Category Archives: Politics

Cheri Honkala Should Win PA’s HD197

Politics, Uncategorized, , ,

Democrats deserve to lose #HD197 to Green write-in #CheriHonkala, due to repeat Dem corruption. #MyUnpopularOpinion #papol #p2

I’m serious. The one who comes out smelling like roses in the HD197 race is Honkala.

Campaigners for the Democrat who sought to be named on the ballot but ended up a write-in, Emilio Vasquez, are already being accused of abetting voter intimidation. The two predecessors in office, both Democrats, resigned from office due to corruption charges. The GOP candidate who was the sole candidate on the ballot, Lucinda Little, left the Dems because of their corruption.

Now we know that the GOP lost this race, but Friday 3/31 will reveal which write-in won. I hope the Dems lose this seat to the Green write-in. The Dems deserve to lose this race. Honkala should be the first Green member of the PA General Assembly. #papol

Robert Bentley to Resign

Politics, Uncategorized,

What took his corrupt ass

The lawmaker who initiated the move to impeach Robert Bentley said he believes Alabama’s governor will soon step down.

In an interview with WTVY, Rep. Ed Henry, R-Hartselle, said if the House moves on Articles of Impeachment, Bentley would be suspended pending the outcome of a Senate trial. To avoid impeachment, Henry added, Bentley would likely resign no later than next month.

“From what I’m hearing I would expect by mid-April that the governor either will have resigned or the impeachment committee will be moving at a very rapid pace,” Henry said.

via Alabama representative says Gov. Robert Bentley will resign mid-April | AL.com

The Fusion Party in North Carolina

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I’m reading on how the Fusion Party in North Carolina brought together liberal Black Republicans and progressive, pro-labor White Populists against the planter elite-dominated Democrats for a short, amazing period before Democrats used “white supremacy” and violence to split the working class vote.

I think that this coalition approach might work in this era: progressive Berniecrats and liberal Democrats who respect each other’s autonomy without taking over each other.

The Democrats won’t fit all progressives, and many progressives who are focused on class issues will see the Democrats as a constraint. Both should be respected as separate parties, and we should negotiate a coalition between the two on good faith.

But this can’t be negotiated under the Democratic tent. The Democrats will have to come to the table, and not assume that they are the only legitimate party in this country.

Maybe we need the Fusion Party to come back to the South, and be the bridge to unite these groups in ways that the Dems in the South will be prevented from doing for the next several decades.

 

Segregation in the South – The Atlantic

Politics, Uncategorized,

This is sad reading, especially about third party politics in the South.

This is, unfortunately, not a surprising account of North Carolina, or of the South more generally. The South of the 1950s was the land of fire hoses aimed at black people who dared protest Jim Crow laws. Today, schools in the South are almost as segregated as they were when Sevone Rhymes was a child. Southern cities including Charlotte are facing racial tensions over the shootings of black men by white policemen, which, in Charlotte’s case, led to massive protests and riots.

But what few people know is that the South wasn’t always so segregated. During a brief window of time between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century, black and white people lived next to each other in Southern cities, creating what the historian Tom Hanchett describes as a “salt-and-pepper” pattern. They were not integrated in a meaningful sense: Divisions existed, but “in a lot of Southern cities, segregation hadn’t been fully imposed—there were neighborhoods where blacks and whites were living nearby,” said Eric Foner, a Columbia historian and expert on Reconstruction. Walk around in the Atlanta or the Charlotte of the late 1800s, and you might see black people in restaurants, hotels, the theater, Foner said. Two decades later, such things were not allowed.

via Segregation in the South – The Atlantic

Two-Party Duopoly’s Effect on Climate Change Policy

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

If we had a multiparty system, do you think conservative partisans would be so intensely skeptical to climate change?

My idea is that part of the reason why climate change is regarded as such among the American right is because the big-tent nature of the Republican Party forces even those conservative or libertarian partisans who are sympathetic to the idea of climate change from the perspective of free-marketism or religious conservatism to put that on the shelf for the sake of party unity and getting other policies which they may favor into law.

The free-marketism of the oil, coal and natural gas barons and those citizens – entire states of citizens – who depend on their money is a third rail in the Republican Party, and needs to bar climate change as a logical possibility from their minds.

But not every Republican politician or voter lives in an oil/coal/gas-dependent state. And among that subset are those who may be skeptical about the skepticism. And they don’t have control of the party at this moment. Where is their representation?

In a multiparty system, I think they’d have their own party separate from those who are climate change-skeptical/beholden to big oil. And climate change would have far more acceptance than it does right now.

 

What a #DemExit Could Look Like

Politics, Uncategorized, , ,

#DemExit folks who are looking for a left-wing alternative party after yesterday can either join the Greens, Rocky Anderson’s Justice Party, Kshama Sawant’s Socialist Alternative, or build yet another party.

Out of all the alternatives, the Green Party is the only one with ballot access in at least 4+ states. As of this year, they have access in 19 states, with chapters in all 50 states, 3 of which are currently unaffiliated.

Oh, and if you want to be a viable party at all, you’ll need chapters in all 3,142 counties and county-equivalents in the US (threshold 1,571). You’ll have to build that all by yourselves. Otherwise, you’ll have no presence in the Electoral College vote.

Good luck.

 

“Mental Illness” as Insult

Politics, Uncategorized,

I’ve stopped using the word “mentally ill” or “needs help” as an insult, perhaps for months.

Because really, if you’re “mentally ill” or you “need help”, is that really an insult or is it an acknowledgement of your condition?

If you have gender dysphoria, autism, Tourette’s, or extreme stuttering, those aren’t things which can be “fixed”. Their most debilitating aspects can be moderated and accommodated in order to allow optimal function within larger society.

The neurodiversity movement hit upon language which claims these conditions away from being “diseases”, “illnesses” and “disorders” toward “states of being” within a spectrum of “neurological pluralism”.

But accommodation within the larger society for those states of neurological being is still few and far between, because it challenges what we have been taught about how the brain intersects with our senses, speech patterns, knowledge, education, sex, gender and health. And a lot of people would rather see the “degenerates” removed from sight and mind rather than become “woke” to neurological diversity.

They’re states of neurological diversity, and they need to be accommodated with respect and inclusion.

“What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization – and therefore force – is already a sick civilization, a civilization that is morally diseased, that irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one repudiation to another, calls for its [Trump], I mean its punishment.”

From “Discourse on Colonialism” by #AiméCésaire (with a swapping out of “Hitler” for “Trump”)