Citizens' Daily Lobby

Things are black and white as usual over at the ultra conservative Arkansas Family Council.   Folks who use the groups bill tracking site will find that the group has made things very simple for them.   Bills will be classified as “good bills” or “bad bills.”   No independent thought required.   The good news is they don’t have any bills up yet.

Arkansas Citizens First Congress also has a bill tracking site.  They give you a link to the bill and will tell you whether they “support” or “oppose” without laying claim to those emotion-laden moral qualifiers.    Currently the group is tracking HB1008 which will require proof of citizenship or legal residency in order for students to obtain in-state tuition at state colleges.  Note that it’s apparently going to be OK for undocumented people (read students of tax-paying parents who have completed high school in Arkansas public schools)  to attend state-supported universities…they will just have to pay more.   This act is sponsored by Republicans Harris and Woods.

The Arkansas General Assembly has made it possible (and easy) to track bills.  Simply sign up, add the bills you wish to follow to your account, and you will be notified via email as action is taken on the bills.  I tried it, and it works.  This is outstanding progress for our state!  If you aren’t sure who your Representative and Senator are, you can search for them using your zip code at ProjectVoteSmart.  You can find them on the State Assembly page as well, but it’s more complicated.

Get ready for your daily lobby!  All politics is local, after all, and our best chance to make a difference is to act right here in our state.

Ya Es Hora (It’s Time!) is a campaign to empower Latinos to participate fully in the US political process through naturalization, census form completion, and voting.  The campaign provides non-partisan information to voters in the hopes of overcoming the two biggest barriers to Latino ballot participation:  lack of engagement and lack of access.   Some Latino voters of the GOP persuasion would like to walk back Latino progress.  The group Latinos for Reform  is running ads in Nevada urging Latinos to abstain from voting in this midterm election.    The stated rationale of the ads  goes something like this:

Democrats haven’t pushed through immigration reform yet.  Therefore they don’t deserve your vote.  Therefore don’t vote.

The ads pointedly do not mention the abysmal GOP candidates from the state of Arizona this year, nor do they raise the issue of Republican obstruction of any meaningful reform.

The group almost certainly knows that GOP success at the ballot box this year is inversely proportional to voter participation.   Conservatives are touting low voter turnout among Democratic voters as the means to the win this year.   The leadership of Latinos for Reform are smart enough to know they can’t openly endorse Republican candidates with extreme anti-immigration positions, like Sharron Angle.  However,  encouraging Latino voters to stay home increases Angle’s chances of victory, and this cynical group knows it.

Thankfully, Univision has decided not to run the ads in the wake of public outrage after it was announced that the network would air them for $80,000.  At least one player in this distasteful drama that the American political process has become has a conscience, it seems.

Abdicating the right to vote is never the answer to oppression in a democracy.

(Full story at ThinkProgress).

If asked to name one thing that takes place under a big tent, you’ll probably say, “the circus.”  Organized chaos.  Fooling all of the people some of the time. That circus.  Lately, the Democratic party resembles nothing so much as a Ringling Brothers event.   A lot happens simultaneously under the Big Tent,  none of it serious.   There’s a lot of glimmer and a lot of noise, but, at the end of the day,  no purpose.   The Dems don’t even have a good barker.

The Republicans are doing a better job.  True, there are any number of clowns among them, but Republican clowns have traded their squirt guns for live rounds.   They even have a perfectly good barker (FOX News, that is).  The GOP is more like another sort of big-tent event,  familiar to anyone living in the rural Bible Belt: the tent revival.   Every performer, down to the ushers passing the plates, is on-message 100% of the time.   And it works.  Everyone knows that the GOP message is smaller government, fewer regulations and lower taxes.  (Whether you believe the message is another thing).  Even the subtextual messages are undeniable:  America for Americans, sex for heterosexuals, worship for Christians, and authority for the male.

Does anyone even know what the Democratic Party stands for anymore?  I have a few suggestions:

1) Patriotism means love for this country’s land AND it’s people.  All of them.  Red and yellow, black and white.

2) Our government will continue to stand between the oppressed and the oppressor, between the exploited and the exploiter.

3) Ending poverty is a worthy goal.

4) True prosperity, not just wealth, is the  American Dream.

Put that under your Big Tent.

The facts:   Secure Arkansas failed to get enough Arkansas voter signatures to place its hate initiative against undocumented immigrants on the ballot.

The message:  Arkansas voters are just not that into punitive measures against undocumented workers in our state.

So, why is it that every politician on the ballot for national office this year, with the exception of John Gray, either opposes or doesn’t support the Federal lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration law that encourages racial profiling in the state?  I expect to hear that John Boozman and Tim Griffin support Arizona and oppose the Obama administration lawsuit.   They represent the Party of No.

It is surprising to find that Blanche Lincoln, Mark Pryor, and Mike Ross are so out of touch with Arkansas voters they feel it necessary to speak out against (Mike Ross) or waffle over  (Lincoln, Pryor) the Federal lawsuit.   Exactly what do Arkansans have to do to get their attention?

Full story at Arkansas News

Yesterday we encountered a Secure Arkansas petitioner at the Rodney Parham Kroger.  He was trying to get signatures for the group’s meanspritied and unnecessary ballot initiative.   Mexican immigrants don’t want our jobs, according to this guy.  They just want welfare.  That explains why I see them working everywhere…   I don’t think this is an issue Kroger wants to be mixed up in, and I hope they kicked him off their property shortly after I complained.  For those who don’t know, the ballot initiative is to keep any undocumented person over the age of 14 from receiving government benefits.  It turns out that’s already Federal law, but, hey, who’s counting?

The “grassroots” group has never published its sponsors, as previously advertised on their website.  They even removed the “sponsors” link.

I have been waiting to see how the rhetoric from Progressive bloggers would swing now that it’s Blanche vs. Boozman in the Senate race.   I cynically predicted that there would be a softening towards the incumbent and a move to make amends.  I was wrong, at least on some counts.  ArDem of BlueArkansas had this to say on the topic:

As recently as yesterday I was discussing the possibility of helping Lincoln out if just to try to keep her from becoming a serious drag on the ticket. Some people have already urged me to make that push. After reading this [refers to Blanche Lincoln's apparent concessions for Walton-backed Arvest Bank] today, I realize that that’s not going to happen. …

We are not going to sit down and keep our mouths shut just because she managed to squeek out of the primary. Wrong is wrong, and when she’s wrong we’ll call her and everyone else on it. And if Senator Lincoln really wants to fight a two front war going into the general, then that choice is hers.

I couldn’t agree more.