Month: March 2014

A journal of an attempted campaign–

crossposted at http://robfornj.com

I write this in advance of anticipated disappointment.  I have one more day to achieve a signature goal, and barring a miracle I’m not going to reach it.
Perhaps I should start from the beginning.  It has been my intent to run as a Democratic Candidate for New Jersey’s first Congressional District in the United States Congress.  I harbored no illusion that I had more than a thousand-to-one shot of winning a race like this,  I merely hoped that I could make some noise and draw attention to some key national issues from the progressive left side, and show at least some token opposition to the George Norcross machine.  A bit about George Norcross– anyone can Wikipedia or Google him, but noteworthy to mention is that he is Chairman of one of the largest insurance brokerage firms in the country, Chairman of the board of Cooper Health System, and majority owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer.  He is known as the unofficial head of the South Jersey Democrats, and could be the most powerful man in the state.

  My impetus for running was a moment of disgust– I’ll let others judge if that disgust was warranted or naïve.  Until February 4th 2014, the 1st District seat had been held by Rob Andrews.  Facing an ethics investigation in the house, Andrews announced his resignation as of February 18.  This had the immediate effect of making the house investigation go way and let Andrews plan a soft landing at a regional law firm.

Within 15 minutes of the news breaking (give or take a few minutes)  Steve Sweeney, the president of the New Jersey Senate endorsed State Senator Donald Norcross, brother of George.  Before sundown, all Democratic members of the U.S. House endorsed Don Norcross, both senators, and almost every mayor, assemblyman, and freeholder in the South Jersey region.  The fix was in.  I am not disparaging Don Norcross.  I think he has a decent, but not great record as a State Senator for the four years he has been in office.  Rather I wonder if he was so much better than anyone else who could have run.  Why the instant free ride?  And why did the endorsements fall so quickly, and so obviously planned in advance?

There are two potential answers to those questions.  One is that Don Norcross is so popular and so effective that everyone clamored for him to run as a white night for the Democratic party in District 1. That could very well be.  It could also very well be that no one, up to two incumbent US Senators dared withhold their support.  The truth, as the cliché, goes, will be left as an exercise to the reader.

A word about endorsements from the South jersey wing of the Democratic party– It’s no badge of honor to have those endorsements.  They covered themselves in absolute shame the way they sold Barbara Buono down the road in a quid pro quo to save their seats against the insanely corrupt and malevolent governor we have in Chris Christie.  She had no help at all.  George Norcross ostensibly endorsed her in January 2013 and then did everything he could to make sure her campaign was undermined.  But that’s no shock.  He has a really good “working relationship”  with Christie.  Google is again your friend here.

Regardless, your essayist–an IT professional, part-time artist, and armchair political junkie– said to himself, “Damn it, somebody ought to run against him just on f-ing principle! (Your essayist has a bit of a coarse tongue).  As my spouse listened to me rant (and talk about a shoestring campaign built on making my own website, writing to all the blogs I usually just lurk or comment on,  and trying to reach other disgusted people) she suggested (and I agreed) that I should see if anyone else was planning on running.  There were two people- a grad student who  dropped  out after being discouraged by Norcross’ support, and Frank Minor, mayor of Logan Township in Gloucester county with a population of about 6000 people.  What little I found of Minor in the press had him “considering”.  His strong points were he was apparently considered as Buono’s running mate, and has touted not raising taxes while he’s been mayor.  OK.  I wrote to Frank Minor asking him if he was serious about running– saying I’d rather help someone run, but I needed to do something.   I waited several weeks and never got a response.

That left me in back to my nagging compulsion.  My wife (who was wisely dubious about this plan) asked me to speak with people I trusted and see what they thought.  Them and my Tea Party Dad all said it would be extremely tough and near impossible, but no one said NOT to do it.  My Dad, God bless him, encouraged me strongly.

At this point  we are about 3 and a half weeks out.  So what are the requirements?

Wow, just 200 signatures.  OK, 200 signatures from people registered to vote in your district.  Oh, 200 registered voters in the party whose nomination for whom you wish to contend.  And each gatherer (mainly me) would have to get all the signatures notarized. Not difficult. Or…

So the first things I did were as follows:   I registered a domain name (kudos to my unnamed buddy for suggesting http://robfornj.com ). I opened a new website account (in addition to my art site http://rooktoven.com ). I set up WordPress, and commenced to writing an introduction as to whom I was and what were the central tenets of my campaign.   Then I made the announcement on Facebook and started to think about signatures.

I figured I`d start where I work (the firm has about 60 employees).  This is where I started to realize it isn’t so cut and dried.  I knew not everyone was a Democrat there, but figured a majority were.  Not so fast.  Lots were independents.  All would have signed, but rules are rules.  Some lived in Pennsylvania, some lived out of district.  I asked my kids’ preschool teachers, and sitters, and local friends.  No one who was eligible turned me down.  But that still wasn’t many.

I spent some lunch periods, and some time before dinner  for a few days going to businesses in Collingswood and residences, again, those who were eligible almost always signed, but still I didn’t have a lot of signatures.

Then I got sick.  I had four days of mostly being in bed, after that I worked, but wasn’t feeling in shape (due to crap in the lungs) to walk around a lot.  I lost almost two weeks.

If you have ever seen the Shawshank redemption, you will hear Morgan Freeman’s voice echoing what enabled Aandy Dufresne to escape.  Pressure and Time.  Money can obviate the need for both of those in a campaign, but without money, you better have pressure (or patience) and especially time– at least for laying the groundwork.

A few things about me.  I’m not a solitary person, but my friends tend to be spread out around the country and (given my non-American spouse) the world.  I have friends in Camden County, but not as many as I should.  I also have in addition to my older teenagers from a previous marriage a five year old and an almost four year-old at home and my wife and I both work.  No family around so we don’t go out a lot without the kids.

Nevertheless, I like interacting with people.  At first knocking on doors and talking to people in residences and businesses seemed like cold-calling.  But after a while I felt my groove.  I enjoyed chatting up strangers, and finding out what they liked about my platform, and hearing what they thought.  Those conversations are priceless.  But time.

Last night I went to a local coffee shop in where a couple of my favorite local musicians were playing.  They graciously let me hang out and approach people outside for signatures.  I got around thirty in about three hours (some were from people who thought they were Democrats, but weren’t sure.  OK, I have to get overflow anyway.   But again, the conversations were great.  I talked to a guy who was a Green, who thought the Greens ought to be part of the Democratic party like the Tea party is to Republicans (great idea!).  I spoke to a fellow who was frustrated about Christie vetoing an adoption knowledge bill.  I spoke to (a few) people who were so cynical about anything ever changing that they thought the system was hopeless.  They still signed.  It was one of the most enlightening nights I ever had.  I felt like I got it.  But time.

Today my older son and daughter helped me canvas.  It rained hard, all day.  We hit houses, train stations, and the mall.  Twenty five signatures.  I realistically (to account for what could be challenged) need a hundred more.   It’s going be tough.

I don’t regret doing this, I don’t regret reaching high instead of running for a local position first, as I’m a firm believer in a non-professional Congress.  If I couldn’t be at least as coherent as your typical member of Congress I wouldn’t throw myself out there.  I know I can debate well– both in print and face to face.  I know I can speak well in front of people.  I just wish I had considered the initial part a little more thoroughly.  I’ve got until 2pm on Monday before I need to drive those petitions to Trenton. We’ll see how that goes.

Every rich Republican in the country seems eager to throw millions of dollars at Jeb Bush. In a way, I understand. Jeb is more like his father than his idiot brother. On paper, he looks like an actual presidential candidate, unlike, say, Michele Bachmann, Hermann Cain or Rick Santorum. He might be able to unite the Republican Party in a way that Jon Huntsman simply could not. I have been saying for years that Jeb Bush is about all the GOP has in the way of a viable presidential candidate, and I still believe that.

It’s quite possible that Jeb could win the nomination in pretty much the exact same way that McCain and Romney did…by default. But it won’t be possible for him to unite the Republican base. Not only is a big part of the Republican base aligned against the big-government deficit-spending of Jeb’s father and brother, but they are almost pathologically opposed to immigration reform and they’d rather home school their kids than have them race to the top of a Common Core curriculum.

If Jeb decides to run and winds up in a showdown with Hillary Clinton, he’ll have a shot, but he won’t be successful if he relies on a get-out-the-base strategy. McCain and Romney proved that the GOP base is too small to carry a Republican to victory in a national election. A successful candidate would have to take the far right for granted and accept that there will be some drop-off in enthusiasm, while repositioning the Republican Party in the center. Jeb could do that.

But another thing that I think will hamper him is an unwillingness to publicly criticize his brother. I mean, it’s kind of classy to be respectful and protective of your brother, but it leaves you a sitting duck for bombs launched from both the left and the right.

I’m not sure if Jeb will actually run. He’d have to be convinced he has half a prayer of beating Hillary, and I have no idea why anyone would be very confident about any Republican’s chances against her. And, I think, Jeb would have to be pretty confident that he wouldn’t get humiliated and lose the nomination to Mike Huckabee or something.

Either way, the people with the moneybags are waiting in the wings.

I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that Greg Gutfield wrote a book and people actually reviewed it. The title pretty much says it all: Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You.

It’s not quite Liberal Fascism, but only because it doesn’t take itself quite so seriously.

From politics to the personal, from fashion to food, from the campus to the locker room, the desire to be cool has infected all aspects of our lives. At its most harmless, it is annoying. At its worst, it is deadly, on a massive scale. The Cool are the termites of life, infiltrating every nook and cranny and destroying it from within. The Cool report the news, write the scripts, teach our children, run our government—and each day they pass judgment on those who don’t worship at the altar of their coolness. The cool fawn over terrorists, mock the military, and denigrate employers. They are, in short, awful people.

From what we wear and what we eat, to what we smoke and who we poke, pop culture is crafted and manipulated by the cool and, to Greg Gutfeld, that’s Not Cool.

How do the cool enslave you? By convincing you that:
– If you don’t agree with them no one will like you.
– If you don’t follow them you will miss out on life.
– If you don’t listen to them you will die a lonely loser

How do you vanquish the cool and discover your own true self? Read this book.

In Not Cool, Greg Gutfeld, bestselling author of The Joy Of Hate, lays out the battle plan for reclaiming the real American ideal of cool–building businesses, protecting freedom at home and abroad, taking responsibility for your actions, and leaving other people alone to live as they damn well please. Not Cool fights back against the culture of phonies, elitists, and creeps who want your soul. It’s not a book, it’s a weapon—and one should be armed with it at all times.

This guy thinks pretty much everyone is cool except for Republicans and business executives. And we’re all termites. And hipsters.

I wonder if The Joy of Hate is any better.

There are few things that go on in Congress that are less sexy than the annual ritual of jettisoning the “sustainable growth rate” of Medicare, and I have struggled to find a way to discuss last week’s example in a way that might be of the slightest interest to anyone who isn’t a doctor or a lobbyist.

Commonly known as the “doc-fix,” the ritual became necessary after Congress enacted the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which sought to restrict the growth of Medicare spending by capping how much doctors could be compensated for their services. Ever since, Congress has been unwilling to live with the consequences of their own actions, and they keep applying “patches” that prevent the doctors from taking their statutory haircut. At this point, a gap has opened so wide that without a patch doctors will see a 24% reduction in their compensation on April 1st. If that were to happen, a lot of Medicare recipients would discover that their doctor is no longer willing to treat them.

There was a lot of talk this year about applying a permanent fix, and that is something that newly-minted Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) still seems interested in doing. But, as has become the norm, Speaker Boehner can’t get anything remotely ambitious accomplished in the House. In fact, Speaker Boehner discovered last week that he couldn’t even apply the patch.

Emily Ethridge of CQ Roll Call explained what happened to Mary Agnes Carey of Kaiser Health News:

MARY AGNES CAREY: The “doc fix” bill was originally scheduled for consideration on the suspension calendar in the House. This is usually reserved for non-controversial matters that require two-thirds votes for passage. But at the last minute, this was switched to a voice vote. How did that happen?

EMILY ETHRIDGE: Right, it was very surprising. The bill was brought up, and it was debated, and then Republican leaders and some of the members, including some of the members of Republican Doctors Caucus met off the floor. The House went into recess, and they were meeting off the floor, and staff was meeting, and we were trying to figure out what was going on. And once they emerged from their meeting, about 45 minutes or an hour later, they came back, and all of a sudden the bill was passed by a voice vote. And we heard from a lot of members that they were surprised. They didn’t know that was going to happen, and they thought they were going to take a regular roll call vote on this bill this morning, and it didn’t happen.

I wrote about this spectacle on Thursday right after it occurred, noting that Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, who has been serving in the House since 1955, said that it was the most comical thing he had ever seen.

Speaker Boehner realized that he couldn’t pass the bill under regular order or under a suspension of the rules, so he had Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) gavel in a surprise end to a recess of the House, call a quick voice vote in a largely empty chamber, and ignore the obvious ‘no’ preference of those who were actually there to voice their preference.

According to Emily Ethridge, the cost of this doc-fix is $140 billion over 10 years, which seems like a lot of money to spend without actually consulting the full House. It’s mind-boggling that they would simply ignore that they failed the voice-vote, too, and just declare the bill passed.

Ruth Marcus had an extraordinary way of characterizing what happened.

The capital’s dysfunction has its unfortunate exceptions. Gridlock yields to interests powerful enough to trump habits of obstruction. The result is compromise of a peculiarly distasteful variety — bipartisanship in the form of can-kicking, budgetary obfuscation and unaffordable generosity to those with the best-connected lobbyists.

One such example was on display this week as lawmakers neared agreement on the so-called “doc fix,” the perennial problem created by an overambitious Clinton-era attempt to rein in Medicare spending.

I may be nit-picking a bit because I agree with Ms. Marcus’s distaste for can-kicking and budgetary obfuscation, but this wasn’t bipartisanship in any commonly understood meaning of the term. It was, to be blunt about it, an example of the Republican leadership passing a bill that simply did not and could not pass. The Democratic leadership was fully complicit in the coup (or whatever you want to call it) but “bipartisanship” normally means that members of both parties come together to pass a bill, not to pretend that they passed a bill.

There was plenty of grumbling on the right, with some even comparing Boehner to Vladimir Putin. But, the backlash was muted by the fact that no members had to take a recorded vote in favor of spending the $140 billion.

I expected more of a backlash from the base, but even over at Red State the reaction was fairly calm.

This is part of a disturbing pattern of leadership using over-hyped deadlines as leverage to pass bad legislation. In this case, the doc fix deadline was set at April 1.

Remember, this pattern will not change with Republicans in charge of the Senate, unless we change leadership in both chambers. They have shown that when they are up against a Washington deadline – be it a debt ceiling, budget bill, or any number of program reauthorizations – they will press the panic button and give into Democrat demands.

Red State was already calling for a replacement in the House and Senate leadership. Calling what Boehner did “passing bad legislation” is an acceptance that the bill actually passed in some kind of legitimate way. When President Obama uses an executive order, these folks compare him to Czar Nicholas II, but they basically shrug when Boehner spends $140 billion without the approval of his own chamber.

Which all gets back to the fact that the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party is too divorced from reality, and too strong in Congress, for Congress to operate and for our government to function.

So, the main reaction to Boehner’s gambit is simple relief. He “passed” a bill that needed to be passed, and no Republicans actually are on the record as supporting it.

And this party is likely to pick up seats in November?

What does that say about the people in this country?

When Dick Cheney appeared at American University on March 28th, students protested outside Bender Arena, including the student government’s comptroller, who stated that he had voted against allowing Cheney to appear and had so far refused to sign a check compensating the former vice-president for his appearance. The protesters brought enough attention to the issue that Cheney felt compelled to defend himself against accusations that he is a war criminal.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney refuted accusations that he is a war criminal during his speech to students and members of the AU community in Bender Arena on March 28. The Kennedy Political Union hosted Cheney as part of a stream of speakers coming to campus.

“The accusations are not true,” Cheney said.

During his vice presidency, three people were waterboarded, Cheney said. Waterboarding refers to either pumping a stomach with water or inducing choking by filling a throat with a stream of water, according to a report by NPR.

“Some people called it torture. It wasn’t torture,” Cheney said in an interview with ATV.

Of course, “some people” includes virtually every disinterested observer, including the Republican Party’s 2008 presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who stated back in July 2012 that “[Cheney] and I had strong disagreements as to whether we should torture people or not. I don’t think we should have.”

Perhaps one could argue that America had some kind of mandate to contain Iraq resulting from the Persian Gulf War and, therefore, our decision to invade that country and remove its leadership cannot be judged by the same type of standard we used to condemn Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait or Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea. If you want to try to carve out some of kind of double standard for America arising from our unique capabilities and responsibilities for maintaining the international system, I think we can have that debate. But it’s much harder to even imagine how one might justify our government’s decision to torture people during the Bush-Cheney administration.

This effort to simply call it something other than what it was is never going to fly. And, on that basis, Dick Cheney is unambiguously a criminal violator of human rights. But why do people have such an easy time condemning Cheney, or even Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Rice, and such a hard time condemning George W. Bush?

It seems one of the lasting features of the Bush administration is that people simply don’t think that Bush was calling the shots and, as a result, they are inclined to give him a pass on the decisions he made.

That’s a mistake.

If he and his subordinates were held responsible for what they did, we wouldn’t have to listen to his subordinates mouthing off about how weak the current president is.

You’ll know that the current president is as weak as Bush when students line up to protest former vice-president Joe Biden and completely ignore Obama.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the 1954 Hudson ruin. The photo that I will be using is seen directly below. I will be using my usual acrylics on an 8×10 gallery-wrapped canvas.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time, I have continued to work on the painting.

There are many changes this week.  Most notable is the rust now seen flourishing around the body of the car.  I was careful to follow the pattern seen in the original photo and not go overboard.  It actually took a bit of doing to mix the right color but worked out well.  Next up are the side windows, now lighter in color.  Also along the side, door handles make their first appearance.  Below, the chrome spear now graces the side of the body.

And then there is the ground beneath the car.  I actually had a bit of a crisis about this.  Since it was last seen, the ground has gone through several versons/generations.  None was very good.  I almost abandoned the painting.  While not particularly happy with the current version, it is by far the best of them.  I will leave it, a least for now.  It is simple with only traces of highlighted underbrush.  It serves as a good foil for the much lighter-in-color car.  I’d like to know your opinion on this.  I’ve also started on the growth to the far rear.

 
The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week.  See you then.

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

It took a 14 year old kid to discover that the federal government can save an estimated $136,000,000 annually by simply deciding to print all documents with a Garamond font. The reason? The font uses thin strokes and therefore less ink than other fonts. Since Hewlett-Packard ink costs twice as much per ounce as Chanel No. 5, there is a lot of money to be saved by cutting down, even marginally, on how much ink each character consumes.

So, give it up for Suvir Mirchandani from the Pittsburgh area of Pennsylvania. He’s a smart kid.

I seem to remember Condoleeza Rice being the president’s National Security Advisor on both the day we were attacked on 9/11 and the day we invaded a country that had nothing to do with those attacks. This means, surely, that she should shut her pie hole.

Florida Governor Rick Scott and his Secretary of State, Ken Dentzer, really don’t like it that minorities can vote in their state. They’re also incompetent.

In late 2011, Scott ordered a statewide purge of all “non-citizens” from the voter files. Despite questions about the accuracy of the purge list, Dentzer ordered local elections supervisors to mail letters to thousands in 2012, informing them that they appeared to be ineligible to vote. Hundreds of these letters went to U.S. citizens who were indeed legitimate voters, including a 91-year-old WWII veteran. After seeing the high error rates, even in a pared down list of “sure-fire” non-citizens, election officials of both parties spoke out and called a halt to the efforts. The U.S. Department of Justice also demanded an end to the purge, deeming it illegal under the Voting Rights Act.

Dentzer pared down the initial list to just 198 names of people he deemed non-citizen voters. Even that turned up almost no non-citizens who had actually ever voted — just 39 of the state’s 11 million-plus registered voters. And even that small list included some documented U.S. citizens. Still, Dentzer called the purge effort his “passion” and “moral duty.”

Despite this pathetic record of failure and the nakedness of their effort to purge Democratic voters off the voting rolls, they just kept going.

Once again, Ken Dentzer, Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) handpicked Secretary of State, has unsuccessfully attempted to mount a massive purge of Florida’s voter rolls. And once again, he has been forced to abandon this effort due to his lack of an accurate list of who is and is not eligible to vote.

In a memo, Dentzer told the state’s local election supervisors that the purge would be postponed until 2015. He plans to utilize a new federal database which he believes will be up and running by then and will provide more accurate data on who is and is not a U.S. citizen.

Until the Republicans began hyping non-existent in-person voter fraud, I never thought that the American people would tolerate such an affront to our democracy. If you’d asked me, I’d have predicted that people were so committed to the sanctity of the right to vote that they’d rise up and hang anyone who tried to purge the voting rolls of people who are completely entitled to vote.

It turns out, Republican voters are mostly fine with these tactics, and most every one else doesn’t give a shit either way.

Except, black folks. They happened to notice that these purges were aimed entirely at people of color, and they voted at a higher rate than whites in the last election.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals covers Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and it’s probably the most conservative Appeals Court in the country. Ten of its fourteen active judges and six of its nine senior status judges were appointed by Republican presidents. The court is a window into what the Supreme Court might be like if Justice Kennedy (or any of the four liberals) were to be replaced by a true movement conservative. We’d get reasoning like this:

A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld Texas’ tough abortion restrictions that have forced the closure of about 20 clinics around the state, saying the new rules don’t jeopardize women’s health.

A panel of judges at the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court judge who said the rules violate the U.S. Constitution and serve no medical purpose. After the lower court’s ruling, the appeals court had allowed the restrictions to go into effect while it considered the case, which could ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The new law requires abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and places strict limits on doctors prescribing abortion-inducing pills. More regulations that are scheduled to begin later this year weren’t part of the case.

In its opinion, the appeals court said the law “on its face does not impose an undue burden on the life and health of a woman.”

It’s already forced the closure of approximately 20 abortion-providing facilities, but it doesn’t impose an undue burden on the “life and health of a woman”? Why not?

At least 19 clinics have shut down since the new law was approved and the 5th Circuit allowed the provisions on hospital-admitting privileges and abortion-inducing pills to take effect, leaving around 24 still open to serve a population of 26 million Texans. More closures could happen after the additional restrictions are in place.

In reversing the lower court’s decision, the appeals panel said Thursday that the district court opinion erred in concluding the law “imposed an undue burden in a large fraction of the cases.”

“The evidence presented to the district court demonstrates that if the admitting-privileges regulation burdens abortion access by diminishing the number of doctors who will perform abortions and requiring women to travel farther, the burden does not fall on the vast majority of Texas women seeking abortions,” the appeals court found.

So, a law that serves no medical purpose and places an undue burden on a significant minority of women is okay because it doesn’t effect a majority of them?

Basically, the movement conservatives will start with the result they want and work backwards from there to rationalize their decision. The law doesn’t matter. Precedent doesn’t matter. Public health doesn’t matter. Common sense doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that they restrict access to legal and safe abortions. So, that’s what this court did (pdf).

The three judges were Edith Jones (Reagan- Houston), Jennifer Elrod (Dubya- Houston), and Catharina Haynes (Dubya- Dallas).

It will be up to Justice Kennedy to decide whether their decision holds up. Will Kennedy try to turn the whole country into Texas and make us live according to their conservative values? Or will he tell Texas that they have to live by our values, which happen to be consistent with the law as it has existed for over 40 years?