Category Archives: Politics

Police Abolition?

For the love of all that is just, don’t look at the comments. It’s a Fox News video.

I wouldn’t go as far as abolishing the police, but we should consider more non-armed LEOs.

In fact, non-armed officers already exist. They’re known as Community Service Officers, or CSO. CSO are non-sworn civilians who, besides filing reports, are dispatched largely for cases which don’t involve known direct suspect information. They are not deputized to arrest suspects, do not carry handcuffs, and do not carry weapons belts.

CSO typically number in the single digits in the police departments which employ CSO. I think they should be increased in number.

Do we have any CSOs here in Columbus’ Police Department?

Liquid/Delegative Democracy in Practice

Politics, Uncategorized, , ,

Reading up on delegative democracy aka liquid democracy. It’s essentially selecting someone to vote on your behalf in referendums, but where your selected proxy voter can also transfer their delegated votes to another proxy voter, and so on, while you can also take your vote back, override your proxy voter, and review your proxy voter’s voting record.

This is meant to essentially replace legislatures and make voting in referendums easier, quicker and more affordable.

To break down #LiquidDemocracy:

Imagine having a vote on a ballot measure, a referendum. Unlike many, you may not have the time to do research on the proposed law or vote on it.

So what can you do?

In #DelegativeDemocracy or Liquid Democracy, you can select someone – say, a friend who is more knowledgeable about the proposed law on the ballot – to cast your vote on your behalf. You might trust this person – Person A – to have more knowledge and be more responsible with your vote than you are. Person A is your proxy voter.

But what if Person A who you select knows someone else – Person B – who has even more knowledge about the proposed law and has publicly announced that they’ve cast their vote along the same lines as Person A? In Liquid Democracy, Person A can select Person B as their proxy voter, and can delegate Person B to cast your vote, Person A’s vote and the votes of others who’ve delegated their votes to that person.

In short, Liquid Democracy is a third way of passing laws, alongside representative democracy and direct democracy. It blends the two and moves us away from both the cost of direct democracy and the isolation of representative democracy.

The issue I have is this:

  • can this function without dependency upon the Internet to facilitate the voting process?
  • Also, what are the means by which this process can account for disadvantaged groups in a population or suspect classes whose rights may be targeted by referendum?
  • This may rid us of the need for gerrymandering and of competitive elections, but what will it do for minorities?

The Brexit Vote is Already Terrible

Politics, Uncategorized,

I feel like Britain was sold a bad deal on leaving the EU. Should have been a multi-choice referendum, like Puerto Rico’s last status referendum in 2012.

Now everyone is getting the incorrect impression that this is a binding referendum because “the majority voted”, in spite of Scotland and Northern Ireland, two constituent countries, voting to Remain.

Binary choices like this are usually flawed when put to a public vote. People don’t know their full options beyond the single “Yes/No” question. But this is what the Conservative backbench and party base wanted, and now they’re getting it in spades.

Conservatives are coming apart, split by the vote. Labour is coming apart, split by the alleged unenthusiastic support of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for the Remain campaign (and some older political scores).

The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, are coming out, in the days after the vote, as the biggest momentary beneficiaries of the pro-Remain political reaction against the vote, and are even throwing their weight behind Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP on Scottish negotiations with the EU.

Britain may be in the throes of a major political realignment, one which will have to either react against or adapt around the reality of migration and free movement of labor. Nevermind the hypocrisy of the inheritors of a historic world-colonizing power like the UK feeling gutted by the “invasion” of “migrants” so much that they’d withdraw the country from their foremost, closest major trading partner.

The DNC Platform Committee

Politics, Uncategorized

So Sanders is getting the concession he vocally wanted from the DNC. Instead of the chair picking all 15 seats on the platform writing committee, Sanders will pick 5, Clinton will pick 6 and chair DWS will pick the remaining 4.

Problem is, does anyone read the party platform after Election Day? Even John Boehner said that “no one reads the GOP platform.” They’re more likely to read the “Contract with America”. So really, what has Sanders gained? What are Sanders supporters getting?

  • DWS:
    • Rep. Elijah Cummings (Maryland)
    • Rep. Howard Berman of California
    • Rep. Barbara Lee of California
    • Bonnie Schaefer, author and executive
  • Clinton:
    • Wendy Sherman, a former top State Department official and Clinton surrogate
    • Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress and longtime Clinton confidante
    • Rep. Luis Guttierez of Illinois
    • Carol Browner, a former former director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy
    • Ohio State Rep. Alicia Reece
    • Paul Booth of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union.
  • Sanders:
    • James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute
    • Cornel West, a liberal author and racial justice activist
    • Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota
    • Bill McKibben, author and environmental activist
    • Deborah Parker, Native American activist

I AM SEEING NO #LGBT PEOPLE ON THIS LIST.

“Demographic Threats” and Voter ID Laws

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

QUESTION: Among Republican-governed states, Idaho, a state which is 0.6% African-American, has one of the looser Voter ID laws in the United States, requiring non-strict Photo ID.

Map of US Voter ID Laws by State, Strict vs Non-Strict, Nov 2016.svg
By Peterljr888 – Vector map from Blank US Map.svg by User:Theshibboleth.
Information from NCSL.org, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

 

Similarly:

  • North Dakota, with 1.2% African-descended population, has strict non-photo ID.
  • Montana, with 0.4%, has non-strict non-photo ID.
  • Wyoming, with 0.8%, has no Voter ID law.
  • Utah, with 1.1%, has non-strict non-photo ID.
  • Maine, with 1.2%, has none.
  • South Dakota, with 1.3%, has non-strict Photo ID.
  • New Mexico, with 2.1%, has none.
  • Iowa, with 2.9%, has none.
  • Alaska, with 3.3%, has non-strict non-photo ID.
  • West Virginia, with 3.4%, has none.
  • Colorado, with 4.0%, has non-strict non-photo ID.

Meanwhile, the Southeastern United States from Texas to Virginia is covered in Voter ID laws ranging from non-strict non-photo (like South Carolina, Oklahoma and Arkansas) to Strict Photo ID (Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia). Similarly, among the 4 Red States in the Midwest with the highest percentage of African-American population, Voter ID laws range from strict non-photo (Ohio) to strict Photo ID (Wisconsin and Indiana).

And today, Missouri’s GOP is succeeding in getting their Voter ID to the same strict Photo ID level as Kansas and Nebraska; Kansas has 5.9%, Nebraska has 4.5% and Missouri has 11.6%.

I wonder if the Republican rush to stricter Voter ID laws correlates to the percentage of the African-American population under their state governance. Is our mere demographic existence as voters that much of a problem to conservative Whites that the GOP would nationally inconvenience even the White elderly, the White college students, and the White disabled at the ballot box just to spite us?

Why are we such a threat to your interests that the Voter Fraud enemy which you have chosen to curb is usually African-American and perhaps a woman? Are we Black people the ones committing all of the possible or real cases of vote fraud which can be counted on your fingers?

By curbing this fraudulent voter, do you feel safer at the ballot box? Are we the cause of your vote fears, and would it be more of a convenience for you if we left your state? Or is it really the Mexican-Americans?

What Unfavorability?

Politics, Uncategorized

Trump, an outsider, has low favorability ratings among people who do not look like himself, but he wins the presumptive GOP nomination with high turnout. Clinton, somewhat of an insider, has low favorability ratings among people who look like Trump, yet holds the lion’s share of pledged Democratic delegates with low turnout.

After #INprimary, #CruzFiorina has dropped out, and Kasich is running on E. The ball is now in the Democrats’ court to pick a presumptive nominee before the convention. And yet, even now, #BernieOrBust/ #NeverHillary letters are being posted on Twitter.

Sanders is running out of time, but the anti-Hillary faction (especially independents who go out of their way to clarify that they have no relationship with the Democratic Party) are demonizing the Democratic Party in revenge for their candidate not being given the treatment which is more favorable to him.

In other words, the Democratic Party was supposed to host a revolution which a majority of Democratic voters ended up voting against. That has not sunk in.

Voter’s Remorse Over Bernie

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

My eye is better now. I don’t feel the scratching since I woke up. Surprising.

After that utter crushing of Bernie Sanders in #NYPrimary (not even restoring the voter rolls would have gotten him a victory, AFAICT), his birthplace, I’m rethinking the movement behind him.

The “money-in-politics/anti-corruption” focus is incredibly myopic and monomaniacal. To be honest, “money-in-politics” is not my biggest focus. My focus is on civil and human rights, and clearing all possible impediments to those rights.

Right now, those impediments are coming from the 50 states which exercise more control over cities than the federal government exercises over them. State politicians are falling over themselves to stigmatize the autonomies and powers of women, LGBT people, people of color, non-religious/minority-religious people, and organized labor.

But Sanders’ focus is on moneyed interests in the federal government, not the state politicians who are spearheading these terrible experiments in the “labs of democracy” which act as little fiefdoms for the White Male Christian Supremacist orders which have controlled them since colonial times and violently fought the federal government when compelled to change their ways of governance.

Universal health care is also being heavily resisted at the state level, as are the restoration of the VRA, the closing of wasteful local military installations and the drawing-down of our military expenditures, the banning of fracking, card check for union elections, non-discrimination laws, the abolition of the death penalty, the abolition of felon disenfranchisement etc.

All of the vested interests which seek to protect the social status quo and rage against what could bring us together seem to emanate directly from the state governments and their landed gentry, while D.C. merely tries to hold them together with sweetheart deals and gentleman agreements. Oh, and the majority of the federal spending that is ballyhooed by the reactionaries representing these states goes to funding the expenditures which keep these states afloat. Hypocrisy.

While Clinton is already signaling how she will deal with recalcitrant states (in which she will likely follow Obama’s model), Sanders is not addressing what the progressive agenda should be on and in the states. Clinton will most assuredly keep much of this status quo with many allowable incremental changes around the edges, but she, by her platform, is more likely to apply those changes to matters of a civil or human rights concern through executive action than Sanders, by his platform, seems to be.

Sanders’ singular focus on “big banks” has carved out a core constituency of true believers and populists across many states, the majority of whom have not had to live under the oppression of their home state. Similarly, their focus is either on “big banks” or how “Hillary is bad because she takes money from such and such”. I don’t share that concern.

Right now, big banks and Fortune 500s who donated to bigoted state politicians and ALEC are having “buyer’s remorse” and successfully rallying the proletariat against these same politicians’ bigoted legislations. They’re becoming unlikely, problematic but necessary allies of the civil rights constituency in Southern states, where the civil rights movement never ended.

Right now, Fortune 500s are facing off against nasty rural politicians who seek to other and stigmatize non-normative human beings who happen to be employees of these companies. That’s what I and everyone who lives in Columbus, GA live with. I’m not concerned with big banks right now. I’m not concerned with Super PACs right now. I’m not concerned with who donated how much to what foundation, unless they’re doing something to screw with civil and human rights here or abroad.

I VOTED FOR BERNIE SANDERS, liking his progressive bonafides but hoping that he would broaden his platform and address how fundamentally, institutionally unjust we are as a country beyond mere money economics.

I was hoping that Sanders’ social media supporters, even the ones who wear their “independent” label on their sleeve, would retreat from conspiracy theories, utter crankery, poor knowledge of both the Democratic Party’s operations and our massively-unjust 1787 Constitution, massive condescension to Democrats of color, and other *ahem* BS. He hasn’t. They haven’t. And now I’m having “buyer’s remorse.” #AbolishTheStates #AbolishTheSenate #MadamPresident

A Southern State Agenda for Progressive Liberal Dems

Politics, Uncategorized,

“Congressional Republicans in the Obama era have largely been defined by their insistence on standing in front of the administration and yelling stop. Democrats call them the party of “no.” But in state legislatures, Republicans are finding both rewards and peril in being a vigorous party of “yes” when it comes to promoting conservative social issues.”

NY Times

This is what I wonder: for Democrats – progressives, liberals and everyone in between – 2018 will be a crucial moment. At the state level, Democrats have completed their transformation into the “liberal opposition”, the “Negro Party” (the latter being what the Southern GOP was described as in the 1890s), the “anti-gun party”, the “pro-abortion party”. They’re fighting different battles than what Beltway Democrats are fighting in Congress, on a different playing field.

But we’ve also become the “party of No” in states which have gerrymandered state legislature district lines. We’ve come to this point from embracing minority, disadvantaged, young, migrant, creative, urbanized and/or educated identities, and fighting fights from a minority, disadvantaged, young, migrant, creative, urbanized and/or educated position.

This means that at this level, we will have to get used to being the opposition in so much of the rurally-spread United States for a long period of time. The rural agenda and historic rural privilege (pro-gun proliferation, pro-patriarchy, pro-religious establishment, pro-austerity, pro-racial privilege) runs ship at the state level. And I don’t see a turnaround happening without either one of two things happening:

  • a hypocritical repeat of the Southern Strategy in which Democrats drive out the “non-traditional Americans” who they’ve accrued since 1968 and curry favor with the “traditional Americans”.
  • Creating new, Democratic-leaning states from existing ones, a la State of Baja Arizona, State of South Florida, State of Atlanta, State of South Louisiana, State of South Texas, etc.

I think, with the latter option, those minority positions – Afro-American and Latino, college student, LGBT, women, urbanites, creative types, service worker, types who have better representation in city government – will have greater autonomy and home rule in the South than they have in this forever-disadvantaged position against these hopelessly-rural state legislatures. Hawaii is one example, D.C. is another. Why be held in this minority position forever? If bigoted rural interests hold back whole state governments, why let them hold back those who have a more diverse agenda? Statehood for Southern New Democrats. Think about it.

For the strategists and experienced folks: those who grew up aged 20-28 during the Reagan years now constitute the average age span of officeholders in state legislatures and Congress (56-64).

this means that those who grew up as young adults in the Clinton years have yet to constitute the majority of the political class, but do constitute the nationwide average age span of the voting population (47 years old).

If this is the case, why are Clinton-era young adults putting Reagan-era young adults into office from 2010 to 2016? Maybe for lack of contemporary alternatives among their own generation?