The Art Of The Rig... By A Perpetually Failed DCCC

Tuesday is primary day in Texas. The most closely followed races are in TX-07 (Houston), TX-32 (Dallas), TX-23 (Rio Grande Valley), and TX-21 (Austin-San Antonio), races that are considered flippable in November. Then there are two open blue seats-- TX-16 and TX-29, the former being vacated by Beto O'Rourke who is running for Ted Cruz' Senate seat and the latter being vacated by Gene Green because he realized the constituents were onto him and he wouldn't survive a primary challenge. TX-29, one of the poorest and most neglected districts in the U.S., is 77% Latino and Green is a conservative old white man owned by Big Oil who has led the neglecting. When school teacher Hector Morales, challenged Green, no one paid any attention nationally, but people did locally. And Green saw the writing on the wall, picked an establishment crony of his-- Sylvia Garcia-- and announced he was departing to spend more time with his family.

Blue America has been enthusiastic about Morales replacing Green. Six other Democrats jumped into the race to vie for the nomination in this deep blue district, including Tahir Javed who has put $800,000 of his own money into the contest-- hoping to buy the seat. And as of February 14 he had raised a total of $1,217,677 and Garcia a total of $483,885. Our candidate in this race, Hector Morales, had brought in just over $10,000. In a Q & A yesterday told the Houston Chronicle yesterday that "Money and signs don't win election, people do. When 30,000 people determined the winner in the primary for the 29th last year, during a presidential election year, it was beyond time to act. Elections should be won based on merit, not low voter turnout or millions of dollars spent and raised from special interests." Asked why he's running, Hector responded with this:

Education, healthcare, and the environment. As a teacher I've seen first-hand how the policies in Washington and Austin affect our students and parents. We've grown to accept a system with zero accountability on behalf of our elected officials. When my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, my family witnessed first-hand the sickening world of profits over people and cannot fathom ever having anyone else have to go through what we went through as a family. The time for Medicare for All is now because we can have a system where people do not have to worry about being too poor to receive the health care they desperately need. For decades the refineries in Pasadena have dominated the skyline, along with multiple stories about explosions, leaks, and shelter in places for the community. It's time we hold these players accountable for the increased rates of cancer in our community and tell them "no more." We can have a future of renewable energy that will place us in the forefront of the future.

It's basically too late to send money now but there's going to be a primary runoff in May so we'll readjust our Texas page on Wednesday morning and get back to you. Where money is very much needed now is in the non-Texas races-- and that's where the Act Blue congressional thermometer on the right will take you to if you click on it. Let's flip over to the East Coast where our old pal, Will Bunch, has penned a piece for The Inquirer that sheds light on how the DCCC tries to rig the primaries for their GOP-lite candidates. And he goes right to one of our favorite candidates as an example: Jess King. Jess, he wrote, was frustrated after Trump's narrow victory in Pennsylvania "by watching how the Democratic Party had failed to connect with economically struggling voters in the center of the state who instead were lured to Trump’s throw-back nationalism." He's too polite that the Pennsylvania Democrats had recruited a gaggle of crappy centrist candidates who inspired no one.

“I never saw myself running for office,” King told me this week. But the more she brooded about Trump’s success, she thought, “He’s using a language that people in my neck of the woods are responding to. As Democrats, we need to own the issues for working families. We need to address the challenges in those districts that are Trump Country … that are struggling with the loss of jobs with automation, with off-shoring.” Last June, King announced her candidacy for Congress.

Running for Congress is a daunting task, especially for a political novice, and especially in a district that was mapped for GOP dominance, represented by a Republican incumbent. But 2018 isn’t a normal political year by any stretch of the imagination. In a grim political landscape, the only real energy is coming from the progressive grassroots-- the thicket of heavily female “resistance” groups that sprung up in disgust with the vulgarian Trump and that have amplified support for truly liberal policies like single-payer health care.

In east-central Pennsylvania, King fed on the electricity of an amped-up grassroots group called Lancaster Stands Up and by the end of 2017 she was raising more money than any candidate in the then-16th Congressional District-- even more than incumbent GOP Rep. Lloyd Smucker-- en route to endorsements by progressive groups like the Working Families Party. Indeed, only one key group didn’t seem excited by everything that first-timer King had accomplished: The Democratic Party establishment, with its ability to tip the May party primary.

Last October, the influential Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, held a weeklong training event for candidates. Jess King wasn’t even invited. Instead, an invitation went out to a rival candidate — Christina Hartman, who’d won the party’s nomination in the 16th in 2016 and built close ties with Democratic insiders even as her centrist appeal to white exurban voters fell flat in a lopsided defeat by Smucker. Planning to run again in 2018, Hartman won the immediate nod from of a bevy of establishment types like Ed Rendell, the former governor and national Democratic chairman, and also from the highly influential Emily’s List, which was created to encourage female candidates like King but didn’t even reach out to her before its endorsement.

King’s problems-- which got national coverage in the Intercept in January and which, in her case, has had a happy interim ending (more on that later)-- aren’t unique. Across America, the tsunami of newcomer candidates who decided to get involved in politics because of anger over Trump, generating grassroots enthusiasm, is hitting an unexpected obstacle: the Democratic Party that many had perhaps naively expected to welcome them with open arms.

In regions like the Philadelphia suburbs, where mostly women first-time candidates are lining up in hopes of challenging Republican incumbents, the so-called Trump resistance is bumping up against a party establishment that continues to fight the last wars (even though it lost those wars, for the most part) by favoring more connected insiders who are wealthy enough to fund their own campaigns or tap other rich friends, and who-- not coincidentally-- tend to hold moderate views aimed at nonexistent “swing voters” instead of the fired-up liberal base.

Those tensions boiled over in public this past week as the DCCC-- convinced that only a Republican-lite centrist can win in a suburban Houston district that’s on its list of potential pick-ups after it went narrowly for Hillary Clinton in 2016-- actually lashed out in an attack ad against the female Democratic primary candidate who seemed to be gaining grassroots support, Laura Moser. The party muckety-mucks apparently decided she was too liberal, although the DCCC’s line of attack is that Moser is a “Washington insider” (because she’d lived there with her husband, a videographer … for Barack Obama).

Like most of the Democratic establishment’s clumsy, heavy-handed moves, the attack on the slightly-more-liberal Democrat Moser seems to have completely backfired. Not only has it given the Houston challenger a national profile, but contributions began pouring in-- $86,700 in just a matter of days-- from rank-and-file Democrats infuriated by this election meddling by the real Washington insiders, the DCCC.

But the national party’s attempts to tamp down enthusiasm for female newcomers like King and Moser could cause the Democrats to do what it’s always done best: Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. With Trump’s unpopularity spiking up to 60 percent, the party infighting between the party’s grassroots and its establishment hasn’t stopped a string of victories for the Democrats since November, with some unlikely upset wins in Virginia legislative races while nationally flipping a remarkable 39 formerly GOP-held state legislative seats in special elections. About the only thing that could screw up a Democratic “wave”  this coming November is bitter party infighting tamping down enthusiasm among the party base. And that seems to be happening, right on schedule.

...In recent days, leaks have exposed that the DCCC continues to push its candidates toward the soft, soulless middle. One party memo recently leaked to the Intercept showed that — in a time of surging support for single-payer health care — the DCCC is using poll data that critics say are skewed in an effort to steer Democratic candidates away from that issue. Even more embarrassing was the release of DCCC memos from after the mass shootings in Las Vegas and again last month in Parkland, Fla., that urged Democratic candidates to not politicize the issue on Day One but to take a noncontroversial thoughts-and-prayers approach to gun violence.

The last memo hit just as the teen survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were angrily rejecting the thoughts-and-prayers strategy and calling for immediate gun-law reforms — and electrifying the nation. That gun debate would still be mired in stalemate if the mush-mouths at Democratic HQ in Washington had their way. And that’s symbolic of the broader problem-- insulated party poobahs who don’t seem to have a clue about the anger and energy on America’s streets today … or maybe they’re just afraid of that grassroots energy.

We all know that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing that failed, again and again. Thus, the Democratic Party’s determination to stick to the same tired playbook that lost control of the U.S. House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and the White House in 2016 is officially insane. The intensity of the anti-Trump resistance-- people who were barely engaged in politics two years ago, now determined to knock on neighbors’ doors or even run themselves if that’s what it takes-- is the game-changer the Democrats have been waiting for. The tired establishment can lead, follow, or get out of the way. Or put up a wall, the dumbest possible choice.

In the case of Jess King out in Lancaster, the story has a happy ending … sort of. Her good news is that when the state’s congressional map was changed last month by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the controversial and much-ballyhooed gerrymandering case, her rival Hartman decided her prospects were better in the next district over. This week, King’s candidacy was officially endorsed by Lancaster County Democrats. The bad news? The map made the new 11th District more Republican and more favorable for Smucker.

But in a year in which the political momentum is flowing against all things Trump, the longer odds don’t seem to bother King. She told me that her idea is to prove to the Democrats that a new approach can win back some of the voters who defected to Trump, to show that “we have rebuilt left-wing populism.” Amid a grassroots tidal wave, that kind of new thinking sounds refreshingly … not insane. Are you listening, Beltway Democrats?

And a little update that's roiling many Democrats this weekend about the imbeciles and incompetents at the DCCC-- this time in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, where Republican Charlie Dent is retiring and where the new district boundaries predict a probable Democratic seat. Dave Weigel broke the story Friday for the Washington Post. Greg Edwards is one of the candidates, the most progressive candidate and the only African-American candidate. The DCCC tried forcing him out of the race. "As far as I know they only targeted one candidate to leave this race-- the most progressive candidate, the only candidate of color," said Edwards."Their inability to understand why that’s fundamentally wrong says everything."

The Toughest House Race In Texas

The Texas primaries are less than a month away-- March 6. And the races are crowded. Or at least the seats that look the most flippable are crowded, even after lots of candidates have dropped out. Texas has 36 congressional districts. The very last one, TX-36, southeast Texas in the Houston area, is so red, that the DCCC isn't even contesting it. But two Democrats are-- Dayna Steele and Jon Powell. The PVI is R+26. Obama lost in 2008 with 30% and in 2012 with 26% and last year Trump beat Hillary 72.0% to 25.2%. Lunatic fringe Republican Steve Stockman-- the guy tangled up with the Oklahoma City bombers-- used to represent the district.

The Republican in office now is a little known, right-wing backbencher, Brian Babin, a dentist and former mayor of Woodville. Both Dems running are good but where Powell would likely do as poorly in the general election as all the other Democrats who have tried running there-- the Dems didn't have a candidate in 2016; their candidate in 2014 (the ex-Libertarian from 2012) got 22.1% and their candidate in 2012 got 26.6%)-- Dayna Steele is a respected, even beloved, local celebrity because of her long run as Houston's "Queen of Rock'n'Roll" as music director and on-air personality on KLOL, the biggest music station in the area. She's the Blue America-endorsed candidate and she's expected to win handily next month. Here's the interview a Houston Chronicle commentator did with her a couple of weeks ago:



Friday, the Chronicle endorsed award-winning cancer researcher and doctor Jason Westin in the Houston district viewed as the most flippable, TX-07. The district is on the other side of the Houston metro, west Houston and the suburbs as far as Barker Reservoir and the Houston National Gold Club. "Westin's professional credentials alone, "wrote the Chronicle editors, "are impressive enough; he says his peers elected him to lead the largest clinical trial team in the nation seeking new treatments for aggressive cancers. But don't think for a second this doctor is a one-trick-pony running on a health care platform. He's impressed crowds at community forums with his conspicuously thoughtful command of a wide variety of issues. Westin launched his candidacy with the help of a nationwide group that's trying to get more scientists to run for office. When he says he's bothered by 'disrespect of facts and science,' he speaks with a quiet passion that seems to be winning over a growing number of supporters."

And over the weekend the Chronicle's Kevin Diaz reported on the 7 Democrats hoping to get into the May 22 runoff that will determine which of them get to face Republican John Culberson in November. Hillary didn't campaign in Houston and didn't put any resources into the area but she beat Trump 48.5% to 47.1%. As of the December 31 FEC reporting deadline, 4 of the Democrats had each raised over a quarter million dollars. Together they've raised nearly 3 times what Culberson has raised. They note that the establishment fave, Alex Triantaphyllis, calls himself-- like Hillary did-- a "practical progressive," the latest way to identify yourself as a conservative and shill for the status quo without turning off the energized Democratic base. Mr. T worked for Goldman Sachs and he isn't fooling anyone.

The other establishment candidate is Lizzie Fletcher, the EMILY's List candidate and another conservative-leaning Democrat, who is being savaged by organized labor because of the vicious anti-union work her law form does. She emphasizes her support from EMILY's List, noting that "They get into races and back candidates where they think they can actually win the general election," neglecting to note that EMILY's List has been for several years the kiss of death for the campaigns they actively taken over, like hers. The candidates they run (rather than passively endorse) always lose, primarily because EMILY's List gives them bad advise, just as they're currently giving Fletcher.



The DCCC is less interested in the 2 progressives in the race, Laura Moser and Jason Westin. This quote is hard to resist:

As a doctor, Westin also believes that he is uniquely qualified to carry a potent message on access to health care, a top Democratic issue. For many Democrats that means defending Obama's Affordable Care Act from GOP repeal efforts.

But for Westin, it also means pushing for a "Medicare-for-all" single-payer national health system, a view he shares with Moser and Sanchez.

That does not mean a "radical government takeover of the medical system," he says. "As a cancer doctor, I know that health care is a right, and that denying facts is wrong."

Westin's position has won him an endorsement from 314 Action, a nationally-focused political action committee that backs candidates with backgrounds in the hard sciences, math, engineering or technology. It is sometimes referred to as the "science lobby" or an Emily's List for doctors.

Westin has received a more high profile endorsement from the Blue America PAC, founded by music producer and liberal provocateur Howie Klein, who went negative in a recent blog post calling Triantaphyllis "another DCCC talking point robot."

Westin disavows any connection to Klein's post, which some see as the first direct attack of the primary.

But he's also scored what might be the first celebrity endorsement: Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker in Star Wars (and the veteran of a Twitter war with Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz over net neutrality) recently tweeted his support for Westin with the hashtag, #MayTheFactsBeWithYou.

One more Houston race, one that isn't getting much national attention. TX-29 is a very blue district. Whomever win the primary or runoff will be the next congressmember. Hillary won the district 71.1% to 25.4%. The PVI is D+19 and the ship channel district covering East Houston/Pasadena area is over 76% Latino and one of the poorest districts in the country (412 out of 435). When conservative Gene Green finally announced his retirement, Hector Morales had already been campaigning for months. Since then 7 Democrats have jumped into the race, including conservative Tahir Javed who's may have no community support but does have a fat checkbook and is trying to buy the seat with $400,000 worth of self funding (so far). The Texas Tribune reported that state Senator Sylvia Garcia, Green's handpicked candidate to succeed him, was favored to win-- until Javed, a carpetbagger, jumped in with his open checkbook. Blue America has endorsed progressive school teacher Hector Morales. All of the candidates endorsed by Blue America can be accessed by clicking on the Texas thermometer on the right.

OK, let's move west-- to the gerrymandered Austin/San Antonio district that crazy Lamar Smith is giving up. The Blue America candidate is (emphatically) Derrick Crowe. You know how good Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal and Jamie Raskin have turned out in Congress? That's how good we expect Derrick to be too. Over the weekend the Austin American-Statesman did a rundown of the race which pits Derrick and 2 other progressives, Elliott McFadden and Mary Wilson, against conservative "ex"-Republican Joseph Kopser. There are also 18 Republicans in the race. The establishment Democrats and DC media types are, of course, attracted to Kosper's Republican-lite perspective and push him. Elliott McFadden's critique of the DCCC sound's like what grassroots Dems are saying all across the country:

“What we’re seeing is the national Democratic Party trying to dictate who our nominee is,” said McFadden, a former executive director of the Travis County Democratic Party who is CEO of Austin B-cycle, a nonprofit bike-sharing program. “They shouldn’t be bringing in national donors to influence this race. It should be up to the Democratic voters in this district to decide.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, McFadden said, “needs to butt out of this election.”

McFadden, 43, believes Kopser is emblematic of a misbegotten strategy by many party leaders.

“In partisan races, particularly federal races, people are hyperpartisan today, so, you know when Joseph says, `I’m going to go up there and be reasonable,’ well, the Republicans aren’t going to let him stand up there and do that all by himself,” McFadden said. “They are going to call him a crazy liberal that’s going to take away your guns and all these other things, so you’re not going to be able to get away with standing there and being a moderate.”

Even on its own terms, McFadden said Kopser’s strategy can’t succeed.

“There’s not enough of those voters in this district to win this district,” McFadden said. “When we look at the best the Democrats have done so far in this district (Hillary Clinton vs. Trump in 2016), that’s about a 20,000-vote margin that you still have to overcome.”

“If you can’t win with what the electorate is, you have to change the electorate,” McFadden said. “We need to close that 20,000-vote margin by drawing some of the 60,000 Hillary Clinton voters in the district that would typically not vote in a midterm election.”

“You do not win crossover voters,” said Dean Rindy, a political consultant who is volunteering for McFadden’s campaign. “There are very few truly independent voters anymore.”

...Rindy, McFadden’s consultant, said that if Kopser prevails, it will prove a Pyrrhic victory for Democrats.

“You could elect people like Kopser in 20 districts around the country, but, in the long run, you’d be hurting the party,” he said, burdening Democrats with more “nibble around the edges” members in Congress, offering “more of the same pablum,” when, he said, what the country needs and what voters, including Texas voters, desperately want is “fundamental structural reform.”

McFadden acknowledges that on the primary campaign trail, Kopser is sounding progressive themes, but said that Kopser remains a onetime Republican and admirer of President Ronald Reagan who sits on the board of the Texas Association of Business, “which bills itself as the most conservative business advocacy group in the state. They’ve endorsed Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz, Dan Patrick. They’ve opposed increasing the minimum wage, paid sick leave and in the last session opposed women getting 3-D mammograms through their insurance companies.”

If elected, McFadden said, “which Joseph are we going to get?”

But Kopser, 47, said he helped steer the Texas Association of Business to its signal opposition to last year’s legislation to restrict transgender bathroom use.

He is confident he can draw some Republican support because, “my goodness, it’s my family.”

“My family were Ronald Reagan Republicans when I was younger, and my dad now considers himself an independent,” said Kopser, who grew up in Lexington, Ky.

“These are people who have moved away from the Republican Party, but many haven’t landed comfortably in the Democratic Party,” he said. But, he said, they could support someone like himself who is “rational, full of compromise and civility, but will always be moving the ball forward and never think about going backward on the progress we made.”

Kopser wonders “why my peers in his race, why their followers, cannot offer the same open hand that they extend to an immigrant who comes from a different country to an immigrant who comes from a different ideology?”

“I love pointing out to them how I might be a Democrat today who came from the land of Republicans, but if you cannot accept me in your party, then how can you consistently say, without hypocrisy, that you are accepting immigrants from other countries?” Kopser said. “It’s the same thing. Those people left their country for a better opportunity. I left the Republican Party for a better opportunity.”

“I understand my opponents are clinging to this idea that independents and moderate Republicans will never vote for a Democrat, and I just couldn’t disagree more,” Kopser said.

In an analysis worth reading, Jack Craver made the point that "Trump’s narrower 2016 margin in Texas was most likely the result of new voters coming out for Hillary, not Republican voters deserting their nominee," as many had assumed after the election. "Indeed, Trump won Texas by a far slimmer margin than the three most recent GOP nominees despite the fact that he got more overall votes here than any presidential candidate in history."

It’s pretty simple. Trump got about what you’d expect a Republican candidate to get based on recent performances. In 2008, John McCain got 4.48 million votes. In 2012, Mitt Romney got 4.57 million, an increase of 90,000 votes. And in 2016, Trump got 4.68 million, an increase of 110,000.

In contrast, Hillary Clinton got 557,000 more votes than Obama.

Simply put, the Texans who died today were disproportionately Republican. Of those who turned 18, the great majority are Democrats.

If this trend continues, the GOP’s downfall in Texas isn’t likely, it’s assured. And without Texas, the national GOP is royally screwed.

The Lone Star State has provided the winning margin in the electoral college in the three most recent presidential contests that Republicans have won (2016, 2004, 2000). It now has 38 electoral votes, but it will likely get more in the coming years as its population continues to grow.

Just as important, the 25 GOP members of Congress from Texas are currently the difference between Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi being speaker of the House. Democrats will obviously never win all of those seats, but they will take over a fair number of them. The Republican gerrymandering will protect some GOP seats, but other Republican members of Congress will eventually find that the districts that were drawn to be solidly red for them in 2011 have since become much purpler.

He singles out Culberson's Houston seat and predicts Ted Poe's (TX-02) which wraps around the north of the city, will follow the same trajectory. "12 House Republicans from Texas," he wrote, "represent districts that are less than 50 percent white." Look for Pete Olson (South Houston, Sugarland) and Will Hurd (South Texas) to be looking for new jobs soon and for TX-27 (Corpus Christi) to swing blue as well-- followed by Pete Sessions (north Dallas), Joe Barton (Arlington), Randy Weber (Galveston/Beaumont) and Kenny Marchant (Fort Worth suburbs). If the DCCC ever learns to encourage candidates attractive to the voters in the districts instead of to donors on K Street and Wall Street, this could happen faster than anyone has predicted.

The Ugly Racist Fake President Who Wants To Deport People Of Color

Neither Will Hurd (R-TX) nor Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA) are very popular in their districts and, frankly, neither deserves reelection. A Democrat is likely to beat Hurd, although the DCCC and the Castro Machine have its fingers on the scale for a worthless Blue Dog in South Texas. And it will take some time before a progressive is in position to primary Aguilar in the Inland Empire. They’re both useless back-benchers from overwhelmingly Hispanic districts and this week they co-sponsored a DACA compromise-- a “discussion draft” ahead of Trump’s January 19 deadline. On Monday, CNN reported that “the bill would offer qualifying individuals the ability to get in line for a green card and eventual citizenship after years of conditional residency, provided they meet certain requirements, including a background check and work, education or military service requirements. The bill doesn't make explicit reference to sponsoring relatives, but the bill summary notes that existing law would prohibit parents of these individuals who came to the US illegally to apply for a visa to come back without returning to their home country for at least 10 years before applying and the bill does nothing to erase that requirement. That addresses ‘chain migration,’ or family-based migration, that Trump says he wants to cut.”

Hard to imagine a Democrat would sign onto this Republican perspective? Remember-- Peter Aguilar comes from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Nor was he even a Democrat before the DCCC pushed him into the seat he now occupies.

Meanwhile, also on Monday, the Trump Regime set the field for deporting 200,000 El Salvadoran residents.

The Trump administration said Monday it is ending special protections for Salvadoran immigrants, an action that could force nearly 200,000 to leave the U.S. by September 2019 or face deportation.

El Salvador is the fourth country whose citizens have lost Temporary Protected Status under President Donald Trump. Salvadorans have been, by far, the largest beneficiaries of the program, which provides humanitarian relief for foreigners whose countries are hit with natural disasters or other strife.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's decision, while not surprising, will send shivers through parts of Washington, Los Angeles, New York, Houston and other metropolitan areas that are home to large numbers of Salvadorans. They have enjoyed special protection since earthquakes struck the Central American country in 2001, and many have established deep roots in the U.S., starting families and businesses.

The action also produces a serious challenge for El Salvador, a country of 6.2 million people whose economy counts on money sent by wage earners in the U.S. Over the past decade, growing numbers of Salvadorans-- many coming as families or unaccompanied children-- have entered the United States illegally through Mexico, fleeing violence and poverty.

In September 2016, the Obama administration extended protections for 18 months, saying El Salvador suffered lingering harm from the 2001 earthquakes that killed more than 1,000 people and was temporarily unable to absorb such a large number of returning people.

…Salvadoran immigrant Orlando Zepeda, who came to the U.S. in 1984 to flee civil war, said he wasn't surprised by Monday's decision given the administration's position on other countries. Still, that doesn't make it any easier for the 51-year-old Los Angeles-area man who works in building maintenance and has two American-born children.

"It's sad, because it's the same story of family separation from that time, and now history repeats itself with my children," Zepeda said in Spanish.

Now, he hopes that U.S. lawmakers might pass a bill giving Salvadorans like him a more lasting solution in the United States.

Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said it was "a cruel and heartless decision by a cruel and heartless president."

"By targeting those who were driven from their homes by environmental catastrophe and violence in El Salvador, Donald Trump is tearing more working families apart-- putting their lives at risk, threatening our economy and turning his back on the values that have made America great," Perez said.

Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who services on the House Judiciary Committee and on the Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, responded quickly to Trump’s latest assault against immigrant families:

“The administration has dealt a blow to the moral backbone of our nation by forcing 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants to leave a country they’ve called home for years. It is unfathomable that the administration would deport people back to one of the most dangerous parts of the world. In 2016, El Salvador and its capital were named the world’s most violent country and most homicidal city, respectively. El Salvador’s homicide rate is more than 17 times the global average.

  “When it comes to the rights and lives of immigrants, we cannot be silent. Defending Temporary Protected Status to protect those fleeing war, disease, and natural disasters is a priority that crosses party lines and political barriers. Last year, I joined my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to introduce the ASPIRE TPS Act that would help bring justice for immigrants who are  deeply woven into the fabric of our society.

“Even though the Trump Administration has made clear its disdain toward immigrants of color, it is my hope that Congress will protect our moral conscience and move to save Temporary Protected Status for the hundreds of thousands of people who rely on it.”

Tuesday, federal judge William Alsup (san Francisco) temporarily blocked Trump from ending DACA while litigation is ongoing. Apparently, at least DACA recipients who failed to renew their status by last year’s deadline will have a chance to submit renewal applications.

I just got back from Thailand and on the plane home last night Marie Newman sent me some incredible polling that was done among voters in her primary against right-wing Blue Dog Dan Lipinski in her Chicagoland district. The district went for Bernie by 8 points in the primary and then gave Hillary a 15 point landslide against Trump in the general. So is it any wonder that voters strongly prefer electing a progressive leader to represent them in Congress (55%) over someone like Lipinski who votes with Republicans (38%)? When voters are told about his voting record Marie beats him 39-34%. She e-mailed me about the new move against El Salvadoreans. "Trump's actions to dismantle families, their lives, their hopes and dreams are despicable. We need leaders who will have a backbone and stand up to Trump. This is why my race is heating up, my district finds congressman Lipinski's anti immigrant votes and values disgusting."

Meanwhile Trump has been braying and threatening that there’ll be no deals on DREAMers or any other immigration issues unless Congress gives him the $18 billion for his boondoggle of a 316 mile border wall, a colossal waste of taxpayer money. I asked a few congressional candidates Blue America is supporting. In Houston, Hector Morales told us that after the announcement was made public, a former student, Javier, contacted me and said:'They have ended the TPS for my uncle. Now ICE is going to target him and idk what I can do. [I’m] worried that [Trump] is going to deport him and he's been here for 20 years. Please help us.' As a teacher, I was heartbroken. As a human being with family members who have been in similar situations, I was devastated. These are real people who have been in this country for two decades and made a life for themselves. Now overnight, their hard work will be erased. The sad truth is that the DACA and TPS situation will be horrendously politicized. The DCCC and DSCC will throw a 'progressive' label on the cause and send out yet another fundraising email to 'fight back.' Right wing conservatives will hide behind their wall of cowardice by saying those affected were never 'real Americans' and this is for 'security.' And at the end of the day, it’s people like Javier’s family and uncle who will pay the price for our broken political system. But hey-- I’m sure it’ll make for a great news cycle.

Ricardo Franco is the progressive facing off against Devin Nunes in the Central Valley. Last night he told us that he "spent this past weekend in Tijuana on the border meeting with deported veterans. That's right: deported veterans. These are men and women that served our country in the military, some going back as far as the Vietnam War, and were tossed on the other side of the border wall like unwanted trash afterwards. We have some that have been deported for more than 20 years. A handful have already died waiting for a miracle to bring them back home. It is a shameful disgrace that our country treats its finest in that manner. Our current laws will not allow these war heroes home unless it is literally in a box or an urn. Our immigrants are the embodiment of the American Dream. Sadly, many people on the right don't want to listen to facts anymore which prove Trump's wall won't stop immigration and that immigrants provide a net-positive economic effect on this country. I'm done listening to people who want to project the blame of our own country's problems on the backs of the immigrants who put food on our tables, build a roof over our head and help raise our children. I will also not stand for the separation of families, either. We all know that children have a higher chance of success when they have both parents at home. It's time we rise up to be the country we are called upon to be and embrace immigrants as the best among us rather than creating a new generation of refugees in foreign countries the way Trump and Sessions would want. I have hugged homeless, deported veterans in Tijuana, marched with DREAMers and their families in Porterville and Lindsay, California, and watched young DACA recipients wonder in fear what will happen to them...or their parents. However, it is not fear nor sadness that is most evident in these groups, but rather a steadfast will to survive and prove themselves to the world. They are already fighting for our campaign because they know I will never stop fighting for them. We will fight, and we will win. We come from the same land as Chavez and Huerta. They carved a path towards prosperity and now a younger generation will pave it and keep it open. Our lives literally depend on it. ¡Si, se puede!"




UPDATE: Terrible News In Arizona... For The GOP

How do you find a Senate candidate even worse than Republican Kelli Ward and Blue Dog Kyrsten Sinema? The Arizona Republic opined yesterday that "A guy who was Donald Trump before Donald Trump was Donald Trump says he’s ready to represent the state of Arizona in Washington." Yep... Joe Arpaio, the 85 year old crooked Maricopa County sheriff declared he's running. What a cluster-fuck! "Arpaio couldn’t win re-election as sheriff in Republican-rich Maricopa County in 2016, when Donald Trump won Arizona. It seems doubtful to think that voters across the state will be running to polls to send him to the Senate."

If you’re the Democratic Party, the sun is surely shining upon you today.

Arpaio’s entry into the Senate race seems to boost Rep. Kyrsten Sinema's chances of becoming Arizona’s next senator-- the first Democrat to hold the post in 30 years. (Cue Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a dead faint.)

“For the GOP, it’s a disaster if Arpaio wins,” said Republican Tyler Montague, who runs the Arizona Public Integrity Alliance. “His loss for the sheriff’s race is a bellwether for his Senate race in a general election.” ... [M]ake no mistake, with Arpaio in the race-- and Trump's endorsement, no doubt, on the way-- the primary is likely over.

...Arpaio would likely win the GOP primary-- or at least scare off the one Republican who could deny Sinema the seat. That would be Rep. Martha McSally... This, just as McSally appears to be preparing to announce her run Friday for the seat being vacated by Sen. Jeff Flake. She might want to rethink that. While she could likely beat former state Sen. Kelli Ward in a primary, she’d have a more difficult time in a three-way Republican race. Perhaps best to bide her time.

Which leaves us with Ward vs. Arpaio. Sorry, Kelli, but I’m betting that crafty beats kooky any day.

Arpaio, not Ward, gets Trump's nod.Arpaio may have been unmasked in Maricopa County, but he’s still a fundraising machine nationally. He’ll likely have the Donald seal of approval and he’ll be well funded-- just as Ward’s dreams of Steve Bannon delivering her the Mercer millions have gone up in smoke.

And there's more--much more: With Bannon kicked out of Breitbart, it seemed Trumpanzee was almost challenging him to do something about it-- "it" meaning Trump's evisceration of everything Bannon stood for in terms his xenophobic fascist/racist agenda. Yesterday-- on TV with congressional leaders from both parties-- Trumpanzee announced he's ready for a "clean" DACA deal and comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship. He has swung so far, in fact, that North Carolina neo-fascist and House Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows said Trump "could lose the conservative base... It’s untold damage that it would create among the conservative base." Trumpy-The-Clown nearly made Louie Gohmert cry on the House floor. And you can only imagine what Iowa Nazi Congressman Steve King is doing this morning! Trump said he'd take the heat-- that he likes taking the heat. #StableGenius, right? Ann Coulter seems kind of upset for some reason.

Who Is Hector Morales?

Gene Green is one of the worst Democrats in Congress-- very conservative and very corrupt, a pairing that you often find together. And he's retiring early. No realistic explanation why since he's been raising money hand over first all year. He raised $474,164 so far this year and has a campaign war-chest with $1,272,398 as of the September 30 FEC filing deadline. TX-29 is a strongly blue district-- PVI was D+12 in 2015 and is D+19 this year-- and Obama won it in a walk both times. A 77% Hispanic district, it wraps around Houston (north, east and south) and includes much of the Ship Channel area, South Houston and Pasadena. Green has promised to help solve the endemic pollution problem at election time while taking massive bribes from the oil and gas industries the rest of the time and helping push through their agenda. He should have been replaced years ago.

The only Democrat brave enough to take him on this cycle has been progressive activist and public school teacher Hector Morales. Hector has been one of the few progressives challenging an entrenched incumbent conservaDem anywhere in the country-- the toughest job in politics (please contribute to his campaign here). When the Republicans-- with Green's help. passed a fracking bill last July, we asked him about Green's vote and, he told us that "This should not come as a surprise as Gene Green is one of the founding members of the Congressional Oil & Gas Caucus along with Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, to name a few. Green was also one of the scarce Democrats that voted in favor of the Keystone Pipeline... Perhaps the Congressman should look no further than the Manchester neighborhood deep in the heart of the 29th Congressional District where all the refineries are located. After all, the low-income, heavily Latino community has high rates of childhood leukemia, asthma, and bronchitis-- an observation that has been backed up by data from the Environmental Protection Agency and the University of Texas which found “unacceptable” levels of cancer-causing pollutants in Manchester’s air. Gene Green is nothing more than a corporate shill who has gotten away with representing the oil and gas companies while claiming to look after the well being of the community he has sworn to protect. But with $260,000 worth of campaign contributions in this quarter alone from special interests, what more could you expect?"

The Houston Chronicle called Green "a fixture in the Texas Legislature and Congress for nearly half a century." What a terrible, terrible waste of a seat!

Until now, Green's longevity in city politics helped preserve Houston's status as America's largest Hispanic city without a Hispanic member of the U.S. House. Aware of that status, Green worked assiduously to serve constituent needs through job fairs, immunization drives, and town halls. He also worked to court the city's top Latino activists.

A pretty wretched bunch of opportunists jumped right into the race yesterday, starting with anti-charisma state Senator Sylvia Garcia and state Rep. Armando Walle, both Green disciples who seem to have had advance notice.

Hector, who is part of the Blue America Take Back Texas Team (tap the thermometer on the right) was born in Monterrey, Mexico and moved with his family to Houston when he was 3 years old. He grew up poor and told us that he "will forever remember the Pasadena refineries, just on the outskirts of Houston, that dominated the skyline and the smoke that emitted from them every day and the glow from the fires at night when we moved."

In 1994, I remember I was 7 years old and we were driving on the highway and at the intersection of I-45S and I-610E I saw a large green billboard with a four leaf clover that asked “Who is Gene Green?” It caught my attention every time we drove past it and never much more. Eventually the sign was replaced with another advertisement but I began to wonder “who is Gene Green?” In 1998, dial up internet took off and I decided to look up on askjeeves.com (now ask.com) “WHO IS GENE GREEN” and found that he was a Democratic member of Congress Representing the 29th District of Texas. Turns out he had always been representing me!

  I had always been interested in debating and politics always seemed like fun to me-- a large group of people who worked together to better our community. I went about intermediate school and high school not knowing what I wanted to do with my life. I went to Pasadena Independent School District schools which are all Title I schools, which means a majority of students and parents live under the poverty line and the District receives federal money to try and close the achievement gaps. It was that way in the 2000’s and continues to be that way to this very day.

My teachers were very frank about my prospects as a hispanic male wanting to get into politics. Their responses to finding out I wanted to be a “politician” were always “you’re not white” and “it’s not going to happen.” This was the pattern until my senior year in high school when my economics teacher, Phyllis Geries, said “I think that’s great” and began introducing me to the world of politics. It was at that point that I knew that I wanted to do something big, I just did not know what. But that all changed in the summer of 2004.

We had a family friend who had been diagnosed with breast cancer and it really caught all of us off guard. At our friend’s recommendation, my mom went to the doctor to get a well women check. That is when the clinic called back and said “something is wrong.” My mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. We were devastated. But things became bleak when the insurance company said my mother’s cancer was not a “life threatening condition,” “pre-existing,” and would not be covered under our plan. She was kicked off the insurance and we were left with an insurmountable amount of debt. A corporation had decided that my mother’s life was not worth the cost of saving her. However, we did not falter. With my dad’s salary as a school teacher, my $5.15 minimum wage job, and my brother’s side job stringing tennis rackets, we did as much as we could for my mom. My mom bested her cancer and recovered, but our economic situation did not. We had to file for bankruptcy and it placed my college plans on the cutting board. I vowed to never let anyone else go through that and decided I wanted to ensure healthcare as a right to all people. No one should ever be considered too poor to survive.

I went to San Jacinto Community College and was determined to leave my mark on the world and make my family proud. I became involved in the Honors Program and Student Government, went to national conferences to represent San Jacinto College, and was able to take courses from some of the finest professors I have ever had the privilege of learning from. I transferred to UT Austin where I made healthcare my passion and interned for State Representative Kevin Bailey and the 2008 Obama Presidential Campaign, after which I earned an internship in the Office of Healthcare Reform at the White House with the Obama Administration. It was there that I experienced first hand how policy gets formed. I was able to help craft a very small portion of what became known as the Affordable Care Act in regards to the privacy rules and disclosures of data breaches from healthcare organizations to patients. I had the opportunity to remain in Washington and make a career as a staffer, but deiced that my community needed me and I wanted to make sure I was the change that I wanted to see.

I returned to Houston in 2009 and until this day have been a school teacher. I taught 3rd grade bilingual classes, 6th grade english language arts classes, and for the last four years I have taught Advanced Placement Government and Advanced Placement Macroeconomics to high school seniors. Every step of the way, I made sure to share my passion for helping those in need and motivating our young people to get involved in politics. It was during this time that I finally noticed things that were not much different than when I was growing up.

I have an answer for the billboard that asked "Who is Gene Green?" He is a corporate Democrat who sided with large donors to cement his position as a member of congress. In the 29th Congressional District, the average household income is under $40,000 with an average household size of 5 and a half people. Our infrastructure is crumbling. We have schools in our district that are among the top 1% of the most polluted in the nation. We had an incumbent who took in hundreds of thousands of dollars from special interests and sold out the health and well-being of our people. We had an incumbent who actively supported building the Keystone Pipeline and sided with President Trump and Republican Leadership on it regardless of the negative impact it would have on health and the environment. Our schools have graduation rates that are three times lower than the national average and twice as low as the state average.

I decided to run in January 2017 to change things. For far too long members of congress have made careers out of politics, always doing things for a quick campaign contribution. I have vowed to not accept a single cent of special interest money or PAC money. Elections should be hard-fought with issues at the forefront, not bought with contributions or handed down to friends in state government. I have singed a pledge to support a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress, both in the House and Senate.

The Most Important Primary Elections Of 2018

The New Dems

If you've been with Blue America for enough years, you'll remember the excruciating battles we backed for Donna Edwards, Beto O'Rourke and Matt Cartwright when they took on corrupt old conservative Democrats in, respectively, Maryland, Texas and Pennsylvania. All three, running as reformers and progressives, prevailed. But there is nothing in politics more difficult, no task more painful-- and few as important-- as taking on an entrenched incumbent of one's own party. Each of those districts was solidly blue and the only possible accountability for bad behavior could come in the form of a primary. No Republican was ever going to beat Al Wynn in Prince George's County (D+28), Sylvestre Reyes in El Paso (D+17) or even Tim Holden in northeast Pennsylvania (D+4).

All three had become untreated cancers on the Democratic Party but the institutional party circled the wagons around each to ward off the reformers. It was very painful for each of them, especially Matt and Donna or who were screamed at and lambasted by the Democratic Party leadership. Pelosi and Hoyer raised money for the incumbents and spread malicious and malevolent lies about the challengers.

Blue America is backing progressives in a dozen primary races, but they're not primaries against incumbents; they're primaries among challengers vying for the nomination to beat a Republican. In an ideal world, every Blue Dog, every New Dem and every unaffiliated conservaDem would have to justify themselves to their voters every two years in issues-based primaries. But this year we've only found 4 so far that we've gotten involved with-- in other words, plausible races against exceptionally bad Democrats by exceptionally good Democrats. These are the four races:

• FL-23, Tim Canova taking on Debbie Wassermann Schultz
• TX-29, Hector Morales taking on Gene Green
• IL-03, Marie Newman taking on Dan Lipinski
• NY-14, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez taking on Joe Crowley

Crowley, perhaps the most overtly corrupt Democrat in Congress, was the head of the Wall Street-owned New Dems before he was tapped by increasingly feeble-minded Pelosi and Hoyer to run the party after they're gone. It's almost impossible to imagine anything worse happening to the Democratic Party. Although... Debbie Wassermann Schultz taking over the party-- once a distinct possibility (she's now more likely to take over a prison block)-- might be worse. Lipinski is just a garden variety Blue Dog: anti-Choice, homophobic, xenophobic, and a pawn of his corporate donors. He's a co-chair of the House Blue Dog caucus and votes far more against crucial progressive legislation with the Republicans than with the Democrats. Gene Green represents an impoverished 77% Hispanic district in East Houston, including some of the most polluted areas of America, polluted, we should note by Green's campaign contributors, whose interests he diligently serves.

Dislodging the Republicans from control of the House is everyone's first priority. Getting rid of corrupt Democrats who make the party less attractive to voters who hate the Republicans and who perpetrate the myth that the Democrats can never be better than the lesser of two evils, should also be a priority. Please consider contributing what you can to the special page Blue America has set up specifically to raise funds for progressive challengers to the worst of the congressional conservaDems. I hope there will be more before the cycle concludes, but this is a pretty impressive group so far. This morning, Marie Newman told us that "More than anything else my hope is for progressive Democrats to restore the Democratic party to be a party of real action and solutions. We need to laser focus on rebuilding the middle class and bring a fair deal to working class workers."

Hector Morales is a school teacher in Houston who thinks it's time to hold Green accountable for the pollution that has been making school children in his district sick year after year. "As we continue to listen to members of our community," he told us, "we have been met with much enthusiasm and encouragement. Many times, we do not physically see Gene Green at events-- but his franking flyers and campaign stickers are always there. At a recent immigration forum, a prominent immigration advocate and lawyer asked us 'what [was] Gene Green doing here? He never shows up to these [types of events].' It is comments like those that continue to drive me to actively approach people and ask for their thoughts on what they consider to be the issues we need to work on. And every single time we hear the same things: the pollution of the refineries in Pasadena, the quality of jobs and schools, and immigration advocacy. Meanwhile, Gene Green touts his Keystone Pipeline support (as one of the few Democrats who sides with Trump and Republicans) which continues to place our district amongst the most polluted in the nation, NRA backed policies which cause tragic events like the ones in Las Vegas and Sandy Hook, and 'support' of medicare for all (but only after we advocated for it and brought it up as a campaign issue). After sitting in Congress for 25 years representing special interests, it is beyond time to replace this corporate shill with someone who will always place the people first and will not make a career out of being a member of Congress. We can and will do better in March when we defeat Gene Green in the Democratic Primary for the 29th Congressional District of Texas."

Upgrading the Democratic Party is as essential as banishing the GOP from control of the House and the Senate. That kind of upgrade would finally help break the cycle in which the voters go back and forth on which party is really the lesser of two evils. [NOTE: We just added another outstanding progressive Democrat to our list of challengers to unworthy conservatives. Wonder who? Click the thermometer above.]

Climate Change: The Litmus Test

Imaginary candidate: he is gung-ho on Medicare-for-All and is eager to sign onto John Conyers' HR 676 as soon as he's elected. In fact, his campaign is based not just on Medicare-For-All, but on free state colleges, a higher minimum wage, getting corrupting cachet of elections. He's adamantly pro-choice and adamantly in favor of equality based on gender, race, religion, etc. He even wants to crack down on banksters and put them in prison. So why isn't he on the Blue America endorsement list? He's not quite sure about Climate Change. He has some good feelings about it but... do we really know? Don't we need more proof before we disrupt the whole economy? he asked me. Alarm bells start ringing loudly. He's too stupid-- dangerously stupid-- to be endorsed.

The conservative politicians-- particularly the conservative politicians in Texas-- whose decisions transformed Hurricane Harvey from bad weather to a national catastrophe that's going to cost taxpayers from every part of America over $100 billion, don't need more reinforcement in Congress. Climate Change is a litmus test.

Texans have decided they don't need a state income tax. Texans have decided they don't need environmental protection laws. Texans have decided not to use their $12 billion "rainy day" fund to help Harvey victims. Texas GOP congressmembers, who opposed helping victims of Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey, seem to be already grossly padding the budget for Harvey cleanup. The state's crackpot, extreme right-wing governor, who called a special session of the legislature to deal with which transgender children should use in schools, has already announced he won't call a special session of the legislature to deal with the immediate consequences of Hurricane Harvey. Sunday, Nick Kristof tweeted this meme, alerting me to this column: "We Don’t Deny Harvey, So Why Deny Climate Change?"

"Imagine," wrote Kristof, "that after the 9/11 attacks, the conversation had been limited to the tragedy in Lower Manhattan, the heroism of rescuers and the high heels of the visiting first lady-- without addressing the risks of future terrorism. That’s how we have viewed Hurricane Harvey in Houston, as a gripping human drama but without adequate discussion of how climate change increases risks of such cataclysms. We can’t have an intelligent conversation about Harvey without also discussing climate change." But with Trump leading any national discussion on anything, is "an intelligent conversation" even remotely possible?

That’s awkward for a president who has tweeted climate change skepticism more than 100 times, even suggesting that climate change is a Chinese hoax, and who has announced he will pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord. Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency, says it’s “misplaced” to talk about Harvey and climate change.

Really? To me, avoiding the topic is like a group of frogs sitting in a beaker, fretting about the growing warmth of the water but neglecting to jump out. Climate scientists are in agreement that there are at least two ways climate change is making hurricanes worse.

First, hurricanes arise from warm waters, and the Gulf of Mexico has warmed by two to four degrees Fahrenheit over the long-term average. The result is more intense storms.

“There is a general consensus that the frequency of high-category (3, 4 and 5) hurricanes should increase as the climate warms,” Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane expert at M.I.T., tells me. Likewise, three experts examined the data over 30 years and concluded that Atlantic tropical cyclones are getting stronger.

Second, as the air warms, it holds more water vapor, so the storms dump more rain. That’s why there’s a big increase in heavy downpours (“extreme precipitation events”). Nine of the top 10 years for heavy downpours in the U.S. have occurred since 1990.

“Climate change played a role in intensifying the winds and rainfall associated with Hurricane Harvey,” says Charles Greene, a climate scientist at Cornell. He notes that there’s also a third way, not yet proven, in which climate change may be implicated: As Arctic sea ice is lost, wind systems can meander and create blockages-- like those that locked Harvey in place over Houston. It was this stalling that led Harvey to be so destructive.

Frankly, it’s staggering that there’s still so much resistance among elected officials to the idea of human-caused climate change.

Last year was the third in a row to set a record for highest global average surface temperature, according to NASA. The 10 years of greatest loss of sea ice are all in the last decade. And poor Houston has suffered three “500-year floods” in the last three years.

Remember also that we in the rich world are the lucky ones. We lose homes to climate change, but in much of the world families lose something far more precious: their babies. Climate change increases risks of war, instability, disease and hunger in vulnerable parts of the globe, and I was seared while reporting in Madagascar about children starving apparently as a consequence of climate change.

An obvious first step is to embrace the Paris climate accord. A second step would be to put a price on carbon, perhaps through a carbon tax to pay for tax cuts or disaster relief.

We also must adapt to a new normal-- and that’s something Democratic and Republican politicians alike are afraid to do. We keep building in vulnerable coastal areas and on flood plains, pretty much daring Mother Nature to whack us.

We even subsidize such dares through the dysfunctional National Flood Insurance Program. This offers underpriced insurance, encouraging people to live in low-lying areas-- compounded by flood maps that are old and unreliable. One Mississippi home flooded 34 times in 32 years, resulting in payouts worth almost 10 times what the home was worth.

The truth is that what happened in Houston was not only predictable, it was actually predicted. Last year, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune published a devastating article about Houston as a “sitting duck for the next big hurricane” and warned that Texas was unprepared.

In other domains, we constantly manage risks that are uncertain. We address a threat from the Islamic State or North Korea even when it’s complicated and hard to assess. So why can’t our leaders be as alert to climate risks that in the long run may be far more destructive?

A brainwashed citizenry, where self-interested industries pay off media giants like Fox and buy off callow politicians to propagandize for them? I'm just asking for a friend. But these are the currently-serving members of the House who have accepted the most in bribes from the financiers of Climate Change denial-- the dirty dozen consigning our grandchildren and their grandchildren to a brutish life of misery:

• Joe Barton (R-TX)- $4,560,727
• Fred Upton (R-MI)- $2,837,431
• Steve Pierce (R-NM)- $2,807,154
• John Shimkus (R-IL)- $2,538,190
• Paul Ryan (R-WI)- $2,454,153
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $2,168,460
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $2,021,985
• Kevin Brady (R-TX)- $2,011,001
• Greg Walden (R-OR)- $1,680,787
• Pete Sessions (R-TX)- $1,612,788
• Tim Murphy (R-PA)- $1,606,382
• Mike Conaway (R-TX)- $1,597,597

No progressives on that list of death's disciples! Although there are a couple of Democrats, beyond just sleaze bag Steny Hoyer, who take massive bribes from the Climate Change deniers and help the Republicans pass their agenda. Gene Green (D-TX- $1,388,688) and Jim Clyburn (D-SC- $1,067,993) are the only other House Dems who have taken over a million dollars from the culprits. Should that be reason enough toward for their retirements? Damn straight! Hector Morales is a Houston public school teacher running for seat occupied by corrupt conservative Democrat Gene Green, the congressman who keeps telling his constituents he'll do something about all the pollution in the district but just keeps taking bigger and bigger bribes from there polluters. You can help Hector repeal and replace Green here. Today he told us this:

The Arkema Plant explosion in Crosby, TX was an accident waiting to happen, just like the refineries in Pasadena, TX and the Superfund site near it. Members of Congress are known for accepting large sums of special interest money-- so far that is the only way they have been able to maintain their seats while continuously voting against the health and well being of their constituents. To see the the influence of special interests, look no further than incumbent congressional member and Blue Dog-type Democrat from TX-29, Gene Green. Green has taken in millions of dollars from the energy industry in his twenty four year tenure as a member of Congress and ranking member on the Energy and Power and Environment and Economy subcommittees. There, Green has wielded his influence to continue development of harmful refineries and one of the few lowly Democrats to vote with the GOP and President Trump for the Keystone Pipeline not just once, but every time it has come up- something he ought to bring up more during his townhalls ripping Republicans and Trump about harming the environment. Green religiously campaigns on needing the refineries, much like the Arkema Plant, to keep what he calls "good jobs" for the district. The jobs he refers to have harmed and killed countless people due to plant explosions and exposure to hazardous chemicals linked to cancer.

I grew up with those Pasadena refineries and the seemingly endless shelter in places, boil water warnings, and poor air quality. That was, and still is, the way of life in Pasadena and the 29th District. Why not advocate for renewable energy? It is here that Green's hypocrisy is blatant and on full display- adopt and campaign on the Democratic Platform of "renewable energy" while voting against incentives for the development of renewable energy. And Green gets away with it because he seems untouchable with his million dollar war chest and lack of Democratic and Republican opponents in almost every election cycle.

In twenty four years, Green is proud of having high school graduation rates that are twice as low as the State and three times as low as the nation, an average household income of under $40,000 a year for a family of five, schools that have repeatedly been rated as the top 1% of most polluted in the US-- including 26,000 students going to school within one mile of a refinery, and constituents being fifty times more likely to develop leukemia here than anywhere else in the US. "Good jobs," right?

My plan calls for addressing the issues at their core- by shifting the refineries to produce 100% clean and renewable energy and manufacturing the equipment to build the nation's renewable energy infrastructure. The future of our nation depends on renewable energy and the jobs it will create. This can be our future only if our members of Congress would be beholden to their constituents and not the corrupt money of special interests or the energy sector. And on March 6, 2017, Congressman Gene Green will see what happens when the people make their voices heard and drown out the special interests- he loses and the people win.