April 3rd Primary No Help for Perry

When the Supreme Court torpedoed Texas’ March primary there was all sorts of speculation on what was going to happen. The first thing to come out of the mouths of Republicans, in the person of a State Attorney General, was that there should be two primaries, one for President in March, and one for everyone else later on.

Impossible chime in nearly every County Clerk in the state. Too expensive, they said.

But there remained this enclave of Republicans who insisted that this is the way to go. The Democratic Party was 100% for a later Presidential Primary, and it was roughly 50-50 in the Republican Party.

But reason ruled the day and the primary date was moved back a month to early April.

But I have been puzzling on this for days and I just couldn’t figure out what was behind this lame-brained idea of two primaries? Why make a serious argument for such a bad – and prohibitively expensive – idea.

And I continued to puzzle about it until I uncovered this tiny article from an unlikely source, The Jerusalem Post all of which is pasted below:

“SAN ANTONIO - A panel of three federal judges approved a plan late Friday to delay the Texas primary elections to April 3 from March 6, a move that could be a blow to Republican Governor Rick Perry's presidential hopes.”

“A likely victory in Texas on March 6 could have helped Perry because it's Super Tuesday, when 10 other states are holding primaries or caucuses. Now, Texas' primary will be toward the end of the primary season calendar.”

“The delay came amid a series of legal challenges to the state's legislative and congressional redistricting maps.”

Really? That was what was behind Attorney General Greg Abbott/s plan? That moving the Presidential Primary would negatively affect Rick Perry’s chances at getting into the White House?

Has to be. It was such a stupid – and expensive – idea it has to have come from our self-serving governor’s campaign.

How expensive? At $350,000 per county times 254 of them that’s a whopping $90 million.

That would pay the salaries of nearly 2000 Texas public school teachers.

Primary Colors

Democrats and Republicans have difficulty agreeing on anything these days so it was with some relief that I read yesterday that the two parties have come to agreement on holding a single primary at a later date, April 3^rd. All other dates are moved back as well.

For instance, these are some new deadline for events before and after the April 3^rd primary:

• February 1, 2012 - New residency deadline for candidates seeking election to the Texas House and Texas Senate.
• February 1, 2012, 6:00pm - New deadline of court-ordered reopened filing period, in which candidates for all offices have the opportunity to amend, withdraw or file a new application for the ballot.
• February 3, 2012 - New deadline for County Executive Committees to conduct drawing for candidate order on ballot.
• April 3, 2012 - Date of the 2012 General Primary Election.
• April 14 or April 21, 2012 - Date of County and Senatorial District Conventions, as determined by the State Chair of each political party.
• June 5, 2012 - Date of the 2012 General Primary Runoff Election.

That last one gives me a little pause. A June runoff date? It’s true enough that when I lived in California, which had a June primary for years, that late of a date didn’t keep me from voting, but this is a primary runoff, a totally different animal.

In a primary runoff a person can get elected if his extended family all show up at the polls. And in the Republican primary next year we have 4 who will vie for Fort Bend County Sheriff as the current sheriff has announced his retirement. That race is bound to go to runoff.

Democrats won’t have that problem as only one candidate has filed (so far).

An actual hero.

Here It Is: The TLC Rogue’s List

While Lowe’s Home Improvement is getting the most heat in the blowback that has resulted when a TLC network spokesperson announced that the company had withdrawn all of its ads in response to urging from a rightwing religious group from Florida that objects to TLC’s “All-American Muslim” reality show, this is not the only company to bend to the wishes of this intolerant group of fanatics.

According to this website, the main reason Lowe’s has been singled out in the press is the nature of it’s email response to the Islamophobic religious group, the FFA (Florida Family Association, not the Future Farmers of America). It included this:

“While we continue to advertise on various cable networks, including TLC, there are certain programs that do not meet Lowe’s advertising guidelines, including the show you brought to our attention.  Lowe’s will no longer be advertising on that program.”

Now is “All-American Muslim” a show about a bunch of IED building, Sharia Law following, Anti-Christian fanatics? If so, I guess Lowe’s was perfectly justified in concluding that it does not meet their advertising guidelines.

Unfortunately for Lowe’s, that is not the case. In fact, the show’s objective is to present Muslims who live in American as no different as other Americans. This, the FFA believes, cannot stand.  

So Lowe’s gets to bear the brunt of the backlash from those of us who support religious freedom and tolerance, cornerstones of American traditions and values.

But it is my belief that Lowe’s should spread the wealth, so I went to the FFA website to get the list of companies that have pulled their ads (they claim 75 have done so) so I could inform my 6 (or is it now 7?) readers of where to shop in this holiday season – or more to the point, where not to.

But guess what. The FFA has pulled its list because they don’t want to inform the public anymore about who they need to call or email to chastise them for this obvious trip down the road to perdition. Now they can inflate the list even more.

Because it, as a list, no longer exists.

But then some part of it still exists, at the very website that I cited above (and here).

While DC Court Fiddles, Texas Primaries Burn

Fly, meet ointment.

Today we learned that the federal court in DC that is engaged in the lawsuit to decide whether the Texas redistricting violates the Voting Rights Act will hear closing arguments on the case on February 3^rd.

That’s six, count ‘em, six days after the deadline date that county clerks across Texas say they need to have in order to reschedule a single Texas primary election to April 3rd.

And guess what? What if the DC court decides that the boundaries that were redrawn by the state legislature earlier this year were, by design, discriminatory toward Hispanics in Texas? And what if the Supreme Court decides that the district boundaries drawn by the San Antonio federal judges are invalid?

We have, friends and neighbors, one 9 on the Richter Scale clusterf… . Clusterf… .

That is, between these three courts, DC, SCOTUS, and San Antonio, we might just see not just Hispanic voters disenfranchised in 2012, that’s just small potatoes. We get to witness the disenfranchisement of the entire population of the state of Texas.

And that’s what you get when you stay away from the polls in 2010 and allow Republicans to enjoy a super majority in the legislature.

A true clusterf… .

The Stars Align

Well it seems that the stars are aligning for a new, and single, April 3^rd Texas Primary Election. If this happens a condition foreseen in my past musings over this truly foul situation will be averted. That being the nomination of the truly crazy to public office.

The federal judge panel in DC who will decide whether to preclear the recently passed voter ID law, essentially whether or not to agree that it does not violate the Voting Rights Act, have set a trial date. The trial will run between January 17^th and January 26^th 2012.

Meanwhile back in San Antonio, another federal judge panel heard testimony from various elections officials about whether to hold one primary or two. It was just about unanimous among the witnesses that holding two primaries would be unjustifiably costly to the counties and to the state.

Costly at a time when budgets are being slashed.

The Travis County Clerk testified to this effect and offered a solution: move the primary date back. County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir suggested an April 3^rd primary date, a date that depends on everything being settled by January 28^th.  And now from the look of it from the DC end, it will be settled by then.

Unless the Supreme Court kicks some dust into the air and re-sabotages the whole process.

Now here is one thing I am hoping. I am hoping that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor does not recuse herself in this hearing on the redrawn district maps scheduled for early January. She did that recently, I think to provide an example for Justice Clarence Thomas about when and where it is appropriate to recuse himself from the lawsuit challenging the Affordable Healthcare Act, an act his wife openly opposes.

I am hoping that Justice Sotomayor looks beyond the fact that she is Latina, and the Voter ID law passed by the Texas legislature is openly anti Hispanic.

There’s a New STAAR on the Horizon

Yes, two “As” because we’re not talking about a celestial body, nor are we talking about a celebrity. We are talking about the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness, the state’s new assessment of knowledge instrument that will replace TAKS over the next 4 years.

STAAR will be administered this spring to 9^th graders for the first time, and passing it just might make or break their walk across the stage 3 years hence.

In short, if before we had 4 TAKS tests that a student needed to pass, now we have 12 STAAR tests that they must pass. Yes, high-stakes testing has just gone to a new level.

Trouble is, according to this article, the state has not yet decided what the passing standard will be. And unfortunately once that standard is decided upon one wonders whether they will stick to that standard throughout a student’s secondary education, or whether it will be adjusted year by year as TAKS standards were.

But most alarming to some is that the STAAR test is more rigorous than TAKS. I think the biggest criticism I have of state mandated tests is that the tests are not necessarily written in the language that the content was taught. Textbooks that are adopted in each district differ from one to another. So the language and the context that the content is taught differs from district to district. In addition, many students attempt to pass courses by rote memorization, but when presented with a STAAR test, all of a sudden they are expected to think at the highest order, something that only the 1^st quartile are capable of doing.

But perhaps the biggest concern I have with implementing a new high-stakes testing regimen just now is also the concern of Gayle Fallon, the American Federation of Teachers president in Houston:

“The biggest problem we've got is it's a significant jump in difficulty in a year to be followed by another year where we're seeing the largest class sizes we've ever seen. We're seeing resources disappear on a daily basis. I'm not saying our teachers can't do it, but it's kind of like saying run this race and we're going to tie both your hands behind your back. Now good luck.”

The sad fact is, the state is requiring students to pass a new high-stakes test at a time when the state failed to deliver the resources to public schools as demanded by the state’s own constitution.

SCOTUS Sabotages the Texas Primary

It shouldn’t be of any surprise that the Supreme Court of the United States, the court that appointed George W. Bush to a second term as president, has served us up another pile of steaming manure by ruling that all redistricting maps in the state of Texas are null and void until they get a chance to rule on them.

On January 9^th 2012. Yep, that’s three weeks after the December 15 2011 filing deadline for the Texas Primary Election in March 2012.

Chaos ensues. How can one know if one resides in the state house or senate district that he or she is filing for? Or what about the congressional districts, especially when – next year – Texas has an additional 4 congressional seats.

The Supremes give no clue how Texas is to handle this very heavy-handed decision. Do we keep the presidential primary and hold another one for the state and local offices later on?

When is the filing deadline?

What does this all mean?

But if I were to guess, and I guess about stuff all the time, I would have to say that this puts a new look on the Republican Primary. The way things are going, it doesn’t appear to me that a presumptive nominee will emerge before the March primary, so keeping the Texas primary in March is all but certain. But if Texas is forced into having two primaries, the excitement of voting for the Republican nominee will be limited to just that race, state and local races won’t benefit from the higher poll numbers of a presidential year. This means that a later primary for the state and local offices will be as lackluster as a school board election. And we all know what happens when there is a low turnout.

The bat-guano crazies, unelectable any other time, all win in their primaries.

All of this, courtesy of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Obama Haters Still on a Tear Over That "Flag"

I don’t know whether you remember the moral outrage that the uberright had over reports that in 2008 the Obama campaign leased a campaign jet and promptly removed an American flag painted on the jet’s tail, replacing it with a giant Obama logo.

Oh they were steaming mad over this and the email “chain letters” were viral.

Except it was all blown out of proportion.

And now today I note that they are at it again, this time on Facebook, the new vehicle for dissemination of misinformation to the gullible masses that represent the right.

Snopes has the whole story, with pictures.

The “flag” that was removed? Turns out that North American Airlines, the company that the campaign leased the jet from, has as its company logo a stylized version of the American flag waving in the wind. Here it is:

This is the “flag” that was removed. The company logo.

This, so the campaign could have their own logo painted on the tail.

But imagine the logic and reasoning. Imagine what would happen if all of a sudden it became verboten to remove North American’s logo from a leased plane because it looked like a waving American flag. You lease a plane, you want to have your logo painted on it. If they couldn’t remove North American’s logo, the plane looks like a commercial jet, not a campaign jet.

Who wants that?

Who would ever want to lease another jet from North American? All of a sudden, North American is out of the leasing business, and deprived of the chunk of change that they get from leases.

That is, these rightwing complainers are depriving a company of its commerce.

That’s socialism.

And it is Pearl Harbor Day.

My father and all of my uncles joined  up as best they could after that day. My dad was still at school so he had awhile to wait. His younger brother leaped ahead and joined the merchant marines who didn't have age requirements.His older brother, at school learning to be an architect, had a wait but finally got a shot at a seaman in the US Navy.


They were all affected by that day, 70 years ago.


Anyone have someone to remember who served or was lost in that war? A memory? Leave it here.

Hump Day Humor

I can't wait for Newt Gingrich to implode in public, giving the TEA Party-led Republican Party no other choice than to adopt Mitt Romney as its standard bearer. The excitement at the polls will be absolutely breath taking.

Literally.

Obama Cares

I like the President’s latest speech in front of an enthusiastic crowd in Cannon Falls, Minnesota today. He turned the much-hated GOP derogative term “Obamacare” against the opposition today and said this:

“I have no problem with folks saying 'Obamacare,' I do care. If the other side wants to be the folks who don't care, that's fine with me. But, yeah, I do care about families who have been struggling because of crushing health care costs.”

The crowd loved it, and so do I.

Each and every one of the remaining 7 dwarves that constitute the GOP presidential wannabes have promised in the most strident sentences, that the first order of business when they run Barack Obama out of office is to repeal “Obamacare.”

I’d like to see that. I’d like to see that they repeal a law that 50% of American voters like tremendously, and only 39% want to see repealed. And the 39% don’t even suspect a provision of the law that just went into effect on December 1^st.  The most beneficial aspect of the law outside of the establishment of the insurance exchanges -  a provision that will make health insurance completely subject to the law of supply and demand.

The provision that kicked in just 5 days ago was the one that required health insurance companies to commit at least 80% of their premiums, their income, to actual healthcare payments. Large volume companies must pay 85% of their premiums toward coverage.

Believe it or not, for-profit companies, in the past, have committed less than that toward healthcare coverage, allotting a greater percent toward things like executive bonuses.

Yes, the payments that were previously denied were allocated toward covering payment for some insurance executive’s new yacht.

Now they are going to have to run a leaner and meaner machine. Something that the GOP should be applauding, because they want that so much in government.

But no. These GOP candidates are all against that. They really don’t care that people don’t get adequate healthcare coverage, but they do care that Ritchie Rich, the senior VP of coverage denials gets himself a new 50-foot yacht with a bonus funded by their customers’ premiums.

Obama does care.

Can We Have a Moment of Science, Please?

Every once in awhile my head gets turned by my first love, science. We humans can do some amazing things, and NASA’s Kepler Mission is one of those things. The Kepler Mission (Named after Johannes Kepler, the father of modern astronomy), this is a mission to send a space telescope into Earth orbit, one with incredible optics that can detect the presence of distant solar systems, suns with orbiting planets.

And, no the telescope is not powerful enough to actually see the planets. It takes advantage of the fact that when the planets come between our line of sight and their star, the star’s brightness diminishes slightly, the bigger the planet, the greater the diminishment.

And thus far, the mission has identified hundreds of solar systems with 2,326 “planet candidates.” That’s not bad. But today they announced the discovery of a “Goldilocks Planet.” This is a planet whose average orbital radius is within the zone that allows water to exist in its liquid form, universally considered to be the primary ingredient for the existence of life.

And they know the average orbital radius because they can measure the orbital period of the planet. If it is close to an Earth year, it is within the “not too hot, not too cold zone.”

And they found one.

They call it Kepler-22. A “planet candidate” that, if it is rocky and not a gas ball, and it has the requisite ingredients of abundant liquid water plus carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and potassium, etc. could support life.

And this is just one of a little over 2000.

Consider the odds.

And no, I have not surrendered this blog to science. It is still a political blog. Witness the video that this story reminded me of. Eric Idle’s Galaxy Song.

 

  Galaxy Song by Eric Idle

Is Rick Perry Running for President or Despot?

Rick Perry has been caught on camera again showing his obviously abundant supply of ignorance. It’s either that or he’s not really running for president, but rather would rather have the job of despotic ruler. He was asked the same question four different times about his intention to stop implementation of many parts of the Affordable Healthcare Act by issuing executive orders.

Anyone with an 8^th grade education knows that executive orders cannot be used as a trump card to cancel out the express will of congress.

But this is news to Rick Perry who is not unfamiliar with abuse of power of the executive order as governor of Texas. Recall his executive order ordering the vaccinations of every 11 year old female child in Texas against Human Papilloma Virus. An order so outrageously heavy-handed and overstepping that it was quickly quashed by the state legislature.

So while some may say that this is just another example of the ignorance of the Texas governor, like his earlier remarks about being 21 on November 12th, I am now wondering if this is simply something that Rick Perry intends to make happen.

Why Was Cain Ever in It?

Upon hearing that Herman Cain was “suspending” his presidential campaign my first thought was “Suspending? Like McCain suspended his campaign?”

Then I figured it all out. This guy, with an ego the size of Jupiter could never bring himself to announce an end to his campaign. It sounds so much better to say it this way, as if to say that he might be back.

But no, stick a fork in him, Herman Cain is done.

Then I asked myself, why was Cain ever in it to begin with? Was it really all about selling his book like the pundits say? A national book tour that also took in campaign contributions?

No, I now honestly think he was in it to win. The stars were all aligned. The Tea Party was slowly eroding any common decency that remained in the GOP. The national conservative mood was perfect for a guy like Herman Cain and he knew it.

And then you ask yourself how can someone with Cain’s reputation of sexually harassing women, and extra-marital affairs (and I don’t think it would have stopped at one revelation) think that there was no chance that no one would find out about them? That was my latest thought on the fact that Cain was in it merely to sell books.

But no. He really was in it to win.

And what leads me to think this now? In his latest denial that he would be ending his campaign today, Cain said this: “I’m on this journey for a reason. I don’t look back.”

That’s probably the only true statement of the facts that Herman Cain uttered in his whole time campaigning.

Keeping a Dirty Little Secret Could Cost County Jobs

Shaking my head this evening as I read that the Texas Secretary of State, Hope Andrade, is not doing due diligence in getting the word out that if a county official files for another office in the current filing period, they will find themselves unemployed.

It’s a dirty little secret.

You see, the GOP legislature changed the filing dates for those seeking office by a month earlier. It is now December 2, and filing for candidacy for public office began this past Monday, November 28^th. This ran up against a peculiar law that Texas has that says that someone currently holding a county office who files for another office must resign from their current office if they file on a date more than a year from the date they would take the new office, typically January 1^st.

That means that the new filing period, between November 28^th and December 15^th is more than a year before January 1^st 2013, and everyone currently in office, who files for another office, is automatically out of a job.

Oh, but the legislature fixed that with a constitutional amendment, and the voters approved the amendment last month. They increased the period from 12 months to 13.

Whew. All is good in the ‘hood again.

Except for the fact that Rick Perry hasn’t exactly put pen to paper to sign the bill into law. Something he could have done starting 8 days ago. And now we are 5 days into the filing period.

And Hope Andrade has been curiously silent in not warning people about the fact that should they file for another office this week (Perry promises to sign the bill on Monday), they will lose their jobs.

I wonder how many county public office holders are now ineligible to come to work as of the day they filed this week?

And while some may call this a mistake, a mistake due to miscommunication, I am a little suspicious. You see Republicans have used loads of filing date trickery in the past to rid themselves of people they don’t like. I recall the Glory Hopkins affair in Fort Bend County.

Back in 2005, Glory Hopkins, the perennial District Clerk of Fort Bend County, was given an address for her to send in her filing papers. But gosh darn it all, the address she was given had the wrong zip code on it and the mail was deemed undeliverable.

Hopkins was becoming a thorn in the side of other office holders, and this is how the Republican Party dealt with it. She was kept off the ballot, and lost her lawsuit to get back on.

So you see, when the GOP monkeys with anything in and around filing for political office, you know that they have reason to do it.

Monkey business.

Self-Deprecating Humor is Not Perry’s Forte Either

I have no idea why Rick Perry wants to continually remind the voters of his onstage gaffe last November when he just could not dredge up the name of the federal department that he wanted to abolish.

Perhaps his campaign thinks that the voters will remember this come primary day in their states, but your average voter has no long term memory at all, and one heck of a weak short term memory.

But he keeps doing it. Like today, when he has a one-night only ad that will likely play during his time with Jay Leno tonight.

Here it is:

And so we now see that neither is Rick Perry a “slick debater” (like Slick Mitt) nor can he pull off self-deprecating humor in that stiff moment of comedy.

Cain Isn’t Able

You want a working definition of a zombie? Herman Cain.

Zombies are the walking dead, and Herman Cain qualifies as a classic example of someone who is dead but doesn’t know it or want to admit it. Today Herman Cain tried to lay off the allegations of his former mistress on (probably) some white guys who want him out of the race.

Now, it’s probably true, in Republican politics, that white guys want Herman Cain to be out of the race to the nomination. He has become an embarrassment, much like Newt, Mitt, Ron, Rick, Rick and Michele, but Cain has the unfortunate reputation, now of making moves at white women. Republicans will forgive a lot. They will, for instance, forgive a man who fooled around while his wife was being treated for cancer, and divorced her when she didn’t have the courtesy to die real soon.

They won’t forgive a black man for making moves on white women who are asking for a little help.

They won’t.

So Herman Cain is about as dead as Marley’s Ghost.

Deader.

He’s as dead as the skunk that I ran over on the way to work today.

And the stench in Cain’s case is even deeper.

But he just doesn’t know it. Or maybe he does, but still hasn’t sold as many books as he wanted to.

Well That’s a Relief, Texas Can Continue to Inadequately Raise Revenue

Late yesterday justices of the Texas Supreme Court, Republicans all, ruled that the business franchise tax was not unconstitutional as alleged by plaintiff Allcat Claims Service LP.

This was a lawsuit that was filed last year that claimed that the 2005 revamp of the Texas tax collection system, a totally inadequate one given the basic necessities of what it must pay for, was unconstitutional because of the 1993 Bullock Amendment, passed by the legislature and agreed upon by Texas voters, that forbade the establishment of an income tax.

Yes, voters voted not to have state income taxes. Do tell.

The court found that this was not a tax on the income of real flesh and blood people, but a tax on an entity.

So we can all breathe a sigh of relief that one of the state’s major sources of revenue, a totally inadequate source of revenue given the current biennial budget shortfall of $28 billion, will not be squished like a cockroach in a corner.

They can continue to raise revenue from businesses, revenue that doesn’t cover costs.

Frankly, I was routing for an overturn of the business tax, not because I want Texas to face a budget crisis like it has never faced before, but because I wanted the legislature to be forced into a corner and finally pass legislation that would adequately fund public school education and Medicaid.

But that’s our Republican Supreme Court, enabling the cutters of government services one more time.

They Have Womanizing in Common, But Newt’s Up and Cain’s Down?

OK, now I have to ask this question. Newt Gingrich is well-known for his sexual dalliances with women not his wives, 3 at last count. And wife number two was on death’s door when Newt divorced her so he could marry the woman he was fooling around with at the moment, his present wife.

And Newt, supposedly because of this and other issues, like his flip-floppiness on the issues and his massive spending, is now up in the polls, beating Mitt Romney in a primary election by several percentage points.

Yet Herman Cain, equally a womanizer who has gotten several accusations of sexual harassment, and today, an announcement of a 13-year affair with another woman, who volunteered the information, is way down in the polls, in the low teens.

What’s with that?

Why do Republican voters love them some Newt despite the fact that he cheated on two wives, most recently when he was trying to get Bill Clinton impeached for the same thing, and turn their backs on Hermann Cain for his sexual misbehavior?

A double standard exists, I think.

Gee, I wonder what it is…

No Deference is Exactly the Point

Now, as part of the presentation of new congressional district maps drawn as a result of a continuing federal trial in Washington, DC, all sides were given the opportunity to submit comments before noon yesterday. In and among the comments filed before the deadline was this choice gem filed by the state:“Showed no deference?” Deference?

Because the Court changed all 36 congressional districts, it is clear that the Court has showed no deference to the congressional redistricting plan enacted by the Texas Legislature.”

Now I know the meaning of that word, but perhaps someone needs reminding what the word deference actually means. Here is one definition: “respectful submission or yielding to the judgment, opinion, will, etc., of another.”

In among those words are these: respectful, judgment and opinion.

That is being respectful of the judgment and opinion of the Texas Legislature. An opinion, and a judgment that because of how they drew these district maps up, is beneath the respect of everyone.

Really and truly? The state is critical of how the 3-judge panel, two of them being Republican appointees, redrew the congressional district maps because they got no respect?

That’s kind of the idea, you know.

But I’m willing to cut the judges some slack and say that probably not all of the district boundaries needed to be redrawn, but because others definitely had problems, when you move a boundary in one district because it is unfairly drawn, that means that this same boundary that is shared by a neighboring district also has to move, even it there is no good reason to move it.

It’s either that, or the congressional district map was so poorly and unfairly drawn that it actually required that all 36 districts’ boundaries to be adjusted. That is, the state just proved the plaintiff’s case.