Author: Marie2

couldn’t discern exactly what lies were being told.  However, it was difficult not to sense that there were at least a few big ones.  Yet, the potential biggest one of all — “We came, we saw, he died” — appears to be true.

A Sy Hersh tour de force: The Killing of Osama bin Laden.  He connects all the dots and explains why all the seeming anomalies and inconsistencies didn’t add up.  It was because they were lies and fabrications.

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.
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There’s plenty to discuss from Hersh’s article, but it’s best first to read the whole thing.

What it doesn’t address was who had custody and where of bin Laden before 2006 in Abbottabad.  Why six months after 9/11 and a year before the invasion of Iraq, Bush (likely off-script) was confident enough to speak like this of OBL:

Another question I have is what was the KSA response to the assassination?  Any unintended blowback from that quarter?

With Wildstein claiming in his plea that the GW Bridge stunt was all because Mayor Sokolich didn’t endorse Christie for re-election, it occurred to me to take a closer look at how the endorsements for Christie and Buono played out in real time.

As reported in May:

Democratic elected officials who are Christie backers, including Burlington City Mayor Jim Fazzone, Manville Mayor Angelo Corradino, Chesilhurst Mayor Michael Blunt, Harrison Mayor Ray McDonough, Sea Bright Mayor Dina Long and all eight members of the Harrison City Council.

Buono received the endorsements from multiple liberal groups and scored the Republican Spotswood Mayor’s endorsement.

June was a very good month for Christe endorsements:

Democratic elected officials who are Christie backers, including Burlington City Mayor Jim Fazzone, Manville Mayor Angelo Corradino, Chesilhurst Mayor Michael Blunt, Harrison Mayor Ray McDonough, Sea Bright Mayor Dina Long and all eight members of the Harrison City Council.

From July through September, there were but two Democratic Mayors that had yet to endorse that made any public comments.

The first was Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop.  He’d been elected on May 14th and sworn into office on July 1st.  On August 1, Fulop penned/published Endorsements Hardly Matter.  (Obama’s endorsement of Jersey City incumbent Mayor Healy didn’t help him.)  Then, HuffPo, August 9 Fulop undecided as to endorsing either Christie or Buono.

The second was Hoboken Mayor, Dawn Zimmer.  August 20th NJ Com report

“I don’t expect to be endorsing,” Zimmer said, according to Portnoy.

In response, the Hoboken mayor wrote that Christie has “done a great job for NJ & Hoboken.” She then noted that she has her own re-election fight on Nov. 5.
Later, Zimmer wrote on Twitter that she’s “very glad” Christie is governor.

October 10, NJ.com: Jersey City Mayor Kinda Sorta in For Buono

Just don’t expect to hear Fulop say Buono’s name.

“I’m a lifelong Democrat and when I get in the booth, I’m going to vote Democrat and that means the whole Democratic ticket,” Fulop, 36, told The Jersey Journal yesterday.

There seems not to have been any published reports about Mayor Sokolich either not endorsing either candidate or endorsing Buono.  Not until months later when Sokolich was interviewed about the GW Bridge stunt did the question of his endorsement get media attention.  As Bob Somersby noted in February 2015, Sokolich Pretty Much Changes His Story.  His recall as to if or when he’d been asked to endorse Christie was fuzzy, but he didn’t deviate from saying that he didn’t publicly state that he wouldn’t endorse Christie nor that he had publicly endorsed Buono.

It is to be recalled that when the GW Bridge began blowing up, that Fulop and Zimmer went public with their Christie issues.  1/14/14 NY Daily News report

“Within the past hour, I have received phone calls … all of which cancelled the meetings on the 23rd,” wrote Fulop’s secretary, Nancy Warlikowski, to the mayor. [Mayor’s July documentation]

Fulop, who in separate conversations had told Christie’s staff that day he was endorsing Buono, began to suspect payback when he couldn’t even get his calls returned.

Note: Jersey City population: 257,342; Hoboken population: 52,572; Fort Lee population: 35,014.

Now note the timeline:

July 1 – Fulop takes office.  Meetings with Christie staff scheduled.
July X – Fulop alleges that he informed Christie staff that he would endorse Buono
July Y –  July 23 – Christie staff canceled those meetings.
August 1 – Fulop Op-Ed; “Endorsements don’t matter”
August 9 – Fulop declines to endorse Christie or Buono.
August 20 – Zimmer declines to endorse Christie or Buono, but adds that Christie is great.

Sure looks as team Christie had been leaning on Fulop and Zimmer for endorsements.  But once those two declined to endorse either candidate, they left them alone and engaged in major retribution against the mayor of the smallest of the three cities who also appears not to have endorsed either candidate.  Retribution that not even Mayor Sokolich was able to understand in real time.  Nor did Fulop or Zimmer, neither of whom endorsed Christie before the election.  Even if team Christie had tunnel vision to get a landslide win, why such a huge effort to attack Sokolich?

Now check this out from the Boroni and Kelly indictments

[Page 7]  #9 …between March 2011 and August 2013 Wildstein had separate discussions with Boroni and Kelly about how they could use the Local Access lanes as leverage against Mayor Sokolich. [emphasis added]

Would Sokolich’s endorsement of Christie’s re-election in 2013 have been of concern in March 2011?  Sounds ridiculous.  Was there anything that could have been of issue to team Christie in March 2011?  Possibly:

 In January 2011, Ft. Lee lost its effort to have the [Tucker] suit dismissed.  Ft. Lee and Tucker settled the dispute that June.  FRLA [developer] would develop The Modern on the eastern parcel and Tucker would develop Hudson Lights on the westen parcel.  The original decision by the [Ft Lee] Planning Board to approve the FRLA plan [for the whole site] had delayed the project by over a year and cost money to litigate.  Wisely IMHO, Sokolich and/or the Board chose to settle and move forward after losing the first round in the suit.
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FRLA got its remaining ducks in a row and broke ground in October 2012.  Tucker, for whatever reason, was slower to act.  Exactly when Kushner Real Estate Group (NJ) and Ares Management came on board as partners is unclear, but it may not have been until sometime in 2012.  The financing had been projected to be in place by May 2013 but that was delayed.  By August, word was that Tucker/Kushner/Ares was near completion on the financing and it was reported on September 17, 2013 (seven days after the reduction of the Ft. Lee toll booths from three to one) that the funding had been finalized.
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From labor through birth to runway ready within sixteen hours.  Fit for a Duchess.

A major difference in US prenatal-birth-postnatal health care and that offered by the NHS in the UK is the role of professional midwifes.  Through the entire process, NHS midwifes are integral participants.  For uncomplicated, vaginal deliveries, services from an obstetrician/gynecologist are limited to none.  And the NHS midwife’s duties continue after the birth and release from the hospital/clinic.

While what the NHS spends on maternity/delivery/follow-up care may be a difficult number to obtain, the alternative private care cost is defined.  As reported by The Guardian  

The duchess, who received a 10% discount on the £6,000-plus fees at the Lindo wing as this was her second birth there, was looked after by consultant obstetrician Guy Thorpe-Beeston, surgeon-gynaecologist to the royal household, assisted by Alan Farthing, the Queen’s surgeon-gynaecologist.

Apparently, it was midwives Arona Ahmed and her boss, Jacqui Dunkley-Bent, Professor of midwifery at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, who together delivered the Princess. …while the team of suited male surgeons, led by Mr Guy Thorpe-Beeston, Surgeon Gynaecologist to the Royal Household, looked on.  Okay, a degree of elite privilege for the Duchess, but the actual delivery and post-birth care is the NHS standard of care.  Healthy new mothers and babies go home a few hours after the birth.

The US NIH does recommend the NHS model of care for births.  However, most US births follow the hospital/doctor model and on an aggregate basis midwifery is a minor component.  Since close to half of US births are covered by Medicaid and with the expansion of Medicaid and introduction of ACA subsidized health insurance policies (and not even factoring military and Tricare covered births), a minority of US births will be paid for by the private sector and individuals.  That’s fine (a 100% would be fine by me), but dare we ask if those public dollars are being spent wisely: maximizing the health and well-being of mothers and infants and minimizing the cost?

Medscape: The Cost of Having Baby isn’t insignificant.

Medicaid payments for all maternal and newborn care involving vaginal … childbirths were $9,131 …

That’s Medicaid.  More than the private care cost of the new UK princess.  

The aggregate US C-Section rate is 32.7% and not noticeably different for Medicaid covered births.  It’s lower, but still high, in England at 26.2%.  This suggests that midwifery managed maternal care is helpful in limiting the c-section rate, it doesn’t explain why the rate has increased so quickly in the UK and why it’s now significantly higher than it is in Nordic countries where it’s below 20% (only 6.6% in Finland and Norway, both also with low infant and maternal mortality rates).  There are numerous health related reasons why high c-section rates are problematical, but along with aggregate poorer health outcomes, they cost more.  (There’s no big mystery as to why c-section rate are high in the US and UK and low in countries like Norway and Finland.  But we don’t like to talk about what that is.)

While IMHO, dispensing with monarchies and royal families would be beneficial, they aren’t going away anytime soon and in the interim some can be helpful because commoners have long attempted to emulate “royal” standards and practices.  To their detriment for centuries on the matter of maternal and infant practices.  From Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine to Queen Mary of Teck, breastfeeding just wasn’t done.  The “Queen Mum” brought changed that.  The Duchess has followed the lead of her husband’s mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother in breastfeeding and birth delivery health care.  The difference is that the royal family has been a bit more open with the public as to the Duchess’s choices and she’s made public appearances within hours of the births.  The latter to much acclaim and envy.  

But how Kate did it is within the ability of most women.  (Okay, not the $4,000 silk Jenny Packham going-home-from-the-hospital dress.)  So, why aren’t more doing it?  Would public dollars be better spent helping them to do so and leave hospital/birthing centers within a few hours and looking great?

Healthy, including healthy weight, and fit pregnant women would be beneficial to them, their babies, and aggregate US measures of health.  Midwifes and birth centers are preferable to doctors and hospitals for uncomplicated births and cost much less (and midwifes are on the front line of initiating breastfeeding).   Vaginal deliveries are preferable to c-sections (see Michael Pollan on bacteria) and cost less ($4,459 less for Medicaid).  A post-delivery two-night stay in a hospital instead of twenty-four hours or less, doubles the number of maternity rooms a hospitable has to operate, and easily doubles the number of family and friends showing up to see the mother and baby and increasing the microbial and bacterial count in a hospital.  

What’s wrong with spending a few hundred dollars (including a pretty new going-home-from-the-hospital dress) to pamper responsible new mothers?  Oh, I know.  Rightwingers couldn’t possibly handle seeing public dollars spent on nice things for poor women.  Doesn’t matter if those “nice things” are an effective incentive for women to manage their pregnancies and deliveries more responsibly.  Or that those incentives save all consumers money and cost fewer public dollars than the no nice things alternative. Just as they’d rather bitch endlessly about all the children poor women have and also blocka successful program that reduces the number of poor children having babies.

Sadly, “Do it like Kate and not Kim” will only work with a small sector of the public and most of them are probably already “doing it like Kate.”  A hospital birth (and even c-sections) and a couple of days of post-birth hospitalization offers more pampering and status than Medicaid beneficiaries experience in their day-to-day lives.  If anything, they’d like another day or two in the hospital.  So, they’re aren’t going to be clamoring for midwifes, birthing centers, and ten hour post delivery care.

The US dysfunctional, disjointed, and very expensive health care quasi-system will lumber along.  

I don’t for a moment buy that Wildstein is so stupid and politically naïve that he would engage in a political payback stunt with such serious ramifications for the general public.  (TPM report)  Sokolich’s refusal to endorse Christie for reelection was close to irrelevant.  Closing bridge access lanes could be predicted to create a traffic nightmare.  However, not so predictable that a) it would land on Sokolich’s door and b) Sokolich would connect it to his non-endorsement of Christie.

The evidence that Wildstein had been a participant in a conspiracy is solid.   It was post-toll lanes closing’s speculation that the intended target could have been Sokolich that provided Wildstein with his  least damaging explanation.  Allows him to maintain that he wasn’t much more than a flunky taking orders from Bridget Kelly and Bill Boroni.  Flunkies, after all, aren’t in a position to object to stupid stuff their superiors order them to do.  Better to be a dumb flunky engaged in a relatively petty and local plot than expose anything pointing to far more extensive corruption in the Christie administration.

Recall from WNYC

August 13, 2013
At 7:34 a.m., Bridget Anne Kelly emails David Wildstein: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

August 13, 2013
David Wildstein replies “Got it” to Bridget Anne Kelly at 7:35 a.m.

No other way to read that than that Kelly was giving Wildstein the go ahead for the previously planned GW Bridge toll lane closings.  (Operation began on September 9, 2013)  Formally, Kelly was not in the chain of command for Wildstein and Boroni.  She worked for the Christie administration, and Wildstein and Baroni worked for the NY/NJ Port Authority and Baroni was in the more senior position.  All were political appointees, but none were officials on Christie’s re-election team.

Fishman may have accepted the plea because it was good enough to indict Kelly and Boroni who aren’t talking at all.  Wildstein is scheduled for sentencing in August.  Unless Wildstein draws a heavy sentence and fine instead of a slap on the wrist, doubt Kelly and Baroni’s indictments will change their legal strategies.  Not likely they’ll be treated as harshly as the cheating Atlanta teachers.  

(Not going to shed a tear for Kelly.  She was imagining a high level position for herself in a President Christie’s administration and wouldn’t have shed a tear for any kids that got in the way of bombs Christie ordered to be dropped on his enemies.)

Unless Fishman has some big rabbits left to pull out of his hat, Wildstein’s plea and Kelly and Boroni’s indictments signal and end to this investigation.  As unimpressive as Patrick Fitzgerald’s indictment of Scooter Libby.  If Marilyn Mosby operated at this level of competence and diligence, it would be a year before the six Baltimore police officers were charged with misdemeanors.

The Guardian report on Adelson’s testimony in a civil suit is most illuminating and fascinating.  Combative Adelson rails against ‘greedy bosses’ in entertaining court testimony

It’s possible that the man has developed dementia.  It’s also possible that he’s always been this much of a loon.  Not word salad a la Palin, but conceptual chopped salad that fails as a whole and the separate bits aren’t tasty either.  Easy to overlook that smarts and rationality aren’t necessary personal qualities for success in business and politics.

Can imagine Adelson’s attorneys cringing during his time on the witness stand.  

No one has ever described Sheldon Adelson as a man happy with the world. Happy billionaires do not spend tens of millions of dollars trying to get Newt Gingrich elected president.

To that we can add that unhappy but sane billionaires would not spend tens of millions of dollars trying to get Newt Gingrich elected president.

Read the whole article to appreciate how pathetic this man is.  Only less pathetic than the money grubbers that have been paying homage to him.

 

Back at the dawn of the gay liberation movement in the 1960s, same-sex marriage wasn’t an issue that confronted straight people.  Nor would it have occurred to other than a handful of deep thinking straight people, that denial of marriage rights to gays and lesbians was discriminatory.  To be fair to we slow-thinking clods, marriage in general was being questioned by younger people during those years.  It was the existing financial and legal ramifications and the social and religious conventions of marriage over co-habitation (none of which were going to change anytime soon) that led many of the doubters to wed.

When later the LBGT community raised the issue of domestic partner public employee health benefits and soon thereafter, domestic partner registry, how could denial of this be anything but discriminatory?  Before such rights could spread outside San Francisco (Dianne Feinstein vetoed the first SF measure and thus revealed that she’s okay with discrimination) Berkeley, West Hollywood, Santa Cruz and a few other small communities, same-sex weddings began to happen.  They were called “Holy Unions.”  Not legal marriages but a celebration of a relationship commitment and often with an ordained minister as the officiant.

Slowly, those with a weaker but not absent equality principle and major educational efforts by the LBGT community, began to acknowledge that marriage laws did discriminate against same-sex couples.  So, like liberals tend always to do, they split the baby.  Domestic partnership law, okay.  Marriage, no.  As if Plessy v. Ferguson remained the law of the land.  That separate could be equal.

Yet, in 1996, Congress passed and Clinton supported and signed legislation that enshrined LGBT inequality.  A hundred years earlier would those people would have approved Jim Crow laws?  A mere fourteen Senators recognized that POS for what it was and declined to endorse it.  Only four of those fourteen remain with us and in federal office today: Senators Boxer, Feinstein, and Wyden and SOS Kerry.  Eleven of the eighty-four discrimination endorsers remain in the Senate and one occupies the VP office.  Liberals will forgive or overlook this lack of good judgment by certain Democrats because today they claim to have “evolved” in their thinking.  They’re either just really slow at applying the principles of equality and non-discrimination to an issue that they hadn’t learned from history, are spineless or poll driven politicians, or have no guiding principles.  Whatever the excuse, they can’t be defined as leaders.  

(In 2003, the most prevalent reason given by commentators on liberal blogs as to why Howard Dean was unacceptable is that he had signed Vermont’s domestic partnership law.)

An understandable response on the left to the recent RFRA state laws and bakeries and pizza parlors that define their freedom as the ability to discriminate against LBGT customers is to be like them and refuse to do business with homophobes.  Understandable but not principled.  The owners of Enchanting Creations in Miami Shores, FL demonstrate how to be principled and not like the haters.

In recent weeks Enchanting Creations has received a series of inquiries seeming to have stemmed from recent events in Indiana and Oregon, all of which begging the same basic question: Will you make us an Anti-gay Cake?

Unfortunately, we haven’t been the only targets; the idea of “setting a trap” for small bakeries to catch them in the act of discrimination has become increasingly more common, and we feel it’s time to clarify our stance on this issue.
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We believe that no one should ever be refused service – opposing discrimination by practicing it is not the answer.

They have a better answer.                        

WaPo: New brain science shows poor kids have smaller brains than affluent kids

Neuroscientists who studied the brain scans of nearly 1,100 children and young adults nationwide from ages 3 to 20 found that the surface area of the cerebral cortex was linked to family income. They discovered that the brains of children in families that earned less than $25,000 a year had surface areas 6 percent smaller than those whose families earned $150,000 or more. The poor children also scored lower on average on a battery of cognitive tests.

So, a 6% larger brain is accounts for that 600% income?  Sort of like the tiny appendage that once conferred higher brain power and income on men.

But of course:

The region of the brain in question handles language, memory, spatial skills and reasoning, all important to success in school and beyond.

It’s larger in the areas of the brain that are most critical to what standardized tests measures.

This latest scientific study wouldn’t be complete without letting Charles Murray weigh in:

“It is confidently known that brain size is correlated with IQ, IQ measured in childhood is correlated with income as an adult, and parental IQ is correlated with children’s IQ,” Murray wrote in an e-mail. “I would be astonished if children’s brain size were NOT correlated with parental income. How could it be otherwise?”

No,  Mr. Murray it’s not known that brain size is correlated with IQ.  Adequately debunked decades ago by the brilliant, evolutionary biologist, paleontologist, and historian of science, Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure of Man  But nothing to stop you and your racist/classist colleagues from squandering another hundred years to prove your hypothesis.  [If cosmological science moved at the glacial pace of “conservative” social scientists, earth would still be the center of the universe.]

We know at least 80% of the reasons why poor kids don’t thrive as well in academic settings as their more economically advantaged peers.  Basically, it’s because their poor.  Conceived, born, and reared disadvantaged.  Inadequate maternal, infant, and child nutrition.  An environment short on stimulation, both physical and cognitive for urban kids.  Parents that don’t read books themselves or to their children.  (Poor and rich alike are welcome at libraries.)  Higher economic and social stresses on the family.

But we’ll continue not to do anything truly effective about any of that in favor of studies to rationalize why wealthy people spawn superior children.  Even when their children are obviously, cognitively nothing but average.  We even elect those average folks from wealthy families POTUS.

Hunter has the scoop.

Sen. Rand Paul is running for president. It’s not clear why he’s running for president, other than finding a new use for his dad’s old mailing list, and it’s not clear what political expertise Rand Paul brings to the table that could not be matched or exceeded by a worn copy of Atlas Shrugged tied to a rhododendron.

Team Rand Paul also has merchandising website up and running.  The standard yard signs, placards (Rand on a stick), t-shirts, and baseball caps.  The eyechart is unique.  “Unique” is also the claim for the Ladies Liberty Burnout Tee, but it’s feminine cut and fashion-forward style is at best a dubious claim.  It does, however, offer a clue as to the Rand Paul logo –a big red blob ragged in the top and right hand side — that had me stumped.

Is it a flame drawn by a five year old?  Business Insider reports that it’s supposed to be a torch.  What a flame or torch is supposed to symbolize for Rand’s campaign is a bit of a flicker.  Design experts have essentially said that it sucks.

[Richard Westendorf] “This looks as if it was dashed off in PowerPoint by a staffer. …

[Milton Glaser] “Are we talking about Rand the candidate or Rand the corporation? Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing because the generic torch applies equally to either entity,”

“While graphic designers will appreciate the fact that the interval between the ‘A’ and the ‘N’ forms the base of a torch, the average viewer will not make the connection, and the dash and flame sit above the word almost as though it was an accent mark. In short; no uniqueness, no memorability, no real purpose,” he said.

IOW a dud that’s not going to increase sales of Rand Paul’s memorabilia because it’s not visually appealing.  Plus, it lacks meaning without a decoder wand and that product isn’t yet available.      

The Iowa caucuses and NH presidential primary.

Childhood memories are always a bit fuzzy, and kids tend not to interpret news all that well.  So, maybe my recollection of a time when the first-in-the-nation, NH presidential primary was considered a joke, or at best irrelevant, is incorrect.  It seemed to be accepted as a ritual of no importance that happened every four years.  Suddenly in 1968, that primary was accorded a measure of respect because the results in the Democratic Party were deemed shocking.  A sitting Democratic President won by only seven points!

Politically, 1968 was one of the more historically relevant election years.  To appreciate some of why that was a quick look back at presidential primaries and the NH quadrennial ritual.

A major goal of the progressives in 1911 was a push for primaries. By July 12th, at least six states had passed legislation for delegates to the national convention to be chosen in primaries: North Dakota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oregon, New Jersey, and Florida.

There were thirteen Republican Party direct primaries in 2012 (NH wasn’t one of the thirteen), and it must have been wild with Roosevelt, Taft, and La Follette all in contention.  Wilson won the nomination on the 46th ballot at the DNC convention that year.

There were seventeen presidential primaries in 1916 with NH and Minnesota being first on March 14th.  The next time a presidential primary was held in Minnesota was in 1952; thus was born the tradition of NH  as first.  Unchallenged for the first thirty years because electors and not candidates appeared on the NH ballot until 1952 or perhaps inertia is the explanation.  The second Tuesday in March for the NH primary remained the first-in-the-nation until 1996.

…the 1996 [NH] Legislature tightened the law once more by providing the primary would be held “on the Tuesday at least seven days immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election, whichever is earlier.” In 1996, because some other states had moved their primaries up to February 27, New Hampshire’s Secretary of State set the date of February 20 for the election.

By then the NH primary was not only first but had come to play an outsized role in the nominating process.  The reason for that had less to do with the shocking 1968 Democratic Party primary results and more to do with progressive changes in the Democratic Party that were promulgated by the 1968 presidential election.

WaPo on the Iowa caucus

So how did it get the enormous gift of kicking off the presidential primary process year after year after year?

David Redlawsk: By accident, is the answer. It’s sort of a funny story. In 1972, the revised Democratic rules coming out of the 1968 debacle required that notice be given of caucuses and primaries that would select party delegates. Prior to that, party bosses could schedule primaries without telling anyone. But the new rules required a 30-day requirement. Iowa’s system has four parts — the caucus, then the county convention, then the congressional district conventions, then the state conventions — so, to give a 30-day notice for all of them, Iowa had to start advertising early.

The second part, the state convention, is normally held in June. In 1972, they looked and found there were no available hotel rooms in Des Moines on the planned weekend. So they pushed the convention back. And that meant they had to push the caucuses back. And that’s how they ended up in January, in front of New Hampshire. It was not a plan, and in 1972, it made no difference. Edmund Muskie spent about a day there. But in 1976, Jimmy Carter’s campaign noticed Iowa was first and decided to invest some time. He ultimately came in second to uncommitted, but his win got him attention, and ultimately helped him get to the White House.

In the 1988 and 1992 elections for the Democratic Party nomination, it was NH and not Iowa that became important.  Hence the 1996 move by the NH legislation.  By then both of these small states had also seen the amount of money and national attention that flowed into their states by virtue of being “first-in-the-nation.”  Claims were made that IA is an accurate microcosm of the nation and therefore,  is perfect for being “first-in-the-nation.”  But just in case anyone got the idea that that may not be true:

EK: And how has Iowa retained it? You would think that some other state, desirous of the same power Iowa has, would just leapfrog it.
DR: Iowa’s two parties realized very early on that this was advantageous, so they agreed to hold their caucuses on the same day. And then they wrote into Iowa law that the caucuses must be the first event.

Little tails wagging big dogs and the big dogs don’t mind this at all.  Progressivism and democratic principles be damned.

Maybe it’s time for progressives to accept that “fix it and forget it” can’t work here.  Power and wealth will always find a way to get back as close to the old status quo as possible.

and the regressive becomes set in concrete.

Power and money is what gives rise to progressive actions by “the people” and power and money is what destroys the progressive intent and flips it..

A California example – the direct democracy initiative process:  A hundred and ten years ago in California:

The entire state government had for decades been under the control of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Bribery was the accepted method of doing business in the state capitol.

That was the degree of power that inspires today’s version of oligarchs.

Realizing the hopelessness of dealing with the current officeholders, Haynes and other reformers began a campaign to get rid of them and remake state government from top to bottom. In May of 1907, they founded the Lincoln-Roosevelt League of Republican Clubs, and elected several of their candidates to the state legislature.

That was Step One.  Elect a few “better officeholders.”  (Generally about the limits of liberal/ progressive thoughts and actions for the past thirty or so years.)

Step Two.  Need more “better officeholders.”

Once elected, these legislators worked for a bill to require the nomination of party candidates through primary election rather than the backroom deals of state party conventions.

That was in 1910.  When US Senators were still selected in “backroom deals.”  More than half a century before Presidential nominees stopped being selected in smoke-filled backrooms.

Step Three:  Taking back the legislature

The bill passed, and the League’s 1910 gubernatorial candidate, Hiram Johnson, ran in the state’s first primary election. Johnson won the primary and the general election and swept dozens of other reformers into the legislature on his political coattails.

Step Four:  Doing what they were elected to do  (Or what’s the point in getting power if not to use it?)

Johnson and the new Progressive majority in the legislature made the most sweeping governmental changes ever seen in the history of California. Among these were the introduction of initiative, referendum, and recall at both the state and local levels. Voters ratified these amendments in a special election on October 10, 1911.

In 1912, there were five titled initiatives and four qualified for the ballot.  The one that failed to qualify was to abolish the death penalty.

In 1914, there were 21 titled initiatives and 12 qualified for the ballot.  One of the qualifiers was Proposition 44: Minimum wage (page 29) –

Authorizes the legislature to provide for establishment of  a minimum wage for woman and minors, and for comfort, health, safety, and general welfare of any and all employees;  …

In the argument for passage, it was noted that wages for girls and women at that time were better in California than in older industrial states and that 60% earned $9/week or more.  The funding and support for and against would be familiar to us today even if the arguments on both sides were slightly different.  For example, the advocates cited an expected wave of new cheap labor to flood the state when the Panama Canal opened and therefore, existing CA workers needed wage protections.

It failed.  And the beat goes on.

Forty years on and the forces for ill didn’t quite have their act together:

One of the highest stakes initiative campaigns in terms of campaign spending was in 1956, over a struggle over changes in the state regulation and taxation of oil and gas production. Proposition 4 that year was sponsored by a group of oil companies that sought to make their business more profitable, and opposed by another group of oil firms that preferred the existing system. Campaign funds spent by both sides totaled over $5 million. Proposition 4 lost: California voters, inundated with conflicting claims about a complex measure, took the cautious route and voted “no.”

Two years later:

Almost as expensive was the gargantuan 1958 labor-capital conflict over a “Right to Work” (open shop) initiative sponsored by employers. This battle ended in a double defeat for employers: not only did voters decisively reject the initiative, but the opposition campaign mobilized Democrats and union members to vote in droves, resulting in the election of Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr., the first Democrat to occupy that office in 16 years.

Imagine that.  California voters way back in 1958 were smarter and savvier than Wisconsin voters in 2014.  Maybe folks in Wisconsin are wearing too much cheese on their heads.

Alas, those smarts didn’t last.  Along came Proposition 14 (1964):

Neither the State nor any subdivision or agency thereof shall deny, limit or abridge, directly or indirectly, the right of any person, who is willing or desires to sell, lease or rent any part or all of his real property, to decline to sell, lease or rent such property to such person or persons as he, in his absolute discretion, chooses.

(Sound familiar?  Proposition 8 (2010) and IN RFRA (2015)?  Fortunately, the CA Supreme Court and SCOTUS ruled Prop 14 (1964) as unconstitutional.  But why do we have to spend so much time on this shit again and again?)

Corporations and the big money folks finally got their act together with Proposition 13 (1978.  Democrats/liberals/progressives then wandered in the wilderness for the better part of the next thirty years.  And so far don’t seem to get that thing about taking full advantage of power when you get it.  If nothing else, that’s one lesson that Republicans fully absorbed a hundred years ago.

The CA initiative process, as it currently exists, (authorized killing of gays makes the IN RFRA look like weak tea) and Proposition 13 (1978) must die.  Right along with Charlie’s Pierce’s observation that The Iowa Caucus Must Die.  (more on that in II)