(Good news from BOR reader Eugenia Beh about a landmark poll of Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders. GOTAAPIV! - promoted by Katherine Haenschen)
Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month! What better way to kick off the month than by sharing the results of a new AAPI voter poll from the Asian American Justice Center and APIAVote?
Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters are still largely untapped by presidential candidates and their parties even though they are expected to vote in record numbers this fall, according to a major new poll conducted by Lake Research Partners. The first-ever poll of AAPI voter attitudes shows that close elections in important states like Florida, Nevada and Virginia could go to the candidates who best engage AAPIs, a demographic with increasing political clout.
The poll marks the first time voting trends among the nation's fastest growing racial group - how they will vote this year and their views on a range of issues - have been examined. The effort surveyed more than 1,100 AAPI voters across the country last month and was released today by the Asian American Justice Center and APIAVote to bring attention to this crucial voting bloc at the start of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
The good news is that AAPIs identified overwhelmingly as Democrats in the poll, with almost 3/4 of respondents favoring President Obama over Mitt Romney. Plus nearly five out of six of those surveyed said that they will vote this November and half of them are more enthusiastic than ever to vote, a trend that has continued from the last few presidential elections. So go team! But then there's the not-so-great news:
[L]ess than a third were contacted by the Democratic Party in the last two years, while 37 percent of Republicans said they heard a great deal from their party over the same period.
Granted, Republicans haven't exactly been helping their cause by having people like Pete Hoekstra and our very own David Dewhurst run racist ads that attack Asians. But why should we just wait around for Republicans to alienate Asian American voters the way they have Latino voters? In swing states such as Florida, Nevada and Virginia, the Asian American vote can be decisive, especially if AAPI voters turn out at the same levels as they did in 2008.
Of course, the President isn't resting on his laurels with the AAPI community. This week, the campaign launched AAPIs for Obama with a conference call on Tuesday, May 1st, with the president's sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng and her husband, Konrad Ng, and Mario Salazar, State Operation Vote Director for OFA-Nevada. The campaign also launched a new line of AAPIs for Obama merchandise, which yours truly has already ordered.
(For those looking for today's poll released by BOR PAC on the Austin Mayoral race, here it is again. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
Burnt Orange Report PAC and Capital Area Asian American Democrats conducted a poll last week of likely voters in this May's municipal elections. The poll was an IVR poll of voters who had cast a ballot in either 3 of the last 3 city elections or 2 of the last 3 city elections. Results are below. The percentages are not weighted.
Austin Mayoral Election
Total
Raw #
Female
Male
3/3C
2/3C
Leffingwell
45.4%
179
48.5%
41.1%
47.8%
42.5%
Shea
26.9%
106
28.1%
25.2%
27.6%
24.8%
Dafoe
13.7%
54
10.0%
19.0%
12.5%
16.3%
Undecided
14.0%
55
13.4%
14.7%
12.1%
16.3%
TOTAL
100.0%
394
100.0%
100.0%
100.0%
100.0%
Leffingwell leads among 3/3 and 2/3 voters, he leads among women, and he leads among men. It is not clear how Shea spins these results to her advantage, given that she's almost 20 points down overall. If every undecided voter in this poll broke for her, she would still trail Leffingwell. Traditionally, undecideds break in proportion to the decided voters, so if that were the case here Leffingwell would easily top 50% while Shea would struggle to surpass 30%.
In general, however, the electorate looks fairly decided. Early voting begins next week, and given the number of forums in this city it's possible that every voter has already seen the candidates in person several times. (Just kidding. Sort of.) The barrage of TV and mail have yet to arrive, but again Leffingwell enjoyed such an overwhelming fundraising advantage over Shea that it is not clear how she marshals the resources to persuade voters to support her. There's no clear demographic here that seems to be breaking her way, and there are few undecided voters in the poll. Additionally, Leffingwell has won the lion's share of the endorsements in the race, as a broad range of organizations have chosen to throw their weight behind re-electing the Mayor. Leffingwell has received 21 endorsements to Shea's 8 and Dafoe's 1.
The poll also surveyed which local news source was most trusted by voters on city issues: the Austin American-Statesman, Austin Chronicle, or Austin Business Journal. The results are below, along with which candidate each news source's readers prefer.
Most Trusted News Source of Austin Voters
Total
Raw #
Leffingwell
Shea
Dafoe
Undecided
Statesman
55.1%
172
55.8%
23.8%
11.0%
9.3%
Chronicle
28.8%
90
44.4%
38.9%
8.9%
7.8%
Biz Journal
16.0%
50
34.0%
16.0%
32.0%
18.0%
A few key take-aways here: readers most trust the Statesman, followed by The Austin Chronicle with Austin Business Journal bringing up the rear. Again, Leffingwell leads in all categories, though his margin among Chronicle readers is narrower than that of the Statesman. However, the poll suggests that the readership of the publication clearly favors Leffingwell and not Shea, despite the increasingly manifest viewpoints of the publisher.
The support for Dafoe is heavily male and strongly favors the Austin Business Journal, which suggests that a certain segment of Republican voters are choosing him as their "protest vote" over the two self-identified Democratic candidates, Leffingwell and Shea. Dafoe rings up 13.7% overall in the poll, and outperforms that percentage with men and people who most trust the ABJ. Whether Dafoe will do that well on May 12th remains to be seen. He may be the beneficiary of voters turning out for the various challengers in Places 2, 5, and 6.
Overall, the poll is positive news for Leffingwell -- he has a large lead over his main challenger, who is struggling to get to 30%. However, it's incumbent on Leffingwell's supporter to get themselves, their friends, and their colleagues out to the polls to make sure the Mayor wins handily on May 12th. Early voting begins Monday, April 30.
In 2006 i produced Austin's largest Earth Day Festival to date, "The Sustainable Shopper's Ball!". It was a grand event and an awesome team effort. The event was all dressed in pop-up tent tops, located outdoors with vendors, entertainers, speakers, food, music, activities, sculpture, lectures... Roughly 5,000 people: shopped local green businesses, learned from local green nonprofits, listened other speakers, watched jugglers and tap dancers and kid's entertainers, rocked to a solar-powered James McMurtry, walked their dogs, and more. It was six hours of inclusive, green paradise. Those of us working on the event were celebrating the dawning of a new culture, one invented by our X & Y generations and the internet, one that looked forward to the end of the G.W. Bush era, embraced the idea that global warming was urgent and actionable, and believed that the necessity of building a better world would soon win the day.
We thought light bulbs, local farmers and green architecture were most of what was needed to fix the world's enormous environmental problems. We just needed to increase enthusiasm so more people would start buying the right stuff and "preferring" a greener, sustainable world. I coined the term -- at least I thought I did because so few people seemed to understand it, "sustainable consumerism" based on the idea that consumers have more influence over business than any other force in society, and therefore, indirectly, consumers control the markets, politics, and media of our Western civilization.
So now, six years later, i ask where do we stand?
In 2006 we knew time was of the essence. We told ourselves we had just a few years before the battle to save humanity (and biology as we know it) from the impacts of a rapidly changing climate system would be lost. This kind of doomy-gloomy conversation was vindicated in a terrifying way when in November of 2007http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11... the top professional in the world of climate science, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said,
"If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."
In this regard every influential business and politician fell short. None of the world's local, state, or national leaders stepped up to the plate or heeded the repeated calls to "act now" issued by the international climate science community. Personal politics, profit, willful & unintended ignorance, and personal fear got in the way of making 2007 our collective turning point. Fairly said, neither the leadership nor the 'public will' were there for meaningful change and creative activists like me and my team of Sustain-a-Ballers were not well enough informed or endowed to change the game. It wasn't lightbulbs and higher values we needed, it was big-scale, rapid shifts in economic policy. "Sustainable Consumerism" and all the rest was on the right track but what our planet really needed on Earth Day 2006 was a smarter, wiser perspective from the grassroots. So please allow me to share a few 2012 ideas. And allow me to first substantiate the urgency of changing the way our economy is wired.
(Becky has been raising money for the Hill County Ride for AIDS ever sine BOR has been around. It's that time of year again and I personally encourage you to donate to her fundraising page as part of this annual tradition. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
Well if we've met you know I have 2 big passions besides electing more & better Democrats - AIDS Walk Austin (for which I have been the top fundraiser) and the Hill Country Ride for AIDS, which I'll be participating in for the 13th time in - gulp - 3 weeks. I've been the top fundraiser for the Ride before & both the Ride and I have big fundraising goals this year. I want to be the top funtraiser, which means I need to raise around $7,000; and the Ride has a goal of $500,000. If you want to skip my cheesy U2 worshipping diary, here's my Hill Country Ride for AIDS page. Oh - and technically I'm not supposed to be here during the workday, so I'm going to have to sneak in. If an hour or so goes by, I'm not ignoring you, and I am grateful, I just have to please my employer by closing the internet window every so often.
(We're adding another new feature this week: original political cartoons from Texas-based cartoonist Richard Bartholomew. Look for them every Sunday morning! - promoted by Katherine Haenschen)
Rick Perry's Pink Slime taste test is inconclusive.
(Please welcome Mark Lisheron from Texas Watchdog, a non-profit investigative journalism resource, with this guest post on some bad news from Sunset in regards to the Ethics Commission. Imagine if we had an Ethics Commission that went after actual abuses of power, rather than just ticky-tack filing errors. - promoted by Katherine Haenschen)
By Mark Lisheron
Austin Bureau
Texas Watchdog
April 9, 2012
The Texas Sunset Advisory Commission will not recommend the state Ethics Commission become an enforcement agency for the state's ethics rules, a bitter disappointment to those who have for years called for the reform.
Representatives for 10 public interest groups reacted sharply to the recommendations made in the Advisory Commission's report to the state Legislature. They include the heads of Texans for Public Justice, Public Citizen and Common Cause.
You can find the entire list in this letter sent to the Sunset Advisory Commission.
The report is expected to be discussed during the Commission's regularly scheduled meeting at 10 a.m. Tuesday in Room E1.036 of the Capitol Extension in Austin.
"It is time for Texas to get tough on political crimes, stop protecting the politicians and treat the ethics commission as if it were just another professional regulatory agency," Fred Lewis of Texans Together Education Fund, said in a press release from the group of activists.
Lewis, a former assistant attorney general, is one of the state's foremost experts on the Ethics Commission. "The commission should have the authority to take enforcement actions and hear complaints without needing to check in with a board of political appointees," Lewis says.
While the report is critical of the Ethics Commission's process of dealing with ethics complaints, explored in detail in this story by Texas Watchdog, the interest groups said the process could not be fixed without an enforcement director with subpoena power to execute real investigations of ethics complaints.
Sunset Commission staff does, however, call for changes in the enforcement system that places greater emphasis and stiffer penalties on more serious ethics violations.
The current system focuses attention on even minor errors in the legally required financial disclosure reports filed by elected officials, confusing the public and potentially damaging the official, the report says.
"We think the ethics watchdog agency's enforcement process should be revamped to go after the political sharks and not the minnows that make filing mistakes," Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, said in a press release.
Rather than recommend creation of an enforcement branch, Sunset staff said reviews of complaints should be handled by Ethics Commission staff alone, leaving decisions on the complaints to commission members.
Those decisions would be subject to judicial review, the report says.
Sunset staff is asking the Legislature to give the Ethics Commission funding to improve a woefully out-of-date system for the filing of sworn complaints. The number of complaints filed increased to 374 in 2011 from 168 in 2004.
This upgrade would include financial disclosure statements to be submitted and posted electronically for the public. To view the ethics forms, members of the public must request them. The ethics commission is also required by law to keep the requestor's name, address and affiliation on file. Thinking this onerous, Texas Watchdog posted them all online in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
To pay for the online postings, staff is asking candidates for legislative office and political committees to pay an annual fee to augment the lobbying registration fees that account for roughly 40 percent of the Ethics Commission's $2 million annual budget.
The improvement in the technology fails to require a much greater level of detail in the reports, the reformers say.
The reform critique goes on to ask for campaign contributions limits, voluntary public financing of campaigns, longer prohibitions on elected officials becoming lobbyists and revoking state pension benefits of legislators convicted of a felony.
***
Contact Mark Lisheron at 512-299-2318 or mark@texaswatchdog.org or on Twitter at @marktxwatchdog.
West Austin Democrats held our endorsement meeting on Wednesday night, considering only those contested races that West Austin residents get to vote on. We don't get involved in fights outside our area, like the various Constable races.
Our endorsements are:
U.S. Senate: Paul Sadler (63)
Travis County District Attorney: Rosemary Lehmberg (54)
Travis County Sheriff: Greg Hamilton (51)
Tax Assessor-Collector: Bruce Elfant (65)
167th District Judge: Efrain de la Fuente (33) and David Wahlberg (32).
The numbers after each candidate are the number of votes received out of the 67 votes cast. We give endorsements to candidates who get 60% of the vote (in this case, 41 votes), or to two candidates who get 40% (27) or more in multi-candidate races.
The district judge dual endorsement appears to be moot, with Bryan Case switching to the 3rd Court of Appeals race. But hey, both remaining candidates can still claim the endorsement.
(Great guest post from a long-time BOR reader, featuring content from Cuentame. We hope you will be hearing more from both Nick and Cuentame in the future. - promoted by Katherine Haenschen)
What happens if you privatize prisons is that you have a large industry with a vested interest in building ever-more prisons." -- Molly Ivins, 2003
For the past three years, the small West Texas town of Littlefield has had to come up with $65,000 a month to service a loan on an empty prison it never needed. To avoid defaulting on its prison loan, Littlefield has laid off workers, cut every department's budget, raised property taxes, increased fees, raided its municipal sewer and water fund, and even delayed its purchase of a new police car.
With just 6,507 residents during the 2000 census, Littlefield did not need a new prison. The city's elected officials decided to build one anyways. Littlefield issued $10 million in revenue bonds for construction of a 310-bed for-profit detention center as part of the city's economic development strategy in 1999. Revenue bonds are a special type of municipal bond that do not require voter approval, because they are backed by the expected revenue a project will generate. Littlefield's politicians built the prison believing it would pay for itself, pump money into the local economy, and expand job opportunity.
The nonprofit organization Cuéntame produced the excellent video below about the experience of Littlefield, Texas with speculative for-profit prison construction. Take a look:
As a result of this experience, Littlefield's bond rating was downgraded to junk status, and Littlefield taxpayers were saddled with millions in debt after discovery of mismanagement by for-profit prison operator Geo Group led the Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) to terminate its contract and remove its prisoners in 2009. When IDOC cancelled its contract, Geo Group bailed on Littlefield by terminating its contract and laying off 74 workers.
The Idaho Department of Corrections discovered Geo Group's mismanagement when it conducted an audit of the Littlefield lock-up. The audit was prompted by the suicide of Randall McCullough, one of Idaho's inmates, at the prison. McCullough had been placed in solitary confinement for more than a year as administrative punishment for a fight that was never criminally prosecuted. The IDOC audit revealed that Geo Group chronically understaffed its facility. On the night that McCullough died, the facility was so short on staff that the warden worked the midnight shift.
Of course, extreme right-wing organizations like the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council defend privatization of prisons, schools and social services by peddling sanctimonious twaddle about the "innovation," "competition" and "efficiency" associated with private entrepreneurship. The most common way for corporations like Geo Group and Corrections Corporation of America to save money in running a prison is to cut guards' salaries, though (innovative!).
It turns out that when prison guards are paid wages as low as grocery store cashiers and fast food workers, they don't stick around very long. And when prisons are understaffed or have high turnover, they end up with inexperienced staff, higher rates of prisoner-on-guard assaults, more escapes, and more contraband violations as evidenced by higher rates of positive urine tests for drug use. Or, they might just be plain understaffed, à la Geo Group.
I would continue from here, but Molly does it better:
"The right says that, in the private sector, pay and performance are related. I look at the CEOs of American corporations, and if there's a connection between pay and performance there, I missed it.
What you get when you privatize and outsource is something like the Department of Defense and the military-industrial complex. We spend $399 billion a year on defense, and if you think that money is well spent because much of it gets run through defense contractors, you have not been paying attention.
DOD is the happy home of the $700 hammer, the endless cost overrun, and the revolving door, with accompanying conflicts of interest and dubious contracts. It's a fiscal nightmare. The Pentagon once had to announce that it couldn't account for $17 billion.
You get nightmare public policy consequences, as well. What happens if you privatize prisons is that you have a large industry with a vested interest in building ever-more prisons. The result is even more idiocy, like the three-strikes law and long terms for small-time drug possession."
--Molly Ivins, 2003 Syndicated Column
Amen.
The video in this post was produced by Cuéntame. Cuéntame is an online platform where the Latino community and the public at large can address social, political and cultural topics through social media, videos, interviews, and docu-series. Cuéntame translates "count me" or "tell me your story," and Cuéntame facilitates conversations about everything from soccer and music to immigrant detention and the anti-immmigrant legislation crafted by extreme right-wing, corporate-funded organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council. Find out more about Cuéntame or tell your own story by following Cuéntame on Facebook or Twitter.
With the retirement of Charlie Gonzales TX 20 Joaquin Castro looked like a shoe in, but at the Northeast Bexar County Democrats meeting Saturday Ezra Johnson http://www.ezraforcongress.com/ showed why that hasn't been the case since he announced his candidacy. Johnson was certainly the most dynamic and animated candidate from any district represented and the "fire in his belly" delivery won enthusiastic applause. Ezra spoke of having the courage of his convictions and when he was done I believed him. Johnson's top issues included comprehensive immigration reform, strengthening social security and Medicare without shrinking benefits, taking care of our veterans as they justly deserve and getting our economy back on its feet.
Joaquin Castro put on his usual smooth performance and spoke about his success in getting things done even when in the deep minority in the legislature. Other attendees I spoke to found Ezra's delivery as refreshing as I did. While I don't have a horse in that race I'll be watching it carefully and I'm going to find it difficult not to be disappointed if Johnson doesn't pull of what the conventional wisdom would call an upset victory.
As the SDEC Committeeman for SD-25 I try to keep an eye on what's going on in the major races in the area but I was surprised when out of the blue I had the opportunity to meet a terrific woman who has taken it upon herself to challenge the odious Lamar Smith in TX 21. That woman is Candace Duvál http://www.candaceduval.com/ and she too has the fire inside her. She's another truly progressive candidate and she's willing to go toe to toe with anyone to bring fairness and justice to Texans and all Americans. Candace focused on the need to protect our environment through green initiatives and renewable, sustainable energy projects.
Candace is running a grassroots campaign just like Ezra Johnson and she can use both your financial and shoe leather support. If you're a Central Texas progressive I urge you to give them both a look.
Central Texas has some really great Democratic candidates and I can't wait for November.
(The "Guns in Schools" bill has been a major issue for many of us here at BOR, due in no small part to our strong ties to the UT community. Thanks to founder of Students for Gun Free Schools Texas and multiple-time "Best of Austin" Chronicle award winner John Woods for this post. - promoted by Katherine Haenschen)
Over the last two legislative sessions, I organized students against bills which would have forced colleges and universities to allow guns in classrooms. I did so because I lost people close to me in the Virginia Tech shooting, and grew tired of lawmakers exploiting our tragedy to promote a political agenda having nothing to do with campus safety.
We won that fight, in no small part because of people like Chief Acevedo and Constable Bruce Elfant, as well as all the other members of law enforcement who oppose arming college students.
So it was with great concern that I learned Michael Cargill is running for Travis County Constable, Precinct 2.
There are a number of good things I can say about Mike. He is hard-working, warm, and intelligent. He holds to his convictions.
These bills were about opening a new market for firearms sales and concealed handgun licensing classes - and Mr. Cargill was one of those who stood to gain a great deal from that market. You see, Mr. Cargill earns his living at least in part by running CHL Class Austin, which - among other things - markets CHL classes to college students[2][3].
The Twitter feed for Mr. Cargill's business - which may also be his personal feed - offers some additional hints about his beliefs. It seems that Mike Cargill not only supports guns in classrooms, but also guns in bars.
And on July 26th, Cargill wrote, "Rep. Ron Paul of Texas introduced all three bills in the US Congress....We salute you Sir [sic]," referring to legislation which would (1) force the FAA to allow commercial airline pilots to carry guns, (2) repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, and (3) repeal the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (which instituted federal background checks).
Cargill believes in a Wild West version of Texas that no longer exists. Guns should be readily available to everyone, without background checks, for them to carry anywhere they want. One has to ask: if Michel Cargill believes these things, what would his role be as a member of law enforcement?
I worry that Cargill, if elected, will use his office to promote his own business. I also worry that his motivation for running for this position is to give himself a megaphone through which to broadcast his beliefs about guns.
I ask the Democratic voters of Precinct 2 to take a good hard look at the candidates before primaries come around. Ask hard questions. Make sure that the person you elect is a person who represents your beliefs - and the beliefs of Texans.
