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.

BlogTalkUSA: Eyes Wide Open / DemBlogTalk - 12/08/2015

Listen or download - MP3

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?.

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:

"Kick his ass!"
"Shoot him!"
"Bitch!"
"Sieg Heil!"'

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.

World Leaders Make Landmark Deal to Fight Climate Change

Leaders from more than 190 countries around the world forged an unprecedented agreement to begin to fight climate change driven by global warming. The "Paris Agreement" includes commitments to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from individual countries and promises by wealthier nations to help poorer nations adapt to the damaging effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels.

The agreement sets a long-term goal of keeping the increase in the global temperature to "well below" 2°C degrees (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels and calls on countries to "pursue efforts" to limit the increase to 1.5°C. It adds that "parties aim to reach a global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible."

While the agreement marks a declaration of worldwide war on climate change, it leaves some key decisions on how to fight the war to the future. Those detail decisions are to made to achieve specified goals over the next 10 to 15 years. The agreement also establishes an unprecedented international legal basis for addressing climate issues. Within the agreement, nearly every country on Earth laid out its own plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change impacts. Although those individual plans are not legally binding, the core agreement itself is.

Less optimistic is the reality that the emissions-reduction pledges agreed to by participating countries only limit global warming to roughly 2.7°C (4.9°F), leaving substantial questions on how to fight the global war war on climate change. Michael Mann, director of Penn State University's Earth System Science Center, emphasizes the agreement is just "the beginning of a process. These global commitments "get us roughly half way" to where the world needs to be, Mann reportedly told HuffPost in an email."

Further, current research suggests that forces already set in motion — the melting of glaciers, the release of carbon dioxide from thawing permafrost — could unleash considerable impacts that this agreement is unable to prevent, even if full implemented.

In addition to the carbon cutting of this agreement, quite a lot of carbon capture by human-made devices and human-planted forests may be required. The most important thing to come out of the conference is an agreement to improve on these commitments substantially in the years ahead. (carbon capture video)

SCOTUS May Change How Congress Represents America

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case that could cascade far-reaching changes in the way every election district in Texas — and every state in the nation — are drawn.

The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, challenges Texas’ current method for drawing the lines apportioning state Senate districts. Texas, and every state in the union, draws election districts so they are roughly equal in population. Even those who can't vote — children, non-citizens, and felons — get equal representation.

The plaintiffs in Evenwel v. Abbott, Sue Evenwel of Mount Pleasant and Edward Pfenninger of Montgomery County north of Houston, claim equal apportionment based on total population count, including children under the voting age, and particularly non-citizen immigrants, rather than just eligible voters — only adult citizens who aren't felons — leads to “gross malapportionment” of the value of their votes.

Because there are a larger number of potential "eligible voters" in Pfenninger's district than there are in Evenwel's district, Pfenninger says his vote counts for less. The case turns on the fundamental question about the role of elected representatives, asking whether they serve on behalf of everyone in their district or only those eligible to cast ballots. The share of non-citizens in the U.S. has grown from 2 percent in 1970 to 7 percent in 2013, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington. The portion of American born individuals who are under 18 years of age, and thus are not eligible voters, was 23.1 percent in 2014.

The person actually behind this case is Edward Blum, who has probably done more than anyone who does not sit on the Supreme Court to dismantle America’s civil rights laws. The pair of Texas Tea Party conservatives — Sue Evenwel and Ed Pfenninger — who filed the legal challenge to the way Texas draws its election district maps are working closely with Blum.

Karen Jacobs For Texas House of Representatives On BlogTalkUSA

Karen Jacobs, candidate for Texas state House of Representatives, District 33, joined me on BlogTalkUSA Eyes Wide Open: Democratic Blog Talk, to tell us about Hillary Clinton's November campaign stop at Mountain View College in Dallas, Texas. We also discuss with Karen her decision to run for the Texas House of Representatives.

Karen's well spoken knowledge on a range of state, national and international issues shows why I urge all my friends to support and vote for Karen. Karen has been active with the Rockwall County community and Democratic Party candidates, working hard to get out the vote for state, local, and 5th District Court of Appeals candidates. Karen is committed to providing practical solutions to real problems confronting all Texans today.

Jacob Limon, Texas Director for Bernie Sanders' Presidential Campaign, also drops by to give us a Report, during the last half of the program!




Karen also spoke on Texas' Public Radio Network. Click this link to listen:

Jacobs visiting with Korean War veteran Hubert Howard and Vivian Joe

Texas Democrats Vote Ballot Referenda For March 1st Primary Ballot

At a meeting in Austin on Saturday, December 5th, the Texas Democratic Party's Executive Committee approved a set of 6 ballot referenda for the public to vote on during the March 1, 2016 Democratic Primary.

Texas Democrats ballot referenda address economic security and prosperity for all, fair criminal justice reform, climate change, restoring the Voting Rights Act, fixing our broken immigration system, and opposing campus carry. Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa issued the following statement:

“Texas Democrats are the champions of middle-class and working families across our great state. Our set of thoughtful ballot referenda prove that we believe in growing opportunity for all. I am proud that our state executive committee has put forth a set of solutions that deal with the everyday lives of Texas families.

"Democrats are focused on kitchen table issues and solutions that promote economic expansion and protect our families. Fighting for real opportunity for everyone, not just for the sons and daughters of the well-to-do, makes us the true pro-growth, pro-family, pro-worker, pro-business party.

“While Republicans are considering whether or not to put an un-American, unpatriotic Texas secession proposal on their ballot, Texas Democrats are having a substantive conversation about the solutions that are going to improve the daily lives of Texas families.

2016 Democratic Party Ballot Referenda:

Presidential Candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders At Georgetown University

November 19, 2015 – Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaking at Georgetown University to explain the term ‘democratic socialist.’ The talk, which took place in the university’s historic Gaston Hall, was sponsored by the university’s newly created Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service at the McCourt School of Public Policy. Sen. Sanders begins speaking at time index 11:00.
 
Sanders explained many reforms - like Social Security and banking regulations to safeguard American's savings accounts - instituted in the Roosevelt administration were called "socialistic" in some way or another. They have in fact, become the "fabric of our nation" and the "foundation of the middle class," he said. He focused on FDR's January 11, 1994, “Second Bill of Rights” speech in which Roosevelt said every person should have a right to a useful, adequately paid job, a decent home, adequate medical care, a decent education, adequate protections from the economic problems caused by old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.

Transcript of the "prepared" speech - without his numerous extemporaneous additions.

Democrats Offer Real Leadship Choices For President

Democrats offer America real leadership choices that have everything to do with temperament, personality, and a realistic view of America and the world. In stark contrast to the Republican held a few days earlier on Fox News, Democrats had another interesting, policy-oriented civil debate. Full video below the fold.