The New York Times broke a big story today with their front-page article on how Republican Attorneys General have sold themselves out to the energy industry. This seems to be just one more prong in a larger strategy that we’ve already seen play out with Republican legislators introducing and passing legislation authored by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
With every passing day, the country seems to be going backwards towards the days of the Wild West. It feels like we’re living in an episode of Deadwood.
Well Kroger is cool with open carry in Arlington TX.
Well all of those DC Democratic consultant arguments about only being present in the winnable districts has come home to roost.
And all of the scandals of Democratic Blue Dog elected officials selling out government have as well. It is now accepted practice. Gov. Mike Easley of NC had the misfortune to be ahead of the curve when he sold out to gambling (er, gaming) interests in setting up the NC State Lottery. (Hey ending lotteries and going back to taxes might be a good movement to get some preachers hot about.) He got convicted. And so did Gov. Bev Perdue’s aide. They never got the goods on Bev though. But now it’s effectively legal.
No saloons on Main Street yet. No open prostitution in the upstairs over the saloon. No checking the guns at the sheriff’s office. No reported claim-jumping yet. And executive authority has the power to constrain the frenzy without resort to Congress through a variety of administrative mechanisms, which if taken, would burst the energy bubble.
If you look at the way that mineral rights laws have been drafted by ALEC, such a the NC one, they are loose enough to provide the guy who buys mineral rights for cents on the dollar to take the entire property just by destroying the ground surface–whether there are economically valuable minerals there or not.
My concern is that there are more animals besides ALEC in the conservative zoo and that we need to get an understanding of the institutions and their relationships that are channeling large amounts of money into political campaigns for all sorts of offices. ALEC-related funding has already gone into a local school board race. Here it is going into Attorney General races. Real estate and developer money has already hobbled most local governments from financing infrastructure or raising taxes.
And the remaining Democratic-controlled legislatures are like sitting ducks waiting for ALEC to consolidate its gains elsewhere and then come against them. Democratic obliviousness to the opposition is epidemic.
And the remaining Democratic-controlled legislatures are like sitting ducks waiting for ALEC to consolidate its gains elsewhere and then come against them.
Which ones? Rhode Island is a complete mess. Basically the rich have made a hash out of supposed Democratic states too, like NY. I mean just look at Governor Cuomo. Same corruption, just benefiting different groups.
Just intuitively from a 2013 list in order of vulnerability:
Rhode Island
New York
Illinois
Maryland
Massachusetts
Nevada
New Jersey
New Mexico
West Virginia
Washington
California
I think thats all of the two-house ones, but this 2013 data so one or more of these might have fallen already.
In short all Democratic legislators are under the microscope to take them down with the right story. Wouldn’t put it past the Koch operation to tar a Democrat with attending the ALEC meeting in order to put in a Republican. Legislators can no longer be backbenchers enjoying the state capital high life with the lobbyists from the highway contractors, the gam(bl)ing industry, the liquor distributors, the restaurant and hospitality industry, the farm lobby, and the companies wanting special favors in exchange for a piddling few new plants and jobs. The deals have gotten slimier and more open to muckraker and opposition research disclosure. Nor is it easier for legislators to slot their spouses into cushy jobs without notice as Mike Easley found out. Kochs and other post-Citizens United organizations have more money for opposition research as well and of course money for fabrication of phoney issues.
New York’s attorney general Eric Schneiderman does not play nice with those upper-class criminals though. Hope he runs for governor in 2018! Don’t know about the other states on that count.
This is and has been what scares me as well as I, of approximately the same age as you, have observed this country just ripping apart things I thought were settled law and policy. I’ve never gotten why the national Democratic party has been so gutless for so long.
Three letters D-L-C
One symbol $
Deadwood, would be a step up from how I see it: a multiplicity of large institutions/ organizations unchecked, each out for their own i.e. pillaging the citizenry and the commons – and promoting an ideology of individual self reliance against them. By these institutions/ orgs I mean, for example, corporations in their areas, ALEC, police, et al. They aren’t necessarily connected, hence I don’t see us as living under fascism or in a police state, just that the ordinary person is pretty much buried under the levels of institutions exploiting him/ her, struggling to get out from under with an ideology of “personal self reliance”.
I’m beginning to think the Roosevelt/Kennedy/Johnson era was a blip. It’s difficult to accept since I was born 6 years after Roosevelt died. Conservatives have so many avenues to accomplish their goal of eliminating progressive programs of that era. It will be a real fight just maintaining these programs if Republicans get control of all branches of government.
The GOP (often with collusion from DEM officeholders) have been axing those programs since 1948. The big hits began coming in the late 1970s and the assaults have been continuous since then. The foundational structures have now been so hollowed out that those remaining will be even easier to topple.
it’s depressing, but overall the usa faces a choice between becoming Sweden-ish or Mexico. it’s in the interest of the .1% to go in the Mexico direction, indeed they’re doing everything they can to get us there ( in the case of Mexico it’s the .00001 %) and the a few % of hangers-on, but most ppl do not benefit. What I’m saying is this isn’t happening in isolation, it’s happening in a world where we see how the trajectory options will play out
The blip was a Great Depression, which caused Roosevelt to oppose the interests of the rich in purely monetary solutions and do something to stimulate demand, especially after the run on the banks staged around his inauguration day.
And the onset of World War II, which provided labor the ultimate general stike situation in which to bargain for the implementation of rights long promised.
And the forced savings that rationing of war materials produced, allow a large segment of the population enough money for cars, housing, and appliances at the end of the war.
And the devastation of Europe, China, and Japan, which left the US the primary productive and exporting entity until Europe started shoving cars out in the 1960s and Japan did the same with cars and electronics in the 1970s.
And the delay of having to provide jobs for a labor force that included women and minorties until 1970, which bid up wages during the growth of the 1950s and especially in the 1960s.
Ironically, the conditions that created the opportunity for Roosevelt reappear as the economy more resembles the economy of the 1920s. Likewise with the politics. Unionization efforts already are afoot in the retail and fast food industries. And unionization is active again with the health care industry. Graduate students and adjunct professors are unionizing as are college sports players. All that’s missing is more unionization (big victories at Smithfield Foods-NC and Volkswagen-TN) in the South. And this time, desegregation of unions is not an issue nor is the presence of undocumented workers or immigrants in the push for unionization.
Can’t see anything to stop this other than a Constitutional amendment requiring public financing of all elections. Of course that’s not considered politically feasible. So, might as well make banners to hang on every government office reading, “Best government that money can buy. Sponsored by: xxx”
I can. Behind police brutality lies the issue of corruption. There are people in the streets shutting down major transportation links and disrupting business-as-usual. What happens when the critical mass of non-violent political protesters exceeds the capacity of law enforcement to suppress aggressively? Some saner heads start realizing that rigging the system is a very poor strategy.
If those saner heads are powerless, then we are headed for very huge catastrophes of one sort or another. Aside from those caused by two generations of continual neglect of the important.
Protest energy wanes as TPTB make a few concessions. Concessions that by necessity require years to implement. Body-cams on cops. More cops on foot patrol, fewer shootings and killings by cops, and fewer complaints of excessive force by cops. And the protesters go home.
Not even Occupy identified/targeted our corrupt elections and electoral systems. How many laws have been passed and new election processes instituted since Occupy was shutdown to disenfranchise voters? And how have Democrats responded to all that PAC money flowing into elections? Holding out their hands for some of it to trickle down their way and running campaigns touting that they are like good Republicans.
The body-cam on cops movement just hit a big snag. Some techies figured out that that would be great for capturing facial recognition data for everyone the cop met and vehicle license capture for every car stopped in those ubiquitous click-it or ticket seat belt checks. You collect a database of innocents as you pass by. Add Google glass and the cop is scanning everyone on the street and matching to other merged commercially available data.
Cops on foot patrol alone might increase killings. Depend on their attitudes.
Re: Protesters go home. Movements ebb and flow, even movements that have some continuity. Occupy certainly laid the groundwork for the effectiveness of #blacklivesmatter, and many participants and livestreamers got their original technical and tactical experience with Occupy as well as getting their first arrest. That experience goes home during a ebb and comes out stronger at the next flow of the movement. Enough people are wise to co-optive tactics that those won’t work easily.
Occupy’s position was that the electoral system was so corrupted that it was not worthwhile participating in it except as a minimal tactic. That attitude has intensified with the current bunch; whatever #blacklivesmatter is, it is not first and foremost about elections. But corruption is more pervasive than just elections.
Well, the prostitutes in the Democratic Party held out their hands this past time and their erstwhile johns treated them like cheap whores and dropped them. (Not to disparage actual sex workers by associating them with those members of Congress.)
There is too much broken for co-option to last more than a little while now. Or suppression. As the protest over Mike Brown was waning, there was Eric Garner which is still going on and broadening. The killing of Tamir Rice has not had grand jury action, and then you have a case out in Phoenix. And there are two more cases in the St. Louis area. And leadership by a black movement that has had enough of racism. And then there are the children and grandchildren of these civil rights veterans.
The “techies” may have woken up, but has the general public? Wasn’t it but a few days ago when “liberals” were applauding and cheering Obama’s order to fund 50,000 new body-cams for police? A move that “liberals” had been demanding.
We could decrease arrests in this country by something near 50% by simply legalizing marijuana. And cut the incarceration and parole rate by a similar number. Reform police hiring practices away from a preference for military vets and rejecting those with high biases against women and people of color and low educational achievements. Stop encouraging ticketing and arrests to increase revenues and focus attention those who present a danger to themselves and others.
Fewer cops, fewer unnecessary weapons in the hands of cops, better “to serve and protect” training, and fewer stupid, petty laws would reduce police violence.
Of course the public hasn’t awakened yet. The pubic has not awakened about the Snowden revelations that occurred 18 months ago.
What stops the protests is government allowance of peaceful protest without conditions until it is normalized, becomes old hat, a part of the background, and dies of boredom. Then it becomes trivial and a cultural artifact. That sorta happened in the late 1970s.
Protests for one cop crime at a time, regardless of allowance of no or limited conditions on the protests, is also effective in maintaining all the other institutions that are in place to “serve and protect” the elites and their required lackeys.
The protests this time are not in one city, but multiple cities. Right now (roughly 8PM EST Sunday) there are protests going in Chicago, New York City (possibly at multiple locations), Atlanta, Berkeley, Philadelphia (Interfaith protest at the Eagles game), Miami.
Protests in new cities produce new issue that sustain the protests. In Durham NC, a protest outside the auditorium where John Oliver was appearing (no, he wasn’t the target of the protest) involved some police slamming protesters to the ground, arbitrarily kettling protesters who were dispersing, and using a long range acoustic device (LRAD or “sound cannon”) to hurt the protesters’ ears. That has already resulted in letters to the City Council protesting that police abuse. And the City Council is under the impression that the LRAD is just a louder bullhorn for the police to make sure that protester hear their instructions. Any council meeting that deals with this will bring out protesters.
The involvement of the faith community is significant and so is the spread to smaller cities, especially those not noted for frequent protest.
One issue. You may be optimistic that the protests will expand to other issues, but it requires so much energy for protesters to get exercised by a single issue that they’ll be exhausted by the time any progress on this issue is made. What happened to the anti-Vietnam war protests after early 1970? Years before the signing of the peace accords and the later final withdrawal from Vietnam. Same thing with the anti-Iraq War protests.
LRAD causes permanent hearing damage. they’re very dangerous
A perfectly timed article. Too late to affect the election, and the dupes and marks will have forgotten all about it by the next one, in favor of whatever shiny objects the MSM decide to dangle.