persondem's blog

I spent most of Saturday afternoon sitting on a little chair in a conference room of the Marriott Hotel in Greensboro. It was beautiful afternoon, especially for January, but I didn't mind as I was in that conference room to do the business of the North Carolina Democratic Party. I thought there was to be a meeting of the State Executive Committee; for the most part I was mistaken.

The lives of educators are getting more difficult, a-gain. The program of death by a thousand cuts undertaken by the NC General Assembly (GA) continues unabated. The latest, and not well known, cut involves the increasing difficulty of creating a legal school schedule. You, gentle reader, might not recall that school calendars are not created with the principle goal of educating young minds, but rather to maximize the profits of the coastal tourist industry.

Pat Robertson advises the republican presidential candidates to "take the extremism down a notch".

This could one of the signs of the apocalypse. Anyone seem a pale rider or 4 guys on horseback?

... frames best. The following will be submitted tomorrow as an editorial in my local newspaper. I hope to write one a month until Nov. 2012. The next one is already blocked out.

Republicans constantly crow about shrinking “big” government, about getting government out of the business of regulating lives and corporations. Individuals should sink or swim on their own and corporations should be unhindered in their business practices.

"class warfare". Link here. I guess that phrase tested well for the republicans in the budget debates. Every time Obama or another progressive mentions raising taxes on the poor ole rich people, a hoard of conservative talking heads squawk "class warfare", like life sized Ken dolls in Armani suits with pull strings coming out of their backsides.
They don't know the first thing about class warfare. Now Czar Nicholas and the rest of the Romanovs, they know class warfare.

The following will appear as an editorial in the Roxboro local paper. I put out flyers this week at the high school where I work promoting a Teen Democrat meeting next week. 2012 is here.

Conservatives by definition look backwards. Unfortunately, time does not flow backwards; our children and grandchildren will live in the future, not the past.

So the most recent peak price of oil was $110 a barrel with a peak national average price for gasoline at the pump right at $4.00 per gallon. The price of oil recently dropped below $80/barrel and has been trading this past week in the mid 80's. 110 to 85 is a 23% drop. Oil is bought a month or two ahead of time so that means that gas should eventually drop about 23% as well, right? That would mean that the price of gas at the pump should be about $3.15 a gallon just in time for all those Labor Day vacations.
Who thinks that will really happen? Place your bets and take your chances, but remember you are playing against the House .... of Big Oil. Somebody care to remind me just why the oil industry still needs those billions in federal subsidies every year?

Republican/conservatives like to advocate for constitutional amendments that, at best, do little to advance society and might, if passed, hurt law abiding Americans. I refer to the proposed antiflag burning amendments and DOMA type nonsense.
I would like to propose a constitutional amendment to reform our electoral process so as to be beyond the reach of the Robert's SCOTUS. I would like to see the following:

No electioneering until the year of the election. No declaring of candidacy, no fund raising. (Yes, Iowa and New Hampshire might want to make adjustmnents)

All contributions to candidates must be from individuals and max out at $1000. (this could be indexed to inflation and adjusted every 10 years)

No issue ads within 30 days of an election. (If it's really an issue ad it shouldn't need to be close to an election)

All election money raised must be spent in that election cycle or donated to a nonprofit charity (no war chests).

With apologies to Harlan Ellison, I shall begin this post by stating that what follows is very much speculation. The future is not set in stone.
Collisons can be very scary, and so are those moments just prior to the crunch of metal, moments when tires squeal, brakes burn and stomachs lurch. A collision is coming, and I just might know when.