Safe as Houses

Seeing how, like most conservative TV and radio entertainers, I think Glenn Beck is a no-talent, ill-informed pompous ass ... I particularly enjoyed this variety of takedowns of his antics and '9-12' project ...

Via Left on Lanier, 'Morning Joe' ridicules Beck;

Stephen Colbert's tremendous takedown of Beck;

Editor and Publisher's analysis of Beck's criticism.

I have to say that I agree with Flack on this.

While a handful of folks have misinterpreted my arguments - deliberately I'd suggest - it's important to point out that I haven't really been arguing for Roy Barnes seeking the governor's office over anyone else. Rather, my central thesis has been that Rep. DuBose Porter should forgo a run for the office and opt instead to run a statewide campaign aimed at getting Democrats a majority in the Georgia House of Representatives ... because doing so would be more beneficial for the progressive movement in this state.

You can now easily substitute 'Thurbert Baker' for 'Roy Barnes' and my central thesis will hold, and I hope that Barnes backs off his talk of seeking the office and sets his sights on something else. And I hope and pray that Porter doesn't follow through with his desire to run for governor ... not because he wouldn't be a great governor, but rather because I strongly believe we need him in the House fighting the good fight.

Barnes doesn't need to 'save the day' anymore, and Porter can work to grow the number of House Democrats. There are two viable candidates now, and we ought to make the choice between them.

Sometimes the movement is bigger than the man, and I hope everyone keeps that little bit of advice in mind as they make their decisions.

Blake notices some changing attendence patterns in the past eight years.

There's a term called 'conflict of interest' that apparently Rep. Clay Cox has never heard of.

The Atlanta Journal-Consitution is reporting that Cox is attempting to use his influence in the Georgia General Assembly to change the oversight procedures of the County and Municipal Probation Authority Council ... because, well, right now they're telling him that his business, which falls under their jurisdiction, isn't complying with state law.

Apparently, Cox has been engaged in an email war of words with the agency, which provides guidance, governance and oversight to the private contractors who work with the local courts on probation cases. Some of the contracts written by Cox's business - Professional Probation Services, Inc. - don't meet the stated guidelines for compliance.

Cox, of course, has been deliberately misleading people under the Gold Dome and outside of it of what the bill actually does and why it's needed. In fact, the deception, however, is fairly thick ...

Cox said that he had no motive for the bill beyond regulating an industry that “badly needs to be regulated.” He said he could see how some might see it as a bill tailored for his own business, but “it doesn’t help me in the slightest.”

“I guess I didn’t think it through,” Cox said.

Several times during a conversation with a reporter, Cox asked, “Do you want me to pull the bill?”

Cox is arguing, rather ineffectively, that he feels the bill needs to be put forward, but it won't benefit him. However, as the emails uncovered by the AJC show, they arguably do show him working to curtail the very power the council has in taking action regarding this specific dispute.

In this morning's article, Cox argued that he was only one who could write this bill, and that it was designed to benefit the other companies who had complained about the council. However, in the March 11 article, Cox conceded that no other private probation companies were supportive of the proposed legislation, let alone aware of its existence ...

Cox said no other private probation companies support the bill because “they don’t want to pay the registration fee.”

Companies reached Tuesday said they didn’t know the bill existed until after Cox introduced it.

“I didn’t know anything about it until it dropped,” said Steve Page of Georgia Probation Management.

While this bill, H.B. 622, is a measure aimed at specifically limiting the jurisdiction of the council, it's also not his most bold power grab. For H.B. 619, which he put in his back pocket, would have completely eliminated the agency.

A memo to those folks who are adamently behind a David Poythress or Rep. DuBose Porter run for governor in 2010 in lieu of Roy Barnes seeking to reclaim the Governor's Mansion ...

It's possible to make a coherent argument for why either man would be well-suited to lead Georgia over Barnes, but the argument that 'Barnes can't win' isn't one that you can agressively make. For starters, it relies on a willful and deliberate ignorance of recent political history and, in addition, it ignores the existing data which suggests Barnes is the only Democrats in a strong position heading into 2010.

Barnes lost in 2002 because Georgia, a state that really was pretty doggone conservative all along, finally woke up and those Blue Dog Democrats in the rural parts of the state finally got the courage to admit to everyone they really were Republicans. It took roughly 75 years, but after 9/11 and the Florida election fiasco in 2000, the tide finally turned for Republicans. Likewise, a small, but passionate bloc of voters who either reliably voted Democratic up until 2002 or stayed home, got riled up about the state flag and let their voice heard at the ballot box.

You toss in upsetting a major Democratic consituency in teachers, and the recipe for an electoral shift was ripe. This wasn't a massive strategic error on Barnes's part, but rather an extraordinary time when a variety of things occured at the same instance and propelled an unknown state senator to victory.

Today, however, polling suggests that Barnes would begin the race in a very strong position, which is something alien for most Democrats vying for statewide office these days. Furthermore, he would enjoy substantial name recognition against three to four lesser-known Republican candidates and would possess a narrative that no other Democrat could offer ('you could have had me, but instead you got this mess').

There are legitimate arguments why Poythress or Porter would make excellent candidates for governor, but don't try to mask them in some weird anti-Barnes bias that, quite simply, isn't grounded in reality.

I've always argued there's a fine line that traditional journalists have to walk when they wade into the waters of blogging, and it appears that, over in Savannah, Larry Peterson doesn't know how to swim.

His piece on the Employee Free Choice Act is a hit job masked as journalism under the headline 'Political Notes' but, in reality, it's nothing more than yet another shoddy argument against EFCA that assumes corporations are angels and workers trying to organize into a collective bargaining unit are jackbooted thugs. Along the way he proceeds to engage in wild, reckless speculation of what might happen ... if the world operated like a Francis Ford Coppolla movie.

For starters, majority sign-up has existed as an option since the 1930s, and many businesses (AT&T being a prominent example) currently employ that method as the preferred way to organize. The problem is that current law does not require employers to recognize majority sign-up as an option, meaning the existing National Labor Relations Board method of casting a secret ballot is the only way to organize.

Now - despite the fact that all of representative governments voice their opinions in the open and despite the fact that my church makes any formal decision done through an open church conference - letting workers have that same right is opening the door to chaos.

But most of this is all rooted in illogical fear based on random, singular instances of union intimidation that stretch way back into the past. And none of this fear-mongering is backed up by any credible evidence ...

In fact, it reduces coercion substantially. Workers in "secret ballot" elections are twice as likely (46 percent vs. 23 percent) as those in majority sign-up campaigns to report that management coerced them to oppose a union. But only 4.6 percent of workers who signed a card with a union organizer – fewer than one in 20 – reported that the presence of a union organizer made them feel pressured to sign the card.

A NLRB survey found that 36 percent of those workers who voted against organizing at their place of work - the top-ranking reason in the list - did so because they feared employer backlash. Likewise, studies from Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin have showed that between 40 million and 50 million workers would like to see a union organized at their place of employment, but are unable to do so based on the existing narrow framework of the NLRB.

Still, for detractors like Peterson who insist on clinging to some mythical boogieman story of what unions are, analyzing actual data is beneath them. Because, again, as we see time and time again from these folks, they adhere to how something 'ought' to be rather than what it really is.

I couldn't just write a piece called 'The Sky Is Orange' and then expect that to get it passed off as legitimate analysis in the traditional media because, well, obviously the sky isn't orange. Likewise, falsely interjecting what you wish the EFCA was is just as much of a lie as the fictious analogy I just offered.

Since we're talking about Rep. Keith Heard, while I agree that he got unfairly criticized by the Athens Banner-Herald regarding the Obama resolution, I also think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that he's served his community well.

I mean, voting for The Georgia Power Ponzi Scheme, thus raising the rates of his constituents by as much as $100 by 2017 and using that money to pre-pay profit for Georgia Power's shareholders, isn't exactly serving your community well.

Again, I'm often just flat-out amused at how sad and shoddy the arguments coming from that other web site really are in defense of the the failed policies they so love to embrace. Granted, defending Andre rarely ranks high on my list of things to do, but it's also important to point out that, well, the guy was, you know, right.

So this latest saga of 'we-don't-know-what-we're-talking-about-so-we're-going-to-shoot-the-messenger' finds us examining the unemployment numbers of Georgia's neighboring states. These unemployment numbers are marginally higher than Georgia's which, of course, must therefore mean our policies of ineffective and massive tax breaks for big businesses are actually working (the 9.3 unemployment rate in our state notwithstanding, though it does mean we're able to stay out of the Top 10 by .1 percent ... woo-hoo, we're No. 11!).

Still,, when we take a look at some of these states, it's important to remember what drives the economic engines of, say, Florida or North Carolina. Florida has a thriving tourism industry that, given the economic crisis of the past year, has dropped off considerably as folks opt to save money rather than spend it on vacations ... thus impacting every facet of the state's economy.

North Carolina and South Carolina are both transitioning from a strong reliance on manufacturing, largely in the textile industry, and that means the shutting down of the large firms that used to employ several thousand people, thus directly inflating the number of people unemployed in those states (and, with their depleted purchasing power in the market, dragging down the rest of the state's economy).

Furthermore, North Carolina is viewed as one of the Top 10 states in the country for bioscience development, which is something Georgia claims to be pursuing but can't seem to get its act together long enough to effectively go after. It would seem, then, that The Tar Heel State at least seems to have the blueprint on how to get out of the wilderness while our esteemed state legislature can't even figure out how to build the roads we need to get people from Point A to Point B.

And, of course, it's worthwhile to note that Ohio ranks on this unemployment list after having adopted, just a few years ahead of us, almost the exact same type of corporate giveaway that gutted the state's finances, yet did nothing to stimulate economic growth.

Regardless, the criticism leveled originally by Tom Crawford is still valid ... if these massive tax breaks are supposed to generate jobs, then why aren't they? Shouldn't these strategies be successful against the national average rather than merely yielding something like a statistically insignificant edge on the regional level?

There's a lot of news circulating involving the future electoral plans of Rep. Keith Heard, the current vice chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus and the most vocal defender of the Obama resolution.

Blake says that there are rumors building about a primary challenge against Heard in 2010, and the person would come from Athens-Clarke County's Boulevard and Cobbham area, which is known as the strongest local Democratic strongholds in that blue community. I'm familiar with one individual pondering a primary challenge, but this person doesn't live in either of those neighborhoods and would be a political newcomer.

Related to that, via the tipline, there's word that Heard is considering a run for Insurance Commissioner. Heard, who is works in the insurance industry, also sits on the House Insurance Committee. His presence in the primary would make him the presumed frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, which is ironic given that he'd be hard-pressed to hold on to his House seat if he faced a strong primary challenge.

We generated a good bit of conversation - on the blog and off of it - through this charitable request, and I'd like to continue making the argument why Rep. DuBose Porter should give much consideration to running a statewide campaign for Speaker of the House rather than pursue the governor's office (if Roy Barnes, as he's expected to, wades into the race).

This one deals with numbers, and we'll find out our numbers through a series of questions ...

1. If DuBose Porter is running for governor, without Roy Barnes in the race, how much cash on hand should he have one month out of the primary date?

I think there's a compelling case to be made that he needs to have $2 million available to run an effective GOTV operation, direct mail, radio and TV ad campaign.

2. If DuBose Porter is running for governor, and wins the Democratic nomination, how much cash on hand should he have one month out of the general election?

Assuming, as we should, that the Republicans have dramatically outraised him, Porter would probably need $7 million to $8 million cash on hand heading into the stretch run.

3. How much cash on hand should the average Democratic challenger in a state house race have one month out of the general election?

To feel comfortable - and that means seven to eight pieces of mail, healthy radio ad coverage, a few spot cable ads and an aggressive GOTV operation - having $150,000 or so would be nice.

Now, let's assume that Porter opts for the statewide approach, and he leads the effort to get 20 Democrats elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, he would need to have $3 million cash on hand one month out of Election Day. That's less than one-third of what he would have raise on his own throughout the entire campaign for governor, and, in this case, he'd be sharing the responsibilities for raising said money.

Plus, it's a more effective use of resources as $3 million to help get 20 Democrats elected to the Georgia House of Representatives would yield far greater results than raising $11 million to become governor (particularly if the potential to exists to have Barnes at the top of the ticket).

We're going to keep exploring this idea, and it's worth noting there is ample evidence why Porter should run from a political and policy-based perspective, but this financial one is crucial to consider as well.