2014 vs. 2010, and other stuff

-- It's not as if this topic hasn't been blogged about previously, but there's two pieces out today -- one that talks about how bad it might be, one that talks about how good it might be.  The polling is all over the place, so there's that to confuse everyone also.

-- Rick Perry wins again, and California loses.  Wingnuts rejoice.  The actual relo is a good thing for Toyota, and by extension Texas and Texans.  So let's celebrate the news (but not give all the credit to one fellow, please).  Will Elon Musk -- who announced last week that SpaceX is moving forward in south Texas -- follow suit, or continue to hold his battery factory as a bargaining chip for the direct selling of Teslas here, bypassing the lobby-strong auto dealers?

-- On the other hand, this is what happens when life meets religious conservative dogma.

That's all I have time for today; my uncle Troy -- my Dad's older brother -- passed over the weekend, so there's time and attention offline that command a higher priority.

Racism is a generational attribute, not a partisan one *updates*

Terrific piece here from Joe Concha at Mediaite.

So here’s a question to consider regarding the (LA Clippers' owner) Donald Sterling media storm that hit over the weekend: where was all this outrage when Senator Harry Reid talked about then-Senator Obama only using a “Negro dialect” when he wanted to?

That question doesn’t come from me, but from ESPN’s Robert Smith, a former All-Pro running back for the Minnesota Vikings. (It is worth noting that Smith is biracial, like Obama; African American and Caucasian.)

Mr. Reid — the Senate Majority Leader — made those comments back in 2008, during the presidential campaign as reported in the best-seller Game Change. According to authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann:

“He [Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one…’”

Reid later apologized for the remark after the book came out two years later. He was not asked to resign, nor was there anything remotely resembling the kind of backlash Sterling is feeling — and absolutely rightly so — for his recorded comments scolding his half-Latina girlfriend for bringing blacks to Clippers’ games and/or posting Instagram photos with them.

But as Smith notes, where exactly was the outrage for Reid? 

I had forgotten this happened, but I clearly recall the scorn Joe Biden received for referring to Obama as 'articulate' during 2008's Democratic presidential scrum.   What's being put to bed here is the canard that "not all Republicans are racists, but all racists are Republicans".

Sorry. No.

Or remember when Mitt Romney said this? “In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”

Whoops. That wasn’t Romney, but then-Senator Joe Biden back in 2006. Could you imagine the media reaction if those words did come from a Romney, a Ryan, a Rand or a Cruz?

Rhetorical question.

And then there’s the time the North Carolina county precinct GOP chair (Don Yelton) actually said this of voter ID opposition in a Daily Show interview, of all places: The law “hurts a bunch of lazy blacks who just want the government to give them everything, so be it.”

Racism exists in this country, of course. But it seems to be more of a generational issue than something that pertains to one party.  

This is some brutal truth about to pour itself on our heads, y'all.

Think of what Sterling, Cliven Bundy, Reid, Yelton and Biden all have in common: All are over the age of 60; all are white; all grew up in a “different time,” when racism was much more accepted. So it’s fascinating to listen to Reid this week publicly call on Republicans to disavow Bundy, whom he correctly calls a “hateful racist.” As we’ve seen, the 27-year Senator never misses an opportunity to score political points with the base, even when the hypocrisy is obvious.

Sterling, who has only donated to Democrats in the past (albeit not for awhile), was actually up for his second Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP. 

That would be the LA chapter of the NAACP, which wanted to praise the Clippers owner for the significantly larger donations than he gave to two Democrats, Gray Davis and Bill Bradley, in the early '90's ... his only political contributions for which there is public record.  Thus is revealed the carefully orchestrated hypocrisy of Sterling, who brings his biracial black/Latina girlfriend to "his" games -- while his not-quite-ex-wife still helps him manage the Clippers -- but she (girlfriend) is not allowed to post a picture of herself with Magic Johnson to Instagram.

Let's check in briefly at this time with the Field Negro.

The thing is, though; no one should be surprised. This is not an unusual way of thinking for men in the majority population of a certain age here in America. [...] The fact that Sterling held these views has been the worst kept secret in the sports world, and yet he was allowed to continue owning the Clippers and reach into his deep pockets to purchase high-priced free agents and an equally high profile African American coach. (Please don't tell me that Doc Rivers didn't know about Sterling. He -- like the LA chapter of the NAACP -- should be ashamed of himself.)

As John Oliver -- the former Daily Show reporter/comedian whose new HBO program debuted over the weekend -- observed, it was a "rough week for unrepentant racists and recording devices".  Back to Concha.

Is racism getting worse in this country? Hard to know the answer to that. On one hand, Cliven Bundy’s and Donald Sterling’s deplorable comments have been universally condemned from left and right, blacks and whites alike. On the other hand, it feels like the divide is getting deeper — especially since the media-fueled polarization of the George Zimmerman trial and verdict.

Maybe it’s just that too many people on the extremes have been given a microphone. Shock value is more and more embraced in media, particularly the world of cable news. And nothing is easier for a segment producer to put together than a racial “debate” between the usual suspects we see every time there a story involving black vs. white that day, that week, that month.

Robert Smith wants to know where the outrage was with Harry Reid when he spoke of Negro dialects. It’s a valid question from someone with no skin (pun intended) in the game. But let’s stop trying to keep a scorecard on what member of which party is making a stupid racial remark this week.

As we’ve seen with the decisive dismissal of Cliven Bundy and the soon-to-be-dismissal of Donald Sterling, most Americans and almost all forms of media won’t stand for racism. And if you weren’t born somewhere before 1965, there’s a pretty good chance your thought process doesn’t exactly match theirs.

Nobody — except for blind partisans and ratings-hungry producers more interested in winning or showcasing an unwinnable and pointless argument — really cares about the voting preference of the offender. 

That's the best course of action here.  And that's coming from someone who was born before 1965, and has been guilty on occasion of squeezing lighter fluid on the partisan grill with regard to race.

Call out the racists, and also acknowledge that the blue or red label is immaterial.  That way we can all start to make a little progress together.

Update: FWIW, Michael Tomasky disagrees, as does Wonkette, with its usual graceful snark.  Tomasky has a good point about the incessant false equivalency that conservatives reach for in almost every political case, but w/r/t racism and racists, there's simply no political degree of difference that's worth contending.  As a nation, we can't begin to get past this until we recognize that we have all fallen short of the glory of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Update II: Sources have debunked the 'Sterling is a Democrat' meme by posting pictures of his California voter registration, which shows him registered as a Republican.  I'm going to hold the line on the premise first advanced in the headline, primarily because in our American oligarchy, the wealthiest generally don't take sides (despite Charles and David Koch, Sheldon Adelson, yaddayadda).  They $upport their $elf-intere$t$ quite con$i$tently.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance strongly favors net neutrality as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff notes another redistricting lawsuit, this one filed by people who think our Senate districts aren't white enough.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos discovers Rick Perry and Greg Abbott were for eminent domain before they were against it. They both want to play Cliven Bundy in Texas.

Horwitz at Texpatriate reports that a majority of Houston city council members support a comprehensive non-discrimination ordinance.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston reports on Greg Abbott's call for the drug testing of 4-year-olds.

Greg Abbott tried to ride Cliven Bundy's coattails in a land dispute with the feds at the Red River, but -- as PDiddie at Brains and Eggs observes -- after Bundy "told us what he knew about the Negro", the attorney general was forced to jump off. (Are those figures of speech insensitive to a man in a wheelchair?)

Neil at All People Have Value said most folks correctly realize that the poor are just trying to get by and do well in a tough world. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

DosCentavos tells us that more cities are thumbing their nose at the immigration policy known as Secure Communities, and that El Prez/ICE is just about done with their deportation review -- but it may not be what activists want to hear. Plus: DC has a new font for the logo!

Texas Leftist has a new website! Introducing the NEW texasleftist.com.

=================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Socratic Gadfly is a little ticked that he isn't progressive enough to be included in the TPA weekly roundup.  Dude: you're worthy, you're worthy.

The Rivard Report documents the history of pay discrimination and legislation to outlaw it.

The Lunch Tray reports on new research concerning the effect of using food as a reward in classrooms.

The Bloggess writes about a threat letter her daughter's school received, and the importance of talking about such things with our kids.

Juanita Jean takes the Austin American-Statesman to task for a misleading headline about the grand jury that is currently investigating Rick Perry.

The Texas Green Report considers whether Tesla will build its battery plant in Texas.

Ride On Metro celebrated Lights Out Houston.

Finally, the TPA congratulates Randy Bear for being named the City Skeptic of San Antonio.

Sunday Funnies

If only we had elected this guy president

Asked whether he thought the Federal Communications Commission and Congress needed to preserve the Internet as we know it, the senator from Illinois said, “The answer is ‘yes.’ I am a strong supporter of Net neutrality.”

“What you’ve been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and the various portals through which you’re getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different Web sites,” explained Obama, who warned that with such a change in standards “you could get much better quality from the Fox News site and you’d be getting rotten service from the mom and pop sites.”

Obama’s bottom line: “That I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet—which is that there is this incredible equality there.”

Or maybe even this guy, four years ago.

So was President Obama when, in 2010, the White House declared that, “President Obama is strongly committed to net neutrality in order to keep an open Internet that fosters investment, innovation, consumer choice, and free speech.”

Or even this guy, four months ago.

And President Obama certainly sounded right in January, 2014, when he said, “I have been a strong supporter of net neutrality. The new commissioner of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, whom I appointed, I know is a strong supporter of Net Neutrality.”

But it seems we got tricked; we elected, and re-elected, an Obama who appointed this guy.

If reports in the Wall Street Journal are correct, Obama’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Thomas Wheeler, has proposed a new rule that is an explicit and blatant violation of this promise. In fact, it permits and encourages exactly what Obama warned against: broadband carriers acting as gatekeepers and charging Web sites a payola payment to reach customers through a “fast lane.”

Late last night Wheeler released a statement accusing the Wall Street Journal of being “flat-out wrong.” Yet the Washington Post has confirmed, based on inside sources, that the new rule gives broadband providers “the ability to enter into individual negotiations with content providers … in a commercially reasonable matter.” That’s telecom-speak for payola payments, and a clear violation of Obama’s promise.

This is what one might call a net-discrimination rule, and, if enacted, it will profoundly change the Internet as a platform for free speech and small-scale innovation. It threatens to make the Internet just like everything else in American society: unequal in a way that deeply threatens our long-term prosperity. 

There doesn't appear to be any ambiguity in the reaction to the proposal, that's for sure.  It may in fact be even worse than it initially appears.  Worst of all, those of us who support net neutrality may have to start sucking up to a few of the largest tech companies in order to save it.

No matter what may develop, there is only a short time left to save net neutrality as we know it.  That means a lot of loud complaining about this new rule to Wheeler and the FCC, just to see if public opinion can still make a difference.

It's the same federally as it is locally: as a concerned citizen you must take action.  I dislike having to repeat myself over and over again to my elected (and appointed) officials just as much as you do, but they don't seem to listen.  So make sure they hear you.

Friday Bundy Roundup

-- Who said it: Al, Ted, Cliven, or McGeorge?  I was just 4 out of 10.  I'm ashamed.

-- #ClivenBundyMovies: "Whiners of the Purple Sage", "Throw Mama in Front of the Feds", "A Day at the Racist", "Hiding Behind Miss Daisy", "Negro Like Me", "High Plains Grifter", "Twelve Years a Slave Isn't Long Enough", etc., etc.

When God closes a Fred Phelps, he opens a Cliven Bundy.
— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) April 24, 2014

-- An oldie but a goodie.

-- Some of the latest.

-- And as a reminder that the past isn't just prologue, it's not even the past...

And starring Greg Abbott as Cliven Bundy

Never one to skip a Tea Party poutrage -- and not content with only showing off his pathetic understanding of the law -- Greg Abbott has waded into (is that insensitive?) the Nevada-federal-grazing-land controversy by trying to recreate one at the Red River.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R), the GOP candidate for governor, released a letter politely notifying the Bureau of Land Management that he is "deeply concerned" about reports that the BLM plans to "swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations."

At issue is some amount of acreage — Abbott says 90,000 acres, BLM says 140 — along the Texas side of the border with Oklahoma, delineated by the Red River. The BLM is currently updating its resource management plan for Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, deciding what will be done with the public lands under its management (it could sell the land, open or close it to public use, or let ranchers graze cattle on it, for example). As part of that process, BLM is looking to clarify who owns certain areas of property along the Red River.

You would think that the Texas-Oklahoma border is pretty well fixed by now, but determining the right line has consumed decades of court battles — all the way to the Supreme Court — and involves concepts like avulsion and accretion (when a river cuts away or adds land as it naturally changes course). Both the BLM and Abbott's office say they have the law and court precedent on their side.

Avulsion and accretion, General Abbott.  As opposed to revulsion and excretion, the typical reaction to your ridiculous pronouncements.

Attorney General Abbott in his letter asked the BLM for clarification of its intentions, asserting that "respect for property rights and the rule of law are fundamental principles in the State of Texas and the United States."

But candidate Abbott took a more populist tack, telling Breitbart Texas that he is "about ready...to go to go to the Red River and raise a 'Come and Take It' flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas."

With Ted Nugent, a herd of rednecks with guns, and a few camera phones provided courtesy of those intrepid journalists at Breitbart Texas, who were still picking up the broken pieces of their medium the last time we checked in.  Oh well, at least there'll be a pickup truck with a winch on the front to pull his wheelchair out of the rojo-colored mud when he sinks into it hoisting that petard.

Finally, after the mockery, the moneyshot.

...(M)ore to the point, to paraphrase Shakespeare, he's protesting way too much, perhaps in a bid to obscure the fact that the state of Texas — while Abbott served as its top lawyer — has its own spotty record with protecting private property rights.

You don't have to look too far back, either. Last Thursday, Texas seized the 1,700-acre Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado from a branch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamist Mormon offshoot sect. The group's leader, Warren Jeffs, is serving a life sentence for "celestially marrying" two underage women, and Texas troopers helped vacate the remaining members last week.

Former FLDS member Flora Jessop tells Reuters that Texas deserves the land for having the courage to prosecute Yearning for Zion leaders. But the state claimed its right under a Jan. 6 forfeiture judgment from a state court. "Efforts to seize the property," Reuters' Jim Forsyth notes, "were initiated in 2012 by the attorney general's office."

Then there's the issue of private companies — specifically oil pipeline interests, but also power companies and for-profit toll highway operators — using eminent domain to seize private property, with the state's blessing. In March, the Texas Supreme Court declined to hear a final appeal from northeast Texas landowner Julia Trigg Crawford, who refused to sell her land to TransCanada, which used eminent domain to put a leg of the Keystone XL pipeline through her land.

When you've lost both ends of the political spectrum represented by Julia Trigg Crawford and Warren Jeffs... it's entirely possible that you might just lose the governor's race.  That's conditional upon the Texas Teabaggers being able to see the light through Abbott's Shroud of Hypocrisy, which might be a standardized test too far.

McBlogger says it shorter.

Update: Now that the new conservo-hero has shared his thoughts on race relations, his fans seem to be vanishing.

“They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton,” Bundy was quoted as saying to a group of supporters last Saturday. “And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

[...]

Bundy’s speech also seemingly derailed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s apparent attempt to link his gubernatorial campaign to the Bunkerville camp; Abbott had allegedly written a letter to the BLM accusing it of “threatening” to seize land along the Red River in northern Texas.

But after being contacted regarding the rancher’s “Negro” remarks, a spokesperson for Abbott was quoted as saying that Abbott’s letter “was regarding a dispute in Texas and is in no way related to the dispute in Nevada.”

As my friend Neil likes to say, everything is connected.  That goes double for stupid, mean, racist, and Republicans.

Update II: But Bundy does have a positive opinion of undocumented immigrants.

"Now let me talk about the Spanish people," Bundy said in a new video unearthed by New York magazine, right after he concluded his thoughts on "the Negro."

"I understand that they come over here against our Constitution and cross our borders," he says. "But they're here and they're people. I worked side-by-side a lot of them. Don't tell me they don't work, and don't tell me they don't pay taxes. And don't tell me they don't have better family structures than most of us white people."

"When you see those Mexican families, they're together. They picnic together. They're spending their time together," he said. "I'll tell you, in my way of thinking, they're awful nice people. We need to have those people join us and be with us."

What a terrible quandary the conservatives are faced with now.