May 23, 2018

Colin Allred beats Lillian Salerno for chance to unseat incumbent Republican Pete Sessions

I think he can take that Trumper bootlicker OUT!

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018-elections/2018/05/22/colin-allred-beats-lillian-salerno-chance-unseat-incumbent-republican-pete-sessions

Dallas lawyer Colin Allred, the Hillcrest High School football standout who made it to the NFL before becoming a civil rights lawyer, easily outpaced Lillian Salerno to win the Democratic nomination for the 32nd Congressional District. Allred, 35, will challenge longtime incumbent Republican Pete Sessions in November, a contest that's expected to be one of the most costliest and competitive House races in the nation.

"This community got involved in our campaign and I'm so grateful," Allred said Tuesday. "Through their door-knocking, block walking and neighbor-to-neighbor contact, they helped us spread our message and they are going to help us beat Pete Sessions in November."

Sessions, who cruised to victory in the March 6 primary, did not comment on Allred's victory. Local Democrats are hoping Allred, largely unknown in political circles before this race, can be a champion with the ability and resources to knock off Sessions, who has been in Congress since 1997 and represented District 32 since 2003.

In 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton narrowly won the district over Republican Donald Trump, who went on to become president. Sessions, who was unopposed, won re-election and pulled in more votes than Clinton.

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http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/05/22/colin-allred-win-democratic-runoff/

video of his victory speech

May 23, 2018

Dem Super PAC Spending To Elevate GOP Hardliner In California House Race (Partly b/c Our Revolution)

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/dem-super-pac-spending-to-elevate-gop-hardliner-in-california-house-race

House Democrats’ main super PAC is quietly attempting to boost a hardline Republican candidate in a key House race, the latest attempt by national Democrats to avoid disaster in California.

The House Majority PAC has sent out mail pieces to Republican and independent voters in retiring Rep. Ed Royce’s (R-CA) district tying Phil Liberatore to President Trump, a clear move to raise the underfunded Liberatore’s name recognition in the district and try to siphon off votes from other GOP candidates to him. Images of the mail pieces were obtained by TPM from a source in-district.

The mailers advertise that Liberatore and Trump “want a bigger border wall,” oppose sanctuary cities (a major flashpoint in California, where Republicans are outraged Democratic lawmakers have declared it a sanctuary state), and tout his endorsement from controversial former Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio (R), a hero on the anti-immigrant right. While the ad is framed as an attack, it’s clear the goal is to boost him at other Republicans’ expense.

The effort is just one of many efforts from Democrats to avoid the disastrous scenario of failing to get a single candidate into the general election in a state where they have a number of key pickup opportunities.

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the ratfucking by Our Revolution:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/national-dems-jump-in-to-avoid-calamity-in-ca-primaries

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A few weeks ago, the DCCC jumped in to back Navy veteran and lottery winner Gil Cisneros (D) in the race for the open seat to replace retiring Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA). The move drew howls from Cisneros’ opponents, the loudest of them from businessman Andy Thorburn (D) and the progressive organizations backing him like the Bernie Sanders-affiliated Our Revolution and the California Nurses Association.

That endorsement could come back to bite them, as a local Democratic official who’s backing Thorburn accused the married Cisneros of drunkenly trying to seduce her then withholding a campaign donation — a charge Cisneros and his allies strongly deny. Others told TPM Cisneros wasn’t drunk that night — including local Fox News reporter Jamie Chambers, who said he talked to Cisneros around the time of the alleged encounter and that he was “sober, clear, and lucid.”

Pushing one candidate over others isn’t their only option.

Party leaders have quietly worked on second-tier candidates for months to drop out to help the remaining Democrats consolidate the vote. And a few have done so – including Rachel Payne, who recently dropped her bid for the Rohrabacher seat. But others, like EMILY’s List-backed Mai Khanh Tran in Royce’s district, have told them to stuff it.

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The Intercept gets involved too

California Democrat threatens legal action over ‘fabricated voice mail’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/04/27/california-democrat-threatens-legal-action-over-fabricated-voicemail/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.eb1e98e8c0f7

Two Democrats in a blue-trending California congressional district locked horns Friday over a short piece of audio — a voice mail that candidate Andy Thorburn claims candidate Gil Cisneros left on his wife’s phone. By the end of Friday, the dust-up had led to legal action, accusations of fraud and one candidate comparing the other to President Trump.

The voice mail, first reported by the Intercept, is just a few seconds long. In it, a man identifies himself as Cisneros, a candidate in California’s 39th Congressional District, and informs Thorburn that “I’m gonna go negative on you.”

The Intercept, which has been closely covering brawls in Democratic primaries, reported on the voice mail Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning, Cisneros’s campaign released the cease-and-desist letter it had sent to the Intercept, claiming that the story was “false and defamatory” and further claiming that the audio had been faked.

“The voice on that recording is not Gil Cisneros, plain and simple,” said Cisneros spokesman Orrin Evans. “The Intercept’s ‘story’ about a voice mail — apparently provided to them by the Thorburn campaign — is completely false and manufactured. The Intercept posted the fabricated voice mail without even playing the recording for the Cisneros campaign to verify his voice, and took no steps to authenticate the recording prior to its release.”


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so SICK of these fucking dirty tricks from OR

they attacked an Indian American candidate (who won his primary tonight) as well

Kulkarni's teen drug arrest puts Fort Bend Democrats on edge

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Kulkarni-s-teen-drug-arrest-puts-Fort-Bend-12628608.php

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Nevertheless, the allegation, made at the start of early voting in Texas, has shaken up a U.S. House race in which Democrats hope to make inroads in their quest to loosen the Republican Party's long grip on the state.

Kulkarni disclosed the arrest to the Chronicle on Tuesday after the case was raised by the Fort Bend County Chapter leader of Our Revolution, a group representing a progressive coalition of activists who supported the 2016 presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Doug Beaton, the leader of the chapter, warned Fort Bend County Democratic officials on Kulkarni's previously undisclosed past in a letter posted Monday on social media. The letter suggested that Kulkarni, whose full first name is Srivinas, is running under an assumed name and that he had previously registered with the Federal Election Commission to run for a congressional seat in Massachusetts.


"As these concerns have been validated, we feel that this candidate would be a considerable liability for the Democratic Party in the midterm elections," Beaton wrote.

Kulkarni said neither charge is true.

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ratfuckers!

May 22, 2018

Re: Housewife and Gendarme France's New Reservists

https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/073399-023-A/re-housewife-and-gendarme

Two years after the terrorist attacks which hit Paris in 2015 France is still in a state of emergency. With a shortage of military and police, civilians have been invited to fill in the shortfall. But will this army of volunteers really make France safer?

(31 min)
Available from 10/05/2018 to 25/05/2018

May 22, 2018

Every May 22 primary election you should know about, briefly explained

Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, and Kentucky are all going to the polls.

https://www.vox.com/2018/5/22/17376408/primary-election-2018-may-22-texas-georgia-kentucky-arkansas

The final big primary day in May 2018 will send four states to the polls: Texas (for runoff elections), Georgia, Kentucky, and Arkansas. Democrats hoping to be nominated in key House races will be on the ballot in all four states, with particularly heated primary contests taking place in Texas and Kentucky.

Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas also have governor races on the ballot. All three are currently in Republicans’ hands in states Donald Trump won, but Democrats hold out hope for an upset — particularly in Georgia. Here’s what to watch.

Texas

Democratic governor: the race that probably “determines who loses to Greg Abbott in November”
Who are the Democrats? Former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez and Houston businessman Andrew White. White’s father, Mark White, was a Democratic governor back in the 1980s.

Who is the Republican? Incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott, first elected in 2014.

What’s the story? The last time Democrats won a Texas governor’s race, it was the 1990s. And this year doesn’t promise to be different; Abbott is one of the most popular governors in the country, and will be tough to beat in November. Valdez, the state’s first openly gay and first Latina sheriff, is trying to turn out Latino voters. White, meanwhile, is courting suburban voters who dislike how far-right Texas government has become under Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s leadership.

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May 22, 2018

Foresight Brief - Technological Revolutions And Societal Transitions

Are we currently living through a new industrial and technological revolution? Does it differ qualitatively from similar revolutions in the past? How can we gauge its political implications? Researchers working within the school of evolutionary economics, in particular those who embrace the concept of techno-economic paradigms, regard the ongoing digitalisation of the economy not as a new revolution, but as the turning point between the installation period and the deployment period of a paradigm based on information and communication technologies.

It is not the innovations which determine the form taken by the turning point and its duration, but instead our capacity to couple them with ambitions for economic and societal growth on a scale similar to those which served as guiding beacons during the deployment period of the previous paradigm, in the aftermath of World War II. This type of growth is qualitatively different from what we have seen before, being both socially inclusive and ecologically sustainable, and therefore involving a convergence of the digital and ecological transitions.


Publication date : 2018
Number of pages : 16

FREE DOWNLOAD
Full text (EN) https://www.etui.org/content/download/34312/329459/file/Foresight-Brief_04_EN_WEB.pdf

May 22, 2018

From Neoliberal Ruins To Recovery: Iceland Is Real Poster-Boy

At a Nordic-Baltic Development Forum meeting, held in Riga some years ago, there arose a lively controversy on the relative merits of the Swedish (Nordic) model, on the one hand, and the minimal government and low-tax regimes of the Baltic countries, on the other.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/from-neoliberal-ruins-to-recovery-iceland-is-real-poster-boy

Göran Person, former prime minister of Sweden, reminded the audience that Sweden, almost until the Great Depression (1930s), had been a low-tax minimal government country. The market failure of financial capitalism, which then started a global depression, had changed all that. The Nordic model was built, by necessity, to save capitalism from the capitalists. The Swedes came to the conclusion that the market system couldn’t thrive without state supervision.

During this debate, Persson prophesised that, in the near future, the Baltic countries would have to raise their level of taxation to pay for hitherto unattended common needs and to build a more inclusive and cohesive society. After all, they had a considerable backlog of poverty, dilapidated infrastructure and environmental degradation to sort out.

The Welfare State – And Its Enemies

What clinched the matter was when a well known Finnish social democrat asked the audience if they knew which countries topped the interantional list for lowest taxes? The answer was the failed states of the world. Haiti came top. It has next to no taxes. It has also next to no education, no healthcare, no infrastructure and – conspicuously – no economic growth. And no hope. This explains why taxes are the price we all have to pay for living in a civilized society.

At the heart of the controversy between the neoliberals (conservatives) and those of us who want to defend the achievements of the welfare state lie opposite conceptions of the role of the state in managing our common affairs, including interfering with the market when it fails. Contrary to the tenets of the “Washington Consensus”, which has had a dominating impact on socio-economic development for the past few decades, we believe the democratic state is not only the guarantor of democracy, the rule of law and freedom. Without supervision by, and accountability to, the democratic state, markets can easily go astray, with unforeseen consequences.

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May 21, 2018

Sanders to run as a Democrat -- but not accept nomination (2018 Senate)

The Vermont senator announces his complicated reelection plans for another term.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/21/bernie-sanders-democrat-independent-vermont-601844

Bernie Sanders is running for the Democratic nomination in Vermont — but he won’t accept it if he wins. The famously independent senator, who briefly joined the Democratic Party to run in the 2016 New Hampshire presidential primary only to un-enroll later, officially announced Monday that he would seek a third term in the Senate this fall. He also said that he’ll pull the same maneuver that he did in his 2006 and 2012 Senate races: Running as a Democrat, declining the nomination when he wins and then running as an independent.

The move makes it virtually impossible for another Democrat to seek the party’s nod. And it allows Sanders to loom large in the party primary in August, but still preserve his independence. But the move also comes at a time when Sanders supporters are pushing for changes to the presidential nominating process as part of the Democratic National Committee unity reform commission. One priority is to open up the party’s primaries to voters who aren’t registered as Democrats.

A Sanders spokeswoman did not answer when asked whether the senator considered doing things differently in light of his new party and Senate leadership roles.

The Vermont Democratic Party passed a resolution over the weekend supporting Sanders’ move, proclaiming that he could still be considered a member of the party “for all purposes and entitled to all the rights and privileges that come with such membership at the state and federal level.”

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May 21, 2018

Brexit And Devolution: A New UK Settlement Or The Break-Up Of Britain?

https://www.socialeurope.eu/book/brexit-and-devolution-a-new-uk-settlement-or-the-break-up-of-britain

Social Europe and its partner Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung today launch a new series of papers on the impact of Brexit upon key aspects of UK politics and policy. In the first paper on ‘Brexit and Devolution’, SE editor, David Gow, a former The Guardian and The Scotsman correspondent and contributor to the Red Paper on Scotland, analyses the constitutional conflict between Westminster and the devolved administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. He concludes that the UK faces a stark choice between a new political/constitutional settlement or the break-up of Britain.



Free Download

https://www.socialeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/BP1-Devolution.pdf

May 21, 2018

Federal Central Banks And Decadent Capitalism

Federal Central Banks (Forum Press, 2018) is a unique study that critically examines the role and impact of central banks in federal and confederal political systems.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/federal-central-banks-and-decadent-capitalism

It conducts a detailed examination of the history, design and operation of central banking in the United States and in the European Union. The historical record from the US is that although the Federal Reserve (Fed) was established in 1913, it took until 1935 before it had been re-designed and removed from the destructive influence of the New York banks. Only at that point did it fulfil the requirements of what today is understood as an effective central bank. In the period starting in the 1980s the Fed fell under the influence of the New York banks again, accommodating every financial innovation and expansion of credit that was required by the private sector. In this latter period the influence of the US Treasury over the Fed was weakened under the doctrine of so-called ‘independence’.

There is a permanent contradiction between the centralizing features of banking and monetary policy and the political and economic expectations of pluralist federal democracy. This has come to the fore following the response of central banks to the global financial crisis. Credit easing transferred billions of dollars to large corporations and banks, and quantitative easing – for which there is no historical precedent in terms of scale – destroyed the nexus between saving and reward and between productive investment and return. The banks were saved at the cost of the economic welfare and savings of the majority of citizens.

This, unfortunately, is not a new situation. The Federal Reserve came into existence in 1913 because of agricultural depression, where farmers were placed in debt servitude by private banks. This recurred in 1933, but this time Franklin D. Roosevelt broke the stranglehold of the banks on the economy and reversed the recurring debt deflation problem. In this, he was ably helped by the Utah businessman Marriner Eccles who argued before Senate committees that depression could only be turned around by creating new lines of credit and via the stimulus of government expenditure. He r pointed out that ‘we can borrow from ourselves’ to get the economy working again and this was the rational solution. Eccles went on to reform the Fed as chairman in 1935.

Federal Central Banks assesses the establishment of the European Central Bank (ECB) and introduction of the Euro in the light of the Fed’s checkered history – one of evolution and regression. Design ideas are always context-dependent and reflect the prevailing economic doctrine and economic interests. Neoliberalism decreed in the 1990s that states should withdraw from monetary policy, leaving decisions to the money and financial markets with central banks simply offering guidance and nudges on interest rates. Or rather, that is what monetary policy became in the ‘noughties’. In fact, initially there was adherence to the inoperable Friedmanite doctrine of controlling the supply of money. This was totally reversed under the authority of Basel rules that allowed banks to issue unsustainable amounts of credit, which central banks were obliged, lacking previous tools or the will to use them, to accommodate. In a City forum a couple of years back I asked the governor of Iceland’s central bank why his nation’s banks were allowed to go on such a reckless credit binge. His answer was that it was not disallowed by Basel rules. The moral is pretty clear: Nations and their central banks, which have a responsibility to ensure the soundness of their national currency, a public good, should not offload responsibility to offshore agencies.

Future Shock

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May 18, 2018

Gaza: UN to launch war crimes investigation into Israeli forces' shooting of protesters

UN human rights chief slams Israel's 'wholly disproportionate response'

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-killings-israel-hamas-un-war-crimes-investigate-border-deaths-sniper-a8357981.html


The UN has voted to send an international war crimes probe to Gaza after the body’s leading human rights official slammed Israel’s reaction to protests along the border as “wholly disproportionate”. Israeli firing into Hamas-ruled Gaza killed nearly 60 Palestinians at mass border protests on Monday.

“There is little evidence of any attempt to minimise casualties on Monday,” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein told a special session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The council voted through the resolution with 29 in favour and two opposed, while 14 states abstained. The resolution also condemned “the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by the Israeli occupying forces against Palestinian civilians”.

Israel condemned the resolution, which was put forward by a group of countries including Pakistan. The United States decried it as an example of a biased focus on Israel by the council.

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confirming 2nd source (Agence France-Presse)

UN votes to send war crimes probe to Gaza

https://www.afp.com/en/news/23/un-votes-send-war-crimes-probe-gaza-doc-15472x3

https://twitter.com/JohnFisher_hrw/status/997480298421026818