Sunday Long Read: The Pantheon Walks Among Us

Of the hundreds of millions of dollars funding White House candidates in both parties right now, half of that total comes from just 158 families, and 138 of those families are funding the GOP.

They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters. Across a sprawling country, they reside in an archipelago of wealth, exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of cities and towns. And in an economy that has minted billionaires in a dizzying array of industries, most made their fortunes in just two: finance and energy.

Now they are deploying their vast wealth in the political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, according to a New York Times investigation. Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago.

These donors’ fortunes reflect the shifting composition of the country’s economic elite. Relatively few work in the traditional ranks of corporate America, or hail from dynasties of inherited wealth. Most built their own businesses, parlaying talent and an appetite for risk into huge wealth: They founded hedge funds in New York, bought up undervalued oil leases in Texas, made blockbusters in Hollywood. More than a dozen of the elite donors were born outside the United States, immigrating from countries like Cuba, the old Soviet Union, Pakistan, India and Israel.

But regardless of industry, the families investing the most in presidential politics overwhelmingly lean right, contributing tens of millions of dollars to support Republican candidates who have pledged to pare regulations; cut taxes on income, capital gains and inheritances; and shrink entitlements. While such measures would help protect their own wealth, the donors describe their embrace of them more broadly, as the surest means of promoting economic growth and preserving a system that would allow others to prosper, too.

“It’s a lot of families around the country who are self-made who feel like over-regulation puts these burdens on smaller companies,” said Doug Deason, a Dallas investor whose family put $5 million behind Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and now, after Mr. Perry’s exit, is being courted by many of the remaining candidates. “They’ve done well. They want to see other people do well.” 

By a seven to one margin they are backing the GOP with hundreds of millions, making sure the Republicans stay in power whenever and however they can.  They've already bought Congress.  If they get the White House back, it's over.  The kind of people who have five million to throw away on Rick Perry as President are not your friends, folks.  They want their country back from the Obama voters, and they have the might to take it.

In marshaling their financial resources chiefly behind Republican candidates, the donors are also serving as a kind of financial check on demographic forces that have been nudging the electorate toward support for the Democratic Party and its economic policies. Two-thirds of Americans support higher taxes on those earning $1 million or more a year, according to a June New York Times/CBS News poll, while six in 10 favor more government intervention to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly seven in 10 favor preserving Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are.

Republican candidates have struggled to improve their standing with Hispanic voters, women and African-Americans. But as the campaign unfolds, Republicans are far outpacing Democrats in exploiting the world of “super PACs,” which, unlike candidates’ own campaigns, can raise unlimited sums from any donor, and which have so far amassed the bulk of the money in the election.

The 158 families each contributed $250,000 or more in the campaign through June 30, according to the most recent available Federal Election Commission filings and other data, while an additional 200 families gave more than $100,000. Together, the two groups contributed well over half the money in the presidential election -- the vast majority of it supporting Republicans.

“The campaign finance system is now a countervailing force to the way the actual voters of the country are evolving and the policies they want,” said Ruy Teixeira, a political and demographic expert at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

These are the gods and goddesses who own the most powerful economy on the planet.  And they are one election away from owning it all.

The People Next Door

The major problem with disruptive 21st century internet technology that brings information to an from our fingertips at will is that it's still being used by 19th century jackass douchebags.

Nextdoor.com, a website that bills itself as the "private social network for neighborhoods," offers a free web platform on which members can blast a wide variety of messages to people who live in their immediate neighborhood. A San Francisco-based company founded in 2010, Nextdoor's user-friendly site has exploded in popularity over the last two years in Oakland. As of this fall, a total of 176 Oakland neighborhoods have Nextdoor groups — and 20 percent of all households in the city use the site, according to the company. 

On Nextdoor, people give away free furniture or fruit from their backyards. Users reunite lost dogs with their owners. Members organize community meetings and share tips about babysitters and plumbers. But under the "Crime and Safety" section of the site, the tone is much less neighborly. There, residents frequently post unsubstantiated "suspicious activity" warnings that result in calls to the police on Black citizens who have done nothing wrong. In recent months, people from across the city have shared with me Nextdoor posts labeling Black people as suspects simply for walking down the street, driving a car, or knocking on a door. Users have suggested that Black salesmen and mail carriers may be burglars. One Nextdoor member posted a photo of a young Black boy who failed to pick up dog poop and suggested that his neighbors call the police on him.

And in the end, even in California, even in the Bay Area, when you can anonymously tip the cops that a scary looking brown person is on your street, people just jump on the damn opportunity, don't they?

White residents have also used Nextdoor to complain and organize calls to police about Black residents being too noisy in public parks and bars — raising concerns that the site amplifies the harmful impacts of gentrification. On Nextdoor and other online neighborhood groups — including Facebook pages and Yahoo and Google listservs — residents have called Black and Latino men suspicious for being near bus stops, standing in "shadows," making U-turns, and hanging around outside coffee shops. Residents frequently warn each other to be on the look out for suspects with little more description than "Black" and "wearing a hoodie." 

"These posts cast such a wide net on our young Black men," said Shikira Porter, an Upper Dimond resident, who is Black. "You start seeing this over and over again, and you understand quickly that, oh, it's the Black body that they're afraid of." 

In some Nextdoor groups, when people ask their neighbors to think twice before labeling someone suspicious, other users attack them for playing the "race card" and being the "political correctness police." Some groups have even actively silenced and banned the few vocal voices of color speaking up on the websites, according to records that I reviewed. 

This sometimes toxic virtual environment has real-world impacts. Residents encourage each other to call police, share tips on how to reach law enforcement, and sometimes even alert cops and security guards about suspicious activity they've only read secondhand from other commenters. I spoke to longtime Oaklanders who say the profiling is getting worse, noting that they have recently had neighbors question them on their block or in their own driveway — suspicious of whether they might be up to no good. People of color described stories of white residents running away from them, screaming at them to leave a shared garden space, and calling police on young children in their own home. In some areas, the profiling is further exacerbated by the growing presence of private patrol officers whom residents have hired to guard the streets.

So yes, if you somehow think people of color are somehow safer from harassment or racism or prejudice online in cyberspace, you're sorely mistaken.  It just ends up being another place where being black or brown is a major liability...and in some instances, fatal.

Last Call For Bitter Home Alabama, Con't.

The issue with voter suppression in Alabama is just the endgame for GOP rule in Southern states.  The real goal is to crush the poor and simply get rid of them, and Alabama is well on its way to doing just that after decades of Republican rule.

What hurts in rural areas generally is all the more painful in the Black Belt, a broad band across southern Alabama named for its rich soil. The Black Belt counties, nearly all of them majority African-American, are scattered with dying towns, few job opportunities and bad health.

Still, they were again hit by the funding cuts: three of the five state parks slated to close are here.

Officials with the Bentley administration, who had warned of potentially deeper cuts, blame the legislature for not finding more revenue. But in Alabama, the poor tend to get squeezed when it comes to cutting services and raising revenue alike.

Corporate tax breaks are generous and the timber and farming interests that own so much Black Belt land enjoy substantial property tax discounts. At the same time, households earning far below the poverty level are required to pay income tax, while the local and state sales tax burden is among the highest in the United States, and Alabama, unlike nearly every other state, imposes its full sales tax on groceries. With such volatile funding on the state level and so little tax revenue locally, Black Belt schools are chronically underfunded.

“Whenever there are funding cuts it may give a cold to most of the schools, but it gives us pneumonia,” said Daniel Boyd, the superintendent of Lowndes County’s public school system, which has been short of textbooks since 2008.

And so the schools struggle, people move out, the tax base dwindles and more services are cut. This time around, it is the driver’s licenses.

“It’s going to be a problem,” said Carolyn Shields, who was discussing the cutbacks with her sister Caritha in front of Caritha’s mobile home in the tiny community of Geiger.

With people from several counties now having to go to Tuscaloosa, the lines will likely be longer, they said, meaning a whole day off work — maybe two, if the wait is especially long. More young people will probably just drive without licenses, as plenty around here already do, they said.

The sisters said they were not sure about the effect one way or another on voting. For them, the main consideration was whether places like this could remain at all.

“Before long,” Ms. Shields said, “there won’t be nothing here.”

The prospect of cutting government to the bone and then amputating it is nothing new, certainly.  But it's the poor, the black, the brown, that suffer the most, suffer first, and suffer the longest. And Republicans don't care.  Take everything from them including the right to vote and you win. Wall the place off and let the losers perish.

And the game continues like it has for centuries.

And He's Ore-Gone

I'm old enough to remember when US presidents were not greeted with guns.

Gun-toting protesters gathered on Friday morning to await President Obama's arrival in Roseburg, Ore., where he planned to meet with the families of victims of last week's mass shooting at Umpqua Community College.

But local residents planned to protest Obama's visit, saying he rushed to "politicize" the tragedy by pushing a gun control agenda. 

"My family, my friends, everybody down here is not happy about him coming," Michelle Finn, a Umpqua alumna and Roseburg native, told the Oregonian. "He already says he's going to politicize this — he's already going to push his agenda." 

A Facebook event page for a protest dubbed "Defend Roseburg - Deny barack 0bama" [sic], had garnered more than 8,000 RVSPs by Friday. In its lengthy event description, organizers suggested attendees carry a handgun as opposed to a rifle, but reiterated "you have the right to carry what you wish." 

"Polarizing as usual, Mr 0bama [sic] has insisted on politicizing the event as a conduit for increased executive orders on gun control via means of his pen, and his phone," the description continued.

Now, the notion of publicly saying that you're going to go protest a presidential visit to your town with your rifles and pistols by your side and threatening to run him out of town is pretty common.

Can't imagine what changed from the previous 43 presidents.

Hillary's Poll Position

Here's some crosstabs from the latest Quinnipiac poll matchup between Hillary Clinton and various GOP candidates, in this case, Ben Carson.

Clinton loses pretty badly to Carson, but the reason why is she loses the white vote badly.  Among white women it's 54-40% Carson, but among white men it's 60-29%.

Even Obama got more of the white vote than this in 2012.

Hillary's numbers among white voters are terrible, but she doesn't break 30% against any of the Republicans among white men period, not against Carson, Bush, Fiorina or Trump.

Keep an eye on that number should Joe Biden get in the game.

The Voting Wrongs Act

Don't expect Jeb to sign any voting rights legislation if he's elected, like most Republicans who threw up their hands in 2008 and said "OK, we've elected a black president, what more do you people want" Bush sees the VRA as an antiquated, irrelevant relic.

The 1965 law, signed by President Lyndon Johnson, has dramatically reduced racial discrimination in voting. But for the past two years, its impact has been less clear. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the heart of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. That provision laid out a formula to determine which states had a history of voting discrimination that would subject them to extra scrutiny every time they sought to change voting laws. At the time, nine states were affected by the clause. Unless Congress writes a new formula that would pass muster with the Supreme Court, the effect of the law remains muted. 

To Bush, singling out states for their historic racism is no longer relevant. "If it's to reauthorize it to continue to provide regulations on top of states as though we are living in 1960—'cause those were basically when many of those rules were put in place—I don't believe that we should do that," he said. "There has been dramatic improvement in access to voting. I mean, exponentially better improvement. And I don't think there is a role for the federal government to play in most places, could be some, but in most places where they did have a constructive role in the '60s. So I don't support reauthorizing it as is."

Of course not, because bruised southern white feelings are more important than the right to vote, Supreme Court even said so!

The scary, more serious part is this notion that the federal government doesn't have a role to play in guaranteeing that voter suppression is going on when southern states like Alabama are imposing voter ID laws and then closing drivers license offices in heavily black counties first.

This is exactly the kind of nonsense the Voting Rights Act was supposed to stop, but because it's been gutted, Alabama will most likely be able to get away with it and disenfranchise thousands of black voters in the process.

But that's the point: a Republican president won't enforce the Voting Rights Act at all.

Last Call For Bevin Blowing It

It's looking more and more like Matt Bevin is going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the Kentucky governor's race as the backbiting from the Kentucky GOP is already beginning.

Some prominent Northern Kentucky Republicans have told the Enquirer they support Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jack Conway. 

The bitterness among many Republicans against the tea party, which has challenged many in leadership recent years, might catch up to Republican candidate Matt Bevin, often seen as an outsider candidate who has heavy tea party support. 

In particular, Bevin's nasty primary challenge of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2014 has left a sour taste in the mouths of some Republicans. They believe the lack of support for Bevin in his own party could allow Conway to win, despite Conway having to deal with President Barack Obama's unpopularity in the state. 

"I think the chickens are coming home to roost," said Alexandria Republican Mike Combs, who has given $250 to Conway's campaign. "They made it such a personal attack in so many ways." 

Bevin made so many enemies trying to beat Mitch McConnell last year that when he needs Republicans here in the NKY to turn out to support him, he's coming up empty handed.

The tension between traditional Republicans and the tea party wing that includes Bevin, who won the gubernatorial nomination largely by carrying Northern Kentucky, came to the surface in the keynote speech at last month's Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce annual dinner. 

Incoming chamber chairman Dave Heidrich didn't directly name vocal conservative voters and groups such as the tea party in his speech. But he called out businesses to help current elected officials get things done. 

"The business community must gather around our elected officials and provide support. They need to know they can take a bold position and not be immediately defeated by a small vocal minority in the next primary," said Heidrich, a registered Republican who has held a fundraiser for Conway this year. 

In his speech, Heidrich specifically doubled down on the chamber's commitment to getting a new bridge next to the Brent Spence Bridge, a plan that tea party supports oppose because the plan currently relies on tolls. The crowd of more than 500 at the dinner loudly applauded Heidrich. 

Conway's campaign website lists a group of 24 leading Republicans, known as Republicans for Conway. Two locals on the list are Campbell County real estate broker Ken Perry and lawyer Michael Plummer. 

Could less than complete GOP support keep Bevin from winning? 

Bevin and Conway remain close in the polls, with the last Bluegrass Poll at the end of September by the Louisville Courier-Journal showing Conway leading Bevin 42 percent to 37 percent. The poll showed tepid support among their bases for both candidates, with 16 percent of registered Democrats saying they'd vote for Bevin and 15 percent of registered Republicans saying they'd vote for Conway. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

And that's true, with Conway up by five and Bevin finding burnt bridges around every corner, Conway just might pull this off.

The Fool On The Hill(ary)

Daily Beast columnist Ben Domenech rips into Hillary Clinton's reversal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and wonders out loud if she thinks undecided Democratic primary voters like myself are as stupid as she thinks we are.

For years, Hillary Clinton has championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership as one of her signal achievements in her time as secretary of state. 

She called it the “gold standard in trade agreements” in 2012. She listed it in her book as one of her key accomplishments. But now, four weeks before the final TPP text is released, she has announced a change of heart. “As of today,” she told Judy Woodruff, “I am not in favor of what I have learned about it.” 

Clinton’s flip-flop would be laughable if it weren’t exactly what the American people expect of her—and a trap for Republicans blind to her game. 

From the perspective that assumes Clinton operates according to principles and ideology, the shift is potentially damaging. Vox, for example, headlines its coverage: “Hillary Clinton’s flip-flop on the TPP makes no sense.” 

And it doesn’t, for someone who is a consistent, principled, ideologically driven politician. 

But this move makes total sense if you understand that Clinton is none of these things. She is changing her mind on this, as she has on so many other things, based on nothing more than political pressure from her left and analysis of political trend lines. The media loves to talk about how GOP primaries pull Republicans so far to the right they can’t win a general election, but that’s what’s happening in real time to Clinton, who is locked in a bidding war with a Vermont socialist over the progressive base.

Clinton has always been a perfect barometer of where her party is. She is a follower, not a leader. She has correctly perceived that the Democratic base is now a dominated by a coalition of economic know-nothings and culture-war leftists who are less interested in “progressive” policy than in freezing the status quo in place. 

As an expression of throwback reflexes on trade and growth, it amounts to Trumpism in a pantsuit. And it’s something more: It’s evidence that a second Clinton presidency can only be won on the ashes of the legacy and vision of the first—a triangulating presidency during which entitlements were reformed significantly and free trade expanded. 

Yet I wonder if all the campaign operatives right and left now saying, “Oh, Hillary’s flip-flopping, she’s contradicting what’s in her book—this could damage her,” have been paying attention to anything the voters have learned about Hillary Clinton in the intervening years. Of course it won’t damage her to flip-flop. She has been for all the things before she was against them.

I really can't find fault in Domenech's logic here.  Clinton has been a finger-in-the-wind triangulator like her husband for decades now, and it hasn't hurt her so far.  This demure "As of today" move leaves the door wide open for her to change her position again as she "learns more about" the TPP and everyone knows it.

Of course, the problem is the alternative to Clinton right now is Bernie Sanders, and both of them are more than happy to run away from President Obama and his policies.  Right now I'm wishing Joe Biden would get into the race if only to have at least one Democrat actually run on the fact that President Obama did a pretty damned good job considering the hand he was dealt by both the Republicans and the Democrats in Congress.

That would be nice.

What Happened To Rand Paul?

If there's one silver lining to the rise of Donald Trump's toxic brand of overtly racist, protectionist populism, it's that it buried Rand Paul's toxic brand of more subtly racist, protectionist glibertarian nonsense and that Paul's aspirations for higher office are quite dead. Salon's Conor Lynch:

Trump has taken advantage of the fears and insecurities of a significant portion of white Americans, who see the influx of non-white immigrants — Hispanic, Asian, Muslim — as a threat to their way of life. In their view, Muslims are terrorists (i.e., Syrian refugees are members of ISIS — even though half are children), Mexicans are rapists and job-stealers, foreigners are cheaters, black people are lazy, and so on. They also distrust intellectuals and experts. Consider, for example, the denial of scientific realities like climate change and evolution. Even though the vast majority of scientists agree that human beings are warming the planet with their carbon output, most Republican supporters simply refuse to believe. Overall, the Tea Party movement appears to be a combination of white-identity politics and anti-intellectualism. Even Glenn Beck, the former patron saint of the Tea Party, has called Trump’s Tea Party supporters racists. (I guess he never interacted with supporters at those rallies of his.)

What does all this say about a great percentage of Republican voters? First of all, it reveals that many are ideologically inconsistent (except when it comes to their social views) and politically ignorant. After all, Trump is no small government conservative, and as former congressman Ron Paul said recently, he sounds increasingly authoritarian. It also reveals that most GOP voters are not libertarian like Rand Paul, and that his honesty on certain issues, especially when he speaks out against war, advocates diplomacy, and criticizes the government spying on its own citizens, hurts his standing in the Grand Old Party.

In closing, Jerry Taylor writes about issues that libertarians have been successful with over the past few years: 

Libertarians… can take heart from the fact that political sentiment is moving their way in some areas. Gay rights, drug decriminalization, increasing outrage over heavy-handed police tactics, growing concern over an unjust legal system, disgust over crony capitalism, and opposition to military deployments abroad all suggest that libertarian arguments can have political force.

The thing is, these issues are all areas where libertarians and those on the left agree. Indeed, liberals and libertarians tend to see eye to eye on somewhere around half of the issues (typically relating to civil rights), while they disagree on other things like the free market and income inequality. These issues — war, civil rights, criminal justice reform — are what make Paul an outsider in the Republican Party.

Whether you agreed with him or not during the last two debates, Paul did bring substance to otherwise fruitless events. But it seems that most GOP voters do not care about substance, and prefer entertaining and pompous loudmouths who embrace their irrational fears, insecurities and prejudices. One can disagree with a political opponent and still have great respect for him or her, but only when real substance and debate is involved. How can one have respect for an opponent like Trump, who makes outlandish claims without any evidence and popularizes untrue and dangerous generalizations about entire segments of the population? How can one respect someone who operates in fear-mongering and embraces some of the darkest qualities of human beings, like racism, to get ahead in the polls?

Unfortunately, the GOP is headed in this ugly direction, and the fall of Rand Paul, who is one of the few Republicans with a consistent and discernible philosophy — wrong as it may be — reveals this crude drift towards a political movement that will inevitably leave many victims in its wake.

And when the Trump boil bursts, it's going to be truly ugly, infectious, and sickening.  But at least the guy got rid of Rand Paul's snotty version of "Well, actually" racist libertarianism.  It just replaced it with something far worse.

StupidiNews!

• This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quarter Group for its work in preventing the country from breaking up into civil war.
• The family of Walter Scott, killed when shot in the back by a white police officer in North Charleston in April, will receive a $6.5 million settlement from the city.
• A new four-year contract between the United Auto Workers and Fiat Chrysler will eliminate the current two-tier pay structure and appears to have headed off a strike set for this week.
• Netflix is raising its streaming service price to $9.99 for new customers immediately and for existing customers by 2016 as the company expands into Japan and New Zealand this year.
• A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that hot yoga creator Bikram Choudry's yoga postures cannot be copyrighted.

Last Call For Fortresses Of Learning

The focus in Indiana on dealing with mass shooting events is not guns, but public building themselves.  One high school is now a test case for turning schools into bunkers, and the industry that this is spawning could cost taxpayers billions on "hardening schools" rather than teaching kids.

“I know it sounds politically crass,” said Mason Wooldridge, the co-founder of Our Kids Deserve It, a group that works to promote what many might consider aggressive school safety standards. “But if Sandy Hook Elementary or the college in Oregon had what Indiana is promoting in their schools, nobody would have died.” 

The safety standards Wooldridge is working to implement in Indiana schools are no ordinary measures. 

They’ve already been implemented at Southwestern High School, a small school in rural Shelbyville. There, not only do children perform “active shooter drills” alongside fire drills, teachers wear special key fobs that alert police faster than a 911 call. Classrooms have “hardened doors” that lock automatically and “hardened exterior glass” windows to deflect both bullets and brute force. Cameras in the school have “shooter detection technology” — tools created for the military — to help law enforcement more quickly locate suspects. And if the suspect is trapped in the hallway, smoke cannisters can be detonated to slow down the shooter.

Wooldridge thinks these measures could have prevented the deadly outcomes of shootings like Sandy Hook and last week’s incident at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.

Selling schools as bunkers is the next frontier, folks.  You thought charter schools were profitable? How about spending millions per school to retrofit them with bulletproof glass, reinforced doors, security cameras, electronic locks, security gates and fences, and panic rooms?  And of course you love your kids, so as a parent you're not going to say no to protecting your kids from being slaughtered at school, right?

In the months following Sandy Hook, President Obama signed numerous executive orders to develop model emergency response plans for schools and provide $30 million in grants for schools to develop their own plans, among other things. But there has been no effort to create a nationwide standard for public learning institutions when it comes to active shooter response. 

“Nationally, there’s nothing being done to create standards of safety,” Wooldridge said. “But in Indiana, they are doing all those things.” 

It’s likely that the idea would receive pushback from conservative groups, which generally advocate a state or local approach. In comments to the conservative Daily Signal, for example, the Heritage Foundation’s education fellow Lindsey Burke said initiatives like Indiana’s shouldn’t be handled by the federal government. 

If national standards aren’t acquired, however, it will be up to school districts themselves to decide whether to invest in these measures — and with the high costs, it’s likely that they would be implemented mostly in predominantly-white suburban schools. Indeed, the small Southwestern High School is 97 percent white, and the median income level is above the state’s average.

Oh, I see how this works.  After all, there's no point in protecting schools for poor black inner-city kids.  Hell, we're closing those schools entirely.  We'll need to get the money to protect white suburban schools from somewhere in the budget, you know.

Sounds like the next great school scam to me.  And it's the schools that need the most help that won't see a dime.

Worst Kasich Scenario, Con't

John Kasich continues to show his moderate credentials because he's a moderate guy, and not at all crazy like the rest of the GOP presidential lineup.

In Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC) grilled presidential candidate John Kasich about his views on immigration, gun control, the wars in the Middle East, and economic inequality — particularly between men and women. 

USHCC President Javier Palomarez challenged the Ohio governor on the fact that women in his state working full time are getting paid roughly 78 percent of what men make — according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau. For Latina women across the U.S., the gap is even greater: just 54 percent of what men made in 2014. 

Palomarez pointed out that Kasich has daughters of his own, and asked how he explains this disparity to them. 

“Well, a lot of it is based on experience,” Kasich replied. “A lot of different factors go into it. It’s all tied up in skills. Do you not have the skills to be able to compete?” 

Seeming somewhat shocked at this response, Palomarez asked, “Are you saying women workers are less skilled than men?” 

“No, no, of course not,” Kasich said. “I mean, a woman is now running my campaign, and she’s doing a fantastic job. The head of our welfare reform office is a woman. I understand that if you exclude women, you’re not as effective.” 

He added that he has worked to increase spending on education in Ohio so that both men and women can gain the skills they need to earn a decent living.

It's weird, when you try to ask Republicans to give an answer as to why the gender pay gap exists and it's nearly 2 to 1 among women of color compared to white men for the same positions, they don't have an explanation other than "Women take lower paying jobs" which is hysterical if you again compare similar jobs or like Kasich they give some variation on "women aren't as good" but they don't really say it.

Then Kasich talks about education making a difference when the worst gender pay gap instances occur with women with degrees.

One statistic that both surprises and depresses me: While more women than men enroll in college today, when you look at education levels, the greatest wage gap comes among people with the most schooling under their belts. Women with graduate degrees earn just 69.1% of what men with graduate degrees earn and those with bachelor’s earn 71.4 % of men’s salaries. “These data indicate that women need more educational qualifications than men do to secure jobs that pay well,” says the report.

Education only makes this stuff worse.  And again, there's not only a massive gender pay gap in this country but a racial one, and combined, women of color get utterly screwed in the workplace.

Kasich doesn't have any answers and he doesn't care.  He's a Republican.

Don't be fooled.  None of them do.

BREAKING: McCarthy Drops Out Of House Speaker Race

GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Californi, the current House majority leader and number two to outgoing House Speaker Orange Julius (R-Orange) didn't have the votes to replace ol' John Boehner and has dropped out of the running for the job,

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has dropped out of the race for House Speaker, shocking Capitol Hill and raising questions about who will lead the House Republican Conference.

Republicans were to meet Thursday at noon to elect a new Speaker. Instead, they received the surprising news from McCarthy.

"I think I shocked some of you," McCarthy joked to reporters after his bombshell. 

He said he would stay on as majority leader, but believed Republicans needed to unify around a "new face." 

"I feel good about the decision. I think we're only going to be stronger," he said.

McCarthy suggested it was unclear whether he could have won the 218 votes on the floor needed to be elected Speaker.

"I don't want to go to the floor and win with 220 votes," said McCarthy, who cast his decision as putting his conference first. "I think best think for our party is to win with 247 votes." 

McCarthy told his colleagues of his decision as they were preparing to cast ballots for Speaker. The election was immediately postponed.

If anyone somehow still needed proof that Republicans are incapable of governance, well there you go.  They can't even pick a leader in the House.

It would be sad if it wasn't directly the fault of voters in 2010 and 2014 for giving the House to Republicans in the first place.  These guys are idiots, folks.  We can change that in 2016, ya know.

Bush, Whacked? Con't

Daily Beast columnist Will Rahn doesn't pull any punches as he tells Jeb Bush to pack it in and drop out of the race for the good of the GOP.

The conventional wisdom a few months ago was that your brother’s catastrophic presidency would be your bid’s biggest hurdle. Now, in a fit of desperation, it looks like you’re about to draft him to stump for you. Putting aside that George W. is still despised by a not-insignificant swath of the Republican electorate, how is that going to play in the general should you somehow win the nomination? You’re making the Democrats’ job easy, Jeb. They’ll be more than happy to attach you to his legacy, and you’re doing that for them.

Speaking of the Democrats, we know what will happen if you drag this out through next spring. The going thinking right now is that the guys really low in the polls—your Rand Pauls and George Patakis—should be next to drop out. But what damage do they do to the GOP by staying in? You Bushes, meanwhile, for all your patrician aloofness, are some of the dirtiest campaigners out there, and every jab you get in at your fellow establishmentarians like Marco Rubio is going to be used against them by the left. It’s one thing to toughen up a nominee in a primary fight—it’s another to make them damaged goods, unready to lead. If you’ve got some golden piece of oppo that will take Rubio or John Kasich out of consideration, by all means use it now. Otherwise, time to step aside.

Electability has always been the central rationale of your candidacy. We’re reminded it’s been more than 30 years since a Republican outside the Bush family won the presidency. In 2000, your brother was able to make the case that he was the strongest candidate to take on the Democrats, particularly after he dragged John McCain’s name through the mud.

But your brother was an able campaigner, and you are not. The polls showed he had a particularly good chance of winning back the White House; the same can’t really be said of you. And again, he was a disaster as president. You were doing a decent job of shedding all that baggage, but now that’s he’s joining you on the campaign trail, you’re going to be shouldering all of it. And not for nothing, but your principal strategist, Mike Murphy, does have the distinction of being the only 2016 guru to have already run against Hillary and lost.

And even if your brother wasn’t a nincompoop, Jeb, you’re doing a fine job of messing this up on your own. You’ve already had more than your fair share of flubs. That “stuff happens” quote may have initially been taken out of context by the media, but guess what: Running for president, particularly when you’re a Republican, means dealing with a hostile press. You will not always be treated fairly, you will rarely be given the benefit of the doubt. Contrast your statement with Rubio’s nearly perfect response to a question about Black Lives Matter that was making the rounds on Twitter last week, and you see why Republicans worry about you leading the party through 2016.

I have to admit, in whatever alternate universe where the evil version of me is a Republican political blogger, I'd be giving the Bush camp the same advice.  The longer he stays in, the longet he becomes the punch line of the attacks on the GOP. "Just like his brother, only incompetent and stupid" is not exactly the best image the GOP wants to project if they want to win.

Granted, it's hard not to project that image given the people running.  But at this point, there's no way Jeb becomes the nominee.  The problem is, the Republicans have already committed millions to his campaign, so he can keep going as long as he wants to.

And keep doing damage the whole time.  Stay in Jeb, please!

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