Breaking news - Some voters buck tide, vote in their own interests

This just in.  It seems that contrary to the Republican/corporate sweep across America, there were a few pockets of crusty holdouts who voted in their own best interests, not the interests of corporations, as so many of their fellow voters did last Tuesday.

Shocking as it is, some voters questioned the conventional and accepted wisdom of the Supreme Court , and said, "heck no corporations are not people, or if they are, I'm a more important person, and my interests come first."

They showed this contrariness by voting in favor of measures for raising the minimum wage in some surprising places like Arkansas for Pete's sake, home of Walmart, a very unhappy corporate person right now. They also passed measures against fracking, not just on the Left Coast, where measures passed in Mendocino and San Benito Counties, but in Ohio and Denton Texas.

But anyone feeling sorry for the corporations should take heart that they are not accepting this insult to their personhood lying down.  "Who are these peons, who probably committed voter fraud in the first place, to tell us we can't claim our God-given right to drill under their land and set their water on fire," asked an indigent spokesperson for the Texas Oil and Gas Association which is already cranking up a lawsuit  to overturn the fracking ban.   

  

In another unlikely and humiliating rebuff to the corporate authority, which really has their best interests at heart, voters in  Richmond California, home of  Chevron, who is itself a major employer (and polluter, thus also boosting the economy in terms of hospital admissions and sales of hazmat suits) rebuffed the hand picked City Council candidates Chevron spent millions of their hard earned money promoting with cheery billboards and TV ads.

 

"How could people be so blind as to vote for candidates belonging to something called the Richmond Progressive Alliance, bad branding if I've ever seen it," grumbled a corporate executive from his vacation home in Aruba, shortly after election results were posted online and blasted out by all the major news outlets in the country.

"Next time, we'll hire some guys to dress in baggy pants and hoodies to go out into the hood and talk sense into these people, except now we have to pay them $15 an hour, so we have to think long and hard on that one."

Maybe a lawsuit would be more effective.

Abstention musical chairs on the Assembly floor

The dance is in full swing. The musicians are playing hard and the dance floor is aglow with lights shining on the party clothes of the whirling dancers.

Then the music stops. Someone is without a chair and that person is "it" in the now commonplace game of Abstention musical chairs, the Assembly Democrats latest craze.

Look closely and you will see who is calling the tunes; it's the Chamber of Commerce. The one who is without a seat is the one who abstains, in a high stakes game that has Democrats pitted against their own constituents.The Chamber likes this strategy for those Dems it controls who would not feel comfortable voting no on a bill important to their constituents.

In round one, we saw Marc Levine (District 10, a solidly liberal District) without a chair when the dance tune ended and his fellow Assembly members were voting on whether to give the Coastal Commission the power to levy fines on those who don't play by the rules.

That was the vote that kept the bill from going through.

And now, we read in Beyond Chron about Southern California Democrat Chris Holden (D-Pasadena) taking his turn at being odd man out, abstaining on the bill that would have raised the minimum wage in the state to $15 an hour. Dead bill. Happy Chamber.

One can only think this is an orchestrated move, keep the targets moving, get a different so called moderate Democrat to abstain on important bills, and maybe the people won't catch on.

And maybe they won't as Levine sailed to first place in a hotly contested primary election, facing the lone Republican in the race. (Three Democratic challengers virtually guaranteed the result, especially after some of Levine's top donors sent out a nice flyer on behalf of the frugal Republican). The top two primary is the best gift the Republicans ever got. Now, they don't need a majority in the legislature; they just need willing corporate Democrats who are happy to dance to their tune.

And a complacent, or distrustful, electorate. The perfect storm?