Saturday, June 12, 2010

RPT Convention crazy is spewing like BP's oil disaster

Thank God the Texas Tribune is there to document the atrocities.

Here's Joe Holley at the Chron with the quotes.

"We embrace fiscal disciplineship." -- Rick Perry

"My husband really does like coyotes." -- Anita Perry

"The world will be right when the Pope is a Texan." -- Rick Perry, speculating on the future prospects of Archbishop Jose Gomez, who recently left San Antonio to head the Los Angeles diocese

The rest read like any of the Chron's comment sections: 'ObamaMessiahsocialistkeepthechange' is your executive summary.

They're brewing some awfully bitter tea in the back of the hall, too.

The San Antonio Tea Party's booth is tucked in the back of the Dallas Convention Center's exhibit hall.

To find it, you must wind your way through a maze of commerce and ideology — power scooter rentals, John Birch Society videos, T-shirts backing hard-rock guitarist Ted Nugent for president in 2012, magnetic therapeutic jewelry and campaign buttons proclaiming “Hot Chicks Vote Republican.”

Don't you wish you were there?

If you were, you could have seen Kay Bailey holding Rick Perry's hand while pinching her nose shut with the other. Or the governor's $18-million-dollar elephant in the room. Or his double-wide.

Parked outside Eddie Deen's Ranch on South Lamar Street was a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom green-and-white mobile home that the Texas AFL-CIO is generously offering Governor Rick Perry for $1 a month.

It's the same home they offered to Perry in Austin last month, minus the furniture, issues of Food and Wine magazine, a supply of hair spray, and a 50-year-old stuffed German shepherd "that has sentimental value to me," said the group's president Becky Moeller. Those were tossed out to make the home easier to transport here and later to drive to Corpus Christi for the Texas Democratic Party convention at the end of June.

But the pure, unadulterated insanity belonged to one of the lesser lights down the GOP ballot, Todd Staples -- who has chosen to libel Hank Gilbert in a manner so vile it defies description.

Really, it's so unhinged it is incoherent. Rabies doesn't hold a candle to this kind of crazy. This isn't just garden-variety Obama Derangement Syndrome, but some South Carolina strain of shit-that-doesn't-fall-too-far-from-the-bat so divorced from reality that all you can do is point and laugh at it before the men in white coats carry it away in a straitjacket.

Congratulations, Todd. It takes a lot of work to top Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, and even Jerry Patterson. You win the the 2010 RPT Convention's Chock Fulla Nuts Award. And there's a whole 'nother day ahead.

Friday, June 11, 2010

OpenSourceDem on the Green challenge to Texas Democrats

A GOP operative in Arizona has rigged a reported $200,000 in-kind contribution to the Green Party in the form of sufficient signatures to get their candidates -- to be nominated this weekend -- on the statewide and select countywide ballots.

The Democratic Party perceives this as a short-term threat to Bill White’s campaign and is sensitive to a longer term threat to the status quo, particularly if the Green candidate for state comptroller gets enough votes to meet the statutory threshold (5%) for continued ballot access.

The GOP doubtless regards this as a “dirty trick” in the short term. They love such mischief almost as much as Democratic incumbents in Arkansas like vote suppression techniques such as reducing polling locations in a run-off.

GOP operatives such as the Club for Growth or intellectuals like the Federalist Society may see this ploy as a new wrinkle in their notion of a “Permanent Republican Majority”. That “majority” actually consists of money-driven pluralities in a mix of ratification elections and plebiscites wherein the lower the turnout, the better. Call this the “Citizens United” plutocracy.

In fact, both party establishments in Texas are plutocratic:

For the Democratic Party establishment (TDP), a “Way We’ve Always Done It!” sort of decrepit plutocracy is based on what was for a long time professional and more recently racial patronage, derived from bi-partisan concession-tending (“Jim Crow”). But, the GOP in Texas has long commanded more money, technology, and concessions. So, “Jim Crow” is just an epithet now, not really the regime here today. And TDP plutocracy is really just nostalgia -- Matt Angle’s wannabe plutocracy.

While profoundly reactionary, the GOP is conforming Texas government to radical privatization, deregulation, and economic discrimination using the state and federal Supreme courts. They now dominate the emerging police state it takes to levy and collect indirect and regressive taxes. But like East German Communists, they run as the anti-government, pseudo-populist party. Thus they innovate just enough in electoral politics and roll out sufficiently clever waves of earthy rhetoric to keep Texas a red state bastion despite its latent Democratic majority.

The GOP prevails by further dividing and demoralizing a Democratic Party already broken by professional patronage and further mediated by racial gerrymandering and quotas. A “green” party consisting of not so much anti-corporate as well-educated but chronically underemployed and mostly white environmental activists may do in the general election what the Tea Party has done in GOP primaries. (The Tea Party appears to be well-educated but chronically underemployed, property-rights and gun-rights-favoring, mostly white activists.)

If the jobless recovery continues, of course, there will be more and more well-educated but chronically underemployed (fill-in-the-blank), with increasingly non-white activists out there raging against both plutocracies.

Still, GOP operatives hope to focus the alienation in Texas right now on well-funded Democratic challengers who they can portray as “liberal” or in any case “corporate” establishment, while GOP incumbents portray themselves as moralistic, “small-government”, “cloth coat”, rubber wader”, libertarians or eat-what-you-catch-or-kill hunter/gatherers like Sarah and Todd Palin.

None of this theatrical politics was new even before Citizens United. The Green Party thing is just another wrinkle in a story now decades old.

It could backfire several different ways:

1. Techno-Legal

The Red-Green petition drive can probably be voided by invalidating individual signatures under the exclusive affiliation provisions of state law using the TEAM and VEMACS voter registration systems. But that will take a tech-savvy lawyer who understands those systems. The Green petitions are probably legal under the state exemption on corporate funding for “party-building” activities. In any case, the GOP Secretary of State cannot be trusted to do the signature validation competently or even disinterestedly. (Note: The SOS has approved the Greens' petition signatures, but the Greens and the Democrats have agreed to a two-week moratorium in order to authenticate the legality of the Greens' benefactor.)

2. Trust and Confidence: Try It For A Change!

The GOP noise machine has reached maximum volume very early and is getting very tiresome. By speaking intelligently and calmly, both Barack Obama and Bill White may well elicit the sort of confidence and trust that may be more important in this mid-term election than enthusiasm, especially fake Astroturf  “enthusiasm” or “rage”.

3. Take ‘Em Head On

While the Tea Party will fall in lockstep with the GOP or stay home and sulk, loyal Oil Patch and Texas Environmental Democrats can compete head on and outnumber Green Party activists in every venue, including the Democratic state convention, taking place in two weeks in Corpus Christi.

4. Hey Diddle Diddle, Straight Up The Middle

Even more importantly, Bill White and Jeff Weems can provide real leadership on environmental issues and energy policy ... provided they can break out from the lame Lone Star Project strategy of empty rhetoric in targeted races underwritten by the TDP.

5. Straight D Plus

Finally, if and only if a few of the big, urban county Democratic Parties can mobilize high-information “surge” voters -- a legacy of 2008 primary and general elections -- then Democrats can co-opt more voters from a would-be Green Party than the other way around. The key will be “straight D plus” voting instructions. It is true that a straight G vote is just another spoiler campaign. But a straight D plus a vote for the Green comptroller candidate (where the TDP left a void) would help Bill White (and Ann Harris Bennett in Harris County) and hurt the GOP. Of course, that assumes Democrats have tech-savvy political operatives, something more than just nostalgia to run on and run with.

The downside on Straight D Plus is that the Greens, having gotten on the ballot in service to the GOP in 2010, would be on the ballot in 2012 courtesy of Democrats. That poses a fundamental question for Democrats:

-- Do we want or expect to be the dominant one of two collaborating parties in a bi-partisan plutocracy (“Jim Crow”) ever again, or do we want or have any expectation of ever being a robustly competitive party in a multi-party democracy, not any sort of plutocracy?

That is the sort of historic challenge that a placeholder like Boyd Richie does not recognize and has not faced. It is one Bill White may have to overcome in addition to running his own race if he expects to win statewide, in effect with no more than half a party. If Democrats expect to win elections in Texas, they will have to embrace change as a party. We need to realize that parties which nominate by convention and take unlimited corporate contributions have a huge advantage over parties nominating by primary election and using small donations to leverage corporate contributions and other large donations. That is the way to perpetuate plutocracy without regard to colorful rhetoric or other aesthetic devices to distinguish our brand of plutocracy from the other one. The plutocrats with the most money cannot govern well, but they can win elections dominated by mercenary consultants and mass media.

So behind all the tricks of mercenary political operatives, theirs and ours, there really are some profound questions for Democrats to answer if we are ever to make anything out of our latent majority statewide, our transient one in Harris County, a fairly reliable one in Dallas County, and of course the potentially valuable one in Houston.

Whose ass to kick


Other Ass We'd Like to See Kicked

Kick Peter Sutherland's Half-BP Half-Goldman Sachs Ass
Kick the Supreme Court's Corporations-Are-People Ass
Kick All Lobbyists' Asses Out of Washington, D.C.
Kick Lloyd Blankfein's Ass Into Federal Prison
Kick Monsanto's Genetically-Engineered Ass
Kick Joe Lieberman's Ass Out of the Senate
Kick Congress' Cutting-Unemployment Ass
Kick Jake Knotts' Ass Back to 19th Century
Kick Larry Summers' Ass Back to Harvard
Kick Blackwater's Ass Out of Afghanistan
Kick Dick Cheney's Ass to The Hague
Kick Money's Ass Out of U.S. Politics

http://www.michaelmoore.com

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Perry's top politico connected to Greens' Santa Claus

Matt Angle busts Dave Carney.

Documents obtained by the Lone Star Project reveal that Rick Perry’s top political advisor Dave Carney has a long and direct link to the manager of the Texas Green Party/GOP ballot scam. In 2004, Carney teamed-up with Texas ballot scam leader Tim Mooney to gather signatures to put Ralph Nader on the ballot in order to assist the George W. Bush Presidential campaign.

In 2004, Carney worked with a group called “Choices for America, LLC” which was “run” by Mooney – the same Republican operative who collected signatures for the Green Party of Texas in 2010. (Dallas Morning News, August 12, 2004) Both Choices for America, LLC, the shell group used in 2004, and Take Initiative America, LLC the shell group used in 2010, are registered to Charles Hurth III. (Missouri SOS)

According to the Dallas Morning News, “Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner said the governor's campaign had nothing to do with the petition-gathering effort.” It now appears that statement is likely not true.

That's a hell of a way to open your coronation weekend, Governor. And the Greens will now feel greater pressure to withdraw their petitions.

This just reeks all the way around. It's really a shame that the Green Party got manipulated in this fashion by the Republicans, but it's par for the course for goons like Carney.

Brains surgery scheduled

Much neglected for some time now, this blog will undergo some significant changes here in the coming days as I rework the template, overhaul the blogroll, monetize the site a bit, and re-enable commenting to make it more user-friendly.  You may see some changes that don't stick around for long as I experiment with the look and feel.

While the dust settles, enjoy these something old/something new blog brethren and sisteren:

-- The Yellow Something Something (formerly the Yellow Doggerel Democrat, still Steve Bates)

-- The Southern Shift

-- The Existentialist Cowboy

-- Local Texans

-- From Austin to A&M

-- Billiard Cues

-- and Newsy, which provides this video on the ever-increasing amount of money in politics:


Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Texas Shorts

We're going briefs, not boxers, as we catch up with the news.

-- The Republican Party of Texas opens its state convention this weekend. We'll be posting occasional updates on the free-flowing crazy (hey, there's only so much we can all take). Here's a teaser from the Fort Worth Startlegram; the header is "Texas GOP delegates not keen on 'sensible immigration reform'"; emphasis at the end is mine:

Norm Adams wants Texas to find middle ground in the nationwide immigration debate.

The 65-year-old Houston insurance agent caused a ruckus Tuesday by presenting his "sensible immigration policy" -- a proposal that the Texas Republican Party reverse course and support a path to legalization -- to party faithful gathered in Dallas to prepare for their state convention.

His proposal is designed to secure the borders, deport noncitizens with violent records and give visas to illegal immigrants, who would pay taxes at a higher rate than citizens. In the process, he said, Republicans might regain countless Hispanic voters who shifted to the Democratic Party.

"The Republican Party needs to come together on a sensible immigration policy -- one that is not amnesty, one that is not deportation," Adams told a committee working on party platform issues. "If we get this passed, Texas will set the standard.

"I want this party to come together, folks," he said. "I hope and pray you people give this serious consideration."

Adams' proposal drew heated responses. More than 10,000 Republicans are expected in Dallas for their two-day convention, where they will approve a 2010 platform.

Sara Legvold, a delegate from Keller, was among those to speak against Adams' proposal.

"No compromises, no guest work, until we have our borders under control," she said. "I want to deport everybody who is illegal -- children, dogs, pets, birds.

"My compassion has dried up, just as my tax dollars have dried up."

Your compassion, your tax dollars, your brain, your soul. I hope your God calls you home very soon, Sara.

Update: they've got a three-way of nuts going for the chair.  Get your corn popped now.

-- The Greens made the ballot. Let the lawsuits begin. In Harris County, their candidates for county clerk and statehouse representative in District 144 will very likely be problematic for the Dems.

Update: once again via South Texas Chisme, the Greens won't be on the ballot if it turns out their Republican benefactor has violated the law:

Kat Swift, state coordinator for the Green Party in Texas, said the party's attorney is awaiting written confirmation that an outside group that bankrolled the effort is not a corporation.

Texas law forbids campaign contributions from corporations.

"Unless that paperwork comes through, all of it on the up and up, we're not moving forward with it," Swift said. ...

Swift said if the party gets written confirmation that it can legally list Take Initiative America as the in-kind donor, it intends to move forward and field candidates in the fall campaign. She said the group has until June 30 to make the decision.

-- After seeing Bill White's tax returns, an envious Governor Coyote Killer called for him to quit the race. It's just too funny. The comments in the Chronic are even running against Perry... no small feat.

Still no word on debates.

-- I learned this week that Boyd Richie has an opponent for chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Talk about David versus Goliath Neck...

-- The Trib also reminds us that there is likely to... well, maybe possibly ... be a contest for Speaker of the Texas House next year, as Joe Straus has managed to alienate several Republicans and most all of the Democrats. Some history here about how speakers never used to serve multiple terms until the 20th century, and that the consolidation of power began with Billy Clayton, who was of course scandalized -- along with dozens of others -- by L'Affaire Sharpstown in the early '70's.

-- Tory Gattis has his post up about the charter amendment petition drive organized by Renew Houston. His conclusion:

So my feelings on the initiative are mixed: I agree with the concept, but have serious concerns about the details - especially the open-ended development impact fees.  Unfortunately at this point, the language is set - and I think that language will bring out some tough opponents in the fall.  In addition, this is shaping up as the year of the angry, anti-tax, Tea Party voter, which does not bode well at all for initiatives like this.  DOA?  Maybe.  We'll just have to see how it plays out.

So he thinks it makes the ballot but gets rejected by the voters. I believe that's a fair handicap of the race today.