After what seems like an endless barrage of elected (and wannabe elected) officials in Illinois stepping down due to corruption charges (George Ryan-Jim Ryan-Blago-Cohen), Illinois is trying a new tactic to fill the slot of lieutenant governor nominee. They are holding open auditions, American Idol style, with the Illinois State Democratic Committee serving as the Simon-Paula-Randy. It’s perfectly fitting for the state whose disgraced former Governor Rod Blagojevich is appearing weekly on Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump, Sinbad, and Cyndi Lauper. (It’s true, sadly. But don’t cry for him, Illinois, Celebrity Apprentice is a $#%^@’ golden thing.)

So how do you qualify to be Illinois’ next Lt Gov nominee? There’s no singing involved, but qualifications such as NOT being the scion of a political dynasty, and NOT knowing people in high places may come in handy. So far about 200 people have signed up to give public presentations about their qualifications for the position, and scores more will probably join the applicant pool.

So how did the Lt. Gov. nominee position open up? Scot Lee Cohen was elected in the primary to run as the Democratic Party’s Lt Gov nominee. Then he resigned amidst allegations of domestic battery, unpaid child support and steroid use. I’d say a basic qualification is no drug use and no spousal abuse.

If you think you fit the bill and reside in Illinois, apply online at www.ildems.gov. This is your shot to reform IL government and hey, $135,000/year is nothing to sneeze at.

– Caroline

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Yet another Rahm profile, this time courtesy of the NYTimes Magazine.  It offers up more details about Rahm’s role in health care reform, including this key passage:

After Obama rebuffed Emanuel’s suggestion to trim the scope of his health care bill, Emanuel pushed Baucus to wrap things up. “He told him, ‘You’ve got to decide whether you’re going to be chairman of the Senate Finance Committee,’ ” a Democrat close to the White House recalls. Baucus pushed back, arguing that with a little more time he could still get one or two Republicans and that would keep them from needing every single one of the 60 Democrats. But the August recess, with its Tea Party protests and raucous town-hall meetings, hardened Grassley’s position.

With the White House losing control of the situation, Emanuel summoned fellow aides to his office on the last Sunday in August for a three-hour strategy session. To recapture momentum, they concluded that the president should address a joint session of Congress. Obama agreed with the plan and even insisted they move the date up a week. “He wanted to seize the moment,” an aide recalled.

He did, but not for long. As the debate moved to the Senate floor, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, found himself held up by negotiations with fellow Democrats, as Baucus had feared, because every one was a make-or-break vote to prevent a filibuster. The deals he cut with some senators, especially what Republicans called a “cornhusker kickback” that would have given Senator Ben Nelson’s Nebraska an advantage on Medicaid financing, looked like the business as usual that Obama had vowed to end in Washington. “In the logic of Washington, the Ben Nelson deal made perfect sense,” Axelrod told me. “To the average person, it confirmed their worst suspicions about Washington.”

Jonathan Chait has a fantastic post about the myopia infecting health care reform commentary.  He takes on the Left :

Begin with the left. Without a doubt, Obama’s proposals would leave the health care system far short of what most progressives, myself included, would design in the absence of political constraints. But also without a doubt, it would lift the system far above the status quo that is the only near-term alternative. Here it is, the most dramatic improvement in social justice in at least four decades fighting for its life in the home stretch, and the left can barely be roused to fight for it. The somnolence is far from universal, but on the left there is at least as much passion against health care reform as for it. One of many considerations the vulnerable Democratic moderates who hold reform’s fate in their hands must balance is, in return for the limitless rage of the right, will they get any credit from the left for backing this reform? At the moment when every voice counts, when every ounce of pressure could prove decisive, here is FireDogLake:

The Right:

The right, meanwhile, has whipped itself into a spiraling rage of ideological fanaticism and grotesque partisanship. Republicans have convinced their base that a close replica of the 1993 Senate Republican health care plan and Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts reform is socialism and the end of freedom in America, and as the base spins further out of control, it drags the party still further into scorched-Earth opposition. Thus the Republicans who saw the need for reform were whipsawed one by one by the base and the party leadership into abandoning all negotiations.

And defends the Administration:

In the lonely center of this howling vortex stands the Obama administration, diligently pushing its morally decent technocratic improvements. For this, the salons of establishment thought have given the administration little but grief. Sunday’sWashington Post editorial offers a fair summary of the response from the center. The editorial does allow that Obama’s plan would be ever so slightly preferable to the status quo. The Post editorial page is disappointed that Obama agreed to delay a tax on high-cost health care plans, and to replace the lost short-term revenue with a tax on the rich: “We think that it is not asking too much,” demands the editorial, “given the dire fiscal straits, for Washington to show that it can swallow distasteful medicine while, and not after, it passes out the candy.” Centrist critics have habitually used terms like “candy” and “dessert” to describe the provision of medical care to those currently suffer physical or financial ruin by the lack thereof. It is one of the most morally decrepit metaphors I have ever come across.

As Harold Pollack notes, Obama has successfully fought, over the opposition of lobbyists and Congress, to include numerous delivery reforms, such as an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission, bundled payments, and numerous other cutting edge steps. Centrists give these reforms little or no credit — after all, because they are untried, they have no record and the Congressional Budget Office can’t calculate their potential savings. The CBO can credit things like the excise tax, but the centrists give that little weight as well — after all, Obama agreed to delay the tax in order to let labor contracts adjust. He replaced the lost revenue by extending the Medicare tax to capital income earned by the affluent. But tax revenue from the affluent somehow counts less, too. The Post dismissively calls this “the politically easier option of extending the Medicare tax to unearned income of the wealthy,” as if raising taxes on the most powerful and well-connected people in America, in an atmosphere where one party opposes any taxes on the rich with theological fervor, is the kind of solution that’s just sitting there for the taking.

Also, Ezra Klein ably defends health care reform as progressive:

Five years ago, no one had ever heard the term “public option.” But progressives had been talking about the uninsured for decades. There’s probably no more constant lament in Democratic campaigns than the plight of the nation’s 50 million uninsured. And this bill is, fundamentally, an effort to address that. Once it’s up and running, it spends $200 billion a year to help low-income and working-class Americans afford health-care coverage. About 15 million of those people will become eligible for Medicaid, which is public insurance. Another 15 or so million will get private insurance.

But that private insurance will now be a very different beast: It will have to spend 85 percent or 80 percent (depending on the market) of every premium dollar on care. It won’t be able to reject people for preexisting conditions. It will be in a regulated exchange where it has to justify premium increases and bad behavior or face exclusion. And those exchanges, regulations and subsidies will also create the core structure of a universal health-care system in this country, which should be comforting to progressives who look to the improvements in Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and CHIP and the EITC and know that the history of American social policy is that, in general, we build on our imperfect foundations and make them stronger and fairer over time.

Felix Salmon reports on the “bloggers meeting” with the Treasury Department and the fate of financial regulatory reform.  And in case you missed them, Joshua Green’s recent Tim Geithner profile for The Atlantic, and John Cassidy’s take on the Treasury Sec. for The New Yorker.

Congress, Democratic Party, Economy, Healthcare, Kiren Gopal, Obama Administration | No Comments »

See below for an important message from the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) about the 2010 Census:

APALC Urges API Community – Do Not Throw Away the Census Advance Letter

Next Week, Every U.S. Household Will Receive Important Letter Explaining the 2010 Census

LOS ANGELES, CA – With Census Day quickly approaching on April 1, 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau is preparing to notify households of what to expect in the upcoming weeks, and the community should respond by carefully reading all Census-related materials sent to their households and seeking help if they have any questions about Census 2010.

During the week of March 8, 2010, every household in the United States will receive an “Advance Letter” from the Census Bureau. The letter, which is written in English, will inform household residents that they should be receiving their Census forms on the week of March 15, 2010, and emphasizes the importance of every household completing their forms.  The letter also provides the following short written message in Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian, and Simplified Chinese: “Go to 2010census.gov for help completing your 2010 Census form when it arrives.”

For the nearly one out of 10 individuals in the U.S. who have limited proficiency with the English language, community organizations are fearful that the Advance Letter will not be read. “The Census comes around only once every 10 years, and there is a lot at stake for our communities,” said An Le, Statewide Network Manager of Asian and Pacific Islander 2010 Census Network (API Count), a statewide project anchored by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC).  “The Census is used to determine how much our communities receive in federal funds, and what critical social services that are available for our communities.  But because of fear, distrust, and language and cultural barriers, there are so many Asians and Pacific Islanders who do not get the message about how participating in the Census benefits our communities.  That is why we are urging our community read next week’s Advance Letter – it is critical they understand the importance of the Census forms that will arrive the following week.”

Starting on March 15, Census forms will be mailed out to all households.  The Census Bureau is asking for everyone to complete the forms and mail them back by Census Day, April 1.  Questionnaire Assistance Centers (QACs), operated by Census Bureau staff, will be open in various community locations from March 19 to April 19.  Common QAC locations include libraries, community organizations, churches, and small businesses. At every QAC, there will be official Census Bureau staff available to help individuals complete their forms, oftentimes in languages of the local community.

Anyone who needs assistance or has questions about how to fill out the Census forms can go to a QAC, which can be found on the Census Bureau website at www.2010.census.gov, or they can also contact a local API community-based organization by going to www.apicount.com.

The Census Bureau has an array of materials and services available for communities that do not speak English. There are four categories of help provided by the Census Bureau or through community partnership with the Census Bureau. These four types of assistance are translated forms, toll-free hotlines, language assistance guides, and QACs.

Those who speak Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, and Spanish are able to request Census forms translated into their languages by calling a toll-free number.  For Korean call 866-955-2010, for Chinese call 866-935-2010, for Vietnamese call 866-945-2010, for Spanish call 866-928-2010, and for Russian call 866-965-2010. For those that request a translated form in any of these languages, it is important to save the English form that was originally sent in the mail, in case the translated forms do not arrive on time or get lost.  There is also an English assistance line available at 866-872-6868.

Language assistance guides are available in 59 different languages. These materials are available from the Census 2010 website at www.2010.census.gov.  Materials can also be found for the Asian and Pacific Islander communities at www.apicount.com or www.fillinourfuture.org

Beginning on April 22, Census Bureau workers will be visiting the households that did not complete and mail in their Census forms.  “For every one percent of households that fail to return their Census forms, it costs the federal government $85 billion to send Census Bureau workers out to those households to follow up and assist those households in completing the forms,” said Le.  “During this time of economic crisis, we encourage our community members to complete their forms by April 1 as a way to save taxpayers’ money.  We want to make sure that people are aware of the resources that are available to our Asian American and Pacific Islander communities to complete the Census, and the importance of mailing back Census forms by April 1.  Participating in the Census is a safe and easy way to ensure that our communities count and get counted.”

Demographics, Voting Rights | No Comments »

See below for information about a White House Conference Call on health care reform with David Axelrod, taking place tomorrow at 1:30p.m. EST:

Dear Friend,

Please join for a conference call with Senior Advisor to the President David Axelrod to discuss Health Care Reform.  The conference call will be held this Tuesday, March 9, at 1:30 pm, Eastern Standard Time.  We encourage you to dial in a few minutes early to ensure participation in the entire call.

We also ask that you extend this invitation to health care leaders across community.

Please note:  this call is for background information only and not intended for press purposes.

WHO: David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to the President

WHAT: White House Briefing Call on Health Care Reform

WHEN:  Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 1:30 PM EST

HOW: Please call (800) 398-9386, and ask the operator for the “Health Care Reform Call”

Kalpen Modi

Associate Director

White House Office of Public Engagement

Healthcare, Kiren Gopal, Obama Administration | No Comments »

I realize many of our readers have an urge to skip anything they see on this blog about Texas. “What does a land of secessionist rednecks matter?” you might ask yourself. If you care about education, it means quite a bit. You see, Texas’ textbooks are a national problem.

Before I continue, let’s get this making fun of Texas out of our systems. Yes, one third of Texans believes The Flintstones was a documentary — or at least that humans and dinosaurs roamed the Earth together. Follow that link, there’s a lot of insightful information both positive and negative about people’s vies in Texas.

Gautam warned you about the attempted retconning of United States history to fit the “Christian Nation” mold. But what does that mean? WASP-washed textbooks for social studies and science, of course: “American exceptionalism” (“God bless American and no place else”), minimalization of the importance of non-WASPs and non-males, some form of creationism, possibly including young Earth, drill baby drill, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Says Don McLeroy, a lame-duck member of Texas’ State Board of Education and someone who sounds like a money changer at the temple:

“Textbooks are mostly the product of the liberal establishment, and they’re written with the idea that our religion and our liberty are in conflict,” he said. “But Christianity has had a deep impact on our system. The men who wrote the Constitution were Christians who knew the Bible. Our idea of individual rights comes from the Bible. The Western development of the free-market system owes a lot to biblical principles.”

If you’re lucky enough to be in California or two or three other states, maybe you can enjoy the insulation from the Texas Taliban’s textbooks:

Texas . . . buy[s] or distribute[s] a staggering 48 million textbooks annually — which rather strongly inclines educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State. California is the largest textbook market, but besides being bankrupt, it tends to be so specific about what kinds of information its students should learn that few other states follow its lead. Texas, on the other hand, was one of the first states to adopt statewide curriculum guidelines, back in 1998, and the guidelines it came up with (which are referred to as TEKS — pronounced “teaks” — for Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) were clear, broad and inclusive enough that many other states used them as a model in devising their own. And while technology is changing things, textbooks — printed or online —are still the backbone of education.

I’d like to blockquote the entire article from the New York Times Magazine. Take the time to read it.

If the results of the Republican primaries are any indication, things may be looking up. The Texas State Board of Education currently has 6 sane members, 2 occasionally sane members, and 7 total wackjob Texas Taliban types, whose side did not perform well on Tuesday.

Don McLeroy lost by 860 votes to the sane Thomas Ratliff in District 9. In District 10, Cynthia Dunbar’s chosen successor is in a runoff with another crazy. At least Dunbar will no longer be in office. George Clayton, who is little-known but seems sane, defeated an incumbent swing vote. These results should be enough to flip the SBOE towards sanity again. What’s more, Democrats are running in and could win Districts 5 and 10.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The current SBOE will remain in office for many months. Language arts and science standards, among other items, are on the agenda for the SBOE meeting this week.

When you choose to ignore Texas, you choose to ignore the second most populous state in the country, with nearly 25 million residents including nearly 1 million Asian Americans. And you choose to ignore all of the consequences that flow from letting the American Taliban control such influential institutions as the Texas State Board of Education. Don’t rely on e-books to save the rest of the country. The cover of science textbooks in your state may soon look like this:

- Justin Gillenwater

2010 Campaign, California, Campaign Update, Democratic Party, Demographics, Education, Environment, Immigration, Justin Gillenwater, LGBT, Religion, Republicans, Texas | No Comments »

Sometimes pictures say more than a thousand words. Just look at the smiles on these couples’ faces as they celebrate the end of Congressional review of the gay marriage vote that took place a few months ago in DC. Now DC makes it official, joining 5 states which allow same sex marriage.

- Caroline

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Looks like we won’t have Betty Brown — you remember Betty Brown — to kick around anymore. She lost her primary race to Lance Gooden. Gooden, a former aide to Brown, is under 30. Sources tell me he is not a teabagger and ran as a “moderate.” After a glance at his web site, I’m not sure what makes him a moderate. Brown ran against Obama and lost. I don’t see any reason why Brown could not request a recount, but it would behoove her and her citizens if she just goes away. She lost by 183 votes out of a total 17,985 votes cast.

If you think that’s a small margin of victory, look at the margin in the Democratic primary for HD146. Boris Miles beat Al Edwards by 11 votes. That’s less than the 16 vote margin that made Hubert Vo the first Vietnamese American state representative in Texas. A recount is likely.

The big story, aside from Betty Brown, is the outcome of the gubernatorial primaries. Republicans chose as their gubernatorial candidate the incumbent, secessionist Rick Perry. Yes, when Perry suggested secession, he brought plenty of disdain and scorn upon the state. Commentators around the nation didn’t care for any facts of background. No, they didn’t care that he was elected with only 39% of the vote.

In the Republican primary, Perry just barely avoided a runoff. Hutchison blew what one poll showed as a 25 point lead.

When John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, everyone knew Hutchison wanted to run for governor of Texas. I was shocked she was not McCain’s running mate. She’s qualified, unlike Palin. And a run for VP would raise her profile nationally. If she won, fantastic for her. If she lost, she could use her newfound national base to fundraise and to run against Perry. I wondered how many people McCain asked before he got to Palin. Had Hutchison turned McCain down? And what happened? Perry, backed by Palin, beat Hutchison, backed by Daddy Bush and Dick Cheney.

Republicans want Hutchison to maintain her Senate seat, but I just don’t see Hutchison holding on to her seat in the Senate through the remainder of her term. She conceded extremely early in the evening and immediately endorsed Perry. Her retirement is imminent. And her legacy is tarnished.

Hutchison’s loss may be Bill White’s gain. Hutchison’s backers, be it with votes or money, may be tired of Perry’s decade as governor. Perry has presided over the decline of Texas, which now is near the bottom of most metrics of a state’s well-being including teen pregnancy, number of uninsured, doctors per capita, home ownership, persons below the poverty line, just to name a few.

White won over 75% of the vote, making the Democratic gubernatorial primary look like one of his campaigns for reelection to mayor of Houston. What’s more, one of his primary opponents, who spent at least $8.5 million on the campaign. In his victory speech, White took the campaign straight to Perry.

The Democratic Governors Association is all over this race and you should be too:

From: Nathan Daschle, Executive Director, Democratic Governors Association
To: Political reporters, interested parties
RE: Why Democrats Can Win Texas

Texas conjures up all sorts of bad associations for national Democrats. Land of George W. Bush. Tom DeLay’s gerrymandered Congressional map. No statewide wins for more than a decade. So what makes us think that our party has an unparalleled opportunity to strike deep in GOP territory?

Bill White is an ideal candidate.

In a toxic climate for incumbents, former Houston Mayor Bill White will run as an outsider who can bring people together. In a tough economy, his business background and proven record creating jobs appeal to Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans alike. He’s a conservative fiscal manager who cut tax rates five times while in office and balanced the budget. Politically, he scores high on the most important factors: He is polling within single digits of the incumbent governor, despite relatively low name ID. He has the resources to change that, with $5.4 million in the bank and fundraising that outpaced both Perry and Hutchison. He’s very popular and won his re-elections with an average of 88 percent of the vote.

Rick Perry is strikingly vulnerable.

During his long, brutal primary, Perry has sprinted to the far right – going so far as to suggest that Texas secede from the United States. No incumbent governor in the country has experienced a primary as long or expensive as Perry. Polling in the days before the race showed that if Perry emerges without a runoff, it will be only by the skin of his teeth. If there is a runoff, Perry will have to spend millions more and be further damaged. In fact, while Perry has solidified his support among the far right, his support among general election voters has significantly eroded in the last year. In a PPP poll from a year ago, Perry’s fave/unfaves were 41/48. This month, PPP showed he’s down to 33/50.[1]

Last time Perry won, more than three out of five Texans wanted someone else as governor. There is good reason that Texas voters are rejecting Perry, a career politician, who for the past 25 years who has failed to notch any major accomplishments. To the contrary, he has failed to make life better for the millions of hardworking families trying to get ahead, whether it’s because tuition rates at state colleges are going up by 82 percent, because Texas has one of the highest high school dropout rates in the country or because the unemployment rate is higher than it’s been in decades.

The DGA will play in Texas.

The Democratic Governors Association is expanding the playing field deep into Republican territory in this election cycle. For the first time in our history, the DGA is committed to Texas – a commitment we have already demonstrated with a $500,000 contribution to the White campaign. In fact, Texas joins the four other biggest states in the country – California, Florida, Illinois and New York – as a place where Democrats have good odds of delivering a victory in November.

The stakes are high in Texas.

It’s hard to overstate the long-term ramifications of the Texas gubernatorial race. Texas is poised to pick up four Congressional seats in redistricting, and the governor has a major role to play in drawing the lines. We know in painful detail how Texas Republicans will approach redistricting because Tom DeLay’s gerrymandering last decade was just a warmup. In a stunningly frank admission, national Republicans have stated that they believe they can gerrymander 30 House seats by winning governors races,[2] and Texas is the biggest prize of all. The significance of the Texas gubernatorial race is layered. While Texas could be in play in the 2012 presidential race, the changes that will take place this November in Texas and around the country will shape our national political landscape for a generation to come.

TX-22 has problems. It already has the most conservative member of the House representing it. His opponent for November, who will have a D beside her name, is not a Democrat. Follow that link if you want to learn more, but I’d advise against doing so. All you need to know is one word: LaRouche. I plan to avoid covering this candidate and this race, barring some sort of Betty Brown-like incident.

On the Republican side, the Tea Party proved highly ineffective. None of them forced a runoff let alone run outright against any sitting Republican members of Congress.

In other interesting races around the state, Rick Green has made the Republican runoff for the Texas Supreme Court. You may remember Green from the infomercial recorded in his Capitol office or his punching Patrick Rose in the face on election day in 2006. You may remember Patrick Rose as the alter ego of Mark Strama. I have yet to be convinced that they’re different people.

In the Republican primary in Hubert Vo’s district, a Vietnamese candidate collected 1,000 of 4,824 votes cast. His supporters could easily be the deciding factor in the runoff. That’s a lot of votes for someone with such a horrifying web site. To those who actually click that link, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The primary also revealed some possible racism based on candidates’ names. As Jonathan Bernstein rightly notes, primary ballots are long. Very long. Voters are going to know who very few of the candidates are. I think I’ve met less than 10% of the judicial candidates on my ballot. I had no idea who most of them are, and I’m an extremely high-information voter.

On the Republican side, Railroad Commissioner Victor Carrillo’s loss is likely due to anti-Hispanic sentiment. The same may have led to Harris County Tax Assessor Leo Vasquez’s loss. But is the same anti-Hispanic sentiment in effect among Democratic voters as well?

When Harris County went for Obama, we saw an anti-”uncommon name” bias exposed itself in the judicial races. By “uncommon,” the Chronicle means names that don’t sound “American.” Ashish Mahendru had the worst encounter with this bias. He was one of four Democratic judicial candidates not elected in the near-sweep of the judicial races in Harris County. the others were Mekisha Murray, Andres Pereira, and Goodwille Pierre.

Martha has a good explanation for the seeming anti-Hispanic vote in this year’s Harris County Democratic primary:

Some folks with Latino surnames who were on the losing end of the vote in Harris: Linda Chavez Thompson, Hector Uribe, Larry Hinojosa, Anthony Referente, Javier Valenzuela, Sandra Pubchara-Munoz, Robert Cardenas, Raymond Sanchez, Jr. There were some exceptions. Julia Maldonado is in a runoff. Mary Conneally Acosta won her race. I’m probably missing some folks in both categories – it’s a long ballot! Juliet Stipeche lost her race – she’s Latina, but without a Latina last name.

I suspect what happened here is what usually happens in Harris County – Latino voters turned out in extremely low numbers. African American turnout was probably high, and some of the contested races had an African American and a Latino.

I think that’s a reasonable explanation. Also, maybe voters just preferred the other candidate. I didn’t vote for Linda Chavez-Thompson. Neither she nor her opponent Ronnie Earle had anything resembling a campaign, at least that I could see. Chavez-Thompson had the support of many people and organizations I respect including Burnt Orange Report. Capital Area Asian American Democrats backed Earle. When people asked me who to vote for in the race, I said either were good. When I finally decided who to back, I backed Earle. I was more familiar with him from his prosecution of Tom DeLay and Chavez-Thompson apparently never gave a statement to the League of Women Voters for their voter guidebook. I’ll gladly support Chavez-Thompson for the general election, unlike the candidate for TX-22.

Congratulations to Gordon Quan, who easily won his election with over 80% of the vote.

Quan served six years on the Houston City Council. When asked why he appeared to be headed to such a convincing victory, Quan said, “Even though I left council four years ago, people still remember the work I did and have a favorable opinion of me.”

Quan said he will continue to focus on the issues of homelessness, immigration reform and criminal justice as he campaigns for the general election.

Quan has a tough race ahead against Ed Emmett. Please, no hurricanes.

- Justin Gillenwater

2010 Campaign, Democratic Party, Economy, Education, Environment, Healthcare, Immigration, Justin Gillenwater, Republicans, Texas | 3 Comments »

By Monday, AAA-Fund will announce its endorsement decision in the historic race for California Attorney General.  While we can’t yet tell you our decision, we promise to be more decisive than the California Federation of Teachers.

– Gautam Dutta

2010 Campaign, AAA Fund, California, Democratic Party, Gautam Dutta, Grassroots Activism | No Comments »

Come join AAA-Fund for its 10-Year Celebration!

On Mar. 23, we celebrate 10 years of empowering the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.  Here’s the lowdown:

What: AAA-Fund’s 10-Year Anniversary Celebration & Reception

Where: Wasserman Room, Democratic National Committee, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC 20003

When: Mar. 23, 2010, 6-8:30 pm

Emcee: Former CBS and CNN news anchor JOIE CHEN

Lifetime Achievement Award: US Senator DAN INOUYE, Chair, US Senate Appropriations Committee

Lifetime of Public Service Award: US Representative MIKE HONDA, President, AAA-Fund Honorary Board

Civic Leadership Award: AAA-Fund Co-Founder YENI WONG

Who else: The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and the entire AAA-Fund leadership

Guest Donation: $100 at the door, $75 early bird (online donation only; click here)

Student/Young Professional Donation: $75 at the door, $45 early bird (online donation only; click here).

Hurry — early bird rates expire Mar. 15, 2010!

Rsvp/more info: Nasima Hossain (nasimahossain1 AT gmail.com) or 202.256.8419.

Stay tuned for more exciting details!

Paid for by the Asian American Action Fund, 707 H St NW, Washington, DC 20001; 202.256.8419. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

AAA Fund, Grassroots Activism, Social Justice, The Editors, Voting Rights | No Comments »

Demographics, Local, Obama Administration | No Comments »

It seems like we can’t even escape from the harsh economic realities by flipping through our favorite comics anymore. In the latest issue of Spider Man, Peter Parker winds up unemployed after taking time off from his newspaper gig to be the photographer for the Mayor of New York, a position that he quickly loses as well as he gets blackballed all over town.

So now Spidey is just trying to hustle like all of us. Question of the day: can you be an unemployed superhero?

I don’t mean unemployed the way that Bruce Wayne is theoretically head of Wayne Enterprises, finds time to be a playboy at all the swank parties, and also gets into nifty car chases and fights with the bad guys (but you hardly see him making business decisions or having to layoff his workforce.) I don’t mean the way that most superheroes don’t seem to have day jobs, just alternate identities that sometimes seem to be less real than when they pull on their lycra skinsuit. I also don’t mean unemployed the same way that anti-heroes in indie comics are, but folks like this guy or the guy I saw wearing a Spider Man suit asking tourists in Times Square if they wanted to pay to take their photos with him. I mean straight up unemployed. Is that a tenable situation for a superhero?

American culture doesn’t idolize the unemployed but rather the opposite. We enshrine hard workers like Horatio Alger into our national mythos, while we we wind up castigating and stereotyping the unemployed as lazy people who can’t be bothered to work and who are just sitting around collecting an unemployment check. People want to be working – no one likes having to tell their son or daughter the reason that they can’t have a birthday present is because Daddy lost his job. It’s why movies like Up in the Air are resonating with viewers – we all know someone who is unemployed or underemployed, but who is trying their darnedest to make ends meet.

Now that some counties have over 20% unemployment, now that the unemployed are being prominently featured in popular culture, I hope that we as a society can shake off some of the shame caused by unemployment which leads to so much stress and friction at home. After all, if Peter Parker, all-American boy, can be laid off, we shouldn’t expect our friends and family to be doing better than a superhero.

– Caroline

Caroline, Economy, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) just picked up some major press ink.

A couple weeks back, California Assemblymember (and AAA-Fund Honorary Board member) Mike Eng and State Senator Loni Hancock both introduced bills to allow counties to save millions of taxpayer dollars — by using IRV for “special” elections (via Burbank Leader):

New legislation could change the state’s electoral system to simplify complex races like one in Glendale and Burbank this year, when voters will likely hit the polls four times to fill one Assembly seat.

The election to replace now-Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Krekorian as representative of the 43rd Assembly District has become representative of problems with an electoral system where midterm vacancies result in expensive elections, periods of underrepresentation and additional contests that are often unnecessary, experts say.

A system called instant runoff voting, which has been considered locally and is practiced in San Francisco, Oakland and Australia, could change that, they say.

“In a way, this is one of the elections that was the straw that broke the camel’s back because it’s one that made elected officials realize this problem, that this wave of cascading special elections is not going away,” said Gautam Dutta, deputy director of political reform for the New America Foundation. “If anything, it’s continuing to build.”

The vacancy in the 43rd Assembly District will require a special primary election April 13 to fill the office, followed by a special runoff contest June 8 if no candidate receives more than 50% of votes in the first race. But voters will also cast ballots June 8 in a primary election for the same seat in advance of the regularly scheduled Nov. 2 race at the start of the upcoming two-year legislative term.

An instant runoff system would consolidate those races, said Dutta, whose organization helped craft related bills that were introduced last month by Assemblyman Mike Eng (D-Monterey Park) and state Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Oakland).

Instead of holding a primary and a runoff, voters would rank candidates in the order of their preference, Dutta said.

If constituents’ first-choice candidates do not receive a majority of the election tally, their votes would go to their second-choice candidates, or perhaps their third-choice candidates until one candidate earns enough of the count to win the race, he said.

“The logic is that voters vote for their three choices, and this way, if their top choice gets eliminated, they don’t have to vote again in a two-person runoff,” Dutta said. “Instead their vote will automatically go to their second choice.”

That would result in fewer elections and more quickly restored representation for voters, he said.

The system has worked to save about $3 million per race in San Francisco, Dutta said.

If it was in effect for state legislative races, instant runoff voting could have saved about $4 million by consolidating three upcoming or recent special elections that required runoff races, he said.

Kudos to Asm. Eng and Sen. Hancock for putting IRV into the legislative mix, and to Asm. (and AAA-Fund Honorary Board member) Ted Lieu for coauthoring this important bill.  We look forward to working with them to make our elections less expensive and more meaningful.

– Gautam Dutta

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Trying to jam this unpopular legislation through when it affects one-sixth of the American economy with a simple majority vote is … an outrage.

– R. Bruce Josten, top lobbyist for the US Chamber of Commerce

So a “simple majority” is good enough to declare war, but it’s not enough to reform our dysfunctional healthcare system.

If that’s not a double standard, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

– Gautam Dutta

2010 Campaign, Congress, Democratic Party, Gautam Dutta, Grassroots Activism, Healthcare, Obama Administration, Republicans | No Comments »

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Noam Scheiber has a new Rahm profile in The New Republic, which is replete with all the standard tropes: potty-mouth, missing middle finger, supposed omnipotent control in the White House, etc.  All that aside, it’s a much more nuanced take on his role in the Administration than recent pieces in the Washington Post by Jason Horowitz and Dana Milbank, which try to paint Rahm’s less-is-more approach as the sensible alternative to anything comprehensive.

Schieber points out that Rahm was in favor of fast action on financial regulatory reform:

But, while Emanuel has long been skeptical of the political merits of a robust liberalism, the problem with the broader ideological critique is that it’s at odds with some of his behavior. As early as the transition, according to several administration officials, Emanuel was adamant that reform of the financial sector proceed immediately. He insisted it simply wasn’t politically viable to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the banks without showing voters that they wouldn’t have to ante up all over again a few years hence. Geithner objected that fast-tracking reform would only create more uncertainty and could paralyze the financial system. And there were legitimate considerations on both sides. But, suffice it to say, no one out to coddle the banks would have taken Emanuel’s position.

On health care reform, Rahm worked ceaselessly and apparently urged wrapping up Baucus’ Senate Finance Committee negotiations with Republicans, which stalled the process last summer:

So Emanuel placed a premium on speed. He nagged constantly, setting numerous deadlines: for discussions to conclude, for congressional committees to act, for floor votes to be held. He explored a variety of procedural and substantive options so that progress could never be halted. “He never wanted to have a moment where we didn’t have a move,” says one colleague.

…

For the first half of last year, this was almost all you needed to know about the administration’s strategy. Then, in July, the White House faced a key decision. Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, probably the most important of the five committees considering health care, had spent months negotiating with his Republican counterpart, Chuck Grassley, with little to show for it. Emanuel was getting antsy. He gathered his top aides and pressed for a way to hurry the process along. The Senate labor committee had produced its own health care bill. Perhaps, Emanuel wondered, Majority Leader Harry Reid could bypass Baucus and bring it to the floor. Or maybe Baucus could just stop bargaining with Grassley and let Reid move a more partisan version of his bill.

But, in the end, Obama himself favored letting Baucus negotiate until September. (Though Axelrod stresses that the president was “just as impatient as Rahm was to get moving.”)

If more pressure had been exerted on Baucus during the summer of 2009, Obama likely would have already signed a comprehensive health care bill.

Elizabeth Drew’s excellent article in the New York Review of Books nicely recalls the moment:

Republicans had applied the theory that the longer a bill is delayed, the weaker it becomes. Their real goal was to kill it. They gave Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus just enough encouragement that he engaged in a months-long effort to get Republican backing for the bill. The idea, shared by the White House, was that a bill with bipartisan support would have more legitimacy with the public; but the negotiations kept going long after it was clear that the Republicans didn’t want to help. (He got the vote in committee of Maine’s Olympia Snowe, who made a big show of her reluctance to give it—the diva who wouldn’t leave the stage—and then voted against the bill on the Senate floor.) Finally, even the White House gave up on Baucus and scheduled Obama’s speech to Congress on health care on September 9, to encourage his committee to wrap it up. By the time the Senate finally passed its bill on Christmas Eve, Coakley was losing altitude, but no one seemed to notice.

In the end, both Obama and Rahm will be vindicated.  Now that Democrats have finally realized that their only way forward is through reconciliation, comprehensive reform will likely pass sometime in the next month or so.  When it does, Obama’s decision to ignore Rahm’s advice to scale-back will be vindicated.  And the fact that final passage will likely take place in March or April of 2010 will vindicate Rahm’s advice to bypass Baucus.

Congress, Healthcare, Kiren Gopal, Obama Administration | No Comments »