Tag: elections

Michigan voters resoundingly reject tax increase proposed by Republicans

1:13 pm

The rage builds: Eighty percent of Michigan voters rejected a tax increase proposed by their Republican governor and legislature and backed by a gigantic almost $10 million advertising campaign.

The colossal defeat of Prop 1 is even more intriguing since it had the backing of both the Republican and Democratic parties as well as the governor, who campaigned for it in the final weeks. With a few exceptions the mainstream news media also overwhelmingly favored the measure, with the state’s three statewide print and online news sources (Detroit Free Press, The Detroit News, MLive) all calling for a “yes” vote.

The defeat came despite the fact that a scattered opposition was massively outspent. According the most recent reports the election committee Safe Votes Yes raised $9.6 million to get the measure passed, mostly coming from road builders but also from other special interests that appeared to have no direct stake in the outcome, such as large utilities (who have separate issues of their own pending before the current Legislature).

“The distance between voters on one side and the mainstream media and political class on the other is both startling and unprecedented,” said Jack McHugh, the legislative analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, in an email. “According to MIRS News the measure passed in just three communities, two of which (Ann Arbor and East Lansing) are considered by many to be elitist and disconnected from the mass of Michigan voters (Kalamazoo was the third community).”

The proposition was pushed by a Republican governor and a Republican legislature. The voters bluntly told them to go to hell. I ask: When will Republicans wake up and start doing what the voters want, rather than what they think the media, their liberal friends, and their big money backers demand? The public wants government trimmed, cut back, shrunk, and reorganized to be more efficient. They do not want more taxes, as they know that the government is already taking far more money from them than it really needs.

Elections like this tell me that the 2016 election is likely to be a shocking surprise to our society’s elite community.

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Feel the middle-class rage

11:43 am

While this story is about the testimony of a mother before the Arkansas State Board of Education, objecting to Common Core standards and demanding that they be changed or abandoned, I think its most important take-away is watching the intelligent and thoughtful anger she expresses.

I have included the video of her testimony below the fold. Anyone who thinks the tea party movement is dead needs to watch this video to find out how wrong they are. This woman speaking as a representative of over a thousand parents and teachers, all of whom object to Common Core, the federally-imposed education standards. She also reveals the increasing level of rage and anger that is percolating in the general public over the incompetent and destructive dictates that are being imposed on them by bureaucrats in Washington.

The Republican leadership in the House and Senate might think they were elected to keep the government open, but this woman’s testimony tells me that the mid-term elections were a demand by the public for the Republicans to shut it down.

And they better do it soon, because the rage is continuing to build. If our elected officials don’t respond to it soon the very system of democracy on which our society was built — founded on the principle that government is the servant to the people — is going to become very seriously threatened.

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What every conservative politican should answer when asked a stupid gotcha question by a journalist

10:30 pm

“You want my opinion? My opinion is that you’re not very good at your job and your boss should send someone else to do this. If you want to know about what they said, go ask them. If you’d like to talk to me about the issues or anything I said, feel free. Next question.” [emphasis in originial]

Read it all. It makes perfect sense, to demand better from these reporters. And it works! I remember listening to Margaret Thatcher as she did this to an NPR reporter back around the time of the Falklands War. Very quickly the reporter got focused on asking intelligent questions, and the interview for Thatcher turned out to be resounding success.

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Ted Cruz introduces bill outlawing political targeting of citizens.

11:00 am

Link here.

As Jazz Shaw notes at the link, “You mean that wasn’t already illegal?” Though Shaw does carefully analyze the political ramifications of making Democrats vote for or against these bills, ramifications that will likely weaken the power-hungry in government, my first thought when I read this was instead, “This is more evidence why I am increasingly not a big fan of Ted Cruz.”

You see, how does one really increase freedom and weaken the power of government by passing another law? You really don’t. This law might be politically effective, but if it should happen to pass and Obama actually sign it, all it will accomplish is create another law that can be used as a wedge to pry more power into government.

Cruz does this kind of showboating a lot. Though I almost always agree with him, the behavior illustrates why a senator is not the best choice for President. We don’t need a showboat right now. We need a conservative President who understands how to run a hostile executive branch even as he cuts its power and influence and still wins elections.

Sounds like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker or Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, doesn’t it? Both have the right qualifications, winning elections even as they were being slimed by the left wing union, media, and Democratic Party attack machine for actually cutting the power of these power-hungry groups.

As a senator Ted Cruz does not have and cannot get that track record. Worse, he has made me doubt his tea party sincerity with his talk of rebuilding NASA and going to Mars. Instead of trimming the waste in NASA, it appears he wants to keep feeding the Texas pork that NASA sends his way.

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More penalties from Obamacare

9:42 am

Finding out what’s in it: The Obamacare penalty for not having health insurance is about to triple.

Uninsured Americans who decide not to enroll will face a penalty of $325 per person, more than tripling the $95 penalty those who did not enroll had to pay the first time around. Children under the age of 18 will be fined $162.50. The maximum amount an uninsured family will be penalized is $975 under the flat-rate method. “The penalty is meant to incentivize people to get coverage,” Laura Adams, senior analyst of InsuranceQuotes.com, told CBS News. “This year, I think a lot of people are going to be in for a shock.”

Nor is this the end. According to how the law was written, the penalties will continue to rise in the coming years. Just in time for the next election in fact!

When the law first passed I had said that Obamacare was going to be an election millstone around the necks of Democrats for years, and that is definitely turning out to be true. Expect more Democratic election losses in future elections, unless they change course and join the Republicans in getting this law repealed.

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Focusing on strategy instead of substance

6:14 pm

This article, about the back room maneuvers by both political parties leading up to last week’s election, has been making the rounds on all the political websites. Called a “must-read, vivid piece”, it reveals all the strategies, mistakes, and childish in-fighting that took place during the campaign, the kind of stuff that makes many people consider politicians such a lower form of life.

I am normally not interested in these smoke-filled backroom stories as I care a lot more about what politicians do when they are in office. This is why I didn’t read the article until today, two days after it was published and after I had seen it quoted in maybe a dozen other political articles about the election.

Having read it I have to agree it is worthwhile reading, but my main take-away is that its focus on the campaign strategies and maneuvers by politicians of both parties epitomizes all that is wrong with modern political journalism as well as the interests too many of its readers. Only once did the article hint at the actual issues crucial to the election, when it summed up the Republican strategy near the beginning of the article:

From the outset of the campaign, Republicans had a simple plan: Don’t make mistakes, and make it all about Obama, Obama, Obama. Every new White House crisis would bring a new Republican ad. And every Democratic incumbent would be attacked relentlessly for voting with the president 97 or 98 or 99 percent of the time.

That’s it. That’s the only hint at real substance in this whole very long and detailed article.

For you see, the election was about Obama and his fumbling incompetence. It was about the policies he and his Democratic supporters in Congress had foisted on the nation. And it was about how those policies have been a disaster for ordinary people all across the nation.

All the games that these politicians play against each other during campaigns really isn’t that important. It might tell you something about their character, but what really matters is what these guys do, when they are in office. Keep that in mind when the next election rolls around, because I guarantee that the politicians and the journalists who write about them are not going to be interested in talking about that. It would be far too embarrassing.

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Why the polls underestimate Tuesday’s Republican sweep

10:23 am

The answer is very simple, at least according to this particular pollster:

The American people cannot stand Barack Obama. They dislike his policies. They dislike his “above it all” demeanor. And they rose out of their chairs and off their couches and came out in droves to defeat anyone who they thought was even remotely supportive of him or his administration.

Yep, I was one of those dumb pollster/analysts who thought that no president in a midterm election could possibly be as big of a drag on candidates as was Obama. But I was wrong. He wasn’t just a drag; he was his own voter turnout machine for Republicans.

How could this be? How could the voters be so blind? Don’t they realize that Barack Obama cares!?

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Taking a broad look at Tuesday’s Republican sweep

6:33 pm

I don’t have much to add to the numerous reports about yesterday’s election by political pundits far more qualified than I. The Republicans won a big landslide victory yesterday, not only gaining control of the Senate, but winning more seats than expected. They also won more seats in the House than expected, widening their majority there to numbers not seen since the 1920s. In addition, they made it a grand slam by winning a plethora of governorships — many in Democratic stronghold states such as Massachusetts, Illinois, and Maryland — as well as taking control of more state legislatures than ever before.

What matters to me, however, is not the election but what this new Republican majority does with its majority. In the past, 1994 and 2000, they more or less squandered the opportunity to rein in government. In 1994, they allowed the government to grow but at a rate below the rate of inflation so that in a few years this resulted in a balanced budget and surpluses. But the government still grew in power and size. In 2000 they did not even do this, allowing government spending and yearly deficits to balloon, even though they had a Republican president who would have supported them if they had wanted to cut the size of government.

Thus, while I am hopeful, I also remain very skeptical about what will happen in the next few years. In order to prove to me and the conservative base that elected them that these Republicans mean what they say when they say they want to shrink the size of government, they are going to have to prove it with real action. They are going to have show us that they really do want to repeal Obamacare. They are going to have to show us that they really do want to gain some control over the border. And they are going to have to show us that they really do want to cut the budget and get it balanced.

I understand that the Democrats in the Senate and Obama can still block many of these initiatives, but too often Republicans have used this fact as an excuse to not try at all. This must stop! They must apply strong pressure on these left wing ideologues, make them reveal their politics for all to see by forcing them to veto or block these initiatives. Only by demonstrating a resolve to rein in government will anyone believe the Republicans when they claim that’s what they want to do. And by doing so they will also simultaneously expose the Democrats as the left wing ideologues that they are.

Making these points can only be for the good, politically.

Two more points, often unstated but fundamental to what elections in the United States represent.
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Video of election machine voter fraud?

11:21 am

Video has finally become available showing a voting machine picking a Democrat when a voter presses the touchscreen for a Republican.

Having been an election judge in Maryland, up until now I have been generally skeptical of this story that has been making the rounds in the past week. It is notoriously easy to accidently press the wrong button on a touchscreen, so hearing that people pressed Republican and got Democrat did not impress me. The story could easily be an example of Republican partisans trying to drum up outrage against Democrats, something I abhor, from either party. I wanted to see actual video.

Well, we’ve got some video now, which I’ve posted below the fold. As the article notes,

The YouTube footage is the first visual report of the alleged problem with the voting machines. The error appears to occur when the voter’s finger is slightly off center in the Republican box, which appears below the Democrat box. It is apparently still possible to vote for the Republican candidate, and it is possible for a vigilant voter to correct the mistake and vote again, but a voter in a hurry might easily register a mistaken vote for the Democrat by mistake and fail to notice. The problem seems to recur throughout the ticket of races. (No test involving a voter trying to choose the Democratic candidate and selecting the Republican instead is shown.)

The footage is still not conclusive, as there are many ways the action could be made to appear worse than it really is, and there is no real proof that this video is of an actual voting machine, in a voting booth.

If true, however, it suggests real voter fraud, as there is no way the machine could have accidently been programmed to misread a finger touch like this. Someone would have had to intentionally calibrated the machine to do this.

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What Cantor’s loss and Graham’s win mean.

12:08 pm

What Cantor’s loss and Graham’s win mean.

I think Trende’s analysis here is the best I’ve seen of this ongoing primary election cycle. These three paragraphs especially pinpoint why things are happening as they are:

We are in a deeply anti-Washington environment, both throughout the country and in the Republican Party in particular. In this environment, representatives who pay insufficient attention to what is going on in their districts are in grave danger of losing. There are two components to this explanation.

First, analysts need to understand that the Republican base is furious with the Republican establishment, especially over the Bush years. From the point of view of conservatives I’ve spoken with, the early- to mid-2000s look like this: Voters gave Republicans control of Congress and the presidency for the longest stretch since the 1920s.

And what do Republicans have to show for it? Temporary tax cuts, No Child Left Behind, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, a new Cabinet department, increased federal spending, TARP, and repeated attempts at immigration reform. Basically, despite a historic opportunity to shrink government, almost everything that the GOP establishment achieved during that time moved the needle leftward on domestic policy. Probably the only unambiguous win for conservatives were the Roberts and Alito appointments to the Supreme Court; the former is viewed with suspicion today while the latter only came about after the base revolted against Harriet Miers.

His second component notes that the politicians who understand this environment win, while those who do not lose. Read the whole thing. It will help clarify not only what has happened but what will happen in the coming months.

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This is how the tea party ends.

9:42 am

This is how the tea party ends.

The Tea Party’s success is not gauged by primaries alone. It’s gauged by how much the Tea Party’s priorities become the Republican Party’s priorities.

The Tea Party’s impact in primaries is largely about putting fear into establishment candidates, whether they knock them off or not. It took them two cycles, but the traditional Republican establishment took the right lessons from the Bennett and Lugar losses. Orrin Hatch spent 2011-12 voting lockstep with Mike Lee. Primary threats made Mike Enzi part of the organizing group for the defund push. Pat Roberts is doing his best to don the winger apparel. Lindsey Graham is trying like mad to re-establish his conservative credentials. Thad Cochran is the exception that proves the rule: it’s no accident that a traditional Washington appropriator who hasn’t modified his ways is the most vulnerable GOP Senator this cycle. So if establishment Republicans understand that they are vulnerable in primaries, and have to pretend to be Tea Partiers when they’re in cycle, is that a sign that the Tea Party is dead – or a sign that it’s had a significant political impact?

The tea party movement has won because it is now driving the political debate, in both parties. Republicans want to look like tea partiers, and even Democrats are shaping their election campaigns with tea party issues in mind.

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One liberal pundit proposes that Democrats embrace Obamacare in the coming election campaign.

11:51 am

One liberal pundit proposes that Democrats embrace Obamacare in the coming election campaign.

Here’s a heretical idea. Rather than parsing the individual elements of the law, and trying to persuade voters on an à la carte basis, what about raising the stakes and defending the reform in its entirety as a historic effort to provide affordable health-care coverage to tens of millions of hard-working Americans who otherwise couldn’t afford it? Instead of shying away from the populist and redistributionist essence of the reform, which the White House and many Democrats in Congress have been doing since the start, it’s time to embrace it.

I hope they do it. For one thing, it would be refreshing to see Democrats actually campaigning honestly for once on what they actually believe in! For another, they would get creamed, because their fantasies about how wonderful Obamacare is have nothing to do with the horrible reality being experienced right now by millions of Americans.

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A district that the Democrats won by a big margin in 2013 voted as strongly for a Republican in a special local election on Monday.

1:57 am

I wonder if this means anything: A district that the Democrats won by a big margin in 2013 voted big for a Republican in a special local election on Monday.

The Democrat in this district loudly ran in support of Obamacare. He not only lost bad, the Republican came with a hair of winning the most liberal urban areas in Norfolk City.

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The voters in bankrupt San Bernardino this week elected tea party-type individuals as their mayor and city council.

9:25 am

The voters in bankrupt San Bernardino this week elected tea party-type individuals as their mayor and city council, firing the pro-union old guard that had put the city in debt.

Tuesday’s results follow elections in November, when the balance of power in San Bernardino’s seven-member council shifted dramatically away from an old guard reluctant to take on unions and reduce pension obligations. After Tuesday night, six of seven council members are now on record as saying they want to explore reducing San Bernardino’s pensions, along with Davis, the new mayor, and a new city attorney, Gary Saenz.

This is good news, as it is further proof that elections matter and that the citizenry can make a difference, if it simply pays attention and votes accordingly.

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The 13 Democratic Senators up for re-election in 2014 who voted for Obamacare, both in 2009 and last month.

10:43 pm

The 13 Democratic senators up for re-election in 2014 who voted for Obamacare, both in 2009 and last month.

Here are the Dirty Baker’s Dozen:

  • Mark Begich (Alaska)
  • Mark Pryor (Arkansas)
  • Mark Udall (Colorado)
  • Mary Landrieu (Louisiana)
  • Al Franken (Minnesota)
  • Max “Trainwreck” Baucus (Montana)
  • Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire)
  • Tom Udall (New Mexico)
  • Kay Hagan (North Carolina)
  • Jeff Merkeley (Oregon)
  • Tim Johnson (South Dakota)
  • Mark Warner (Virginia)
  • Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia)

It is time for these politicians to find other work.

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Why I spent $50 at a political fundraiser today

6:54 pm

Jonathan Paton

Two days ago Ralph Kayser, head of the Tucson Tea Party, sent out an email announcing that the Republican Congressional candidate for my district, Jonathan Paton (pictured on the right), was going to hold a luncheon fundraiser today. Ralph wanted to know if anyone was interested in attending.

Normally, I detest giving money to politicians, from either party. I consider them to be the worst form of bloodsuckers. They don’t produce any wealth, cannot create jobs no matter how hard they try, add restrictions to our lives that squelch freedom, and generally only serve to squeeze tax dollars from us all for wasteful government projects, money that we would better left in our own hands to use as we each saw fit. And then they go on the campaign trail, begging for more money so that they can beat the other guy.

Like I say, bloodsuckers.

Nonetheless, to me this election is different, in the same way the 2010 election was different.
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More than a thousand pastors have resolved to defy the IRS and preach politics from the pulpit before the election.

10:36 pm

Good for them: More than a thousand pastors have resolved to defy the IRS and preach politics from the pulpit before the election.

“The purpose is to make sure that the pastor — and not the IRS — decides what is said from the pulpit,” Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the group, told FoxNews.com. “It is a head-on constitutional challenge.” Stanley said pastors attending the Oct. 7 “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” will “preach sermons that will talk about the candidates running for office” and then “make a specific recommendation.” The sermons will be recorded and sent to the IRS.

“We’re hoping the IRS will respond by doing what they have threatened,” he said. “We have to wait for it to be applied to a particular church or pastor so that we can challenge it in court. We don’t think it’s going to take long for a judge to strike this down as unconstitutional.”

First of all, the IRS has always enforced this oppressive regulation very selectively. Black churches for example have been allowed to preach Democratic Party politics for decades, without any threats from the IRS.

Second, the regulation really does make no sense. What right does the IRS have deny these religious leaders the freedom to participate in the political debate? Free speech is free speech. To threaten their tax status just because they express their opinions for or against a candidate seems quite oppressive, the kind of thing petty dictators do when they want to shut their opponents up.

In fact, when you think about it, the regulation’s basic consequence was to shut these religious leaders up. Much like the “equal time” regulation that was used for decades to shut up conservative thought on the radio and television airwaves, this IRS regulation has effectively banned religion from the political process. Our Constitution might forbid Congress from setting up an official religion, but it does not forbid people of religion from using their moral teachings to try to influence elections. As I say, free speech is free speech. They are citizens like everyone else, and have the right to express their ideas and to try to persuade people. And in a free society, no one is obliged to listen to them or be convinced by them,

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FAA officials in Seattle have been accused of pressuring employees to vote for Democratic candidates in the November election

7:05 pm

FAA officials in Seattle have been accused of pressuring employees to vote for Democratic candidates in the November election, a violation of the law.

“We write respectfully to request that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) initiate an investigation into Deputy Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety John Hickey and Deputy Director of Flight Standards Field Operations Ray Towles,” Epstein wrote. “We have been informed that during mandatory meetings of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, Mr. Hickey and Mr. Towles encouraged employees to vote for Democratic politicians in upcoming elections, explaining their jobs may very well depend on a Democratic victory.”

The encouraging thing about this story is that it appears that the FAA is taking this allegation very seriously and appears willing to do something about it.

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The just released Pew poll which shows Obama with a 10 point lead oversampled Democrats by 19 points.

3:23 pm

Here we go again: The just released Pew poll which shows Obama with a 10 point lead oversampled Democrats by 19 points!

This is disgraceful work, and should discredit Pew as a pollster. There is no chance in hell that Democrats are going to outvote Republicans by 19 points come November. They didn’t even do that in 2008, when Obama won handily. For Pew to release a poll with a sampling that badly skewed smacks of incompetence, fraud, political manipulation, or a willingness to deny reality.

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“It’s all up to the voters now.”

10:31 am

“It’s all up to the voters now.”

It always has been up to the voters. Sadly, my baby-boom generation has too often turned to the courts to absolve themselves from responsibility for making tough decisions as voters. With Obamacare, that is no longer possible. If the public wants to get rid of this turkey of a law, which every poll says they do, the public had better come out to the polls in November and vote for candidates who are in favor of its repeal.

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The empty bench of the Democratic Party.

4:03 pm

The empty bench of the Democratic Party.

In comparing the potential Presidential candidates from both the Democrat and Republican parties, this article leaves one with the impression that the future is definitely not with the Democratic Party. As admitted by its own membership, its leadership is old, it has very few candidates with national stature, and the depth of the party is shallower than a pond in Tucson in summer. Meanwhile, the Republicans have many young new faces that already have national standing.

Though the article likes to blame this situation on internal forces within the parties, I see it as the result of actual elections and the circumstances of the time. The Democrats have increasingly appeared bankrupt when it comes to dealing with today’s fundamental problems, especially the out-of-control spending of government at all levels. Meanwhile, Republican candidates, especially those associated with the tea party movement, have come forward with some fresh, reasonable, and thoughtful ideas for dealing with these problems.

Faced with such a choice, it is not surprising that the Republicans have a deep bench compared to the Democrats.

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A new poll in Nevada repeats what was found in North Carolina: Obama appears to be losing a significant percentage of the black vote.

9:34 am

A new poll in Nevada repeats what was found in North Carolina: Obama appears to be losing a significant percentage of the black vote.

Both polls could be noise. If true, however, the Democrats cannot win. Without 95% of the black vote they just do not garner enough votes from any other group to win.

And if this is true, it will also mean that the racism in the black community might finally be abating. Voting for a candidate merely because of skin color is still bigotry, no matter what the skin color. If the black community is finally gaining the ability to see past skin color it will be a very good thing.

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