It’s another one of those days when I have far more good news stories than I can possibly use. But those of you who have read my long-winded Roundups before know that I’m sure going to try.
As usual, I ask that people don’t comment if the only intention is to bring us down. We’re not stupid, naive, or uninformed, so we’ll know when you make stuff up or ignore the reality that’s right in front of you. Instead, why not think about the fact that we know all the bad news and are choosing to fight on anyway, and ask yourself why that is. Then carefully read this diary, or any of the Roundups, and see why that is. Then ask yourself why you feel it useful to be a Gloomy Gus.
I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to comment yesterday. I saw that a couple of folks showed up with very sad attempts to throw cold water on the good election news from California. They were handled quite effectively by other commenters, but since I missed the chance to pile on yesterday I’m just going to throw a metric ton of good election news at you.
Democrats Flip State Legislative Seat In Missouri, Bringing Total To 42
For the 42nd time in this election cycle, a state legislative seat has flipped from red to blue, this time in Missouri. And yes, the winning candidate was a woman.
On Tuesday, Democrat Lauren Arthur won the special election for Missouri state Senate District 17, giving Team Blue its 42nd state legislative pickup of the cycle.
Arthur, a former teacher and current member of the state House, won the district 60-40 percent (with 90 percent of precincts reporting as of press time), a 24-point swing from Donald Trump’s 49-45 percent victory here in 2016.
Arther is a staunch progressive who supports government ethics reforms, equal rights for Missouri’s LGBTQ residents, and local autonomy for cities that want to raise their local minimum wage or enact gun-safety ordinances.
It would seem that the Missouri GOP’s problems are just beginning, as this special election is seen as an indication of the extent of the Greitens effect.
The result suggests that the Greitens effect, combined with anti-Trump energy among Democrats, could pose serious problems for Republicans this fall, when a crucial Senate race will be on the ballot.
Democrat Lauren Arthur beat Republican Kevin Corlew with nearly 60 percent of the vote. In 2016, President Trump won the district, which had been under Republican control for over a decade, by 5 points.
Judge Aaron Persky Recalled By California Voters
Persky is was the Santa Clara County judge who sentenced a Stanford student to 6 months for three felony rape charges because he thought “a prison sentence would have a severe impact” on the poor boy. I wonder what impact the end of his political career will have on lowlife Persky.
The judge whose controversial sentence in a sexual assault case sparked national outrage was booted out of office Tuesday, the first sitting judge to be removed from office in California in nearly a century.
[Stanford law professor Michele] Dauber said Tuesday’s result “demonstrated that violence against women is a voting issue,” and that “if candidates want the votes of progressive Democratic women, they will have to take this issue seriously.”
And yes, a woman was elected to take his place on the bench.
Democratic Enthusiasm The Key To Avoiding The Pitfalls Of California’s Terrible Primary System
There was much well-founded concern that California’s amazingly bad jungle primary system could result in Democrats being locked out of November elections in several competitive Congressional races. While there are still a somewhat large number of ballots to count, and it is still barely possible that Republicans will sweep the top two spots in CA-10, right now it appears that enough Democratic voters turned out to avoid being without candidates in any of the most competitive red seats.
Despite some terrible takes in some of Wednesday’s media (hello New York Times!) the California results indicate that Democratic enthusiasm remains high enough to overcome some structural barriers like the ridiculous jungle primary.
New Mexico Poised To Elect First Native American Woman To Congress
Deb Haaland of the Pueblo of Laguna will most likely be the first Native woman elected to Congress,
"Donald Trump and the billionaire class," she said, "should consider this victory a warning shot: the blue wave is coming."
Over All, Tuesday Was Another Good Night For Women Running For Office
Besides all the candidates mentioned, Tuesday was yet another indication that this year the wave will be female as much as it is blue.
Going back to New Mexico, Democrats nominated Xochitl Torres Small as their candidate in NM-02. The district has long been considered a GOP stronghold, but is rated “leans Republican” by Cook’s, and in Tuesday’s primary Democratic voters outnumbered Republicans by about 2400.
Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne will be trying to become the first women ever to represent Iowa in Congress, in GOP districts Cook's rates as a tossup and “leans Republican.”
Of course there was more going on than elections, and that means more good news. And since this is one of my Roundups, it is required that we include a couple of items that is home to one out of every 12 Americans.
Texas Medical Marijuana Advocates Campaign For Rural Support
Texas is creeping slowly towards joining the medical marijuana movement, but thus far a major obstacle has been entrenched attitudes in the state’s rural areas. But the state NORML chapter is looking to change that with a new ad campaign aimed at rural Texans.
“Our real goal is to change the face of cannabis,” particularly for West Texans, said Jax Finkel, executive director of Texas NORML, the state’s chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
“The stereotype (marijuana user) is the pothead hippie from the ’70s,” Finkel said. “It’s really time to push back on that. People aren’t thinking of an active, hardworking person who wants to stay active and hardworking” but requires access to medical marijuana to do so.
A number of high-profile bills that, by varying degrees, would have lifted marijuana restrictions in Texas cleared legislative committees during the 2017 regular session of the state Legislature, but they all died before coming up for a vote in either chamber.
One of those unsuccessful bills — HB 2107, aimed at making “whole plant” marijuana broadly legal in the state for medical purposes — had 78 legislative sponsors, with nearly 40 percent of them Republicans.
The ads feature a 51-year-old rancher named Richard, an actual patient who would benefit from cannabis treatment. Here’s one of the ads:
Court Upholds Ruling That Texas Must Reveal Source Of Execution Drugs
The Texas Supreme Court has let stand a lower court ruling that the public has a right to know where the state is getting drugs it uses to kill people.
The state’s highest civil court declined to accept the case without comment, other than to note that Justice Jimmy Blacklock — formerly a legal adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott — did not participate in discussions of the case.
Prison officials have worked for years to avoid identifying the source of the state’s lethal injection drugs, arguing that the publicity would deter suppliers from selling to the state over fears of protests and threats from death penalty opponents.
The Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals, however, ruled in May 2017 that exceptions in the Texas Public Information Act did not apply to the information, sought in 2014 by three lawyers who represented death row inmates, because state lawyers could point only to vague threats of violence against suppliers.
While it is certainly possible that pharmaceutical manufacturers may be shamed into not colluding in the state-sponsored killing of Texans, the government has failed in its attempt at conjuring a left-wing antifa terrorist threat right out of Fox News. The state will request a rehearing of the case, but the court rarely grants such motions.
And speaking of Fox “News...”
Fox News’ Business Model Is Failing
Rupert Murdoch has been trying with some success to continue to run Fox News from behind the scenes as a propaganda arm of the GOP, and that is not helping the network.
The crown jewel of New Fox—Fox News—is confronting some business headwinds. While Fox News dominated the ratings in May—a fact Trump bragged about on Saturday—the network is having new difficulties monetizing its most pro-Trump programming. According to three sources briefed on the numbers, advertising revenues for Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are down in recent months. “The pro-Trump thing isn’t working. We can’t monetize DACA and the wall and that right-wing shit,” one staffer said. “Despite all the hype on Hannity, they can’t sell it,” another insider told me. (Tucker Carlson’s show is faring better, sources said).
This is especially encouraging because it means that the Trumpanzee base is as small as I have always said, so small that appealing to it is a good way to make a small fortune only if you start with a large fortune.
In other news…
Google Will Not Renew Its AI Imaging Congress With The Pentagon After Employee Backlash
Project Maven is the name of Google’s effort to develop artificial intelligence for military interpretation of drone footage. Thousands of Google employees have signed petitions decrying this violation of the company’s old pledge to “don’t be evil,” and on Friday it was reported that the Pentagon contract for Maven will not be renewed.
...internal emails reviewed by Gizmodo show that executives viewed Project Maven as a golden opportunity that would open doors for business with the military and intelligence agencies. The emails also show that Google and its partners worked extensively to develop machine learning algorithms for the Pentagon, with the goal of creating a sophisticated system that could surveil entire cities.
Greene had told concerned employees during meetings that Google’s contact with the Department of Defense was worth only $9 million, Gizmodo first reported—a relatively small figure as far as government contracts go.
However, internal emails reviewed by Gizmodo show that the initial contract was worth at least $15 million, and that the budget for the project was expected to grow as high as $250 million. This set of emails, first reported by the New York Times, show senior executives in Google Cloud worrying about how Google’s involvement in Project Maven would be perceived once it became public.
This technology would give the military unprecedented capabilities for surveillance both overseas and within US borders. It’s good to see it being killed, at least for now.
Harebrained Idea To Arm Teachers Faces A Big Hurdle—Insurance Companies
As any rational person can see, giving teachers the responsibility of becoming an armed school security force would be extremely risky, and the people who are responsible for paying for that risk aren't fond of the idea.
One roadblock to arming teachers: Insurance companies
Kansas has a problem: It has a law allowing teachers to carry guns in the classroom, but almost no schools are using it because insurance companies refuse to provide coverage if they do. As EMC Insurance, the largest insurer of schools in Kansas, explained in a letter to its agents, the company “has concluded that concealed handguns on school premises poses a heightened liability risk.”
Then came the Parkland, Fla., school shooting in February, leading frustrated Republican legislators in Kansas to try forcing the issue with a bill banning “unfair, discriminatory” rates for schools that arm staff. The insurance industry held firm. Last month, the bill failed.
“I don’t think insurance companies are notorious anti-gun liberals,” said Mark Tallman, associate executive director for the Kansas Association of School Boards, “so we think they’ve got good reasons for not doing it.”
“There’s not a lot of carriers that want to insure that risk,” Nate Walker, a senior vice president at insurer AmWINS Group.
The reaction of insurance companies is notable because they are supposed to evaluate dangers through the dry eye of actuarial science, largely avoiding the heated emotions of the nation’s gun debate, in which one side condemns guns and the other side claims, as Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) did last week, that the best way to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun.
It’s easy for NRA employees like Dan Patrick to talk nonsense about increased guns equalling increased safety, but those whose business is to evaluate risk know it’s not true. And schools, like any large organization, need insurance to function.
Well, we’re running out of time once again, and once again I had more good news than I was able to cover. There’s California's ban on state-sponsored travel to Oklahoma because of OK’s discriminatory adoption laws. And a looming strike by UPS union employees over the company’s anti-labor two-tier wage system, which would be the largest labor strike in decades. There’s India's plans to outlaw single-use plastics, and Spain's selection of an anti-austerity Socialist Prime Minister (who happens to be an atheist.)
But the show must go on, and the curtain must rise on time. Next week I promise a more expansive Roundup with more good news than you can handle. For now, just keep in mind that if there’s not enough good news here, go out and make some of your own.
This week we’ll close with a musical salute to California’s bizarre primary system.
Claudia, I know you’ve been feeling down. I hope this cheered you up at least a little bit.