No Campaign Finance Reports Roundup

-- No campaign finance reports posted here. Ever. As written many times previously, that is a poor way -- probably the poorest -- of evaluating the quality of a political candidate. In fact it's sort of like picking a horse to bet on at the track based on the size of its owner's bank account. Or declaring which team might win the World Series or the Super Bowl strictly on the amount of the team's payroll.

I'm just not interested in the political insiders -- and those who crave access to them -- telling me what I should think about who is a better man or a woman of the people (sometimes erroneously referred to as "grassroots")  based on how much money they have raised. Not only don't I care, it actually has the opposite effect of convincing me that they care about the 99%. By all evidence of voter turnout in municipal elections, a vast majority of that 99% doesn't care too much either.

If it was in the best interest of our city, state, and nation to vote for people who proved themselves the most adept at pandering for campaign contributions, we'd have the kind of representation in Washington and Austin that we already have. The definition of insanity and all that.

If you don't think there's something wrong in a political system where money is scrutinized and evaluated as the most important thing to getting elected, then you might be part of the problem and not the solution.

There's an app for that. To fix it, I mean.

-- Will almost a million people quit their jobs when (perhaps I should say 'if') Obamacare is fully enacted?

A new study distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that somewhere between 530,000 and 940,000 Americans might quit their jobs after January 1, 2014, as they’re able to get affordable health insurance through one of the public exchanges to be set up under Obamacare. That could provide ammunition for both critics and supporters of the politically explosive law. Critics might see it as evidence that Obama’s reforms encourage idleness while contributing to a growing welfare state. But it might also be a sign that workers have more freedom to pursue meaningful work or other interests instead of sticking to one job just because of the benefits, a phenomenon economists have dubbed “employment lock.”

This is a bad thing how for corporations? It's like mass voluntary layoffs without the separation packages; why would they be upset about that?

-- Justice for Trayvon rallies in a hundred American cities this weekend; noon Saturday, at federal courthouses across the nation. "Juror B37 does not speak for us", according to four of the other five jurors. Here's the story of the Twitterer who single-handedly killed B37′s book deal. (Now that's what I call the invisible hand of the free market.)

Between the injustice served by a clearly biased set of panelists charged with evaluating the guilt of George Zimmerman and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, I have to wonder if the Supreme Court justices who bought the argument that racism is over in America are having second thoughts about that. Perhaps the federal judges who were planning on going in to the office this Saturday have a better understanding.

-- State representative Harold Dutton (D-Houston) has filed a pro-life bill: No abortion restrictions can be implemented until the death penalty is abolished. Sounds good to me.

What I think I like best about it is how it paints pro-birth radicals right into a corner. And they won't be able to tiptoe out of it without getting blood on their shoes.

-- Big Jolly hyperbolically -- or maybe it's hyperventilatingly -- defends Dr. Mark Jones (because he can't defend himself) and Greg calmly bats that away. What's a clown got to do to get in this fight, Dave?

-- Is the tide actually turning, or might it be a storm surge signaling a hurricane? Read all about it in Texas Monthly.