, assaults, suicides, accidents, or by police intervention.
31,537 people die from gun violence: 11,583 people murdered; 18,783 self inflicted; and 584 accidental shootings.
71,386 people survive gun injuries: 51,249 people intentionally assaulted by gun owners; 3,627 people survive at tempted suicide; and 15,815 people are shot accidentally.
Click to listen to our podcast:
Listen or download - MP3
Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. explains why "The gun lobby's con game will come to an end.." As Dionne writes, "... Something important happened in the East Room when Obama offered a series of constrained but useful steps toward limiting the carnage on our streets, in our schools and houses of worship and movie theaters. He made clear that the era of cowering before the gun lobby and apologizing, trimming, hedging and equivocating is over...Bullies are intimidating until someone calls their bluff. By ruling out any reasonable steps toward containing the killing in our nation and by offering ever more preposterous arguments, the gun worshipers are setting themselves up for wholesale defeat. It will take time. But it will happen."
At ABC News Gary Langer has "Views on Gun Control: A Polling Summary."
From Pew Research Center, via Greg Sargent
Sen. Bernie Sanders On Wall Street And Banking Reform
If you’ve seen the Adam McKay's film “The Big Short,”
you know it was the greed of Wall Street traders and bankers, combined with the lack of
regulatory control, that produced the 2008 economic crisis. You also
know that nothing has changed. Congress still has not enacted the kind of financial
reforms needed to prevent the next 2008-like financial crash and, even more disturbing, most of the banks are now bigger than
they were before the 2008 crash. As noted by the Washington Post, “three of the four largest financial institutions are nearly 80 percent larger” than they were in 2008.
At Town Hall in New York City, Bernie Sanders delivered a major policy speech declaring that he will "break up any banks that are too big to fail and that big bankers will not be too big to jail."
YouTube
Politico: Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday offered some strong praise for Bernie Sanders Wall Street speech.
Huffington Post: Hillary Clinton's Campaign Response to Sanders' Wall Street Reform Proposals.
Sanders'Speech text as prepared for delivery:
At Town Hall in New York City, Bernie Sanders delivered a major policy speech declaring that he will "break up any banks that are too big to fail and that big bankers will not be too big to jail."
YouTube
Politico: Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday offered some strong praise for Bernie Sanders Wall Street speech.
Huffington Post: Hillary Clinton's Campaign Response to Sanders' Wall Street Reform Proposals.
Sanders'Speech text as prepared for delivery:
Monday, December 28, 2015
Who Turned My Blue State Red?
By Alec MacGillis, ProPublica
It is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net.
In his successful bid for the Senate in 2010, the libertarian Rand Paul railed against “inter-generational welfare” and said that “the culture of dependency on government destroys people’s spirits,” yet racked up winning margins in eastern Kentucky, a former Democratic stronghold that is heavily dependent on public benefits.
Last year, Paul R. LePage, the fiercely anti-welfare Republican governor of Maine, was re-elected despite a highly erratic first term — with strong support in struggling towns where many rely on public assistance.
And in November 2015, Kentucky elected as governor a conservative Republican who had vowed to largely undo the Medicaid expansion that had given the state the country’s largest decrease in the uninsured under Obamacare, with roughly one in 10 residents gaining coverage.
It’s enough to give Democrats the willies as they contemplate a map where the red keeps seeping outward, confining them to ever narrower redoubts of blue. The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.
But this reaction misses the complexity of the political dynamic that’s taken hold in these parts of the country. It misdiagnoses the Democratic Party’s growing conundrum with working-class white voters. And it also keeps us from fully grasping what’s going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers have detected alarming trends in their mortality rates.
It is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net.
In his successful bid for the Senate in 2010, the libertarian Rand Paul railed against “inter-generational welfare” and said that “the culture of dependency on government destroys people’s spirits,” yet racked up winning margins in eastern Kentucky, a former Democratic stronghold that is heavily dependent on public benefits.
Last year, Paul R. LePage, the fiercely anti-welfare Republican governor of Maine, was re-elected despite a highly erratic first term — with strong support in struggling towns where many rely on public assistance.
And in November 2015, Kentucky elected as governor a conservative Republican who had vowed to largely undo the Medicaid expansion that had given the state the country’s largest decrease in the uninsured under Obamacare, with roughly one in 10 residents gaining coverage.
It’s enough to give Democrats the willies as they contemplate a map where the red keeps seeping outward, confining them to ever narrower redoubts of blue. The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.
But this reaction misses the complexity of the political dynamic that’s taken hold in these parts of the country. It misdiagnoses the Democratic Party’s growing conundrum with working-class white voters. And it also keeps us from fully grasping what’s going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers have detected alarming trends in their mortality rates.
Sunday, December 27, 2015
How Democrats Could Win The U.S. House
Whoever wins the White House in 2016, it’s an article of faith among political pundents that not much will change in the House, where Republicans have a seeming lock on the majority.
It’s true the Democrats’ odds of flipping the 30 seats needed to win back the House of Representatives are not good. But the current polling leaders for the Republican presidential nomination are candidates almost perfectly designed to turn off Republican voters in the districts Democrats need to win to retake the House.
Read more at Politico.com:
It’s true the Democrats’ odds of flipping the 30 seats needed to win back the House of Representatives are not good. But the current polling leaders for the Republican presidential nomination are candidates almost perfectly designed to turn off Republican voters in the districts Democrats need to win to retake the House.
Read more at Politico.com:
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Hillary v. Bernie Polls And Sampling Frames
If the 2016 U.S. presidential election were held today, a sampling of all voters finds Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would win by a landslide over GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, according to a new poll released Tuesday by Quinnipiac University.
Voters favor Sanders over Trump 51 to 38 percent, giving Sanders the general election win by 13 points — nearly double Sanders' chief rival for the Democratic nomination, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton would likewise beat Trump, but her margin of victory over Trump is seven points — 47 to 40 percent. This suggests Sanders would attract some politically disaffected voters Clinton would not.
Columnist Brent Budowsky writes for The Hill:
Voters favor Sanders over Trump 51 to 38 percent, giving Sanders the general election win by 13 points — nearly double Sanders' chief rival for the Democratic nomination, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton would likewise beat Trump, but her margin of victory over Trump is seven points — 47 to 40 percent. This suggests Sanders would attract some politically disaffected voters Clinton would not.
Columnist Brent Budowsky writes for The Hill:
If Sanders' margin held in a general election, Democrats would almost certainly regain control of the United States Senate and very possibly the House of Representatives.Budowsky concludes, "analysts would be talking about a national political realignment and new progressive era in American history if an enlightened candidate such as Sanders would defeat a retrograde race-baiting candidate such as Trump by a potentially epic and historic margin."
It is high time and long overdue for television networks such as CNN to end their obsession with Trump and report the all-important fact that in most polls, both Hillary Clinton and Sanders would defeat Trump by landslide margins.
[....] It is noteworthy that in this Quinnipiac poll, Sanders runs so much stronger than Clinton against Trump.
Season's Greetings From DemBlogNews
We offer our readers a holiday treat with a video of Bob Dylan reading “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan hosted a satellite radio show, Theme Time Radio Hour, once a week for almost three years. For his 2006 Christmas broadcast, the show featured a wide variety of Christmas music with Dylan’s commentary.
Following the Dylan video, we offer a 1939 radio broadcast and then a 1935 British movie of "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens.
Here is the 1939 Campbell Playhouse radio broadcast productions of "A Christmas Carol" featuring Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge.
Play starts at 3:00 minutes [MP3] - [Mercury Theatre Info]
Seymour Hicks plays the title role in the first sound version of the Dickens classic about the miser who's visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. This British import is notable for being the only adaptation of this story with an invisible Marley's Ghost and its Expressionistic cinematography. This is the uncut 78 minute version from the Internet Archive.
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
DNC Penalizes Sanders Campaign For VAN Security Breach
On Thursday, December 17th at 11:47 p.m., the Washington Post broke a story reporting Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had cut off presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign access to the DNC's master 50-state voter file managed for the DNC under a sole-source contract, by NGP VAN Inc., a private political data services vendor. Schultz accuses a VAN data base system expert working for the Sanders campaign of intentionally breaching VAN system security firewalls to gain access to Hillary Clintion’s campaign data about voters.
Chairwoman Schultz intentionally misrepresents the facts after the Sanders campaign VAN administrator stumbled upon and investigated a VAN software bug introduced Wednesday morning, December 16th, at approximately 10:40 AM, when NGP VAN, the company whose software hosts the Democratic National Committee’s voter file, installed a routine software update. The update introduced a bug that allowed members of Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, among others, to filter the voter records they share using custom “scores” each campaign had independently tagged to those common voter records. Such custom scores tagged by individual campaigns are to be private to those campaigns, but the bug exposed that campaign specific scoring as public data to all VAN users. (about which more shortly).
Josh Uretsky was the Sanders campaign’s National Data Director who discovered NGP VAN had opened every candidate's campaign data for viewing by every other NGP VAN client user.
WaPo headlined its story, "DNC penalizes Sanders campaign for improper access of Clinton voter data," with a lead paragraph reporting,
The initial Thursday night Washington Post story and all subsequent stories through the day Friday were clearly originally sourced from individuals at the DNC and NGP VAN. The frame of that sourced reporting - "Sanders campaign gained improper access to" and "breached" Clinton data - gives the impression Sanders campaign staffers with malice of forethought hacked system security to access Clinton campaign data. The DNC seemingly used that same framing language in notifying the Clinton campaign its data had been breach through four Sanders campaign VAN/VoteBuilder userids.
DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz, by taking the story public, stating to Washington Post reporters and other reporters she cut off Sanders campaign access to the DNC's voter information database, because Sanders' campaign staff had "improperly accessed confidential voter information of Hillary Clinton's campaign" and that "cutting the Sanders' campaign's access is the only way we can make sure we can protect our significant asset that is the voter file," Schultz instantly flipped Sanders' news momentum for the week, leading into the Saturday Democratic debate, from positive to negative.
Chairwoman Schultz intentionally misrepresents the facts after the Sanders campaign VAN administrator stumbled upon and investigated a VAN software bug introduced Wednesday morning, December 16th, at approximately 10:40 AM, when NGP VAN, the company whose software hosts the Democratic National Committee’s voter file, installed a routine software update. The update introduced a bug that allowed members of Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, among others, to filter the voter records they share using custom “scores” each campaign had independently tagged to those common voter records. Such custom scores tagged by individual campaigns are to be private to those campaigns, but the bug exposed that campaign specific scoring as public data to all VAN users. (about which more shortly).
Josh Uretsky was the Sanders campaign’s National Data Director who discovered NGP VAN had opened every candidate's campaign data for viewing by every other NGP VAN client user.
WaPo headlined its story, "DNC penalizes Sanders campaign for improper access of Clinton voter data," with a lead paragraph reporting,
"Officials with the Democratic National Committee have accused the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of improperly accessing confidential voter information gathered by the rival campaign of Hillary Clinton, according to several party officials." The article's third paragraph said, "The discovery sparked alarm at the DNC, which promptly shut off the Sanders campaign’s access to the strategically crucial list of likely Democratic voters." The DNC had shut down access Wednesday morning.That WaPo news headline replaced the day's headline story that Sen. Sanders received endorsements from the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America union, secured 88.9 percent of 270,000 votes cast in Democracy for America’s official endorsement poll, and received a record 2 million campaign contributions, with over $2 million raised in just 72 hours.
The initial Thursday night Washington Post story and all subsequent stories through the day Friday were clearly originally sourced from individuals at the DNC and NGP VAN. The frame of that sourced reporting - "Sanders campaign gained improper access to" and "breached" Clinton data - gives the impression Sanders campaign staffers with malice of forethought hacked system security to access Clinton campaign data. The DNC seemingly used that same framing language in notifying the Clinton campaign its data had been breach through four Sanders campaign VAN/VoteBuilder userids.
DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz, by taking the story public, stating to Washington Post reporters and other reporters she cut off Sanders campaign access to the DNC's voter information database, because Sanders' campaign staff had "improperly accessed confidential voter information of Hillary Clinton's campaign" and that "cutting the Sanders' campaign's access is the only way we can make sure we can protect our significant asset that is the voter file," Schultz instantly flipped Sanders' news momentum for the week, leading into the Saturday Democratic debate, from positive to negative.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Democratic Debate - December 19, 2015
You probably didn't watch the third Democratic presidential primary debate at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire Saturday night, hosted by ABC New correspondents Martha Raddatz and David Muir. Maybe you had something better to do on a Saturday night six days before Christmas. Maybe you went to a holiday party. Maybe you watched the New York Jets take on the Dallas Cowboys. Maybe you got some Christmas shopping done. Maybe you went to see "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Maybe you were so burned out with the political ranker over Democratic National Committee (DNC), Debbie Wasserman Schultz cutting off the Sanders campaign’s access to the campaign's NGP-VAN's voter information database, you just didn't feel like tuning in.
The debate attracted only 6.71 million viewers, the lowest number so far for any 2016 debate organized by the DNC or the RNC. Saturday night’s debate was such a flop that it barely attracted one quarter of the viewership of the most watched Republican debate.
If you didn't watch it, you missed a good debate! In the third Democratic presidential primary debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Hillary Clinton quickly moved past the previous day's rancor over the DNC's handling of a campaign data exposure breach caused by data services company NGP-VAN switching off data privacy protocols between all the candidate's campaign data. The Democratic National Committee contracted with NGP-VAN to store and securely manage its voter data for Democratic candidates. NGP-VAN is run by Stu Trevelyan, a veteran of Pres. Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign "War Room" and then Pres. Clinton's Administration.
Saturday night's debate moved on to a pointed but polite and factual discussion of national security, Americans' heightened terrorism fears and the economy between Sen. Sanders, former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.
Watch the entire debate in this video, courtesy of ABC News:
Transcript:
The debate attracted only 6.71 million viewers, the lowest number so far for any 2016 debate organized by the DNC or the RNC. Saturday night’s debate was such a flop that it barely attracted one quarter of the viewership of the most watched Republican debate.
If you didn't watch it, you missed a good debate! In the third Democratic presidential primary debate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Hillary Clinton quickly moved past the previous day's rancor over the DNC's handling of a campaign data exposure breach caused by data services company NGP-VAN switching off data privacy protocols between all the candidate's campaign data. The Democratic National Committee contracted with NGP-VAN to store and securely manage its voter data for Democratic candidates. NGP-VAN is run by Stu Trevelyan, a veteran of Pres. Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign "War Room" and then Pres. Clinton's Administration.
Saturday night's debate moved on to a pointed but polite and factual discussion of national security, Americans' heightened terrorism fears and the economy between Sen. Sanders, former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.
Watch the entire debate in this video, courtesy of ABC News:
Transcript:
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Who Is On 2016 Texas Primary Ballots
The 2016 primary election filing period ran from Saturday, November 14, 2015, through the filing deadline date of 6 p.m. Monday, December 14, 2015.
With the filing deadline past,Republican and Democratic Party precinct chairs of each county will meet during the coming days to approve their party's ballot and set the order of candidate names for contested office ballot positions.
Presidential Candidate Filings
| Office Sought | Ballot Name | Party |
| -------------- | -------------- | ------- |
| President/Vice-President | Bernie Sanders | DEM |
| President/Vice-President | Calvis L. Hawes | DEM |
| President/Vice-President | Hillary Clinton | DEM |
| President/Vice-President | Keith Judd | DEM |
| President/Vice-President | Martin J. O'Malley | DEM |
| President/Vice-President | Roque "Rocky" De La Fuente | DEM |
| President/Vice-President | Star Locke | DEM |
| President/Vice-President | Willie L. Wilson | DEM |
| President/Vice-President | Ben Carson | REP |
| President/Vice-President | Carly Fiorina | REP |
| President/Vice-President | Chris Christie | REP |
| President/Vice-President | Donald J. Trump | REP |
| President/Vice-President | Elizabeth Gray | REP |
| President/Vice-President | Jeb Bush | REP |
| President/Vice-President | John R. Kasich | REP |
| President/Vice-President | Lindsey Graham | REP |
| President/Vice-President | Marco Rubio | REP |
| President/Vice-President | Mike Huckabee | REP |
| President/Vice-President | Rand Paul | REP |
| President/Vice-President | Rick Santorum | REP |
| President/Vice-President | Ted Cruz | REP |
Congressional Filings
Of the 36 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats currently hold 11 seats and Republicans hold 25 seats. According to filing information on the Texas Secretary of State website, Democratic candidates filed in 28 of the 36 Congressional seats. No Democrat filed for congressional district 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 19, 32, or 36, however, it is my understanding Democrats had intended to file in districts 4 and 5 -- filing information for 4 and 5 may not have yet been posted on the SOS website.
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
GOP Debate Full Of Fear Mongering
The fifth GOP debate seemed even more chaotic and irrational than any prior GOP debate, with more yelling, bickering, and illogical talking points. Was it just me, or did others find it difficult to watch?
Nine candidates for the Republican nomination faced off in Las Vegas Tuesday night for the prime time debate on CNN, moderated by Wolf Blitzer, CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash, and Salem Radio Network talk show host Hugh Hewitt.
Twitter's Government and Elections team tracked which 2016 presidential candidates gained the most Twitter followers during the debate. As with every prior Republican debate, the candidate who gained the most twitter followers wasn't a Republican, it was Bernie Sanders who gaining more Twitter followers Tuesday night. After Sanders, Donald Trump's twitter following increased the most, trailed by Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, according to Twitter. Poor Hillary Clinton, left out of all the action.
So many people followed Sanders on Twitter, one might argue the event intended to promote Republican Party issue positions was actually driving voters away from the GOP and to Sanders. As for prior GOP debates, Sanders live-tweeted his dissenting opinions to each Republican candidate's talking points throughout the event. Sanders tweeting his progressive policy positions in contrast to Republican talking points drew people to his twitter feed. As the Republican front-runner, Trump also gained more Twitter followers than did his opponents on stage, but Sanders was the top dog on social media on Tuesday. When someone outperforms Trump on Twitter, it's an important clue on the mood of voters - particularly younger voters.
The Republican candidates running for the White House spent much of Tuesday's CNN debate talking about ISIS and Islamic terrorism. (I won't identify them as presidential candidates, because they were anything but presidential in their debate.)
Other threats, including gun violence, climate change and domestic terror carried out by white extremists -- all of which kill more Americans at home than jihadists -- were ignored by both the moderators and candidates. If the Republican (and mainstream news media) strategy is to terrorize American voters about Islamic extremist terrorists and immigrants in general, Tuesday's debate was proof it's working. Americans see terrorism as the top issue facing the U.S.
Nine candidates for the Republican nomination faced off in Las Vegas Tuesday night for the prime time debate on CNN, moderated by Wolf Blitzer, CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash, and Salem Radio Network talk show host Hugh Hewitt.
Twitter's Government and Elections team tracked which 2016 presidential candidates gained the most Twitter followers during the debate. As with every prior Republican debate, the candidate who gained the most twitter followers wasn't a Republican, it was Bernie Sanders who gaining more Twitter followers Tuesday night. After Sanders, Donald Trump's twitter following increased the most, trailed by Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, according to Twitter. Poor Hillary Clinton, left out of all the action.
So many people followed Sanders on Twitter, one might argue the event intended to promote Republican Party issue positions was actually driving voters away from the GOP and to Sanders. As for prior GOP debates, Sanders live-tweeted his dissenting opinions to each Republican candidate's talking points throughout the event. Sanders tweeting his progressive policy positions in contrast to Republican talking points drew people to his twitter feed. As the Republican front-runner, Trump also gained more Twitter followers than did his opponents on stage, but Sanders was the top dog on social media on Tuesday. When someone outperforms Trump on Twitter, it's an important clue on the mood of voters - particularly younger voters.
The Republican candidates running for the White House spent much of Tuesday's CNN debate talking about ISIS and Islamic terrorism. (I won't identify them as presidential candidates, because they were anything but presidential in their debate.)
Other threats, including gun violence, climate change and domestic terror carried out by white extremists -- all of which kill more Americans at home than jihadists -- were ignored by both the moderators and candidates. If the Republican (and mainstream news media) strategy is to terrorize American voters about Islamic extremist terrorists and immigrants in general, Tuesday's debate was proof it's working. Americans see terrorism as the top issue facing the U.S.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
BlogTalkUSA: Eyes Wide Open / DemBlogTalk - 12/08/2015
Mike Collier, the 2014 Democratic candidate for Texas State Comptroller, joined co-hosts Michael Handley and Rheana Nevitt Piegols to talk about Texas' state budget and economy on Tuesday, December 8th @8:30pm cst.
The Texas miracle, long touted by Texas Republicans, is predicated on high oil prices, not low taxes. For years, Texas Republicans bragged low taxes and no regulation kept employment high and the state economy strong, while the rest of the country recovered from the 2008 housing bubble crash.
But it was Texas' deep pockets of crude oil selling at over $100 per barrel and high natural gas prices that was the "miracle" of Texas' economy.
Over the last week, the market price for West Texas Intermediate crude oil traded down steeply to the mid $30's per barrel, the lowest levels in more than six years.
Oil is under pressure amid speculation the record global oil glut will be prolonged after OPEC effectively abandoned its longtime strategy of limiting output to control prices at an early December meeting.
West Texas crude was trading over $100 per barrel in mid-2014.
Falling oil and gas prices already prompted Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar earlier this year to reduce his state revenue estimate, but more bad state budget news may be coming. Oil prices may go lower, yet.
Looking beyond Republican talking points, the Texas miracle already is more of a mirage. Texas did have 41 percent of all U.S. job growth from 2000 to 2013. But the state also has the 10th highest rate of low-wage jobs in the country. More than 31 percent of Texas jobs pay less than $24,000 per year — a wage that keeps families in poverty. That’s why Texas has cronic poverty and economic inequality. Texas ranks among the top 10 states for income inequality in the nation. Between 2000 and 2012, the number of people living in poverty jumped by 82 percent in Austin, 64 percent in Dallas, 46 percent in Houston and 36 percent in San Antonio.
Texas Republicans have kept taxes low by racking up debt over the last 12 years. Once you add in all the debt Texas keeps off the books, the state ranks third in the country among the states in outstanding debt at a level approaching $350 billion. For the last decade, the pension debt problem has been metastasizing out of view — off of state balance sheets and obscured by official figures that misrepresent the depth of the hole. The state’s pension debt in 2013 was approximately $244.1 billion, according to a by State Budget Solutions report. Add in $55.4 billion for retiree health care and $41.3 billion in bonds and other official debt.
Among the topics we'll talk about with Mike Collier beginning at 9:00pm is Texas State Auditor John Keel’s sudden resignation. His resignation will take effect just before the state’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report is issued. His departure may seem inconsequential, but it is worth taking notice of what might be behind his usually timed resignation, mid-audit.
If the auditor of a major corporation were to resign abruptly mid-audit, the story would make headlines. Shareholders would want to know urgently whether the resignation had anything to do with bad accounting, fraud, or corruption inside the company.
But first up David Sanchez from the Sen. Bernie Sanders' Texas presidential campaign joins us for our weekly #feelthebern update.
The Texas miracle, long touted by Texas Republicans, is predicated on high oil prices, not low taxes. For years, Texas Republicans bragged low taxes and no regulation kept employment high and the state economy strong, while the rest of the country recovered from the 2008 housing bubble crash.
But it was Texas' deep pockets of crude oil selling at over $100 per barrel and high natural gas prices that was the "miracle" of Texas' economy.
Over the last week, the market price for West Texas Intermediate crude oil traded down steeply to the mid $30's per barrel, the lowest levels in more than six years.
Oil is under pressure amid speculation the record global oil glut will be prolonged after OPEC effectively abandoned its longtime strategy of limiting output to control prices at an early December meeting.
West Texas crude was trading over $100 per barrel in mid-2014.
Falling oil and gas prices already prompted Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar earlier this year to reduce his state revenue estimate, but more bad state budget news may be coming. Oil prices may go lower, yet.
Looking beyond Republican talking points, the Texas miracle already is more of a mirage. Texas did have 41 percent of all U.S. job growth from 2000 to 2013. But the state also has the 10th highest rate of low-wage jobs in the country. More than 31 percent of Texas jobs pay less than $24,000 per year — a wage that keeps families in poverty. That’s why Texas has cronic poverty and economic inequality. Texas ranks among the top 10 states for income inequality in the nation. Between 2000 and 2012, the number of people living in poverty jumped by 82 percent in Austin, 64 percent in Dallas, 46 percent in Houston and 36 percent in San Antonio.
Texas Republicans have kept taxes low by racking up debt over the last 12 years. Once you add in all the debt Texas keeps off the books, the state ranks third in the country among the states in outstanding debt at a level approaching $350 billion. For the last decade, the pension debt problem has been metastasizing out of view — off of state balance sheets and obscured by official figures that misrepresent the depth of the hole. The state’s pension debt in 2013 was approximately $244.1 billion, according to a by State Budget Solutions report. Add in $55.4 billion for retiree health care and $41.3 billion in bonds and other official debt.
Among the topics we'll talk about with Mike Collier beginning at 9:00pm is Texas State Auditor John Keel’s sudden resignation. His resignation will take effect just before the state’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report is issued. His departure may seem inconsequential, but it is worth taking notice of what might be behind his usually timed resignation, mid-audit.
If the auditor of a major corporation were to resign abruptly mid-audit, the story would make headlines. Shareholders would want to know urgently whether the resignation had anything to do with bad accounting, fraud, or corruption inside the company.
But first up David Sanchez from the Sen. Bernie Sanders' Texas presidential campaign joins us for our weekly #feelthebern update.
Republicans’ Coup de Grace On Voting Rights?
Last week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case called Evenwel v. Abbott. The case involves an issue of increasing importance to American politics: Congressional Redistricting. Hear the oral argument recording @ DemBlogNews: SCOTUS May Change How Congress Represents America
» The Voting News
» The Voting News
It got to the Supreme Court because conservative litigators with a successful track record of fighting against the right to vote are trying to turn the logic of pro-voter rights decisions on their head. And it’s very possible that they may succeed again.
This most recent battle in the voting rights war involves two of the Warren Court’s most important decisions.
One of the tactics that state legislatures used to disenfranchise African-Americans before 1964 was to draw district lines (or refuse to revise them) in ways that left minority voters massively underrepresented.Perversely, the Evenwel v. Abbott lawsuit hopes to use these decisions to turn back the clock and dilute the representation of minority voters. The theory of the lawsuit is that Texas violated the Equal Protection Clause when it drew its district lines based on total population rather on the population of voters. The state, according to the theory, should only be able to conduct apportionment according to the number of eligible voters.
In Alabama in 1964, for example, some counties included 40 times more people than others. In Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims, the Supreme Court held that such schemes were illegal.
States were required to adhere to a “one person, one vote” standard when apportioning their legislatures. Combined with robust enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, these landmark cases helped to end Jim Crow disenfranchisement schemes.
If adopted, the theory presents an obvious practical problem. Total population is measured with reasonable reliability by the Census. Eligible voters are much harder to measure, not least because the numbers change every election. (What should be counted — presidential election years? Off years? State elections? Some combination?) The discretion the measure would leave to legislators leaves the process open to more of the kind of manipulation that Reynolds v. Sims tried to minimize. Plus, it just seems illogical for a state’s representation in Congress to be based on total population, but its districts drawn by eligible voters.
Which brings us to the even bigger problem with the theory: In most cases, the effect of the rule change would be to over represent white voters and under represent minority voters. As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick puts it, “if the plaintiffs win this appeal, power will shift markedly from urban voters to rural voters and to white and Republican districts over minority and Democratic ones.” To read the Equal Protection Clause to not merely permit but require the under representation of minority voters is, to say the least, perverse.
Full Article: Scott Lemieux - The Week: Republicans’ coup de grace on voting rights?.
Monday, December 14, 2015
Trump’s Hate Rhetoric Promotes Domestic Terrorism
A Las Vegas rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump turned ugly Monday night when multiple protesters interrupted Trump's speech.
According to reporters at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort and Casino event venue, the protesters appeared to be Black Lives Matter activists and gun control supporters.
As security guards remove a black man from the rally, someone in the audience yelled, “Light the motherfucker on fire!” MSNBC's Benjy Sarlin tweeted:
'Things shouted as Black Lives Matter protester dragged away at Trump rally:Of twenty-eight recent deadly attacks by homegrown US citizen terrorists, twenty of them were carried by right-wing extremists, including the mass shooting that killed nine at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"Kick his ass!"
"Shoot him!"
"Bitch!"
"Sieg Heil!"'
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