Archives for June 2012

The annual Netroots Nation gathering has come and gone. A record number (2500 or so?) of progressive activists, operatives, politicians, staffers, and such were in attendance at the meeting in Providence. As usual, I was invigorated by last weekend’s activities. You see, unlike my youthful colleague Roya, I’m a veteran of these gatherings. The only one of the seven YearlyKos/Netroots Nation events I missed was YK2 (Chicago, 2007). In Rhode Island I was pleased to have quality time with longtime friends, and also to make new friends, connecting faces with names I’ve known for years.

Between Roya and me, we’ve more than adequately recounted Darcy Burner’s keynote, so there will be no further mention thereof. However, I do have one addition to Roya’s piece on criminal justice … identifying the principal speaker at the keynote. It was Ben Jealous, who has hugely revitalized and strengthened the NAACP in his short tenure as its President and CEO.

For the next several days, I’ll be visiting with an old and dear friend (we first met in our first college class, in September 1968) in the pleasurable small city of Keene, New Hampshire. It’s a bridge-time between NN12 and next weekend’s college reunion up in Hanover.

While the vibe of Netroots Nation is fresh, though, I’d like to offer a few observations about last weekend’s get-together in Providence:

• The city of Providence and the state of Rhode Island welcomed us enthusiastically. It’s a real advantage to be a small state in which nearly everyone is closely connected with everyone else. When US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is a good friend of Angel Taveras, mayor of the state’s largest (and capital) city, things get done.
• Further evidence of our warm welcome was the always-spectacular WaterFire, wherein the city celebrates its revitalized downtown rivers with over 80 ceremonial braziers, unique music, boat processions, and civic engagement that inspires residents and tourists alike. Saturday’s WaterFire was held specifically to honor Netroots Nation.
• One of the major themes of the meeting was the widespread illegal practices of the banksters. Whether it was foreclosure fraud or peddling of “securities” they knew full well were worthless, or a thousand other outrages, banks and their enablers in Congress (to be fair, many in the executive branch have been (ir)responsible too) were repeatedly the targets of our enmity.
• In the “horse race” panel, where DailyKos elections experts offer up informed opinions on the upcoming cycle, I asked about WA-06. That’s the seat long held by Norm Dicks, who will retire after the current session of Congress. The only Democrat running to replace Dicks is Derek Kilmer, a good friend of mine and an absolutely top-drawer candidate. At least two self-funding Republicans are also running in WA-06. One of them, I’m told, wrote his campaign committee a half-million dollar check within days of forming it. Although the CD is ancestrally Democratic, I was somewhat taken aback when the panelists opined that those deep GOP pockets mean that the race is a tossup. I expect to have more to say about Derek and his campaign in the future.
• While perhaps not as star-studded as in some previous years, NN drew the likes of Paul Krugman; Elizabeth Warren; Bill McKibben; Cecile Richards (Planned Parenthood); Rich Trumka, Trevor Potter (Stephen Colbert’s SuperPAC lawyer); Senators Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and Ben Cardin; Representatives Tammy Baldwin and Keith Ellison. And, of course, all four of Rhode Island’s members of Congress — Senators Whitehouse and Jack Reed, Representatives Jim Langevin and David Cicilline.

One item requires a few paragraphs of its own.

Netroots Nation was supposed to have been held in Providence last year. Instead, we went to Minneapolis. The reason for that switch is straightforward. In 2010, the hospitality industry union in Rhode Island, UNITE HERE Local 217, was involved in acrimonious contract talks with the Westin Providence. The hotel threatened pay and benefit cuts, and even fired some leaders of the union, prompting a strike. Local 217 asked Netroots Nation for its support by not coming to Rhode Island during their labor dispute. That request was honored, of course. More than that, though, it prompted many bloggers across the country to write about the union’s situation. The increased attention and publicity, along with UNITE HERE’s dogged persistence, eventually led to a new agreement with the Westin … with pay and benefits restored, and with fired workers rehired.

After that happy result, UNITE HERE joined the city and the Senator in opening its arms to Netroots Nation in 2012. Sure, members of the union tended our bars, cleaned our hotel rooms, provided our bagels and coffee. But they did it almost as friends, interacting with us as individuals (and vice versa). At one of the plenary sessions, a dozen or so members of Local 217 — some of whom had been pouring drinks just a couple of minutes earlier — stood on the stage with NN Chairman Adam Bonin, thanking our organization for its assistance by presenting him with a print of Providence signed by them and many of their union brethren.

One of the last Netroots Nation events was a “blogger breakfast” hosted by Local 217. Held on the top floor of the Providence Biltmore, another unionized hotel and an official NN12 hotel, it was their way of formally thanking the rank-and-file activists for our aid to the rank-and-file workers. We learned about other places, all around the country, where UNITE HERE continues to fight for its rights. And we heard from Providence City Council member Carmen Castillo, almost certainly the first elected official in a big city who works as a hotel housekeeper.

It was an inspiring event for me, particularly after I learned that UNITE HERE is, in part, a descendant of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. My paternal grandmother was a proud longtime member of the ILGWU. During and after that breakfast, I thought a lot about immigrants, about how unions have helped them become productive, functioning Americans. About how union membership led directly to their opportunity to fulfill the American Dream. About how those immigrants were able to buy homes and cars, to feed, clothe, and educate their children.

I’m a result of what unions did to build the success of America. I bet you, dear reader, are such a result too.

The Tacoma News Tribune has an editorial objecting to bonuses for General Services Administration managers. I have nothing in the editorial qua the editorial to object to (OK, it starts off with an unnecessary metaphor implying that GSA managers are the same as dogs, but the thrust of the piece is fine). GSA fucked up and the pressure should stay on on them. This is the sort of public good that we expect newspapers to push, and to push hard.

But I don’t remember the Trib lamenting the managers at big banks getting bonuses. I did a few searches. Maybe I missed something. You can argue private versus public, that we should care more about a government agency like the GSA. But given the big banks central role in society (I’d say I interact with banks a lot more than with the GSA) surely they ought to be held accountable in some way. And of course one main reason they stayed afloat during the crisis and have done well since is the massive amount of freeish money taxpayers are giving them. Surely those bonuses to people who fucked things up are worse use of taxpayer money than bonuses to the GSA.

But fine, maybe that’s not a direct waste of taxpayer money if you buy what the banks are saying. Still there was a scandal about missing money in Iraq a few years ago and it pops up every now and again that kind of makes the GSA story seem teeny tiny itty bitty. The Trib’s Ed Board editorialized against it too. But this is the only one that I could find. After the 3rd inspector general’s report, they finally did one piece on it. It seems like any waste of money by a government agency cranks out similar outrage.

– The social engineering in recruiting and force structure, the endless, pointless missions,the impossible standard set by asking every soldier to be a “hero,” when soldiers know that most heroes are dead or disabled. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Which is why it’s no wonder that we see stories like this…

– Another chance for Pierce Transit voters to vote for a sales tax increase to help their system.

– Paid signature gathering, what could go wrong?

– I haven’t had a chance to watch the Revitalizing State and Local Blogging panel at Netroots Nation, but the tweets were interesting.

– Olympia High School‘s response to Westboro Baptist Church. [h/t, and while you’re there, check out the Calvin Johnson walking tour of Olympia]

– I’m the guy in the video. LOL forever.

Last week’s contest went unsolved. It was in Chatswood, just north of Sydney, Australia.

This week’s is from a TV show or a movie, good luck!

Ezekiel 23:8
She did not give up the prostitution she began in Egypt, when during her youth men slept with her, caressed her virgin bosom and poured out their lust on her.

Discuss.

At another incredible keynote speech today at Netroots Nation 2012 titled “Criminal Justice in America”, there were a few examples mentioned of issues related to the Trayvon Martin case you may not know of. I decided to pass on a few that were mentioned in the key note, other panels, as well as find a few more of my own examples. Racial profiling needs to be eradicated. The only way to do that is first by knowing where the problem exists.

Stop and Frisk (New York):

A program that gives police the ability to stop, question and search anyone that they have “reasonable suspicion” of committing criminal activity. Supporters say that it reduces crime, opponents question whether the police really have “reasonable” suspicion of the people that they stop. About 580,000 people were stopped in 2009, 55% of which were African-American and a large portion was also Hispanic. Only 6% of the stops resulted in arrests.

Cocaine vs. Crack Offenses:

“The sentences for crack offenses need to fall to a level in line with the punishments for powder,” said Rachel King, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. “There is no rational medical or policy reason to punish crack more severely than powder. Cocaine is cocaine.” In the powder cocaine cases in 2000, 57% were against Latinos and 30% against African-Americans, even though the vast majority of powder cocaine users were white. 84.7% of crack cases were against African-Americans, 9% against Hispanics and only 5.6% against Whites. Where in reality, 64.4% of users are white. The federal mandatory minimum prison sentence disparity between cocaine and crack is 18 to 1, which was improved in 2009  from a disparity of 100 to 1.

Criminals And The Right to Vote:

Yes, it is a right. Most rights are restored to criminals after they leave jail, however voting is not one of them. Some states require you to petition the governor if you would ever like your right to vote to be restored after being in jail.

Report Illegal Immigrant Hotline:

There are multiple hotlines for people to call if they just “suspect” someone of being illegal, both national and local.

Those are just a few, feel free to leave more example in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.

There is hope, the End Racial Profiling Act has been introduced and needs to be given more support!

I’m not sure how much value we should put into a no hitter. After all, it’s as much of a win as a 9-10 slug fest or a 3-12 blowout. And with the Mariners it isn’t even a point of pride for the starter. It seems like it’s becoming more common, although maybe that’s just my perception.

Still, having grown up on New York and lived out here in the Seattle area most of my life, it’s very nice indeed that both of my teams have had one this year. It’s especially nice for the Mets since 50 years. But either way it’s a great day in the midst of a long season.

Also (and there was some discussion of this in one of the Mets blogs last week, but I can’t find it), for the love of God, mention the no hitter in your emails and facebook postings. “Are you watching the game?” Doesn’t cut it. I know baseball fans get superstitious about mentioning the no hitter. But the best case is that your friends get to see something great and the worst case is they think you’re magic.

White House: West Wing Week.

Purging Florida:

• Pap and Sam Seder: Will Rick Scott go to jail for voter purge? PT 1
• Pap and Sam Seder: Will Rick Scott go to jail for voter purge? PT 2
• Pap and Sam Seder: Will Rick Scott go to jail for voter purge? PT 3
• Thom: Voter purge…Rick Scott gives the finger to Washington.

Maddow: Someone might go to jail in the John Ensign scandal.

Darcy Burner’s keynote at the Friday mid-day Netroots Nation plenary:

Lilly Ledbetter on Paycheck Fairness.

Slatester: Michelle Obama does David Letterman.

Thom with The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Ann Telnaes: Paycheck Fairness Act fails in Senate.

Obama’s message for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.

Mark Fiore: Dogboy and Mr. Dan with Who’s on Second.

Mitt Romney criticizes Obama for wanting to hire more police, firemen and teachers?!?

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Obama for America: Jobs.

Maddow on the bitter and best thing about the former Sonics.

Roy Zimmerman: Song of Mitt Romney:

We’ve heard it all before….

Sen. Cantwell (D-WA): Working for Washington.

Recalling the Wisconsin Recall Election:

• Sam Seder: Looking into WI recall election.
• Pap: Mitt will get spanked in Wisconsin.
• Thom and Pap: About Wisconsin.
• Young Turks: Big $$$ wins in Wisconsin.
• Alyona: How to buy an election.
• Sam Seder: Wisconsin and the demonization of public workers
• Stephanie Miller: Lessons from Wisconsin.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Mitt Romney penchant for impersonating a police officer.

Stephanie Miller with Dr. Jill Biden on troop support and the 2012 campaign.

Pap: You can’t make nice with the Tea Party.

Actual audio: Mitt’s campaign Day 1, part II.

Red Hot Chili Peppers Rock for Barack.

Thom: LA GOP spiral into chaos.

Slatester: Supreme Court now has it’s very own bad approval rating.

Alyona’s Happy Hour: Did Obama make a blow job joke?

Maddow: Going after Hillary Clinton.

Jen: Mitt’s donut gaffe.

Ann Telnaes: Whittling away health-care costs.

Why have Romney’s favorability numbers rebounded so fast? (Via TalkingPointsMemo.)

Greenman: Among the deniers at Denia-Palooza:

Slatester: Jeb Bush isn’t sticking to the script.

Maddow: One caught, Romney has no interest in correcting lies.

It’s up to you.

Thom: Organized Money beats Organized Labor.

Ann Telnaes: GOP solutions for health-care reform.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

I was surprised at how hard the loss in Wisconsin hit me. I mean, it wasn’t like the Democrats nominated someone other than a corporate shill (just less of one than Walker). I’ve never even been there. Still, the loss. The stripping away of union rights. The fact that money got to dictate the agenda even more than usual. That this somehow became more of a process story rather than a story about Walker until election day when it was a reformation of his agenda.

But still, a win would have turned back something. It would have signaled that enough is enough. That at our best we’re in it together. That corporate money doesn’t trump decency and hard work. I don’t know what to say, except keep working.

Corporate money and obfuscation won the day. And it sucks. But as much as powerful interests want to drown out your voice, you still have a voice. As much as organizing lost to big money this time, there will be a next time. As much as this is a setback, as much as people’s lives are going to be hurt by his policies, it’s not the end. There is no end.

It happens almost every election season: the return of the Poll Analysis Concern Trolls. Well…they’re baaaaaaaak!!!

This season we have HA’s newest amateur right-wing propagandist, “Bob”, who is vewy, vewy concerned about the methods and polls I use for the election analyses. And we have the return our most esteemed amateur right-wing propagandist (to put it kindly), currently under the name, “Smilin'” (before that, ironically self-named, “GetFactsFirst”) . If you are interested, you can follow some of their election analysis concern trolling here, here and here.

I don’t want to totally belittle our Concern Trolls. The do play some useful roles here, like contributing to the raucous back-and-forth in the comment threads. And, for me, providing new opportunities to pontificate about polls, probabilities, statistics, simulations, bias, etc—topics that I enjoy in my professional life as well as in my hobby of collecting and analyzing electoral polls.

I also want to acknowledge them for inspiring a new occasional feature for this election season: The Electoral Pundit Contest. It is sort of like Lee’s Birds Eye View contest, but dealing with polls and stuff. The challenge is given below, but first allow me to pontificate….

This first contest was inspired by Bob and Smilin’s discussion of “outliers” in polls. It really bothers them that I don’t assess whether polls are “outliers.” And their latest “target” is a new Pennsylvania poll from Franklin and Marshall college (also known as The Keystone Poll). It shows Obama leading Romney 48% to 36% with 17% selecting neither.

What triggers their “concern” is the partisan make-up of the poll: “Respondents 50% D, 37% R, 10% I.”

Smilin’ puts it:

Why would Darryl include a poll that uses 50% Dems? Seems like there are several “outlier” polls like this that have zero credibility because of their underlying assumptions.

Is this poll an outlier? We could approach this from a probabilistic point of view by asking the question: if the sample of 412 registered voters was truly a random sample of PA voters, what is the probability of drawing a result as “extreme” as 50% Ds and 37% Rs and 10% I?

To make this easier, let’s ignore the “I” category, so the question becomes: if the sample of [207 Ds + 154 Rs =] 361 registered “partisan” voters was truly a random sample of PA voters, what is the probability of drawing a result as “extreme” as [50%/(50% + 37%) =] 57.5% Ds and [37%/(50% + 37%) =] 42.5% Rs?

A proper test would require us to know the “truth” about the probability of drawing a D versus an R in the population. Suppose the “true” probability is 54% for drawing a Democrat and 46% for drawing a Republican (ignoring folks who are Independent). We could then ask: for a sample of 361 partisans and a true probability of 54%, how probable is it to draw at least 207 Ds?

There is an exact answer to this question that can be found from the Binomial Distribution. The answer is about 11%.

In other words, if we did a bunch of polls with truly random samples of 361 registered voters each (assuming truthful answers, etc.) and with the true proportion of Democrats of 54%, we would, just by chance, draw a Democratic sample of 57.5% or greater about one out of every nine such polls. Hence, this particular evidence is not very strong, under our assumptions, that the poll is an outlier.

Whether partisan make-up or whether we look at the percentage “voting” for each candidate, there isn’t usually strong evidence for outliers. For example, let’s look at all polls for PA in the 2012 Obama—Romney race:

The vertical lines show the plausible range of “true” proportions, given the poll proportion and the sample size.

Two points. First, the plausible range of the most recent Franklin and Marshall poll largely overlaps all recent polls. The best evidence of an outlier comes from the previous Franklin and Marshall poll that just barely overlaps a Susquehanna poll (yellow). But both polls plausibly overlap their neighbors. So…which one should go? Or are they both perfectly valid, but happened to legitimately draw samples at each end of the spectrum? The rule for my analysis is to assume the difference is sampling variability, and include both polls. Since the election analyses typically have 60 or more polls, this sampling variability will, more or less, cancel out.

The second point is that the most variable polls are the smallest polls. The most current Franklin and Marshall poll is tiny. (In fact, you can get a rough idea of the sample sizes of polls from the plausible range—the Quinnipiac polls (cyan) all have samples over 1,100.) Because of the mechanics of the simulation analyses, larger polls (with smaller sampling error) have greater influence on the analysis.

Contest: There are three parts.

(1) In the above discussion, I had used 54% as an example for the “true” proportion of Ds versus Rs in Pennsylvania. Your task is to provide your best estimate of the true proportion of Democratic, Republican and “independent” (or other) voters in Pennsylvania. Use any resource and estimation technique you wish. Since partisan composition could change daily, let’s pin it down to June 4th (the last day of the Franklin and Marshall poll) as our target day.

(2) Assess the difference between your best estimate (part 1) and the partisan composition of the Franklin and Marshall poll (this is simple subtraction). The difference may be surprising.

(3) What is the cause for the “surprising” difference?

Good luck!

So, I know I only got 1/3 of the way through Lou Guzzo’s book if that (and it’s tiny). But I was walking through Elliott Bay Books the other day and I passed Mitt Romney’s book. Torn between buying it and trying to slog through it here on the one hand or not doing that, I eventually put it down. But if you guys are interested, I might pick it up next time.

Greetings, HA readers, from Providence, Rhode Island! Until Sunday, I’ll be here with a couple thousand other bloggers, activists, and media, attending the annual Netroots Nation meeting.

As I write, I’m in a session called “Winning Smarter: Using Data to Transform Elections”. Mega-wonky, with discussion of polling and focus groups, targeted advertising, GOTV for primaries, and more. It’s moderated by an avid local consumer of this sort of data. You many have heard of her … one Darcy Burner, candidate for Congress in WA-01. She’s actually the organizer if this panel.

Also in the audience is one of Darcy’s arch-nemeses, covering the event even though (as he’s told me and other HA bloggers) he’s disappointed that the Right Online idiots aren’t stalking NN meeting in the same town at the same time, as they had been doing for several years. Last year in Minneapolis, the late Andrew Breitbart — film crew tagging along, of course — tried to disrupt Netroots Nation by antagonizing attendees. Instead, the security people at the convention center escorted him away, after he’d tried to bully his way into the exhibit hall without an NN nametag. Parenthetically, several years ago in Austin, Bob Barr (running for President at the time, as a Libertarian) paid for NN registration, attended a few sessions, and was treated civilly in all respects.

I predict that Joel’s first Netroots Nation piece will include, if not focus on, several snarky (he thinks) digs at Darcy. You know the type:

…more popular here among the goofy Left than she is in Washington state…

…campaigning nationally instead of shaking hands in Sedro-Woolley or Ferndale…

I expect to file at least a few more reports from the conference (or maybe from the parties surrounding it), so stay tuned for more of Netroots Nation.

– Goldy lays out the costs of an arena to SoDo.

– Europe is working how Europe was designed to work.

– Why was the reaction among liberals to Wisconsin so different from the reaction to North Carolina?

– This investigation is not about wayward US nuns. It is the last gasp for control by a dying breed, wrapped in its own self-importance.

– Charges dropped against 16 occupiers of abandoned Capitol Hill building

– I think there is something to mourn as newspapers switch from paper to online only.

– Checkmate, Pro-Choicers

– I would totally like to read baby names for bad parents.

I like Joel Connelly, but in his coverage this back and forth between the Association of Washington Business and the Inslee campaign, he misses the larger point.

“As you can imagine, accepting $100,000 from a major oil company openly supporting Mr. McKenna leaves the impression that the money is intended for eventual use on behalf of Mr. McKenna against Jay Inslee,” Shimomura wrote to the AWB.

“This raises serious concerns for us, and we imagine it will raise concerns for many viewers and voters as well.” Shimomura urged the Association of Washington Business to “return Tesoro’s contribution.”

One problem: Tesoro and Equilon (Shell) were using the AWB PAC not to support McKenna, but to pass through money to Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1185. Seattlepi.com and Northwest Progressive Institute both posted stories May 11 on the pass-through. Eyman, too, explained the arrangement in a letter to his followers.

Four big oil companies, BP ($100,000), ConocoPhillips ($100,000) Tesoro ($100,000) and Equilon ($50,000) are underwriting the I-1185 signature campaign while Eyman delivers populist sound bites. BP and ConocoPhillips gave directly to the campaign.

Maybe. But I think the larger point is still holy shit, the global warming industry is throwing around how much money, again? The fact that these companies — and they are anti-Inslee companies — freely spend this much money is a huge problem. For huge companies to spend more than what most people make in a year like it’s Monopoly money is a disgrace. I realize Joel covered it before, but for that to be an aside is taking your eye off the ball.