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Just As Every Cop Is a Criminal...

27/5/2020

 
I'm feeling positively ill—and at a loss for words because words aren't sufficient to express the feelings—about the recent extra-judicial killings of black folks by rogue cops and the Minneapolis PD's response to the peaceful protest after four cops killed George Floyd. Not only did those four cops deprive a man of his most basic civil rights without charge, let alone without trial, but also the entire department decided to compound the problem by using flash-bangs, tear gas, and rubber bullets to deprive thousands of their First Amendment rights.

As my grandmother liked to say, enough is enough, and too much is plenty. Just based on the last ten years of documented police misconduct, setting aside the previous 200 years, I think we can declare that police are a hazard to public health. Some Tweets I've seen are calling for immediate abolition of police; I wouldn't go that far yet: How about a moratorium on police activity though, until we can completely reform the very institution of policing.

Fortunately, when I run out of useful things to say, I can fall back on this press release from the GPUS National Black Caucus, copied and pasted below in its entirety.

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Ballot-Access Chickens Remain Uncounted

27/5/2020

 
At least Laura Palmer is optimistic. The GPTX co-chair said last night in a Green Party Houston Zoom conference that she is interpreting as good news the Secretary of State's Office's reply to the list of electoral nominees that she filed. If there's any truly good news, it's that SOS did not remark in this reply that the candidates who had not paid filing fees would not be granted official candidate status.

I don't see how SOS could avoid enforcing the statutory fee or petition requirements for minor-party candidates as set forth in last year's HB 2504. We still have to wait for the outcome of the pending lawsuits to see whether SOS can waive those fees legally and without major parties throwing a major hissy fit. We have made it a matter of public record that only two of the eight nominees ponied up to run for office, those being Hal J. Ridley, Jr. (US House District 36) and Brody Mulligan (Texas House District 92).

As of now, it's a little less unofficial that GPTX has three statewide nominees in addition to the presidential ticket. We'd certainly feel better if all nine million or so who vote in the general election have more Green choices than just the top of the ticket, rather than the 150,000 or so in Ridley's and Mulligan's districts.

The Green nominee for US Senate, yours sincerely, may begin doing something like campaigning soon. It will be a very low-key effort. As I told Laura, as much as I'd love to travel the state as I did in 2012, the current pandemic makes that impractical; making a lot of noise on the Internet seems to be the only way to go, but there's so much other noise competing for voters' attention.

​The watchword for now is "wait & see."

Johnstone's Truth Hits Close to Home

19/5/2020

 
She's right, y'know. Right as in POW!! Right in the ol' truth gland!!

Fellow lefties, Greenies, Progressives of every stripe, please read the entire article, two excerpts of which appear below. It's not very long. I'll wait.

pic.twitter.com/x7P6eFouTO

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) May 19, 2020

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kat Dropping District 51 Campaign, Focusing on RRC

18/5/2020

 
In last night's online meeting of the State Executive Committee of the Green Party of Texas, state co-chair Laura Palmer revealed that the Secretary of State's Office had some questions about katija gruene's occupying two places on the 2020 general election ballot. As a result, ms. gruene decided to stay in the statewide race for the Railroad Commission seat and drop out of the Texas House District 51 race.

The Texas Election Code does not state explicitly that one person cannot run for more than one office in the same election—or, at least, I have not found such language. However, no one person may serve in two elected offices in the event of winning both races. Hypothetically, if gruene could be elected to both positions in the event of a sudden Green Wave, she should not take a chance on a dual victory.

Possibly Moot Point
This is the paragraph where we remind readers that gruene is not officially on the ballot for either position, despite being nominated for both. She did not pay the new HB 2504 filing fees to run, nor did she submit petition signatures in lieu of the fees. The fee provision for candidates irrespective of party is in legal limbo, pending the lawsuits filed in hopes of overturning it.

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Ridley Rant #3: Solutionation

12/5/2020

 
Solutionation is a word I invented because I thought it’s needed, to express a need. To move from problem to problem, you need problem people; but now we need to move from solution to solution, we need solution people. The problem is, problem people don’t like solution people. They feel threatened: if problem production falls, they are unemployed. That’s a sizable percentage of the workforce.

The problem industry is vast and worldwide. It is an essential part of the functioning of the multi-national organization of problem production. Such is why, that even when a problem is solved, the solution is still ignored by those who profit from problems. The multiplication of problems means more failure, in the sense that nothing will or can change or get done, so no need to try.

Why are 85% of people sitting on a couch of some kind, passive, waiting and watching it all pass by, till they pass where they sit?

Solutionation should be a word in the dictionary—do they still have those? Invention, innovation, and entrepreneurial acumen are all we have to pull up from this rapidly descending spiral. We'd best improvise some wings quickly.

Hal J. Ridley. Jr.  Green candidate U.S. House TX-36—I wrote and approve this message. 
haljridleyjr.com
​
roboticconstruction.com is my personal site.

Virtual GPUS Convention Announced

8/5/2020

 
The Green Party of the United States officially announced earlier this week that its 2020 Presidential Nominating Convention and Annual National Meeting will take place in cyberspace. GPUS has also extended early registration so that delegates and others may still register for only $100 each. That's right, only. If I recall correctly, registration at Baltimore in 2012 was $120. But that's just the suggested donation: Lots of Greens without the means can negotiate their ticket price downward.

As previously discussed here at dbcgreentx, the decision had been made back in April, but was only announced this week after the organizers had all the particulars nailed down.

One of the unfortunate oversights in the appointment of delegates at the GPTX convention last month was forgetting to inform attendees that there was indeed an admission price for the convention. However, nobody should be too upset about not having to travel to Detroit or book lodging there, thus saving hundreds they might otherwise have spent.

(Cue nostalgic music and slow-mo images of seven Texas Greens back in 2004, including yours truly, traveling to Milwaukee and back in a rented van.)

As always, there are discounted tickets available, particularly for members of one of the identity caucuses or even those who are eligible to join those caucuses.

GNC SC Meets Re PNC and CCC, etc.
I'm not generally tuned in to the National Committee scene, but it came to my attention via some Facebook browsing that the Steering Committee of the NC will have its monthly meeting this Sunday night. The highlight of the agenda appears to be an update on the PNC (Presidential Nominating Convention) so that it at least appears in the official minutes. But I'm excited about a proposed change to the GPUS Bylaws regarding the gender composition of the Coordinated Campaign Committee, which will likely be adopted by Steering Committees and State Executive Committees thereafter (bolds​ mine):
Proposal
To replace language which governs elections to the CCC, the goal of which is to retain the aim of gender balance to advance women’s participation, while also providing space for non-binary individuals to join the committtee in a way that does not force them to choose a “male” or “female” election in which to run.

Current language:
The committee shall always have an equal number of males and females on Its roster except when it has an odd number of members. Then its makeup can Be +1 for any gender. The exception to this rule is that no member of the committee shall be asked or forced to resign from the committee in order to reestablish the gender balance. The balance will be re established by Adding members to the committee. Each year the election to fill seats on the CCC shall actually be two elections, one to elect males to the committee, one to elect females to the committee. The number of men and women elected in any given year shall be determined by nature of the vacancies in that year with the goal of having 5 men and 5 women on the committee. 

Proposed new language:
The committee shall strive to include women and gender non-conforming individuals at high levels to counteract years of patriarchy which results in cis gendered men being over-represented in political office. Each year the election to fill seats on the CCC shall take place using Ranked Choice Voting. The number of men, women and non-binary individuals elected in any given year shall be determined by nature of the vacancies in that year with the goal of having at least 5 women on the committee. This may mean skipping over men who place higher than women and non-binary candidates in order to ensure gender diversity.

Non-Review: A Breath of Snow and Ashes (Gabaldon)

5/5/2020

 
The front cover of Diana Gabaldon's novel
(copied and pasted from Goodreads, with some edits)

Six down, however many to go. If you find the tone of this review sardonic, more appropriate for panning the book, please believe me that I enjoyed this, even when there were lulls in the plot and emotionally difficult passages. Do not read this title without reading its five predecessors.

Snow and Ashes is, IMHO FWIW, the best-written of the series that I have read thus far. Dr. Gabaldon, fondly known as "Herself," truly solidified her writing style and her sense of narrative space by Book 6 of the Outlander saga. She also ratcheted up the sex and the violence for this one, as well as the sexual violence. The extended Fraser family's kill count increases dramatically—we Ian Murray, for example, has absorbed a shall-we-say very different view of life and death from his brief time as a Mohawk—and there's some wrenching rape and post-rape recovery narrative.

The paperback copy that I read came with a most ironic flaw: In addition to its 1400+ pages, in its middle third it has two clumps of 32 pages each that are repeats of pages already read. It's almost as if someone in the print room said, "Damn, this book just isn't thick enough. I know a way to fix that."

In my mind as I read, the soundtrack to this book consisted entirely of 10cc's "Things We Do for Love" on endless loop. Why did 20th century surgeon Dr. Claire Beauchamp Randall want so badly to return to the 18th century back in Voyager, gambling that she might not become Claire Fraser again, knowing the perils of the times? Oh yeah, that love thing. If it can make people kill, torture, steal, build elaborate webs of lies, and sacrifice themselves the way Gabaldon's characters do, love must indeed be the most powerful force in the universe. If that isn't Gabaldon's intended message, indeed of the entire series, I reckon it should be.

After 7,000 pages of the Outlander saga, I can usually tell shortly after a character's introduction whether that character will survive into the next installment or die in some grisly way. I will not tell you which of these types my two favorite minor characters are:
  1. young Malva Christie, the teenage daughter of an ex-Jacobite Jamie Fraser knew from his stay at Ardsmuir Prison, who settles on the Ridge with her father and brother; and
  2. Wendigo Donner, one of a troop of 20th century Native Americans who have failed catastrophically in their mission to change history by warning 18th century Indigenous folk of Whitey's boundless treachery.

Easy to overlook, amid all the chaos in the run-up to the American Revolution, is the wickedly Faulknerian subplot involving Jaime's relatives at River Run and their 150-odd slaves who almost never run away. I really didn't want to mention the Starz TV adaptation in this review, but...here goes. If you're watching Seasons 4 and 5 of the miniseries, and you have grown to despise the ever-genteel Aunt Jocasta MacKenzie Cameron Cameron Cameron Innes, prepare to get your hate on even more. Jocasta isn't willfully evil, but she is a most unfortunate product of her times and her family tree.

And then there's the whole Stephen Bonnet mess, about which I'll say only this: The psychopaths and narcissists in this saga always show their human side and gain a smidgeon of sympathy from the reader; nonetheless, the reader still wants them dead.

Gabaldon's real strength is weaving history into the tapestry of bodice-ripper romance and sci-fi trappings. Unless you grow up in the Carolinas, you probably don't get much information in your history classes about how the Revolution went down in the southern colonies. We mostly learn of Boston and Philadelphia, not much else. Just as in the other twelve, North Carolina had its share of nasty colonist-on-colonist violence between the War of Regulation and the siege of Boston. Declaring yourself for one side or the other could be not just a death sentence but a "whole family tortured and killed plus your servants and your livestock stolen" sentence. But staying neutral didn't improve the situation. A group of settlers on a 10,000-acre plot in the Carolina Piedmont in the 1770s could take nothing for granted and had to remain on armed alert. Herself doesn't hit us over the head with a history lesson, but lets the characters interact with the history in intensely believable ways.

I am glad that my wife encouraged me to read this volume while we've been taking in Season 5 of the TV version, mostly because Season 5 borrows rather heavily from Book 6. What it borrows, I'd rather not spoil for you.

No "Body" Is a Green Candidate for President

4/5/2020

 
I wish I could just leave this alone and let the online chatter keep raising the profile of the Green Party in public consciousness. Fortunately or not, anything I say here or on Facebook or on Twitter will not put a dent in this whole "Jesse Ventura is running for president as a Green" phenomenon.

"None of the Above" will still be an option, but I doubt that any "Body" will have delegates in the GPUS Convention just two months and change from now.

As of this moment, Ventura. Is. Not. A. Candidate.

The rumors were flying a year and a half ago, and The Body denied that he was in the running for the GPUS nomination. He hasn't formally declared even now. If he had announced last spring or summer, put together an organization, and filed the appropriate paperwork, he would at least be a candidate.

Would he be a viable candidate? Plenty of Greens said last year, via social media and otherwise, that they would not support his quest for the nomination, given his Libertarian leanings. What these people forget is how much the Green and Libertarian platforms have in common, even if the core philosophies beneath those platforms are quite different.

My hope is that Ventura will meet with the candidates and head up the street team for the eventual nominee. As cool as it was to have Cornel West stumping for Jill Stein in 2016, Dr. West does not have the name recognition that Ventura enjoys. It might even lead to other celebrities helping us out, including not just occasional Green Susan Sarandon but those who have thrown their support behind the Movement for a People's Party (e.g., John Cusack). I don't foresee the Green campaign garnering as much celebrity support as Nader/LaDuke 2000 did (Eddie Vedder, Patti Smith, among many others), but, given the way 2020 has gone thus far, I may yet be proven wrong.

    DBC Sez...

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