Political debates schedule (more than just Obama and Romney)

-- You've probably already seen the Commission on Presidential Debates' October schedule of the traditional three-P-and-one-VP. Free and Equal has also scheduled a presidential debate between Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, and Virgil Goode on Tuesday, October 23rd, in Chicago. They're still waiting on RSVPs from Obama and Romney. No, seriously.

Free & Equal Elections Foundation gained national attention in 2008, when it hosted the only Presidential debate in the country in which every candidate who had ballot access in enough states to become President was invited. Both Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin participated in 2008, and Free & Equal is seeking to increase that number for the 2012 election. The debate made history, being the first and only all-inclusive, nationally televised debate on C-SPAN2. 

The Libertarians are suing the CPD, the Dems, and the Repubs because of being excluded from the Obama-Romney matches, but their legal argument doesn't appear to hold a great deal of water.

If you would like to see Stein, Johnson, Goode and/or Rocky Anderson added to the CPD roster, you can sign a petition here.

-- Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly plan a faceoff that should be worth exceedingly more than the $4.95 pay-per-view price. Count me in on that.

-- Ted Cruz and Paul Sadler have two debates scheduled in Dallas next month, both to be televised. They likewise haven't invited David Collins or John Jay Myers to participate. Myers has been busy protesting that decision as well, just not inside a courtroom. The Green and Libertarian senatorial candidates are holding discussions about having their own debate, and I'll post news about that if/when it breaks.

-- Nick Lampson and Randy Weber (CD-14, to replace Ron Paul) had a debate scheduled this past week but Weber canceled. The two have another one on the calendar for October 3rd in Clear Lake.

-- And Pete Gallego and Quico Canseco (CD-23) will debate en Espanol next Tuesday the 25th in a contest that will last for an hour, but be edited down to 30 minutes and then televised on Sept. 29th. The Alpine Daily Planet, Gallego's hometown newspaper, has more. Once again, their Green and Libertarian counterparts -- Ed Scharf and Jeffrey C. Blunt, respectively -- are not invited to join them in any language.

Juan Percent

"Pathetic" moves forward to "absurd".

Mitt Romney appeared on Univision Wednesday alongside Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas, but something was a little peculiar about his appearance -- his skin tone. Looking back at the hundreds of photos logging his every moment on the campaign trail, the Republican presidential nominee is usually not so shockingly tan.

While his orangey-brown appearance on Univision could have been the result of bad lighting or a makeup mishap, left-wing blog the Democratic Underground concluded that Romney "dyed his face brown for his Univision interview."

The claim is not completely out of the ballpark. After all, as Gawker points out, Romney did say "it would be helpful to be Latino," in a video secretly recorded at a campaign fundraiser earlier this year.

It would be an appropriately sensitive response at this point to feel sorry for the guy, but his acute disingenuousness makes that impossible.

Only the George McGovern campaign of 1972 rivals Romney's in terms of self-destructiveness in the modern era. I see no way for the Republicans to regain any kind of momentum at this point, no matter how much money they raise and spend, no matter how nasty their attacks get.

The debates are going to be pure comedy gold. You can just feel it, can't you?

Update: Nobody skewers it like Esteban Colberto.

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Brainy Endorsements: David Collins

David B. Collins is the Green Party's candidate for US Senate, running to replace the retiring Kay Bailey Hutchison. The Republicans have tapped Ted Cruz, of course; Paul Sadler is the Democratic nominee. (Cruz and Sadler are scheduled to debate twice, on Tuesday, October 2 and on Friday, October 19.) The Libertarian Party's pick is John Jay Myers.

As you perhaps recall from some of my earlier posts, I have never been inclined to support Sadler. While he may be experienced and even competent if elected, his values are simply too conservative to be a match for mine. He went past the point of no return when he declared in a debate with Grady Yarbrough prior to the runoff election in June that "the people of this country are not ready for" the decriminalization of marijuana, despite the Texas Democratic Party's platform position and all polling evidence to the contrary.

Never mind conservatism. This demonstrates, to me, a cluelessness of Romneyesque proportions.

I perceive that a prospective Senator Paul Sadler would be the Bluest of Dogs, in the Joe Lieberman/Ben Nelson of Nebraska tradition. And I'm sorry, Democratic pals, that's just not enough of an improvement over Cruz for me to be able to vote for.

You may remember that Sadler entered the contest very late, after the withdrawal of presumptive Democratic annointee Ricardo Sanchez. I suspect this happened at the urging of newly-appointed TDP official Bill Brannon, like Sadler an East Texas conservative Democrat. There is, as I referenced here, a mildly delusional school of thought that Texas can be turned blue by working the Big Thicket a little harder for votes. My humble O about that premise: they must have found some of the marijuana fields in the woods while they were looking for Democrats.

You'll have better luck going after Bigfoot, boys.

Charles Kuffner, bless his heart, has pimped Sadler hard, particularly for fundraising purposes, but the reality of Texas is what it is. Despite the slivers of hope expressed elsewhere online for each man, Sadler has even less chance of winning Texas than does Barack Obama. Ted Cruz will draw more crossover votes from Latino Democrats who will split their tickets based on surname alone than the Democrat will capture of the mythological Republican ticket-splitters.

This is getting really embarrassing for Sadler, frankly. If you've been reading the campaign's e-mail, you know what I'm talking about.

When the Texas TeaBagger goes to Washington next January, he will join Rand Paul's caucus of kooks to defy, deny and obstruct everything that comes before the upper chamber -- no matter how despicable -- just as they have for the past four years. Texas is the primary reason why the Senate Republicans, led by John Cornyn, can do things like filibuster a jobs bill for veterans. And no amount of money is going to do anything to change it.

So given this sad set of circumstances, only a Pyrrhic victory is possible... which is to say that if Cruz fails to reach 60% of the November 6th tally, everyone who is not beet red all over their body can cling to some hope for sanity for the future of Texas.

As with the presidential contest here in the Lone Star, because the outcome is foreordained voters can free themselves from obligation to their respective tribes, and in the secrecy of the ballot booth can -- and are encouraged -- to vote their consciences. Republicans: if Cruz is just too crazy for you, cast a vote for the Libertarian. To Democrats, especially those in the Democratic wing of the TDP: you have a better, more progressive option. As Collins says: "No STDs, please" (straight-ticket-Democrat).

I have to say: as much as I know it is going to piss off my Democrat friends -- maybe former friends at this point -- I just love that.

Here's a bit on Collins from the San Antonio Current in the summer, at the Greens' state convention.

David Collins walked to the front of the Hill Country cabin with a green toga draped over shirt, tie and slacks, a throwback, he said, to mankind's first republic: the Roman Senate. "The toga has great symbolic significance for me," he said, "and I've felt myself to be politically and spiritually green for a long time." Staring down at the getup, Collins laughed. "I would run for office naked if I thought the Green Party would benefit from it."

And here's the video of that.



Collins is pragmatic about his chances, which is what I like about him as much as his stand on the issues. The US Senate race, even more than the presidential one, is a referendum on how more or how less Tea-drunk our state is at this moment. The choices, again, are:

1. Batshit conservative (overfunded and overpublicized)
2. Moderately conservative (underfunded and under-publicized, the usual circumstance for Democrats running for statewide office in Texas)
3. An unknown progressive candidate
4. And an unknown Libertarian (who seems both less crazy than Ted Cruz at times and more so at others)

So what do you have to lose by not following the herd? The two races at the top of your ballot represent the best chance to send a protest message to the two major parties in a long, long, time.

So send it.

Collins is in the DFW area today for two events and back in Houston on Friday to join a protest against the Keystone XL pipeline. Find him also on Facebook here. You can watch more video of Collins here and also on the Greenwatch channel here, along with SD-17 senatorial candidate David Courtney and Harris County constable candidate Carlos Villalobos, about whom I will post in the future.

Personally I would like to see Collins and Myers debate each other if they wind up being excluded from the Cruz-Sadler matches. How about you?

Brainy Endorsements so far include the following...

Nile Copeland for the First Court of Appeals
Alfred and GC Molison for HD 131 and SBOE, respectively
Henry Cooper for HD 148
Keith Hampton for Presiding Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
Barbara Gardner for the Fourteenth Court of Appeals
Don Cook for Congress, 22nd District
Max Martin for Congress, 36th District
Remington Alessi for Harris County Sheriff
David Courtney for Texas Senate, District 17
Ann Harris Bennett for Harris County Tax Assessor/Collector
Ann Johnson for HD-134
Mike Engelhart, Larry Weiman, and Al Bennett for the Harris County bench
Mark Roberts for Congress, 2nd District

Brainy Endorsements: Mark Roberts

Mark A. Roberts is the Green Party's nominee for US Congress, District 2. The GOP incumbent is Ted Poe; the Democratic nominee is Jim Dougherty, and the Libertarian candidate is Kenneth Duncan.

This map shows the gerrymandering performed on CD-2 by the Republicans, after all of the court wrangling. The district is commonly referred to now as "The Giant Shrimp", and as you can note, it lost all of the area of Southeast Texas (Jefferson and Liberty counties) and was moved entirely into Harris County, and now includes inner loop -- and bright blue -- neighborhoods of Montrose and West University, immediately west of the Texas Medical Center (recall we had a discussion previously about district lines in the TMC when James Cargas -- and subsequently Evan Mintz of the Houston Chronicle''s editorial board -- got confused). The district's PVI is R+13 according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index Wiki page, but that data is aged. I suspect --without being able to confirm -- that the new district has gotten a bit more purple.

Dougherty, an attorney and CPA, filed to run almost on the deadline last December, and told me he felt like 'somebody had to challenge' Poe. I like Jim Dougherty personally, and have supported him in his previous bids for public office (HD-134 in 2004, Harris County DA in 2000), but when I learned he excoriated Rachel Van Os in her recent bid for TDP chair -- publicly, and to her face -- essentially for being a progressive, I was forced to step away from endorsing his candidacy.

I am capable of supporting a few moderate and conservative Democrats -- like Max Martin for one, and Nick Lampson for another -- but I cannot do so when there is a better progressive running, and especially not when it's a candidate as solid as Mark. From his Amazon.com authors' bio page...

Roberts is a husband, a father, and a grandfather. He has been teaching full-time and part-time for twenty-five years. Currently he is a social studies and language arts instructor for a small private school in Houston, TX. Chinavare's Find began as a character sketch in a creative writing class in the early 90's, and gradually morphed into a novel.

Here's Mark's introductory video.



Roberts makes as clear and obvious an elucidation of what Greens feel are the problems -- and their solutions to them -- as you will find. If you don't know or understand what the Green Party is all about, then watch this video. If you still don't understand after watching, then you probably won't ever get it. That's okay, because you still have the option of voting for the same old corporate thing and expecting a different result.

Mark's campaign has some cute slogans:

If the Republicans have your seeing red,
and the Democrats leave you feeling blue,
Vote Green!

and...

 If you believe in the proper removal and disposal of petrified dead wood clogging the community, then remove Ted Poe and vote Green!

Roberts is, in short, exactly the kind of "Mr. Smith" we need more of in Washington. The voters of Texas' 2nd Congressional District would be well-served by replacing Ted Poe with Mark Roberts.

Find Mark also on Faceboook here.

Prior Brainy Endorsements have included the following:

Nile Copeland for the First Court of Appeals
Alfred and GC Molison for HD 131 and SBOE, respectively
Henry Cooper for HD 148
Keith Hampton for Presiding Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
Barbara Gardner for the Fourteenth Court of Appeals
Don Cook for Congress, 22nd District
Max Martin for Congress, 36th District
Remington Alessi for Harris County Sheriff
David Courtney for Texas Senate, District 17
Ann Harris Bennett for Harris County Tax Assessor/Collector
Ann Johnson for HD-134
Mike Engelhart, Larry Weiman, and Al Bennett for the Harris County bench

Ed Emmett, Don Sumners, and "esperanza"

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett has brokered a deal with the Texas secretary of state to restore about $700,000 in funding the state had cut off after the county tax assessor said he would not purge presumed-dead voters from the rolls before the Nov. 6 election.

Tax Assessor-Collector Don Sumners on last week said he would delay the purge after hundreds of very-much-alive voters called his staff, upset about a letter they had received from his office saying they may be dead and would be removed from the rolls if they did not act within 30 days.

Those voters were on a list of about 9,000 names generated by the Secretary of State's Office using data from the Social Security Administration's master death file, as mandated by a new state law.

State officials, saying the purge is required by law, accused Sumners of jeopardizing the integrity of the election and cut off his voter registration funding. Sumners had received about $31,000 of an expected $732,404 this year before being shut off, secretary of state spokesman Rich Parsons said. 

When this news broke last week -- along with the subsequent developments -- my first reaction was the same as everyone else's: "I'll be damned; Don Sumners did the right thing". As I thought about it some more -- given Sumners' inherent Tea Party bias -- I began to wonder if this wasn't some kind of three-dimensional chess game, where Sumners would be able to disenfranchise last-minute registrations, hang a 'Mission Accomplished' banner at the King Street Patriots' headquarters, and avoid being seen as the bad guy. (Texas SOS Esperanza "Hope" Andrade is, after all, appointed by the governor and thus unaccountable to public opinion.)

But then I remembered: this is Don Sumners. He can't be trusted to pull on his boxers with the snap in front. Even Ed Emmett knows this.

Emmett blamed Sumners for the mix-up, revealing the tax office had been sent two lists by the secretary of state, but only acted on one. One list included 9,000 names the state considered "weak" matches to death records. The second list was composed of about 1,000 names considered "strong" matches to death records.

Sumners' office only sent letters to voters on the "weak" list. Sumners, who serves as the county's chief voter registrar, acknowledged his office erred, believing until late last week that the 1,000 names on the "strong" list were among the 9,000 on the other list.

Emmett's deal is based on the "strong" list. The secretary of state has agreed to restore Sumners' funding if the taxman sends letters to the names on the strong list, canceling those whose relatives confirm they are dead and removing from the voter rolls those for whom there is no response after 30 days, Parsons said.

Everybody -- yes, even Democrats -- believes the deceased ought to be removed from the voter rolls. Only a few people who drink too much tea and watch too much Fox News believe it's a good idea to do it the way Sumners did it, especially less than two months before Election Day. He must have gotten a lot of calls from allegedly dead Republicans to have reversed himself so quickly.

To the larger issue of voter disenfranchisement generally -- and the growing franchise operated by Catherine Engelbrecht -- here's an example of what KSP thinks is happening... and what's really happening.

In Houston, the group targeted the Congressional district represented by Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat who is black. Ms. Engelbrecht said the group settled on Ms. Lee’s district because thousands of addresses there housed six or more registered voters, which it took as an indication of inaccurate registrations. The methodology, which the group still uses, could disproportionately affect lower income families. 

Volunteers spent five months analyzing 3,800 registrations in Ms. Lee’s district, discovering more than 500 voters that the group said were problematic. More than 200 voters were registered at vacant lots, prompting Ms. Engelbrecht to later remark that those voters had a “Lord of the Rings Middle Earth sort of thing going on.” 

The reality was far less interesting. 

“They had one particular case I remember very well,” said Douglas Ray, the Harris County assistant attorney who represents the election registrar. “They had identified an address where eight or 10 people were registered to vote. There was no building there.” Mr. Ray found out that the building had been torn down and that the people simply moved. 

This would be another example of conservatives really having no understanding -- and even less empathy -- of how the poverty-stricken live their lives.

My feeling is that most independent voters are as sick of sneering plutocrats and oligarchs as the the rest of us. But we'll have to wait and see what the poll that concludes on November 6 says.

That's moving from esperanza and toward surety every day.

Happy 225th birthday, Constitution

A message from Move to Amend.

Today is Constitution Day, the anniversary of the day the US Constitution was ratified in 1787.

Breaking from the tyranny of the British Empire was an important victory. Most of us have seen the paintings of the Founding Fathers in that historic moment, and heard stories about how our country came to be.

But there’s a problem with those paintings and stories: there are a lot of people missing.

At the time the Constitution was ratified, only about 8% of people living in America qualified as “legal persons.” That means that 92% of people didn’t qualify for those inalienable rights that are supposed to be innate to all human beings – they were too poor, the wrong sex, or not white enough.

That’s a whole lot of people to leave out of a democratic republic.

Today's also the the one-year anniversary of the Occupy movement. On a day when percentages like 47% are all the news, it's important to be reminded that if the 99% all went to the polls in 50 days, the 1% wouldn't matter.

Luckily, though, the 92% weren’t about to take this sitting down. From the Constitution’s adoption, our forefathers and mothers spent decades organizing and agitating to make the promise of American democracy a reality.

Ordinary people are the ones who gave us the political rights that we associate with the Constitution today – they insisted the Bill of Rights be added, and they fought for the additional amendments to secure equality. They also realized that they would not be free until they secured economic democracy as well.

That’s why many states set up laws to hold the most powerful form of concentrated capital in check: the corporation. They legally required that corporations serve the public good, that charters expire after a short period, that yearly revenues be capped, that shareholders be local, and that corporations couldn’t spend a single penny in elections!

These folks were on their way to political and economic equality!

But the wealthy elite fought back too. The Supreme Court made corporations legal persons – before they would acknowledge women’s right to vote and while they approved Jim Crow laws that denied African Americans their rights to equal protection.

So on this year’s Constitution Day, we at Move to Amend ask you to imagine what it would look like if the picture had been different. What if women, the poor, the indigenous and people of color had written the Constitution? What kind of country would they have created? And what would democracy look like if it actually represented all people?

Join Move to Amend in our struggle to amend the Constitution to return human rights back to real people, not corporations – find your local group or start one near you. And then join us as we embark on the even bigger task of creating the kind of democracy we have never actually seen in this country: one where "We the People" – all people – create the world that we want to see.

Local blogger Egberto Willies can answer any question you may have about the Houston effort.

Update: Only tangentially related, PBS has a lengthy interview and video excerpts with former Supreme Court Justice David Souter on the occasion. Here's just one piece, from the end.

The greatest threat to America's republican form of government won't come from foreign invasion, or military coup, he said, but from what he described as "the pervasive civic ignorance" of Americans today.

Because of cutbacks in civic education from the 1970s onward, and exacerbated by the No Child Left Behind law, two-thirds of Americans today don't even know that their country has three branches of government, he said. So they don't know whom to hold accountable for the country's festering problems. "What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible," he said. "And when the problems get bad enough -- another serious terrorist attack, another financial meltdown -- some one person will come forward and say, 'Give me total power, and I will solve this problem.' That is how the Roman republic fell....That is how democracy dies. And if something is not done to improve the level of civic knowledge, that is what you should worry about at night."

Hoping against hope to end on an upbeat note, I asked: "Do you think we're losing our ability -- which has always animated our belief in the Constitution and our country -- that we are always perfecting our democracy?"

His reply was anything but hopeful. "I don't think we have lost it. I think it is in jeopardy. I am not a pessimist, but I am not an optimist about the future of American democracy," he said. "We're still in the game, but we have serious work to do, and serious work is being neglected right now."

Does he think we still have the capacity to do what the Framers did over the hot Constitutional Convention summer 225 years ago, which was compromise to overcome our differences? Souter paused. "I would like to think that enough examples of non-compromise are going to start people thinking that there must be a better way to try to govern the country," he replied.