Greg Abbott, the Republican candidate for Governor of Texas, won't debate Wendy Davis, his Democratic challenger in this year's gubernatorial election in Texas:
Republican candidate Greg Abbott has reversed his decision to appear in the only gubernatorial debate to be broadcast statewide on television.
Abbott and his Democratic opponent, Wendy Davis, had both agreed to participate in a roundtable debate in Dallas on Sept. 30.
But on Friday morning, Abbott's team reversed an earlier decision and said it will not participate alleging concern over the format.
In other words, Greg Abbott broke his promise to Texas voters to debate Wendy Davis. Abbott originally agreed to the terms of the debate, but he turned around and complained about the terms of the debate, so he now refuses to debate Davis.
Greg Abbott has completely disrespected Texans by refusing to appear for a debate he originally agreed to.
Montana Democratic Party (MDP) officials nominated Amanda Curtis, a teacher and state legislator from Butte, to be the replacement Democratic nominee in this year's U.S. Senate race in Montana.
Unlike what Republicans and the mainstream media are saying about her, she's far more than some woman with a nose piercing.
As a state legislator, Curtis has opposed the proliferation of guns in Montana schools, has supported increased funding for Montana schools, has opposed efforts to privatize public education in Montana, and has supported voters' rights and stricter campaign finance laws. Sure, she might have a few non-progressive positions (after all, she's running in a statewide race in Montana), but she's supported many progressive causes.
Amanda Curtis would make a good U.S. Senator for Montana, and I encourage Montanans to vote for her on November 4.
On the afternoon of August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, a 17-year-old black male who was not armed and had no prior criminal record, was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis where two-thirds of the population is black, but the vast majority of the local police officers are white.
As a result of the senseless shooting of Brown, the FBI has opened a federal civil rights violation into the matter, and violent protests have taken place in Ferguson. While I believe that rioting and vandalism is the wrong thing for people to do, police crossed the line once again when they arrested Wesley Lowery of the Washington Post and Ryan J. Reilly of the Huffington Post, two journalists who were simply providing media coverage of the protests, for no valid reason.
Despite the fact that few elected officials in this country have made any attempt to address the issue of police brutality, police brutality is one of the most serious problems in our country.
Less than a month earlier, Eric Garner, a 43-year-old resident of New York City, was put in a chokehold by New York Police Department (NYPD) officer Daniel Pantaleo in violation of the NYPD's own protocol, and Garner died due of neck compression suffered as a result of being placed in a chokehold by a police officer. Additionally, there have been numerous incidents of police brutality in this country in the past few decades, most notably the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) beating of Rodney King in the early 1990's.
The culture of police brutality is absolutely rampant in this country, and there needs to be a large-scale effort to get rid of the culture of law enforcement officers beating, shooting, choking, and killing people when such force is not necessary. I have five ideas to end the rampant police brutality culture in this country:
Establish police review boards that have the power to review instances of police brutality and, with due process, fire law enforcement officers who use excessive force across the country
Train police officers on how much and what kind of force they can use in various situations
Ensure that hiring discrimination based on race, gender, etc. by law enforcement agencies is prohibited
Hire more minority police officers where whites make up a large part of the police force in areas with significant minority populations
Make instances in which a law enforcement officer uses excessive force that results in the death of one or more individuals punishable by manslaughter or murder charges
It's time to end the police brutality culture in this country.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and top state legislators are heading to Israel this week for a two-day visit as a "demonstration of solidarity" with that country in the conflict in Gaza, the Democratic governor announced Sunday.
Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate co-leaders Dean Skelos and Jeff Klein will travel to Israel on Tuesday. Cuomo said the delegation would meet with Israeli leaders and visit residents affected by the fighting.
"Friends stand together in times of crisis, and I am proud to lead this bipartisan delegation to Israel to reaffirm our friendship and support," Cuomo said in a statement emailed to reporters.
If you thought Cuomo tampering with witnesses who testified before the Moreland Commission was bad (it's not only bad, it's illegal), this, in my opinion, is even worse. Cuomo, along with Democratic and Republican leaders in the New York State Legislature, publicly support an ongoing genocide that is being carried out by the Zionist, Benjamin Netanyahu-led government of Israel against Palestinian people.
To those who accuse me of being "anti-Israel" or "pro-Palestine", I'm not "anti-Israel" or "pro-Palestine" at all. I support the right of both Israel and Palestine to exist as sovereign countries. However, I don't support is the current Zionist government of Israel, and I don't support the current Hamas government of Palestine. Most importantly, I don't support genocide.
Zephyr Teachout, who is running against Cuomo in the Democratic primary (provided that the courts allow Teachout to run against Cuomo), won't be a shill for Israel or Palestine. She'll fight for progressive policies that will restore New York's middle class and improve the quality of New York's public education system. I strongly encourage Democrats in New York state to support Teachout for governor should her name appear on the primary ballot.
While Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois has proposed legislation to discourage these so-called "inversions", in which U.S. companies merge with foreign companies and then set up their new headquarters overseas, I'm going to go even further than Durbin's proposal, which, if enacted, would prohibit companies that undergo inversions from accepting federal contracts, and propose enacting a globalization tax, which would require companies that conduct any business in the United States to pay U.S. corporate taxes, regardless of which country their headquarters is located.
While the globalization tax wouldn't completely do away with economic globalization, it would certainly put the reins on the economic globalization that is hurting our country's economy and costing our country millions upon millions of dollars in tax revenue. While Senator Durbin's proposal is certainly a step in the right direction, we can certainly do more to discourage companies that do business in our country from moving overseas to avoid paying corporate taxes here.
Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of the State of New York, could have to face a federal criminal investigation for obstruction of justice and witness tampering.
Preet Bahara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, has issued a warning to Cuomo and his crones that he is threatening to investigate Cuomo and his cronies over Cuomo's closing of the Moreland Commission, which was tasked with weeding out political corruption in New York state government:
The letter from prosecutors, which was read to The New York Times, says, “We have reason to believe a number of commissioners recently have been contacted about the commission’s work, and some commissioners have been asked to issue public statements characterizing events and facts regarding the commission’s operation.”
“To the extent anyone attempts to influence or tamper with a witness’s recollection of events relevant to our investigation, including the recollection of a commissioner or one of the commission’s employees, we request that you advise our office immediately, as we must consider whether such actions constitute obstruction of justice or tampering with witnesses that violate federal law.”
If you need another reason to support Zephyr Teachout, who is running against Cuomo in the Democratic primary, there it is. Cuomo shut down the Moreland Commission because they were going to expose Cuomo for the morbidly corrupt politician that he is, and now federal prosecutors are seriously considering investigating Cuomo and his cronies.
I live in Illinois, the state that twice elected Rod Blagojevich, who was one of the most corrupt individuals to have ever held elected office in this country's history, and New York's Andrew Cuomo strikes me as another Blagojevich.
Stuart Mills, the Republican candidate in the 8th Congressional District of Minnesota who is running against Democratic incumbent Rick Nolan, recently hired Keith Gilkes, who has been implicated in two criminal investigations into violations of campaign laws by Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, as a consultant:
GOP 8th District congressional candidate Stewart Mills has tapped into Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s political organization for his race against Democratic U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan.
A story on Minnesota’s 8th District race from the Rothenberg Political Report (behind a paywall) reported Mills has hired Keith Gilkes to serve as a general consultant for his campaign. A campaign spokeswoman said Gilkes is working with another group to “provide media and general consulting services to the campaign.”
Gilkes has a long track record of being associated with Walker and his long track record of corruption and cronyism. When Walker was the county executive of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Gilkes was one of several people (which also included Walker) who were implicated in Walker's corruption and cronyism, and, although neither Gilkes nor Walker were charged with any crimes from that investigation, six people connected to Walker were either convicted of, or plead guilty to, various criminal charges as a result of the probe. An ongoing, but officially stalled, investigation into Walker's corruption while Governor of Wisconsin has found that Walker, Gilkes, and two other people connected to Walker illegally coordinated with Republican/conservative outside groups, although neither Walker nor Gilkes have been charged with any crimes at this time.
Furthermore, Gilkes, then Walker's chief of staff, was one of two people, the other person being Walker, that fell for a prank caller who pretended to be David Koch, one of the Koch Brothers who have bankrolled Republican and conservative causes (including Walker's gubernatorial campaigns in Wisconsin), but was actually Ian Murphy, the editor of the online alternative newspaper The Beast. Gilkes, not realizing that the person on the other end of the line was a prank caller, forwarded Murphy's prank call to Walker, and Walker, also not realizing that the person on the other end of the line was a prank caller, admitted to using and planning to use vindictive, Nixonian tactics against Democratic members of the Wisconsin State Senate and also admitted to planning to illegally coordinate with Republican front groups:
Mills's ties to Wisconsin Republican corruption don't stop there. Earlier this year, Mike Ellis, the Republican Wisconsin State Senate President, admitted to planning to start his own SuperPAC in order to run attack ads against Penny Bernard Schaber, the Democratic candidate for the Wisconsin State Senate seat currently held by Ellis, and Ellis named Mills as one of the big-money donors who would have funded Ellis's planned illegal SuperPAC:
Ellis ended his re-election campaign not long after his plot to violate campaign finance laws became public knowledge.
Stuart Mills, who is a Republican candidate for Congress in Northeastern Minnesota, has extensive ties to flagrant political corruption that is rampant in the Republican Party of Wisconsin. The fact that he's hiring campaign operatives who once worked for Scott Walker, one of the most corrupt, vindictive politicians to have ever held public office in this country's history, is more than enough for me to say that a Mills victory would be an absolute disaster for Northeastern Minnesota.
Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird, two former political operatives for President Barack Obama's campaign who now run the consulting firm 270 Strategies, are running what appears to me to be a scam in which they are asking people to pay $5,000 for a six-week program consisting of one week of political training and five weeks of volunteer work on an unnamed "important Democratic campaign":
Two top veterans of President Obama’s campaigns are asking political campaigners to pay $5,000 per person for the chance to learn their secrets and then work for five weeks in an unpaid campaign job somewhere in America.
Democratic operatives and progressive activists are questioning this training program launched by Obama campaign architects Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird. The $5,000 program promises access to the wizardry of Obama’s presidential bids — and a five-week, unpaid gig on an “important Democratic campaign.”
Run by Bird and Stewart’s consulting company, 270 Strategies, the new program’s emphasis on placing paying customers in essentially volunteer roles on Democratic campaigns is atypical in the campaign training industry, and some Democrats say it sets a dangerous precedent. The firm’s first-ever “270/360 Training Intensive” program is scheduled to begin in September.
In case you're wondering, the one-week training program is a staggering $3,500, and it will cost you an additional $1,500 for the five-week volunteer work program on an "important Democratic campaign". 270 Strategies has not named which campaign or campaigns are participating in the program, although I'm guessing the campaign(s) in question are one or more Democratic gubernatorial and/or U.S. Senate campaigns that are considered by most political pundits to be competitive to some degree.
There are several reasons why this is a terrible idea. First off, this reminds me of those expensive golf instruction videos that do virtually nothing to improve a recreational golf player's game. Even worse, there's already a ton of barriers to political participation in our country (no guaranteed paid leave to run for public office, Election Day is not a national holiday, wealthy candidates and big-money interests discourage people from running for public office, etc.), and having people pay thousands of dollars just to volunteer on a political campaign sets up yet another barrier to political participation in this country.
Progressives like me are not the only ones criticizing Mitch Bird and Jeremy Stewart's scheme. Even many Democratic operatives are criticizing Bird and Stewart for asking people to pay thousands of dollars to volunteer on a high-profile Democratic campaign.
If someone were to ask me whether or not I'd be interested in paying $5,000 to volunteer on a campaign, the answer is HELL NO! First off, I don't have that kind of money, and, more importantly, we have far too many barriers to political participation in this country the way it is, and Mitch Bird and Jeremy Stewart are only making that problem even worse.
Walgreens, one of the largest pharmacy chains in the country, has threatened to move its corporate headquarters from the United States to Switzerland in order to evade U.S. corporate income taxes.
This has set off a major political firestorm, and it should. I think it's downright unpatriotic for a U.S.-based company to move their corporate headquarters, which often consists of nothing more than a mailbox and a filing cabinet, to a foreign country, for the sole purpose of tax evasion. Furthermore, corporate tax evasion is depriving federal, state, and local governments of revenue that could be used to, among other things, fix crumbling roads and bridges, fund public education, and reduce or eliminate budget deficits.
I believe that corporations based in foreign countries, but do business with the United States, should be legally required to pay federal corporate income taxes, in addition to any corporate income taxes they are legally required to pay in the countries where they are headquartered. Not only would this put an end to corporate income tax invasion in the U.S., it would also put the reins on the rampant economic globalization that is hurting our economy and costing us thousands upon thousands of jobs.
Corporate tax evasion is one of the more serious problems our country faces.
Netroots Nation is supposed to be an annual gathering of progressive bloggers and activists, although quite a few corporate Democrats showed up to crash the party.
Although Hillary Clinton, who voted for the unjustified Iraq War and voted for free-trade agreements that shipped American jobs overseas as a U.S. Senator from New York, didn't show up at Netroots Nation herself, the Ready for Hillary SuperPAC, an organization seeking to convince Hillary to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, did bring their bus to Netroots Nation.
I find it disturbing that corporate Democrats have managed to infiltrate a supposedly progressive convention. Also, it's a shame that there there are few truly progressive conventions in this country, in fact, the only one I know of is Fighting Bob Fest, which is held annually in Wisconsin.
Sheila Kihne, a far-right Republican running against incumbent Republican Minnesota State Representative Jenifer Loon, is one of the most vile candidates I've seen run for public office. Prior to running for public office, Kihne was a conservative political blogger, and she wrote some downright nasty blog posts, including one where she shamed women who get married while pregnant:
On a blog she discontinued in 2009, she wrote that President Barack Obama was leading the one-world-order communists and demanded that single mothers be denied formal wedding ceremonies.
“Don’t you think that if you’re having a baby — and you’re not married — that you should forego the shower?” she asked. “I also think that if you get married — and are knocked up — you should get married quietly. At a courthouse, at a private home.”
Kihne specifically said that there should be no dancing or dinner for prospective brides who are pregnant. She acknowledge that “I’m seen as very cold-hearted with this issue and it’s caused a couple of big arguments in my family,” but insisted on standing her ground against “the idiots in Hollywood who make it look ‘cool’ to tote a baby around sans daddy.”
For Sheila Kihne to suggest that women who are getting married while pregnant shouldn't be allowed to have the kind of wedding ceremony they want to have is downright offensive and shames women who have children out of wedlock. Also, shaming women who get pregnant out of wedlock is going to do absolutely nothing to decrease the percentage of women who get pregnant out of wedlock.
If you live in Minnesota State House District 48B (which is based in the Eden Prairie area in suburban Hennepin County), and you think that Jenifer Loon has been a terrible representative, Sheila Kihne would be an even worse representative, as Kihne would carry on Michele Bachmann's destructive legacy of embarrassing Minnesota. Thankfully, there is a DFL candidate (for those of you not familiar with Minnesota politics, the state Democratic Party in Minnesota is known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) running in Minnesota House District 48B: Joan Howe-Pullis. You can learn more about Howe-Pullis's campaign here.
Neoconservatives, who had considerable influence on Former Republican President George W. Bush's foreign policy and were behind the costly wars in Iraq and Afghansitan, are now trying to influence Hillary Clinton, who is considering running for the Democratic presidential nomination:
After nearly a decade in the political wilderness, the neoconservative movement is back, using the turmoil in Iraq and Ukraine to claim that it is President Obama, not the movement’s interventionist foreign policy that dominated early George W. Bush-era Washington, that bears responsibility for the current round of global crises.
Even as they castigate Mr. Obama, the neocons may be preparing a more brazen feat: aligning themselves with Hillary Rodham Clinton and her nascent presidential campaign, in a bid to return to the driver’s seat of American foreign policy.
[...]
It’s not as outlandish as it may sound. Consider the historian Robert Kagan, the author of a recent, roundly praised article in The New Republic that amounted to a neo-neocon manifesto. He has not only avoided the vitriolic tone that has afflicted some of his intellectual brethren but also co-founded an influential bipartisan advisory group during Mrs. Clinton’s time at the State Department.
It's not just the brains of the neocon movement that are praising Hillary Clinton. Republican U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, who is one of the biggest war hawks in either house of Congress, praised Hillary Clinton a while back and is open to the idea of supporting Hillary's possible candidacy for president.
Many of the same war hawks who helped people like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld lead this country into two long, costly wars that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans and turned a federal budget surplus into a massive federal budget deficit are now promoting Hillary Clinton's possible presidential candidacy as part of an apparent plan to divide and conquer the Democratic Party, whose base is full of progressives who, like me, are opposed to the interventionist foreign policy that the neocons support and promote. I disagree with people like Hillary Clinton and John McCain on this, but I firmly believe that the U.S. shouldn't be the world's policeman and should stay out of the affairs of foreign countries except when U.S. interests are at stake.
Hillary Clinton is more interested in serving some of George W. Bush's former cronies than rebuilding the American middle class and other progressive goals.
The City of Cleveland, Ohio has been in the national spotlight for the past few weeks.
First, the NFL's Cleveland Browns drafted quarterback Johnny Manziel, who played for Texas A&M University in college football for two years, winning the Heisman Trophy as a redshirt freshman.
Second, Cleveland landed the 2016 Republican National Convention, which will officially nominate the Republican Party's candidates for the offices of President and Vice President of the United States. Republicans are all but certain to nominate presidential and vice-presidential candidates who support far-right political views that would wreck the American economy, destroy what little is left of the middle class, and take away rights from the American people.
Earlier today, Lebron James, one of the most high-profile NBA players, announced that he is returning to Cleveland to play for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
With Manziel, James, and whoever Republicans nominate for president and vice president, Cleveland will now be home to overhyped professional athletes and politicians. Well, at least it's not home to a burning river anymore, although the Republicans who will gather in Cleveland two years from now want to weaken environmental regulations so that the Cuyahoga River could be set on fire again, which would be an absolutely terrible thing to happen.
Andy Kroll, a reporter for Mother Jones, has signaled that it's likely, but not certain, that the U.S. Supreme Court may rule to either effectively enact a nationwide right-to-work-for-less law by judicial fiat or, even worse, effectively bust every single public-sector union in the entire country by judicial fiat in the Harris v. Quinn case that will likely be decided Monday.
However, it may not be the usual five conservative justices who may make up an anti-union majority on the Supreme Court. Justice Antonin Scalia, usually one of the most conservative justices on the court, sided with the unions during the oral arguments of the Harris case (however, that doesn't guarantee that Scalia will side with the unions when the ruling is issued, although it's certainly a possibility). Additionally, in 1991, Scalia himself wrote that "where the state creates in the nonmembers a legal entitlement from the union, it may compel them to pay the cost" in the Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Assn. case.
If the Supreme Court, which has five conservative justices and four liberal justices, has only four conservative justices siding against the unions, that would mean that the union busters would need at least one of the liberal justices to side against the unions in order for the court to rule against the unions. You're probably asking yourself this question: Which one of the four "liberals" on our nation's highest court would be the one to side with the conservatives and bust the unions in this country? My guess that it would be either Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, or Stephen Breyer, since Ruth Bader Ginsburg is widely considered to be the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court bench, and it would be highly unlikely that she'd rule against the unions in a landmark case that would have massive ramifications on American society.
Should one or more of the four "liberal" justices of the Supreme Court rule against the unions in the Harris case, that would be perhaps the single most traitorous act in modern American history. It's atrocious enough when conservatives want to take away rights from working Americans, but, in my opinion, it's even worse when liberals do so, since liberals are expected to stand up for workers' rights, not take them away. A ruling against the unions would give wealthy people and corporations even more influence and control over our country's politics, worsen income inequality, and cost this country thousands, if not millions, of jobs.
Republicans and corporate Democrats have long supported corporate welfare, in which taxpayer money goes toward tax credits, tax cuts, handouts, and other forms of payouts to specific businesses or specific types of businesses, and those payouts have little or no benefit to the general public.
The corporate welfare system in this country is an inefficient, unsustainable system of government encouraging growth in the private-sector economy, and that's why I'm writing a book, which will be titled Corporate Welfare Queens, criticizing the corporate welfare system in this country and promoting my ideas for responsible economic development.
My book is currently slated for release sometime in the early part of next year, and it will likely be available in an online-only format, as I don't know of a single traditional book publisher that would be interested in anything I write.
What Cheney won't tell you is that he, along with George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, is responsible for the Islamic fundamentalist terror group ISIS capturing much of Iraq.
ISIS, which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, became a significant force in Iraq following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, of which Cheney was the mastermind of. If it weren't for Cheney and his cronies leading us into an unjustified war in Iraq, ISIS wouldn't have been in a position to take over much of Iraq and Syria. It was wrong for this country to invade Iraq in 2003, and the current situation there proves that.
Dick Cheney has absolutely no standing whatsoever to criticize President Obama over the current situation in Iraq. After all, he's responsible for helping the terror group ISIS capture much of Iraq.
Hillary Clinton, one of several possible candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, has sounded guarded in recent media appearances. For example, she isn't willing to take a firm stand on a number of issues, such as the Keystone XL pipeline and legalization of recreational marijuana.
This is a considerably different Hillary Clinton today than the one we all saw in the 1990's. Back then, Hillary publicly spoke out in favor of universal health care and railed against the "vast right-wing conspiracy" against establishment Democrats, such as herself, and progressives.
Since Hillary Clinton is considered by many to be the standard-bearer of the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, that leads me to ask this question: Has the Democratic establishment stopped fighting for anything?
One of my biggest grievances about the current leadership of the Democratic Party is that the current leadership of the party is more concerned about getting themselves and their cronies elected than fighting for anything that would make America a better place to live. Granted, on a few issues, such as marriage equality and, more recently, student loan reform, most establishment Democrats are fighting alongside progressives. However, on many other issues, most establishment Democrats are either siding with the far-right Republicans or distancing themselves from the issue altogether.
The Democratic establishment has completely given up on the idea of political courage these days. Instead of fighting for ideas that will make America a better place to live, the Democratic establishment is more concerned about sucking up to special interests and rewarding their cronies. It's time for progressives to divide and conquer the Democratic Party and lead the party into a new, more progressive generation of leadership and courage. It's time for progressives to start fighting for pro-middle class, pro-worker, pro-woman, pro-civil rights, pro-civil liberties, and pro-democracy values, and start realizing that both the Republicans and the Democratic establishment are adversaries in this fight for America's heart and soul.
Over 100 years ago, Robert M. "Fighting Bob" LaFollette invented the primary system, which, for the first time, allowed rank-and-file members of each political party to choose who would run on the party's ticket in the general election.
However, the partisan primary system that is used nowadays in most states doesn't really allow people who don't strongly identify with a political party that has primary access (in most states, these are the Democratic Party and the Republican Party) to participate in the primary process, and the "top-two" primary system that is seen in states like California and Washington can result in a single political party getting both of the slots in the general election.
My proposal for semi-partisan primaries works like this:
The government of each state that adopts the semi-partisan primary system would be responsible for maintaining registrations of all political parties in the state.
Voters who are registered with a political party will get a ballot listing all of the candidates for public offices to be elected (i.e., state governor, U.S. Senator, U.S. Representative, state legislator, etc.), regardless of party affiliation, as well as the candidates running for party offices (i.e., state party chairperson, county party chairperson, precinct committeeperson, etc.) in the party that they are registered with.
Voters who are not registered with a political party will get a ballot listing all of the candidates for public offices to be elected, regardless of party affiliation, but elections for party offices are not included on the ballot for those not registered with a political party.
For presidential elections, voters who are registered with a political party that is eligible for presidential primary ballot access (i.e., the state party in question would have to be affiliated with a national party that nominates a presidential candidate, and the national party in question would have to hold its national convention sometime within a 3-5 month window specified by law) would get a ballot containing only the presidential candidates who are running for the nomination of the party that the voter is registered with. Voters who are not registered with a political party or registered with a political party that does not nominate a presidential candidate would get a ballot containing all of the presidential candidates who are running in a party that has presidential primary ballot access. Voters who are registered with a political party that is ineligible for presidential primary ballot access due to the party holding its convention outside of the legally-specified window for presidential primary ballot access are not allowed to vote in presidential primaries, and the party or parties in question would be required to use a caucus/convention system if it wishes to nominate a presidential candidate. Results for each party's presidential primary is tabulated separately, and pledged delegates are assigned to candidates based on the percentage of votes they receive among those running in their party.
For other elections for public office in which only one office is to be filled, any independent candidate who receive at least 1% of the vote advances to the general election, and any political party whose candidates receive at least 1% of the vote combined sends the candidate with who receives the highest number of votes among those who are running within that party to the general election.
For elections for public office in which more than one office is to be filled, the threshold for qualifying an independent candidate for the general election is 1%/n, in which n is the number of offices to be filled, and the threshold for qualifying a political party is 1%/n, in which n is the number of offices to be filled. Political parties who qualify for the general election are able to send a number of candidates to the general election equal to the number of offices to be filled.
For elections for party office, the candidate(s) with the most votes are elected unless a preferential voting system of some kind (instant-runoff voting, single transferable vote, etc.) is used.
For general elections for president, a "majority-take-all" system is used within each state to allocate electoral votes: should one presidential candidate get more than 50% of the vote in a particular state, the presidential candidate in question wins all of the electoral votes from that state. Should no presidential candidate get more than 50% of the vote in a particular state, the state's electoral votes are allocated to each of the candidates in proportion to the statewide popular vote in that state.
For general elections for other public office in which only a single office is to be filled, instant-runoff voting is used should more than two candidates qualify for the general election, and first-past-the-post voting is used should one or two candidates qualify for the general election. Officially non-partisan elections for public office in which only a single office is to be filled use are done in this manner, but without the primary.
For general election for other public office in which multiple offices are to be filled, single transferable voting is used should the number of candidates running be more than twice the number of offices to be filled, and single non-transferable voting is used should the number of candidates running be twice the number of offices to be filled or less. Officially non-partisan elections for public office in which multiple offices are to be filled are done in this manner, but without the primary.
The semi-partisan primary system is designed with the hopes of boosting primary turnout, allowing for greater participation in the political process in this country by those who don't strongly identify with a political party, allow minor political parties to participate in the primary process, and prohibit the strange occurrences that sometimes happen under a "top-two" primary system.
The Republican Party, anti-abortion groups, and other organizations and people who are opposed to women's rights are waging a war on women in this country, but, sadly, they're not the only ones waging a war on women. The mainstream news media in this country is also waging a war on women in this country.
Shortly after the guilty verdict in the Steubenville rape case was announced, Candy Crowley took to the airwaves to report it and connect with their reporter on the ground for more details. Her lead-in to the remote shot was shameful.
Crowley was filled with sadness for two young men who took advantage of a drunk and possibly drugged young girl because the judge actually held them accountable for what they did. Instead of wondering aloud why they weren't tried as adults, she was instead very concerned that now they would have to register for the rest of their lives as sex offenders.
Never once did CNN or Crowley show any sympathy for the female victim of the rape, and me and many other people found that to be distasteful and offensive.
More recently, George Will, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, wrote this post criticizing the federal government for cracking down on college and university administrators who aid and abet the far too pervasive rape culture in this country, falsely claimed that sexual assault never occurs on college campuses, and claiming that being a victim of sexual assault is a "coveted status".
Will's pro-rape culture column is the single worst piece that I have ever seen from the mainstream news media in this country. Dr. Jennifer Gunter, an obstetrician/gynecologist who was sexually assaulted while a college student two and a half decades ago, wrote this response to Will's column, where she criticized Will for defending rape culture and shared her own experience of being raped:
I was specifically moved to write to you because the rape scenario that you describe somewhat incredulously is not unfamiliar to me. Not because I've heard it in many different iterations (I have sadly done many rape kits), but because it was not unlike my own rape. The lead up was slightly different, but I too was raped by someone I knew and did not emerge with any obvious physical evidence that a crime had been committed. I tried to push him away, I said “No!” and “Get off” multiple times,” but he was much stronger and suddenly I found my hands pinned behind my back and a forearm crushing my neck and for a few minutes I found it hard to breathe. I was 22, far from home, scared, and shocked and so at some point I just stopped kicking and let him finish. Sound familiar? For several weeks I didn't even think about it as a rape because that was easier than admitting the truth. Again, sound familiar?
When a man who is much stronger than you holds you down (Hey baby don’t fight, you know you want it) and forces your legs open the violence and power of those movements is horrifically violating and utterly disempowering. You think you screamed NO! at the top of your lungs but you were so scared and so shocked that when you went from yelling no! to pleading no to silently weeping no is hard to remember. Implied violence Mr. Will is a terrifying thing indeed.
One of the main reasons why sexual assault is tolerated by a large segment of this country's population is because the mainstream news media in this country aids and abets those who defend rape culture in this country.
The ACLU is opposing a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would repeal the Citizens United v. FEC U.S. Supreme Court decision and other court decisions that have opened the floodgates to unlimited amounts of money in electoral politics in this country. What is even worse is that the ACLU is using the same argument against amending the U.S. Constitution to get the undue influence of money out of politics that Republicans and conservatives have used to open the floodgates to big-money politics in the first place:
In a letter submitted Tuesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union expressed opposition to the amendment, saying it would “lead directly to government censorship of political speech and result in a host of unintended consequences that would undermine the goals the amendment has been introduced to advance.”
The ACLU argued the amendment, intended to reign in the spending allowed by those rulings, would “fundamentally break the constitution and endanger civil rights and civil liberties for generations.”
The proposed constitutional amendment to get the undue influence of money out of politics would do absolutely nothing to restrict the free speech rights of Americans. What it would do is make it more difficult for wealthy people to buy elections and bring government closer to the people.
The ACLU is defending millionaires and billionaires who hate democracy, are waging a war on democracy in this country, and want to buy elections for themselves and their cronies. I strongly encourage members of the U.S. Senate to vote for the proposed amendment to eliminate the undue influence of money in politics in this country.
Here's my speculation as to why Schweitzer attended the Romney retreat: He may be considering running for president or vice president...as a Republican.
For those of you who are not familiar with Schweitzer, he's no fan of the Democratic establishment, having been a vocal critic of Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. While I'm certainly not a fan of the Democratic establishment myself, I'm considerably more progressive than Schweitzer is. Sure, he's taken stances to the left of mainstream Democrats on some issues, such as health care and campaign finance reform. However, he's also taken stances to the right of mainstream Democrats on issues like guns and the environment. Schweitzer was personally endorsed by NRA head Wayne LaPierre in his 2008 re-election bid for Governor of Montana, and Schweitzer has criticized President Obama and other Democrats for supporting clean air and clean water laws.
It's not completely out of the question that Brian Schweitzer may run for president or vice president as a Republican. If he did that, he would lose all of the respect I have for him, to put it mildly.
U.S. News columnist Dave Cantanese wrote this piece on a growing divide within the Democratic Party between the party's establishment and the progressive base of the party. In his piece, Cantanese quoted Roger Hickey, one of the co-founders of the progressive organization Campaign for America's Future, who gave a very good description of a growing divide within the Democratic Party between the party's establishment and the progressives who compromise the party's base:
Roger Hickey, co-founder for the liberal group Campaign for America’s Future, contends that while the base is lurching leftward, party leadership is less comfortable with the path.
“The structure of the Democratic Party [is] trying to figure this out,” he says. “There are the timid Democrats who don’t want to threaten their possibility of getting money from Wall Street. There’s a lot of them, including Hillary Clinton.”
If you're wondering why the Democratic Party isn't as progressive as it should be, there are two key reasons why:
Establishment Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Steve Israel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Ron Kind, Rahm Emanuel, etc. are more concerned about getting payoffs from Wall Street and other special interests than fighting for progressive ideas.
Most Democratic voters hold progressive views on most issues, but many Democrats don't want to be seen as progressive and are unwilling to fight the party's establishment for control of the party.
Unlike many Democrats, I'm proud to call myself a progressive. I believe in restoring the American middle class, protecting the rights of workers, women, minorities, and voters, guaranteeing equal rights for all Americans, giving more Americans access to affordable health care, making government less corrupt and more transparent, guaranteeing workers a living wage, regulating private-sector businesses to protect consumers, the environment, and the public, modernizing our nation's infrastructure, repealing free trade agreements that have shipped American jobs overseas, and staying out of the foreign affairs of other countries except when necessary to protect U.S. interests, among other things. More importantly, I fight for what I believe will make America a better place for all of us to live.
I'm Aaron Camp, the author of this brand new progressive political blog, The Progressive Idealist. I'm a 24-year-old resident of the small town of Westville, Illinois.
Normally, I write about Illinois and Wisconsin politics at Blue Downstate and The Prairie Badger, respectively, but this will be my home for blogging about national politics, international politics, state-level politics outside of Illinois and Wisconsin, and election analysis.
