NCGA Does the Right Thing. Sort of.

A Senate bill (SB656), already passed by the NC Senate, is now out of committee in the NC House, and scheduled for a vote on Tuesday, June 26.  The "committee substitute" bill is here, if you want to look at it.....

What would this mean? NC has had some really restrictive ballot access laws, since 1983. In particular,
it now takes about 110,000 (individually validated) signatures to get on the ballot ("access") and 2% of the vote in either the Prez or Gov races to stay on the ballot once on ("retention").

The bill, if it passes, and it's expected to pass, would change those rules as follows:
Access: 10,000 signatures
Retention:  Either the 2% rule for Prez or Gov votes in NC in previous election OR have "a candidate" on the ballot in 80% of the states.

Now, the Libertarian Party has been on the ballot continuously since 2008, when (ahem) I got more the 2% of the vote for Gov.  In 2012, Barbara Howe did it, and in 2016 Lon Cecil did it.  A number of Republicans blame the LP for the Republican loss of the Gov race in 2008 (implausible) and in 2016 (extremely plausible).

But the point is that the LP is already on, again, for 2020. My man Gary Johnson actually got 2.74%, 130k votes, the first time an LP Prez candidate has EVER secured ballot access in NC.  Whoo-HOO!

Okay, so here's the thing. The Republicans don't have many chances to look like they are for ballot access, or expanding electoral freedoms (which include voting for the candidate of your choice). AND, they are likely tired of having to lose some votes, enough in close races to change the outcome, to the annoying "third party" Libertarians.

You can have a double win, if you are a Republican strategist, by cutting the restrictions on ballot access! You get credit for having a more sensible and less draconian set of rules, more in line with other states (NC regularly makes, on merit, those "Worst Laws in the US" lists, when it comes to ballot access).

And you get the Greens on the ballot, diverting votes from the Dems! Is there a downside?

I don't really see one. An interesting question is whether Gov. Cooper will sign it.  If a goofball like me can figure this out, I expect Mr. Cooper will not need to have the effects explained to him. But it will be difficult to veto the thing, because it really does just bring NC back into compliance with pretty normal rules for party access. This is hardly a radical bill, it just also "happens" to help the Republicans at the ballot box.  (Here is a story from the right-leaning Carolina Journal, which doesn't mention the political angle--adding Greens takes away Dem votes--or, oddly, the new 80% retention rule added in the committee version).

EDIT: The reason the 80% (40 states) is important is that Stein was on the ballot in 44 states in 2016.  That means that, depending on the way the law is interpreted retroactively (and it seems to be retroactive, since it says "previous election"), Greens would be on the ballot for the 2018 midterm elections in NC.

Ballot Access Kerfuffles

A nice mess you have gotten us into this time, Stanley!

Gov. Perry, of Texas, is all upset because (gasp!) voters might not get to vote for the candidate of their choice! He failed to get the signatures required to get on the ballot in Virginia.

I have to agree with him. That's a dumb law, a ridiculous and arbitrary distinction on the ability to compete for office. Here is the complaint (from BAN, with thanks)

But then how come the Guv-meister has not said a peep about the fact that Texas, the state where I hear he has some pull, has made a complete hash of ballot access? Et tu, Ricky?

Some more background from Brian I, here...

Congo Election Correction

In my earlier post about politics in the Congo, I may have said that there were 32 presidential candidates. That of course is ridiculous; there are only 12! 11 men, 1 woman, and two of the 11 men are the sons of previous dictators, one of which, incumbent Uncle Joe Kabila, is the likely winner.

Here are the 12:

Les candidats à l’élection présidentielle 2011:

Jean Andeka Djamba (ANCC)
Etienne Tshisekedi (UDPS)
François Joseph Nzanga Mobutu (Udemo)
Vital Kamerhe (UNC)
Kengo wa dondo (UFC)
Nicephore Kakese (URDC)
Joseph Kabila (Indépendant)
Oscar Kashala (UREC)
Antipas Mbusa Nyamwisi (RCD-K/ML)
Adam Bombole (Indépendant)
Ngoy Mafuta (Indépendant)
Ismaël Kitenge (MRC-PTF)

From the personals

MBM ISO 270 electoral votes for a 4 year relationship.

Turnons: electric cars, choo-choos, windmills, peas, taxing the rich

Turnoffs: tea, paperwork, take home pay, ratings agencies

Why didn't Fubarak resign sooner?

Two competing views.

First, this story says he was out of touch, isolated, surrounded by yes-men and advised by his genius son that he could still ride things out and stay in power.

Second, this story says he was buying time while he feverishly stashed his billions of wealth in untraceable places.

I guess both could have elements of the truth, but my money is on #2.

talk like a Egyptian

Via Salon, here's a truly excellent post about how NOT to talk about events in Egypt.

My favorite faux pas: "I loved Sadat".

(Sadat WAS Mubarek with a worse hairdo)

Relatedly, Bill Easterly describes the double standard for democracy that seems to be operating.

Look out Tyler, in Zimbabwe, Zombies have voting rights!

Yesterday, in a classic blog post, when asked to choose an anti-zombie weapon, Tyler chose "the rule of law" (second choice was "anti-zombie constitutional amendment"!!!!).

Grim news for him comes today from Zimbabwe where it is reported that "nearly 1/3 of Zimbabwe's voters are already dead" (this of course explains why Mugabe is still in power after 275 years, he's a Zombie)!!

So under PR, they'd be in a coalition government controlling several ministries!

Plus, during elections, they can eat the brains of non-Zombie voters while waiting to exercise their franchise.

How's that rule of law gonna save you Tyler, when Zombies vote?

They know what boys like

Harry Reid and the Senate democrats think they know what President O and the Republicans evidently don't: how to lure the House Dems into supporting the tax deal.

And their answer is........

PORK!!!!

A few billion here and there for ethanol subsidies and wind and solar subsidies is all they figure it'll take to get the bill past the opposition of the Democratic Caucus in the House.

I bet it works, but I'm surprised they didn't throw in a lil bit more high speed rail money just to clinch it.

What's in a name?

In the recent Brazilian elections, 6 candidates registered themselves as "Barack Obama" (they all lost). One candidate ran as "Chico Bin Laden" (and lost). Over 200 candidates registered their names as some riff on outgoing president Lula's name. There is much more here and here.

My favorite name of all and one person that I'd consider breaking my lifelong "no voting" policy to vote for?

Kung Fu Fatty! (not making this up)

Contest finalists

Here are the four finalists for the KPC tagline reader appreciation contest. These are actual verbatim entries from actual KPC readers!

"Business up front, quantitative easing in the rear"

"Fatter in real life than you imagined"

“Those are my principles; if you don’t like them, I have others.” (Groucho Marx quote)

"Still looking for our copy of the social contract"

Comments are solicited while the judges deliberate.

'lection day

Hello people. Election days always make me melancholy. People get so worked up and excited about who is going to "take power" and "govern us". People get so worked up about ballot initiatives telling other people what they can and cannot do.

I just hang out, keep a low profile, and hope for some anarchy.

So please consider (a) voting Libertarian, or Green or some other alternative, (b) going the creative write-in route, (c) spoiling your ballot (I absolutely LOVE that term), or (d) not voting at all.

Voters may be dumb, but they are smarter than Taegan Goddard

On his Political Wire, Goddard says:

A Bloomberg National Poll finds that by a two-to-one margin, likely voters in the midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program won't be recovered.

The facts: The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, has overseen an economy that has grown for the past four quarters and expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks.

Umm, Taegs old pal, the economy HAS shrunk! real GDP peaked in the 4th quarter of 2007 and we have not yet reached that level. Now the economy is not still shrinking, but that's a different story.

While I'm at it, taxes HAVE gone up. Our deficit has exploded and (repeat after me cheese lovers) DEFICITS ARE FUTURE TAXES!

Finally, while banks are paying back TARP money with interest, taxpayers are losing billions on the TARP funds that were used to bail out GM.

I would score this one for the voters!

On the leftiness of Obama redux

To summarize where we are, I've come to realize that a lot of Obama's foreign and social policies are both (a) wrong and (b) conservative.

Since then I've been dealing with a lot of "epistemic closure" from the left as they argue that there is no evidence at all of Obama being left or liberal. I presented a lighthearted list, the first 6 of which I think are genuine evidence.

In an attempt to bring some at least semi-objective data to bear on the issue, I propose that his voting record as a Senator is relevant for judging his ideological bent (i.e. his inner leftiness).

Here is some information on that record:

The National Journal magazine, in its annual vote rating, said Obama moved left last year to the "most liberal senator" rating "after ranking as the 16th and 10th most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate."

Americans for Democratic Action, the liberal activist group, and the American Conservative Union, the conservative activist group, also rate Congress members on their votes. Their findings describe Obama as one of, but not the most liberal U.S. senator.

The ADA gave Obama a 75 percent liberal score in 2007, 95 percent in 2006 and 100 percent in 2005. Other Democratic senators received 100 percent during those years. David Card, ADA communications director, said Obama's score was lower last year because he missed certain votes.

Obama has a lifetime ADA average of 90 percent. Other senators - such as Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and others - have higher lifetime ADA ratings. Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, was ranked as the most liberal senator by the National Journal in 2003.

"He is one of the most liberal senators," Card said, referring to Obama.

The ACU, which customarily places conservative Republicans on the top of its list and liberal Democrats at the bottom, has given Obama a lifetime ranking of just 7.67, according to the figures on the group's Web site.

It says Obama scored 8 percent in 2005, 8 percent in 2006 and 7 percent in 2007. Other Democratic senators in the ACU rankings have had lower yearly and lifetime scores, the site shows.

"He's one of the most liberal," said Larry Hart, the ACU director of government relations.

Quotes entirely relevant for this election season

"Politics is a ridiculous profession populated by ridiculous people. Maybe if we elect increasingly clownish candidates, the public will eventually come to realize this, and finally realize that it’s probably not a good idea to put larger and larger portions of our lives and livelihoods in the hands of people who have achieved success in a field that rewards character traits you spend your entire tenure as a parent trying to teach out of your kids."

-Radley Balko

more here.

Obama explains the upcoming election, take 2

I guess the "blame it on the Supremes" balloon wasn't flying, because now the President is blaming the upcoming election results on evolutionary biology!

Really:

"People out there are still hurting very badly, and they are still scared. And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared," Obama said at a Democratic fundraiser Saturday in Boston. "And the country is scared, and they have good reason to be."

Man, that is a bodacious line of argument, innit?

Here is what Obama should say:

We won near-historic majorities in 2008 and history shows that those kinds of gains are almost always eroded in the following mid-term. Plus, despite our best efforts, the economy hasn't recovered quickly and historically voters will blame my Party for that.

But don't be fooled my friends, the Republicans are the same duplicitous, ignorant, venal, clowns you correctly threw out in 2006 and 2008, and if these historical forces put them back in now, they will be gone again by 2012!

The 2010 election will be just an inconvenient blip in the road to a progressive America.

KPC readers, what do you think?

Why is it so hard to stay a good guy?

Or, why is it so hard to give up power.

Look at the Castro Brothers, they were once heroes of the revolution (I mean that sincerely) and now they are just the worst.

Look at Robert Mugabe, hero of Zimbabwe's independence, now reduced to destroying his own country to stay in power well into his 80s.

Look at Chavez. It's hard to remember now that he too was a hero.

In Africa, Museveni of Uganda helped depose Amin but has stayed in power now for 24 years and counting.

Sadly, Paul Kagame appears to be the latest case. He was a post-genocide hero, but most recently won re-election with 93% of the vote after vigorously suppressing opposition parties. Now the NY Times reports that Rwanda's leading opposition figure was just arrested today. Of course Paul has a long way to go to reach Mugabe longevity; he's only got 10+ years on the job at this point.

Are these all manifestations of the same personality type? Does fighting for a cause somehow delude you into thinking you are indispensable?

I find these cases simultaneously baffling and heartbreaking.

Pity poor Connecticut

There is an old joke in economics:

"I pity the poor econometrician who must use a dummy for sex and a proxy for risk".

Porfirio Diaz once said:

"Poor Mexico, so far from God but so close to the United States"

People, I pity the poor Connecticut voter, who has as her Senate candidates Vince McMahon's wife and one Richard Blumenthal, who repeatedly lied about his military service and, in response to a debate question asking how his lawsuits against Connecticut companies affected job creation said:

"Our lawsuits, our legal actions, actually create jobs".

So you have a creepy showman's consort or an uber-creepy serial fabulist.

Good luck to the Nutmeg State voters, they'll need it.

Peruvian Political Potboilers

As Tyler has reported Vargas-Llosa has won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Whatever you may think of this award (I am not a big fan), his country, Peru, is both wonderful and deeply weird.

Considering the fact that their current President, Alan Garcia, pretty much turned the country into a basket case during his first term as President in the 1980s, electing him again was a supremely reckless act. However, the Peruvian economy has performed very well during his regime. Now it turns out that there are plans afoot to put him on trial for human rights crimes after his term ends.

Of course, this has already happened to Alberto Fujimori, who during his term as President, rescued the economy and put a massive hurting on the Shining Path, albeit with some unsavory methods and allies.

Just to make this soup even weirder, the current "front-runner" to be the next president is Alberto's daughter, Keiko Fujimori!

People, I am not making any of this up.

Words of wisdom from Matt Taibbi

"In the Tea Party narrative, victory at the polls means a new American revolution, one that will "take our country back" from everyone they disapprove of. But what they don't realize is, there's a catch: This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change. The Tea Party today is being pitched in the media as this great threat to the GOP; in reality, the Tea Party is the GOP. What few elements of the movement aren't yet under the control of the Republican Party soon will be, and even if a few genuine Tea Party candidates sneak through, it's only a matter of time before the uprising as a whole gets castrated, just like every grass-roots movement does in this country. Its leaders will be bought off and sucked into the two-party bureaucracy, where its platform will be whittled down until the only things left are those that the GOP's campaign contributors want anyway: top-bracket tax breaks, free trade and financial deregulation."


Full and excellent article is here.

Say hello to my little friend

(as always, click the pic for a more glorious image)

In addition, Gallop polling shows a 10 point lead for Republicans in a "generic" congressional ballot (supposedly the largest such lead ever in a midterm campaign).

Just to be clear, the "friend" in my title is gridlock and NOT the Republicans. If there was a Republican Prez, I'd want a Dem Congress.