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Politics dad explains it all!

[heypoliticsdad]

How to Punish a President

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been metaphorically and occasionally literally running around in circles screaming incoherently about presidential misconduct and the collapse of checks and balances and how does this keep happening and WHY ISN’T ANYONE DOING ANYTHING I MEAN THIS IS A REALLY BIG DEAL. 

The President is suspected of several impeachable offenses, starting with illegal campaign contributions (Stormy Daniels payoff!) and ending with these ongoing issues with collusion with Russia regarding the election, points thereafter, and what he did or didn’t know. He continues to come closer and closer to moving against Robert Mueller’s investigation in a way that has even the right wing governmental leadership trying to get him to knock it off. He gives so few fucks he didn’t seem to care that people caught him out congratulating Putin on winning a sham election. There is something kind of amazing about watching someone with a raised-rich-billionaire’s level of DGAF just do whatever the hell he wants.

There really are only two formal mechanisms for checking the president: censure and impeachment. I imagine you’re as obsessed with impeachment as I am these days, but to recap: the House of Representatives would have to bring impeachment charges. If (after some procedural go-round) the House voted in favor of any of those charges, that is the moment at which the President has been impeached. After that, the case goes to the Senate for trial on the charges. If they convict the president on a two-thirds majority vote he loses his office. Notably, it’s not a criminal case and doesn’t have the same meaning of a criminal conviction nor its burden of proof; it has to do with whether or not the Senate thinks the charges warrant removal.

Censure, on the other hand, is basically a formal, extra-serious scolding issued to the President from either the Senate or House of Representatives. All you need is a simple majority to vote in favor of the censure. There aren’t really formal consequences if you’re the President, aside from the embarrassment of the whole thing.

Both censure and impeachment are rare. The Senate has censured one president, Andrew Jackson, for refusing to turn over documents related to changing banks at the beginning of the US’ westward expansion. The House has also censured one president, James K. Polk, for starting the Mexican-American War back in the 1840s. Andrew Johnson got impeached in 1867 but acquitted in the Senate; Bill Clinton got impeached in 1998 but was acquitted by the Senate. Richard Nixon, everyone’s favorite impeachment story, didn’t ever actually get impeached – he resigned before the House could vote on the articles of impeachment.

If we somehow have elections free from hacking and the Demos win big and the power transfers successfully, it would not be surprising to me if the Dems go for an impeachment. If there isn’t a Dem wave though, and the GOP refuses to impeach Trump, it is entirely possible that he just...you know...stays the president no matter what happens. A funny fact about the US government is that no one knows if you can indict a sitting president for a crime or if they have to be impeached first - it is an unanswered Constitutional question. If Mueller wants to indict Trump, but Congress won’t impeach him, it is entirely possible he would have to be removed from office for it to happen. The judicial branch can’t remove a President. The people can’t remove the president aside from refusing to re-elect him. There is this whole 25th Amendment thing but it seems even less likely than an impeachment in a GOP congress. Mueller could try to indict him anyways, but there would be an actual procedural challenge that would certainly end up at the Supreme Court (if it didn’t start there), at which point who knows how it would play out.

There is, in fact, a censure resolution active in the House, inspired by that time our President talked about how the Nazis marching in Charlottesville were really good people.  It has, one assumes, died in committee - a bill being introduced is still a long way from a bill being passed. Maybe there’ll be another one, especially if the blue wave rolls on through the 2018 Congress. But in terms of who can do what, exactly? We’re looking at you, Paul.

[heypoliticsdad]

Jennings v. Rodriguez: Detention, the Constitution, and Non-Citizen Immigrants

Maybe you’ve heard about this, maybe you haven’t: yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled on a case involving non-citizen immigrants in ICE detention. Frankly, it’s funny to me that more people aren’t talking about it, maybe because it’s a weird and legalistic decision that doesn’t go on about big moral issues. So allow us to discuss Jennings v. Rodriguez.

Before I go any further, I should say that so much of my understanding of all of this is thanks to SCOTUSBlog that I worry writing anything at all is going to be at least a little plagiaristic because they’re so good at what they do. If you care about the Supreme Court, you should be reading SCOTUSBlog.

Hold onto your hats, y’all - it’s about to get LEGAL.

The legal question at hand is not whether any non-citizen immigrants can be indefinitely detained without ongoing hearing - that’s the political question. The legal question is whether or not the 9th Circuit overstepped its judicial boundaries when it comes to how it weighed two other Supreme Court cases when dealing with the statute that grants the state permission to indefinitely detain non-citizen immigrants. The 9th Circuit said that bond hearings were required in order to avoid - and this seems to be a legal term of art - a “serious constitutional problem.” SCOTUS ended up saying, 5-3 (Kagan recused), that the 9th Circuit should have done it differently, and sent the case back for the 9th Circuit to actually review the Constitutional question rather than sidestepping it. LAWYERS BEING LAWYERS AMIRITE?

Anil Kalhan, a law professor at Drexel, lays out what could have happened in this epic thread (it might be a little technical, but it’s good stuff) - essentially, that the argument Breyer lays out in the minority for making the constitutional call holds water:

But to be fair, at the end of the day, it’s not like SCOTUS actively approved indefinite detention. In fact, some analyses (see SCOTUSBlog, above) even indicate that in both the majority and minority opinions they laid out the path to overturning it on the Constitutional issue. But they could have found that the 9th Circuit was within their rights to make the interpretation they did, and that would have been that. Now there’s more to do. 

So for now there are fewer protections for non-citizen immigrants who are being detained, although there aren’t none (Lily Axelrod, an immigration lawyer, goes into this on Twitter here.) As per usual with the law, there are significant reasons that boil down to procedural frustration. Even the Supreme Court rarely gets to go in hard on issues of moral high ground; more often, it’s these procedural issues - what REALLY makes the world go round.

I always get unsure when it comes down to things like this. The majority is holds that the 9th Circuit doesn’t have the right to overturn a law like they did without actually doing the work of deciding on the Constitutional issue. I am frustrated by this, but I have to wonder if I would feel the same if the ideological poles were reversed and the Supreme Court was protecting a law that I felt good about. Is the procedural conservatism appropriate, given how often it is that people’s liberty hangs in the balance? My gut says no, but I struggle a little bit with why. But fundamentally: here’s to the ACLU and the other parties to the case kicking the shit out of their new trial, resolving the Constitutional question, and freedom for all people very soon.

[heypoliticsdad]

JUST HOW BAD IS IT?

IT FEELS REALLY BAD RIGHT? The government is lurching around like a drunk raccoon, more and more people are being deported daily, Muhiyidin d’Baha was shot and killed, another school shooting, all this Russia stuff continues to unfold, and somehow half the country - or some smaller percent of the country that has a whole lot of power - still is worrying about Hillary Clinton.

How bad are we doing though? As a whole? It’s hard to tell because for a lot of America, it’s been bad and it’s just a little more obvious than it used to be. The ugly parts are more visible, and the executive branch of the government is uniquely clusterfucked, and there is this whole Russia thing...but aside from all that (can you even dismiss all of that in one swoop?), it is not like activists have just started getting killed. It’s not like all citizens have had equal access to the rule of law and the protections a friendly government is supposed to provide. I don’t want to fall prey to the idea that it is not worse, but I also don’t want to fall prey to the idea that all this is a unique singularity outside of our usual functioning. 

Yeah yeah yeah, Dad, we get it. How bad is it?

One of the most important bodies of work I have been reading lately is writing from people who have lived through authoritarian regimes. They make the very valid point that it is not as if suddenly the sky turns red and IT IS ALL BAD ALL THE TIME. The sky stays blue. There are still movies at the theater. But little by little the edges start eroding: freedom of public discourse, freedom of the press, freedom of movement, freedom of this or that little thing. Then they erode more. Maybe one group in particular gets blamed for bad things that happen (Jews, Christians, Muslims, immigrants, etc, etc) or maybe everyone has to start putting pro-government signs in their windows or who knows what.

Yeah yeah yeah, Dad, cool. BUT HOW BAD IS IT?

America is a country that prides itself on its freedom and democracy. To me it seems unlikely that it would ever work to throw a coup in the classic sense, because we luvvvvvv the rhetoric of democracy and freedom and we also love pretending things are better than they are (see: how none of this is new, it’s just bigger than it’s been.) Trump was inevitable - I fail to see how this wasn’t obvious to everyone the moment he declared - but he was not the beginning of something. He was a step far along a path.

The thing is, there are two forces at work here. There is the chaos in the executive branch that is using the US government as a billionaire4billionaire gift shoppe, and then there is the bigotry and xenophobia in the legislative branch being allowed to have its day. I don’t think Trump or Putin or whomever cares that much about the bigotry and violence, to be honest; I think they care about power to do what they want. But when looking around to figure out who could get them that power, who did they find? The best-organized (sorry, lefties) and most ready crew was this far right wing. 

I’ll be honest, perhaps too honest, perhaps the kind of honest that will come back and bite me in the ass at some point in the nebulous future: I think the right is 100% correct when they say that if it was a leftist in power doing lefty things, we wouldn’t care so much about the state of the government. If I had a nutjob president who was elected in a corrupt fashion on a platform of universal healthcare and alternatives to sentencing, I would care a whole lot less because at least I would see the country doing things I’ve wanted it to do. Is there any doubt as to why the Republicans aren’t super concerned about all this with Russia and the regime’s corruption? They’re getting what they want. Aside from when we’re talking about ourselves, the US is a country that cares about ruthless efficiency far more than abstract principles of greatness. 

What’s the point of a democratic government, anyways? I do not mean that rhetorically. Aside from lofty ideals and our own moral superiority, why do we care what kind of government we have? At the end of the day, I don’t, really: I care that everyone I care about has enough to eat, has free passage through the world, has somewhere warm to stay, can go to the doctor, and can make meaning for themselves. The problem, of course, is that there doesn’t seem to be a kind of government that can provide these things without finding some other group of people to severely repress, and I hope from the bottom of my heart I am not willing to trade my own security and the security of those I love for those other people’s repression any more than I already do. I can feel how this is going to be tested, and any situation that relies on a lot of humans choosing the moral high ground over their own comfort is not, historically, a good situation to be in. 

As far back as I can count in my incomplete understanding of history, there have always been the people in power running the government and then the rest of us. How it is for the rest of us largely depends on what tactics are being used to maintain the power of the people in charge. Right now, those tactics are against the people I stand for and with, and what is happening in their hands is against what I believe, and they seem to have a pretty broad base of power, and I feel pretty unclear that they will be unseated without a significant fight no matter how the 2018 election turns out because of the things I hear them say they believe. 

OKAY DAD, BUT HOW IS IT? Pretty bad.

[heypoliticsdad]

That Stupid Budget

Ok so we have all heard about how Trump put out a budget, right? It’s a terrible budget. A truly terrible budget. I’ve never seen a budget so terrible.

Lowlights include, but are definitively not limited to: * wall money; * ending the subsidized Stafford Loan program; * cuts to food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare; * cutting the EPA, HUD, and lots of other government agencies; * cutting heat assistance and other similar humanitarian programs; * a massive increase in the federal deficit, something I am not even sure I care about but most people seem to agree it’s VERY BAD; * figures that predicate on an LOL-level rate of economic growth.

But here’s the thing: this budget is not binding. This budget is a mission statement. It’s Trump telling us what we already know: he hates people, he loves the military, he doesn’t really care about the fiscal conservatism the GOP has been historically known for. 

So what is actually binding? The things that happen in Congress. The spending bill they just passed? Binding. The budget resolutions that they will draw up? Binding. The president’s budget is important, but it is also an ideological document more than a policy one; it’s a “hey dudes, this is what I think you should do” document. 

There’s not much new here. We already know Trump is a jackass. We should save our breath is for what’s coming up - the fight for the actual budget, where these decisions will be actually hashed out. WHEW. Ok. Next!

[heypoliticsdad]

The State of the Union: an overview

I am still trying to dig down to WHAT I AM FEELING about the state of the union, as in, the state the country is in. Easier is to summarize the State of the Union, as in, the speech Trump gave. Here you go, friends, my thoughts and what stuck 24 hours later.

Part of what is so hard about this speech overall is it is just wrong. It is incorrect. It doesn’t work in the real world. How are we going to cut taxes and spend $1.5 trillion on infrastructure and an unknown amount on fully funding the military (is it really not yet fully funded?)? How are we going to keep the government out of regulating industry while also bringing down the price of prescription drugs? What are these loopholes that need closing to stop this imagined rush of international criminals, and do they apply to white collar criminals too? This speech isn’t even internally consistent, which is a hallmark of this administration, and something I struggle with profoundly. What does it mean when we just don’t care about this any more? Not even a little? When there are no consequences to things like lying on your application for security clearance or in your confirmation hearing? I hear all these pundits I listen to talking about The Threat To The Rule of Law and I’m like, ok, first of all the rule of law doesn’t even exist in this country if you’re Black or a POC or an immigrant or poor or trans or any of those things, or at best it exists conditionally. Second of all, if you believe the rule of law did exist, given everything that’s happened, how can you put its dissolution in the future?? MORE ON THAT LATER.

Also of note: I can’t take on the full sweep of wtfery and distortions and inaccuracies in this speech. There’s only one of me and other people do it better. For a full dissection, take a look at the NY Times or Politico - I liked the Washington Post’s one too but I am out of free articles on their paywall and too lazy to go get my credit card out of my wallet and just subscribe already. Dad’s tired. 

1) Why do male politicians think black suits are ok? They’re not ok. The good lord gave us greys and blues for a reason. Black suits that are not tuxes are just so weird and politician-ey and they’re also very hard to make work, especially with light ties. The red or bright blue ties look crisp, but the light blues and pistachio greens and all that don’t and a black suit + a colored shirt (light blue in particular) is just incorrect. This isn’t an article about fashion so I will stop there but I COULD GO ON.

2) This is the Congressional Black Caucus upon Trump’s self-congratulations with regards to Black employment reaching its lowest level ever, one of the three zillion points he made that is in fact true but given without any context in a way to make him look like he cares about Black people:

3) Notable future gays who are going to regret this later include Preston Sharp, a now-12-year-old who got concerned about how veterans’ graves were being ignored and started a movement to take care of them. I don’t object to this, but I do object to how Trump uses patriotism as a weapon. It’s creepy. He took a dig at everyone taking a knee during the anthem in this part and I was not impressed.

4) Speaking of which, Preston is gawking at Ryan and Rebecca Holets, who were held up as an example of helping each other during the opioid epidemic. As Trump told it, Ryan (a cop) stopped a pregnant woman who was shooting up. She was upset and said she didn’t know what to do or where to go. God told him that it was time for him to help, and so he adopted her baby, and that baby is named Hope. We heard nothing about THE MOTHER OF THAT BABY, merely congratulations and gratitude that the Holets reached out to help the baby. I can’t even begin to deal with everything wrong with applauding taking the baby from the mom and ignoring the mom itself. I finally found a story in the Washington Post that goes into the mom’s story, and it sounds like the Holets have been trying to help her too, supporting her getting into rehab and raising money for her to have a landing place once she’s released. How did none of that make it into this anecdote? THAT is a fucking American story right there: people turning to GoFundMe to support each other because there’s no social safety net.

5) Can we talk some more about this particular toss-off gem from the president, hidden inside some talk about government efficiency, that is certainly definitely 100% not about a certain man whose last name starts with an M- and hopefully ends with a -peachment.

So, tonight, I call on Congress to empower every Cabinet Secretary with the authority to reward good workers and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people.

6) While we’re quoting, let’s take this gem about the courts:

Working with the Senate, we are appointing judges who will interpret the Constitution as written, including a great new Supreme Court justice, and more circuit court judges than any new administration in the history of our country. We are totally defending our Second Amendment, and have taken historic actions to protect religious liberty.   

AWKWARD, Donald. AWKWARD. You know who else thought this was awkward? Neil Gorsuch, who is trying to look tough and above the political fray while Stephen Breyer whispers something nasty and Elena Kagan throws up in her mouth just a little:

7) Even stranger - Trump’s weird shout-out in support of paid family leave, which can only be described thusly: 

8) One of the things liberals are supposed to ignore (I learned this while getting that previous screenshot) is all of the suffering caused by undocumented immigrants who are criminals. Trump brought two families whose daughters were killed by undocumented people to show how dangerous undocumented immigrants are. So let’s say this: it fucking sucked that people killed those two young women. But is that reason enough to go rounding up all undocumented people? Of course not, any more than the fact that white men have a reputation for being disproportionately involved in mass shootings means we should round them all up either. There is a lot going on in the statistics of who commits what crimes and I don’t feel like I know enough to dive in and parse them out (especially since you’re unsurprised right-leaning researchers analyze them one way and left-leanings ones quite another.) But for the record, Ann Coulter, I don’t want kids to get killed - and I don’t somehow imagine that treating undocumented people badly will stop that in any way, shape, or form.

9) Overall - Trump was on the downers not the uppers, which meant he stuck to the script and didn’t go off into crazytown even when you could feel him itching to improvise. This is going to be lauded as a victory because he did not run around the stage making rocket noises and flipping off the Democratic side of the room. He blustered. He applauded himself into the mic. He said he wanted more nukes. Everyone chanted U-S-A. It felt like lots of days these days - a run-of-the-mill nausea and idle rage, the resigned rage of disempowerment. 

(sources: event photos are AP or screenshots from various telecasts; quotes from the President are from the C-SPAN transcript; 

[heypoliticsdad]

WEATHER FASHION HELPER for NYC Wednesday, January 17th.

[heypoliticsdad]

8 Reasons Queers Should Care About Net Neutrality

So the FCC wants to roll back net neutrality rules, the rules that classify internet access as a public utility and restrict ISPs’ ability to restrict access based on content of what you view or do. As the NY Times quotes FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: 

“Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet,” Mr. Pai said in a statement. “Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them.”

This is NEVER TRUE EVER EVER EVER. Please, please, point me to one place where deregulation has somehow led to a better deal for consumers. No. Really. The LA Times ran a piece about this and basically it’s good in the short term but corporate capitalism’s Katamari Damacy-esque preference towards monopolies means that in the end people always get the shaft.

But I digress. So many people smarter than me have written about this. But maybe you’re overwhelmed, my queer friend. The world is brutal. You’re worried about being deported. Or beaten. Or shot and killed. Or queerbashed. Or having to pee. Or the zillion other things. Why should you care about this?

You should care because every time you touch the internet could be affected. Think about every time you did something on the internet in the last 24 hours: Snapchat. Twitter. IG. Organized a rally. Played a stupid phone game. Tindr/Grindr/Her/Gay.com/whatever the kids are doing now. Sent your cat a text. Read something radical that challenged the mainstream. Ordered dinner in your pajamas. Looked up how to fix something. Called a car. Fought with a stranger to feel better. Now imagine a corporation, or a series of corporations, is even more intimately in control of your access to all of this than they already are. Not convinced yet? Read on...

8) Do you really want these guys - the CEOs of our telecom infrastructure - dictating the terms of everyone’s internet access?

7) Let’s say you like to use Growlr on your phone, but Verizon wants you to use Grindr instead because the Can You Hear Me Now guy got his heart broken by a bear. So now Grindr comes with your data plan, but you have to pay $1.99/month for “premium cruising” or whatever to get Growlr. Or, even more likely...

6) Do you really want to have to order the “adult cruising apps” package? Or worse, have their data throttled to the point where they’re useless anyways? Everyone is obsessed with how Portugal does its mobile services - nominal neutrality but a loophole that allows selling packages of individual data for different kinds of things. My understanding from reading traveler tip messageboards that you can buy general data from Portuguese providers, but this is a way of buying extra. I’m not sure that’s true, but no one on these incredibly helpful different boards seems to say “if you want to use What’s App you’ll need to buy a package” and I think they would. (photo from Business Insider):

5) Hey queer folks who grew up with the graphic internet: remember when you were sorting out your queerness and you spent a lot of time on google? That must have been really important. Now imagine all those amazing sites are throttled or blocked completely because the corporation that sells your internet doesn’t think queer stuff is ok. Go ask a friend from before the graphic internet about how they learned about queer stuff. Only now there isn’t a card catalogue, it’s an internet catalogue. Ut oh. 

(Sorry these are all masc-presenting and almost all white. I had to crop to avoid violent photos and the little corner I could find that still gave me the header bar was very uniform.)

4) Don’t believe me? Go read these folks, who did studies and studies and studies about the importance of the internet to the rainbow...and are for net neutrality. 

3) Oh, so you’re already a super savvy cyber security hero activist and you use Signal and you have a Tor browser and so on and so forth? That’s cool! Now your cell phone provider doesn’t want you using Signal, they want you using some other app whose encryption has been cracked. Sounds like a plan! 

2) All the telecoms are for it and everyone else is against it and sometimes it’s ok to pick your opinion based on what, oh, EVERYONE GOOD IN THE WORLD is saying.

1) We already know what it is to be pushed underground and deemed immaterial by a world that doesn’t want us. The internet has become absolutely vital to the way queer worlds organize, learn, grow, and connect. This is already so terribly mediated by capitalism and corporate interests - remember how much we hate Facebook and the self-serving way the algorithms decide what to show us and what not to show us and what to allow and what to deny and so on and so forth? Only instead of FB being the problem, imagine if it is the fabric of the internet itself that make these restrictions. That is slightly hyperbolic, perhaps - I want to be responsible here - but it isn’t that far from the truth. 

Click here to call your representatives (suggested by the Tor Project, which I trust) and click here to send them an email. (the EFF, the greatest internet freedom fighters of all.)

[heypoliticsdad]

NYC General Election Endorsements November 2017

Oh yes, y’all, strap in. Another long one awaits. I am not weighing in on every race here; there’s too much for me to keep track of and there’s a lot I don’t know. Especially in city council races, it’s so local that it’s hard to keep track if you’re too far away. It’s also true that a lot of these races aren’t that contested (have you changed your party affiliation?), so there isn’t much to say. In races where there is a clear front runner, even if I kind of hate them, I’m not bothering to weigh in. 

I also am noticing two things about these endorsements: one, that there are two places where I recommend a male upstart over an existing female candidate; two, that I am clearly biased against incumbents. I’m not quite sure what to do with either of those things, but I wanted to name them as important. The city council stands to lose several women this time around, and while my feminism isn’t as simplistic as “women are automatically the best candidate,” I am still unsure what role misogyny is playing here, especially when incumbency means you have more to be hated for.

Want to know who’s on your ballot? Go here. Want to know where you vote? Go here. Polls are open 6am to 9pm so you really have no excuse.

Finally: when in doubt, write in Beyoncé. 

Mayor: Write in Beyoncé I can’t in good faith say vote for Bill de Blasio. He just hasn’t done enough good. The approval of the Bedford Armory redevelopment is just the latest fuckery in his “affordable housing” plan; he has the stank of corruption around him. He’s done some cool things but a lot of those cool things were already in process. Short of some kind of freak occurrence, he’s going to win (I’m not even going to bother looking up the correct spelling of his GOP opponent’s last name, it’s like that) and so you might as well write someone in. Beyoncé gets shit done. She would be ruthlessly effective and the longer she goes the more politicized she becomes. If we’re going to live in an oligarchy, I want my billionaire overlord to be the one that sunk a police car in a music video.

Public Advocate: Team Tish! I like what Tish James has done for us. I feel like I am waiting for the romance to be over and it’s possible I’ve missed some things. But she’s been a good public advocate, has stuck up for people, and I feel an overall sense of goodwill about her. The Public Advocate job is a weird one – tasked with advocating for the public – and I think necessarily this requires about some grandstanding as well as actually resolving complaints. It seems like she’s done good work so far, has the work to back up the grandstanding, and she’s definitely the best of the options.

Comptroller: Oh whatever, just go for Scott Stringer, or Beyoncé He’s better than the other guy, I think.

Manhattan DA: Write in Marc Fliedner. Remember the Brooklyn DA primary? With 500 people lining up around the block to be the most progressive? Marc Fliedner was one of those. He actually got ranked the best by the 5 Boro Defenders, a largely POC group of public defenders in the city. I ended up going for Anne Swern by a hair; Marc would have also been a good choice. Now he’s running in Manhattan as a write-in against Cy Vance, the sitting DA who is recently best known as declining to prosecute people who contributed to his campaign. (de Blasio, the Kushners, Harvey Weinstein). I feel great endorsing Marc as a write-in. Tell your friends!

District 1: Christopher Marte, I think I don’t know a lot about the long-term context of this race. I know that Margaret Chin is one of these funny third-term council members, a long-time incumbent. It’s hard to tell what her district thinks of her. I can’t find a good reason she gives for not doing participatory budgeting and it seems like there’s a lot of rage in the neighborhood around her work to preserve affordable housing, especially around the Two Bridges development. I’m a pragmatic guy at heart and her answers were, well, pragmatic; however, they’re a lot of that weird “people don’t really know what went into making these deals, we really tried” without actually telling people what went into making the deals and what she tried. Christopher Marte is from the neighborhood, evidently very involved, but in the way where it’s hard to know if what he does is as important as it looks on paper. He has the League of Independent Theaters’ endorsement, which also matters to me, although Chin’s overall list is much longer and includes Make the Road NYC and Planned Parenthood. She’s squarely in the middle of the City and State NY’s ranking of city council members. I read both of their responses to the Citizens Union survey about open government and found his more compelling. So vote Christopher Marte, I think, but I’m willing to be wrong about this one.

District 35: Jabari Brisport Laurie Cumbo sold out her district to the Bedford Armory. She has repeatedly bowed to developer pressure and the people just don’t like her. She attracted primary pressure, but the power of incumbency propelled her; luckily, people are still running. His Citizens Unite survey is full of the kind of truisms about government you get from the idealistic left, but what the eff, he’ll be a strong member of the progressive caucus. It’s a shame Ede Fox didn’t beat Cumbo in the primary, but I am happy to open the door to Brisport. I don’t think Cumbo is bad – she’s actually very highly ranked as a councilmember in responsiveness to her constituents, and she’s been the prime sponsor on a lot of bills about things that I think matter (% for arts reporting, public art, sex ed, multilingual information on housing.) Butttt…..I’m leaning Brisport. By a hair.

District 40: Brian Cunningham, Brian Cunningham, Brian Cunningham Mathieu Eugene has been a trash councilman. He has been the lead sponsor on only 7 bills in 10 years. He can’t even get a crosswalk made for a school. He might not even live in the district. Cunningham is young, he’s full of energy, he’s from the neighborhood, he’s worked with youth, and even if he ends out to be no good he’ll be no good in a new, better way. Cunningham is endorsed by the Working Families Party, the Stonewall Democrats, Planned Parenthood, TenantsPAC, and the Brooklyn Independent Democrats (we like them! They’re not the IDC!) 60% of the district voted for someone other than Eugene in the Democratic primary, but the vote split; Cunningham had the Reform endorsement which meant he could be on the general ballot on their line. He’s got good ideas about housing and more than that seems to actually care about what he does. You’re going to have to go to the Reform Party line to vote for him – he got the WFP endorsement too late to be on the ballot with them – so scoot that pencil to the right column and fill in that box. (Full disclosure: I’ve been volunteering with them.)

Prop 1: The Con Con:……no, but I hate myself a little and I might change my mind. Oh, the Con Con. I have been wrestling with this one and frankly it’s part of why this is coming out only one day before the election. There is so much good that could come from this, and so much bad that could come from it. The right says it’s a bad idea because the left would control the agenda; the left says it’s a bad idea because the right would control the agenda. Public unions are against it because of the risk to pensions. It’ll cost so much! (Will it cost so much?) It’s the only way to make change aside from our dysfunctional system! (Is it the only way to make change aside from our dysfunctional system?) The last one did nothing in the end! The one before that did so much! Most of our progressive laws come from constitutional conventions! The Koch brothers would take it over! NYCLU is against it; Citizens Union is for it. Unions are against it; progressive politicians are for it. The New York Times is against it; Newsday Long Island is for it. I have been watching debates and reading articles and it is one giant, messy ball.

The fact of the matter is this: no one knows what will happen because everything goes up for grabs. Everyone agrees on this. The pro side is arguing this presents an enormous opportunity for change: home rule for cities! Gender expression could be a protected class! Early voting! Legislative term limits! A unicameral legislature! The con side is basically making the same argument, only the bad side: loss of union pensions! Rolling back of the right to shelter! Gerrymandered senate districts leading to a conservative delegate base! The pro side says this is a chance for the government to truly be shaped by the people; the con side says the process will be hopelessly corrupt and just cost people money.

Voting yes hits all my love of sweeping action and big change. Past conventions are what have given us many of the things that already make New York relatively progressive: the “forever wild” land preserve, the right to welfare, expansion of voting rights. It’s a seductive argument. How often do we as progressives get a chance to build something from the ground up?

And yet. You might have noticed this isn’t a great time for progressives at the ballot box. One of the few things that I have not heard countered by the pro side is the fact that the statewide left is weak; Democrats aren’t even organized enough to get rid of the IDC, let alone a statewide progressive caucus. The unions are against it because they don’t feel they can guarantee a progressive outcome, and to me when someone publicly says they aren’t sure how powerful they are, you listen. That gerrymandering is real, and while a majority of the state senate districts went for Clinton over Trump, the state Senate is split more or less evenly. 

How all that translates to a vote really boils down to this: are you a pragmatist or are you an idealist? Are you a risktaker or do we play it safe? In my heart of hearts, I want to believe in the con con. I want to believe we can do something great. But…I just can’t get over the feeling in my gut that this is not the moment. Politics worldwide don’t look good for progressive, expansive views, and especially in the United States it’s a moment for the left to be very careful with the risks we take. So I say vote no, but grudgingly, and I reserve the right to change my mind at the last minute in the voting box and make an idealistic, possibly reckless vote.

Prop 2: Cut Pensions for Public Officials Convicted of Corruption Yes really. It’s a question. FOR GOODNESS SAKE’S VOTE YES. It doesn’t even automatically cut these pensions. It just makes it an option for judges when the circumstances warrant it. VOTE YES. I’m not even giving you a link; if you vote against this, just go home.

Prop 3: Land Bank for Modifications for Forever Wild This is one of those upstate questions that we down here don’t really think about. Basically, it comes down to this: right now, the “forever wild” lands upstate can’t be developed for any reason. This seems good until you realize, say, a bridge needs to be repaired, only it can’t be repaired without a constitutional amendment because the repair would need to use some small corner of the forever wild land. This proposition would create a bank wherein the state would buy 250 acres of new forever wild land and then make the same amount of land available for projects like bridges and internet cables. This makes sense and is endorsed by the Nature Conservancy as well as a broad coalition of preservation groups for both the Adirondacks and the Catskills, which is good enough for me. 

Ok, if you made it to the end, one more thing: this ad for Kalman Yeger in Boro Park. That race is its own hot ticket - Yoni Hikind, Dov Hikind’s son, against Kalman Yeger. The Forward goes into the underground heat, but I just want to give Kalman Yeger an award for the jingle of the election (and for all I know, this is a dis track, but I don’t know enough Yiddish to figure it out):

[heypoliticsdad]

Why You Should Change Your NY State Party Affiliation Already

Yes, you. You right there. Maybe you hate politics. Maybe you hate the Democrats. But I am here to ask you, a person who leans at least vaguely left, to consider the strategy of the next few years of state electoral politics and register yourself as a NY State Democrat. (You can print the form at that link, or pick one up at the library or post office.) Why? Read on. First, some fun facts: NY State allows for closed primaries. This means that political parties do not have to let anyone vote who isn’t registered in their party, and that the party gets to decide how long you have to be registered before you can vote. And that lead time is very long - in order to be able to vote in the 2018 primary as a Democrat, your change of affiliation needs to be receivedby October 13th, 2017.  So why care? Well, folks, in most of NYC, the Democratic primary is the de facto election - the candidate that wins that race is the one that wins. In the state at large, the Democratic race is still the closest thing most of us get to a real choice of candidates; the people reading this are not going to be considering the Republican ticket.  2018 is going to have some big races: governor, a federal senator, federal representatives, state assemblymembers, and state senators. If you live in NYC and not in Staten Island or very-south Brooklyn, your federal representative, state assemblymember, and state senator will be a Democrat. So if you want to weigh in on the people who will actually represent you, this is your moment, and PS: you do.  Say what you will about the stupidity of electoral politics generally: on a local level, this actually has a concrete impact on your life. Minimum wage? Controlled by the state (even if you don’t have a minimum wage job, it’ll affect you too; minimum wage applies upward pressure on other wages close to the minimum wage.) Rent stabilization? Controlled by the state. Healthcare for all? Controlled by the state. Weed legalization? Downstate, we live in a pretty liberal wonderland; even if everyone is close to the same, you can still see real differences in candidates’ relationships to developers, the police, labor rights, taxation, weed legalization, and other issues on what I suppose is best discussed as the liberal-to-progressive spectrum. So yes, it is the master’s tools. No, it won’t dismantle the master’s house. But for those of you who want that house to be livable for as many people as possible while we’re waiting for it to come down, these elections do in fact matter. And to participate, you have to be a Democrat. You can change your party registration by printing and mailing this form, or get a postage-paid form at any library, post office, or most public benefit locations. Get it done in the next few weeks!

[heypoliticsdad]

Brooklyn Primary Endorsements September 2017

Ok y’all. Strap in, this is a long one: ENDORSEMENT TIME. I gathered this from reading a lot of things: posts on local FB political blogs, friends’ posts, lots of interviews and articles, a few voter guides. I wish I could cite my sources better but I accidentally closed my window with all the tabs I’d been saving. I’m less well-cited than usual. I apologize.

The primary is tomorrow, but to participate you have to be enrolled in a party having a primary (aka, the Democrats or the GOP.) If you’re not, and you lean at all to the left, I highly recommend you consider enrolling in the Dems if you want to be directly involved in electoral politics in NYC. New York State has closed primaries, which means that if you aren’t registered as a member of a party, you can’t vote in its primary. But NYC is a Democratic town and the Democratic primary is the de facto election for most city offices. On the one hand: fuck a closed primary! Change the system! On the other hand, if you’re into electoral politics, you might as well participate where the action is.

Don’t know what or who you’re voting for? Go here: http://www.whosontheballot.org.

LET’S SEE WHAT WE HAVE HERE.

Mayor: Bob Gangi, but mostly NOT DE BLASIO: De Blasio, you had such promise. De Blasio, I liked you so much. De Blasio, your housing plan sucks rocks and your financial conduct feels off and you never lived up to your promise and while I agree Andrew Cuomo is a jackass you really lost that fight. But you’re the mayor, and though I wouldn’t be surprised if you lose in the general to some fiscally-conservative-socially-liberal Republican, the Democratic machine chose you. As such, I don’t think any of your challengers are going to win, but I can’t recommend voting for you. I picked Bob Gangi because he’s hella to the left and two young women of color handed me his flyer at the mayoral debate I went to. That made me like him. So vote for him.

Public Advocate: Tish James: I continue to really like Tish James. The Public Advocate is a funny job and is designed to be a power check on the mayor, and I admit I don’t have a great sense of how effective she’s been at this outside of the spin machine which makes her seem pretty great. I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if there is some blog post I can’t find talking about the machinations behind the scene that make her look less rosy, but what I can see I support very much (housing rights, equal pay work, bad landlord lists, etc.) Additionally, the other guy’s campaign is basically “Tish didn’t have an adversarial enough relationship with the mayor, and also I’m a history professor from Columbia and I know things.” He has no elected experience. BZZT. I wouldn’t vote for him even if I didn’t like Tish.

Brooklyn DA: Anne Swern: A lot of what I’ve been reading has been marveling at the fact that this DA race is about reform rather than being tough on crime. A lot of this can be attributed to Ken Thompson’s legacy and his move towards more progressive choices around how the DA works and the power the DA has in setting bail, choosing or declining to prosecute, and the options defendents are given. So who’s the best reformer?

Unlike a lot of people, I like Eric Gonzalez. I appreciate that he comes from a community impacted by policing and the criminal “justice” system. But word on the street is that public defenders don’t like him and he has repeatedly failed to come out against some systematic reforms I think are important (bail, discovery rules, etc.) I don’t think he’s bad but I don’t think he’s the best. Anne Swern is better rated by several progressive orgs, has committed to ending cash bail, and wants to reform discovery rules that currently favor prosecutors. She’s also worked as a public defender, at least briefly, which to me proves she has had to understand and defend the humanity of defendants over the course of her career. I feel unsure about endorsing a white woman over a person of color, given the borough and who is most affected by the criminal justice system, but I think she will be a good progressive voice; the 5 Boro Defenders’ #KnowYourDA committee, which is entirely POC, ranked her highly in their guide.  Why not Mark Fleidner? He just hits every button for me: a far-left white guy with a lot of privilege without a lot of proof of a visceral understanding of how it all goes. Also reports show him as mansplaining/whitesplaining Black Lives Matter to Patricia Gatling, a black woman, and just no.

Civil Court Judges: Consuelo Melendez, Isiris Isella Isaac, Ellen E. Edwards, Fredrick Arriaga, and Patria Frias-Colon. I understand, abstractly, the reason why we elect judges. I don’t think we do a good job of it, though. The above slate is suggested by my genius friend Jen Abrams: (http://mailchi.mp/e46598afcde0/dont-forget-to-vote-on-tuesday-sept-12). She does her own endorsements, including straight SENDING OUT A QUESTIONNAIRE this year, and I trust her judgement. You should trust her judgement too. She goes a lot more into it at the above link, including the complicated politics around this different, better group of “Independent Democrats.”

District 6 Judge: Rupert Barry by a hair, via Jen as well. I’m going with her endorsement; Elena Baron is also a star in the race. I think we’d do well either way.

City Council Races other than my own: I haven’t paid much attention to the other races, for the most part, but people I trust have - Make the Road NYC, the Arab-American Association of NY, friends who pay attention, Tenants PAC. If you want to vote by endorsements, here’s a big list from the Gotham Gazette. But if you don’t, or you just want someone to tell you what to do, here are the few races where I feel I know enough to weigh in.

District 2: Carlina Rivera

District 5: Patrick Bobilin

District 6: Mel Wymore

District 8: Diana Ayala

District 35: Ede Fox

District 38: Carlos Menchaca

District 39: Brad Lander

District 43: Rev. Khader El-Yateem

City Council District 40: Brian Cunningham, but I really really like Pia Raymond too. This was really hard. Mathieu Eugene, bless his heart, is a waste of space and we deserve better. But he’s a popular incumbent with a strong base, and sadly the race had several challengers which will likely split the opposition vote. For me, it really came down to Brian Cunningham vs. Pia Raymond. Both Cunningham and Raymond have been around the block; Cunningham has been coming up the neighborhood Democratic machine and Raymond has been on the community board and Nostrand Avenue Merchant’s Association. I think they both are smart about policing, housing, participatory budgeting - my gut is that Raymond is a little more conservative than Cunningham, but I also think that’s generational. So why Cunningham? I like that he has the Stonewall Dems’ endorsement, although neither of them talk much about queer issues. I have heard a ton of stories about him showing up places (block parties, neighborhood group meetings), although I am at the same time wary of the fact that I am much more connected to the white side of the neighborhood than the various POC sides and I might be missing Raymond’s doing the same. I appreciate what I have heard from several people about his wonkiness, including nuance around both housing rights in the neighborhood and participatory budgeting. If I could somehow vote for both of them and get them both on the council I’d feel great about that. Buttttt, in the end, it’s Cunningham by a hair.

[heypoliticsdad]

Dreamhost Fighting Justice Department Subpoena

Yes, kids. The Justice Department subpoenaed visitor records for disruptj20.org, one of the many, many websites that rose up to (you guessed this) coordinate protests around the inauguration. Dreamhost is fighting it in court (love you, Dreamhost!) and we’ll see how it stands up; there’s a second hearing scheduled for August 18th. Hold this space for more. Lest you wonder if it’s like that, it’s really like that.

[heypoliticsdad]

Now kids, sometimes autocorrect makes assumptions. Right now, Google is assuming I don't know what fontgate is, because it thinks I'm one of *those* Americans. Did you know Calibri might bring the government of Pakistan down? No? Well, read up. Don't let Google be right about you.

[heypoliticsdad]

Now kids - and I'm speaking especially to you, my masc of center kids - when someone starts saying things that objectify a woman and reduce her to her appearance, remember: you need to speak up. Ms. Macron is perfectly able to handle herself, but it's nice to be a friend.

[heypoliticsdad]

OK kids, so, if your family isn't from the region, you probably forgot about the Korean War. I know, I know, you learned about back in 10th grade, but that was the year you were experimenting with getting high (of course I knew; your eyes were always so red) and so you probably don't remember. Curious why North Korea is so mad at the United States? Curious about the sources of tension in the region? This is worth a watch.

[heypoliticsdad]

Politics Dad says: making fun of someone is a bad way to solve a problem.

[heypoliticsdad]

Notes from a Poll Worker: Count Them Ballots Edition

Well here we are again with round two: what happens after the polls close.

So, starting around 8-8:30pm, the guys who were our fearless leaders came over and started circulating the forms we were supposed to sign, in the name of pre-working. There was a lot of emphasis on getting things done ahead of time, which makes sense - remember, at 8pm we’ve already been there for 15 hours, and the coordinators even longer. Everyone wants to go home and I assure you that the voters rolling in at 8:59:45 are disliked even more than the ones who show up at 6:00:01.

In a system so byzantine, you can imagine how intense the audits are. Tabulating the vote was the most intense reconciliation process I have ever conducted. As election table workers, we have to account for every ballot we have given out. So we add up how many ballots we gave out total, and that number better total the number of ballots scanned + the number of voided ballots voided by voter error + the number voided by pollworker error (oops they mentioned tracking that during training but I sure didn’t remember it) + the number of special types of ballots and so help you lord that needs to equal the number you gave out. For the primary, there were three ballots - the Democratic primary, the GOP primary, and a special second ballot. We had to come out exactly for all 3.

I have spent years reconciling accounting at various jobs down to the penny. I am really good at this. And I was off by 2 Democratic ballots. Where did they go? No idea. The guy in charge said it was fine. We take those totals and it all goes in a little pamphlet, the Election Forms Booklet. This booklet is the sleeper master of the election universe, although it looks like nothing - it’s your timecard, your returns log, the number of the seals sealing your cart, all the little details. It is the audit log, essentially.

This form goes one place, the seals we use to close the carts goes another, we seal and sign envelopes, we put some things in the Grey Transport Envelope and seal that, other things in the Orange ED Return Bag, still others in the ED Supply Cart, we seal the cart, and then we go to put everything into the forms booklet only to be reminded that we already signed everything and the coordinator will handle filling it out from there, it’s so late, we can just go home.

And we do, because like every hourly worker, we are not in a position to push back at the boss, not even and perhaps especially to challenge them on a principle as large and as noble as THE FATE OF DEMOCRACY IS IN OUR HANDS SO WE HAVE TO DO IT RIGHT. The guys running our site were rad - kind, smart, fair, generous with the breaks, and I do not say this to denigrate them or call them out specifically. The poll workers I was working with were smart, awesome people who were not necessarily very good at arithmetic, and it took a while to close things up. It should be noted that these are not the things that control the vote itself - shutting down the scanners involves a whole other process, even MORE intensely detailed.

Fundamentally, again, it is about incredibly rigorous checks and balances coming up against a system run by humans who have been working for 17 hours and awake even more than that. And this human element is in fact the check on this new and computerized system - that the number of ballots accounted for equals the number of ballots used; the scanner counts equal the ballots used; the scanner counts on the tape equal the scanner counts on the PMD (Poll Memory Device?) and so on and so forth. But again, these humans are balancing an almost ridiculous number of rules and subrules, and going through the checklists as we are presented with them requires working much, much slower than time actually allows. It is very easy to miss steps, or to go with your supervisor’s judgement, even though the whole training manual makes it very clear THE FATE OF DEMOCRACY IS IN OUR HANDS.

There are a million more pieces to this and I have a lot more thoughts that I’ve been trying to write; I imagine more to follow in this series.