Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has nominated Timothy Reese to be the new state treasurer. Reese is a registered independent. Treasurer is an elected partisan office in Pennsylvania, and if Reese wishes to run for re-election, he will do so in 2016. See this story. Thanks to Michael for the link. …read more
Greg Orman, who ran a strong independent campaign for U.S. Senate from Kansas last year, has this comprehensive essay on how state ballot access laws, federal campaign finance laws, and the restrictive policy of the Commission on Presidential Debates, all handicap candidates for president and other important office if they choose to run outside the two major parties. …read more
Jersey City, NJ — Sgt. Vincent Corso, a Jersey City cop, was out for a drunken and reckless drive on January 30, 2014, when he was stopped by a Robbinsville police officer.
At the beginning of the stop, Corso tried to claim that he was “on the job,” and that he should be let go.
“Are we OK here?” Corso asks.
“Yeah, just sit in your car,” Robinson Police Officer Shawn Bruton says.
When Officer Barbara Borges arrives, the situation then escalated.
“Do we have a problem?” Corso asks her.
“Yeah, we do have a problem,” she says. “You’re intoxicated and you’re driving a motor vehicle.”
A …read more
Underground hip-hop artist Immortal Technique has always been outspoken on important issues like government corruption and police brutality. In a series of recent interviews about the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, he is speaking out again.
Technique has been protesting against, and rapping about police brutality for decades, long before the issue was thrust into the mainstream with the recent high profile police murders.
In the interview about Michael Brown, Technique talks about how rappers are afraid to be controversial, and afraid to discuss police brutality and other issues that may give them bad press. He goes on to explain …read more
On May 19, California held a special election to fill the vacant State Senate seat, 7th district, in Contra Costa County. Steve Glazer, an anti-union Democrat, was elected. Stories about his election victory in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News, all said that the top-two system was responsible for Glazer’s win.
In reality, all California special elections 1967-2010 used a blanket primary. All candidates ran on a single primary ballot and all voters used that ballot. If someone got 50% that person was elected. Otherwise there was a …read more
The Nelson Star, a daily newspaper in British Columbia, has this op-ed advocating proportional representation for Canada. The author is Danette Moule of Fairvote Canada. …read more
Could the sun really be setting on the Patriot Act? #Section215 #PatriotAct
On Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul, with help from Senator Ron Wyden, spent 11 hours on the Senate floor demanding amendments to the USA Freedom Act to better protect our privacy from NSA spying.
This “filibuster” also created an opportunity to let some provisions of the Patriot Act die…
Section 215, which the NSA used to justify their bulk spying, expires on May 31, midnight.
The Senate and House are in recess all of next week.
The two chambers might not be able to agree on either USA Freedom amendments or …read more
Washington DC – This week, President Obama signed a bill that will create a national alert system for the capture of anyone who hurts or makes a threat against a police officer. The new bill further solidifies the fact that the lives of police officers are seen as more valuable than that of the average citizen.
The new bill would create a system that would be comparable to the Amber Alerts used to find abducted children, but would likely be taken far more seriously.
USA Today Reports:
The law requires the Justice Department to create a notification system relating to assaults on police …read more
New York City, New York – Police Commissioner Bill Bratton of the NYPD recently proposed a plan that would grant amnesty for over 1 million people with open warrants for low-level offenses, inadvertently revealing that 1 in 7 New Yorkers have warrants for their arrest.
According to The United States Census Bureau the population of New York City is 8.406 million. The number of people who currently have open arrest warrants is 1.2 million. That means that 1 in 8 people in the city is currently under the threat of imprisonment for things like “drinking in public” or “disorderly conduct.”
These statistics …read more
The Jakarta Post has this analysis of Britain’s electoral system, compared with Indonesia’s system. Indonesia uses proportional representation. The author is an Indonesian political scientist who works in Great Britain. …read more
