Wondering on Wednesday (v182)

Ready for some wondering? 

Let's dive in!

I wonder what the handful of states that are  cancelling their Republican presidential primaries are thinking. I can't imagine the president not wanting to show how loved and popular he is by crushing his opponents in a primary, can you? I mean, everyone talking about him is exactly what he lives for, right? 

Is it, as has been suggested by former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, that the president's party faithful support, hovering around 90%, may be a mile wide, but only an inch deep? Are the states afraid of letting that particular cat out of the bag?

Given that one of the reason why the cancellations are happening, we're told, is because it's expensive to hold a primary, I wonder if the RNC will cancel their convention? I know, that's silly, but a woman can hope, right? 

Staying with presidential politics for a bit, I saw a headline today that began "Sanders supporters cry foul..." and my first thought was, I wonder why that's not a bumper sticker? I mean, that could be every headline from 2016, and they're just piling on the foul-crying this time around too. Which is one reason why many people don't like him. You know, people like me. And I wonder if that's why Sanders is in third place in four of the five national polls since the debate?

I'm also wondering what the Democratic presidential candidates have to gain by calling for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

I get it - I believe he lied in his confirmation hearings, I believe he did make unwanted sexual advances, of varying degrees, on multiple women, and that he has no business being on the court. But on the court he is, and there he will stay, barring forensically verified proof of his lies or the sexual activities, and I don't know that such evidence exists. And honestly, if the NY Times reporters had not been writing a book, but instead were working solely to get to the bottom of the accusations against Kavanaugh, I'd feel better about that. 

More important, though - under even the weakest of normal circumstances, the nomination of a potential SCOTUS justice with even a hint of what he's accused of never would have seen the light of day. And I wonder if we'll ever be close to that kind of normal again.

Finally, tonight, the president has named Robert O'Brien as his fourth National Security Advisor. O'Brien was most recently the 'Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs' at the State Department, and according to Trump, his record is 38-0. 

I wonder if anyone knows who those 38 'hostages' were? Because to me, a hostage is someone like Terry Anderson, kidnapped on the streets of Beirut and held for over 2450 days, from the mid-1980s until 1991, or the 52 American diplomats held for 444 days in Iran before being released. 

A hostage is not someone convicted of a crime in another country and held in jail. You know, like A$AP Rocky, for example, who was arrested after getting into a fight on the streets of Stockholm. 

Keep in mind that Trump send Robert O'Brien to intercede in the case of A$AP Rocky - and wonder about that. 

Poll Watch: Climate, Guns and Prejudice

As promised, here's the post highlighting what was learned about climate change, gun control. and prejudice in America from the recent Quinnipiac poll. 

Here's the small print: Quinnipiac University surveyed 1422 self-identified registered voters nationwide August 21-26. Generally, the pollsters conduct live interviews with people on randomly dialed landlines and cell phones. The margin of error for this survey is +/- 3.1percentage points.

The survey shows:

• 56% of registered voters say climate change is an emergency, with both Democrats and Independents believing this; Republicans do not. Further, 67% of registered voters believe the US needs to do more to combat climate change. 

• 72% of voters say Congress needs to do more to reduce gun violence - even 50% of Republicans think so. The majority - 60% - thinks we need stricter gun laws.

• 74% of voters think that prejudice against immigrants is at least a somewhat serious issue (23%), with 51% thinking it's a very serious issue.

Let's look at some of the details.

Prejudice.

This section of the survey focused on prejudice against specific groups of people, and whether it's a very serious, somewhat serious, or not so serious problem, or if it's not a problem at all. By political party, the percentages of people saying prejudice is at least a somewhat serious problem falls where you'd expect it to, but the percentages were a little more extreme than I anticipated. 

When you look at it from a 'what's your religion' perspective, the divides are also extreme. 

When a majority of people think that prejudice against whites is a bigger problem than any other kind of prejudice, in a society in which whites are overwhelmingly better off from every measure, we've got our work cut out for us.

Guns.

As we all wait to hear from the president what he wants Congress to do, and we hear from the Democratic candidates what they want to do, here's what we want them to do.

• Universal background checks are supported by +87 (93% to 6%).  Every demographic supports this, even Republicans, at 89% and rural voters at 91%.

• Needing a license to purchase a gun is supported by +66 (82% to 16%); again, every demographic supports this, including Republicans, by +41.

• Red Flag laws are supported by +65 (80% to 15%)

• An assault weapon ban is supported by +24 (60% to 36%),Surprisingly, support for this measure is actually down 3% since the May survey. This was a surprise, given that the mass shootings in Virginia Beach, Dayton, El Paso, and Odessa/Midland, which resulted in 50 deaths and 79 injuries, happened between the two surveys.

• An assault weapon mandatory buyback is underwater by -3 (46% in favor, 49% opposed)

The overall percentage of folks saying more needs to be done, at 67%, is the highest since since the question started being asked back in December 2015.

Support for stricter gun laws comes from across all demographics except for Republicans and gun owners. Men (53%), white men (49%) and whites without college degrees (51%) all support stricter rules. Even rural voters by the slimmest of margins (47% to 46%) support this. And, 

• Almost every demographic (again, Republicans are the outlier, at -10) believe Congress needs to do more. And the overall percentage on this question is up 4 points since it was last asked in March 2018. 

• More people overall, and people of every demographic except Democrats and Blacks, feel that mental illness is a bigger cause of mass shootings than is the availability of guns. 

• Most think that stricter gun laws would help decrease the number of mass shootings, but by generally much slimmer margins than the political party demographic reflects: Dems agree +71, while Reps disagree by +54. 

And no matter what the president says, we do think he has an impact on white supremacists when it comes to motivating them to commit violence. Everyone but folks in the four standard outliers are of one mind on this.

Climate Change.
40% of voters overall (and 15% of Republicans, 56% of Democrats, and 44% of Independents) are worried that someone in their family might be affected by an extreme weather event. The overall percentage is unchanged since this was last asked in December 2018.

By age group, 43% of those 35-49 and 65+ are worried; by race, Hispanics (48%) are the most worried about this. The least worried? Republicans (83%) white men (67%) all men (66%), and whites without college degrees (63%).

On the question of whether we're doing enough, doing too much, or if we need to do more, 91% of Dems and 76% of Independents say we need to do more. In fact, every demographic but one --Republicans, at 32% - believe by a pretty significant margin that we need to do more.

As to whether climate change is an emergency, only Republicans, at 81% saying no, and people 50-64 (50% no, 49% yes) believe it's not. All other demographics believe it is. 

One more thing.
The last question asks whether the respondent feels more safe or less safe with Donald Trump as president or if he doesn't have an impact on a person's sense of safety. By a +20 margin (46% to 26%), people feel less safe with Trump in office. 

#MAGA, or something. 

We Don't Need to Take People's Guns Away

If you saw last week's debate, or yesterday's interview with Beto O'Rourke on Meet the Press, you know that he's on record with a mandatory buyback of AR-15s and AK-47s and other 'weapons of war.'

Don't get me wrong -- I think these guns are unnecessary, and have no purpose other than inflicting a great deal of harm in a very short period of time. But the mandatory buyback - confiscation with pay, if you will - is wrong. And I don't think most Democrats, or most Americans, believe it's right, or constitutional, even though O'Rourke says it can be done using the Commerce Clause without stepping on the Second Amendment.

This is exactly the kind of position that will make it much harder to get Donald Trump out of office next year. Besides, there are too many other things the majority of us do agree on, such as background checks for all gun sales; red flag laws, given courts the ability to have someone's guns temporarily removed; allowing medical professionals to collect and study data on gunshot victims; and so on. That's where the current Congress should be focused, regardless of what O'Rourke and the other candidates think.
Back in 2013, a friend and I had a very long conversation about guns, which culminated in my post The One in which We Agree.... The post outlined what we, after days of discussion and negotiation via email and chat, were comfortable with to try and shift the dial on gun safety and enhance the principles of responsible gun ownership. Here's what we agreed was reasonable, not overly burdensome on current and prospective gun owners, and which might be achievable (if only...):

1. People choosing to exercise their right to bear arms need criminal and mental health clearance. Yes, this is background checks, and yes, it's intrusive to a certain degree, but it doesn't feel unreasonable to me. 
2. Registration of all gun purchases on a federal gun license. I'm okay with a federal license; I appreciate states having different tolerances for gun legislation and ownership, but certainly in the case of concealed carry permits, we need one law, not many.
3. Mandatory safety training for each type of firearm purchased. This is so simplistic it's ridiculous, and I'm not sure whether it's already the law of the land, but if not it certainly should be.
4. Yearly renewal of the federal gun license, including proficiency testing. Again, not rocket science. He suggested not only proficiency, but also moral simulation, to gauge a person's decision-making ability, such as when to fire vs. when to de-escalate, which I think is a fascinating approach. 
5. Reducing the price of ammunition, thereby making it more readily available so people can practice with their weapons. I had a hard time with this one, but coupled with all of the other things we'd change, and a couple of qualifiers, I decided I could live with it. My qualifiers? Eliminating Internet ammunition purchasing and adding mandatory reporting of large volume ammo purchases, similar to how banks are required to report large cash deposits.
6. We agreed we need to eliminate black market gun sales, but neither of us offered anything here. I'm not sure how to do it, other than good old fashioned police work, finding out who's selling guns illegally and stopping them. It'll take quite a bit of effort, but coupled with other changes, it may be possible to make a dent.

Yes - these would impact law-abiding gun owners more than they impact criminals. But here's the thing: when it comes to mass shootings, most of the perpetrators were law-abiding citizens right up until the point they started killing innocent people. With the right rules in place, it's certainly possible that we might have been able to prevent one or more mass shooting. 

Sunday School 9/15/19

Several of the 2020 Dems made the rounds this morning,  including Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg (This Week), Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker (MTP), and Buttigieg and Andrew Yang (CNN's SOTU). Since Klobuchar was the focus of last week's post, I'm skipping her today.

Let's start with George Stephanopoulos and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who was considered by some (me included) to be one of the winners of Thursday's debate.

They discussed Buttigieg's widely misinterpreted comment Thursday night about the war in Afghanistan; he said, in part, that "the best way not to be caught up on endless wars is to avoid starting one in the first place." Stephanopoulos asked if he "misspoke" when he said we started it.  Buttigieg (who left Afghanistan five years ago today) said

I did not say that the US started the war; what I'm saying is the lesson is that wars are difficult to end... we went to war in Afghanistan because the United States was attacked. And right now our mission in Afghanistan should be to ensure that we are never attacked as a consequence of something happening in that country, something that I believe we can achieve without an open-ended commitment of ground troops. 

Moving to the debate, Buttigieg talked about needing "ideas that are bold enough to actually meet the challenge of the moment we're in and also capable of unifying the country" and he spoke about unifying the majority of Americans on  "pretty much everything" the Dems are putting out there.

Shame on us if we can't gather a majority of American who already agree with us on a majority of issues, and use that not only to win an election, but to govern well. 

He was asked very similar questions on CNN, and gave consistent answers.

Now, entrepreneur Andrew Yang's turn; he was asked about reaction to his Freedom Dividend contest, launched during the debate. I suspect I'm not the only one surprised to learn that Yang has been giving people the Dividend for months now. He said the idea is gaining traction, and

...Americans are waking up to the fact that we can solve our own problems if we have a dividend that gives us some extra resources to do so. 

He also said 'an army of lawyers" have signed off on him giving campaign money to people, and then said he wanted to reflect on the fact that if he

gave a million dollars to a media company or consultants or hired a small army of canvassers, no one would blink an eye, but if we give the money directly to the American people, somehow that's problematic. So, it just speaks directly to how messed up our system is...

They also talked about racism towards Asian-Americans. Yang forgave new SNL comic Shane Gillis, who apparently has used Asian-American slurs generally, as well as specifically directed towards Yang, in his act. Yang said that anti-Asian epithets are "not taken as seriously" as slurs against others.

But at the same time, bigger picture, I believe that our country has become excessively punitive and vindictive about remarks that people find offensive or racist and that we need to try and move beyond that if we can...

On his own comments, such as joking, that he likes math, or knows a lot of doctors,

...I think Americans are very smart. And that they can actually see right through that kind of myth and if anything, by poking fun at it I'm making Americans reflect a little bit more on them.

He also agrees with proposed legislation that would pay NCAA student-athletes, saying he would push for similar legislation as president. He said he would - 100% - and complimented California's Gavin Newsom for pushing the legislation.

To me it is immoral that you have institutions that are profiting to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases and then they are saying these athletes are amateurs and they can't receive a dime. 

In Case You Missed It (v2)

In case you missed any of this week's posts, here's a recap.

Amy Klobuchar was front and center in this week's Sunday School post, talking with both Chuck Todd (MTP) and Jake Tapper (CNN's SOTU). Here she talking about being a moderate in a field full of progressives.

I do believe I may be more moderate in tone than some of the people running for office. But I am betting that people don't want the loudest voice anymore. They've had that right now. That's the guy in the White House. That they want someone who's going to be honest with them and tell them that, "No, we are not going to erase rich kids college debt." We're not going to do that, even though some of my opponents have put that forward as their proposal.

Also on Sunday, I did a Grains of Salt post, focusing on the new collaboration between the City of Syracuse and Syracuse University, which will allow city data to be analyzed by SU students to help find ways to gain efficiencies, improve city services, or both.

We just have a lot of information and we're going to collect a lot more of it in the coming years. We will never have the staff to be able to analyze all of it and make the decisions  that we need to make. Tapping into expertise and resources at the university is kind of a no-brainer to me. 

Monday, more Grains of Salt were spilled. We were told of allegations by the Onondaga County Comptroller  Matt Beadnell against the Democratic Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny, leading to a criminal referral -- and a political firestorm.

Beadnell inexplicably briefed the Onondaga County GOP Chair, Tom Dadey, before making his announcement. I can't fathom any reason that would be necessary - it simply doesn't pass the sniff test... In  addition to Dadey and Fitz, Beadnell also shared his findings with the County Exec Ryan McMahon, County Attorney Robert Durr, the County Legislature, and NY AG Tish James.

Things quieted down a little on Tuesday here in Syracuse, but Meanwhile, Back in Albany, I shared that a second NY State Supreme Court Justice ruled against the limits on outside income for most legislators. The income limits accompanied a substantial raise - $50,500 paid over three years to our part time legislators, but have left the raises in place, at least for now. And I'm not happy.

So, what next?  It would be nice if they asked the governor to call them back for a special session and erase the raises for 2020 and 2021, come up with better language around outside income, and show us that they're more concerned about our tax dollars then they are about how many dollars they get.

Wednesday was another two-post day. In a Quick Takes entry, I lamented that the Democratic State Attorneys General Association (DAGA) and their Republican counterparts (RAGA) both accepted money from defendants they are actively suing - including opioid drug companies., for Pete's sake.

RAGA, which represents 24 GOP state attorneys general, got a total of $385,000 from defendants and the pharmaceutical trade association PhRMA between Jan. 1, 2019 and June 30, 2019, according to late June filings....

DAGA, which represents 27 officials, got a total of $365,000 from defendants and PhRMA during the same time period...

And, of course There was Wondering on Wednesday, as there is most weeks. This time, one of the wonder-full topics was Republicans behaving badly, under cover of 9/11. You honestly can't make this stuff up.

Incredibly, the GOP, the party of patriotism and flag-waving and chest-thumping and all that, decided that the best time to override the Democratic governor's budget was to call a vote while Democrats in the legislature were attending a 9/11 memorial service...

On Thursday, I was busy at the Update Desk bringing you up to speed on my social experiment with the top ten Dems for 2020. Here's a snippet of this week's tally of candidate communications.

• I received 140 emails from the candidates, over 70%, of which (99 emails) included a direct ask for money.
• Cory Booker (22), Kamala Harris (21), and Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders (15 each) led the way in total emails. In the second tier? Beto O'Rourke and Elizabeth Warren with 14 each, Mayor Pete with 13, and Amy Klobuchar with 11. Andrew Yang (8) and Julian Castro (7) brought up the rear. 

And finally, in this week's TGIF, all eyes were turned towards Houston and the first one-night debate of the campaign season. Here's how the experts called the winners and losers:

• Joe Biden: 3 wins, 1 lose, 1 neutral
• Cory Booker: 2 wins, 1 neutral 
• Pete Buttigieg: 2 wins, 1 lose
• Julian Castro: 1 win, 4 lose
• Kamala Harris: 3 wins, 3 lose
• Amy Klobuchar: 3 lose
• Beto O'Rourke: 2 wins, 1 neutral
• Bernie Sanders: 1 lose, 2 neutral
• Elizabeth Warren: 3 wins, 2 lose, 2 neutral
• Andrew Yang: 1 win, 3 lose

I agreed with them on some, but not on others - especially on the front-runner.

So that's this week in a nutshell; next week, I'll get you that polling update I promised, at least a couple regular features, and whatever else catches my eye. And if something catches your eye, let me know.

TGIF 9/13/19

I hope you're all having the best kind of day you can have today, given the date and everything.

For today's good week/bad week recap, I'm focusing on last night's debate. Winners to the good week side, losers to the bad week side, and the rest of them? They'll have to decide themselves where they fall, or wait for the polls to tell them how they did, I guess.

First, some general impressions, starting with giving the DNC credit for having rules for debate qualifying. I know they're taking heat for it, but honestly, if you're polling below 2%, do you really think you're going to win?  Consider your failure to qualify as a sign. Take it to heart. Run for a different office (hint, hint) or keep doing what you love, or throw yourself into something completely different. But stop running for president.

I also think the moderators deserve a lot of credit, particularly Jorge Ramos, for the questions they asked and the lack of look-at-me-ness they displayed. And while I appreciate the importance of talking about issues important to he Latinx community, what about Asians? Muslims? Who's making sure we are addressing their issues with immigration, assimilation, racism and so on?

So: who do the experts think won the debate? Here's a scoreboard from CNN, Fox News, USA Today, Business Insider, Salon/Alternet, and the WaPo, as well as the top three and bottom three identified in the rankings used by the NY Times Opinion writers and their guests.

• Joe Biden: 3 wins, 1 lose, 1 neutral
• Cory Booker: 2 wins, 1 neutral 
• Pete Buttigieg: 2 wins, 1 lose
• Julian Castro: 1 win, 4 lose
• Kamala Harris: 3 wins, 3 lose
• Amy Klobuchar: 3 lose
• Beto O'Rourke: 2 wins, 1 neutral
• Bernie Sanders: 1 lose, 2 neutral
• Elizabeth Warren: 3 wins, 2 lose, 2 neutral
• Andrew Yang: 1 win, 3 lose

Others receiving votes: President Obama got three wins, while voters, the gun debate, health care, Jorge Ramos (for his effective questioning), and the Democratic Party all received one win.  

The economy, reproductive rights, those not on the stage, and TV viewers all received one 'lose' vote - the first two because there were no questions about them; the folks not on the stage because it's going to be even harder to get on it going forward, and TV viewers because there weren't enough breaks and they didn't happen soon enough.

And my take?

On the good week side, in alphabetical order, I have Booker, Mayor Pete, and Warren. She's not my favorite candidate, but she and the other two were sincere, they spoke clearly about what they stand for and they had no gaffes that I heard. And, they stayed out of the mud and out of the fake stuff (see losers).

Neutral: Klobuchar and Beto fall in this bucket. Klobuchar's a moderate, steady Midwesterner and Beto is Beto; he got to curse, he threatened to take guns away (which was harmful overall), but I think they held their ground on some things where others failed to do so.

And the bad week folks?

Honestly, Biden did not do well. He continues to struggle with tough questions on his record, and on being his own man, vs. being Obama's veep. He started better than in the prior debates but lost ground, particularly under questioning by Ramos and Linsey Davis. Castro - his attacks on Biden were blatant,  as if that's the only thing he has going for his campaign.One was a swing and a miss; the other paled in comparison to how Jorge Ramos handled the same basic question. Harris I think came off fake in many ways, which was disappointing. Examples include her 'come hither' response to Biden, her crack about Trump's 'size', and so on. To me that stuff overshadowed her opening statement which I thought was pretty good.

Yang was the gimmick man last night, with his contest for a Freedom dividend and his 'democracy dollars.' He also played an Asian race card. All of this takes away from his attempts to be considered a serious candidate. And finally Sanders. You all know I'm not a fan of his, but setting my bias aside, he simply comes off as a grumpy old man, a caricature. Honestly, other people pitch his plans better than he does - I don't care if he wrote the damn bill.

I'll be paying attention to what lands in my inbox from the candidates - if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say there's more winners in my email than there were on the stage last night.

TGIF, everyone.

The Update Desk: Who Loves Me, Baby? (2)

Who Loves Me, Baby? was my original post setting the stage for me signing up with all ten of the top-tier candidates (nine Dems + Bernie) to see how they communicate. This update highlights the first week of my joining the fray, which included the end-of-August fundraising deadline and the lead-up to the CNN Climate Change town hall.

And, here's the recap of the second week, which led up to last night's showdown in Houston. (I covered the debate on Veritable Pastiche on FB, if you want to check that out.)

• I received 140 emails from the candidates, over 70%, of which (99 emails) included a direct ask for money.
• Cory Booker (22), Kamala Harris (21), and Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders (15 each) led the way in total emails. In the second tier? Beto O'Rourke and Elizabeth Warren with 14 each, Mayor Pete with 13, and Amy Klobuchar with 11. Andrew Yang (8) and Julian Castro (7) brought up the rear. 
• Harris led in in the number of direct requests for money, within 17, followed by Booker, Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren with 12 each. On a percentage basis, though, Warren and Castro asked for money more often (86% of their emails), with Harris (81%), Sanders (80%), Beto (78%) and Yang (75%) rounding out the top tier. Biden (73%), Buttigieg (69%), Booker (54%), were next, while Klobuchar, at only 27%, coming in far less aggressively on the fundraising appeals. 

So, what were they talking about? Surprisingly, only two of them (Mayor Pete and Bernie) mentioned climate change, which is interesting since collectively the spent seven hours talking about it. But that proves my point that the candidates are going to talk about whatever the flavor of the day is, and climate change was last week's flavor. 

The majority of the emails (67%) continue to be general notifications, why they're running, that they're good people, that we need to stop Donald Trump, or simply "send money" requests. Other topics covered?

• Polls showing they're ahead of Trump - even Yang is ahead of Trump in New Hampshire, he said in one email;  
• requesting support for other candidates, including Dan McCready in North Carolina (he lost);
• surveys to help drive their platforms or what they should say in the debate, or their plans for solving all of the problems; and even
• concerns about the DNC's debate qualifying rules possibly changing as they move ahead, and about Tom Steyer buying his way into the next one.

Bernie wanted me to get on his honor roll and to get my sticker; Andrew Yang creates a free button for each debate, but by the time I read the email, I was too late. And, in case you're wondering, Chasten Buttigieg calls his husband Peter.

I've gotten at least one email already from nine of the ten candidates, with only Klobuchar not accounted for yet.

Finally, some of the candidates are using surrogates -- voters, contest winners, members of the campaign staff who identify themselves in the emails, and yes, even Richard Schiff.

Most Dems would recognize the name, I think, but if not, this will help.

You might remember me as Toby Ziegler, the communications director from the West Wing. He was called ornery and he was certainly flawed but in the end he was much loved. Why? Because he fought hard to do the right thing and wanted to leave the world a better place than he found it. As did his boss, President Bartlett.

During this dark Trump era, it is easy to find yourself wishing we could be led by President Bartlett instead.

Sadly, President Bartlett is just a TV character. 

Sadly, that's correct.

Even more sadly, not only did I recognize immediately the error in the email, even my Google spell-checker recognized that it's not 'Bartlett' like the pear, it's Bartlet like the best president we never had.

Tonight's TGIF will focus on the debate, with expert opinions from the talking heads and journalists, and my rank amateur opinions as well.

Wondering on Wednesday (v181)

Meandering through the muddle, and wondering, this Wednesday, about stuff like this:

• Whether anyone will ever be able to show us conclusively, with forensically verified photographic evidence, where Donald Trump was on 9/11?  The story changes, and changes, and changes, and I know it's not the most important thing in the world, but everyone remembers where they were when they heard about the attacks, and to my knowledge no one has three or four versions of where they were and what they did that day. And I don't know if anyone believes that Trump was at Ground Zero - and if he had been (which is highly doubtful) there would absolutely be a photo. About that I don't wonder one bit. 

• If the Republican legislators in North Carolina reached out to Scott Walker and the rest of the Wisconsin Republicans to get a page out of their playbook?  Incredibly, the GOP, the party of patriotism and flag-waving and chest-thumping and all that, decided that the best time to override the Democratic governor's budget was to call a vote while Democrats in the legislature were attending a 9/11 memorial service, guaranteeing them the requisite majority to blow up the budget. I've long wondered where all the Republican cojones were, and it seems I don't need to wonder about that one bit, either.

• Why the president expressed concern about "very very bad drug dealers" who could be hiding among the refugee, when our own data shows that there's actually more risk of drugs flowing from the US to the Bahamas than the opposite?  

And I wonder if the country will ever remember what it felt like on 9/12, when everyone was of one heart, and stood together, and was kind to each other, no matter what our differences may have been on 9/10. 

Is that lost forever?

Quick Takes (v42) - State AGs Take Money from Opioid Lawsuit Defendants

Quick Takes

If ever you needed an example of why we need to get money out of politics, you're going to love this one.

I've talked about this a few times, including in this August 2013 post, when I was at my rantiest, and again in August of last year, when I was calmer but just as strong in my belief that we need to really change how this all works.

And here's the story I'm sad to share with you today. Sad, but unsurprised, I guess. It comes from NBC News.

WASHINGTON — The top legal officials in dozens of states are suing drug companies and retailers for their role in the opioid crisis, but as of June both the Republican Attorneys General Association and its Democratic counterpart were still taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from some of those companies.

RAGA, which represents 24 GOP state attorneys general, got a total of $385,000 from defendants and the pharmaceutical trade association PhRMA between Jan. 1, 2019 and June 30, 2019, according to late June filings....

DAGA, which represents 27 officials, got a total of $365,000 from defendants and PhRMA during the same time period...

Really?  The associations of AGs for both parties are taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies they're suing for pushing drugs that have killed or addicted tens of thousands of Americans annually?

Really?

Meanwhile, Back in Albany (v34)

Nathaniel Brooks/NY Times photo

Regular readers know I'm not a fan of the term 'full-time legislator' being applied to New York's state senators and members of the assembly.  They're in session about 60 days a year, after all, unless a special session is called.

But they used the full-time designation as justification for their pay raise request, something I've written about many times, including the first six or seven posts in this Meanwhile, Back in Albany series.

When they were granted a $50K+ raise over three years last year, the one good thing I saw come from that was a limit on outside income starting in January 2020. Here's what I said about the deal back in December, knowing that folks were happy with the raise, probably wishy-washy on the lulus, and unhappy with the outside income limits.

Legislators can convene a special session to overturn the recommendations, but that seems unlikely. What seems more likely is that there'll be court challenges to the plan, on the income cap almost certainly, and perhaps on the 'pay for performance' aspect of future raises.

We've not heard the last of this, for sure. 

No, we've not. But we have heard about the court challenges. For example, we learned recently that a second state judge has ruled that the limits on outside income don't pass muster. State Supreme Court Justice Richard Platkin determined only the raises - not the outside income limits - carry the force of law, noting

"All of the committee's other recommendations are just that - recommendations advanced for the consideration of policy makers, but not the law of New York State." 

Under this decision, it appears the three-year raise deal will stand.

Grains of Salt (v50): Official Accused of Working 2nd Job On Taxpayer Time

Last night there was breaking news (on Twitter, anyway) that the Onondaga County Comptroller was holding a press conference today on a subject involving a "high level County Official" but it was such a sensitive matter, no more details would be provided until today.  

Here's what we learned from Tim Knauss on Syracuse.com:

Onondaga County Comptroller Matthew Beadnell today will accuse the county's Democratic elections commissioner of occasionally working as a driver for Uber and Lyft during daytime business hours when he should be working at the Board of Elections. Beadnell, a Republican running for election in November, will discuss his allegations against  Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny this morning at a news conference. 

Beadnell noted the overlap between the job we pay Czarny for and the job he gets paid for by Uber and Lyft were "infrequent but improper," noting

(Czarny) should not be earning outside income during business hours.

And he's right.

Government employees should not work a private job on taxpayer time. Even if, as Czarny said, he "doesn't punch a clock, and his job gives him the flexibility" to, say, work through his lunch or after normal business hours if needed to make up any time he might have spent on a ride-sharing job, and even if  he works more hours than called for in his regular schedule.

I believe that's the flexibility that the Board of Elections commissioners have had.

Beadnell says the Elections Commissioner job calls for at least 35 hours a week; Czarny is paid $98,753 per year, so the 94 hours of driving he's accused of doing during work hours in the past 18 months would have been worth around $5100 in county pay - and those hours would have been credited towards his pension.

Beadnell inexplicably briefed the Onondaga County GOP Chair, Tom Dadey, before making his announcement. I can't fathom any reason that would be necessary - it simply doesn't pass the sniff test.

He also notified Onondaga County DA-for-Life Bill Fitzpatrick; per a statement, we were told

This matter is now under criminal investigation and this office will have no further public comment until we have completed that investigation.

In  addition to Dadey and Fitz, Beadnell also shared his findings with the County Exec Ryan McMahon, County Attorney Robert Durr, the County Legislature, and NY AG Tish James.

In the investigation, which started in March after a tip was received, Beadnell's office reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, subpoenaed from Uber and Lyft, which they compared to the county's payroll system. While they found the 94 hours without any paid time off entered, there were other trips where holiday, vacation, sick or personal time were used for drive time.

This suggests to me, with no knowledge other than what's being alleged, that Czarny had at least some awareness about the optics, if not the ethics, of what he was doing.

Whether Beadnell appreciate the optics - or the ethics - of his sharing his news with the head of the GOP, we may never know.

Sunday School 9/8/19

This morning, we'll spend some time with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who talked with Chuck Todd on Meet The Press, and with Jake Tapper on CNN, where Julian Castro also made a classroom stop today. He was a feature last week; you can read that here.

First up, MTP. Her segment started with a video of her making these comments:

I do believe I may be more moderate in tone than some of the people running for office. But I am betting that people don't want the loudest voice anymore. They've had that right now. That's the guy in the White House. That they want someone who's going to be honest with them and tell them that, "No, we are not going to erase rich kids college debt." We're not going to do that, even though some of my opponents have put that forward as their proposal.

Todd asked her if she thought she might get fallout from those comments. Klobuchar said she didn't think so, because the party will eventually unify behind someone and will clearly show the difference between the Dem and the serial liar currently in the Oval Office. And, she said,

... what I meant by that (comment) is that we need to have a candidate that will lead, that will look people in the eye and tell them the truth, and that isn't going to make a bunch of promises that they can't keep. And I truly think they want something different than Donald Trump.

And if I interpreted her comments correctly, she's not a big fan of sitting back and doing nothing for the next 14 months, and that she's more interested in seeing Mitch McConnell do his job than she is watching him sit around waiting for the president to pull his strings. And, about the upcoming debate, she's prepared, and

...We don't want to find out that we win at 4 in the morning or the next day. We want to win big and also carry the US Senate. And the way you do that is with a candidate that has a proven record of bringing in Independents and moderate Republicans that deserted our party in 2016... You add to an ignited Democratic base that wants to win big. And you win big...

And then we got to the stupid 'baiting' question Todd asks every week. This week's edition? Does Klobuchar think she's a stronger candidate than Joe Biden. She tried to dodge him, because what on earth does he think the answer is, no? She tried to provide a nuanced answer, but gave up.

Oh, Okay - I believe I'm stronger than all the other candidates or I wouldn't be running, alright?

After some more dilly-dallying from Todd, asking her about the other candidates, crowd size, and meaningless polls, he asked her about Afghanistan and the supposed talks that were to have occurred this week and what her position was. 

In a nutshell: bring the troops home. But also, stop paying attention to every shiny thing (buying Greenland, Sharpie-gate) and focus on what's important.

Yes, you negotiate with the Afghan government and the Taliban. But you don't treat this like some kind of game show when you're dealing with terrorists. He clearly wanted this showman's moment of having them come to Camp David, when he didn't even have a complete ceasefire. He didn't have the deal done. And then he does a tweet, late on Saturday saying, "Oh," blaming them, "Oh, it's over." Give me a break. This is exactly what he did with Kim Jong-un, bringing a hot dish to the dictator next-door, across the DMZ... We need to bring some credibility back into our foreign policy.

Grains of Salt (v49): Syracuse Partners with SU on Data Analytics

Continuing the collaboration that is the hallmark of Mayor Ben Walsh's administration, the city of Syracuse and Syracuse University have a new agreement on data-sharing.

The agreement, reported in the Daily Orange, will allow SU students access to municipal data on which they can perform analytics and hopefully identify opportunities.

The article recaps emails with Sam Edelstein,the city's chief data officer, who advised that select data will be shared with the students. The city both collects and creates data, he said, and added

We know that students get great experience working with real data like the types that we collect - and we get the benefit of experts helping us to make sense of the information.

The Common Council approved the agreement at the end of July, after discussion privacy concerns. Councilor Khalid Bey was one who expressed concern, as noted in this report from WRVO.

I'm certainly a person that's for creativity and innovation, but we have to be careful about being creative at the expense of the taxpayer. Hackers are very good. We learned that. I want us to be a little more clear about what we're doing. I can see the value of the exchange. But I thought the downplay on our concerns with security, relative to the data, was a little negligent. 

Even though Edelstein said much of the information is already made public, or could be -  most of it comes from infrastructure projects - Bey is right to be concerned, and the city should take privacy concerns seriously. It's particularly timely, given the recent ransomware attacks on both the Syracuse City School District and the Onondaga County Public Library systems.

No one benefits when these concerns are downplayed, certainly not the administration.

SU will receive only copies of the data, via the cloud, not access to the systems where the data is stored. Edelstein said the city will choose the data carefully, and "is sensitive about what data is presented, especially if it contains personally identifiable information." The Common Council should request regular updates from Edelstein on this.

How might city taxpayers benefit from the new collaboration? Edelstein mentioned dashboards for individual city departments are a possibility' these could complement the city's Performance Dashboard, which gives a whole-city look at things like financial and neighborhood stability and service delivery. l'll talk more about the Dashboard in another post.

I agree with Edelstein on the bottom line here. Again, from the WRVO article,

We just have a lot of information and we're going to collect a lot more of it in the coming years. We will never have the staff to be able to analyze all of it and make the decisions  that we need to make. Tapping into expertise and resources at the university is kind of a no-brainer to me. 

The goal is to have the project up and running this fall.

In Case You Missed It (v1)

In case you missed any of this week's posts, here's a quick recap.

Sunday School 9/1/19, continued my weekly look at who's talking with the talking heads, brought us a couple of the Dems vying for the 2020 presidential nod. Here's Julian Castro on the desire for younger folks at the top of the ticket:

While the three leaders -- Biden, Warren and the non-Dem - are "very talented individuals," Castro thinks that as they get close to the Iowa caucuses, "people do want a new generation of leadership." To that end, he thinks the voters need to take a chance, as they did with JFK, Carter, and Obama.

And, Beto O'Rourke, on polls vs. policy:

You know, more than I worry about the politics or the polling, more than I care about what the NRA has to say on this, I care for my kids, and this country...  This triangulation, poll-testing every move, that's what got us here in the first place.

Monday's Grains of Salt post - a recurring focus on Syracuse and Central New York, talked about a new, mixed-use park being developed in the city's Near West Side neighborhood, designed to help answer this question:

What do you do with 77,000 square feet of vacant land adjacent to one of the country’s most innovative public broadcasting stations within one of the nation’s poorest neighborhoods?

In Tuesday's post, Walmart Goes Where Others Fear to Tread, it was painful to make a comparison between the changes made by the world's largest retailed to do something about guns, and the lack of effort on the part of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who reiterated his lack of commitment to doing his job thusly:

I said several weeks ago that if the president took a position on a bill so that we knew we would actually be making a law and not just having serial votes, I’d be happy to put it on the floor.

My Wondering on Wednesday post, the 180th in this series, focused on the president's weather forecasting, his golfing (in a way that might surprise regular readers), and his 'enrichment efforts, among other things. Here's a snippet, related to Trump's 'suggestion' that Mike Pence stay at Trump Doonbeg property while attending meetings in Dublin, fully on the other side of Ireland:

In total, nearly $20 million has been spent at the Trump family hotels since 2015 by various mostly Republican political groups, including Mr. Trump’s own political committees, according to a tally by the Center for Responsive Politics.

I delivered a post from The Update Desk  on Thursday, about my social experiment with the Democrats (and Bernie) and how they're handling outreach efforts. I' signed up on all of the top ten candidates' websites, and eventually heard from all of them, on a variety of topics. Here's what they aren't talking about:

The economy, education, foreign policy, health insurance, or immigration, unless they included those in a 'general' message. No email addressed any of those issues individually, likely because the candidates are gearing their efforts towards whatever is the flavor of the day - the climate change Town Hall, the debate, and the August 31st filing deadline being among those flavors.

And finally, Friday brought us the latest TGIF 'good week/bad week' news, featuring (among others), Boris Johnson, who had a really bad week. I mean, he lost two votes, people crossed over to the dark side in the middle of debates, and then, even his little brother abandoned ship - which made me think of another famous family member.

In a tweet, he pointed to an "unresolvable tension" between loyalty to the family and the national interest.  Which leads me to declare that Ivanka Trump also had a bad week. Now that she knows it can be done, she can stop being complicit in her father's nonsense, and the longer it takes for her to do it, the worse her weeks become.

That's all for this week. Coming next week, in addition to our regular features, I'll have an update on some recent polling, as well as a look at what is - or isn't - going on in Albany.

TGIF 9/6/19

Time for our weekly look at the good week/bad week ledger.

Let's start with Debra Messing, who had a bad week, if you ask me. Aside from her retweeting a racist post, something she clearly should have known better than to do, there was the whole kerfuffle about political donors.

Messing suggested (with others piling on in agreement) that the list of donors to the president's upcoming Hollywood fundraiser should be made public. But here's the thing: when she called for a list of Trump's donors, she didn't simultaneously release a list of the political contributions that she's made, nor did she demand that Democratic donors are similarly publicized. Shame on her - let's be all about transparency and equality and publish all of them. Or conversely.

Moving on to the great state of Alabama, rarely have so many been talking about a state - people who have about as much intention of visiting Alabama as, well, as Dorian did. I'd guess that more folks can now find Alabama on a map than at any other time in recent memory, maybe no.

The president is making a bad week worse by doubling down, having his Cabinet members double down, and literally making an ass of himself. He's acting like the proverbial four-year-old who picks up his toys and goes home when he doesn't get his way.  On the plus side, though, his Sharpie-doctored map has spawned a whole lot of creativity in the Twitterverse, with loads of drawings of all kinds of Trump-related stuff being hilariously marked up. Search the #SharpiePresident hash tag for some fun. FYI, there's some NSFW content there, so be careful.

We also learned which projects the Pentagon was going to ignore, instead misappropriating the money for Trump's Mexican-funded border wall, leading all of us to try once again to understand exactly how Mexico is paying for the darn thing. We're paying for it, of course - the military, and FEMA, so far, are having a bad week as money is pulled to help make sure that Trump gets 500 miles of wall built by the 2020 election. Because a political promise is more important than our three branches of government, dontcha know. Mexico is having a good week, I think.

James Comey had a mixed week. On the one hand, he's not being charged with any crimes, but on the other, he violated FBI policies in a couple of ways, we were told, including sharing his memos with a friend who shared them with the press. Rabid Trump fans are demanding he be jailed for life or longer, maybe jailed for life AND stoned in the public square and stuff, as if any company would to that to an employee. Heck, in some circles, he'd be considered a protected whistle blower.

Boris Johnson had a bad week, suffering embarrassing losses in his first couple of votes as the UK's Prime Minister. Worse than that, though, the 'British Donald Trump' lost the confidence of his little brother Jo, who resigned as a member of parliament and as a minister in his brother's government. In a tweet, he pointed to an "unresolvable tension" between loyalty to the family and the national interest.  Which leads me to declare that Ivanka Trump also had a bad week. Now that she knows it can be done, she can stop being complicit in her father's nonsense, and the longer it takes for her to do it, the worse her weeks become.

And finally, on a sadder note, the number of people suffering from serious lung illnesses stemming, it seems, from their vaping habits continues to grow, as does the number of deaths, with five reported. Some are calling for Ned Sharpless, the acting head of the FDA, to do something or resign.

I'm not sure there's anything he can do - or should do - to solve this problem, other than offer thoughts and prayers. You know, like we do with mass shootings. Good for the goose, and all.

The Update Desk: Who Loves Me Baby?

A week ago, I decided to test my tolerance for email bombardment, and test the tenacity of the top candidates vying to be the Democratic presidential nominee at the same time.

This all started because I was getting A LOT of emails from Joe Biden, and nothing from the other candidates. I wasn't sure why that was happening, so I devised a plan to find out how the top candidates communicate with potential voters. Here's an excerpt from my post setting up the experiment.

So: now that the field has been cut in half, at least for a couple of weeks, and in the interest of trying to get a sense of how aggressive (desperate?) the other candidates are relative to Biden, I signed up on all of their websites today, using one of my alternate emails. I'm going to unsubscribe to Biden emails under my primary account (which would be the one on file from the Obama donation I made) and see how things go.

I can tell you that it took me 12 minutes to locate all of their official websites, enter my email address and zip code and become a 'supporter' of each of the ten. And so far, 45 minutes later, I've only gotten 'thanks for signing up' messages from three campaigns: Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and yep - you guessed it, Joe Biden.

After a full week of opportunity, how are things going?  Well, I received 100 emails, 69 of which directly asked for money (any amount or a specific amount), by including one or more links, one or more buttons, or both.  By candidate, here's the total number of emails received (and the number asking for money):

• Joe Biden: 10 (7)
• Cory Booker: 18 (10)
• Pete Buttigieg: 11 (5)
• Julian Castro: 9 (5)
• Kamala Harris: 14 (11)
• Amy Klobuchar: 12 (8)
• Beto O'Rourke: 8 (7)
• Bernie Sanders: 11 (90
• Elizabeth Warren: 6 (6)
• Andrew Yang: 1 (1)

Booker was first to respond, followed by Biden and Harris, who hit me simultaneously. All three were within 10 minutes of me signing up on their pages. Andrew Yang was last - dead last, by a long shot. I actually signed up a second time when, after four days of nothing, I figured I might not have completed my first submission. I finally heard from him last night, around 6PM.

Other than money, what are the candidates talking about? 

• General info, with 57 emails, led the way. Harris (10), Booker and Sanders (8),  Klobuchar (7) and Biden (6) were out in front here. Candidates talked about their families, their backgrounds, why they were running, their favorite teacher (my first email from Buttigieg), and why we need to do something other than more Trump. Guns popped up a couple of times here as well.
• Next week's debate was second, with 21 emails. Buttigieg and Castro (four each), followed by Biden, Booker and Klobuchar (3 each) were ahead of the pack on this one. Some of the candidates are running contests, with the winner going to Houston. 
• Climate change (17 emails, six from Booker alone - none from Castro, O'Rourke, or Yang) was the third most talked about issue, as folks prepared for the CNN town hall last night. 
• Jobs - specifically union jobs - was a distant fourth. Five of the 10 candidates issued Labor Day messages mentioning union jobs.

What aren't the candidates talking about? The economy, education, foreign policy, health insurance, or immigration, unless they included those in a 'general' message. No email addressed any of those issues individually, likely because the candidates are gearing their efforts towards whatever is the flavor of the day - the climate change Town Hall, the debate, and the August 31st filing deadline being among those flavors. 

The most personal messages came from Beto O'Rourke, hands down. His email on the shootings in Odessa and Midland deeply saddened him, while the widely-shared fake news that the shooter had a Beto sticker on his car outraged him. Other than Mayor Pete's email about teachers (I'm the daughter of two very good ones, so that one was close to my heart), none of the rest of what I read really stuck with me.

Up to this point, I've been an observer, just tracking what the candidates have sent me. Going forward, I'm going to be a non-financial participant. Offer me a survey, I'm going to take it. Ask for my signature on a petition, you'll get it. I'm going to see if that changes anything with the emails. I'm going to hold off donating until after the debate.

And I really hope that Andrew Yang does something with his website monitoring. I don't want to wait almost a full week to hear from my next president, especially since the current one won't be quiet, about anything. 

Wondering on Wednesday (v180)

Happy first Wednesday of September.

Let's start with Alabama, Dorian, and the president. Here's my wondering: If Alabama was a blue state, would Trump have put it inside the cone of uncertainty at any point? Would he have defended that move, if he made it, even as the National Weather Service was tweeting disagreement in order to calm fears that had been raised for no reason?  And who the heck drew the Sharpie cone over Alabama in the first place?

There was a lot of consternation on the left that the president supposedly cancelled his visit to Poland so that he could stay home and monitor Dorian directly, when in fact he spent a couple of days at his golf course in Sterling, VA. "Shame on him for golfing during a potential crisis," was the message - as if President Obama didn't play golf back in '16 when Louisiana was flooded. I wonder why there was so much outrage? Dorian was not threatening the US at the time - Alabama had nothing to fear while the president was assaulting the golf course.

Besides, he was monitoring the storm. Take a look at this article from the New York Times.

Over the long weekend, President Trump monitored Hurricane Dorian from a golf cart at his club in Virginia, calling for regular updates from an aide trailing him around the course. By 8 p.m. Monday, as Dorian churned toward Florida and Mr. Trump’s boarded-up Mar-a-Lago resort, the president had golfed twice and since Saturday morning pelted the American public with 122 tweets.

By all means, slam him for making money again from his presidency, but I think we can all back off from the criticism of golfing during a crisis. I also wonder who or what he would have been tweeting about had he not had Dorian to keep him occupied.

Speaking of making money from his presidency, how about that visit by Pence and Mother (and his actual mother and his sister) to Ireland? Pence needed an hour-long motorcade, another hour on Air Force Two, and then another short trip by car to get to his meeting with the Irish President.

The lengthy commute was necessary because of Mr. Pence's choice of hotel: Rather than spending Monday night in Dublin, the vice president stayed 181 miles away by car on the other side of Ireland - at the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in Doonbeg. The person who suggested he stay there was the hotel's owner himself, President Trump.

 "I don't think it was a request, like a command," Marc Short, Mr. Pence's chief of staff, told reporters travelling with the vice president. "I think it was a suggestion."

The Times notes that this just the way things are done in the Trump Administration.

In total, nearly $20 million has been spent at the Trump family hotels since 2015 by various mostly Republican political groups, including Mr. Trump’s own political committees, according to a tally by the Center for Responsive Politics. 

Nice work if you can get it, right? I wonder how anyone can pretend that he's not making money off his presidency?

And finally tonight, let's wonder how many more Republicans will not be running for re-election next year. A short time ago, another one - Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, declared he's done.

I've said all along I'd know when the right time came and I've come to the conclusion that it has. There is nobody running against me. Nobody can say they've pushed me out. I'm doing this on my own terms. 

Sensenbrenner, 76 years old, has served for 42 years. And he's the second one to announce today; earlier, Rep. Bill Flores said he's not running again, becoming the fifth Texan to bail. 

Now, I wonder how we can get Republican Senators to make the same decision...