Sunday Funnies

The editorial board of the Boston Globe is proposing that newspapers across the nation express their disdain for the president’s rhetoric on Aug. 16 with the best weapon they have: their collective voice.

"Bipartisan Agreement" flavor is back!

Texas Democrat leads on un-ban of fossil fuel $$$

“Officials said that the ban was an “attack on workers” in the fossil fuel industry”. Seriously. That’s their argument.
Oh, @DNC, you really are a bunch of corporate a-holes.
Democrats repeal party's ban on fossil fuel donations after two months https://t.co/lWGD2MEght

— #ThereIsNoPlanetB 🌍 (@RosettaDrone) August 11, 2018

Let's cut to the chase.

The strength of the fossil fuel donations ban seemed in question almost immediately after it passed. The DNC refused to announce the resolution, declining to comment to HuffPost for a story that made the vote public.

At the Texas Democratic Party’s convention two weeks later (this past June), a state party official opposed a state-level proposal to ban fossil fuel donations and oppose new gas extraction, arguing that the DNC’s own resolution was not set in stone.

A.J. Durrani, a retired engineer and manager at the oil giant Shell who recently joined the national party committee, said the DNC did not include the earlier vote in the minutes from its last executive committee meeting.

“There was no mention in it,” Durrani said by phone in June. As far as he was concerned, he said, “As of right now, the DNC has not voted.”

Durrani did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Texas Democrats ultimately voted down their proposed resolution.

A. J. MF'n Durrani.

I've known him from my earliest days (2002) as a Democratic Party activist in southwest Houston (though I will wager he doesn't know me, even though we served on some SD-17 committees together).  You can read about that activism of his here, and his professional life since retiring from Shell here.  Oil Patch Democrats (old link but note the names), SDEC, one of the first members of the Asian American Democrats club, then state caucus, and eventually growing that into DNC membership and super delegate status in 2016.  Yeah, he's done some shit.

Needless to say, he's no progressive.

He may or may not be the ringleader behind this; Durrani has without a doubt been pulling thick strings behind the scenes.  He lives in CD-7, the home of most of Houston's O&G; long been butt buddies in the OPD with James Cargas, and has likely used every method available -- light, dark, and in-between -- to bundle contributions from Shell and other Houston-based oil companies, oil company executives, and the like for Democrats up and down the ballot for the past decade.

Not that it's done them any good, of course.  (I'm not counting state representatives Hubert Vo and the Green-hating Gene Wu in the 'good' column, either.)

It's likewise difficult to imagine an old company man, top management, bucking up for the Steelworkers -- the hardhats in the refineries -- here, as Perez has suggested.

The DNC's proposal to lift the ban on accepting donations from fossil fuel companies is premised on the party's support for unions. As of 2017, just 4.4 percent of workers in the mining sector -- including coal, oil and gas -- were union members (via https://t.co/1Ao6HRNKFk) pic.twitter.com/MdQWfp90n7

— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) August 10, 2018

My hunch would be that this came from (among others) higher-ups at the IBEW, which has donated $305K to the DNC this cycle https://t.co/JI6idJx3q6

— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) August 10, 2018

Obviously if California weren't burning, if there weren't a global heatwave, if the alarm bells weren't sounding as loudly as they ever have about tipping points tipped and 'Hothouse Earth' ... maybe the Jackass Party could have slipped this one by.

But everybody sees you, A. J.  Did you work closely with Gilberto Hinojosa on that whole "helping fund state parties" part?

We'll wait and see if "Houston's oldest continuously published" blogger, himself a Shell employee, has anything to say about this beyond a few tut-tuts -- on his most progressive day -- every time the Donkeys in charge take a shit on everybody on the left.  Somebody let me know if he does.

In the meanwhile, I just have one question: if the oil companies and the banks and the drug companies and all the rest of the corporations can buy off both the Republicans AND the Democrats ... then why would they GAF who wins?

More from Shadowproof.

Friday White Elitist Racist Toon

It's not just Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson and the rest of Fox News; racism has a long-standing and under-acknowledged white elitist component, and Kris Kobach is proof.

We have an unfortunate tendency in America to treat racism and racial resentment as a pathology of the white underclass. Takes about the need for Democrats to abandon woke “identity politics” typically cite a desire to win back the “white working class,” not white members of the Harvard Club.

But while there’s some survey data backing the idea that working-class whites are likelier to harbor racial resentment (see table 3 here), the racism that kept Jews and blacks out of country clubs (and out of Harvard) for generations is still around. And Kobach is a great example of how it can continue to have real political consequences.

Kobach isn’t alone. White House adviser Stephen Miller didn’t have a Huntington figure during his time at Duke; in all the profiles written about Miller, I’ve yet to find one that mentions a professor who mentored him or even liked him. But it was Miller’s role as a conservative voice on campus during the Duke lacrosse scandal (a scandal that became a national affair only because of Duke’s elite status) that catapulted him into a career as a policy aide on Capitol Hill, and now in the White House. He, like Kobach, leveraged elite credentials to implement racist policies.

Further on the fringes of American life, Richard Spencer’s time as a Duke grad student, and Jared Taylor’s Yale pedigree, have helped lift them from obscurity into being commonly cited voices from the “race realist” movement. They got a patina of respectability, a sense that they’re a different, higher class of racist.

Working-class white racists can inflict a lot of harm; hate crimes in this country are a real thing, committed by people with all kinds of income and education levels. But economically unprivileged whites typically don’t cause damage on the scale of Miller or Kobach — or even Spencer or Taylor. That escalation requires elite credentials and connections.

... I hope Kobach can help change our mental image of an American racist from lazy stereotypes of manual laborers to a Yale-trained lawyer with a PhD, whose racial views come in part from a celebrated Harvard professor. That’s the bigger danger.

Culberson's questionable stock trades resurface in wake of Collins arrest

Congratulations to Lizzie Pannill Fletcher for the big break.

The arraignment of US Rep. Christopher Collins yesterday in federal court for violating the laws regarding insider trading is bad news for Trump, but five other Republican Congressmen, including  Texans John Culberson and Michael Conaway, are also caught in the undertow.

Via Raw Story, which counts them as six but that number includes Tom Price, who has cycled through the swamp faster than anyone, from Georgia Congresscritter to HHS Secretary to out on his ass cushy healthcare industry board job, i.e. lobbyist.  Raw Story's reporter also apparently didn't realize that the Houston Chronicle piece they mentioned but did not link regarding John 'Keeps His Word' first appeared in June of 2017 (it referenced Culberson's opponent only as a "research physician", aka Dr. Jason Westin).  Excerpt from the Chron:

Culberson says his interest in Innate was sparked by "press reports," though he has declined to specify which ones. News reports in January -- just before he and Conaway bought Innate stock -- focused on the controversy surrounding the purchase of shares at discounted prices by Collins and then-Georgia U.S. Rep. Tom Price, now (formerly) the secretary of health and human services.

An article in the New York Times in early January, two weeks before Culberson bought his stock, hardly inspired confidence. It described Innate as "a tiny pharmaceutical company from Australia that has no approved drugs and no backing from flashy venture capital firms." The piece also noted that the company had run out of money "more than once" and nearly folded.

On Capitol Hill, the focus was on Collins, who was being accused by Democrats of promoting Innate stock to colleagues in the halls of Congress. Collins has repeatedly denied the charge.

Earlier this month The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper, published an "exclusive" report citing a half-dozen Republican lawmakers -- all speaking anonymously -- who said they heard Collins "talking up" Innate at various congressional gatherings.

Again, Collins denied it, telling The Hill, "I've never encouraged anyone to buy the stock. Ever."

A number of ethics watchdog groups and legal analysts say that if Culberson and other lawmakers were steered into their Innate investments with non-public information, they could be in potential violation of the Stock Act, which bans insider trading by members of Congress - whether or not they make money.

Culberson has declined repeated requests from the Chronicle to talk about the details of his Innate stock purchase, including whether he was still holding on to the stock Tuesday when its price plummeted. He has relied instead on a written statement that his investment was motivated by the death of a family friend from multiple sclerosis. He also acknowledged in a statement that he "rarely" buys or sells stock.

That admission has deepened interest in his decision to buy stock in Innate, a struggling biotech company that generally has been trading for less than $1 on the Australian Stock Exchange.

So Big Bad John has some 'splain' to do, and whether he does it to federal prosecutors or the Congressional ethics committee or the media or the voters of the 7th Congressional District ... well, we'll just have to wait a little longer and see.

Also from Bloomberg: "Charges Against Rep. Chris Collins Highlight Lack of Trading Limits for Congress".

At least one of the lawmakers, John Culberson of Texas, reported selling his holdings a few weeks before the company was privately informed in June 2017 of negative results from a clinical drug trial. When the news was announced, the company’s share price tanked. He said in a statement Wednesday that he didn’t have any inside information when he sold.

As for Conaway, the 11th District of Texas is a pretty safe one.  A quiet backbencher for most of his seven terms, Conaway took over in April from Devin Nunes (who you might have seen and heard on the news just last night) the Congressional 'investigation' into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, which includes collusion as well as election-related meddling.  Prior to that, he would have been in charge of investigating Collins, Culberson, and himself on these stock trades, as he was the House Ethics Committee chair.  And his Democratic challenger, Jennie Lou Leeder, while seemingly a good progressive -- the words 'single-payer' show up in the first sentence on her healthcare issues page -- is still, sadly, a long way from getting some traction.

But Ms. Fletcher and all the centrist Democrats in the Seventh ought to be waking up this morning feeling elated at their good luck and the fortuitous timing of these developments.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance blogs less about polling, fundraising, and the forthcoming November election and more about the social justice issues that are focusing our attention at this less-sweltering, less hurricane-threatened start to August.

Meanwhile, Harris County voters should not overlook the $2.5 billion dollar flood bond election, which has early voting beginning today Wednesday, August 8.

Here's the blog post and lefty news roundup.

In ordering the Trump administration to immediately begin locating immigrant parents and reuniting them with their children, a federal judge declared that the danger of creating "permanently orphaned children" will be "100% percent" the responsibility of the federal government.

Calls for a state investigation and to cease approving licenses for immigrant detention centers were made after a report that a toddler died after being released from a facility in South Texas, and allegations of sexual abuse of at least eight immigrant boys at centers in Arizona run by Southwest Key, the company that wants to open a "baby jail" in Houston.

Texas Standard wonders if Pope Francis' call to eliminate the death penalty will change any minds among Texas Catholics ... like Greg Abbott.

Gov. Abbott told journalists in 2014 that there was no conflict between his Catholic faith and state law on the issue. Now that the death penalty does conflict with your faith, will you oppose the death penalty @GregAbbott_TX @helenprejean

— Tom Wakely (@wakely1953) August 2, 2018

The Texas Observer has a report (.pdf) that shows that two-thirds of the state's high schools have failed to comply with a decades-old law to register their seniors to vote, leaving over 180,000 Texans off the voter rolls.  The problem is statewide, but concentrated in the Rio Grande Valley.  Texas Leftist has more.

At Texas Rural Voices, they understand that arming teachers is dangerous.  Yet they see it happening all over the state.

SocraticGadfly wonders why 25 House Dems and a Gang Greenish environmentalist group are recycling an old Ryan Zinke idea for new National Parks funding.

David Collins has some candid revelations about the state of mental wellness -- his and others'.

Pages of Victory defines his progressive and liberal terms.

The Militant reports that more than 500 people attended a July 24 screening of the new film “Santos Vive,” which documented the murder of 12 year-old Santos Rodriguez at the hands of a Dallas policeman on that day in 1973.

Officer Darrell Cain played Russian roulette with his gun, killing the handcuffed Rodriguez in the back of his patrol car.  Cain had arrested Santos and his brother David at their home, accusing them of stealing $8 from a soda machine at a local gas station.  Cain was convicted of “murder with malice” but served only half of a five-year sentence.  DNA tests conducted after the boy's death confirmed Santos was innocent of the burglary.

Alice Embree at The Rag Blog contributed her history to that of other '60's and'70's-era women activists in Austin in "Fight Like a Girl", featured in the recent edition of Life & Letters, a publication of the Liberal Arts College at the University of Texas.

Very Smart Brothas, one of the blogs at The Root, caught the mural in the Trinity Groves neighborhood of Dallas that depicts the Cowboys' Dak Prescott as being in 'The Sunken Place'.  (It was the quarterback's 'house Negro moment' in supporting his owner's and the NFL's position on national anthem protests that inspired artist Trey Wilder.)

And a Tom Waits song serves as muse for Harry Hamid's latest short work of mostly fiction.

Sunday Evening "Make Orwell Fiction Again" Funnies

Sunday Collusion Confusion Funnies

Eric Holder for president?

Been wanting to do a post about his germinating presidential ambitions since before he came to Houston in June for an "intimate, high-dollar fundraiser".  It's been almost two weeks since he was on Colbert and pseudo-declared, and he's said so again.

Once again I shan't bury the lede: Holder is in a three-way tie for first in my sports book for the 2020 Dem nom, and here's a few reasons why.

1.  Holder should bring back the voters who sat out 2016.

2.  Black Democrats, especially those of a certain vintage, are simply disinclined to support candidates on the left like Bernie Sanders.  They are more religious and more conservative, and older African Americans as we know turn out for Democrats like it was an extension of Sunday morning church service (which 'Souls to the Polls' is, of course).  If you need evidence, see Doug Jones, Alabama.  But this piece from Briahna Joy Gray about the awakening political power of the black female vote, more specifically credited with carrying Jones to victory, is direct and a must-read.  One short excerpt:

Recall that the majority of black women under 35 cast their lot with Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic primary, and about 26% of black Americans identify as independents. Moreover, young voters of color disproportionately chose to stay home in 2016 rather than vote for Hillary Clinton. 

Extending the premise in the last sentence: millennials, especially in Texas, may be getting louder but still aren't showing up on Election Day (at least in the primaries).

Before these digressions get too far, let's return to Holder.

3.  I can vividly recall being at my precinct convention in the spring of 2008, where there were almost 250 people gathered (when there have been less than 10 at every one before and since) and listened to my black neighbors close to my own age say that while they respected Barack Obama's bid for the nomination, they simply could not support it because they didn't think the country was ready for a black president.  Which was why they were caucusing for Hillary.  (You may recall that Sheila Jackson Lee was also an early Clinton supporter ten years ago.)  Meanwhile, all the young white kids in my precinct were caucusing for Obama, and in Texas Clinton won the primary but Obama won the caucuses, so they wound up splitting the delegates.  Which is part of the reason the Texas two-step no longer exists, but that's also a digression.

The point -- so the logic goes -- is that America is ready for another black president to clean up everything that Trump has fucked up.  Not only that, but Trump, by trying to undo everything Obama did, has made it personal.  He is engendering a "blacklash" to Trump's 2016 "whitelash".

A reasonable enough premise.

To be clear, Holder would not be a Democrat I would vote for under any circumstance.  He could have prosecuted the banker gangsters in the wake of the Great Depression of 2008-09 despite whatever Obama wanted; the USAG has that independent discretion and authority (as Jeff Sessions and Trump are demonstrating).  In his post-Obama life Holder went to work for a tassel-loafered law firm, Covington Burley, whose clients include some of the worst corporations with a few of the biggest legal problems you can think of: Uber, Facebook, the NFL.  Yes, Eric Holder's law firm is actually defending the NFL's owners against Colin Kaepernick's lawsuit alleging their collusion/blackballing him from playing professional football in their league.

Another report has him going way too easy on the opioid manufacturer McKesson while he was the nation's top cop by exploiting his cozy relationship with their top attorney, who had previously worked at ... Covington Burley.

Some people might smell a quid pro quo somewhere in there.

But keep in mind that Democrats in 2020, no matter what happens in three months, are just gonna wanna win, and as Michael J. Fox said in a movie once, they'll crawl across the desert and drink the sand if they think they see an oasis -- even if it's a mirage.  The centrists combined with the black vote might be unstoppable irrespective of scandal, baggage, and misguided Obama nostalgia.  (He and Joe Biden both, for that matter.)  Still, I count at least two more strikes against Holder.

Holder has shown a tendency to play things safe politically. He has called the progressive push to eliminate the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency a “gift to Republicans” and is urging Democrats not to talk about impeachment on the midterm trail.

That last leaves him opposed to one of the very few people willing to spend tens of millions of his own dollars on Democratic infrastructure, Tom Steyer.  Here is the part where I echo Libby Watson at Splinter: Trust no billionaire.

Maybe—and this is just a thought—we shouldn’t have individual billionaires set the agenda for a political party, let alone one that’s supposed to represent working people (but doesn’t). A party run by billionaires, however good their intentions might be, will never do what needs to be done—like ending the existence of billionaires, just as a start.

So while it's possible Holder cannot withstand scrutiny of his record, stances, and ethical conduct, his fellow dark horses at this too-early stage are also flailing.  Wrecking both sides of her street, Elizabeth Warren outs herself as a capitalist.  Trump cannot wait to go all First Peoples on her, either.

Congressman Joaquin Castro, standing in for his brother, goes mealy-mouthed about ICE.  That's not helping Julian with their base, nor will it help any Latino who actually wants to be president (and not just vice-president) who stands off on this.  There is no raft of law-and-order Democrats -- forget "moderate" Republicans -- waiting to board this ship on a Donkey.

(The "Abolish ICE" political opportunity almost backfired on Democrats in Congress; they let the GOP instantly call their bluff.  But then they turned the tables on Paul Ryan, et.al., so maybe the Donks are not as dumb as they seem.  Republicans are masters at inflaming their base with promises they cannot keep.  So it's important to realize that it goes like this: Democrats outside of Congress should be the ones summoning the meager amount of courage to pass the litmus test; Democratic hopefuls committed to chasing the mythical crossover Republican voter are the ones leaving the chant and the hashtag to the activists.  Julian Castro -- assuming his brother is speaking for him; I can't find the former HUD secretary on the record -- is the wrong one of those.)

Kirsten Gillibrand might have an Al Franken problem.  And not with just George Soros but with women, amazingly enough.  The depth and breadth of these objections shocked me, and are excerpted below.

Many of these donors said that either they were unhappy with Gillibrand or knew plenty of people who were. The 2020 race is still years away, but as donors start to shop around, her comments on Clinton and Franken could be a factor.

“I viewed it as self-serving, as opportunistic ― unforgivable in my view,” said Rosalind Fink, a New York donor. “Since then, I have not purposely attended any fundraiser where she was there. And there is absolutely no way I will support her.”

Fink said she condemned Franken’s behavior, but she believed the Senate should have investigated the allegations thoroughly before forcing him out.

“I think it was a big mistake,” said Irene Finel Honigman, another Clinton donor from New York, adding, “I was not that impressed with her to begin with. I think she certainly had potential, but as for many people, this kind of sealed the deal.”

[...]

Susie Tompkins Buell, a major Democratic Party donor who has championed female politicians, also said she was reconsidering her support for senators who called for Franken to resign.

[...]

Jill Farber Bramson, a Democratic donor and activist in Michigan, said she knew a number of women ― who tended to be older ― who were deeply disappointed when Gillibrand spoke out against Franken.

“They had always really liked Kirsten Gillibrand very much,” she said. “They really respected her. ... They were just devastated that she pushed, they felt, all too hard and all too soon to have him resign.”

(You should read the full HuffPo piece for the context, including the many powerful Democratic female donors who defend Gillibrand.)

At Netroots Nation over in NOLA this weekend, a surge of ballot-stuffing centrists have propelled ... wait for it ... Terry McAuliffe into the lead over Bernie Sanders for their Crowdpac-sponsored straw poll for the 2020 presidential nom.  Kamala Harris is now third, with Joe Biden fourth and Warren fifth.  The rest, including those I've already mentioned above trail far behind.  As Kuffner says, 'it's a data point', but as usual, you can flush it after reading it.

Mark it Sanders, Biden, and Holder as the three front-runners with 2.25 years to go.

Alyson Kennedy for US Senator, Texas

Found someone I can vote for at the top of my November ballot.

“We invite workers and youth to join us knocking on doors in cities, towns and farming areas, discussing how we can rebuild the labor movement and forge the unity that is necessary for us to fight effectively,” said Alyson Kennedy, candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas. “We will join workers’ picket lines, fights to defend abortion rights, actions demanding prosecution of killer cops and protests against deportations, calling for amnesty for undocumented immigrants.”

Kennedy's name will not appear on the Texas ballot; she will be a qualified write-in, according to the statement from the Socialist Workers Party, via The Militant.  Hat tip Ballot Access News.

I would say that the SWP, being Trotskyite in origin and leaning today (though that is contentious internally; click for more) is somewhat to the left of where I find myself these days.  But the views of the candidate and the party are coming closer to mine than the centrist corporate Democrats holding a death grip on the Donkey Party.

Kennedy was the SWP's presidential nominee in 2016.  Here's an interview from then.



And another where she speaks about women's reproductive freedoms.  More:

She was among the first wave of women who broke the barriers that coal bosses used to exclude women from underground mining jobs. She has been part of numerous United Mine Workers union battles in the coalfields, from West Virginia to Alabama to Utah. From 2003 to 2006, she was among those in the front ranks of a union-organizing battle at the Co-Op coal mine outside Huntington, Utah. The miners there, a majority (of them) immigrants from Mexico, fought for UMW representation to win safe working conditions, an end to abuse by the bosses, and improved wages.

Kennedy joined the teachers on strike in Oklahoma this spring — part of a wave of battles across the country —  and the July 12 rally in Columbus, Ohio, where more than 10,000 union miners, Teamsters, bakery workers and others rallied to demand that the government fund their pensions.

If you recall, the Texas AFL-CIO hesitated in January to give Bob O'Rourke their endorsement.

Explaining the decision not to make an endorsement in the Senate contest, (AFL-CIO President Rick) Levy also said some members "had significant concerns about the congressman's commitment to fighting for working people and, unfortunately, he wasn't at the convention to address any of those concerns."

  

One of those concerns was likely O'Rourke's support in 2015 for allowing then-President Barack Obama to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement with 11 Pacific Rim countries. It was vocally opposed by labor unions — including the Texas AFL-CIO — who believed it would threaten American jobs. 

Ultimately the union caved, you know, because "not Ted Cruz".  O'Rourke gave one of his typical double-speak explanations for his TPP vote.

O'Rourke stood by his vote to give Obama so-called trade promotion authority, saying the choice was to let the Democratic president negotiate the deal or let it fall to Republican committee chairmen in the House. He noted it did not mean that he supported the trade deal itself, about which he said he still has "some outstanding concerns" regarding its impact on his El Paso-based district.

In other words, he was for it before he was against it.  

Obama's full-court press for TPP failed, but it succeeded in alienating union rank-and-file (because of the bitter aftertaste of Bill Clinton's NAFTA), and labor's resentment can reasonably be implicated as the primary cause of Hillary Clinton's defeat in the three Rust Belt "firewall" states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  This was no unforeseen upset; in July of 2016, over two years ago, the threat was on high alert.

That's a far bigger deal than Russian meddling on Facebook and Twitter.  It's probably a bigger deal than "misogyny", generalized.  It's probably even a bigger deal than the voter suppression we know about in Wisconsin and in Michigan (Vox's evidence disputes this).  Update: So does Carl Beijer.

(T)he case that Russian intervention was decisive ultimately depends not on anything we can see in the data, but on completely unsubstantiated theories about what's going on inside of the data, buried beneath an massive avalanche of statistical noise, bad polling, underdetermination, and pure fantasy.

It  was -- and is -- most certainly a greater factor than voting for a non-duopoly candidate.

And I like it better than simply undervoting the US Senate race.  I'm looking forward to seeing Ms. Kennedy swing through Houston.

Tuesday Toon: The Centrist Democrat's Dilemma

(Democrat pictured may or may not be Beto O'Rourke.)