Mid-term elections

[Brian]

I usually start these election threads much earlier than three weeks before I vote the old fashioned way, in a booth near my home.  But there are no contested races on my ballot statewide or locally, and the six state propositions are the fewest I remember for a general election.

Still, I'm excited about voting Yes on Proposition 45, which would give the state Insurance Commissioner authority to regulate health insurance rates.  Absentee voting only started a week ago, but I caught ads for the No on 45 campaign before Labor Day.  I'm paying for them:  98 percent of the campaign funds come from three big health insurance companies, two of which are nonprofit and one of those is mine.  Millions of dollars that should be spent on patient care or refunded to rate payers is instead being spent on slick deceptive ads on television and radio.  That's reason enough for me to put a "Sacramento politician" -- actually, effective public servants like John Garamendi and Dave Jones -- in charge.

I hope that Californians see through the ad blizzard and vote for Prop 45, like they did when they approved Proposition 103 in 1988, which also established the Insurance Commissioner's office, and as they did when they defeated Mercury General's Proposition 17 in 2010 and Proposition 33 in 2012, which would have rolled back many of Prop 103's consumer benefits.  The insurance company spent more than $17 million on their Prop 33 campaign -- and outspent the opposition 62 to 1 -- but lost again.

[Brian]

As the Supreme Court session was winding up last spring, I read and heard people saying that 81 year old Ruth Bader Ginsburg should step down and allow President Obama to appoint a much younger liberal Justice before the Republicans take over the Senate.  Then her dissent in the Hobby Lobby case made her a national hero, known to folks much younger than me as Notorious RBG.  And just last Friday, she stayed up all night to write a dissent in the decision that upheld Texas' new voting laws, the worst in 50 states.  I hope to hear even more from Justice Ginsburg over the next two years, at least.

All year, I've been reading e-mails from Democracy for America, Move On, Credo, Progressive Democrats of America, Peace Action's PAC, Daily Kos, Act Blue and numerous Senators like Pat Leahy and Elizabeth Warren who aren't running now, all wanting my money while trying to scare the hell out of me with the prospect of a Republican Senate.  Except for the Supreme Court, I haven't been convinced by any of their arguments.  As long as the Republicans control the House, nothing substantial will be accomplished.  And President Obama still has the veto.  I think that two years of Republican majorities on Capitol Hill could result in a deeper and wider swing to progressive Democrats in 2016 than those we enjoyed in 2006 and 2008.  Unless Obama and his party become mired in war and recession like Bush and the Republicans did back then.

If the Democrats can hold on to 50 seats, they will maintain a majority.  Vice President Joe Biden will travel a lot less, returning to his happy home in the Senate.  Anything can happen.  I make only one prediction:  We won't know everybody who's taking office in January for days after the election or maybe weeks.  There will be many close races, slow absentee ballot counts, legal challenges and at least one runoff election in Louisiana in December.  Political junkies like me will wallow in the news while our in boxes pile up with more fundraising appeals.

[Jeanne]

A tangent to the mid-term elections is the goings on in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Brian gave me a sympathetic ear tonight while I expressed my disgust at the board of education and the "leaders" they have brought in to run the district. Teachers in LA have weathered pay cuts, lay offs, and bad press through the economic crash, No Child Left Behind, and Race To the Top. Since Prop 30 passed, I have seen no relief of overcrowded, understaffed schools. The best vision our superintendent could come up with was using construction bond funds to purchase ipads and requiring teachers to serve breakfast to students in the classroom. This breakfast was already available for free just before school. So 15 minutes of instruction was turned over to force feeding kids and cleaning up.

Class size has always been an issue in LAUSD. In my 16 years of teaching, most of my classes have been in the mid 40's, sometimes 47-49. This year my classes run 39-45. There is one exception of a class of 18 that has slipped by the administration, maybe because of the poorly functioning software that Deasy pushed into operation too early. Whatever the reason, I am having a ball in that class, teaching intuitively, responding to the students as we get to know each other. Imagine if teachers could do that all of the time. Maybe that's scary to the powers that be who would have us cranking out drones who can bubble well on standardized tests and follow instructions.

This is the first year that I have seen any backbone and proactive strategizing from UTLA, our teachers' union. I am feeling a bit of hope for LA teachers and unions in general. They had a press conference this week before school about class size. I was surprised to discover that one of my ninth graders has been an activist since elementary school. He has started a club of students for justice and was chosen to speak at the press conference. I have talked to him since and today gave him the ACLU know your rights card and the anti recruiting pamphlet that Jim and Sharon have given me. He's going to show them to his club. More hope sprouting up.

Here's the link to Channel 4's coverage of the press conference.

beta.criticalmention.com/app/#clip/view?11753412/token/27e7c979-0f49-4a79-b292-c3b279c0506f

[Sharon W]

Thanks for sharing that hopefull story, Jeanne! LA Unified used to have an active organization called Coalition Against Militarism in our Schools - CAMS - that changed its name to Coalition for Alternatives to Militarism in our Schools - still CAMS - but the link I had for their website is dead now and they may not exist any more. This is a similar organization in San Diego, www.projectyano.org/index.php , that your student might be interested in. I have more pamphlets and know your rights cards in English and Spanish if you want more.

[Brian]

Thank you, Jeanne, for posting that link to the news coverage of your action!


In case you missed it, here's the closing editorial from this week's "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO.

Then I watched Prince on "Saturday Night Live" tonight, and I realized that President Obama wasn't the first half black, half white breakthrough artist who arrived ahead of his time.

Both gentlemen are now poised for a comeback.

[Brian]

Oct 22, 2014 23:00:23 GMT -8 Brian said:

I make only one prediction about the Senate races:  We won't know everybody who's taking office in January for days after the election or maybe weeks.  There will be many close races, slow absentee ballot counts, legal challenges and at least one runoff election in Louisiana in December.

Well, I was right about Louisiana.  But the Republicans had their majority before I could finish dinner.  I started drinking a little earlier tonight.

Even worse and almost unnoticed -- it looks like the GOP will have more than 250 seats in the House, an insurmountable hurdle for Democrats for the next two election cycles.  My only hope for now is that Speaker Boehner's larger majority will allow him to shed enough of the anti-government wing of his party that he will allow some constructive legislation to come to the floor.

[Sam Scibetta]

In response to Jeane's post from Oct. 24,

You are so right. You know you don't have to watch the US Senate or House to see back stabbing , self serving, two-faced,pupetts engage in Shakespearean style intrigue, heavens no. Just watch the LAUSD school board in action. I hear all about it every day from my wife who has been a librarian for 14 years with the district. What a soap opera. Thank goodness Mr. Deasy is gone but not soon enough. All it took was the addition of Monica Ratliff and then for good measure Dr.George McKenna and just like that his kingdom fell. The school board matters. The education unions matter. Work together and everybody wins.

[Brian]

Thank you for posting, Sam! I also agree with what you wrote in the baseball thread -- it's been too long. I will contact you soon.

Did you vote for Monica Ratliff for school board like Anni and I did?  Her election last year was considered a shocker.

***

There was a bigger surprise up here last Wednesday morning:  Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra was trailing another Democrat, the unknown Patty Lopez.  At the close of business in Norwalk on Monday, she leads by seven votes.

Nobody saw this coming -- not even Lopez, from the accounts I've read online.  Bocanegra got nearly two thirds of the vote in the June primary, and his own poll had him up at 81 percent.  He raised more than $600,000, compared to Lopez' $10,000 in contributions.  While he campaigned for other candidates to shore up a future bid for speaker of the Assembly, Lopez knocked on doors with some 100 volunteers, she says.  One story mentioned the upset by Monica Ratliff, insinuating that there's something bizarre about voters in the northeast Valley.  My theory:  Republicans, who turn out more reliably, chose Lopez over the incumbent Democrat.  But all that door knocking was the real key.

Right now, 241,545 votes remain to be counted in Los Angeles County, many thousands of those for the 39th District.  If Bocanegra isn't leading when the election is certified, I bet that he has enough cash on hand to pay for a recount.

***

Congratulations to Loretta Lynn for being nominated as attorney general of the United States.  I caught her on the Country Music Awards last week, and Loretta still sounds great, hitting all the beautifully familiar notes.  If only President Obama had nominated the coal miner's daughter before the election, Mitch McConnell might have been defeated.

[Brian]

Assembly member elect Patty Lopez

When the Los Angeles County registrar announced the final tally Monday afternoon for the 39th Assembly District -- leaving Patty Lopez ahead by 467 votes -- incumbent Raul Bocanegra conceded.  No recount.

I'm a little sad because I was hoping for another week of fun reading all of the speculation online about the causes of this stunning upset.  Like this piece posted Sunday night by LA Weekly with updates:

www.laweekly.com/informer/2014/11/23/is-this-ballot-responsible-for-patty-lopezs-bizarre-upset-over-raul-bocanegra

I paid no attention to Patty Lopez until the day after the election.  But there's a picture of her holding a sign at a protest, so I feel like I know her.

I might be naive, but I cannot imagine that voters up here did not notice that more than one Democrat was on their ballot, and that the second name belonged to the guy they chose over another, more prominent Democrat, Richard Alarcon, only two years ago.  Though I'll allow that there might be 468 such people out of 45,033 voters.  I think Bocanegra might have reaped at least 469 votes if he'd just put that English language billboard touting his sponsorship of the legislation that created all them movie production tax credits on Sunland Boulevard, where industry workers drive, instead of Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima, where it probably engendered resentment.