Monthly Archives: April 2010

Pssst…Wanna Buy a Judge?

Ever since the Supreme Court issued its January ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), lifting the ban on corporate spending on elections, most of the attention has been directed towards how this would effect things like presidential and congressional races. And while there now will certainly be the opportunity for big corporations to openly campaign for candidates friendly to their points of view, the executive and legislative branches are not the only ones who run elections. Much less talked about is how Citizens United has opened up vast swaths of the judicial system to corporate purchase.

In an article at The New Republic,Adam Skaggs delves into this issue and explains how state judicial elections have changed over the past ten years from quite little affairs to huge contests flush with corporate players. Skaggs writes, “As an Ohio AFL-CIO official put it, ‘We figured out a long time ago that it’s easier to elect seven judges than to elect one hundred and thirty-two legislators.'” I’m a little surprised that I haven’t seen more outcry over this issue, but I guess there’s only so many things people can get worked up about in a given stretch. This issue, I think, differs from the fear that corporations can buy legislators, mostly because people expect politicians to have agendas and represent a particular segment of society. Judges, on the other hand, are supposed to be impartial, and guided only by the law — or maybe I’m hopelessly naive (that was rhetorical, btw).

And in case you think judges are not swayed by the origin of their funding:

The obvious question here is whether special-interest spending sways judges once they’re presiding over cases. Three in every four Americans believe the answer is yes, according to a 2001 poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. More importantly, even judges believe there is a connection: Of over 2,000 state judges polled in a 2002 Greenberg Quinlan survey, nearly half said campaign contributions influence judges’ decision-making.

The TNR article cites several instances that make it hard not to think that judicial decisions were bought outright by interested companies. Obviously, Citizens United is not creating the situation whereby big companies can buy favorable court decisions, it’s only making it easier. In my mind, this all brings up two important points. First, it seems obvious that there should be provisions in place to ensure that elected judges are made to step aside from any cases involving campaign contributors. Secondly, as I’ve asked many times before, why are judges elected in the first place? As a voter, I have no way to appraise the competency of judges. I don’t think judges should be elected at all. To me, it makes more sense to have them appointed internally via an internal merit-based system. At the minimum, if judges have to be elected, there should be public financing systems adopted, as four states have already done. The alternative, as Skaggs writes, is, “If, in the Citizens United era, states don’t adopt public financing and strong disclosure and disqualification rules, the judiciary’s credibility will dissolve—and quickly.”

17%

If you read our illustrious rivals over at Delaware Politics, or really any conservative blog or any “reporter” on Fox “News,” you are led to believe that the overwhelming majority of Americans are Teabaggers. And I am not even talking about a 50 + 1 majority, I am talking about the “constitutional” majority of over 60% or more. However, a Republican polling outfit called the Winston Group is out with some poll results that should, but won’t, change that narrative.

Only 17% of Americans consider themselves members of the “Tea Party” movement. Of that 17%, 60% are Republicans, 28% are independents, 13% are Democrats, 66% are conservatives, 26% are moderate and 8% are liberal (these supposed liberals must be the members of the site Hillary is 44 or something or firebaggers). Tebaggers are also overwhelmingly male (56%), old, and white. They are also confused. Because while 36% name the economy and jobs as their top issue, 21% say the deficit and spending are their top issue, and when asked to chose between spending money to create jobs versus balancing the budget, the Teabaggers chose creating jobs by a whopping 63% to 32% margin. So why are they all out there crying about spending and deficits when they themselves are interested blowing up the budget to create jobs.

We all know why, and it has nothing to do with spending and deficits.

17%.

In other words, if we had a parliamentary democracy like the United Kingdom, the Teabaggers would be no more powerful than the Liberal Democrats over there, and in case you are ignorant of UK politics, the third party Lib Dems are often treated with scorn and derision in the press and by the dominant two parties: Labor and the Conservatives. But in America, 17% controls all. 17% is a supermajority. The 83% must cater to what the 17% demands, or else we are threatened with violence or worse.

Monday Open Thread

Welcome to your first post-iPad Monday. Does the world feel different and new? Are you ready to chuck your unwieldy netbook and use an iPad forever? So, are there any non-iPad related things you want to discuss? Put them here, in your open thread.

I’m sure you’re shocked to learn that the Florida urologist who told Obama voters to seek treatment elsewhere has no idea what he’s talking about:

Dr. Jack Cassell, the Orlando urologist who put a sign on his door letting patients know he doesn’t want to have to treat them if they are Obama/health care reform supporters, was on my radio show Friday night, but didn’t seem to know much about the health care bill he’s criticizing.

At 1:46 in:

Cassell: Hospice cuts in 2012…Does the government want people to die slowly?
Colmes: Do you really think the government wants people dead?
Cassell: Well I think that they’re cutting all supportive care, like nursing homes, ambulance services…
Colmes: What to you mean they’re cutting nursing homes?
Cassell: They’re cutting nursing home reimbursements
Colmes: Isn’t what they’re cutting under the Medicare plan what was really double dipping; they were getting credits and they were getting to deduct them at the same time.
Cassell: Well you know, I can’t tell you exactly what the deal is.
Colmes: If you can’t tell us exactly what the deal is, why are you opposing it and fighting against it?
Cassell: I’m not the guy who wrote the plan.
Colmes: But if you don’t know what the deal is why are you speaking out against something you don’t know what the deal is?
Cassell: What I get online, just like any other American. What I’m supposed to understand about the bill should be available to me.
Colmes: It is; it’s been online for a long time; it’s also been all over the media…

In fact, the National Association of Home Care and Hospice praises much of the bill.

All he knows is “socialism, socialism, socialism.” I don’t think I would want to be treated by a physician who can’t even bother to inform himself.

Sarah Palin’s show of canned interviews done by other people didn’t have such a great debut:

Following the show’s airing, critics gave middling reviews, calling it “canned,” “innocuous, flat,” and a “letdown.” It appears viewers weren’t thrilled either, as Mediaite notes that the show’s ratings didn’t even beat those of the program it replaced:

Sarah Palin’s much-hyped LL Cool J-less Fox News special last night didn’t bring in the huge ratings some (ok, we) predicted. Greta Van Susteren’s On The Record which normally airs at 10pmET beat the program the previous three nights in the A25-54 demographic and two out of three nights in total viewers.

Moreover, the show “shed viewers from start to finish,” losing 18 percent of viewers over the course of the program.

I thought controversy was supposed to sell. It sounds like a lot of people weren’t even interested in checking the show out. Has Palin’s star lost its luster? She still has her rabid base but everyone else – not so much.

Republicans In Disarray!

Can you remember back just over one year ago when the Republicans were electing the chair of the Republican National Committee? The last three choices came down to Michael Steele, the guy who was a member of an all-white country club and the guy who sent the “Barack the Magic Negro” song to his buddies for Christmas. Out of that bunch, Steele looked like the best choice.

In the subsequent year Steele has said some very silly things, spent a lot of time enriching himself (remember the book he published that the Republican leadership had no idea he was working on), mismanaged money in the most embarrassing manner (lesbian sex bondage clubs) and just been generally incompetent. Democrats love him!

Steele is defending himself by claiming Republicans don’t like him because of race:

For his part, Steele spoke to George Stephanopoulos for ABC’s “Good Morning America,” and the RNC leader said he would not step down from his post. Steele went on to say that race likely plays a factor in his on-the-job difficulties.

“The honest answer is, ‘yes,'” he said on “Good Morning America” today. “Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. A lot of folks do. It’s a different role for me to play and others to play and that’s just the reality of it. But you just take that as a part of the nature of it.”

This has the potential to make matters worse. Steele has plenty of detractors in Republican circles, and if they believe Steele is accusing them of racially-motivated criticism, they’re likely to push back aggressively.

Tornoe’s Toon: The Quiet Chris Coons

Chris Coons Delaware Senate Mike Castle

Hey everyone! The folks at Delaware Liberal were kind enough to offer me a spot in their sandbox to post my cartoons, so here’s my first offering. If you’d like to contact me, feel free to drop me a line at robtornoe@delawareliberal.net. You can also follow me on twitter @RobTornoe.

And make sure you pick up The Community News, The Dover Post, The Middletown Transcript or any of the Dover Post papers throughout the state to check out my cartoons every week.

This Is What Winning Does

Wall Street and Republicans seem to be acknowledging privately that the White House and Congressional Democrats have real momentum now that they’ve passed the health care reform bill

Shelby’s recent outreach seems to reflect the new reality in the battle to tame the banks: Both sides recognize that the reformers have the momentum, given the way last month’s health care victory has unified Senate Democrats, and given the political peril for Republicans in appearing to do Wall Street’s bidding. But both sides also recognize that, p.r.-wise, the consumer agency tends to overwhelm other elements of the reform effort.

In light of this, Republicans seem to be settling on a strategy: Give the Democrats much of what they want on the consumer agency and bet that Democrats won’t be too picky about the rest. If the bet pans out, the industry and its GOP allies would, in effect, be trading a robust consumer agency for a chance to scale back a number of highly consequential but below-the-radar reforms. But will it?

…

And yet, the longer you talk to such K Street denizens about the politics of financial reform, the more they concede that this is what the landscape may give them. This same person told me he sensed that Dodd was open to compromising on everything but the consumer agency. He added: “For the average American, it’s the only piece of the bill they can really sink their teeth into.”

Some Democrats have finally figured out that you need to use your governing majorities. I think we have the Republican strategy of say no to everything to thank for this. The Republicans decided not to work with the Democrats on any issue, even if they agreed with them. Weak-kneed Democrats started to panic but cooler heads realized that the country still needs to be governed, even if one party has collectively lost its mind.

Passing a health care reform bill has given Democrats more confidence. In fact, passing the bill has stopped the bleeding in the polls and has started to re-energize the Democratic base. Already the conversation changed from hapless, divided Democrats to crazy, divided Republicans. The media is talking about an extremely accomplished 1-year president and passing a financial reform package will cement that view.

Bill Clinton was right that voters prefer “strong and wrong.” Most people don’t follow the ins and outs of Congress enough to really understand most legislation. They gravitate towards the winners. Democrats won a bruising battle and hopefully this will make the next battle a little easier.

In Which We Find Ron Williams Losing All Journalistic Integrity He Had Left

Sunday’s editorial page had another piece from Williams, this one not just carrying water for the Insurance Commissioner, but inexplicably injects her current round of excuses into the debate without a single comment from Matt Denn. The appalling thing is that Williams is using the editorial page to try to alter the mood of the current debate and concerns swirling around the ICs office (and concerns that are a year old) — rather than get his reporters to actually try to do some , you know, reporting on this thing. And in the process, stoops to the despicable two-facedness of the WSJ editorial page.

Williams lets Stewart — via his editorial page — make the accusation that Matt Denn didn’t leave any of the records from his tenure at the office. Now if this were true, this would be serious news — and a story you’d think the NJ would want to report. But there is no reporting — just a recitation of Stewart’s litany of excuses.

But let’s think about files and records for a minute. Stewart tells Williams that only Denn’s records are missing, all of the others from previous ICs are intact. There is alot about this that makes no sense whatsoever — as in if Denn’s records were this crucial, the office would have come close to a dead stop long ago. But it didn’t — they certainly had enough information to be able to terminate the contract of the previous Captive Insurance leadership (they wouldn’t have known when his tenure was up otherwise, right?); they could find enough information on a lease that Denn signed to be able to come back to try to defect that bit of business back to him. In short — it doesn’t hold up. And are you wondering why she decided to make a big deal of this NOW — rather than a year or so ago? When the need for these records would have been URGENT? Yep, me too. But right now, Stewart is in some real hot water and apparently doesn’t have the character to honestly address her issues — she spins up a story for Ron Williams that he reprints hook, line and sinker. Even the part about taking the records as an act of revenge for primarying Denn — a primary that he won pretty handily (58-42) — Williams just repeats even though this may be where you see the real flop sweat by Stewart. Of course it is entirely possible that Stewart’s story is correct — unlikely though once you start thinking through the handwaving being done by Stewart.

The hearings being held by Byron Short are set for April 13 in Dover starting at one. Given the inept spin and blame that Williams so helpfully previewed, this ought to be a meeting for the recordbooks.

Whoa! McNabb to Skins?

According to just-breaking news from Adam Schefter of ESPN, the Birds have agreed to trade DMac to the Skins. I’m guessing that they get the ‘Skins’ second round choice, which would be pick # 37.

Trading within the division is really unusual. It’s clear that the Iggles are in rebuilding mode. They’d better have a great draft.

Anniversary of Dr. King’s Assasination

While many of us are celebrating Easter, Passover, baseball season or at least the fact that this long-coming spring is finally here, we also take a few minutes to remember that on April 4, 1968, Dr.Martin Luther King was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was in Tennessee helping the city’s sanitation workers to get a living wage and safer working conditions. That’s important to remember — all too often Dr, King is remembered for his fight for Civil Rights for African Americans — with little remembrance of his equally compelling and provocative work to eliminate poverty and also to end the Vietnam War. Take a look at Dr. King’s prophetic and moving speech the night before he was killed:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvPZKZErEfM[/youtube]

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship discuss the long term lack of progress in economic progress — as working families and poor communities are still those who bear the greatest brunt of bad economic policy.

Bob Herbert remembers not this speech, but the one Dr. King gave a year earlier at the Riverside Church, denouncing the US war in Vietnam. Herbert uses this speech to contemplate the symmetries with the current Afghanistan war. And to note that the morality of Dr. King’s position on the unjust Vietnam war doesn’t seem to have had any impact on those thinking about going to war and escalating the ones we are in.

Last, the Martin Luther King national memorial opens on the Mall on the fall of 2011.

The Nuance of Studying Same-Sex Behavior in Animals

This is not a political post, rather it is an anti-political post regarding zoology and how it relates to human beings. In this morning’s New York Times Magazine, Can Animals Be Gay? focuses on one of the largest same-sex Laysan albatross colonies and how it does not relate to human behavior.

First and foremost, when a study regarding animals is released, we should really try and stop relating animal actions to humans and, conversely, human traits on animals. Whether it be Laura Bush incorrectly commending the Laysan albatross for its life-long commitment or gay rights groups celebrating same-sex penguin couples. Both are silly and totally misconstrued. On the other hand, one of the great fallacies that biologists have been guilty of for hundreds of years is the assumption that animals in pairs are strictly male and female.

The study of same-sex behavior among animals has recently taken off from a history of science that, to put it lightly, wasn’t to thrilled about same-sex behavior in animals.

In 1999, [Bruce] Baghemihl published “Biological Exuberance,” a book that pulled together a colossal amount of previous piecemeal research and showed how biologists’ biases had marginalized animal homosexuality for the last 150 years — sometimes innocently enough, sometimes in an eruption of anthropomorphic disgust.

There is much to learn about animal behavior, more studies to start and complete, and Jon Mooallem’s article covers everything from evolutionary biology to the human politics of same-sex relationships.

Weekend Open Thread

It’s a holiday weekend and it’s time for an open thread. The holiday I’m talking about, of course, is iPad launch day. If my Twitter feed is correct it’s the biggest thing happening in the world this weekend. There’s also some holiday called Easter.

The headline of this article says it all “Not satisfied with U.S. history, some conservatives are rewriting it”

The most ballyhooed effort is under way in Texas, where conservatives have pushed the state school board to rewrite guidelines, downplaying Thomas Jefferson in one high school course, playing up such conservatives as Phyllis Schlafly and the Heritage Foundation and challenging the idea that the Founding Fathers wanted to separate church and state.

The effort reaches far beyond one state, however.

In articles and speeches, on radio and TV, conservatives are working to redefine major turning points and influential figures in American history, often to slam liberals, promote Republicans and reinforce their positions in today’s politics.

The Jamestown settlers? Socialists. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton? Ill-informed professors made up all that bunk about him advocating a strong central government.

Theodore Roosevelt? Another socialist. Franklin D. Roosevelt? Not only did he not end the Great Depression, he also created it.

We see this with modern history. The recession started on January 20, 2009 as did the deficit. Saddam wasn’t cooperating with the U.N. and that’s why we invaded. Now more than ever it’s easy for conservatives to stay in their own bubble – they have their own news channels and schools.

The U.S. Justice Department is suing KBR for improper charges to the government:

The U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday it sued the Houston-based military contractor KBR Inc (KBR.N) for alleged false claims act violations over improper costs for private security in Iraq.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleged that KBR knowingly included impermissible costs for private armed security in billings to the U.S. Army covering the 2003-2006 time period, the department said.

KBR has been the U.S. military’s largest private contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been criticized for cost overruns in Iraq, and lawmakers in Congress last month questioned the Army’s continued use of KBR for logistics work.

The company said it had to hire private security because the government failed to protect its employees, and added that it believed the government filed the lawsuit to avoid reimbursing it for security costs.

If the deficit peacocks were really worried about “waste, fraud and abuse” of taxpayer money, government contractors is where they should turn their attention.

Erick Erickson, A Shotgun, And Census Workers

Via Think Progress:

ERICKSON: This is crazy. What gives the Commerce Department the right to ask me how often I flush my toilet? Or about going to work? I’m not filling out this form. I dare them to try and come throw me in jail. I dare them to. Pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property. They can’t do that. They don’t have the legal right, and yet they’re trying.

Notice how he dances along the fault line:  …and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. He just wants to scare the little twerps.  With a shotgun.

What could possibly go wrong with this scenario?  It’s not as if anyone out there is cheering at being called a Tim McVeigh wannabe.