Trump’s main rivals were able to meet minimum thresholds to collect delegates in many of the Super Tuesday contests. But Trump regained his momentum in the March 8 contests, winning three – Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii – while Cruz prevailed in Idaho.
Yet there is a key Republican convention rule, known as Rule 40, which could hand Trump the nomination on a silver platter because it limits the number of nominees while prohibiting certain attempts to steal the nomination away from a front runner.
The purpose of this rule was to help ensure the coronation of a clear front runner and to give a presumptive nominee a celebratory sendoff into the general election. Prior to the 2012 convention, this rule required a candidate to have won a plurality of delegates in at least five states to have his or her name put into nomination at the convention.
However, once Mitt Romney secured enough delegates to win the 2012 nomination, his supporters (especially key adviser-operative Ben Ginsburg) got this rule revised to block any person from being nominated at the convention unless he or she had won a majority of delegates in at least eight states. (Part of Romney’s reasoning was to freeze out a major floor demonstration of support for libertarian Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and thus to present to the nation watching on TV a united party rallying behind the former Massachusetts governor.)
In addition to prohibiting the recording of any delegates won by candidates who failed to meet the eight-state threshold, Rule 40 barred delegates from promoting a groundswell on the convention floor for any person who did not participate in the state contests. Thus, the rule prevents a modern-day replay of the “We Want Willkie” selection of Wendell Willkie at the 1940 Republican convention. (Ironically, that would now rule out a stealth establishment strategy to mount a “Romney, Romney” uprising at the convention in Cleveland.)
It remains to be seen if and when Trump and his rivals can secure majorities of the delegates in eight states. Trump has met that threshold in seven of the 15 states in which he has won the most votes, meaning he is just one state short of the threshold.
Cruz has won the most votes in seven states and secured a majority of delegates in four states: Idaho, Kansas, Maine and Texas. In other words, the Texas senator is halfway there.
Monday Reads: Attack of the Killer Bunnies
Posted: March 21, 2016 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Donald Trump, Killer Bunnies, Republican establishment 24 Comments
Good Morning!
Things can frequently come in confusing packages. Take my choice of Killer Bunnies today for your visual enjoyment. You just wouldn’t think those cute little furry things could be the source of any one’s nightmare! Yet here there they are! It’s much easier to envision a critter gone bad when it looks positively evil.
I’m with Frank Rich who thinks it’s nuts when all the bunnies in the Republican Party keep saying that Donald Trump is not one of them. They all seem genuinely confused when it’s really quite easy. Donald Trump is their FrankenBunny.
The Republican Elites. The Establishment. The Party Elders. The Donor Class. The Mainstream. The Moderates. Whatever you choose to call them, they, at least, could be counted on to toss the party-crashing bully out.
To say it didn’t turn out that way would be one of the great understatements of American political history. Even now, many Republican elites, hedging their bets and putting any principles in escrow, have yet to meaningfully condemn Trump. McCain says he would support him if he gets his party’s nomination. The Establishment campaign guru who figured the Trump problem would solve itself moved on to anti-Trump advocacy and is now seeking to unify the party behind Trump, waving the same white flag of surrender as Chris Christie. Every major party leader — Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Reince Priebus, Kevin McCarthy — has followed McCain’s example and vowed to line up behind whoever leads the ticket, Trump included. Even after the recurrent violence at Trump rallies boiled over into chaos in Chicago, none of his surviving presidential rivals would disown their own pledges to support him in November. Trump is not Hitler, but those who think he is, from Glenn Beck to Louis C.K., should note that his Vichy regime is already in place in Washington, D.C.
Since last summer, Trump, sometimes in unwitting tandem with Bernie Sanders, has embarrassed almost the entire American political ecosystem — pollsters, pundits, veteran political operatives and the talking heads who parrot their wisdom, focus-group entrepreneurs, super-pac strategists, number-crunching poll analysts at FiveThirtyEight and its imitators. But of all the emperors whom Trump has revealed to have few or no clothes, none have been more conspicuous or consequential than the GOP elites. He has smashed the illusion, one I harbored as much as anyone, that there’s still some center-right GOP Establishment that could restore old-school Republican order if the crazies took over the asylum.
The reverse has happened instead. The Establishment’s feckless effort to derail Trump has, if anything, sparked a pro-Trump backlash among the GOP’s base and, even more perversely, had the unintended consequence of boosting the far-right Ted Cruz, another authoritarian bomb-thrower who is hated by the Establishment as much as, if not more than, Trump is. (Not even Trump has called McConnell “a liar,” which Cruz did on the Senate floor.) The elites now find themselves trapped in a lose-lose cul-de-sac. Should they defeat Trump on a second or third ballot at a contested convention and install a regent more to their liking such as Ryan or John Kasich — or even try to do so — they will sow chaos, not reestablish order. In the Cleveland ’16 replay of Chicago ’68, enraged Trump and Cruz delegates, stoked by Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Matt Drudge, et al., will go mano a mano with the party hierarchy inside the hall to the delectation of television viewers while Black Lives Matter demonstrators storm the gates outside.
Republican Donors are acting in backrooms all over the country. It’s probably coming a lot too late, but what’s left to really stop Trump? Utah?
If Donald Trump becomes the Republican Party’s nominee, Utahns would vote for a Democrat for president in November for the first time in more than 50 years, according to a new Deseret News/KSL poll.
“I believe Donald Trump could lose Utah. If you lose Utah as a Republican, there is no hope,” said former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, a top campaign adviser to the GOP’s 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney.
The poll found that may well be true. Utah voters said they would reject Trump, the GOP frontrunner, whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is the Democratic candidate on the general election ballot.
Yes, Tuesday night is the night Donald Trump will likely get “whipped in Utah”. Does it really matter? And, Cruz is the overwhelming favorite there. Is that the like the utlimate Hobson’s choice or what?
The good news for Donald Trump’s foes: Three lions of Utah Republican politics agree the insurgent billionaire is the wrong choice for 2016.
The bad news: They can’t agree on the right choice to stop him.
Mitt Romney, beloved by Utah’s heavily Mormon and conservative electorate, sought to steer his party toward Ted Cruz on Friday, pledging to vote for Cruz at Tuesday’s caucuses as part of a strategic voting strategy to deny Trump delegates.
But instead of falling in line behind Romney, one of his closest allies, former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, threw his voice behind John Kasich instead. And Gary Herbert, Utah’s current governor, says his heart’s also with Kasich, but he can’t bring himself to offer an official endorsement when Utah’s hard-right voters more clearly line up with Cruz. So Herbert’s sitting this one out entirely.
Adding further confusion to the tangled messaging: a fourth favorite Utah son, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, has ruled out backing Kasich — despite what he described as lobbying by Kasich’s allies for his support. Though he’s offered no endorsement either, he’s been less hostile to Trump than his fellow Utah leaders, praising his call to focus more American dollars on domestic infrastructure and signaling support for Trump if he’s the party’s nominee.
Interviews with the state’s last three governors reveal a Utah-based discord that doubles a microcosm of the dispute wracking Republican insiders around the country. Huge swaths of Republican Party loyalists are working feverishly to deny Trump the GOP nomination — afraid he could redefine the party’s brand and doom it to electoral oblivion for a generation, if not destroy it altogether. Yet their attempts to bring down Trump, while united in principal, have been scattershot and at times at cross-purposes in practice.
You can look up all the little Red Blogs that are apoplectic about this. Just Google it. I’m still wondering what the Trump v. Clinton general election is going to be all about. I 
keep wondering what those hapless media and pundits who did the debates and townhalls are going to do with both of these folks on the same damn stage. It should be pretty popcorn worthy. Things certainly bounce off Trump much differently than Hillary. The media’s rampant sexism is undoubtedly a contributing factor.
When is a gaffe not a gaffe? When Donald Trump says it.
Over a period of 72 hours earlier in the month, the Republican front-runner faced a campaign crisis after unrest at his events forced him to cancel a rally in Chicago. He responded, not by apologizing but by justifying his supporters’ violent reactions to protesters at his events and offering to pay legal fees.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton spent much of the same period cleaning up misstatements about former first lady Nancy Reagan’s role in addressing the AIDS epidemic, whether her policies would kill coal-mining jobs and her husband’s 1993 health care plan.
The three-day window offered a glimpse into an extraordinary campaign cycle, in which strategists on both sides are wondering whether Trump’s penchant for provocation has shifted the gaffe gauge in American politics.
His bombast already has shaken up the Republican primary contest. Now, as the race moves toward the general election, new questions have arisen about a double standard in political rhetoric —— one for Trump and another for everyone else.
“Trump’s ‘gaffes’ haven’t hurt him because a certain segment of GOP primary voters actually support the things he is saying and the way he is saying them,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former Obama adviser.
Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist and former adviser to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign, says that the image Trump projects as a political outsider has superseded the controversy that surrounds him. Christie has endorsed Trump.
Whether by mistake or intention, there’s little question that Trump’s eruptions are key to his strategy.
I haven’t had a chance to check out the AIPAC meetings today but it’s usually an interesting indicator of foreign policy chops. So, Hillary explained a lot of stuff and is seen as pro-Israel and hawkish. Bernie just skipped the entire thing because foreign policy has never been his thing but his staff sent them a nice glossy brochure. The Donald, well, he’s getting the full on treatment,
But it’s not Trump’s comments or his opaque policy positions on Israel and the Middle East that bother many of the Jewish leaders who plan on protesting him Monday. It’s the general demagogic tone and tenor of a campaign and candidate who, they believe, is dividing the country.
“When he belittles his opponents, refers to ethnic groups as a monolithic group, the way he speaks about immigrants with disdain, the way he encourages violence, those are things that have been turned against Jews and used against Jews in the not-so-distant past. So there is a real sensitivity to that in our community,” Raskin said. “Those are issues we feel a responsibility to respond to as people who are teachers of religion.”
“What Donald Trump has engaged in is something significantly different than any other candidate in political history. For obvious reasons, the challenge to those who are somehow ‘the other,’ and the use of inflammatory language, the rhetoric of hate and division, we think is unbecoming not only of a presidential candidate but anybody in American political discourse,” said Rabbi Irwin Zeplowitz of Port Washington, New York, whose newly formed group, “Come Together Against Hate,” plans to sit through Trump’s speech in silent protest.
Michael Koplow, the policy director for the Israel Policy Forum based in Washington, wrote last week about the importance of sending a message to Trump.
“AIPAC cannot be seen as legitimizing Trump, even if it provides him with a pulpit,” he wrote on the IPF’s ‘Matzav’ blog. “If this means allowing the crowd to boo, or multiple anonymous quotes to journalists from AIPAC grandees about how odious they find Trump, or some other way of signaling that Trump is outside the boundaries of what is acceptable in the American political arena, it must be done. … Trump must be rejected not on the basis of his approach to Israel; he must be rejected on the basis of everything else. What he does or does not think about Israel is ancillary to the conversation, because American Jews and the state of Israel do not need a friend who looks like this.”
Hillary went after Trump at AIPAC showing she’s shifted to the General Election as she should. As you know, I’m not an all out supporter of what Israel’s been up to recently under Bibi. So, i’ll put this up with that caveat.
Hillary Clinton used a speech today on Israel and Palestine to slam her potential opponent in the general election, Donald Trump, accusing him of being unqualified to take on the challenges in the Middle East.
“We need steady hands. Not a president who says he’s neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who knows what on Wednesday because everything’s negotiable,” the Democratic presidential front-runner said during remarks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee gathering in Washington, D.C., referring to Trump’s recent comment that he is “neutral” on Israel and Palestine.
“America can’t ever be neutral when it comes to Israel’s security or survival. We can’t be neutral when rockets rain down on residential neighborhoods. When civilians are stabbed in the street, when suicide bombers target the innocent,” she continued.
“Some things aren’t negotiable,” she added, “And anyone who doesn’t understand that has no business being our president.”
Hillary and her advisors are being quite open about their strategy on facing Trump in the General.
Neither the Clinton campaign nor several independent super PACs working on her behalf plan to respond with the same brass-knuckles style that Trump has taken with his Republican opponents, aides and outside supporters said. But in their view, Trump isn’t Teflon: Republicans waited too long to go after him, and they went about it the wrong way.
“What the Republicans did was too little, too late,” said David Brock, who runs two pro-Clinton super PACs now engaged in researching and responding to Trump. “It was petty insults. It was not strategic.”
Justin Barasky, spokesman for the large pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA, said Republican candidates committed “malpractice” by failing to raise liabilities from Trump’s past or aggressively challenge him on offensive or incorrect statements.
Implicit in the effort is real worry about Trump’s outsider appeal in a year dominated by working-class anger and economic anxiety. The prospect that Trump could compete for some of the blue-collar voters who have flocked to Sanders, for instance — or to reorder the map of competitive states to include trade-affected Michigan or Pennsylvania — has prompted Clinton’s allies to leave nothing to chance.
Yet, they also believe that, although Trump has motivated a loyal plurality of supporters in primary contests, he has limited ability to expand that support once the Republican field clears. Because of the litany of controversial pronouncements he has made, they expect a Trump nomination to make it easier to rally women, Latino and African American voters to turn out for Clinton. In fact, her aides are planning for a historic gender gap between Clinton and Trump.
Given Trump’s willingness to attack his opponents — and his pivot to going after Clinton in recent days — one clear presumption has emerged about the fall contest: It will be ugly.
That’s one reason the former secretary of state plans to counter Trump with high-road substance, policy and issues, according to one senior campaign aide. The idea is to showcase what Clinton’s backers see as her readiness for the job without lowering her to what they describe as Trump’s gutter.
Of course, we have yet to get through what Republicans hope will be a brokered convention where they will be looking for some kind of white knight. There is a key convention rule that can be changed and would need to be changed at this point.
That could be one of the reasons the Republican Killer Bunnies are holding their nose and 
giving Ted Cruz a second look. We all know that he’d be bad for all kinds of social justice issues, but he could wreck the economy too. This is from the Street.
The IRS is broken, and the current tax system is convoluted, according to Cruz. He has said he wants doing taxes to “become so simple that they could be filled out on a postcard.”
A simplified tax code is something that Republicans of all stripes have been advocating for years, but Cruz takes this to the extreme.
In 2014 Cruz wrote an op-ed in USA Today calling to abolish the IRS and impose a national flat tax that, as opposed to our current system of progressive taxation, would tax all income levels at the same rate.
Policy wonks argue over the potential economic fallout, but flat tax supporterssuggest that the increased spending resulting from abolishing a complicated tax code with its attendant incentives would give government revenues, in the case of a 17% flat tax, a 1.8 percentage-point shot in the arm.
In a plan like the one Cruz suggests, the poor and middle class would pay more in taxes, but the rich would pay less and have more money to invest back into the economy. A flat tax system would also remove incentives toward consumption by eliminating the various deductions that offset costs, and instead encourage savings. Advocates also argue that the possibility of reaching a higher tax bracket would no longer disincentivize people from earning more and crossing a tax bracket threshold, thus contributing to long-term economic growth.
According to a seminal study by the National Center for Policy Analysis, the flat tax would boost the production core of the economy in every area by getting rid of corporate tax avoidance schemes, except for subsidized agriculture since tax subsidies would be lost there. In the case of a 17% flat tax, there’s also the suggestion that the housing sector would see a 1.5% uptick.
Flat tax opponents, however, argue that such a policy would increase the national deficit because of lost tax revenue in the higher brackets and also would cause outsized economic burdens on the poor while favoring the rich who can shoulder the same tax rates more easily.
Here’s the same analysis with Hillary if you’d like to read it. There is similar analysis for the other candidates. You can compare Bernie and Hillary’s Wall Street policy as viewed 
by Wall Street insiders. It’s kind’ve interesting.
My personal thoughts are that Trump will continue to sound more reasonable other than when he’s out the stump with the likes of Arizona’s Sheriff Joe. He’s beginning to get some surrogates–like Palin and Christie–who have no problem sounding outrageous and mean. We’ll just have to see. He’s already called Hillary tired and low energy but it seems like a vanilla threat since every one appears to be smeared with that one.
So, tonight is a townhall with all five remaining candidates on CNN. We will be live blogging it later. Also, tomorrow is the next set of elections. We’ll live blog that too! So stay tuned for more of “Attack of the Killer Rabbits”.
What’s on you reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: Low Information Voters (SMH)
Posted: March 18, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Afternoon Reads 77 Comments
Good Afternoon!
I have to admit it still feels like the middle of the night to me. It looks like the middle of the night from my desk window. I do know–because my brain works–that it’s just damned daylight savings time freaking with my internal clock again. My brain always wins the argument though. I know I can’t ignore the time change even though I really really want it to go away. I know it’s longer than it used to be. (That’s another product of DUBYA’s shock and awe attacks on the nation.) I doubt that the US Congress will buck the Leisure Industry lobby and get rid of it. That’s the story of my life. My brain always wins the argument.
Some times it amazes me how many people can shut down any ability they’ve developed in math, science, reality, and life in general to believe what they want to believe. BB’s the psychologist around here so maybe she can explain it to me. My Facebook and Twitter feeds are cluttered up with so much nonsense these days that it’s enough to make a professor weep. My mantra these days is believe me, the math is the math. Do you know what kind of probabilities we’re talking here? It’s all to no avail.
This story sort’ve sums up what I keep seeing but in a macro kind’ve way. It’s not Florida Man for a change but East Texas Man is just about right there with him. This fossil enthusiast-not a rocket scientist or even 5th grade scientist with a chem kit–says he found fossils from Noah’s flood in his back yard.
“From Noah’s flood to my front yard, how much better can it get,” Wayne Propst said.
Propst is stunned. He was helping his aunt lay some dirt outside her home in Tyler when he found this.
“What’s really interesting to me is we’re talking about the largest catastrophe known to man, the flood that engulfed the entire world,” Propst said.
He called up self-proclaimed fossil expert Joe Taylor who confirmed that what Propst found is in fact from the time of Noah’s ark and he says finding those fossils in Tyler is rare.
“I’ve never heard of anything about that from over there, I’m surprised he found it there,” Taylor said.
For days, Wayne and his aunt Sharon have been combing through this dirt with the help of some neighborhood kids.
“I just take my toothbrush and work on it until we get it,” Wayne’s aunt Sharon Givan said.
And send pictures off to Taylor.
“To think that like he says that we have something in our yard that dated back to when God destroyed the earth. I mean, how much better could anything be,” Givan said.
But those damned experts at UT Austin just won’t let a man have his delusions. Why is it that they just can’t let a man and his love of fairy tales be?
But one expert at the University of Texas at Austin isn’t so sure. He said that the fossils predate humans by millions of years.
“The rocks there are about 35-40 million years old, and these little turret snails are commonly found in marine rocks of that age,” said James Sagebiel, Collections Manager of the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections. “It’s not unusual.”
James Sagebiel said this type of fossil is usually found in sandy soil and the reason it’s here is not due to a great global flood.
“The Texas coastline would have run several miles closer inland than what it is today,” said Sagebiel. “So where Tyler is today would essentially be the coastline.”
Sagebiel said the scientific evidence points to the earth being billions of years old. And that there’s no evidence of a great global flood, as described in the Noah’s Ark story.
So, the Bernie memes and koolaid are in. We’re deep in the doo doo. For example, I found out today that Bernie says “Hillary is running out of deep red states” yet, I look at the 2016 Primary schedule and see a list that sort’ve defies whatever attempt at logic that was. Yes, 
Sky Dancers, Arizona, Indiana, Wyoming, Alaska, West Virginia, Idaho, Kentucky have suddenly turned blue. Imagine the surprised look on my face! Facts just don’t seem to bother people any more. Journalists and low information voters alike have decided they dislike Hillary based on a whole bunch of things that aren’t true and have been proven untrue.
Clinton has been in the public eye for so long, journalists have long since formulated a storyline about her, as former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis recently observed. Their view—and portrayal—of her as “remote and programmed,” he said, is “nonsense” and impervious to accounts by those who know or meet her that she is actually warm, smart and funny. Political opponents have had decades to dredge up (or fabricate) accusations, with a smoke-there’s-fire (you might say blame-the-victim) result. Whitewater! Benghazi! Email! After endless investigations, each accusation has turned out to be groundless. Yet the impression remains: she’s been the object of so many accusations and investigations, she must be doing something wrong. Hence the impression she’s not trustworthy.
There is also a self-fulfilling prophecy element to Clinton’s long history with the press. Part of the reason that they see, and depict, her as stiff and measured (and therefore inauthentic) surely is what she herself saidrecently: she’s not a natural politician—something that is as ironic as it is obvious, since her being a seasoned politician is one of the main criticisms raised against her. But another part of it, no doubt, is that she has had so much experience having her words and actions turned against her, it’s no wonder she might be cautious in choosing them. And this, too, started with her hair.
When Clinton first appeared on the national stage back in 1992, the young wife of the Arkansas governor running for president, she kept her natural-brown hair off her face with a headband. This sparked an avalanche of criticism, so she colored her hair and had it styled, which led to a new round of accusations: she was nefariously manipulating her image! Other damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t attacks were also particular to her as a woman. Because the Clintons kept their small daughter out of the public eye, polls showed that people thought they were childless, a condition that stigmatizes women. When evidence emerged that Clinton was a devoted mother, Margaret Carlson writing in TIME found her guilty of “yuppie overdoting on her daughter.”
All these forces have played a role in Clinton being seen as inauthentic and untrustworthy. And they are all related to the double bind that confronts women in positions of authority, as I recently wrote in the WashingtonPost. A double bind means you must obey two commands, but anything you do to fulfill one violates the other. While the requirements of a good leader and a good man are similar, the requirements of a good leader and a good woman are mutually exclusive. A good leader must be tough, but a good woman must not be. A good woman must be self-deprecating, but a good leader must not be.
Sanders is appealing when he comes across as tough by railing against Wall Street and corporations, and as comfortingly homey and authentic with his rumpled clothes and hair and down-home Brooklyn accent. When Clinton is tough, a characteristic many see as unfeminine, it doesn’t feel right, so she must not be authentic. And a disheveled appearance would pretty much rule her out as an acceptable woman. As Robin Lakoff, the linguist who firstwrote about the double bind confronting women, put it, male candidates can have it both ways but Clinton can have it no ways.
The biggest nitwit meme I’ve been seeing these days comes under the heading of there’s no excitement for Hillary. WTF? Bernie keeps getting on TV to insist only he can beat Trump. But look at the damned vote count. Who is beating Trump and who is NOT beating Trump?
Considering that narrative, one would expect Clinton to be faring far worse in the primaries. Instead, she currently holds a popular vote and delegate lead over Sanders that far surpasses Obama’s lead over her at this point in the race in 2008.
This is no accident. An examination of Clinton voters and their motivations might reveal that the narrative that most media outlets have been feeding us this election cycle is dubious at best. Because if the biggest vote-getter of either party is Hillary—by a large margin—then that suggests the electorate is not necessarily as angry as pundits claim. It further suggests that perhaps some people are tired of hearing about how angry they are, and are quietly asserting their opinions at the ballot box. If Democrats are so angry, Clinton would not be in the position she is today. Is it really so farfetched to claim that quite a few Democrats aren’t voting for Sanders precisely because he seems angry? Which isn’t to suggest that people aren’t angry—certainly many Republican primary voters seem to be. Rather, it is to suggest that voters who aren’t angry are still showing up at the polls, despite being ignored in news stories.
Of course, angry voters make for sexier clickbait. So it’s not too surprising that we’re not seeing front-page headlines that scream, “Satisfied Obama Supporters Show Up in Droves.” Furthermore, Trump and Sanders have seen enormous crowds at their rallies, and exuberant support on social media platforms.
So perhaps Clinton voters don’t show up at rallies so much. Perhaps they are a bit less passionate on Facebook, share fewer articles, give less money to their candidate (she does have a super PAC, after all). But what they are doing is perhaps the only thing that actually matters in an election. They are showing up to vote. In numbers that no other candidate can boast.
It’s certainly curious to presume, as many do, that Clinton’s supporters are somehow less enthusiastic than Sanders’s are. How is enthusiasm measured, if not by actual vote count?
So here are some things worth reading today.
Clinton is kicking butt and taking names in NY: RCP
Clinton is kicking butt in CA: RCP
So much for the Bernie’s gonna cream her in Deep Blue States.
Clinton owes her commanding lead to African American Women.
I call this Sistertude !!!! Sisters are into doing it for themselves!!!
The bedrock of her winning campaign is African-American women, and, as a group, these women seem pretty damn determined to vote for her.
“They are the absolute heart of the party,” Jaime Harrison, the South Carolina Democratic Party chairman said of African-American women in a comment posted on Sidewire (the political communication platform I work for). “Hillary is their BFF.”
The connection isn’t lost on Clintonworld. Her last two major ads featured the “Mothers of the Movement” who lost children in killings involving police and ABC television luminaries Shonda Rhimes, Viola Davis and Kerry Washington, all of whom (in case you’ve been living on a television-free planet) are black.
It is not common for a presidential candidate to run ads that feature an all-African American cast — or, in the case of the ABC stars’ ad, a mostly African-American cast. Ellen Pompeo of “Grey’s Anatomy,” who is white, was also in the spot.
But it’s not unusual for Clinton to rely on African-American women. Over the years, her top aides have included Maggie Williams and Cheryl Mills, owners of two of the sharpest minds in the political world.
More compelling, though, are the numbers.
Consider exit polling from the dozen states where there were enough African-American Democratic primary voters to adequately survey both how white men and women voted and how black men and women voted.
African-American women supported Clinton at between 66 percent (Michigan and Illinois) and 93 percent (Alabama) in those dozen states, according to data on CNN’s Website.
I’d call that enthusiasm too! So, why are young white college kids getting all the press?
Bernie is getting more hypocritical in his quest to win. It appears to be coming at any cost now including his purity ring. First he wanted to get rid of super delegates calling them establishment and corrupt! Not now.
So, Rachel asked again whether he might try to convince superdelegates to side with him, even if he’s behind in pledged delegates. Sanders said he and his campaign are “going to do the best we can in any and every way to win,” but he still avoided comment on the specific approach he’s prepared to take.So, Rachel asked again. For those who missed it, this was the exchange that stood out.MADDOW: I’m just going to push you and ask you one more time. I’ll actually ask you from the other direction. If one of you – presumably, there won’t be a tie – one of you presumably will be behind in pledged delegates heading into that convention. Should the person who is behind in pledged delegates concede to the person who is ahead in pledged delegates in Philadelphia?SANDERS: Well, I – you know, I don’t want to speculate about the future and I think there are other factors involved. I think it is probably the case that the candidate who has the most pledged delegates is going to be the candidate, but there are other factors.It was arguably one of the more controversial things Sanders has said this year.When the race for the Democratic nomination first got underway, many saw this same scenario, but in reverse: it seemed possible that Sanders would do well in primaries and caucuses, and Clinton would turn to powerful superdelegates to elevate her anyway.That possibility, not surprisingly, enraged many of Sanders’ backers. The Hill published this report in early February:
All is fair and good as long as Bernie is the one to do it. Same with using Shadowy SuperPacs. Try this one on for size: Bernie Sanders Gets an Alaska ‘Super PAC’ Aimed At Millennials. This one operates on murky legal ground.
Now, there is a pro-Sanders super PAC just for the millennials of Alaska.
The Anchorage-based America’s Youth PAC, made up almost entirely of former Bernie 2016 campaign staffers, is the latest unconventional outside group to throw its support behind the Vermont senator. Its leaders broke off from the Sanders campaign last week and have holed up in an old mall on the outskirts of town, just steps away from the official campaign’s office in the same building.
Despite Sanders’ fading odds for the Democratic nomination, America’s Youth PAC’s 10-person team is canvassing, making buttons and registering voters in the hopes of giving him a victory in the Alaska caucuses on March 26 against Hillary Clinton. Chris Johnson, the executive director of the super PAC and former Sanders field director in Alaska, said they abandoned the Sanders campaign over “creative differences.”
“We were all former staffers on the Bernie Sanders campaign and we came to a realization that there was a niche where we could do some really good work,” Johnson said. “We really felt like there was a niche of activating new voters that was left untapped.”
It is an unusual arrangement: Instead of billionaire donors looking to fund television ads, Sanders campaign staffers have formed a dissenting splinter group in the northernmost state and campaign on the ground for the Alaska caucus. From a drab shopping mall storefront, they want to take on Clinton’s powerful alliance on the Acela corridor.
The group also exists in murky legal territory, as federal election law requires a “cooling-off period” that prevents a candidate’s staff from leaving the campaign and doing certain kinds of work for a supporting super PAC within 120 days. America’s Youth PAC disputes it is doing anything illegal, but several independent campaign finance experts said it was pressing the boundaries of election law.
The so-called “cooling off period” is intended to prevent coordination with the campaign. Technically, the law prohibits former campaign staff from assisting on paid “public communications” that rely on material knowledge from the campaign.
Bernie’s being nasty to our President again. It’s not only Republicans that don’t want President Obama doing his job. Bernie Sanders Says He Will Ask Obama to Withdraw SCOTUS Nomination if He Wins. Another link to Maddow, btw. Oh, and Bernie is all about getting rid of citizens united and no SuperPacs. (Don’t forget to go reread that last link so you can see exactly how clearly hypocritical the man can be.)
And of course, Bernie is now after Clinton’s pledged delegates that resulted from actual votes. Feeling the Fucking Bern yet? BB wrote on Master Taddler’s presser a few days ago but just thought I’d remind you.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign believes it can win the nomination by persuading delegates pledged to Hillary Clinton to defect.
In a call with journalists just now, Senior Strategist Tad Devine suggested that a string of victories from his candidate in the second half of the race would put “enormous” pressure on Clinton delegates.
“A front-runner in a process like this needs to continue to win if you want to keep hold of delegates,” he said. He said pledged delegates are not bound to the candidate they are pledged to.
“I think that pressure is going to build. If we can win, I think the pressure on the other side is going to grow and be enormous.”
This is a major step beyond the Bernie camp’s reported push to persuade superdelegates to switch their endorsement.
Here are Devine’s comments in full, made in a briefing call that we were on this afternoon.
If you really want to read Master Taddler’s tales follow the link to Bernie Wonderland. Bernie is now leaving pressers when reporters ask him questions he doesn’t like. How very Trumpish of him!!!
So, here’s my favorite read of the day from Amy Freid Bangor: Four reasons why it’s so unlikely Sanders will win the Democratic nomination. Freid basically responds to all the totally unrealistic Bernie wet dreams I’m seeing since the Mega Tuesday Bloodbath. Oh, btw, Missouri has been officially called for Hillary so she did officially sweep all five states. Again, the big shitty argument is that the landscape improves as we move towards the West Coast and back to the East coast.
First, one specific claim is that Sanders will do much better in the next eight contests.
Those are the Arizona and Wisconsin primaries, the Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Washington state and Wyoming caucuses.
That’s true for the caucuses and indeed the Sanders campaign could win the primary in the very progressive Wisconsin, although the recent polls have it close.
However, there are just not that many delegates in all of those contests. Taken together, there are just a few more than in just Florida and Illinois. Clinton won Florida huge and Illinois narrowly, netting 69 more delegates more than Sanders from those two states.
Moreover, Arizona is by no means a slam dunk for Sanders. He has weaknesses on immigration and gun control, both of which matter in Arizona, due to the shooting of former Rep. Gabby Gifford and the large Hispanic population.
In fact, the most recent poll I could find for Arizona found Clinton with 50%, 24% for Sanders and the rest undecided. Given that Arizona is the third largest of the eight states, a good Clinton win here could provide enough delegates to wipe out Sanders leads from small caucus states or even from a small win in one of the large states.
Second, the states following those include many states that, based on demographics and their past voting behavior, are likely to be good states for Clinton.
For example, April 19 and 26 include a trove of 753 delegates in New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maryland and Pennsylvania.
New York elected Clinton as U.S. Senator with 55% in 2000 and 67% in 2008. The most recent polls have her 21 points ahead. It’s also a diverse state with a closed primary. All of that suggests she should do well there.
As for the other states of April 19 and 26, unless something comes along to seriously transform the race, Clinton will likely win all or most of the others.
There are of course other states after this, and those could be won by both candidates or be close, but if Clinton gets to April 27 having done well on April 19 and 26, any chance for Sanders winning most pledged delegates is pure fantasy.
My final offering of the day is this: “Hillary Won the Confederacy”: How Bernie’s Campaign is Subtly Fueling Racist Rhetoric of His Supporters. How is this not as freaking racist as the STrump?
This is one of the most racist things I’ve seen during the entire primary season and it comes from Bernie Supporters NOT TRUMP.
Ed Schultz. Michael Moore. The Huffington Post. Shaun King of New York Daily News. Prominent Bernie Sanders backers in the media and culture have for some time been perpetuating the reprehensible idea that black voters – who delivered 30, 40, 50 point wins for Hillary Clinton in southern states don’t count because their states are likely to vote for the Republican in the general election in November.
But it isn’t just his prominent supporters. The Sanders campaign has itself repeated that message, albeit in more subtle forms. After Hillary Clinton won seven out of 11 states on March 1, Sanders senior adviser Tad Devine and campaign manager Jeff Weaver sent the message that the “calendar” ahead didn’t look good for Clinton, intimating that the black-heavy southern states where Clinton racked up big margins were about done voting (well, that prediction didn’t work out too well).
It was only a matter of time before a prominent Sanders backing organization would do something like this:
Progressive Democrats of America is an ultra ideologue Leftist organization that backed Bernie Sanders’ candidacy early. After Sanders lost 5 out of 5 states on Tuesday, PDA has taken the logical next step to what Bernie’s mouthpieces have been doing for more than a month: they have gone from minimizing the black vote as insignificant because they live in “red states” to minimizing them as part of the confederacy.
That is outrageous. The people providing Clinton’s huge margins, black voters, are by and large descendants of slaves, and to associate them with the confederacy is a disgusting display of racism.
There’s examples from Weaver and Master Taddler Devine at the link. Be sure to read it. It’s not that long.
So, anyway, I was already sick of that shrill, finger wagging man. I’m really sick of him and his little followers now. Where’s a good house to drop when you need it?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday Reads: Nasty Desperation = f(Election Math)
Posted: March 14, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Afternoon Reads 60 Comments
Good Afternoon!
We’re at the point in the primaries where intellectual dishonesty has taken on an ugly life. It’s probably because the paths to victory for any one that’s not Donald Trump or not Hillary Clinton are narrowing drastically. While some people hang on the overall results of one state. Savvy politics followers know it’s the math.
For Bernie, he has to win Big States by a BIG margin for the math to come close to working for him. This is highly unlikely.
As of today, Clinton has 1,231 delegates to Sanders’s 576 — a lead of 655. That means that Clinton has 51.7 percent of the 2,383 delegates she needs to become the Democratic Party’s nominee.
Subtract superdelegates — Clinton is dominating even among this group of elected officials and party luminaries — and she has 766 delegates to Sanders’s 551, a margin of 215. (Worth noting: That is a wider lead than the margin by which Clinton ever trailed then-Sen. Barack Obama in the long slog of the 2008 primary race.)
That lead may not seem momentous. After all, almost 3,000 delegates are yet to be allocated in the primaries and caucuses to come. The problem for Sanders is that Democrats allocate their delegates proportionally in every state — meaning that between now and when the process ends June 7, there is no state where Clinton will be shut out.
Winning, then, is not enough for Sanders. He has to win by a lot to make up any real ground.
Clinton has already done that. Take, for example, Alabama. She won there March 1 by 59 points and gained 38 more delegates than Sanders. Or Georgia on that same day, beating Sanders by 43 points and netting 55 delegates. Or the aforementioned Mississippi, where Clinton’s 66-point win translated to a net gain of 28 delegates.
Tomorrow is an extremely important day for the Republicans because Florida is a winner take all in a closed primary state. Hillary Clinton is likely to do well in the state since the state’s she’s lost have been due to Republican cross-over vote (likely sandbaggers) and independents (any one’s guess). However, there’s an all out fight to stop the Donald there and in Ohio because the magic number is within Trump’s reach.
Tuesday might be the most decisive day of the 2016 GOP campaign. Depending on the results, one or more of the remaining candidates might be forced to drop out. And Donald Trump might be unstoppable.
If Trump rolls to victories in Florida and Ohio — the first states on the calendar this year that award every single delegate to the statewide winner — his lead becomes all but insurmountable. Without home-state wins, Marco Rubio and John Kasich would have little cause to continue.
But if Rubio or Kasich can pick off either of the delegate-rich battlegrounds, the calculus of the race could be rewritten. Though neither underdog has a mathematical shot to overtake Trump before July’s convention, big wins Tuesday could breathe life into efforts to deny the billionaire the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination — and make a contested convention in July a likely scenario.
Ted Cruz doesn’t appear poised to win any of the five states on the ballot, but he could corral delegates in the three other states on the calendar: Missouri, Illinois and North Carolina.
With 367 delegates at stake Tuesday — the second largest one-day haul of the campaign — here’s the state-by-state breakdown:
You can follow the link to Politico for the numbers at stake.
There are some new polls out but one thing you have to remember is that a poll only captures a sample of a defined population at a particular point in time. I prefer to follow those folks that do election polling math with megadata which means their numbers are based on a “poll of polls”. Nate Silver of the NYT and Dr. Sam Wang of Princeton use this kind of methodology. But, here’s the latest capture of data from PPP for Dem Voters in tomorrow’s battleground states.
It does look like Hillary’s Southern Fire Wall strategy will continue to hold which again, makes the math for Bernie Sanders precipitously uphill to the point of impossible without a massive Super Delegate betrayal. Remember, when you don’t get Republicans voting in Democratic Primaries or Independents, you say huge Hillary Victories.
New Public Policy Polling surveys of the 5 states that will vote on Tuesday find that the Democratic contests in Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio are all toss ups, while Hillary Clinton maintains a significant advantage in Florida and North Carolina. The surveys were conducted on behalf of the VoteVets Action Fund.
Clinton leads Bernie Sanders just 46/41 in Ohio and 48/45 in Illinois, while narrowly trailing Sanders in Missouri 47/46. Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri are all open primary states and Sanders is benefiting from significant support from independent voters and a small swath of Republicans planning to vote in each state, putting him in position to potentially pull an upset sweep of the region on Tuesday night:
State Overall Democrats Independents Republicans OH Clinton 46-41 Clinton 55-37 Sanders 53-20 Sanders 56-21 IL Clinton 48-45 Clinton 59-37 Sanders 69-18 Sanders 62-23 MO Sanders 47-46 Clinton 56-39 Sanders 62-23 Sanders 66-23 Clinton is better positioned in the Southern states voting on Tuesday. She leads 57/32 in Florida, and 56/37 in North Carolina. She benefits in Florida from it being a closed primary state- her lead with Democrats is comparable to what it is in the three Midwestern states voting on Tuesday but that’s the entire electorate in the Sunshine State, putting her in a strong position. In North Carolina, Clinton has already accrued a huge lead during early voting. Among those who have already cast their ballots she leads 68/29, and the race only gets closer overall because her advantage is a tighter 50/40 spread among those planning to vote on Election Day.
A new Quinnipiac Poll has Trump winning Florida while being tied with Kasich in Ohio. This is yet another indication that Ohio is close so it may be that we won’t get Republicans boosting Bernie Sanders.
Because we’re coming down to the do or die portion of the election cycle, we’re beginning to see some really intellectually dishonest as well as down right nasty electioneering.
This particular one floors me. It comes from the Bernie Sanders Campaign. You can see Tweet with the pic of 
Hillary here basically aligning her with–of all groups–the NRA. It’s really pretty well known that many of Bernie’s wins in open primaries have come from the NRA actively phonebanking and throwing its Super Pac behind hind Sanders. (H/T to Kim Frederick) . The NRA actively tweets support of Bernie Sanders during debates. I’m not exactly sure who is going to believe this other than low information, last minute voters who are just wrapped up in the moment.
The NRA tweeted that Sanders was “spot-on” when, in a contentious exchange during CNN’s Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Michigan, he defended his position favoring protection of gun manufacturers from legal liability over the use of their products.
“Sen. Sanders was spot-on in his comments about gun manufacturer liability/PLCAA,” the organization wrote, linking to a story explaining the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) and Sanders’ support for it.
Sanders also voted against the Brady Bill. He voted for letting guns on to trains. Here’s Bernie Sanders on all of his pro-gun votes if you really want the huge list showing why this tweet is so intellectually dishonest that every one in the campaign should be growing Pinocchio noses now.
The other disturbing thing is the number of policies and issues that now seem to be popping up from the Sanders Campaign that were never around before. Sanders now has an AIDS policy. Plus, after a debate question, he now has a policy on HBCs. Hillary’s had policies on these things since the beginning. Is he responding to the criticism he’s a one issue candidate or is he just becoming a Pander Bear?
The worst one deals with something near and dear to me. Bernie says Hillary voted to enable the BP Oil Spill. It’s a complete, baldface lie. It’s also a new one.
“With Sanders scheduled to address a rally here [Tampa] tonight in this Gulf of Mexico coastal community, his campaign cited the 2006 vote on the gulf drilling bill. Sanders, then a member of the House, voted against the legislation. Clinton, then a senator, voted for the bill. After the bill passed, the oil giant BP obtained a permit to drill in the area where one of its rigs exploded in 2010, killing 11 workers and causing a catastrophic spill of of 130 million gallons of oil into the gulf.”
— From a news release issued by the Bernie Sanders campaign, March 10, 2016
The Bernie Sanders campaign, touting an event to be held in Tampa, sought to tie Hillary Clinton to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill by citing a vote she cast in 2006 …
In a floor statement at the time, Clinton said that “as part of a balanced energy policy, we need to expand domestic oil and gas production where it has local support and can do so in an environmentally sound way.” But she warned that she would oppose any effort by the House to expand offshore drilling to areas not permitted in the Senate bill.
So, just to be clear, Sanders, who was then in the House, voted against a different bill than the one Clinton voted for. The House never took up the Senate version. But after the GOP lost control of the Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, the Senate version was folded into a tax bill and passed during the lame-duck session. Sanders also voted against the omnibus bill; it passed the Senate in a voice vote.
Another Bernie baldface lie was that Hillary some how has responsibility for Rahm Emmanuel. This undoubtedly comes as a last minute effort to appeal to black voters in Chicago. The entire campaign still hasn’t quite figured out how to speak with black Americans.
If you want to critique why some black people are voting for Clinton afford us the same complexity and nuance you would critique any other group with. Maybe some voters in the black electorate are already aware of Clinton’s flaws but are willing to use them as leverage against her to make stronger campaign commitments, so that they can hold her feet to the fire if she were to be elected. Or maybe some voters might actually be selfish capitalists who are only interested in their bottom line. Literally, anything other than the “These foolish negroes don’t know what’s best for them” narrative that’s currently being pushed.
I guess the most frustrating thing about this whole ordeal is that black people have played a huge role in getting Bernie this far in the race to begin with. The Black Lives Matter movement is arguably the catalyst that allowed a candidate like Bernie to emerge in the democratic party. Black Twitter and black protestors have created the atmosphere where candidates are discussing black lives, police brutality and systematic racism during national presidential debates. However, even our ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ brethren still show flashes of smug superiority that makes many people want to roll their eyes so far into the back of their heads they can see their own thoughts.
The final thing that just frosts my cupcakes is how Bernie thinks that Donald Trump needs to quit inciting violence because he’s responsible for his voters but Bernie isn’t responsible for his out of control supporters. Bernie is just as much of a “rage peddler” as the Donald.
Bernie Sanders may not be offering to pay the legal bills of his supporters who punch protesters (perhaps that has something to do with his massive credit card debt), but he’s stoking the fire of anger just the same. Media types like to describe this as “tapping into the anger” of people mad at “the system” for various reasons, but this has gone far beyond tapping and turned into inflaming. Rather than channeling a destructive emotion like anger and channeling it to constructive change, both Trump and Sanders have been telling their supporters that if anything, they should be even angrier (and thus, more destructive).
Rage-peddling has consequences. Just yesterday, Trump’s supporters clashedwith protesters in skirmishes that left some injured at a Donald Trump event in Chicago – which The Donald ended up canceling. On Friday, a Trump supporter punched a peaceful protester in face as the protester was leaving. And now Bernie Sanders’ supporters are sharing the following on social media, while having a good laugh.
You can follow that link to a well thought out essay with lots of examples on on the out right misogyny that Bernie incites. Meanwhile, Trump considers his rallies to be “lovefests”. The Republicans may have toned their last debate down some, but I doubt that ambiance will hold. Rubio is undoubtedly sunk. He’s also whining.
Marco Rubio said Monday that his presidential run would be over if his campaign manager forcibly grabbed a reporter, as Donald Trump’s top aide has been accused of doing to a Breitbart reporter.
The Florida senator told conservative radio host Mike Gallagher that if Corey Lewandowski really did grab Michelle Fields, the Breitbart reporter who resigned on Sunday, “it’s one more example of what’s happening here at these events.”
“If my campaign manager had done that, my campaign would be over. He would have had to resign, and my campaign may be over. I would have had to quit that very day,” Rubio said.
So, as you can see, there are both quiet and loud and obnoxious acts of desperation. I for one am somewhat ready to have the next few weeks over. I hope the stars are aligned and the voters do the right thing. Then, we can prepare for the ugliness of the General because there will be blood.
We’ll be live blogging the returns tomorrow. Join us!!!
Each of the historical pictures I’ve used today come from the event of a presidential nomination convention. Can you name the year and the two nominated candidates?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday Reads: “Excuse me, I’m Talking!”
Posted: March 7, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Afternoon Reads, Hillary Clinton 55 Comments
Monday again!
So, we’re past Super Tuesday and heading towards the Ides of March. I didn’t think I’d learn much new from the Democratic Debate in Michigan last night. There may have not been any new information but there certainly was a lot of reinforcements of impressions and old information.
Y’all know me. I’m a nerdy girl. I always have been. I play piano. I paint. I love animation. I read The Hobbit in 4th grade for the first of many times and discovered Dr. Who in Grad school. I had a comic book collection as a kid. I was in every AP class in High School. I have a doctorate in financial economics which means I use the same damn math that Rocket Scientists and theoretical physicists use. I love anything nonfiction and documentary. I’ve worked at the FED, lots of banks, and I’ve taught university. I’ve been nearly the only damn woman in the work environment or class many, many times. I had to go through a lot to get there and stay there. I’ve been the brains behind a stupid CEO in quite a few states and cities.
So, believe me when I tell you that there’s always one old quack in the room that talks over women, gives nonverbal cues that what we say is unappreciated, and feels that his opinion is the only one that’s important. Every single one of those experiences came flooding back to me last night in living color accompanied by the ol’ heebie jeebies. Oh, and I’m white and any one whose been to my house prior to the flood of young white hipsters would likely call my neighborhood a “ghetto”. WTF?
Losers* Bernie Sanders: The senator from Vermont had effectively walked a fine line in the previous six debates when it came to attacking Clinton without coming across as bullying or condescending. He tripped and fell while trying to execute that delicate dance on Sunday night. Sanders’s “excuse me, I’m talking” rebuttal to Clinton hinted at the fact that he was losing his temper with her. His “Can I finish, please?” retort ensured that his tone and his approach to someone trying to become the first female presidential nominee in either party would be THE story of the night.
You don’t have to be a woman making her way in a primarily male environment for work to be continually hushed by men. We all know the rules of 
communication are different for us. We have to interrupt frequently to just get a freaking word in edgewise.
It seems the only thing of importance that happened at last night’s Democratic debate is that Hillary Clinton interrupted Bernie Sanders and he shushed her. This has erupted into a big debate on the Twitters and Facespace thing, but I actually think it’s an important topic we need to discuss.
The rules of communication are different for women and men.
Here’s the deal, guys: women don’t like to be shushed. At all. If my husband ever tells me to be quiet or shush — yes, it’s happened — it elicits an intense, visceral, negative response. It makes me furious. And when it happens in a professional setting? It pushes every feminist button I own.
Why? Because you’re telling me I’m not important. You’re discounting me. You’re saying my ideas don’t matter, and that I don’t have the right to express them.
Men interrupt each other all the time and I daresay they don’t have that same response. It’s just how they communicate. But men and women come at communication from very different places.
The way we communicate is one of the many subtle ways women are expected to take a subservient role in society. I know it looks like we’ve come a long way, baby — hey we can vote and wear pants, huzzah — but when you look at basic social interactions, we’re constantly sent the contradictory message that we are second place. We get talked over, our ideas don’t matter, our issues aren’t important to the country at large they’re “women’s issues,” so who really gives a shit. Our work is worth less. Our effort is less valuable. This is the world from a professional woman’s point of view.
“But Beale,” you say, “Hillary interrupted him.” Yes, she did. Of course she did. And this is another thing about the difference between male and female communication: professional women always have to assert themselves to express their opinion. Because women are talked over all the damn time, it’s something we’ve lived with for generations, and many of us have learned how to interrupt if we want to say something.
But, that wasn’t the only moment where we had our doubts about Bernie’s ability to absorb and be interested in the rights of Americans and the 
intersectionality of racism, misogyny, xenophobia and sexual preference. Those of us that experienced the “White People Don’t Know What It’s Like To Live In The ‘Ghetto’ ” moment last night nearly had a collective heart attack if we knew anything about code words used to race-bait since the adoption of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. (Follow that link to a great article by historian Heather Cox Richardson on how the Republicans got to their FrankenTrump Monster.)
Movement Conservatives fought to take control of the party from moderate Republicans. Movement Conservatives stood firmly against taxes and government activism, but they built their power by adding racism to their anti-government crusade. They argued that tax dollars redistributed wealth from hardworking white people to undeserving people of color and women. This argument proved a winner when Movement Conservative Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater’s only five states in 1964–aside from his home state—were in the Deep South. In 1968, Nixon captured Goldwater voters by adopting the Southern Strategy to assure white southerners that the days of federal enforcement of civil rights were ending. In 1980, Reagan began his general election campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been murdered during Freedom Summer, and told the crowd, “I believe in states’ rights.” The message was unmistakable. He also used the image of the “Welfare Queen,” a black woman who stole tax dollars by making fraudulent welfare claims, in winning the presidency.
With a Movement Conservative in the White House, the faction’s leaders tied the Republican Party to tax cuts, the deregulation of business, and the end of social welfare policies. Then, when even racism did not produce enough popular support for their economic policies, leaders welcomed evangelical voters into their movement, promising them conservative social legislation in exchange for their votes.
Trump has just been refreshingly openly racist to the point that he’s publicly attracting white supremacists. It seems to be how he won Louisiana since his big supporter turn out was in David Duke’s old district. New Orleans’ segregationist suburbs gave him his win. No wonder he was so obtuse about Congressman Steve Scalise’s old Stormfront buddies. He’s dropped the old code words and gone straight for the hate.
Now, imagine our surprise when those code words show up on the lips of a candidate for the Democratic nomination in today’s Democratic Party which
is solidly supported by the country’s African American voters.
Social media lit up after U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders told debate watchers “when you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto” during the Flint Democratic presidential primary debate.
The answer came after CNN anchor Don Lemon asked the candidates about possible “racial blind spots” they may have.
“(W)hen you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto,” Sanders responded. “You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car.”
He then went on to call for an end to systemic racism.
But, the statement drew mixed reviews from those on social media.
I spent a good deal of last night and this morning trying to gently explain the entire concept to a really white young guy going to SFU.
So, here’s my nice young BernieBro’s whitesplain. I’ve withheld the name to protect the ignorant.
This is just an opinion, but I don’t think it was that offensive, especially in the context with which he used it by Sen. Sanders in that debate.
There are ways with which you should and should not use “ghetto” in describing something. Using it to describe the terribly unfortunate and specific living circumstances of some families is proper use of that terminology in my eyes.
Again, just my opinion.
I couldn’t let that go especially given this was posted to the page of a black democratic activist’s page and comment stream.
He answered the question on institutional racism by using code words and paradigms of white male privilege. Bringing single women into middle class livelihoods will not mean they will not be making 70¢ on the male dollar any more. Bringing black people into or beyond the middle class will not make access to jobs, education,loans or neighborhoods necessarily available. Poverty occurs across gender and racial lines but the experience of poverty or even middle or upper class livelihoods intersect with racism and misogyny which still exist despite income levels. We have plenty of poor whites in this country but when privileged white men use words like “ghetto” or “thug” we know they are code words specifically applied to the black community. It’s a way to apply the “n” word without speaking it. When white folks are unable to see these things it is because of blind spots they develop while living in a society that advantages whites. While I can never truly experience racism, I can watch and listen to others experience of it and learn about my blind spots and experience of privilege. It’s evident that Sanders has not done this in his many years of living and public service. A person with a tin ear cannot truly experience enough empathy to find ways of leading policy to places where problems are solved for all communities.
And of course, the usual “I have to have the last word cause I’m the guy in this conversation” keeps bringing back responses. I keep getting whitesplaining and mansplaining in one fell swoop. For some reason, these folks are convinced that Bernie was the white MLK. I have no idea why.
You bring up great points, but I disagree that Sanders hasn’t tried to look into his blindness and see past his privilege in order to and understand what poverty and living circumstances look like for poor black families vs other poor families, or even more specifically black folks in general (no matter their walk of life or income levels).
His work during his younger years in university more than establish that, which certainly carries in to a lot of his policies and thoughts as Senator.
To that end, I still don’t think that just because he’s privileged and white that he should be barred from using such terminology as “ghetto” when describing someone’s living situation. Like I said above, the way he said it seemed incorrect, but I seriously doubt that he would stick to that exact wording were he able to elaborate further on what it means to be poverty stricken, no matter your race or ethnicity.
I believe this for my before-mentioned point at the beginning.
You know me, I can’t let this go.
Ok. So my final point on this is to ask you to listen to what black people are saying rather than to rationalize in your mind that both you and Sanders couldn’t possibly be whitesplaining or under the influence of a blind spot.
At this point, my friend wakes up and takes up the lesson.
Kathryn: your last comment on this is spot on.
Sorry, but your defense of Sanders is sort of like when I hear my white friends say, “my grandad is not racist, but…”
While I don’t believe Sanders’s comment came from a place of malice, his experiences POST college activist days (because who hasn’t done crazy shit when they were in college?) have clearly left him out of touch with the black community. The dude was totally winging this answer. And you’d think that after being shut out by black lives matter, and after being crowned by white people as the white Dr. King, he’d be able to speak more intelligently on this subject.
But no. He is, as Clinton pointed out, a one issue candidate. If the topic doesn’t revolve around breaking up big banks, or if he’s unable to pivot to Wall Street, Sanders knows nothing.
Followed by:
Nah, Kathryn is right: Ghetto is a code word that is specifically applied to the black community by politicians. Bernie used it that way himself!
So, the old people in the room get this retort from our BernieBro. Notice how closely this first comment echos the republican meme about playing the race card? Isn’t that special?
There it is, whitesplaining. I guess that’s the trump card.
I did watch the debate, and I don’t understand why you’d think that I wouldn’t understand the moderators question, though, Lester.
I have a question for you though. Kathryn and yourself both mentioned that white males are of privilege, and in Bernie’s case also a politician, use that word to only make mention of the black community.
My question is, would it miraculously be ok for a white male in the middle class to mention ghettos when talking about poverty and living circumstances when, let’s say, maybe he came from the ghetto himself?
I just want to clear the air with that. That seems to be where a lot of this is stemming from.
He continues to be as obtuse as Bernie. Albeit, he’s young so he still has a chance, I suppose. There were many things that upset me last night. None of these things have made me into a Bernie Fan. Just the opposite.
One of the more interesting things I found out was that the NRA was happily tweeting support for Bernie last night. This continues to concern me mightily.
During the debate, CNN moderator Anderson Cooper argued that a suit brought by families of the victims from the Sandy Hook shooting against Remington may not go anywhere. He asked Sanders what he would say to those families.
Sanders replied that if a gun was legally purchased, he disagreed with holding the gun manufacturer liable.
“If that is the point, I have to tell you I disagree. I disagree because you hold people — in terms of this liability thing, where you hold manufacturers’ liable is if they understand that they’re selling guns into an area that — it’s getting into the hands of criminals, of course, they should be held liable.
“But if they are selling a product to a person who buys it legally, what you’re really talking about is ending gun manufacturing in America. I don’t agree with that.”
Hillary Clinton‘s campaign has sought to use Sanders’s position on guns against him. It has particularly lambasted his vote in favor of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in 2005.
Critics say the law provides gun manufacturers with an unprecedented form of immunity that no other industry enjoys, but supporters maintain that it protects the firearms industry from frivolous lawsuits.
The NRA’s tweet for Sanders was quickly highlighted by Correct the Record, a super-PAC that backs Clinton.
Here are the remaining March Election Dates for your information.
Hawaii — Republican Party Caucus March 8, 2016
Idaho — Scheduled Elections: US President for Republican Party and US President for Constitution Party March 8, 2016
Michigan — Presidential Primary Election Day March 8, 2016
Mississippi — State Primary and Presidential Primary Election Day March 8, 2016
Washington DC — Republican Party Convention : Number of Delegates: 19 Total Delegates March 12, 2016
Florida — Presidential Preference Primary Election March 15, 2016
Illinois — Presidential Primary Election and State Primary Election Day March 15, 2016
Missouri — Presidential Preference Primary March 15, 2016
Northern Marianas — Republican Party Caucus : Number of Delegates: 9 Total Delegates March 15, 2016
North Carolina — Presidential Primary and State Primary Election Day March 15, 2016
Ohio — Presidential Primary and State Primary Election Day March 15, 2016
Virgin Islands — Republican Party Caucus : Number of Delegates: 9 Total Delegates March 19, 2016
Idaho — Democratic Party Caucus March 22, 2016
Utah — Presidential Preference Primary Election March 22, 2016
Alaska — Democratic Party Caucus March 26, 2016
Hawaii — Democratic Party Caucus March 26, 2016
Washington — Democratic Party Caucus March 26, 2016
A new poll shows Clinton way ahead in Michigan
Clinton Opens Up Huge Lead in Michigan (Clinton 66% – Sanders 29%)
There continue to be other lies mentioned by Sanders that keep getting repeated. First, he keeps at the how he tried to single handedly stop Wall Street from getting Big Banks when he voted for the Deregulation of Derivatives which was probably the one piece of deregulation law that had the most to do with creating the concentration in banking. Clinton first slammed him with it the CNN debate back on January 18. He’s not stopped the charade.
“You’re the only one on this stage that voted to deregulate the financial market in 2000,” Clinton said, making reference to his support for former President Bill Clinton’s Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
The law effectively gave bankers, or “sophisticated traders,” free rein from pre-existing oversight mechanisms when they wanted to make deals on the sidelines of the major stock exchanges, in “over-the-counter” trading.
Clinton himself would later cop to having made a serious mistake in signing the bill, saying he didn’t understand the extent to which these deals, if they went bad, could ripple across the global economy.
“Even if less than 1% of the total investment community in derivative exchanges, so much money was involved that if they went bad, they could effect 100% of the investments,” he told ABC’s “This Week” in 2010.
The new interesting slam to Sanders was Michigan specific. He voted against helping the Auto Industry because it might help Wall Street at the same time. He was against and for but somewhat against the very successful Auto Bailout. This is another nuanced vote where Sanders decided he wasn’t going to vote for the bill because “purity”.
The bank bailout was so big it had to be doled out in portions. In January 2009, Senate Republicans tried to block the Treasury Department from releasing the second half of the money, some of which was designated for the auto industry. Sanders, based on his opposition to the Wall Street bailout, voted against releasing that money as well.
That vote gave Clinton the opening she needed to hit Sanders as anti-auto bailout on Sunday. “If everybody had voted the way he did, I believe the auto industry would have collapsed, taking 4 million jobs with it,” she said.
(Side note: Having your votes picked apart by opponents is one reason whyit’s tough to run for president as a senator.)
Clinton is technically correct that Sanders voted against releasing the money that went to the auto bailout, but Sanders can also correctly argue that he supported the auto bailout when it wasn’t tied to the Wall Street one.
This back and forth likely isn’t going anywhere; expect both to claim as much over the next few days.
The Export-Import Bank conversation was even more interesting because Sanders actually agrees with Tea Party crazies on this who think it’s a waste of Tax Payer money. Let me get wonky on you. Remember I’m a nerdy girl and economist to boot!
Ex-Im exists to help American businesses sell to customers abroad. Recently, it’s not only not been costing taxpayers anything, it has returned significant amounts of money to the Treasury in the same way Fed profits do.. Bernie’s position threatens a significant number of US jobs. The competitive position of companies like Boeing would be impacted. Boeing specifically needs Ex-Im because it has one competitor on the global stage; Airbus. This industry is a classic duopoly. Airbus is a European entity that enjoys significant support from its own government when competing with contracts around the world. This is actually one area where every one is better off with our Government helping that corporation who couldn’t compete with Airbus given its subsidies. The bank has not relied on any taxpayer money since 2008.
Every year Congress sets a limit on the bank’s financial activities. The bank then borrows money from the Treasury to give out direct loans, which it pays back with interest.
Since 2008, the bank has not relied on taxpayer dollars to cover its operational costs and loan loss reserves. Instead, the bank charges customers fees and interest that it uses to cover those costs in full. Often, the fees generate a surplus, which the bank gives back to the Treasury. In the past five years, the bank has given back $2 billion.
Additionally, the bank’s default rates have historically been lower than private financial institutions — the current default rate is less than 0.25 percent.
The bank hasn’t been completely without losses, though. In 1987, several straight years of losses of more than $250 million to $300 million forced the bank to ask Congress for a $3 billion bailout.
The most recent losses were in the 1990s, following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, said Export-Import Bank Advisory Board member Gary Hufbauer, also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan think tank.
Still, the bank has generated an overall profit of more than $5 billion for the Treasury since 1990. But just looking at cash flow doesn’t give us a full picture.
My final issue with the Bernie lies and tin ear comments is that he continues to insist that he does not take Super Pac Money. Sanders keeps earning Pinocchios for this one. Here’s a pretty comprehensive article on that from Time magazine.
I just would like to add one more thing about last night’s debate. The more I see and hear from the man, the more of an active dislike I take. He should quit before no Dem will work with him in Congress.
Sorry for the really long and late post but I had a helluva lot to say. I probably should’ve put up Nancy Reagan’s obit as a nicety but I still remember how political she was to Rock Hudson at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. I’ll let The Advocate talk about her mixed responses on that account.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: This and That, Good and Bad, Policy and Empty Promises
Posted: February 19, 2016 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Bernie Sanders, Bobby Jindal, Crisis of Public Health care in Louisiana, Harper Lee, Louisiana financial wreck, Sports stealing from Higher Ed, Ted Cruz, unrealistic policy goals 17 CommentsGood Afternoon!
We heard this morning of the passing of the great writer Harper Lee.
Harper Lee, the author of the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird, has died in her hometown of Monroeville, Ala. The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer was 89.
Monroeville city officials confirmed reports of Lee’s death to Alabama Public Radio. Her publisher, HarperCollins, also confirmed the news to NPR.
Her famous novel about a young girl’s experience of racial tensions in a small Southern town has sold tens of millions of copies and been translated into dozens of languages.
Lee’s family issued a statement Friday morning saying that Lee “passed away in her sleep early this morning. Her passing was unexpected. She remained in good basic health until her passing.”
Family spokesman Hank Conner, Lee’s nephew, said:
“This is a sad day for our family. America and the world knew Harper Lee as one of the last century’s most beloved authors. We knew her as Nelle Harper Lee, a loving member of our family, a devoted friend to the many good people who touched her life, and a generous soul in our community and our state. We will miss her dearly.”
The family says that as Lee had requested, a private funeral service will be held.
Lee’s novel is probably one of the greatest stories showing American Life ever written. It is studied by students and beloved by all that read about Scout and see the movie adaptation.
More than a half-century after its publication, the novel continues to be studied by high school and college students. It has sold more than 30 million copies—still selling nearly a million copies per year by the 50th anniversary of its publication in 2010, according to Publishers Weekly–and has been translated into more than 40 languages.
The film adaptation of the novel, with Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as Scout, opened on Christmas Day of 1962 and was an instant hit. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won four, including Best Actor for Peck and Best Screenplay for Horton Foote, who wrote the screenplay for the movie based on the book. Lee became close friends with both of them.
The novel also inspired a generation of lawyers with its portrayal of the gentle, wise Atticus Finch, who defends a black man, Tom Robinson, falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a white woman. Meanwhile, the Finches’ strange neighbor, Boo Radley, who strikes fear in Scout’s and Jem’s hearts, turns out not to be the monster the children expect him to be.
Though Lee denied that the novel was autobiographical, many parallels exist between “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Lee’s own childhood. Her father was also a lawyer who owned the town newspaper. Comparisons have been made between Lee and Scout, the 9-year-old tomboy protagonist, especially in her friendship with Dill, a character widely considered to have been based on Lee’s own childhood friend, Truman Capote.
When he was a child, the author of “In Cold Blood” often stayed with his cousins, who lived next door to the Lees. Capote and Lee collaborated on the early stages of his novel and remained lifelong friends.
The interior of the Monroe County Courthouse was reconstructed on a movie set in Hollywood for the film’s pivotal courtroom scenes, and local actors bring the book to life each spring at the courthouse itself, where they stage “To Kill a Mockingbird” to sellout crowds.
BB wrote extensively about Lee’s publication last year of a novel that delves back into the lives of the Finch family .
A Chicago court is scheduled to hear a lawsuit asking for Cruz to be removed from the ballot in Illinois.
A judge will hear arguments on Friday from an Illinois voter alleging that Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is not a “natural-born citizen” and should be disqualified for the party’s nomination.
Lawrence Joyce, an Illinois voter who has objected to Cruz’s placement on the Illinois primary ballot next month, will have his case heard in the Circuit Court of Cook County in Chicago. Joyce’s previous objection, made to the state’s Board of Elections, was dismissed on February 1. He appealed the decision and was granted a hearing for Friday before Judge Maureen Ward Kirby.
Joyce challenges Cruz’s right to be president in the wake of questions put forth by GOP rival Donald Trump about being born in Canada. Cruz maintains he is a natural-born citizen since his mother is American-born.
“What I fear is that Ted Cruz becomes the nominee, come September, Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida will go forward with his threats and probably several other Democrats will file suit to prevent Ted Cruz from being on the ballot,” Joyce, a pharmacist and attorney from Poplar Grove, Ill, told USA TODAY.
Grayson, a Democrat, has told reporters that he will file a lawsuit contesting Cruz’s citizenship if the senator from Texas wins the GOP nomination.
“What Democrats will do at that point is cherry pick which county courthouse they are going to show up in order to file these petitions,” Joyce said. “And at that point, I fear they’ll get a string of victories in the lower courts and the funding for Ted Cruz would dry up, his numbers would plummet in the polls, he may be forced to give up the nomination.”
The primary and caucus tomorrow continues to be the top headline grabber. I liked this Charlie Pierce item describing the relationship between the Trump Candidacy and the late Lee Atwater. It’s an excellent essay into Atwater’s legacy and life.
What Atwater did was more than inject into Republican politics a modern form of strategic viciousness. With it, he injected an entirely new form of strategic unreality. From that has come the party’s inability to recognize or acknowledge the empirical. By creating an entirely new Dukakis in which his voters could believe, Atwater showed them how to build the bubble and to armor it against reality. The combination of strategic viciousness and strategic unreality has come full flower this year. We have Donald Trump, who is one ring of the circus all to himself, calling his opponents liars and Mexicans rapists, and threatening to sue Ted Cruz, who responds by telling Trump to bring it on, and that he, Cruz, would be happy to depose Trump in discovery personally. And Marco Rubio is telling people that the United States is at the edge of the abyss and that only he can restore it to its former glory. What seemed crude and nasty in 1980 has become sleek and edgeless and as common as milk now.
Both my daughters and I went to public universities where football is so central to the university’s life, fundraising, and culture that everything else seemed underfunded and small by comparison. As a professor and a student I have experienced things that still make me shake my head. Local investigative reporter Lee Zurik dug some things up in our state’s colleges--not the flagship LSU–that will make your toes curl. This is really disheartening given the drain of funds from university’s missions due to the Jindal-caused financial crisis.
Professors laid off. Classes cut. Campus buildings falling apart, and students left wondering why.
These are not simply the risks to higher education in the future. This has been happening, in slow and painful stages, for the last eight years across the state of Louisiana.
Mary Brocato can attest to it.
“I say that I’m the Angelina Jolie of dogs,” she jokes with us at her home in northwest Louisiana, surrounded by her six dogs. “They’re a lot of company for me.”
Brocato lived in New Orleans for 20 years before moving to Natchitoches, where she spent 12 years teaching journalism at Northwestern State University. In the past eight years, Brocato has lost both her job and her husband.
Cutbacks at Northwestern State eliminated the journalism program there; the university fired Brocato, a tenured professor, in the spring of 2011.
“The real sin or crime there was those students… who had started and who had been in the program and got caught in the middle,” Brocato tells us. “And they could not get a degree in journalism.”
The year before Northwestern State cut journalism, chemistry, economics, physics and other programs, the school sent $3,689,522 from its operating budget to athletics. By the time Brocato left, that athletics supplement had increased by almost $300,000.
That’s roughly the same amount as her journalism department’s annual budget; Northwestern State raised its monetary support to athletics while cutting a program that cost about as much money.
“It shows where the emphasis is,” Brocato says, “that there seems to be more emphasis and more accommodation for athletics than there is for academics. And I don’t like it. I think it’s very dishonest… because I don’t think people understand that.”
Brocato’s professorship paid her $77,600 a year. A year after they let her go, the athletics department paid Mississippi Valley State University nearly the same amount of money, $75,000, to come play them in football.
While the school cut professors and programs, administrators paid $75,000 for what’s called a “game guarantee” – essentially trying to guarantee the school a home win in football.
Such guarantees are a surprise to some of the NSU students we spoke with, on campus in Natchitoches.
“I would cry,” one tells us. “Is that like Information that everybody knows? That should be known by everyone.”
Also in 2012, Northwestern State paid another football opponent, Arkansas-Monticello, $37,500. That comes to roughly $112,000 in game guarantees – for a football team that finished that season with a 4-7 record.
“That’s literally throwing money away,” says the student.
“It blows my mind,” says another co-ed.
I taught at one of these regional universities where the football team is like another extension of the local highschool. Maintaining athletics programs at the expense of the education mission of the school is really a
disservice to the community and the students. However, most administrators are convinced the school has to try to support the various programs. I’ve basically seen from the viewpoint of student and professor the major coddling these students get. It’s really time and resource intense and as a brainy little girl, I did not appreciate being frequently circled by athletes trying to “borrow” my work.
Schools aren’t the only thing still suffering from the Jindal Reign of Terror. We face the clear possibility that the poorest among us will no longer have access to health care all over the state. Doctor and nurse training are in jeopardy also.
Several of Louisiana’s privatized safety net hospitals, including University Medical Center in New Orleans and Our Lady of the Lake in Baton Rouge, are considering walking away from their contracts with the state under “best case” budget cut scenarios being debated in the Legislature.
The CEOs of seven hospitals told Senate Finance members Wednesday that the $137.8 million in proposed cuts would either cause steep dropoffs in their ability to deliver care to the poor, or cause them to halt operations altogether. All of the hospitals, which represent every major population center in the state, play a pivotal role in treating the poor and uninsured and are considered a centerpiece of Gov. John Bel Edwards’ Medicaid expansion policy. Many of the hospitals educate hundreds of new doctors annually and place them in jobs across the state.
The threat of canceling contracts with the nine safety net hospitals could mean a major setback for Legislators looking to close the state’s $940 million budget gap through a mix of tax increases and spending cuts. If the contracts are canceled, lawmakers risk leaving Baton Rouge after the special session in March to face constituents angry over health care worker layoffs and patients being told they are losing access to care.
“We’re going to have to hit the reset button,” said state Sen. Fred Mills, a Republican who represents Acadiana. “It would be devastating for my area.”
University Medical Center in New Orleans, which is facing a $44 million cut under the best-case scenario, could present the biggest crisis in the entire partnership system if it terminates its agreement. In addition to scattering indigent patients to surrounding emergency rooms that would be flooded with new people seeking care, the hospital is also leasing a brand new facility on Canal Street that represents a $1.1 billion investment for the state.
The hospital also makes millions of dollars in lease payments to the state.
Asked if UMC would be able to continue operating under the $44 million cut, UMC’s CEO, Greg Feirn, told the Senate Finance committee that the funding cut would be “devastating” to nearby university teaching programs. Losing funding would likely mean the system would cancel the contract.
“We can’t risk our balance sheet to fund what’s otherwise a state obligation,” Feirn said. “If we have significant capital investment by way of these payments, or capital expenditures in the future, why would we continue to make those with an uncertain revenue stream?”
We have Jindal, Grover Norquist, and the basic agenda of the Koch Brothers to thank for this. Here’s the one big reason we don’t bring in funds any more to run our most basic services. A close look at Kansas shows similar trends too. Our spineless leges still won’t face up to the damage they’ve done and work to correct it.
Louisiana’s taxes on business are supposed to help government provide its many services.
But the state has paid out $210 million more in tax credits and rebates to corporations so far this year than it has collected in corporate income and franchise taxes, reports the Department of Revenue. That shortfall is contributing to the massive budget gap that the 25-day special legislative session is supposed to address.No one is claiming that large numbers of corporations are violating the law to avoid paying taxes. What has happened is that state lawmakers over the years — and especially during Gov. Bobby Jindal’s two terms – have been increasingly generous in creating the tax subsidies, at the behest of corporate interests and their lobbyists in Baton Rouge.
A tax break here and a tax break there, over time they have added up, as The Advocate reported in a 2014 series of articles: Tax breaks for six major programs alone cost the state $1.08 billion in 2014, up from $207 million in 2004.
You can read more indepth about how Jindal and his cronies gave our state away in this extremely good article from two years ago. It’s the one referenced above. I wrote about it at the time.
I really meant to spent some time today on the incredible criticism of wonks and economists on the Sanders’ policy suggestions but I’m seriously to tired to do it. I’ll just throw this latest link and we can discuss it down thread. Those of us joining the criticism have been facing charges of being too close to industry to have any kind of integrity.
Bernie Sanders has a problem with the liberal wonkosphere — or, more precisely, the liberal wonkosphere has a problem with Bernie Sanders.
With every upward tick in Mr. Sanders’s poll numbers in the last few months, there has been a corresponding rise in a very specific type of commentary: Left-of-center policy experts and former staffers for Democratic officials have questioned his plans as unwise, unrealistic or both.
On Wednesday, it took the form of a joint letter from four people who led the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton and Obama administrations. They criticized projections by Gerald Friedman, an economist who has advised Mr. Sanders, of what the candidate’s policy proposals would achieve. Their comments were quickly echoed by the liberal economists Brad DeLong and Paul Krugman. The health care experts Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University and Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution have also been tough on Mr. Sanders’s health care plan.
Behind the critiques: Mr. Sanders’s advisers have often worked off assumptions that their policies would sharply increase economic growth, reduce health care costs and create other salutary effects, making the policies in question look more affordable and desirable than they would with more cautious assumptions.
This is the analysis that really appealed to me as I watched Christie Romer get criticized last night on twitter for not having particularly good analysis about the financial crisis and need for stimulus. Actually, her number krunching was fine and she had suggested a much bigger stimulus. It was the politics that silenced her and nothing else.
The wonkosphere vs. Bernie clash is not just a story of center-left versus left-left. It is also a clash between those who have been in the trenches of trying to make public policy for the last seven years versus those who can exist in a kind of theoretical world of imagining what public policy ought to be.
Suppose, for a moment, that you worked as a staff member to a Democratic member of Congress, or perhaps in the Obama administration, or in the world of academics and think tank experts advising both.
Perhaps you worked countless all-nighters on the language of the Affordable Care Act or the Dodd-Frank Act — or maybe you were at an agency trying to write the thousands of pages of regulations to institute those laws, or even an advocacy group trying to nudge all of the above to the left.
You know the compromises that were made back in 2010 and why — uniting 55 or 60 senators with wildly different political temperaments and local politics was really hard. You had to come up with a bill that could get a “Yes” vote from both a centrist like Joe Lieberman or Joe Manchin and, well, a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders.
You’re convinced that those laws — much hated by both conservatives and the industries they overhauled — made the United States a better place, helping millions more people afford health care and reining in the financial industry. You know the laws aren’t perfect — but also believe that future presidents and Congresses should build on them, much as Social Security and Medicare are now much expanded from their original charters.
Now comes a man who has had to answer only to voters in the most liberal state in the nation, who has never had the responsibility to actually pull together the disparate center-left coalition that is the Democratic Party to enact concrete legislation.
When Mr. Sanders argues for scrapping Obamacare’s intricately constructed mix of private health insurance with public subsidies for a single-payer government program, he’s essentially saying your efforts were useless, hopelessly corrupted by the health insurance industry. Same with Mr. Sanders’s call to break up the largest banks, as opposed to the current approach of just regulating them more intensively.
Then, if you criticize Mr. Sanders’s plans, or question their political feasibility, his supporters assail you as a member of a corrupt establishment.
Anyway, there’s a lot here for you to consider. What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments