Cris Dush, ALEC & Sketchy Republican Math Exposed

Got Gerrymander? PA state legislator Cris Dush

Democrat Mike Revis' defeat of a Republican challenger in Tuesday's special election for Missouri's 97th district seat for the state legislature only adds to growing conservative anxiety over the increasing likelihood of significant gains for Democrats in this fall's 2018 midterm elections.

As Matt Ygliesias reported for Vox, Revis winning the seat by a 3-point margin in a district Trump won by 28 points isn't a good sign for the GOP.

Nowhere is Republican desperation any more visible than in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, where Republican state legislator Cris Dush has been thrust into the media spotlight lately after calling for the impeachment of five of Pennsylvania's seven state supreme court justices.

All five of those justices are Democrats, and all five recently ordered Pennsylvania's Republican-majority state legislature to redraw the state's congressional map because it's so unfairly biased against Democrats that it violates the state's constitution.

As journalist Tim Darragh reported in an article for The Morning Call on Thursday, "The groundbreaking Pennsylvania Supreme Court majority opinion declaring the state congressional map unconstitutionally partisan came down to six simple words in Article 1, Section 5: 'Elections Shall Be Free and Equal.'"

The 139-page ruling handed down by the court Wednesday night gave the Pennsylvania legislature until February 15th to redraw the state's congressional map in a manner that legislators and Democratic Governor Tom Wolf can agree on - or a special master appointed by the court will redraw it in advance of the 2018 midterm elections.

Now undermining the basic principles of democracy by actively suppressing and manipulating the access to vote for those who tend to vote Democratic has become part and parcel of the Republican playbook.

The Republican congressional map drawn in 2012
when 50.5% of votes were were cast for Democrats 

So predictably, Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers freaked out when the state supreme court told them their intentionally-rigged congressional map had to be redrawn.

So just how biased is the current Pennsylvania congressional map as drawn by Republicans?

It's arguably one of the most politically-biased in the country - one intended to keep a Republican minority in control of a numerical Democratic majority.

According to the latest data from the Pennsylvania Department of State, there are 4,030,174 registered Democrats and 3,221,975 registered Republicans - so amongst those registered to vote in Pennsylvania, Democrats outnumber Republicans by 808,199.

During the 2012 elections (when Obama won Pennsylvania), Democratic congressional candidates won 50.5% of all votes legally counted.

But back in 2011, Republicans redrew the congressional map of Pennsylvania's 18 congressional districts established after the 2010 U.S. Census - so because of that, Republicans won 72.22% of the congressional seats in 2012 even though they won 49.5% the total number of congressional votes.

Based on the numbers, that should've been more like a 50-50 split - so how does that math work?

As the majority of the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday, it doesn't.

Map showing the 68% of state legislatures currently
controlled by the Republican Party [Map NCSL]

Based on the state's population as determined by the U.S. Census, according to Wikipedia, there are currently 17 congressional representatives from Pennsylvania, 12 Republicans and 5 Democrats - one seat remains unfilled and is up for election, there should be 18.

How do Republican congressman outnumber democratic congressman by 12 - 5 when registered Democratic voters outnumber their Republican counterparts by over 800,000?

Cris Dush could probably tell you, but I doubt he would.

Especially in light of the fact that he's calling for sitting justices of the state supreme court to be impeached because they ruled that Pennsylvania Republican's rigged congressional map is illegal.

Republicans in general really don't want Americans knowing how it is that a party that is so out of touch with the mainstream controls both legislative branches of the federal government, the White House and, according to the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) a remarkable 68 percent of state legislative chambers across the U.S. (See map above).

Normally, a conservative state legislator like Cris Dush wouldn't exactly register as a familiar household name on America's national political radar.

But the way that he and other Republican members of the Pennsylvania state legislature are digging in their heels and trying to oppose the court order to redraw the congressional map is only drawing more media attention to the length to which Republicans will go to hold on to their majority in congress.

Journalist & voting rights advocate Ari Berman

A redrawn (fair) congressional map in Pennsylvania could obviously have serious implications in the 2018 midterm elections in November.

So the Keystone state has become a focal point for national media attention on Republican gerrymandering in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Or North Carolina, where the Supreme Court denied Republican efforts to disenfranchise black voters last May.

Journalist Ari Berman's article in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, "How The GOP Rigs Elections",
offers some intriguing insight into the Republican Party's rampant, overt and calculated interference with congressional districts, voting rolls and the use of legislative power to put up obstacles making it harder for people who tend to vote Democratic to cast votes.

In his article, Berman takes a particularly close look at the Republican's gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts in Wisconsin - the home state of House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Rather than reflect the inflated rhetoric extolling the ideals of freedom and democracy so often bandied about by Republicans like Ryan, the sketchy political rigging in Wisconsin reeks of the same kind of repressive authoritarianism Americans so often attribute to countries like North Korea, Russia and China.

During a politically-tumultuous year marked by a chaotic White House, when 33 different seats in the U.S. Senate and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for election on November 6th, the repercussions of the 2018 midterm elections could have a profound impact on American society and the Trump presidency.

Bill Murray escapes with Punxsutawney Phil in
a scene from the 1993 film Groundhog Day 

So it's understandable why Cris Dush has suddenly achieved national recognition.

The married Pine Creek Township resident represents the 98% white, solidly "red" Republican 66th district in rural western Pennsylvania which includes all of Jefferson County and parts of Indiana County.

Fans of the 1993 comedy Groundhog Day might be more familiar with Jefferson County as the home of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania where actor Bill Murray played a depressed weatherman trapped in a time loop.

Punxsutawney is the town where each year a groggy groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil is hoisted aloft to great fanfare to check if he sees his shadow to herald six more weeks of winter.

Now when I think of the film Groundhog Day, I think of two things: the song "The Pennsylvania Polka" and the horror of being stuck in a time loop living the same day over and over again.

In recent days, Cris Dush's actions have reminded me of both.

Remember back in 2016 when the Republican-majority of the radically right-wing conservative Kansas state legislature tried to pass Senate Bill 439?

Republican legislator Mitch Holmes authored the overreaching legislation that proposed authorizing the legislature to be able to impeach State Supreme Court justices after the court ruled that ruinous cuts to the Kansas public school budget violated the state's constitution.

Kansas Republican legislator Mitch Holmes 

That kind of unprecedented expansion of legislative power, using oversight authority over state supreme court justices meant to be used to impeach judges who commit "high crimes and misdemeanors" to block judges from ruling on legislation that violates state law reeks of the creepy fascination with authoritarianism that Republican politicians now seem to covet.

It also reeks of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the secretive organization funded by corporations and wealthy donors that drafts "model legislation" templates for state legislators and even members of Congress to use to propose laws that make it easier for corporations to profit by undercutting or eliminating environmental laws, or dismantling unions through "right to work" laws.

Or, as in the case of Cris Dush in Pennsylvania, suppressing Democratic and progressive votes by shielding sketchy Republican math that undercuts free and fair elections from the oversight of the judiciary as mandated by the state constitution.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court has thus far refused to overrule lower court decisions in North Carolina in 2017, and last Monday in Pennsylvania, where Republicans have sought to usurp the court's authority to crack down on laws that violate "free and equal" elections.

And as Tim Darragh shrewdly observed in his article for The Morning Call on Thursday, Pennsylvania Republican legislator's efforts to impeach state supreme court justices could backfire - and pave the way for other state courts to begin to dismantle the complex trickery of unfairly-drawn political maps intended to subvert the will of the American people.

Between Cris Dush calling for the impeachment of judges he disagrees with, and the High-Chair President's absurd call to spend millions on a military parade to appease his narcissism and soothe his massive personal insecurities, reasonable mainstream Republicans really have to ask themselves two questions:

When did they allow their political party to become defined by an overtly authoritarian sense of control - and whether their embrace of a "power-at-any-cost" philosophy is helpful to American democracy.

Or a means to intentionally undermine it.

Kris Kobach's Ministry of Voter Suppression

Voter suppression czar, Republican Kris Kobach

In the cruel pantheon of the modern American Republican Party ideology, aside from a fetish-like obsession with lowering the tax burden on the wealthiest 1%, no idol is more worshiped than the suppression of the right to vote.

Content to abandon their supposed allegiance to Constitutional principles, many Republicans have now gone full tilt and embarked upon a crusade to aggressively block access to the ballot box on a nationwide scale.

No that long ago these reprehensible voter suppression tactics were generally engineered from the state level in those states with majority-Republican state legislatures and Republican governors mostly working off of scripts, media talking points and model legislation courtesy of our old friends at the American Legislation Exchange Council (ALEC).

Check out the Center for Media and Democracy's 'ALEC Exposed' Website to learn more about how ALEC helped Republican politicians lay the groundwork for massive voter suppression by enacting ludicrous, overly-burdensome voter ID laws in at least 37 different states following the 2010 mid-term elections.

To most Americans it's an affront to the basic principles of democracy, but as you've likely heard over the past week couple weeks, Republican efforts to target the voter rolls of the entire nation are now being orchestrated from the federal level - directly from the Trump administration.

As Madeline Conway reported yesterday in an article for Politico.com, written requests from the Presidential Advisory Commission On Election Integrity for individual states to provide detailed information including voter's full names, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, party affiliation, voting history since 2006, and information on felonies and military status, were met with widespread outrage - and not just from traditionally blue states either.

Mississippi Sec. of State Delbert Hosemann

After reviewing a copy of the letter sent from Trump' widely-panned commission, Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said his response would be:

"They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from." 

And he's a Republican from Mississippi.

As Chris Cillizza reported for CNN yesterday, at least 45 states have already refused to provide at least some of the information to the commission.


Democratic Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe got to the heart of the matter when he said in a statement:

"This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November. At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump's alternative election facts, and at worse is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression."
 
The blowback for the Trump administration's "voter integrity commission" and it's chief architect Kris Kobach has been swift, but what's really bizarre are their attempts to justify and defend it.

Despite serious pushback from dozens of secretaries of state and governors, Kobach simplistically dismissed the media's efforts to question the commission's motives "fake news."

And predictably, Trump took to Twitter to suggest that anyone who doesn't comply has something to hide.

What else can you expect from Republicans who know they can no longer win the mainstream American vote based on the issues?

Whether it's gerrymandering of political districts or voter suppression, they must cheat to win.

What real voter fraud looks like courtesy of Crosscheck

What's particularly troubling is that if you take some time and go back and read Greg Palast's meticulously-researched article "The GOP's Stealth War Against Voters" published in Rolling Stone back in August of 2016 in the lead-up to the November elections, Trump's outrageous information request is really nothing more than a souped-up version of Kris Kobach's widely-condemned voter data collection system known as Crosscheck.

As Palast noted, based on the algorithms and search parameters within the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program as it's formally known, the program "disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters" by incorrectly listing certain ethnic-sounding last names as inherently suspicious.

Click the link above and read some of the flagrant ways in which thousands of mostly-minority Americans were improperly and unfairly "flagged" by Crosscheck and denied the right to vote.

It's truly Third-World authoritarian stuff, and this big data request by Trump's "commission" (ostensibly headed up by Kobach) is nothing more than an attempt to create a "Crosscheck 2.0" in time for the 2018 mid-term elections.

If you missed it, check out Ari Berman's profile of Kobach that was published in the New York Times Magazine back on June 13th.

Kobach is a genuinely dangerous individual, heading up a hyper-partisan "voter integrity commission made up of a cast right-wing zealots summoned up from the putrid depths of authoritarian bigotry.

Voter suppression zealot Hans Von Spakovsky

No member of Trump's "commission" embodies that more than the widely-reviled Hans Von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission who oversaw the division of the Justice Department that monitored voting rights during the Bush administration.

If there is a Creature From the Black Lagoon of Republican voter suppression, it's this guy.

His mission in life is clear:

Use arcane misinterpretation of data, racist and xenophobic fear-mongering and the flagrant manipulation of existing federal and state laws to prevent as many people of color, the elderly, students, legal immigrants and people with foreign-sounding names from participating in the voting process as possible.

If you're not familiar with this guy, take some time to read Leon Neyfakh's recent feature on Von Spakovsky published on Slate.com titled, "The Dark Prince Of Voter Fraud Alarmism Is Joining the Trump Administration".

Kris Kobach may be the evangelist of Republican voter suppression in America but Hans Von Spakovsky is arguably the high priest - a man who has literally spent years trying to make it harder for non-white people to vote in the name of mass voter fraud that simply does not exist.

Trump is far too self-obsessed, uninformed and shallow to realize the degree to which Kobach and Von Spakovsky are true believers in the Ministry of Voter Suppression.

He embraces them and their so-called commission only because he thinks it will help legitimize his continuing delusional fiction that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton because 3 to 5 million illegal aliens cast votes in the 2016 presidential election.

Make no mistake, men like Kobach and Von Spakovsky need Trump too in order to lend an air of credibility to the dark and arcane arts they practice - Trump's concocted unproven lies about fictional "busloads" of illegal aliens costing him the popular vote in 2016 are right up their alley.

And their "presence" in the White House under the guise of a presidential advisory board is indeed a boon to the likes of Trump policy advisors like Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller - and proof positive that a cabal of white nationalists eager to create a 21st century version of Apartheid in America now runs the presidency.

Point of No Return? Republican's Environmental Agenda

EPA nominee Scott Pruitt addresses the 2014
Annual Meeting of ALEC (Yes, that ALEC)

Being somewhat superstitious by nature, it comes as something of a relief to have Friday the 13th off - even if it does mean I have to work on a chilly Saturday when we're expecting snow.

Tonight it's supposed to dip back down into the upper 20's here in central New Jersey, a far cry from yesterday when it got up into the lower 60's.

Last night I stepped out for a few beers at my local, as I stood outside in a short sleeve shirt admiring the exceptional brightness of January's full moon (also known as the Wolf Moon), I couldn't help but reflect on the fact that this is the last full moon under a rational president with actual experience as an elected leader.

It was, to say the least, a rather sobering thought that sent a chill down my spine.

Experiencing mild spring-like weather in the middle of January reminded me that Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump's new pick to head up the Environmental Protection Agency, is on record as denying the scientific consensus that human activity affects global warming.

Pruitt, a former college baseball player whose professional resume includes stints as a lawyer, general managing partner of a AAA baseball team, state politician and attorney general, is not a scientist - so maybe he should read Jeff Goodell's interview with James Hansen, the former head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

As Goodell notes in his RS article, Hansen, one of the world's leading experts on climate change and the first scientist to present hard data that human activity related to the burning of fossil fuels is heating up the Earth's atmosphere, warns that mankind is dangerously close to a 'point of no return' unless massive systematic changes to how we govern ourselves, consume energy and appropriate resources can be enacted.

As Hansen observes, "We're close to that point of no return, Whether we've passed it or not, I don't know...We've passed it in the sense that some climate impacts are going to occur, but we have not necessarily hit the disastrous level, which would knock down global economies and leave us with an ungovernable planet. But we are close."

Seriously, what part of "ungovernable planet" do Republicans who deny climate change not get?

Chart tracking temperature changes as recorded by four
international science agencies including NASA & NOAA

According to studies of climate change research conducted by NASA (folks who actually ARE rocket scientists), "Multiple studies conducted in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97% or more of actively publishing scientists agree: Climate warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities." 


But Scott Pruitt disagrees with stuff like scientific research based on facts.

Pruitt was one of a group of Republican attorneys general from other states with Republican governors and majority-Republican legislatures that formed secretive alliances with some of the nation's biggest energy companies to challenge federal regulations that protect water, soil and air from pollution caused by fossil fuel extraction and production.

As Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton reported in a New York Times article back in December, Pruitt is on record as saying, "Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connections to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged - in classrooms, public forums and the halls of Congress."

Actually, it's not a debate, but that's the mindset that this lackey of the fossil fuel industry and member of the American Legislative Exchange Council will bring to the EPA - nominated by a man who thinks climate change is a "hoax."

Clinton email Obsession? GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz

But it's not just the federal regulatory agencies that will be impacted by radical conservative ideology.

You can be certain that the Republican-majority 115th Congress is already at work chipping away at laws that protect environmental safety, or making it more difficult to hold those who commit environmental crimes accountable.

Increases in subsidies to oil and natural gas companies are almost a given.

Remember the crusading Republican Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz who chairs the powerful House Oversight Committee?

Same guy who did everything he could to theatrically draw out a Congressional investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a personal server to store emails during the presidential campaign season?

Despite multiple Congressional investigations of the same issue for over a year, in addition to a lengthy and highly public FBI investigation that concluded that nothing illegal had taken place, Chaffetz recently announced that he will continue his dogged pursuit to further investigate Clinton's emails.

As CNN reported, Chaffetz said, "Just because there was a political election doesn't mean it goes away." 

But what's interesting about Chaffetz's apparently unquenchable thirst for the truth is that it magically (and for conservatives) conveniently seems to coincide with the broader partisan political needs of the Republican Party.

Republicans stopped investigating this?

Oh and speaking of thirst...

Just one day after the Trump transition team cancelled a planned December 15th press conference where the new PEOTUS would lay out a plan to sever his ties from his hundreds of businesses amid public outrage and media frenzy over his potential unprecedented conflicts of interest, Chaffetz quietly and quickly decided to end a Congressional investigation into the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.


Which of course was caused by Republican Governor Rick Snyder and other state Republican politicians and officials who stripped Flint citizens of the right to govern themselves by appointing an "emergency manager" for the city who ordered Flint's fresh water supply to be switched to the polluted Flint River.

Why?

As part of an effort to slash state spending on government in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthy; fiscally irresponsible efforts which have proved disastrous in Kansas and were designed by none other than the American Legislative Exchange Council.

Remember, the Flint water crisis resulted in people dying, and exposed thousands of Flint residents to toxic levels of lead poisoning - and it's still going on.

Republicans on Capitol Hill famously fought efforts to provide $600 million in federal funding to fix Flint's toxic water supply system before eventually approving $170 million in relief.

Flint residents still get drinking water like this

So Jason Chaffetz ended a House Oversight investigation into an environmental crime of monumental proportions that affected 100,000 people and is still happening now as you read these words.

But he's continuing a bogus partisan witch hunt over how Hillary Clinton stored her private email correspondence when she was Secretary of State over three years ago?

That, and the nomination of Scott Pruitt to head the EPA pretty much sums up the Republican stance on the environment in a nutshell and as hard as it is to imagine, James Hansen could be right.

The inauguration of Trump a week from today along with the clown car of kleptocrat cabinet picks he's bringing with him, coupled with Republican majorities in the House and Senate, plus a conservative-leaning Supreme Court doesn't bode well for our environment.

Should Trump follow through on his campaign pledge to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement and causes other large-scale fossil fuel burners like China and India to pull out, it could very well mark the beginning of the 'Point of no return' for our environment and the climate.

All in the name of narrow-minded political ideology and short-term financial profits for a small fraction of the Earth's population.

"Making America Great Again?" Not so much.

Pfizer's Irish Tax Dodge & 21st Century Conservative Ethics

Trump supporter grappling with a protester in VA (AP)

The headline-grabbing violence erupting between rival protesters at recent Donald Trump rallies serves as a harsh reminder that the current state of divisive American politics, much like the one-hour "Spring Forward" earlier this morning marking daylight savings time, is an extremely sharp double-edged sword that cuts in different ways.

For those like me who are definitely not "morning people", there's an immediate lingering sense of unfairness from having a precious 60 minutes of sleep snatched away.


But on the other hand there's that revitalizing feeling that comes from the increased light stretching into the early evenings, heralding summer's approach.

While the temperatures hovered in the low 60's today, the gray overcast skies over Hamilton, New Jersey and lack of sunlight or breeze combined to create a sense of stillness that reflects the mild sense of disorientation I felt waking up into the one-hour shift forward into daylight savings time.

It's not unlike the sense of disorientation that 21st century conservative ethics, ideology and politics have cast over the American landscape.

For example, a February 25th press release issued by the organization Americans For Tax Fairness detailed the efforts of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer (maker of drugs like Viagra, Celebrex and Lipitor) to exploit gaping loopholes in the U.S. Tax Code by merging with a small pharmaceutical company based in Ireland called Allergan in a sketchy effort to avoid a staggering $35 billion in U.S. taxes by shifting it's base across the Atlantic to Ireland.

Please note that Americans For Tax Fairness is NOT to be confused with conservative anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform; the organization that created the notorious and fiscally irresponsible "No New Taxes" pledge that has been signed by hundreds of Republican politicians across the country.

Pfizer's move, a practice known as corporate inversion that enables American companies like Apple to avoid paying billions in U.S. taxes, would shift it's taxable base to Ireland even though the global pharmaceutical giant would still be headquartered in New York.

As the executive director of Americans For Tax Fairness Frank Clemente observed in the AFTF press release:

"By dodging taxes while increasing prescription drug prices, Pfizer squeezes American families and communities from two sides at once. In the company's biggest insult to America yet, Pfizer's merger would allow it to go on enjoying all the benefits of being based here - everything from a publicly-educated workforce, to an excellent communications infrastructure, to a reliable patent system - without adequately paying to support them."

Pfizer certainly isn't the only U.S. company trying to use the avoidance of paying their fair share of taxes as a strategic move to increase profits.

But it's a reflection of the power lobbyists have to spend millions to influence the politicians who create these kinds of obscure tax loopholes for large corporations - the same politicians who view unemployment insurance, nutrition assistance programs, housing subsidies and even job training programs as "government waste".

Well over a 100,000 people have signed an online petition (you can too!) that will be delivered to the White House encouraging the President and Treasury Department to deny a massive pharmaceutical manufacturer like Pfizer the right to skip out on paying $35 billion in taxes by simply changing their address.

Tap water flows from tainted pipes in Flint, Michigan

Corporate tax inversion is just one troubling aspect of a Republican philosophy of further widening the wealth gap in this nation by shifting even more of the tax burden onto the middle-class and the working poor through the pursuit of destructive policies that place profits for corporations, big institutional investors, and wealthy individual investors over the collective interests of the nation and the average American.

The suppression of wage increases for average workers, or the reluctance of Republicans in Congress to authorize emergency funds for critical infrastructure repairs to the water system in Flint, Michigan are just two examples.

You can also see that divisive philosophy reflected in Republican efforts to manipulate energy policy in favor of fossil fuel producers by trying to suppress the ability of individual American home owners to have the right to choose to use solar power to save on energy costs.

Tim Dickinson's February 11th Rolling Stone article "The Dirty War On Solar Power"  chronicles the coordinated nation-wide effort of Republican lawmakers, extremist billionaire Republican rainmakers like the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - the activist conservative policy-making think tank they finance- to pressure state lawmakers in states like Nevada and Florida to re-write laws that impose steep rate hikes and unjustified fees on home owners who want to choose renewable energy sources like solar power.

Anti-solar Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott

Dickinson's article offers a glimpse into the power that investor-owned utilities wield over state politics and the Republican lawmakers who willingly write legislation (often drafted by ALEC) that puts up barriers to rooftop solar.

The very same politicians who rail about the excessive intrusion of state and federal government into commerce and private industry use government legislation on behalf of fossil fuel providers to stop average Americans from putting solar panels on their own roofs to draw power from the sun .

As Dickinson observes, Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott (pictured above) has personally accepted over $1 million of the $18 million in campaign contributions that the state's biggest power utilities have donated to state politicians in Florida since 2004.

Ironic that the biggest political donors in the Sunshine State are anti-solar power utilities that reap profits from the burning of fossil fuels.

There's something deeply troubling and distinctly un-American about Donald Trump encouraging riled-up supporters at his rallies to engage in outright thuggery against people protesting the hatred and bigotry he peddles; and his offering to pay the legal fees of those arrested for assault.

Just as the policies and ideology advocated by the 21st century Republican party are less about the common interests and "general welfare"of the American people than the enrichment of the privileged few.

A point that seems to elude the disenfranchised masses packing into arenas to listen to yet another billionaire who exploits their anger and frustration by telling them what's wrong with the country to obscure the fact that the Republican party and the unrestricted flow of Dark Money into the political system are the architects of the very circumstances that fuel their rage against those who actually have nothing to do with it.

Cast Your Vote & Smile For the Camera!

With live coverage of the New Hampshire primaries underway on the always-reliable WNYC, I'm preparing to go home, make dinner and binge out on political analysis.

Some of the Republican presidential candidates, particularly New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, are going to have to make some tough decisions tomorrow depending on how the primary results pan out.

Christie only captured 1.8% of the vote in the Iowa caucus last week, and he won none of the 30 delegates at stake either as he came in 10th place.

So I'm interested to see if the pummeling he gave Marco Rubio at the GOP debate on Saturday is enough to persuade the notoriously late-deciding New Hampshire voters to push Christie to a top three finish tonight - anything under 3rd place and he's really going to have to consider whether or not it's realistic for him to continue.

Earlier this morning on The Brian Lehrer Show there was an interesting segment with New Jersey Public Radio reporter Matt Katz, who produces The Christie Tracker podcast, (which has the latest on the Bridge Gate scandal) and Annie Karni who's in New Hampshire covering Hillary Clinton's campaign for POLITICO.

Definitely worth a listen if you want some insight from a reporter who really knows Christie.

Journalist / author Ari Berman

Not to be outdone on New Hampshire primary day coverage, Leonard Lopate had an insightful but disturbing interview this afternoon with Ari Berman, senior contributing writer for The Nation.

Berman, author of the timely non-fiction book published in 2015, "Give Us The Ballot: The Modern Struggle For Voting Rights in America", has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the issue of voting right in this nation.

Berman used that knowledge to cover a lot of territory during his interview with Leonard Lopate this afternoon.

From Senator Ted Cruz's long-time advocacy for the aggressive (and borderline illegal) suppression of the right to vote for those Americans who tend to pull the lever for Democrats, to the Republican party's determination to maintain control over state legislatures across America in order to enact even more restrictive laws and regulations designed to make it harder for college students, the elderly, African-Americans, Hispanics, legal immigrants and people convicted of felonies to cast their votes and participate in the Democratic process.

If you're interested in hearing how the current crop of Republican presidential candidates are also working to keep (some) people from voting, you might want to give the interview a listen.

As Berman reported in an article for The Nation yesterday, New Hampshire is one of the 16 states controlled by majority-Republican legislatures who've enacted tough new voter ID laws for the 2016 presidential elections.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice reports, those states account for 178 electoral college votes.

It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency - think about that.


As if the snowstorm hitting New Hampshire on  primary day isn't enough, the state's new voter ID laws include a provision that calls for registered voters who don't have ID with them at the polls to sign an affidavit, then submit to having their picture taken.

It's absurd and a clear violation of the right to privacy - and ironic that it's the law in the "Live Free Or Die" state.

But, as Ari Berman pointed out in an article for The Nation back in January, as the then-solicitor general of Texas Ted Cruz said back in 2008 after filing a court brief in support of restrictive new voter ID laws in Indiana:

"There is no right to be free from any inconvenience or burden in voting"

With that I must be off, coverage of the New Hampshire primaries is about to get underway and I'm interested to see if registered voters report having problems casting their votes because of these new Republican voter suppression measures.

I guess Republicans would say it's not that bad, if you forget your ID in New Hampshire, all you have to do is sign an affidavit and smile for the camera!

As for who does what with all those photos of folks who didn't have ID's, I'm sure right-wing Republicans and their friends at the American Legislative Exchange Council have some great ideas.

Mittens Drops Out & Other Not-So-Surprising Stuff

So Long! Farewell! Auf wiedersehen goodbyeee!

Mitt Romney's decision to drop out of consideration for the 2016 GOP presidential race is making big headlines today, but I'm really not sure why.

It's certainly less surprising than the Republican-heavy Texas legislature proposing a state budget that threatens to cut funding for breast and cervical cancer screenings by cutting off Planned Parenthood's participation in such cancer prevention treatments for low income women.

Do only wealthy Texas women deserve access to comprehensive health care in the GOP's view? At this point I'm honestly not sure if Texas Republicans are just predictably misogynistic, or simply bat-shit crazy.

Mitten's anti-climatic decision about seeking the White House is about as surprising as Death Row Records founder and "rap mogul" Suge Knight being arrested for murder at 3am this morning after he intentionally ran over two people outside a Burger King in the Compton section of Los Angeles.

And it's right on par with unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin's killer George Zimmerman having yet another domestic abuse charge against him mysteriously dropped for the third time since 2013.

By the way, one of those charges involved his holding a shotgun to the head of girlfriend Samantha Scheibe during an argument; talk about stand by your man.

Girlfriend seriously needs to wake up.

To me, Mitt Romney's decision to shelve his presidential ambitions once and for all is less a headline story than a reflection of a deep philosophical divide within a Republican party that has long since been enslaved by an almost pathological need to appease the tiny right-wing extremist wing of the party; typified by Tea Party politicians like Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

The GOP is governed not by the will of the majority of the American populace, but from a shadowy coalition of wealthy American oligarchs (led by Libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch), corporate lobbyists, the American Legislative Exchange Council and a network of conservative media outlets and talking heads who function more as propagandists than journalists.

What doomed Romney's presidential chances from the start is the fact that this coalition bakes it's bread by ignoring a fundamental cornerstone of the Constitution espousing a separation of church and state.

Instead this coalition channels fundamentalist "Christian" values into a misogynistic assault on women's rights and abortion that manifests as a rigid, ethnocentric brand of patriotism; and openly embraces intolerance; like having a top leader of the US House of Representatives (Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise) who once spoke at a white supremacist event held by a group called E.U.R.O and described himself as "David Duke without the baggage." [Source].

Sadly for Romney, this coalition of the very party he wanted to represent as president, rejects him as an outsider.

Not because of his immense wealth, which they embrace, but for his religion; which they fear. 

Even though Romney is by all accounts a decent family man and a member of a conservative religion (the Mormon Church) that is unquestionably charitable, even to non-Mormons; he is viewed as an "other" by the core Republican base in the southern and mid-western United States.

And today's Republican party lumps "other" into a massive cultural bin which they fear; and see as a "threat" to an abstract sense of what they like to call their "freedoms."

The party of "family values", have made stripping American families of their right to accessible, affordable health care (by attacking the Affordable Care Act) a priority - so Romney having championed comprehensive healthcare for the people of Massachusetts when he was governor also pegs him as strategic liability for today's Republican party.

So Mitt's announcement today is less surprising than it is logical given the current climate of the GOP.

But I will share one thing that surprised me today though.

On a September night back in 2012, Walmart employee Markeith Williams (pictured left) was part of a group off employees remodeling a section of a Walmart store in Richmond, California.

He was tying some rope around his waist to help move a large counter when a Walmart supervisor named Art Van Riper, notorious for screaming insults at his employees, told Washington, "If it was up to me I'd put that rope around your neck."

The employees who were working that night, including Washington, were understandably upset about Van Riper's comment and it's not so subtle lynching connotation.

They addressed their concerns about being respected in their work environment to Walmart's store management, demanding that Van Riper be disciplined for his comments and behavior.

When that didn't work they wrote a letter to Walmart, and when that didn't work they staged a work stoppage at the site.

So Walmart fired the workers. And Van Riper? He's still working for Walmart.

According to ColorOrChange.org, last month a judge ruled that Walmart had illegally fired the workers who engaged in the work stoppage as a result of Van Riper's behavior in the workplace.

Given the massive scrutiny Walmart is under for it's employment practices, it's surprising to me that Van Riper is still working for the company and the workers who complained about his abusive behavior are not.

Feel the same way? Take a minute to add your name to this online petition from the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) calling on Walmart's executive vice-president Kristin Oliver to fire Art Van Riper and rehire the workers who were fired for having the guts to speak up on Markeith Washington's behalf.

Decoupling working Americans from union representation may be a GOP policy, but the right to be respected in the workplace is still a freedom that's worth standing up for.

Justice For Renisha McBride - Theodore Wafer Found Guilty of Murder

Theodore Wafer and Renisha McBride [Photo ABC News]

A court ruling last week reminds us that there are ocassional victories for the sense of humanity, decency and fair play that define what America is supposed to be about.

Back on November 15, 2013  when I blogged about 19-year-old Renisha McBride's death, I was feeling pretty pessimistic about the chances of her and her family getting justice from the court system.

The grisly shooting that took her life in the early morning hours of November 2nd, 2013 was part of a disturbing pattern that is more prevalent in the United States - an innocent and unarmed African-American with no criminal record being shot and killed by a white male on the premise of feeling "threatened".

Let's review the facts.

McBride had spent an evening doing what millions of other people do; drinking alcohol and smoking weed. She was legally intoxicated when she was involved in a single car accident in a Dearborn Heights, Michigan neighborhood.

After stumbling around in confusion for awhile, and with no power in her cell phone, at about 4:40am she walked up to 54-year-old Theodore Wafer's porch and knocked on his door to ask for help.

Wafer opened his door and shot her in the face with a shotgun through a screen door at point blank range, killing her instantly.

George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin

Just after the shooting, Wafer lied to police stating the shotgun had gone off accidentally.

He also falsely claimed McBride was trying to break into his house.

The shooting occurred in the wake of the controversy of George Zimmerman being found not guilty in the death of Trayvon Martin.


Did you hear that back in March Zimmerman was at a Central Florida gun show signing autographs and shaking hands with admirers?

Evidently smitten with the fact that he shot an innocent 14-year-old black kid walking home from the store to his father's home with a bag of Skittles and some juice, and got away with it.

McBride's death happened less than a month after a 27-year-old white North Carolina police officer named Randall Kerrick shot Jonathan Ferrell ten times and killed him.

Ferrell was an unarmed 24-year-old African-American college athlete who made the mistake of knocking on a woman's door and asking for help after a car crash.

In a panic she called 911, the cops showed up, saw Ferrell walking towards them (thinking they'd come to help him) tasered him, then promptly shot him ten times.

Jonathan Ferrell and former Charlotte-Mecklenberg
PD officer Randall Kerrick

In the context of those events, I felt like the prospects for Renisha McBride getting justice were slim, but the courts proved me wrong.

Last Thursday afternoon a jury of seven men and five women found Theodore Wafer guilty on three counts of second-degree murder, manslaughter and a felony firearms charge following nine days of harrowing testimony and two days of deliberation.


The racial implications in the McBride case are clear, but the jury's decision is much bigger than that.

In my view it sends an important message to the NRA, the Tea Party and Republican lawmakers who dangle at the end of the strings held by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) who are collectively responsible for introducing laws like 'Stand Your Ground' in Florida which allowed George Zimmerman to stalk, attack and murder unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in February 2012.

Or the 'Shoot First' law introduced in Michigan in 2006.

Laws which have the effect of conferring upon white citizens a sense of a right to use deadly force against citizens of color under the shaky and ambiguous pretense of  "fearing for their life" - therefore sanctioning a dangerous "shoot first ask questions later" firearms policy. 

Now Florida's 'Stand Your Ground' law is not specifically written with language that suggests it's only for white people to invoke.

Ex-US Air Force Airman Michael Giles

But I use the term "white citizens" because cases like that of former USAF Airman Michael Giles (who is African-American) make clear that Florida prosecutors hold people who use a 'Stand Your Ground' defense after firing a weapon are held to totally different standards based on their race. 

Where George Zimmerman targeted, stalked, confronted and murdered Trayvon Martin and was able to convince a Florida jury he was justified because he was standing his ground, Michael Giles was punched in the back of the head and knocked to the ground during a 2010 melee at a Florida nightclub.

He took out his handgun, which he had a concealed carry permit for, and shot his attacker in the legs, injuring two bystanders with bullet fragments - the jury rejected his claim of self defense and he was found guilty of aggravated battery and sentenced to a mandatory 25 year sentence.

There's an ongoing grassroots social media campaign to get Giles, who served two tours overseas in the Middle East, freed.

But the outcome of the Renisha McBride case in Michigan makes clear that these laws do not give Theodore Wafer or any other citizen free license to kill innocent people with guns - especially when their lives are not actually threatened.

I think it also makes clear that Michigan wants to carefully distinguish itself from states like Florida, who's absurd 'Stand Your Ground' law is so abstract as to encourage mentally unbalanced people like George Zimmerman or Michael Dunn to commit murder - or Georgia where the state recently passed laws allowing people to carry loaded handguns into bars or even churches.

The jury decision in the McBride case reminds us that we are a nation of laws.

It won't bring back Renisha McBride's life, but if it serves as a warning for trigger-happy gun owners to think twice before shooting a human being and call 911 instead, perhaps it gives her death meaning and her family and friends some measure of solace knowing that the loss of her life could very well save someone else's.

I think the essence of the case boils down to a simple quote from the parents of Renisha McBride, as her father said after the court verdict, "That could have been anybody's kid."    

Bob McDonnell Got Some Gifts, Eee-Eye-Eee-Eye Ohhhh

Bob McDonnell & wife Maureen; happier times (AP)

Former Virginia Republican Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen had good reason to smile as they danced at his inauguration ball in Richmond back on the night of January 16, 2010 (pictured left).

They were riding the crest of a political wave that swept 29 Republican governors into office; including NJ Governor Chris Christie three days later on January 19th and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on November 3rd.

Democrats were humbled in the 2010 mid-term elections that saw the GOP capture 63 seats in the US House of Representatives to recapture the majority and also boost their Senate minority numbers by 6 as well; they captured 680 seats in state legislatures around the nation creating a number of "Super Majorities".

But as we know, a lot can happen in four years.

McDonnell and his wife appeared in Federal Court earlier today to face 14 counts of obstructing Federal investigators, conspiracy and fraud. The charges stem from at least $140,805 worth of gifts they received from Jonnie Williams, the wealthy CEO of a nutritional supplement company called Star Scientific.

This afternoon McDonnell was adamant about he and his wife's innocence: “We did not violate the law, and I will use every available resource and advocate I have for as long as it takes to fight these false allegations, and to prevail against this unjust overreach of the federal government.”

The embattled ex-Gov trying to curry sympathy with the right by characterizing the charges as some kind of infringement by the Federal Government is a pretty desperate ploy.

Frankly he's got some cojones accusing the Federal Government of "overreach" considering the gifts he and the former-First Lady of Virginia received from their pal Jonnie; including golf bags, golf shoes, an engraved Rolex watch, designer dresses, earrings, wallets, two iPhones, $15,000 worth of catering for the McDonnell's daughter's wedding and free trips on Williams' private plane.

The jaw-dropping list of goodies was summarized in a stunning document made public in the 45-page indictment - click here to take a look at the list of gifts for yourself. You think that's bad?

The Washington Post reports the McDonnells also had the gall to bill the state of Virginia for personal items like nasal spray, sunscreen and dog vitamins too. And don't think their buddy 'Ole Jonnie was in some kind of perpetual gift-giving mood for no reason either.

An excellent article on the Politico Website today by Alexander Burns and Elizabeth Titus details several specific instances when McDonnell used his political influence and the power of his office to do favors for Star Scientific immediately after some kind of lavish gift from Jonnie was received.

And so yet another once high-flying GOP governor once mentioned as a possible presidential contender in 2016 falls under the cloud of scandal; even though McDonnell's gift grab pales in comparison to Bridge-Gate.

Speaking of which, even as Christie was sworn into office today and basically ignored the growing scandal surrounding his massive abuse of power during his speech, Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer  isn't backing off an inch on her charges that Christie's Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno threatened to withhold Hurricane Sandy relief funds for Hoboken if Zimmer didn't back a massive redevelopment project on a three-acre site proposed by The Rockefeller Group.

Who did the Rockefeller Group hire as it's lobbyist? According to the NY Daily News, none other than former Christie cabinet officer Lori Grifa. The Daily News article also points out that The Rockefeller Group's law firm, Wolff & Samson is the law firm of (drum roll please) Port Authority Chairman David Samson - a Christie appointee.

Kim Guadagno was probably pushing the righteous indignation act just a little bit too hard the other day when she called Zimmer's accusation of political retribution "completely false" and "illogical".   

According to WNYC reporter Sarah Gonzalez, Zimmer fired back with a copy of a letter dated April 23, 2013 written to Governor Christie in which she objects to Sandy aid being contingent on her supporting the Rockefeller Group development proposal to counter charges from the Christie camp that Zimmer's charges against the Governor appeared out of nowhere.    

Seriously what is it with these Republican governors anyway? It's like the political power buzz of the 2010 elections and Tea Party fervor never wore off and they saw it as some kind of rubber-stamp edict from the voters who elected them to do whatever they pleased; even if it was ethically and legally reprehensible. 

How about Republican North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory? This state might as well have the flag of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) flying over the state capital, or they should just send Republican thugs out across the state with bats to beat the poor, working class and middle class citizens of the state into submission.

Journalist Bill Moyers has been doing some excellent coverage of ALEC on his television show and his Website. He reports that The Raleigh News & Observer reporter John Frank claims that 54 out of 170 state legislators in North Carolina are members of ALEC; including the Speaker of the House Thom Tillis; ALEC's 2011 "legislator of the year".

Governor McCrory's new legislative lobbyist? State ALEC chairman Fred Steen; himself a former state legislator.
 
No wonder North Carolina has passed some of the most draconian voter suppression laws since the Jim Crow Era and actually voted against the state accepting additional funds from the Federal Government to extend available unemployment benefits for those in the Tar Heel state still struggling to find work.

Not only are Republicans busy suppressing as many votes as they can, Think Progress.org reports that Governor McCrory is catching heat for leaving North Carolina's 12th Congressional district without an elected US Congressman representing them for more than a year.

According to the article by Josh Israel, Democratic Rep Mell Watt resigned his office on the first day of the legislative year to become director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Governor McCrory won't hold a special election until November 4th - meaning a Congressional district that stretches from Charlotte to Greensboro with over a million citizens, the majority of whom are minorities, will have no representative in the US Congress for 12 months.

Kudos to MSNBC's Chuck Todd for confronting McCrory last Wednesday on The Daily Rundown.

But confrontation isn't enough. The mainstream media, average citizens and the Justice Department have to come together to identify, address and stop this kind of contemptuous dismissal and denial of the Constitutional rights of citizens.

Par for the course for this Republican party - and a blight on the basic ideals of liberty, freedom and citizenship for our nation. Republicans just can't sell their extremist policies and rigid ideology to mainstream Americans, so they're determined to cut off access to the political process (and health care) for millions of Americans who don't vote Republican.

But have faith. In "The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News - And Divided a Country" a new unauthorized biography on Fox News chief Roger Ailes, one of the chief architects of this divisive form of political warfare, author Gabriel Sherman asserts that the Republican party has shackled itself to a rapidly shrinking base that's aging fast - and unable to connect with the more diverse, politically progressive, younger and more technologically savvy voter base that is becoming the majority in this nation.

Smarter more moderate Republicans like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, South Carolina Senator Lyndsey Graham and Arizona Senator John McCain know the numbers don't lie; but they sit quietly on the side of the room while the Tea Partiers dance. If the GOP couldn't pull it off with Mitt Romney in 2012 against Obama; it's probably not going to happen in 2016 either.

Not while the GOP is ruled by misogynists, zealots and reactionaries; and governed by an archaic  intolerance that's indigestible for the majority of Americans. 

For Republicans, the states have become the last bastion of this vicious brand of Conservatism.

But as we've seen by the actions of Republican Governors like Bob McDonnell, Scott Walker, Chris Christie and Pat McCrory, they're starting to loose their grip on the pulse of the states as well as they increasingly operate not in the actual political arena - but in an abstract ideological vacuum where reason, dissent or debate are not tolerated.

By their own actions they have become the authors of their own epitaph; maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

Republican Happy Kwanzaa Facebook Message - The GOP Has a Long Way to Go

Another disastrous GOP Tweet implodes

One could almost feel sorry for the GOP's klutzy social media outreach efforts blowing up in their face but then I think about those voter suppression efforts in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere during the 2012 presidential election.

It's honestly almost too to painful to watch.

A political party that's repeatedly worked hand in hand with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) across the nation to draft arcane sorts of laws to suppress and limit voter participation by African-Americans, immigrants, students, the elderly and poor people now trying to use social media to bridge the enormous gap between the GOP and Americans the party alienates is just plain sad.

When I read the December 27th story on the Forward Progressives Website about the Republican National Committee posting a happy Kwanzaa message on their Facebook page, I was waiting for a punchline - but there was nothing funny about the flood of remarkably racists comments by REPUBLICANS reacting to the presence of the Kwanzaa message on their own Facebook page; just click the link above and read a couple responses for yourself.

The same GOP that's willingly allowed its message and substantive focus to be hijacked by a right-wing extremist element that's openly hostile to minorities, women, immigrants, homosexuals, progressives, reasonable gun control laws, the environment, most science and well, pretty much everyone who doesn't subscribe to their fringe beliefs now wants to employ cutting edge Internet platforms to try and disguise itself?
 
It's almost as if Republicans don't actually understand how the Internet functions.

What's even more laughable (or pathetic, depending on how you look at it) is that just a few weeks ago back in December the Republican Twitter page was making headlines for a poorly thought out Twitter message about Rosa Parks that suggested racism in America was over.

The unfortunate part of this media equation is that the RNC was recently lauding their hiring of a new black female "Director of African-American Communications" named Amani Council; who spent quite a bit of time on The Hill as a Congressional staff aide to two former Republican House members, and also coordinated lobbying efforts for the Family Research Council, which is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for their attacks on gays and lesbians and their stance on same-sex marriage.

Did anyone check to see if Amani had any actual experience with social media before hiring her? Because the two most high profile roll-outs of the GOP's online minority outreach efforts this year (the Rosa Parks Tweet and the happy Kwanzaa Facebook post) have been total media disasters that ended up showing just how completely disconnected the party is from mainstream Americans in the cultural sense.

Now to be fair all that can't be laid at poor Amani's feet, the GOP had Lee "Willie Horton" Atwater and current Fox News president Roger Ailes as media strategists long before she was hired and Lord knows Rome wasn't built in a day.

According to a press release by RNC chair Reince Priebus, Amanai was supposed to be working closely with Raffi Williams, hired as the RNC deputy press secretary to "build relationships with African-American media as we (Republicans) work to earn the trust of more African-American voters."

Obviously the jury is still out on just how much trust these recent efforts are earning.

Based on a recent on-camera Q&A on MSNBC on Obamacare, Raffi, the son of PBS journalist/ anchor Juan Williams, is still a bit of a work in progress too.

Amani and Williams the Younger are not to blame here though. The Herculean effort to repair the GOP's reputation with black Americans would require an A-level PR firm; not just a couple of young people with family connections to the party and dark complexions. 

Even perpetually dorky failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney was candid (post-election of course) about the fact the Republican party is never going to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue if it can't figure out how to bridge the enormous gap between the GOP and people of color in this nation.

If this latest GOP Facebook implosion is any indication of how Republicans intend to use social media in 2016, Hillary Clinton is sleeping like a baby tonight.

As I wrap up my final blog of 2013 I wanted to give my sincere thanks for everyone who stops in to check the blog out, both here in the US and from the many different countries around the world who've shown up in my blog stats!

Have a wonderful New Year's Eve, if you're going to drink please don't drive; I expect to see you back here in 2014.  -CG