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.
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
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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