Oklahoma & Kentucky: Teaching Democracy

Tulsa, Oklahoma elementary school teacher Janie
Mitchell at an April 2nd rally at the state capital 

On the 50th anniversary of his assassination, it's difficult to know exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. might think about the current state of America.

Particularly given the polarized nature of our politics, a two-tier justice system rife with racial and economic bias and the growing socioeconomic inequality between American citizens exacerbated by legislative policies passed by Republican-majority state legislatures and the GOP-majority House and Senate. 


But if Dr. King were still alive today (he'd have turned 88 in January), it's fair to speculate that he'd be among those fighting for the causes that he believed in and fought so hard to achieve in the 1950's and 60's - including the right to a good education and fair pay.

The essence of Dr. King's spirit, including his embrace of Mahatma Ghandi's belief in the power of peaceful non-violent resistance and civil disobedience, and the courage to speak truth to power, can  arguably be seen amongst the striking public school teachers across the nation.

Inspired by West Virginia teachers, whose nine-day walkout in early March captured global attention and forced state lawmakers to grant them a 5% pay increase, thousands of Oklahoma public school teachers, administrators and other supporters descended upon the state capital in Oklahoma City on Monday morning.

They rallied in front of the state capitol building, then broke into groups to confront state lawmakers in hallways and offices to demand significant increases to Oklahoma's education funding. 

Since the Oklahoma state legislature slashed public school spending by more than $200 million in the wake of the Great Recession in 2008, the number of students in Oklahoma public schools has increased by more than 40,000 - placing huge demands on public school administrators and teachers and forcing some schools to eliminate funding for programs like art, music and athletics.

Thousands of Kentucky public school teachers
packed the state capital in Frankfurt on Monday

As the sign (pictured above) held by Tulsa elementary school teacher Janie Mitchell demonstrates, Oklahoma public school teachers are fed up with being ranked 49th out of 50 states in terms of salary.

And at the same time, the draconian education cuts have led to some 1,500 teachers being removed from the ranks of Oklahoma public schools.

Those cost are impacting the lives and futures of both students and teachers.

Some public schools in Oklahoma have four day school weeks due to a lack of teachers and money - a situation that plays out in Kentucky as well where thousands of teachers closed schools to fill the halls of the state capitol building on Monday morning to protest under-funded public schools and a sneaky legislative maneuver by state lawmakers to pass cuts in teacher pension benefits on the sly.

Part of what would rankle Dr. King is that the reality is that there's money in the Oklahoma state budget to fully and properly fund public schools and pay teachers a competitive salary.

But as in other states controlled by Republican state legislatures (like Kansas), lawmakers have used anti-union rhetoric and irrational ALEC-driven vilification of public schools to justify shifting money from education in order to fund (drum roll please...) tax breaks for corporations and the 1%.

For example, consider the $300 million tax break for new oil and natural gas drilling Republican Oklahoma legislators and Republican Governor Mary Fallin tucked into the fiscal 2018 state budget.

Republican Oklahoma Gov. Mary Falin

Oklahoma is one of the biggest producers of oil and natural gas in the nation, and U.S. petroleum companies already benefit from a host of federal subsidies for oil and natural gas exploration and drilling.

Yet Oklahoma Republican lawmakers authorized moving $300 million in taxpayer funds to oil and gas companies as many public school classrooms go without sufficient teachers, books and other basic school supplies - it literally borders on criminal.

Conservative Republican Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who many already considered something of a ideologically right-wing nitwit, epitomized the simplistic, condescending, uninformed Republican contempt for public education on Tuesday when she told CBS News that:

"Teachers want more, but it's kind of like having a teenage kid that wants a better car."  

Now when you read a dismissive, idiotic, Trump-like statement like that, just remember that the public school teachers Fallin is talking about have gone without pay raises for a decade, rank 49th out of all 50 states in salary, and are teaching more students with less funding in an era when education is as critical for global competitiveness as it's ever been.

Who sounds more like the teenage kid?

Fallin and other state legislators moved to sign an education funding and teacher salary increase, but it's way below what teachers are looking for - and her Betsy DeVos-ish "teenage kid" statement only gives teachers more fuel to keep pressuring Republican lawmakers to cough up the money.

Dr. King with other leaders of the 1963 March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 

Unfortunately for Fallin, she's too politically one-dimensional to realize that her statement only validates the striking teacher's demands, and paints Republicans as even more tone deaf than most Americans already think they are.

And it only increases the chances of a Democratic Blue Wave this fall when these thousands of voters head for the polls in November for the mid-term elections.

These grassroots protests are demonstrating growing widespread support for public education.

Teachers, administrators, parents and educational professionals are building political momentum across the country - including way out in Arizona where teachers, fired up by the strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky, are moving closer to a strike in one of the most reliably politically Red States in the nation - one with an open Senate seat in the fall too.

This despite years of Republican legislators working to curb collective bargaining rights for teachers and other public sector employees, and trying to shift public education funding to private and charter schools with the help of the American Legislative Exchange Council.

But thousands of teachers across the country (and thousands of students protesting gun violence) are showing that real voices matter - and that there is real power in numbers.

This is what Democracy looks like, and Dr. King would be proud to see civil disobedience and organized protest making a difference and moving the needle in the 21st century.

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.

We're So Not In Kansas Anymore

Kansas Republican Governor Sam Brownback

It's one thing to listen to the leading Republican candidates talk about abstract campaign promises to deploy tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS to see "if sand can glow in the dark" , make the U.S. military torture people, or construct a big wall along the southern border with Mexico.

But if you really want to get an idea of the kind of America that extremist Republicans have in mind should they win the White House and retain control of both houses of Congress, look no further than the great state of Kansas.

Hyper-conservative 2nd-term Kansas Governor Sam Brownback and his Republican-majority state legislature have come under fire in recent years for trying to create a bizarre "conservative utopia-slash Tea Party lab experiment" which has plunged the state economy to the brink of turmoil and adversely affected the lives of tens of thousands of Kansas citizens.

Brownback and his cronies have used their power to slash state spending on education, social programs (like their bizarre restrictions on how welfare recipients can spend their money) and basic government services to finance outrageous tax cuts for guess who?

The tiny fraction of the population made up by the wealthiest folks in the state.

Most recently the mad scientists running the state legislature were up in arms after the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that severe cuts to the education budget they'd inserted into the budget had disproportionately and unfairly affected schools in the state's poorest districts - leaving at-risk school districts underfunded in violation of state mandates on educational funding.

After lawyers filed suit on behalf of local school boards, the state Supreme Court told the legislature it has until June 30th to revise budget expenditures to restore millions in public school funding back to the poorest schools.

Republican Kansas State Senator Mitch Holmes

In response to that ruling, and other court rulings on hot-button conservative issues like abortion, Kansas Republican lawmakers are trying to pass Senate Bill 439, a law that would radically expand the ability of state legislators to impeach judges

As the editorial board of the Kansas City Star noted in an op-ed, on Tuesday, even though Kansas legislators already have the authority to impeach judges for improper behavior or conduct, Senate Bill 439 would authorize lawmakers to impeach judges for striking down legislation passed by the legislature.


Why undermine the basic system of checks and balances between the legislative and judicial branches in Kansas?

As the author of the bill, Kansas state senator Mitch Holmes (pictured above) told the Associated Press, "I believe the court has a tremendous problem with overreach."

Now let me just repeat that because I'm still trying to wrap my head around it myself after reading about this on DailyKos - Republican legislators in Kansas want to be able to impeach state Supreme Court justices who rule against legislation they pass; even if it violates the state constitution.

It's the kind of reprehensible abuse of political power concocted by the right-wing brain trust at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that Tea Partiers like Senator Ted Cruz salivate over - remember his efforts to single-handedly shut down the federal government?

Like voter repression and illegal redistricting, Kansas Senate Bill 439 is part of the Republican party's vast efforts to allow a numerical (and shrinking) political minority to maintain control of state and national government - even if it means tramping on ethics, decency and the basic foundations of Democracy.

Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was right a few weeks ago when he said that the GOP has gone "bat shit crazy".

Nowhere more so than Kansas.

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.

Sweet Home Alabama - Republicans Drive Over Voter Rights

A state drivers license center in Alabama

The restrictive voter ID law passed in 2011 by the the conservative Republican politicians who now dominate the Alabama state legislature didn't take affect until 2014.

But it only took a year for them to take another swipe at the voting rights of Alabama citizens; those who vote Democratic anyway.

In another low point for the basic principle of American democracy, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency ( the result of a consolidation of 12 different law enforcement agencies under a single authority now known under the acronym ALEA) announced that budget shortfalls would require the closing of an astounding 31 different driver's license centers around the state.

Republicans, including Governor Robert Bentley (we'll get to him in a moment) were quick to deny accusations leveled by politicians, members of the press, voter rights groups and citizens that the closing of these centers were part of an underhanded effort to put up barriers that make it more difficult for citizens of Alabama to comply with the voter ID law that Republicans themselves drafted and passed in 2011.

But statistics suggest otherwise.

As Rachel Witkin wrote in an article posted on TheNewCivilRightsMovement.com on Monday,
8 of the 10 counties where the drivers license facilities are being closed just happen to have the largest percentages of non-white voters in the state.

Driver's license centers in every county in the state of Alabama where more than 75% of registered voters are African-American will be closed.

Coincidence? Hardly.

First off, Alabama is one of many American states with a solid "super majority" of Republican state legislators dominating the state house; as well as a Republican Governor.

Since it's the Republican party who are essentially responsible for establishing the budget for the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (which runs the driver's license centers across the state); Republicans are the ones responsible for the apparent lack of available funds to keep the centers open.

Oct 2013, Ted Cruz & Sarah Palin protest WWII memorial closing THEY caused 

That kind of  manipulative legislative nonsense is taken right from the playbook of the senseless Republican "starve the beast" strategy of governing.

And the illogical political spin, where they childishly blame Democrats for their own Republican handiwork, is hardly new for them either.

It's the same kind of demented GOP thinking that led Republicans Senator Ted Cruz and former VP candidate Sarah Palin to fan the flames of conservative hysteria which lead to an intentional shut down of the federal government in 2013.

Once they'd accomplished their demented goal, they had the gall to actually go and stand theatrically in front of the WWII Veteran's memorial in Washington, DC and piously criticize Democrats for not keeping the national parks open (pictured left).

Is it a total PR nightmare that contributes to the Republican's dismal approval rate? Sure, but they still do it.

And then they have the temerity to act offended by people who call their actions out for what they are by dismissing them as nosy outsiders trying to politicize an issue for personal gain.
 
Since the news about the closing of the driver's license centers has been so dominated by national media news outlets lately, I was genuinely curious to see what people who actually live in Alabama had to say on the issue.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley

To gain some perspective, I decided to troll through some of the over 522 reader comments that were posted in response to a story posted on the AL.com Website by Charles Dean about Republican Governor Robert Bentley (pictured left) strongly denying accusations that the decision to close 31 different state-run facilities where (mostly) people of modest income who reside in more remote rural areas can obtain driver's licenses, was not a race-based decision intentionally designed to make it more difficult for people of color to get ID's to vote.

Interestingly, the reader comments seemed to break down along just about the same political lines as national reactions to the story; but there seemed to be blacks and whites on both sides of the issue.

There were white Alabamans who thought the closing of the centers were clearly race-based, and there were also black Alabamans who pointed out the relatively low state voter turnout (under 50%) in the last election to point out that if you really want to vote in the state, you just have to register to do it.

Someone who claimed to be black pointed out the fact that there are large numbers of black folks in the state who have valid state ID's to cross state lines to gamble in Mississippi or Louisiana or buy alcohol legally.  

Some white Alabamans felt it was only being made into a national issue because Alabama's legacy of racism and political correctness make it easy to accuse the state of such racial shenanigans.

More than one reader expressed skepticism over the fact that Hillary Clinton and Jesse Jackson have both inserted themselves into the controversy - for what some readers felt were for self-serving reasons rather than the issue of voter rights.

But as you may have guessed, I'm just not buying that.

Nov 5, 2012 - Voters in Akron, Ohio wait hours for early voting

Especially given the Republican party's openly passing dozens of sketchy voter ID laws in states like Ohio (pictured left), North Carolina and Florida - and other ALEC-crafted legislation that intentionally restricts the rights of the poor, racial minorities, working class, students, legal immigrants and the elderly to cast their votes in elections.

As the AL.com article reported, the state's embattled Governor, Robert Bentley offered up some fairly sketchy reasoning for the closures of the 31 driver's license centers during a press conference on Tuesday when he said:

"The last time I looked, 16-year-olds that get their license at a driver's licenses place, don't vote," said Bentley. "That's all we're doing. We're repositioning people in the state because we don't have enough funds in this state to keep these offices open." 

"Repositioning people"? He and his Republican cohorts in the state legislature are the ones who control the funds that keep the drivers license centers open in the first place!

Now just bear in mind folks, this statement is from the same Governor who self-righteously opposed gay marriage on the grounds that  heterosexual marriages like his represent 'Stability' before his wife of 50 years, Dianne Bentley, filed for divorce back in August. 

Bentley has also had his toes in hot water over race recently, after what many perceived as insensitive comments insinuating common simplistic stereotypes about the black family structure were to blame for the horrific kidnapping and murder of 8-year old Hiawayi Robinson.

Governor Bentley took particular issue with Hillary Clinton weighing in on the issue of his party actively suppressing the rights of minority voters in Alabama, saying:

"The one that I'm really angry about is Hilliary Clinton. You know Hillary Clinton never lets the facts get in the way of a good political sound bite and that's exactly what she has done criticizing the state of Alabama,"  

Hillary Clinton wasn't afraid to call a spade a spade; she called the decision to close the centers in Alabama  "a blast from the Jim Crow past."

And her criticism of Alabama's closing 31 drivers license centers isn't her first time calling out Republicans for suppressing votes.

Bentley's insinuation that she just started chiming in on the issue after Alabama's latest voter suppression efforts earned national attention for a "soundbite" is plain wrong.
 

Guess who vetoed state legislation to add early voting hours?

Say what you want about her, Hillary has been attacking Republican presidential candidates for suppressing voter rights for months.

The "Truth-o-Meter" of the Pulitzer Prize-wining PolitiFact.com Website fact-checked Clinton's claims of Republican voter suppression by Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rick Perry and Scott Walker.

They found them to be "largely accurate" and rated her claims, "Mostly True."

Why? Because the reality is that actively using legislation, illegal redistricting, gerrymandering and even voter intimidation are now part of the accepted (by Republicans anyway) strategy for winning the White House in 2016 and holding on to a majority in the House and Senate.

It's disgraceful and a mockery of everything this nation stands for, but that's today's Republican party for you.

But the closings of the 31 centers is far from a done deal. Politicians and activists groups including the NAACP are calling for legal challenges to the closings as well as a Department of Justice investigation.

If you were curious about what would happen after the Supreme Court gutted key provisions of the Civil Rights Act, look no further than the state of Alabama.

"Sweet Home" indeed.

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."