Election 2012

GOP race is all about poo-poo

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And you thought it was all about birth control.

Can anybody seriously say that all the reporters and editors who write these stories and headlines about Santorum surging from the bottom and Santorum surging from behind don’t know what they’re doing?

Can anybody seriously say that the gooey brown liquid that the esteemed senator is getting sprayed with in this new ad doesn’t look just like the stuff on the spreading Santorum website?

And is there really a new defintion for the word “Romney?

I’m afraid it’s all rolling downhill from here.

The Obama budget, beyond the politics

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Man, the way the president’s talking it sounds as if he’s appointed the General Assembly of OccupySF to write his budget plans. He’s going to make everyone pay a fair share of taxes. He’s going to invest in affordable higher education. He’s going to spend $350 billion on jobs programs. Just about everyone in the news media is calling it a “populist budget.

I love the politics. It’s the year Occupy will dominate the national political debate, and for Obama to decide that he wants to hitch his wagon to the tax-the-rich star can only be a positive development. Washington is listening, and is starting to talk. We’re making progress.

But we haven’t made that much. Because the actual Obama budget isn’t such a radical departure from what he and his predecessors have been doing for years: Spending far too much on the military, cutting tax rates for high incomes and leaving largely intact the class divide.

There’s a good NYT analysis here but you have to go through it carefully. Here’s what our populist leader wants to do:

1. He’s going to spend $613.9 billion on the military, more than most other departments combined. When you add in the $64 billion we’re spending to clean up the human costs of former wars (which isn’t enough) and the $40 billion we’re spending on Homeland Security, that’s a big, big number. Yeah, it’s about 2 percent less than last year. It’s still far too large, dwarfing all other federal spending. And we’re supposed to be winding down wars.

2. He’s not going to raise the marginal tax rate on the rich. In fact, he’s talking about lowering it. That’s crazy, that’s criminal, that’s a recipe for continued deficits and increased wealth disparity. All he’s proposing is to raise the tax rate on stock dividends — yeah, that’s something that mostly benefits the wealthy (although also some middle-class retired people), but it’s a tiny fraction of the money that would be available if the top bracket was raised just a little bit. His goal for new taxes? About $20 billion a year. Peanuts.

3. He’s not investing heavily in critical transportation priorities like high-speed rail. The funding for the transpo system of the nation’s future: $47 billion over six years. That’s less than $8 billion a year, which won’t build much track. His annual commitment to a project that would create tens of thousands of jobs and go a long way to end fossil-fuel reliance? About what the Pentagon will spend every four days. Whoopee.

So while I get the rhetoric, and it demonstrates that he’s going to make a few nods to the left during the campaign, I wouldn’t get too excited about this budget. It’s really business as usual.

 

 

Missed the state Dem party convention? No worries

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I missed the state Democratic Party convention, too — had the kids all weekend while the partner was partying in Vegas. But that’s OK — lots of other people were there, and while the MSM mostly missed what was going on, the bloggers had it covered.

If you want the live blow-byblow and some excellent post-prandial analysis, CalBuzz had the scoop. Mostly: Jerry Brown was acting like, well, Jerry, and ducking the major issue of the competing tax measures. John Burton said fuck a lot. Kamala Harris had the best speech (and is already positioning herself to run for guv or maybe senate, maybe against Gavin Newsom, who was working every room).

If you want all the drama around the Howard Berman v. Brad Sherman battle, John Meyers of KQED has the story and the audio.

If you want to know — suprise, surprise — how the Old Guard in the party (once again) screwed the grassroots activists and kept an iron fist of control over the outcome of some of the key votes, Paul Hogart tells the sad, predictable tale here and Brian Leubitz at Calitics has an overview here.

And if you’ve read all of that and still need to know more about the insides of the San Diego Convention Center, then you’re a sicker soul than I.

Would Sept. elections be better than RCV?

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A proposal by Supervisors Sean Elsbernd and Mark Farrell to end San Francisco’s experiment with Ranked Choice Voting will come before the board Feb. 14, and RCV suporters are organizing to fight it. According to an email I just got from Steve Hill, one of the leaders in the RCV movement, “the vote is going to be close.”

The first version of the Elsbernd-Farrell legislation would have returned the city to the pre-RCV situation — the general election for city offices would take place in November, and runoffs in any race where nobody got a majority (almost every contested city race these days) would take place in December. 

The December turnout in Board of Supervisors races was always way lower that the turnout in the November election (although that hasn’t always been the case in mayoral races — more people voted in the Matt Gonzalez-Gavin Newsom runoff than voted in that year’s general election).

But the two conservative supervisors have backed off that plan and replaced it with another one: The first election (in effect, the primary) would be held in September, with the runoff in November.

Some years, that would be three elections in the city in five months — the normal June state election, a September city election, and a November general election.

I realize that a lot of people, including some of my friends on the left, aren’t thrilled with RCV. If the mayor’s race had a runoff, it would have been a head-to-head contest between Ed Lee and Dennis Herrera, and that would have been fun. (Where would David Chiu, who got stabbed in the back by Lee and who criticized him during the general election, have gone in the runoff? What about Leland Yee?)

But I have to say, a September election seems like a really terrible idea. When are the candidates going to campaign — during August, when about half of the city is out of town? Would the candidates all have to trek out to Burning Man? (You can’t send direct mail flyers to the playa.) Maybe you hold the election late in September — but then the absentee ballots would arrive when, over Labor Day weekend? Talk about low turnout.

The whole idea of RCV was to get more people involved in electing their representatives at City Hall. You can talk about whether it helps the left or the right or incumbents or whatever, but it’s really all about turnout. One election: More people vote. Two elections: Fewer people vote. September election: Very few people vote.

Then in November, when the turnout is highest, the choice will be lowest, because the candidates who did well in the low-turnout election (typically the more conservative candidates) will be the only ones on the ballot.

On balance, I’m sticking with RCV — but if you have to change it, why not make the primary election in June? There’s already a June election in even-numbered years, it’s no added expense — and there’s the additional value of forcing candidates for mayor and supervisor to declare their intentions and get in the race early on. No more Ed Lee August surprise.

I asked Elsbernd about it and he told me that New York City holds its primary in September, and that’s an effective model. And, he pointed out, there’s no June primary in the odd-numbered years, when the mayor, sheriff, city attorney, treasurer and public defender are on the ballot.

True — but if you’re going to have a special municipal election anyway, June makes more sense to me. People are used to voting in June. I worry about September.

Santorum lives for donuts and venison

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I love Bad Lip Reading. And the Rick Santorum ad is the best one ever.

We are all homosexuals.

The big fat chick stunk … like beef.

I hold it like it’s a fancy fist for joy.

I had some porn, and I swore, and some weird witch gagged me.

I’m living for donuts and venison.

The first time I drank I had my shoes under my arm.

Diarrhea is OK.

Check it out.

 

 

Redistricting: A Guardian Forum

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The new supervisorial districts could change the makeup of the board and have a lasting impact on local politics. There’s been a lot of discussion about individual districts — but not so much talk about how the new map will affect progressive politics citywide. We’re holding a Guardian forum Jan. 26 to look at that issue, discuss different scenarios and come up with some alternatives. Panelists include Calvin Welch (who helped draw the first district elections lines in 1976), Quintin Mecke (who was on the redistricting panel 10 years ago when the current lines were drawn), Norman Fong (who runs the Chinatown Community Development Center and Fernando Marti (a community architect and housing activist who has some proposals for new lines).


If you’re interested and want to join the discussion, the event starts at 6 p.m. at the Mission Campus of City College, 1125 Valencia. We’ll be done by 8 p.m., I promise.

Occupy and the State of the Union

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Have all of the Occupy actions made any difference? Gee — I wonder.


I wonder if a president who acted a year ago as if economic justice wasn’t even an issue in this country would have devoted a substantial part of his State of the Union speech to fairness in tax policy. I wonder if he would have said this:


Right now, we’re poised to spend nearly $1 trillion more on what was supposed to be a temporary tax break for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.


Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Or do we want to keep our investments in everything else –- like education and medical research; a strong military and care for our veterans?


Or this:


Tax reform should follow the Buffett Rule. If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes. And my Republican friend Tom Coburn is right: Washington should stop subsidizing millionaires. In fact, if you’re earning a million dollars a year, you shouldn’t get special tax subsidies or deductions. On the other hand, if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn’t go up. You’re the ones struggling with rising costs and stagnant wages. You’re the ones who need relief.


Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.


or this:


No American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas. From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax.


Now: Not saying any of that is going to happen right away, or even that Obama will put tax reform at the top of the agenda. And changing the tax code to charge people like Mitt Romney 30 percent is nowhere near enough; in the 1960s, those people paid 80 percent of their marginal dollars in federal taxes. The Repubs in Congress won’t let any of this happen anyway.


But all of the major newspapers (which a year ago didn’t even know how to spell economic injustice) made his pitch for greater fairness in the economy the lead of their reports and all of the headlines talked about it. And when pollster Stan Greenberg tracked the responses of Democrats, Republicans and independents to the speech, the vast majority were pleased by and agreed with the commments that I cited above. That’s not just 80 percent of the Dems but 70 percent of the GOP voters.


The other thing Obama said — in indirectly — is that government is important. Beyond the flag-waving salute to the troops and the talk about the Navy Seals (Yay! We killed a guy! No arrest, no trial, just summary execution!), Obama was setting the tone for a debate over the role of the public sector in America. He talked about building the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge and the interstate highway system. He talked about the importance of public support for research. That’s a direct contradiction to what the Republicans are saying about making government much smaller and less significant in people’s lives. I wonder what happens if the Republican candidate and Obama get out of the platitudes are actually have that discussion this fall.


Of course, he also said the solution to most business problems was tax cuts and incentives, which is not only GOP dogma but silly, since tax cuts for business almost never have the intendent effect. Tax penalties won’t keep companies from moving offshore (although I still support the idea), and tax cuts won’t bring them back.


It’s notable that Obama didn’t mention corporate personhood, which is going to be a huge part of the Occupy agenda this year. And that’s something that could actually change business behavior. Corporate charters are granted by the government — and with a few changes in law, could be revoked by the government, too. Screw your workers, cheat on taxes and move jobs to low-wage non-union areas where children work 14 hours a day making your products? Guess we’ll have to revoke your corporate charter. No more protection for personal liability for the owners and shareholders. Too bad.


And while his populist stuff struck a chord, the energy and environmental policy suggestions were just horrible. Yeah, I’m for ending tax breaks for oil companies — but opening up 75 percent of the potential offshore areas to drilling? Encouraging more natural gas drilling? Not much in the way of serious talk about investing a fraction of that money in renewables?


Oh, and I love this: Obama’s going to force natural gas drillers to “disclose the chemicals they use.” That’s going to keep us safe, yesiree. Thank you, mister driller, for telling me how your poisoning my water. Not that I can do anything about it, of course; you can keep right on going. But now, thanks to our bold president, I know about it.


Occupy the natural gas wells. I’m ready to go.


 

Big changes to the DCCC?

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Half the city probably doesn’t realize there is such a thing as the Democratic County Central Committee, and most of the other half doesn’t realize how powerful it is. The daily papers never cover the DCCC meetings and rarely write about the elections that choose the members of an organization that runs the local Democratic Party — and controls local party endorsements. But it’s a serious factor in local politics — the party slate in a Democratic town is one of the most influential endorsements around. And a lot of the city’s current elected leaders started off as members of the DCCC.


For the past few years, progressives have held a majority on the DCCC, but it’s always up in the air, particularly since every elected state and federal Democrat who lives in SF is automatically an ex-officio voting member. So Senator Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Nancy Pelosi both get to vote (actually, the never show up; they send proxies). Gavin Newsom had a vote until he moved to Marin. You get the picture.


And now, with reapportionment, the part has to change its rules. Under the current system, 12 members are elected from each of the city’s two Assembly districts — but under the new lines, Tom Ammiano’s Assembly district will expand beyond the eastern side of town and he’ll now represent 61 percent of the Democratic voters in the city. Fiona Ma’s district moves south into San Mateo, and she’ll only represent 39 percent of the Democrats.


So now the state has to reapportion the DCCC. Three LGBT members describe the process in a B.A.R. piece here. It seems to me that the easiest thing to do is to add five more members on the east side of town. Good for getting more San Franciscans involved in local politics. Good for the diversity of the DCCC. And good because the more directly elected members you have, the less the ex officios influence the committee.


Seems like a fair easy fix. 

The GOP primary: Enjoy the show

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The 49ers game isn’t until Sunday, but in the meantime, I hope everyone’s enjoying the spectacle that is the Republican primary in South Carolina. First off, we have John King asking His Newtness about allegations that he wanted an “open marriage” and setting off a classic Newtron bomb. Then we have all the discussion on CNN about Mitt Romney’s (allegedly) huge penis. And of course, the SuperPac ads accusing Romney of being a serial killer (“Mitt the Ripper.”) Oh, and by the way: Did anybody actually win the Iowa Caucuses? Does anybody actually care?


Party on, Repubs. You’re doing better every day.

Newt Gingrich, commie radical

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Actually, more likely Newt Gingrich, Scorched Earth Opportunist, but whatever, we’ll take it: Newt — he the friend of plutocrats and one-time lobbyist for predatory lenders — is launching an assault on Mitt Romney, calling him, in essence, a capitalist pig who exploits the workers.

The fact that it’s true makes the story even more fun. As does the fact that Romney has run so far to the right in the primaries that Obama — by any standard in serious trouble — now has a natural line of attack against the candidate most likely to offer him a credible challenge.

Here’s CalBuzz:

The Occupy Wall Street movement has succeeded in pushing the issue of the nation’s vast wage and wealth disparity onto the agenda of the 2012 campaign. While Republicans in the past have been successful in dismissing discussion and debate about the Third World levels of wealth concentration in the U.S. as unpatriotic “class warfare,” the inarguable facts about the massive gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else are now well-known by many mainstream voters, at a time when Romney stands as a central casting character representing the 1%.

Paul Hogarth at BeyondChron says that ” many of us wish that Democrats had the chutzpah to be this scathing and direct,” and I can’t argue with that. The good news is that the Newtclear Bombs in South Carolina will probably work: Romney’s going to win the nomination, and everybody knows it, but the blitz of revenge ads may wound Romney enough to convince the Obama folks that this is the line of attack to use during the general election.

In other words, Newt is pushing the Democratic party to the left, legitimizing the class warfare that the Republicans so love to denounce as unAmerican.

How much do we love this?

Who will push progressive taxes in 2012?

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Mayor Ed Lee talked to the Examiner about his plans for the next year, and it’s a lot of the usual political crap: I’m going to create jobs, I’m going to bring people together and promote civility, ho hum. But he did mention, briefly, the need to change the city’s business tax, and here’s how he put it:

We have given ourselves four months to reach out to all the business groups. There will be different views and opinions. You can have a hybrid [between a payroll and gross receipts tax], and you can also have a phase-in period of time. We want to have a good conversation with everybody and get their best ideas, and then use those ideas to craft what we think could be on the ballot. We’re not saying it has to be on the November ballot, but it could be. We want to have something that is not job punishing, but also something that does not decrease our revenue.

First: He’s going to reach out to all the business groups — but what about everyone else in the city? The level of business taxes has a direct impact on city services; is that not part of the equation? Clearly, he’s talking about something that’s at best revenue-neutral, something that “does not decrease our revenue.”

And please, don’t tell me about “job punishing” — it makes me even crazier than I already am. Look: There has to be a business tax in San Francisco. And any time you tax businesses, you take money for the city that could be used for other things. In some cases — not that many — the extra money might be used to hire a few people. In reality, for most businesses, the payroll tax is absolutely NOT a factor in job creation. It sounds bad — Gasp! a tax on jobs! — but the truth is that payroll is a rough approximation for the size of a company, and that’s what the city uses as a tax base.

Of course, we could change that to a gross receipts tax — another rough approximation for the size of a company. It’s also imperfect — some companies have a lot of money (VC funding, for example) and a lot of employees, but at this point not much in the way of sales. Some companies (supermarkets, for example) have high gross receipts but relatively low profit margins. And, of course, if you do a gross receipts tax the same people who complain about the payroll tax will have a new line: The GR tax penalizes growth! It penalizes success! The more money you make the more you pay! Unfair! Un-American! Job killer!

Because some people in this town (mostly big business types) just want lower taxes, period — not different taxes, lower taxes

So let’s get rid of the “job killer” rhetoric and start talking about what the city’s tax policy should be. And it should go like this: The individuals and businesses with the most money should pay the highest tax rates. The rich don’t pay their fare share anywhere in the U.S., and while the mayor and the supervisors can’t change federal policy, they can do their part on a modest level at home.

This a great year for tax reform in San Francisco. The spirit of Occupy is very much alive. There is, for the first time in decades, a national discussion about income and wealth inequality. There’s strong evidence that the middle class is vanishing in San Francisco. And, thanks to the wierdness of state law, in 2012, when there’s an election for the Board of Supervisors, a tax measure can pass with a simple majority vote In many ways, this is the single most important policy issue in the city, the one that defines who pays for what and who gets what and whether (public sector) jobs are created or destroyed and what kind of a city we want to be.

So let’s take it seriously. Instead of allowing Mayor Lee and the (big) business folks set the agenda, the progressives really need to move forward on a tax-reform plan that looks at making big business pay more and small business pay less — and that brings in another $250 million a year for the local coffers If gross receipts is the flavor of the day, I’m good with that — but not a flat tax. Exempt, say, the first $250,000 (or the first $500,000, whatever, run the numbers and see what we can afford). Put a 1 percent tax on the next million, a 1.5 percent tax on all receipts between $1.5 million and $5 million, a 2 percent tax on $5 million to $10 million and 3 percent on everything higher. Adjust the numbers either way, but that’s the general idea. Then add in a tax on commercial rents (again, exempt the first $500,000 or whatever) to make sure the the big landlords (who get away with murder under Prop. 13) are paying, too. And yes, based on market supply and demand, some will try to pass that on to their tenants, but companies (including a lot of law firms) that rent enough space to be paying millions of dollars a year in rent can afford to modest tax hike.

It will take the city controller or the city’s economist to do the math and see what the options are and how you get to $250 million net new revenue, so my proposal is just a start. But somebody needs to take this on, some member of the Board of Supervisors — or else we’ll just be responding to what the Chamber of Commerce wants. Who wants to be the champion of Tax Reform for the 99 Percent? Time is getting short.

The GOP and class warfare

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Every political consultant knows that words like “together” and “unite” play well with voters. That’s why you hear them so much on the campaign trail, from races for local office to presidential campaigns. Remember Obama’s signature speech, with his signature line?

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.

Now the Republicans are claiming that it’s the Obama administration that’s dividing America:

Democrats will “poison the American spirit by pitting one American against another and engaging in class warfare,” Romney said. “I believe in an America that is one nation under God, and I will keep it that way.”

But here’s the thing: Obama actually tried to work with both sides. I wish he hadn’t tried so hard, since the Republicans have no interest in helping him govern, but you can’t say he was a divider. The GOP candidates, on the other hand, can’t possibly succeed without being divisive; as Kos points, that’s all they have:

Their entire schtick is predicated on pitting Americans against Americans. Without such demonization, they would be unable to function as an ongoing concern.

I don’t have to run for office, so I can get away with saying this: I am not a uniter, not in the sense that the politicians are using the word. I want us all to get along and I’m not a fan of violence, but there’s already a war on in this country. There’s a class war — and our side didn’t start it. Americans have already been pitted against each other — not by Obama but by a small group of the very rich and the political toadies who support them, who have systematically dismantled the tax, education and service system that once made at least an attempt at creating a country with a level playing field, a stable middle class and an income and wealth distribution curve that wasn’t grossly distorted.

The one percent has declared war on the rest of us. And we’re supposed to sit here and take it and not fight back?

Or should we attempt to drown corporatocracy in the bathtub?

How scary is Iowa?

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I know, I know: It doesn’t deserve the hype. And Mitt Romney’s going to be the Republican nominee anyway; the rest is all theater. And I was just joking about how it might help Obama if one of the true wingnuts won the Iowa Caucuses.

But in the cold light of a Jan. 4 morning, I have to say:

It’s pretty fucking scary that the voters in Iowa not only took seriously but gave a fair amount of support to someone who has made much of his career out of being a homophobe and a racist. Oh, and really, really stupid:

“There are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren’t anymore. I don’t know if that’s the similar situation or that’s the case for anyone that’s black. It’s a behavioral issue as opposed to a color of the skin issue, and that’s the diff for serving in the military.”

Seriously: I know that he only got 30,000 votes, and there are a lot of evangelical Christians in Iowa, and I suppose not all of them hate queer people. Al Sharpton — and whatever you say, Sharpton’s no political fool — says that Santorum helps the Democrats by forcing Romney to continue to pander to the right. And I don’t believe that even 25 percent of the Republican voters in the nation as a whole would support someone with Santorum’s views.

But still: It’s 2012. And the most virulently antigay candidate in a right-wing field is right up near the top in the first real contest.

Isn’t that a little bit alarming?

The Iowa Caucuses are silly (but we’re all watching)

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We all know (or we ought to) that Iowa is radically unrepresentative of the United States and that the Iowa Caucuses are a dumb barometer for choosing a president and that only really insane news media coverage has made this into such a big event. And this year it’s a freak show, complete with Santorum Salad and a weird World War II reference and that creepy guy calling that deadly dull guy a liar and lots of other fun Republican tomfoolery.

But here’s the question for those of us who don’t vote in Iowa (and wouldn’t be hanging out at a Republican caucus anyway): Is it better for one of the major-league wingnuts to win, or should we all hope that Mitt Romney, who is going to be the nominee anyway, comes out ahead and we can stop wasting our time talking about Michelle Bachman, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and that guy named Santorum?

Seriously: Is it better for the country to have the Republicans look even crazier than they really are, and have someone who’s gone far off the deep end become the front-runner, and leave Obama looking like the only grownup in the race — or is it better if Iowans dismiss the worst of the worst and go with someone who’s just a typical opportunistic sack of shit but who once managed to run the liberal state of Massachussetts and probably wouldn’t attempt to have half of San Francisco locked in prison on general principles?

I must admit, I’m tempted to root for the nutjobs.

The redistricting furor

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I opposed the measure that created California’s new Redistricting Commission. As we noted in our endorsements at the time:

The commission is hardly a fair body — it has the same number of Republicans as Democrats in a state where there are far more Democrats than Republicans. And most states still draw lines the old-fashioned way, so Prop. 20 could give the GOP an advantage in a Democratic state. States like Texas and Florida, notorious for pro-Republican gerrymandering, aren’t planning to change how they do their districts.

But Prop. 20 passed anyway, and control of the critically important task of drawing lines for state Legislature and Congressional districts fell to an unbalanced group of people with no political experience. They commission held hearings up and down the state, took reams of testimony — and wound up with a map that will probably add six or seven Democratic seats to the Congressional delegation.

That’s not a big surprise: Democratic Party registration is stable in a very blue state, and Republican registration is declining. Any fair redistricting would likely lead to more Democratic seats. And it’s clear that the likes of Phil Burton were not involved: In Los Angeles, two powerful veteran members of the House, Brad Sherman and Howard Berman, wound up in the same district. No matter what happens, the Democratic Party will lose one of its heaviest hitters.

But ProPublica, the national (and generally very solid) investigative reporting group, took on the process and concluded that the Democratic Party managed to wire the deal:

As part of a national look at redistricting, ProPublica reconstructed the Democrats’ stealth success in California, drawing on internal memos, emails, interviews with participants and map analysis. What emerges is a portrait of skilled political professionals armed with modern mapping software and detailed voter information who managed to replicate the results of the smoked-filled rooms of old.

(Memo to the folks at PP: There haven’t been “smoked filled rooms” in this state in quite a while. By the time the 1990 census was done, most of the state (including most public facilities) had strict limits on indoor smoking, and in 2000, nobody smoked in any rooms controlled by any governmental agency. But we get the point.)

The story has set off a furor. Robert Cruikshank, one of my favorite political bloggers, did a fairly brutal takedown on the report:

Of course, the core assumption that California Republicans deserved any new seats is challenged by their collapse in the November 2010 elections. While Republicans across the country were having a banner night, California Republicans lost every single statewide election (including losing the governor’s race by 13 points despite outspending the Democrats nearly 10 to 1). They also failed to pick up a single seat in either the legislature or Congress, losing one Assembly seat. California voters made explicitly clear in November 2010 that they do not like Republicans. That doesn’t appear to have actually influenced the commission’s deliberations, but it does mean the claim that Republicans had any reasonable expectation of gains is ridiculous.

Then Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine, two poltical reporters with at least 50 years of experience between them, did their own examination at CalBuzz, and asked PP’s Jeff Larson to explain himself. The result is scathing:

  Plainly put, their piece is the worst kind of ersatz “investigative” reporting: lots of heavy breathing and over-reaching conclusions drawn from selectively using, twisting or ignoring facts, relying on innuendo and suggestion, and mischaracterizing crucial elements of the story to inferentially allege an impropriety where none exists. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more. Moreover, ProPublica never even called the commission for a comment on its much-ballyhooed “findings.”

In failing the smell test, this clunker promises plenty, but simply doesn’t deliver the goods.

Wow. Harsh.

But the Roberts/Trounstine takedown holds up pretty well. The point they make is that everyone — the GOP, the Dems, city and state officials, groups like the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and more — tried to influence the process. In Northern California, the Dems were apparently a little better at it (and managed to create at least one fake front group to promote the interests of Rep. Jerry McNerney); in the southland, the big Democratic operation of Howard Berman and his brother, Michael, which, as CalBuzz points out, have played a key role in past redistricing efforts (those “smoke-filled rooms”), got totally fucked and Howard may lose his seat after 28 years.

I will say that PP dug up some new info and exposed how the Dems managed to create “communities of interest,” some of them bogus, to try to influence the final lines. But I’ve been watching this stuff for a long time, and I can tell you: Reapportionment is political. Always has been, always will be. There are better lines and worse lines, there are scandalous cases of gerrymandering and political payback and there are (relatively) honest attempts to create districts that are fairly compact and also comply with federal law and don’t dilute minority representation. But there’s no such thing as “clean” reapportionment — and if the Dems and Republicans weren’t trying their best to influence the outcome, they’d be guilty of partisan misconduct.

The CalBuz conclu:

The plain fact is that while Democratic registration has been essentially flat in recent years, Republican registration has fallen into the toilet, and the GOP now represents less than one-third of state voters.

This means that Democrats represent an increasing proportion of the electorate; add to that the fact that decline-to-state independents, the fastest growing bloc of registered voters, also tend to vote Democratic, as we’ve shown previously.

This makes Johnson’s claim that Republicans are entitled to at least their current number of seats, which is the money quote of the Pierce-Larson opus, not only laughable but also intellectually dishonest. Sort of like the whole piece.

 

Lots of buzz and politicking around D5 appointment

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There is eager speculation – and lots of public and private pressure being applied to Mayor Ed Lee – over the question of who he will appoint to fill the District 5 seat on the Board of Supervisors that is being vacated by Sheriff-elect Ross Mirkarimi.

Anti-progressive entities from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce to the San Francisco Chronicle are urging Lee to appoint a fellow moderate to the solidly progressive seat, despite the outrage that would trigger on the left and the difficulty that appointee would likely have keeping the seat after the November election.

Chron columnist CW Nevius today published a weird little puff piece plugging London Breed – a moderate who wants the D5 seat, a fact he strangely didn’t mention – and her leadership of the African American Art & Cultural Center. Chron columnist Leah Garchik also pumped up Breed as a D5 appointee last week. Nevius’ column in particular seemed to be a thinly veiled attempt to influence the decision, despite the regular insistence by Nevius and others at the Chron that they never have a political agenda or try to influence City Hall. Yeah, right – at least we at the Guardian are honest about our advocacy for more progressive city leadership.

Breed is being strongly pushed by Willie Brown, the former mayor and current Chron columnist, as well as most of the city’s African American ministers, such as Revs. Amos Brown and Arnold Townsend, who showed up at last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting and followed Lee back to his office after his appearance before the board.

Sources connected to the ministers told us that Lee hadn’t returned their phone calls in recent weeks and they were angry about the snub, so they showed up to let him know and mau-mau him into appointing Breed. Indeed, Brown did get a private meeting with Lee after his followers wedged their way into the office.

Reporters had asked Lee about the D5 appointment just moments before and he said that he was in no hurry to make a decision. “I want to pay my respects to many groups in District 5,” Lee said.

While many names have been floated as D5 contenders, there are a few that rise to the top. Malcolm Yeung, public policy director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, is being pushed by Rose Pak, the Chinatown power broker who worked with Brown to get Lee into Room 200.

But given Lee will probably avoid simply choosing between the Brown and Pak choices – unless they can privately coalesce around someone, which is certainly a possibility – most City Hall speculation these days falls on Christina Olague. The Planning Commission president comes from the progressive camp but she also served as a co-chair of Progress for All, creators of the Run, Ed, Run campaign that persuaded Lee to run for a full term.

Speaking to the Guardian in October, Olague denied that her early endorsement of Lee had anything to do with the D5 seat, which she said she wasn’t seeking but would take if offered. “If we get progressives to support him early on, maybe we’ll have a seat at the table,” was how she explained her support for Lee.

On Friday, Olague showed up for Mirkarimi’s art opening and holiday party in his City Hall office, and she chatted with other possible contenders for the D5 seat, including Quintin Mecke, Julian Davis, Gabriel Haaland, Jason Henderson, and Michael O’Connor. Asked by the Guardian if she had any insights into how the appointment was going, she said all she knows is what she’s read online and in the newspapers.

And so we wait.

My (latest) favorite website ever

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Rick Perry will fight a chicken with hand. He says so himself, right here. And Newt Gingrich reminds us that you can’t think when you’re fucking high.

Oh, and there’s a group of spin-meisters in the back room trying to figure out how to make Perry sound less like a blithering idiot.

Livefunnyordie. I don’t know how these folks manage the lip-reading stuff, but it’s spectacular.

The women who love Herman Cain

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Sexual harassment is serious, and Herman Cain ought to be held to account for the sizable number of allegations against him. (Really, whatever Cain says, most women don’t make this stuff up; going public is painful enough). The charges that he had an affair? Whatever — that’s none of my business or anyone else’s. But in the GOP world, being “unfaithful” is a pretty serious sin (unless, of course, your name is Newt Gingrich).

Still, it’s pretty creepy that he’s set up a “women for Cain” website, with some truly bizarre testimonials:

**Sir, I firmly believe that you were sent to our nation through Divine Providence and I believe that you are the man to preserve our Republic for our children.

**”I first saw Mr Cain on the day he announced his presidency! I absolutely loved his upbeat attitude about my country! Then he smiled … how long has it been since we have seen a sincere smile from a political candidate!

**I am with you all the way Sir!!!!!!!! We need someone that believes in GOD, life and liberty

**Mrs. Cain, Joshua 1:6 says, “”Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them.” I am praying for you and Mr. Cain…that God would protect you and give you courage to be obedient to Him…whatever He asks.

**Dear Mr Cain many years ago I find this not so unique for christians I knew a man Charles in died at 54 i knew him and and his wife and they were beautiful from the heart christians. at one point in my live i was going to lose my home and well he heard about it, so me at Maass and told me Adrinne I want you to go down to the bank Monday and there wil be a check for 40.000 dollars. I told him I dont know how in the world i would pay it back and he just said don.t worry you are young and you have your whole live to pass a blessing on to someone else, At any rate he died at 54 of a heart attack and when I went to the funeral I was not surprised to see at least 500 or more people at his funeral and I went up to his wife and she told me has helped so many people his whole life and I looked in those green eyes with flowing tears and I said I was one of those people!

Whoa. These are the supporters of Herman Cain. I wonder what Women for Gingrich would look like.

Will Obama win in 2012?

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Right now, all the signs say no — the economy isn’t improving, he’s pissing off his base, the GOP kicked his ass in the 2010 midterms, and a vast majority of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. But then, at this time in 1991, all the signs said that George Bush I was unbeatable.

And then, of course, you have the Republican candidates.

That’s why the political consultant brain trust at CalBuzz predicts by a 2-1 margin that Obama will be relected. We’re talking Democrats and Republicans, from across the ideological spectrum (although mostly centrist; there aren’t many radical political consultants, since they have to make a living working with all sorts of candidates).

I always get these things wrong — a good way to win an election-day bet is to listen to my predictions then go the other way — and I’m not the Obama supporter I once was. But I think these folks have a point — is there a single Republican now in the field who won’t self-destruct by the end of next year, in the heat of battle? You can say all you want about his namby-pamby positions and the bimbo eruptions, but Bill Clinton was a hell of a campaigner — and it takes a hell of a campaigner to unseat an incumbent president, no matter how bad he looks in the polls.

Some of their comments:

As much as history points to no president being re-elected with unemployment numbers this high, there is no sign that the GOP can get its act together and nominate anyone capable of defeating Obama. As amazing as it may be the GOP is poised to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory — what a party!

Romney, the probable GOP nominee, combines most of the worst features of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry. That’s some feat — and it won’t get him to the White House.

Obama will win . . . more because the Republican field is pathetic.  “Mittens” is the likely winner, but has flip-flopped more than a tuna on the deck of a boat.

Harsh — but possibly true. Thoughts?

Mormons and Republicans

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CalBuzz, one of my favorite political sites, has an interesting essay on what the anti-Mormon sentiment in America means for Mitt Romney. Among the central points:

Gallup found that Democrats (27%) were more unlikely to support a Mormon than were Republicans (18%) – suggesting that in a general election, a Mormon’s hard-right views on gays, marriage, abortion and women’s rights might have more to do with resistance to an LDS candidate than religion itself.

Actually, not all politically active Mormons share that “hard right” approach — Stew Udall, the Arizona environmentalist, Congressmember and interior secretary under Kennedy and Johnson was a Mormon. So was his brother Mo, a liberal member of Congress who ran for president in 1976 as a left alternative to Jimmy Carter. But like evangelical Christians, Mormons in general tend to be conservative, especially on social issues.

The CalBuzzers are puzzled by the distrust of this particular religion:

It’s hard to determine what, exactly, drives anti-Mormon sentiments – whether it’s what people know, what they don’t know or what they think they know.

Are they familiar with Joseph Smith, Jr., the treasure digger from Palmyra, New York, who said he was visited by the angel Moroni in 1827 and guided to a box of golden plates which he said contained what is now known as the Book of Mormon, after he transcribed them from “reformed Egyptian”?

Are they thinking about the breakaway Mormons in HBO’s late great “Big Love” with Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplethorn, Chloe Sevigny, Ginnifer Goodwin, Bruce Dern, Mary Kay Place and Amanda Seyfried? Maybe they think Mormons are all like Roman Grant, the evil self-proclaimed prophet and leader of the Juniper Creek Compound played by Harry Dean Stanton.

Or are they like one wag we know who argues that the only difference between Mormonism and Scientology is the choir?

If you want to pounce on logical improbabilities in religions, you’ve got your parting of the Red Sea and the burning bush, the immaculate conception and the resurrection and that passel of virgins waiting for you in Heaven. Pick your myth.

The point, of course, is that the stuff Mormons believe is no odder than the teachings of most major religions. But there’s a big difference, and I find it fascinating.

The thing is, if you believe in Jesus or Abraham or Mohammed, you’re talking about people who lived a really long time ago, before there were accurate written records. Despite former Guardian writer Burton Wolfe’s best efforts, you can’t really prove that Jesus lived or didn’t live, or did or didn’t turn water into wine or cure lepers. The Bible has been translated so many times (and by many accounts, rewritten so many times) that it’s hard to know exactly what the original stories even were.

On the other hand, there are people alive today whose grandparents might have known Joseph Smith. Mormonism came to life in a time of newspapers and nearly-modern record keeping. Upstate New York in 1827 wasn’t exactly Manhattan today, but it wasn’t the Middle East in 44 B.C. either. There are still accounts of newspapers of the day denouncing Smith as a charlatan and fraud. Nobody can argue about whether he was into polygamy or not.

In the context of the 1800s, although there was plenty of strange religious stuff going on, the notion of a failed treasure hunter finding golden plates left by an angel (who then took the plates back after Smith made the one and only translation) seems pretty bizarre. That’s in part because the traditional religions all teach that the weird shit took place a really long time ago, which somehow makes it easier to justify.

If the son of a carpenter announced in 1827 that he was really the son of God, and that his mother was a virgin who had been impregnated by something called the Holy Spirit, who was also sorta, kinda part of God, isn’t it likely he might be called a nutjob? Ya think?

And the way the Mormon Church operates, with all of its official secrecy, just encourages people to think of it as a cult. But you ever tried really looking into the Vatican?

My point is that poor Mitt is going to face an uphill battle over his religion largely because the stuff that’s really, really hard to believe supposedly happened a couple millenia after stuff that’s really, really hard to believe was supposed to happen.

Not defending the Mormons here. (Although, if you stipulate that women have equal opportunity and gay people can get married, too, what IS wrong with polygamy?)

Just saying.