In other contests, the pro-charter lobby took a beating in Democratic primaries in New York City. There, the pro-charter group Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) targeted three African-American state legislators for defeat because they questioned the expansion of charters in their communities. DFER raised huge sums for the challengers (Google "DFER Watch"). The highest-profile race was in Harlem, which has more charters than any other neighborhood in the city. Hedge-fund managers and other friends of DFER poured more than $100,000 into the campaign to defeat Bill Perkins, who gained their enmity by seeking public audits of charters. The New York Times, the New York Post, and the New York Daily News ran numerous articles and editorials vilifying Perkins and endorsing his opponent, Basil Smikle. Smikle was supported by New York Gov. David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. On Sept. 14, the three state senators opposed by DFER were re-elected by large margins. DFER's main enemy, Bill Perkins, collected 76 percent of the vote. The media referred to the re-election of these state senators as victories for the teachers' union, denying the possibility that black voters exercise personal agency when they cast their ballots.

[w/ links = full discussion]

There are several dubious aspects of the majority's opinion (principally its decision to invalidate the entire campaign finance scheme rather than exercising "judicial restraint" through a narrower holding). Beyond that, I believe that corporate influence over our political process is easily one of the top sicknesses afflicting our political culture. But there are also very real First Amendment interests implicated by laws which bar entities from spending money to express political viewpoints [...] while this decision will make things marginally worse, I can't imagine how it could worsen fundamentally. All of the hand-wringing sounds to me like someone expressing serious worry that a new law in North Korea will make the country more tyrannical. There's not much room for our corporatist political system to get more corporatist. Does anyone believe that the ability of corporations to influence our political process was meaningfully limited before yesterday's issuance of this ruling? [...] It's the smaller non-profit advocacy groups whose political speech tends to be most burdened by these laws. Campaign finance laws are a bit like gun control statutes: actual criminals continue to possess large stockpiles of weapons, but law-abiding citizens are disarmed [...] Meaningful public financing of campaigns would far more effectively achieve the ostensible objectives of campaign finance restrictions without any of the dangers or constitutional infirmities.

Here are my picks for the top ten worst things about the wretched period, which, however, will continue to follow us until the economy is re-regulated, anti-trust concerns again pursued, a new, tweaked fairness doctrine is implemented, and we return to a more normal distribution of wealth (surely a quarter of the privately held wealth is enough for the one percent?) It isn't about which party is in power; parties can always be bought. It is about how broadly shared resources are in a society. Egalitarianism is unworkable, but over-concentration of wealth is also impractical. The latter produced a lot of our problems in the past decade, and as long as such massive inequality persists, our politics will be lopsided. (10) Stagnating worker wages and the emergence of a new monied aristocracy (9) Health and food insecurity increased for ordinary Americans (8) The environment became more polluted (7) The imperial presidency was ensconced in ways it will be difficult to pare back (6) The Katrina flood and the destruction of much of historic African-American New Orleans (5) The Bush administration's post-2002 mishandling of Afghanistan (4) The Iraq War (3) The great $12 trillion Bank Robbery, in which unscrupulous bankers and financiers were deregulated (2) The September 11 attacks on New York and Washington (1) The constitutional coup of 2000, in which Bush was declared the winner of an election he had lost

synopsis

evidence that the numbers released by Iran's Ministry of the Interior were manipulated

http://change-congress.org/ al gore @ 37:00 - "democracy crisis" Q&A 42:00

The results of this historic election repudiate narrowly crafted outreach to voters based on their perceived religious preferences. They disprove the idea that voters are comforted by hearing a candidate or his surrogate explain how his policy positions line up with the Bible. They show that Christians across the country have different answers to the question of What Would Jesus Do. And they prove that whether a presidential candidate aligns with a voter's religious viewpoint should be answered by the voter herself -- not by grandstanding mega-church pastors or surrogates with political agendas of their own.

click a state, then click "voting shifts"

The most potent ingredient making Tuesday's election bittersweet is the apparent passage of Proposition 8 in California. It's one thing for a state to decide in advance not to allow same-sex marriages. It's another thing entirely to watch a state strip a targeted group of citizens of the already vested right to marry.

on the bailout of Fannie and Freddie

note zeldman's critique, the ubiquity of beta-type launches

sobering numbers - note stupid stupid commentary

JELLO BIAFRA. that is all.

it's long past time for the Hillary bashers to STFU. Between this and the concession speech, she played this campaign perfectly. Obama owes her a tremendous debt, and the creepily fanatical Obama pod people ought to concede that they are the impediment to party cohesiveness - that's you American Prospect. Bunch of windbags.

..everyone just had to bitch and moan about the delayed concession.

To Clinton, the Presidency is more about achieving goals than about transforming society.

Gore’s critiques of the Administration’s rush to war in Iraq and of the deceptions used to justify it were early, brave, and correct. On the issue of climate change, of course, he has exercised visionary leadership.