Archive for Democrats
Exit Shuler
Posted by: | CommentsRep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) will not run for reelection after three terms in office.
“This was not an easy decision,” Shuler said. “However, I am confident that it is the right decision. It is a decision I have weighed heavily over the past few months. I have always said family comes first, and I never intended to be a career politician.”
Is Our Democratic Centrists Learning?
Posted by: | CommentsRemember when Minnesota’s Gov. Mark Dayton was branded “too liberal to win? That was then. This is now, from PPP:
January 27, 2012
Dayton sees strong approval in MinnesotaRaleigh, N.C. – Minnesota DFL Governor Mark Dayton holds a +19 job approval rating, with 53% of voters approving of his job performance as Governor and 34% disapproving. His support is fueled by near-unanimous approval among Democrats (85-5) and strong approval among Independents (51-33).
Also today from the Star Tribune, Dayton blasts GOP senators as ‘unfit to govern’ after they voted his appointee to the public utilities commission — a clean energy advocate:
Open political warfare erupted between Republicans in the Legislature and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton on Monday with the Senate’s decision to oust a top Dayton appointee from office.The Senate’s 37-29 party-line vote rejecting former state Sen. Ellen Anderson as chair of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) prompted a stern rebuke from Dayton, in which he reminded Senate Republicans of their “leadership scandals” and pronounced them “unfit to govern.”
[...]
A quietly furious Dayton said at a news conference after the vote that “a very good person, a very dedicated public servant and an excellent chair of the Public Utilities Commission was wrongly maligned and cruelly rejected today by Republican senators, who showed once again they are unfit to govern this state. You would think that after their leadership scandals, which caused them to replace all their leaders last month, they would behave themselves for at least a little while.”
Not bad for a liberal.
Rabbit Punch
Posted by: | CommentsWow! That’s terrific bunny …
New York Times : A Mortgage Investigation
The moment Obama mentioned a panel to investigate banks, I thought: “I hear you. Now show me.” The panel is to include New York AG Eric Schneiderman, a thorn in the side to an administration that seems keen on sweeping the whole thing under the rug. A attempt at co-opting him? The Times thinks so.
There is good reason to be skeptical. To date, federal civil suits over mortgage wrongdoing have been narrowly focused and, at best, ended with settlements and fines that are a fraction of the profits made during the bubble. There have been no criminal prosecutions against major players. Justice Department officials say that it reflects the difficulty of proving fraud — and not a lack of prosecutorial zeal. That is hard to swallow, given the scale of the crisis and the evidence of wrongdoing from private litigation, academic research and other sources.
Fiscal Times :
After the Layoff: Congrats on Your New, Worse Job
The good news is the unemployment rate is slowly ticking down – from 9 percent in October 2011 to 8.5 percent in December. Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 200,000 in December, and hiring was up in retail, hospitality, professional services and health care.Yet, for the majority of U.S. workers, average wages have remained stagnant for decades, and median household income dipped during the recession, declining 6.4 percent between 2007 and 2010. According to a study released in December by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, just 7 percent of those who were let go during the recession have matched previous income. A little over half reported taking a pay cut – and of those, 29 percent took a reduction in salary by 30 percent or higher. To top off the bad news, 30 percent of the reemployed percent took a reduction in benefits.
Digby: Zombies are eating election officials brains
Not that this will stop the wingnuts from their crusade but it should. Turns out that the South Carolina zombies weren’t zombies after all.
What Digby said.
Brownie Newman for Buncombe County Commission
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Look what landed in my inbox this morning! Brownie’s skills, talents, leadership, and effectiveness are going to move Buncombe County in the right direction.
Brownie Newman today announced his plans to run for Buncombe County Commission. Newman has served two terms as a member of Asheville City Council and has served as Mayor Pro Tem since 2009. Newman did not run for re-election to City Council in 2011. His last official day as a member of City Council is Dec. 6.
“As a member of Asheville City Council, I tried to set ambitious, achievable goals for our community. I am proud that we have established Asheville as a leader for energy independence and green jobs, promoted the growth of locally owned businesses and made it clear that we are an inclusive community that supports equal rights for all our citizens,” said Newman.
Newman cited these as some of the key accomplishments on City Council:
Established Asheville as a leader for clean, renewable energy:
- Asheville City Council committed the city to reduce its carbon emissions by 80% and to require all new municipal building to LEED Gold standards.
- Asheville replaced its old, polluting diesel buses with a new fleet including clean, quiet hybrid buses and is replacing its city street lights with LED bulbs, which will save taxpayers $650,000 a year in lower utility bills.
- Newman helped secure funding for Asheville Green Opportunities, to provide job training and mentoring for young people from low income neighborhoods so they can develop work experience in the new clean energy economy.
Supported job creation, locally owned businesses and working families:
- Asheville worked with Mountain BizWorks to create a revolving loan fund to provide capital to local citizens to start their own business.
- Asheville partnered with Buncombe County to bring Linamar to Asheville, who will create at least 400 or more good paying manufacturing jobs and put the property formerly occupied by Volvo back into productive uses.
- Asheville held the line on property tax rate while investing more than $35 million to fix our long neglected water infrastructure.
Along with other members of Council, Newman supported a domestic partnership policy to extend equal workplace rights to municipal employees. The policy assures city workers will receive the same compensation for doing their job, regardless of sexual orientation.
“During a time when state legislators are trying to change North Carolina’s Constitution to discriminate against our citizens, I am proud that our community is standing up for equality,” said Newman.
In addition to his work on City Council, Newman is also one of the partners at FLS Energy, a local solar utility company. Since Newman joined FLS Energy in 2008, the company has grown from eight employees to more than eighty. Newman serves as Vice-President and Project Finance Director. He is one of the four members on the FLS board of directors.
Newman will be running in a new two-member County Commission district that includes most of Asheville and the central part of Buncombe County. Long-time County Commissioner Bill Stanley has announced he will not seek re-election.
Holly Jones is currently a commissioner from this district who plans to run for re-election. Newman and Jones previously served together on Asheville City Council and the two plan to support one another for County Commission.
“Holly has done a great job as County Commissioner. I am proud to lend my full support to her re-election campaign and am honored to have her support.” said Newman. Holly Jones added, “I am excited that Brownie is running for County Commission. He has contributed a lot to the City Council over the past eight years and he will be an effective member of the Commission.”
The Newman campaign will hold its kick-off event in January. Details to follow.
To learn more about Newman for County Commission, go to http://www.facebook.com/BrownieNewman
http://twitter.com/brownienewman
Patsy Keever vs. Terry Bellamy?
Posted by: | CommentsFrom Patsy Keever’s Facebook page:
Yes, I am still planning to run for Congress in the 10th District against Patrick McHenry if the redistricting maps hold and I am drawn out of my NC House district. Since Terry Bellamy announced, I’ve had so many questions from people who knew I was planning to run that I figured I better let everyone know. Her announcement doesn’t change my plans.
Quadruple Down Economics: Serious or CYA?
Posted by: | CommentsWith the congressional supercommittee expected to fail in its attempt to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts over the next decade by next week, another group in Congress is urging even deeper cuts.
WASHINGTON — With the deadline for a supercommittee deficit-reduction deal closing in, more than 150 members of Congress from both political parties made a renewed push Wednesday for a $4 trillion package.
But that doesn’t appear likely to happen, since the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is struggling even to come up with its mandated goal of at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.
As one of the organizers of the effort, NC-11′s usually media-shy Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) has been making the rounds on the Beltway media circuit this week, urging the committee “to be brave and go big.”
The show of fiscal breast beating from 150 members of Congress from both political parties is supposed to convince the public that Congress is serious about pursuing budget austerity. Without raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) told reporter John King, even though two thirds of Americans support that. Appearing with Shuler, Chambliss suggested that more corporate tax cuts would allow America to grow its way out of debt. Call it Trickle Down 3.0.
(Fool me thrice, shame on who?)
But if the supercommittee is already poised to fail and if, as some congressmen have suggested, the dreaded triggers may be “reconsidered” if the committee fails to deliver, wouldn’t it be strategic to have a high-minded-sounding stand on principle to wave before voters in the next election?
If the committee fails to deliver next week, you’ve proven your austerity bona fides by publicly pressing for deeper, less politically viable cuts than the smaller package the supers could not agree on.
Alternately, if in a clutch move the committee does deliver an agreement next week, you can vote against it and explain that it was too small to boost the confidence of “the markets.”
In Washington, that’s a win-win.
A Generation Indicted
Posted by: | CommentsIn the Washington Post over the weekend, a 31 year-old Penn State graduate’s indictment of the preceding generation:
They have failed us, over and over and over again.
I speak not specifically of our parents — I have two loving ones — but of the public leaders our parents’ generation has produced. With the demise of my own community’s two most revered leaders, Sandusky and Joe Paterno, I have decided to continue to respect my elders, but to politely tell them, “Out of my way.”
They have had their time to lead. Time’s up. I’m tired of waiting for them to live up to obligations.
The Iraq war veteran is from the generation that turned out in force in 2008 to elect Barack Obama in hopes of ending the misfeasance of the Bush administration and the corrupt system that birthed it. They were hoping, waiting, for something different, better, but naive enough perhaps to believe the people in charge could repair the damage done by other people in charge.
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” became somewhat of a cliche during that campaign. Now maybe, we are seeing signs that they finally believe it.
Party of the Rich
Posted by: | CommentsThere is little you don’t already know in Rolling Stone ’s “How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich.” Still, having the narrative recounted in detail makes a timely reference for those headed toward that Thanksgiving dinner with conservative relatives. When faced with ballooning deficits during the Reagan administration, saner Republicans than todays’ reversed course to staunch the red ink. Sen. Alan Simpson: “Reagan raised taxes 11 times in eight years!” All that has disappeared down the memory hole.
The article is flush with words of caution from Republican officials — Paul O’Neill, Larry Lindsey, George Voinovich, Bruce Bartlett, David Stockman, Lincoln Chaffee — who question policies that resulted in the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression. According to Chafee, “The wreckage was left by Dick Cheney, Grover Norquist and the gang … This was their doing.”
Not to absolve complicit Democrats, Rolling Stone provides a sidebar featuring five Senate Democrats that lent the Party of the Rich a hand: Chuck Schumer (NY), Ben Nelson (NE), Joe Manchin (WV), Mary Landrieu (LA), and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan.
Asheville City Council Election Thread
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Lots of scuttlebutt over the last few days.
CIBO leader Chris Peterson sent out an attack mailer telling Asheville to “STOP Cecil!”, perhaps not understanding that Cecil isn’t actually running this cycle. He used a photoshopped image of a smiling Cecil wearing a t-shirt that reads, “Unbalanced”, and urged voters to cast their ballots for Mark Cates and Jan Davis.
Jan Davis, gentleman that he is, says this at his Facebook page,
“I just became aware of a mailer linking me with Mark Cates. Though Mark is a worthy candidate, I have no interest in being part of a slate. In fact, I have no interest in being part of anyone’s slate. I have put forward a clean above board campaign and am most unhappy with being included in this mailing.”
Mark Cates is linked again with the right wing due to donations made to the Tea Party Republican group Buncombe Forward. For a guy who claimed he wanted to “strike a blow from within” by getting elected to City Council and who called our city “enemy territory”, he sure spends a lot of time saying how non-partisan he intends to be!
I’m pretty sure that Cates is the only candidate for City Council who couldn’t ever be arsed to actually vote in a City Council election.
Marc Hunt, by way of contrast, continues to draw support from the entire political spectrum as folks see that his approach to problem-solving is the one that’s truly inclusive and considerate.
Unaffiliated Council Member Bill Russell, who was a registered Republican until just recently, is supporting Cates, Davis, and Hunt. Cecil Bothwell, along with PARC, is supporting Gray, Hunt, and Pelly. The Mayor has endorsed Davis. Esther’s endorsed Gray, Hunt, and Davis. Brownie’s endorsed Hunt and Davis. I’ve endorsed Hunt.
What’s your sense of the race, Hooligans? Did you vote yet? I hope you’re planning to get all your friends, families, and colleagues to the polls on Tuesday. Big turnouts make for better results.
Short Attention Span Theater presents: Repatriation Tax Holiday 2
Posted by: | CommentsTwo views here on the repatriation holiday. (Sorry about the ad in the first clip.) I had a brief conversation on this Saturday night as Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) was speaking at the Grove Park Inn. Hagan is a the primary sponsor of another repatriation tax holiday. (Because it worked so well when the first one passed under Dubya.) Like she said, we’re all about jobs, jobs, jobs.
Hagan, two Democrats and six Republican senators think they can coax the public into having another run at the jobs football that got yanked away after Bush teed it up in 2004. And within weeks of getting their money, Pfizer, HP and others thanked us by laying off thousands of workers to boost their stock prices. As I wrote in back in August,
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