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Political Rants

Taking a chance on the twenty third

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My mind has been a piece of shit all week, so I apologize in advance for this column. About all I can manage is a trash-talk session about my member of the House of Representatives, the honorable Claudia Tenney, who announced her re-election bid this week.

It’s not surprising that she wants to return to Congress. After all, it’s the best way she can serve vol … I mean, her liege lord Trump, king-in-waiting of the future imperial autocracy formerly known as America. The twist is that she has just been gerrymandered out of her district (NY-22) by the New York State legislature, run by majority Democrats who apparently recall Claudia’s tenure as a state senator.

We go way back

I mentioned at one point that Claudia and I are from the same small town (New Hartford) in upstate New York and that we went to high school together for about 4 months. I graduated in January, and was two years ahead of her, so I remember her not at all, though as I said in that previous column, I knew her brother fairly well.

Well, when she serves in Congress, Claudia of course represents the whole sprawling 22nd House district, and as per custom, her home town appears next to her name. However, the NY legislature saw fit to sever her town from the rump of the 22nd district, which will now encompass Syracuse and will be a hard win for any republican, particularly an autocrat like Claudia. Revenge is a bitch.

Finding a new home

So Claudia’s district no longer exists, in essence. Strangely, Nate Silver lists her as an incumbent in the new 23rd district, which covers the southern tier all the way to freaking Ohio, but that just includes a corner of her current 22nd district. Nevertheless, she has just announced her intention to run for the nomination to win that seat, which Silver calls an R+26 district – literally the reddest district in New York.

I’d say she stands a fair chance against Tom Reed, who currently holds the 23rd. Claudia is about as right-wing as a New York House member can get. She’s a full-on Trump acolyte, constantly obsessing over immigration, enthusiastic second amendment absolutist, and so on. On the other hand, she doesn’t live in the new 23rd district, so people might hold that against her. (Fellow New Hartford native Luke Radel has some thoughts on this – check out his latest installment of Elected News.)

Either way works

There are those who deplore the practice of gerrymandering, and who accuse people on the left of hypocrisy when they applaud partisan redistricting in blue states. I’m of the opinion that representation is a national problem, and until it’s handled on a national basis, the opposition to the autocratic party shouldn’t unilaterally disarm.

I say this, even though nonpartisan redistricting commissions often come up with positive results from a Democratic standpoint largely because the maps end up reflecting demographic shifts that generally favor the left. In all honesty, though, as much as I can’t stand Claudia and think she’s an embarrassment at best, I honestly don’t care whether or not she’s in Congress, so long as the autocratic party she belongs to loses two or three seats in New York. That’s my bottom line.

luv u,

jp

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Political Rants

Under the radar.

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If you had your fill of thankfulness over the past week, this might be a good time to look in on some stuff that’s happening at the national level that seldom gets reported on. So much media attention is focused on the current administration’s relationship with the Russian government,  various sexual harassment revelations, and Trump’s latest asinine tweets (all important topics, to be sure), some of the more impactful stuff the administration and its Congressional allies have been doing is slipping by unnoticed. Time to fight back … and give thanks for the Internets.

Reactionary policy vessel.Court-Packing. As Trump appoints circuit court judges at an unprecedented pace, his friends and supporters in the Senate have greased the skids obligingly, disabling the filibuster and individual Senators’ right to put a hold on nominations – methods the Republicans used liberally during the Obama administration to prevent his nominees from being seated. Now the reactionary Federalist Society has proposed a court-packing scheme that would triple the number of appellate court judges, enabling Trump to appoint an unassailable majority of ultra-conservative jurists to lifetime appointments on the bench.

Census and Sensibility. Trump looks ready to nominate a right-wing academic with no administrative or data-analytical experience to the number 2 post in the Census Bureau, which is the main executive position in that agency. Now, there is no permanent director of that agency, and the number 2 spot does not require Senate confirmation, so this is a stealth appointment of an ideologue who argues that competitive elections are not good for Democracy(!) and who played a key role in the GOP’s partisan redistricting last time around. That’s the guy who will oversee collecting the demographic data that informs redistricting. Holy shit.

Media Matters. Meanwhile, over at the FCC, Trump appointed chair Ajit Pai has been working overtime. You’ve probably heard about his attack on net neutrality, and there’s no question that that story deserves more attention, but less visible has been Pai’s efforts to break down the already weak system of rules regarding media ownership. In a 3-2 party line vote, the FCC recently voted to allow cross ownership of a television station and a newspaper in a single market. This, along with the decision to again discount UHF channels with respect to the statutory national audience share cap of 39% spells greater media consolidation and expansion of right-wing companies like Sinclair Broadcasting.

These and other issues, though not leading the headlines, have the potential to affect our daily lives for decades to come. They constitute the core of the GOP’s assault on public institutions as a constraint on concentrated private power. We ignore them at our own peril.

luv u,

jp