It has been an interesting five days since the 2016 election. Taking another swing at this blog after another extended absence. Thoughts and views haven’t changed much so a lot of the older content is still accurate, the only difference being the current roster of miscreants and demagogues have changed to match a world two years on. Here’s to seeing what happens next.
Tag: political
I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating
It’s a cheap shot today and return after a long absence.
The Primaries are going on today in Virginia. So far it looks like a par for course run; the races that are close are going to be driven by the grassroots support that is drummed up during these off-season primaries while strong incumbents and those who are historied within the wall of their respective parties will clinch their nominations with little difficulty. That doesn’t bother me. Shenanigans bother me, and I’ve been listening to them for months.
The purpose of the Republican Primary was to ensure that there was ‘purity’ in the selection of the candidates that were chosen last month. There was the need for this to be ‘honest’ and ‘clear of meddling’. Rush Limbaugh refers to these yet to materialize, and oft worried about, efforts at tampering ‘Operation Chaos’. The gist is simple: open primaries mean that Democrats can roll in to the polling station and supposedly pick the weaker of two candidates, effectively setting up their “strong” candidate with an easy win. If the yarn sounds familiar, it was kicked around in 2008 when McCain was winning much to the chagrin of the Republican party. It was rolled out again in 2012 when Mitt Romney was facing supposedly impossible odds against the titanic political powers of Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, and (seriously?) Rick Santorum.
Therein lies the problem. Since the end of the Primary, and the wretched result that has me wincing each morning I have to listen to John Fredericks talk about the latest train wreck of a video someone has dug up on the Virginia Lieutenant Governor nominee E.W. Jackson, the discussion has shifted from the need for purity in the selection process to encouraging our team to go out and vote during the open primaries for the other side. Granted, there are primaries today for Republican candidates, and to those I say go nuts, have a ball. For the Democratic candidates and races I wonder where the wagging tail ends and the dog begins.
Now, I enjoy Mr. Fredericks’ show, and have so since I discovered it on a drive to work one morning last year, but I take pause with his notion that voting in the Democrats open primary is perfectly acceptable after our party went to such great lengths to prevent such actions. It is, of course, his choice, and he chose to exercise that, and in no way am I saying it’s bad. I’ve met Senator Northam, at the end of election night where I was working for the team that was trying to take his seat, and found him most agreeable, articulate, and, to borrow common vernacular, very real. As Fredericks said, and so I shall reiterate, what you see from Northam is what you get. No, I have no problem with his selection, but I’m saying the action of voting for a democrat after you’ve selected your Republican candidate feels…awkward. It invites analysis by others, and recognition of the inherit weakness of the primary system; any Tom, Dick, or Harry can roll into a polling station and vote for a rep from their state or district.
After the utter, pardon the following, shitcan mess that was the Republican primary in May, why on earth would we advertise, nay, encourage our huddled masses, who were terrified of the bogeyman of cross-platform voters, to go out and do the very thing we decried as fouling the process? It is hypocritical to demand a pure representation of a party, then to encourage our team to go out and muddy the waters for the other side. There is no honor in it.
Stars out of the eyes, I understand that, mathematically, the Republican turnout for a Democratic primary is going to be low (maybe 0.25-0.5% of the Republican voting block, so 0.10-0.35% of the overall voting block for the district), but the notion is noxious to me. If we are going to claim moral high ground it means constant diligence. Moral strength comes from the ability to act consistently, and in the political world consistency, if measured in gold, would be worth the national debt and a few dollars more. Lastly, if Mr. Fredericks is going to champion the notion of selecting a candidate based on his authenticity and amicable nature in working across the aisle, maybe closing a post out by talking about the unique opportunity to take Senator Northam’s seat in a special election should probably be saved for another day. Especially when you are reminding folks that Northam’s vote, if taken, would tip the balance to 21-19 in favor of the Republicans who, at the moment have a very, very weak candidate running for the coveted tie-breaker known as, you guessed it, the Lt. Governor of Virginia. I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you, Mr. Fredericks, to cover yourself; your machinations are showing.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
A curious note was passed my way regarding a recent court decision to prohibit the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors from holding a pre-meeting prayer that included the name Jesus. Couple that with the knee-jerk reaction from some state representatives in North Carolina who submitted a resolution to establish a state religion, and it’s another spin on the ‘religious freedom’ movement.
Going back to Virgina first, The article regarding the court decision can be found here and the ACLU has it’s own take here. In short, the County Board of Supervisors had deviated from the religious neutral prayer that most government organizations insist upon at the beginning of meetings for a clearly identifiable Christian one. This raised the hackles of one Mrs. Barbara Hudson, and she informed the Board that what they were doing was unconstitutional…which it is. The board more or less told her to shove off, and, true to form, the ACLU became involved. Mediation failed, and ‘lo the Judiciary is brought in to lay the smack down.
A similar incident occurred in North Carolina, in the district the that is represented by the state congressman that presented the resolution. The judicial response to the prayer is what inspired these two representatives, one of which wears the tea party badge with honor, to file this amazingly unconstitutional piece of legislation.
The ground level I’m getting to is this: They were informed that it was unconstitutional, and when informed of such they didn’t bother to research their position nor did they take it under consideration. They blew the challenge off for self-indignant or self-righteous reasons, failed to come to a compromise in court mandated mediation (a simple acquiescence would have sufficed), and in the end cost the taxpayers significant time and energy better spent addressing the issues of their respective county as well as the thousands, if not millions, of dollars in legal fees that will be assessed after the dust has finally settled.
The need, not desire but flat-out need, to invoke God at public government events also makes me wonder, as I have many times before, about the personal relationship with God that the believers are suppose to have, but seem very eager to show off in public. My understanding was that it was a deeply personal, one-on-one kind of relationship. One that cannot be impressed upon by the government, and, through that same clause, cannot be impressed upon others.
The comments on other articles claiming this is another attack on religious freedom by the Judiciary, the resolution goes on to itemize how these decisions are just that, but here’s the thing; the government, any government beholden to the Constitution of the United States America, cannot endorse any religion. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution overrides state Constitutions and local legislatures. Its not an attack on religion when those affected are asking that the rules that apply to the situation be enforced accordingly. Somewhere along the line those who are pushing for “religious freedom” forgot what it was about.
The Representatives from North Carolina, short on civics lessons or long on sleeping in class, fail to realize that the federal government does have a say in what the states do. The power of the states lies in their people and the states capacity to represent themselves at the federal level. They rage about judicial oversight with regards to these, and many other social matters (and religion is a social matter), but fail to recall that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are to balance each other. Should the legislative, or we’ll say the most representative body of the electorate, get a wild hair up it’s ass, it is up to the Judiciary (since the executive cannot directly interfere on state affairs) to apply the law as it is interpreted.
Does that mean that the “majority” might get a black eye supporting specific causes, yes. I’d point to school integration, inter-racial marriage, interstate commerce, property rights, voting rights, freedom of speech, and several thousand other decisions made by the Judicial branch that have in some respects hindered the majority from being a collective dick to a select group of people, but also protecting the body politic from those in both the state and federal realms from doing long-lasting harm.
There isn’t a gun being held to their heads saying that they must worship Allah, Amaterasu, or Cthulhu because there are explicit protections prohibiting the government from enforcing a state religion. That protection, however, does not guarantee that a specific religion will remain in the majority over the existence of a nation, or that the majority religion receives any special privileges or protections because it has the most, or most influential, followers. It appears that those that normally decry religious freedom forget that the government is designed to protect not only those practicing a religion from government interference, but also to protect those of us who don’t share their beliefs from being steamrolled by the them.
The ever growing elephant in the room
What is $474.15 Billion dollars?
The fiscal cliff looms in the distance like a funnel cloud on the hard-packed plains of Texas. The key difference is we can avoid that wicked looking mess coming our way. Functionally, this is a historic opportunity, wrapped in gilt and handed to the parties with the same bows and trappings of the holiday preceding the impending fluster cluck that is about to go down. That gift; a moment to finally stop bullshitting and come together to get this nation on a path to a balanced budget, an aim at reducing the national debt, and reigning in the last decade and change of madcap spending that has gone on.
Those hoping for this know better. The only thing we, the American public, will get out of this deal is coal in our stockings which will be summarily taken away because it is neither green nor ours to use as an energy resource.
The New York Times has a fantastic Infographic available to the public where you can see firsthand what grew, what shrank, and what is owed to who and where. I will be frank, if the President or Congress is serious about cutting the deficit and balancing the budget then all the programs they swore to protect must share in some of the bloodletting.
Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly one-third of the budget by itself. Toss Social Security into the mix and over half the budget is consumed by these two programs alone. Defense spending. It rings in, for the first time, lower than the cost of Social Security, and is quickly being outpaced by the interest on the national debt.
This brings me to my beginning question; what is $474.15 billion dollars? That number is what is owed in interest on the national debt.
It is staggering to look at, and, mind you, that is the interest. Not some credit card minimum where part of what you pay hits the principle and we will ever so slowly knock it down. Nay good reader, this is pure interest without a dime set to the principle. I’ll be honest, that would be the first number I would be set to tackle for that number will be what kills us.
If the President’s moratorium on discretionary spending (which would freeze the large majority of defense spending but leave social security and Medicare/Medicaid alone) goes through then we’ve only slowed the train down, but it will chug along. Mayhaps you can knock out some of that principle. Hold back the rising tides, but the moratorium cannot last forever, and if it is not adapted to, the glut of costs that will come cascading down and crush any gains made.
So, while our elected officials piddle away the hours playing games of imaginary chicken and peek-a-boo with the press, handing out reports of “nothing to see here” we are getting buried. The interest grows, and will eclipse the costs of social security and Medicare/Medicaid if left untouched, all the while pledges are being made to not raise taxes on anyone and no programs will be cut. Looking at the reality on paper/webpage and listening to the news brings two conclusions to mind. Either those in power want this world to burn for the sake of petty feuds and broken ideologies, or they are, much to our chagrin, monumentally clueless as to what they have brought down upon all of us. It will come to a day when that cost, just to cover the interest being made on the debt, will choke us out, and we will be forced to cut to maintain or default. Best to do them now, with flexibility and foresight on our side than a later time when we must cut because there is no other option. When a monthly social security check is short $21 a month for living expenses versus hundreds of dollars short because there isn’t any money left to paid those who are owed. Petty promises and pledges won’t mean a damn thing then, and, to be frank, shouldn’t mean a damn thing now.
Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?
I thought the quote from the Avengers was appropriate here.
Two sides in Wisconsin, genuinely believing they are working for the greater good but coming from wildly different directions, engaged in a full scale brouhaha to make their point known. I’m still not certain as to who would wear the tights, but I call dibs on the Iron Man suit.
Fashion jokes aside, the fight was largely pointless, and the essence of american voters, played by Captain America in this little production, stopped the fight between two petulant powerhouses. In the end vox populi spoke loud and clear, and Gov. Walker remains in place for two more years, but has lost his majority in the State Senate.
The day-after recovery is over, the analysis is done, and we found out that 38% of voters who supported Walker came from homes that have at least one member in a union. We found out that while roughly $75 million was spent on this campaign, walker trudging up $30 million of that on his own through Super PAC donors, the real story remains that the turnout, percentage-wise, was almost identical to the election two years prior, even with a higher voter turnout.
I’m tired of the Citizens United decision being touted as the evil grandaddy and reason everyone is winning. I call BS. You can throw millions at a campaign and if the message sucks, or the candidate is less than stellar, looking at you Gingrich and Santorum, you will accomplish next to nothing except transferring wealth from donors to local businesses.
The issue with the Walker recall was that he did exactly what he said he was going to do. The politically connected unions and loyal opposition were taken aback when an elected official decides to follow through on campaign promises. Were those promises heavy handed? Some can argue as much, but these are desperate times, and the voters selected desperate measures, and thus they were delivered after much bally who and childish shenanigans by the State Senators unhappy with the legislation.
So, in response to a governor who did what he swore he would do, despite some of the blatantly childish political behavior I have seen in my life, and the result was a nationally supported recall. I don’t mean that the entire nation supported the recall, but that interests well outside the borders of Wisconsin became involved. It was no longer about just about a losing side’s dissatisfaction with being thrown out of office and then having to suffer the political fallout that comes from failing to represent the people rather than representing the interests that fill the campaign coffers.
Sanity reigns in the Old Dominion but it isn’t stopping the show
On Friday a highly anticipated decision regarding the appearance of Primary candidates who couldn’t muster enough support to be placed on the Virginia ballot came down, and it was an absolute delight. The Hon. John A Gibney Jr. echoed what many had said over the weeks leading up to this (copy of the decision provided care of Politico): “In essence, they played the game, lost and then complained that the rules were unfair.”
I saw former Speaker of the House New Gingrich as being the sole individual who might even have a modicum of a chance in the challenge, with the disparate rules regarding those who get over 10,000 signatures and those who get over 15,000 signatures. So, when he didn’t file the suit, and it was Rick “I barely pulled off half of what was required” Perry, it was doomed to fail. When Santorum and Huntsman jumped on board, it was an obvious grab, like those who aren’t directly affected by a particular event, but jump onto a civil lawsuit pocket some ill-gotten reward, the theatre of the situation only worsened. The most galling of notes, aside from the Huntsman/Santorm scam attempt, was that Gingrich did not file notice of intent to run for office in Virginia until 22 December 2011. For those unaware, signature collection began on 1 July 2011.
The argument that if the candidates had access to the horde of out-of-state petition gatherers (of the paid variety I imagine) that they would have easily trumped the 10,000 signature requirement is dubious at best. Judge Gibney pointed out in his decision that there are over five million registered voters in Virginia, and close to two million participated in the last statewide election. Cut down the middle that means that there were one million active voters that should have been available to had their doors knocked and said yes or no. If all candidates had hit those doors, and assuming a one in ten chance of success, that still leaves roughly 100,000 voter signatures, more than enough for all of the candidates combined, and room for a few more. Another point of disclosure, a registered voter can sign for more than one candidate.
I will give a local example to ply exactly how poorly these men failed: Ben Loyola, a local businessman, ran for State Senate last year. During his campaign he is said to have knocked on over 50,000 doors personally. After the campaign events were done for the night, barring it wasn’t too late, he along with his campaign manager and body man would head out to a section of the district he was running for and started on a block, and away he would go. Sometimes only 20 houses in a night, sometimes north of 100. Either way, he was on the ground personally. Come election day Mr. Loyola, sadly, did not win, but pulled in over 10,000 votes. Those in the game have said the door to actual vote ration is somewhere in the 10:1 range. If a local businessman can walk from the Hampton Roads area to the border of Maryland looking for support on what would be even less than a shoe-string budget compared to a national campaign, then all of these individuals running for President could have gotten the word out, or, at the least, made a damn appearance in the state. A Gingrich event at a park, cordinated with one of the Tea Party organizations would have brought hundred, mayhaps a few thousand.
What happened in earnest, is that the candidate didn’t put their foot forward, and in the case of Santorum and Huntsman, they flatly didn’t give a damn (Santorum did gather signatures, but since he never filed a notice to run in the state of Virginia, the signatures were turned away). Those in Virginia now roaring to the Heavens about the intolerable nature of it all, and the vile laws that govern the way it goes have forgotten that their signature and their options on the ballot are driven not only by their keen interest in a candidate, but in the candidate’s campaign to do the bare minimum. Santorum is a perfect example with the thousands spent in Virginia to gather the roughly 8,000 signatures, then to have them turned away because he didn’t fill out the needed paperwork. He, himself, and his campaign managers, national and Virginia, are bearers of blame there.
Virginia is not some evil society of string-pulling puppeteers winnowing the field of choices down to the guy they kinda-don’t-like and the one that is getting run over because he sounds crazy saying in public what we’ve been chatting about over kitchen tables for the last twenty years. The law is in place, followed for decades, and performed as intended. Should someone fail to follow the letter of the law, there is a punishment that goes along with that. Those who cannot even follow that simple dictum have no place running for the highest office in the land. If they can’t figure out one state’s requirements for a simple primary petition, how can we have any faith that they will be able to grasp the issue then provide educated insight and leadership on topics far, far more complex?
Ron Paul is a terrifying, horrible, evil man…until we need him, even then he’s still terrifying
It was rather surreal to find out that after the solid ribbing that Rep. Paul (R-TX) received in the last Presidential election from the likes of the Republican National Committee and other conservative groups that his clout with them would have dropped into the abyss of political obscurity. Somehow, logic apparently got it very, very wrong:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/20/conservatives.meeting/index.html?section=cnn_latest
If someone had asked in 2008 if Paul would have been the forerunner for the Republican party’s return to power, most of us would have scoffed at the notion that a representative with such radical views (albeit somewhat appealing) on economics, spending, and general reduction in the size of the federal government would even be considered. Especially after The drumming the Republican party took in 2008, the odd duck out, who placed consistently in the top three candidates during the primaries, is now the forerunner for those tired, those mildly poor, and those with enough time on their hands to go out and protest government spending. To be fair to those Tea Party members, I concur with them on issues like a reduction in government spending, in looking at the policies that led to a surplus in the late 1990’s into the early 2000’s. I would love to see the government file legislation that is in tune with the Constitution and have serious debates about the quality rather than quantity of legislative documents that roll out of the halls of congress. On those subjects we agree, and I’d be fine with Rep. Paul in those regards.
However, Rep. Paul is a staunch isolationist, and, to be frank, in this day and age, that won’t fly. Hell, it hasn’t flown since 1945. The United States, for better or worse, is the current superpower of the world. Political Scientists accept this notion, and it is the basis for an understanding of how the gears spin in international circles. One of the definitions of a superpower is that in events that occur half way around the world, we are directly or, most of the time, indirectly impacted by those results. It is the price that comes with our prolific and immense economic and political base. Isolationism will do jack-all for us. He has called for leaving both the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to better protect state sovereignty in a day and age where state sovereignty is a paper tiger hiding monstrosities like genocide in Sudan. Do we need to give up our rights to acquiesce to an international body, no. Will either of these organizations ever ask us to give up something that we hold dear to our Republic, hell no. The United States pays for 22 percent of the UN’s annual budget, ringing in at $458.3 million in 2008. I, like many others and quite a few fans of Rep. Paul, am not a tremendous fan of the UN. The process is lumbering, slow, painfully convoluted, and rife with the potential for corruption. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I was talking about the House or Representatives or Senate at length, but I digress. In their massive approach, and nearly universal representation, they gain a legitimacy that is, largely, unquestionable. Laws that passed by the US government are not ignored out of pure spite or conjecture, and if they are, there are penalties. The same goes for the UN. Follow their rules, or sanctions will fall.
We jest of strongly worded letters from Ban Ki-Moon to Sudan, Iran, or Myanmar, but in all due honesty, the men and women of the UN are doing what they can with what they have. Same goes for NATO. Isolationism doesn’t work because of the interconnected nature of the world today. Without some sort of standardized international community in which to address issues, the big will continuously screw over the small, the violent will oppress those who have fewer firearms, and the world would be, generally, a giant mess…moreso than it is now.
It is noted that the international issue is not the only place where Rep. Paul and I differ, however, it is painfully obvious that my Libertarian beliefs will be challenged at great lengths should he continue to gain popularity amongst the Tea Party goers.
In closing, it is particularly odd to me that the Libertarians, and by proxy the constitutionalists and median Republicans, were for the longest time shoved aside. The message is similar, there are hooks that keep us from joining the party en mass. They’re not doing any better at bringing us in. Rather, the ‘big tent’ philosophy that ‘failed’ the Republican Party in 2008 was a sham at best. You were in the big tent if you agreed with the big tent. Right now, the big tent includes populist ideas amongst those who think Obama isn’t an American citizen, those who think he is Islamic and trying to torpedo this nation, and those who vow that obstructionism and a grinding halt to any legislative progress is considered advancement, not of the people of this nation, but of a political agenda. It is not a party of ideas, of new notions, or suggestions and creativity, but of chalk-white, stark terror. Fear seems key, and for a short time, fear works. Men and women can only be afraid for so long, then, when the other contemptible shoe never falls, the fear abates, the anger boils out, and you are left with a political body that, instead of having a legislative history to stand on, has a thin layer of ideas held up by a bilious gas. Ladies and gentlemen of the right. Welcome to the first political bubble of the 21st century. I can’t wait to see this one burst.
Fear and Loathing in Massachusetts
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/17/brown-takes-lead-campaign_n_426679.html
The legions of the two political parties have descended upon Massachusetts like a murder of crows, all cawing and braying in the name of their select candidate. I hope the lessons of NY-23 are fresh in their minds. Granted, the Republicans and Conservatives are not serving up two different candidates to split the vote, but I still worry. A campaign that has, for months, worked diligently, and slowly clawed its way from fifteen points down to a five point lead should remain wary of any outside influence.
Don’t get me wrong. I am certain the candidates appreciate the long overdue money and attention. The influx of support is a relief for tired phone bank operators and station workers who stump for their candidate endlessly. However, the fear, my fear, is that the big guns will roll in, and those that are the national darlings of the Republican party will take center stage versus the real candidate. I don’t care for Sarah Palin standing up, and giving a long-winded speech about the national trend of attacks on conservatism, and the impact this election will have on the national forum. Candidate Brown must be center stage, telling his constituents what he is going to do for them when he gets to DC. Nationalism will have its fair share of his time when he gets to DC…should he get to DC.
I apologize, my bias is showing.
My concern is national. I want Massachusetts to pick the representative that they feel reflects the needs and values of their state and IS GOING TO REPRESENT THEM ON A NATIONAL PLATFORM. Not another glad-handing yes man or woman, that will roll over and offer up the nation on a plate with a harried and rushed vote on a topic that, I feel, has not had so much a serious discussion, but serious plotting. I look forward to tomorrow, and what it brings. Regardless of the result, the dance on the national level is frenzied and a bit worrisome. I have found it quite disconcerting that the future of this tremendous bill lies on the shoulders of one election. The notion that steps are being taken to hasten the bill and not allow the elected representative of the people to vote on it is bothersome to say the least. That the strength of the bill is not measured by a simple majority, or even by consensus of the members of congress, but by a matter of procedure. parliamentary procedure is being used to circumvent discussion, debate, and, something I have never been fond of, filibustering. The fact that now that parliamentary procedure may fail the majority, they are seeking out other tactics upon which to pass this legislation in a harried attempt to prove some value to their constituents before they are to return home and ask to return to DC to represent us for another two, four, or six years. One could almost say the fear is palatable, and when their fear is tied to such a monumental piece of legislation, one cannot help but be just a little frightened by proxy.
J.P.
Another voice in the dirge
Salutations to all those who find this wee corner of the political market we call the blogosphere. I have, for several months now, tried to post commentary on sites such as Huffington Post and Politico with little response, or some very colorful questions being raised about my mother and the nature of her work. I will clear the air now and say that I am one of those oft reviled Republicans. Notes should be made that I will not call myself a conservative. Conservatism, as far as I am concerned, is a movement that seeks to divide the Republican party along lines that, if followed, will alter the structure of the party, and the political landscape. I’m not out to hold a religious sword of damocles over anyone’s head, to judge them and harangue them due to shortcomings that a book, a preacher, or my parents saw as counter-agent to their specific cultures. Nope, not coming from me.
I’m old school Republican. Jeffersonian Republican. Small central government, minimal interference in business dealings but the capacity to act and make sure that a fair market practice is obtainable in a fair market. Legislation dictating how we think, believe, or who listens to our phone conversations are generated out of fear for fear’s sake, not for the great good of the masses. So, here is where I’m going to stand. I’m not going to make a lot of Republican friends here, and I believe that a central government is necessary to the functional dealings with a massive number of people, so I am almost certain Libertarians will find me wanting. Here I stand, here I will write, and here I will remain. None-the-less, I look forward to posting thoughts and news articles that I find of interest, as well as some of my own. I welcome debate and discourse. You can disagree, but do bring facts and information.
Old Jeffersonian 