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."

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.

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.

Trump's Crazy Republicans Have An Arya Stark List Now

Shouldn't Nancy Ohanian be commissioned to do the official Trumpanzee family painting?

Drawing on an historical perspective, author and activist Danny Goldberg bemoaned the left's circular firing squad for Nation readers yesterday. He wrote that "With excruciating predictability, mainstreamers blame young people for low turnout and for being seduced by the Libertarian or Green parties, as if finger-wagging at youth has ever been effective. Such lectures are like a rock band blaming the audience for not giving them an encore instead of improving the show. A certain number of low-information young voters struggling with college debt, stressed out by diminished job opportunities, and terrified of global warming were not motivated by charts showing statistical economic growth during the Obama years or by Tim Kaine’s harmonica playing. It is equally absurd when some on the left refuse to admit that the United States and the world would be in a lot better shape today if imperfect Hillary Clinton had won."

Democratic Party mainstreamers should stop claiming that they and they alone are pragmatic. (Or as a smug New York Times headline put it, “The Base Wants It All. The Party Wants to Win.”) That argument has long been highly debatable, but after 2016 it is delusional. They have controlled most of the candidate selection and most of the campaigns that have resulted in the weakest presence of Democrats in elective office since the age of silent movies.

But you know who's having even worse circular firing squad problems? The political right. Trump is encouraging television ad campaigns and primaries against Republican incumbents he doesn't like for one reason or another. One of his PACs already started running ads in Las Vegas and Reno against Dean Heller (R-NV) and he and his staffers have been meeting with perspective extremists who want to run against Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Bob Corker (R-TN). And the groups that feed the right-wing base its opinions are turning their big guns on Ryan, McConnell and Republicans in Congress.

“It’s shocking the amount of pushback he’s getting from his own party,” said Carl Higbie, a former spokesman for the pro-Trump Great America PAC. “It’s time to primary some of these longstanding congressional leaders that can’t get the job done.”

Conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt trained his ire on Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), arguably the most endangered GOP Senate incumbent in 2018, for opposing the repeal and replace bill.

Hewitt questioned Heller’s intelligence, saying on his Tuesday show that he’s not the “sharpest knife in the drawer” and accusing him of not grasping the damage he was doing to the Republican Party.

Hewitt even compared the list of Republican defectors from the bill to a fictional list kept by Arya Stark, a character on HBO’s Game of Thrones, of people who have been marked for revenge after wronging her family.

“We know the list to blame. It's like #AryaStark list. And it just keeps getting longer,” Hewitt tweeted.

Hewitt said that, along with Heller, Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.), Susan Collins (Maine), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Mike Lee (Utah) belong on that list for opposing the bill.

Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler fumed, ticking through the names of senators who he said abandoned conservative voters by opposing a subsequent measure to repeal the Affordable Care Act and put off replacement.

“[Alaska Sen. Lisa] Murkowski, [West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore] Capito and Collins. People are furious. And not one ounce of it is directed at Trump,” Meckler said.

The Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), which funded ads in the past against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans, vowed to back primary challenges against Republicans who did not back the repeal efforts.

“Republicans have promised to repeal ObamaCare for years, and now with President Trump in the White House there is no excuse for them to break their promise,” said SCF chairman Ken Cuccinelli.

The outrage illustrated the intraparty divisions that have opened up in the Republican Party over healthcare and could imperil other parts of Trump’s agenda.

...The Drudge Report placed the blame right on Ryan and McConnell, with the heavily trafficked site's banner all day Tuesday showing a photo of Ryan and McConnell over the headline "MOST UNPRODUCTIVE CONGRESS IN 164 YEARS."

Meanwhile, back to the Democrats for a moment. Last yesterday, the GOP passed, 248-179, a heinous fracking-related bill, H.R. 2910, that will allow natural gas companies to seize private property and conduct surveys of private land without consent of the landowner. Only one Republican voted against it, but 11 from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- almost all of them Blue Dogs-- voted for it. The culprits were mostly the usual suspects who always vote with the Republicans and with the corporate special interests that pay for votes-- like Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX), Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA), Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Vicente Gonzalez (Blue Dog-TX). Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH), who voted against this bill, told her constituents that "Billion-dollar natural gas companies have no right to infringe on Americans’ private property-- end of story. This attack on the pipeline approval process would not only allow expanded use of eminent domain, but also deny communities the opportunity to participate in the public input process. Instead, it gives corporations free rein to cause irreparable harm to the environment."

One of the worst of the oil industry whores among Democrats is Gene Green, who represents a Houston shipping channel area district with severe environmental and pollution problems. Hector Morales is a young activist and school teacher challenging Green for the seat he has used for too long to serve the interests of Big Oil against the interests of his own constituents. He's 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). This morning, when we asked him about Green's vote with the Republicans, 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 with the abhorrent excuse the 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?"

What does it mean to be a Schumercrat? Let's Look At A Pennsylvania Schumercrat, Katie McGinty

In the video above, the establishment candidate for the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nomination, Katie McGinty, is very clear that she didn't accept any money from the oil and gas industry. That's what Democrats expect from their nominees since the oil and gas industry seeks to bribe politicians with funding. Pennsylvania Democrats ended the sleazy career of pro-fracking Blue Dog Tim Holden in 2012 when progressive insurgent Matt Cartwright called him out for his ties to Big Oil. Although Holden was heavily backed by the same corrupt Pennsylvania establishment that backs McGinty, Cartwright beat him 57-43%. It's worth noting that although Holden was the dean of the Pennsylvania congressional delegation and had been in Congress for two decades starting in 1993, McGinty has never been elected to anything anywhere and her one try for elected office-- in 2014-- resulted in complete rejection by Democratic primary voters, only 7.66% backing her on election day.

Despite her claim to not be taking Oil and Gas money, it turns out her FEC disclosure shows the worst of the fracking industry has pumped over $125,000 into her Senate campaign in the last few months, not to mention thousands more from fracking industry lobbyists. This is especially ironic since McGinty has been instructed by Schumer to falsely claim that she's an environmentalist-- just as he has done with Florida Schumercrat Patrick Murphy despite Murphy's lock-step votes for the Keystone XL Pipeline and for oil drilling off Florida's pristine beaches. McGinty hates her claim on having worked as an environmental advisor to conservative administrations that always played footsie with Big Oil-- Bill Clinton's and Ed Rendell's.

A few days ago we talked about how right-wing Democrat Gene Green has been taking oil money and pushing their agenda for a very long time. He was elected in 1992, the same year as Holden. Although the Energy Sector contributes primarily to Republicans, since he's been in Congress he's taken $1,221,738 from the sector, more than any other Democrat in the House other than Majority Whip Steny Hoyer. In return, Green protects their interests from his perch on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and as the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy. He is widely considered one of the worst of the pro-pollution Democrats in Congress and consistently takes the side of special interests rather than consumers and working families in his Houston area district. Blue America has endorsed Adrian Garcia, his progressive primary opponent, and if you'd like to help his campaign, you can do so here.

As for McGinty, she has two opponents, Braddock Mayor John Fetterman and Admiral Joe Sestak. Neither is a Schumercrat and either would be preferable to McGinty. You can contribute to Fetterman's campaign here, on the page reserved for candidates who have endorsed Bernie Sanders and are running on his issues.

Blue America Endorses Adrian Garcia For Congress

As we mentioned the other day, Adrian Garcia, is one of the bright lights in the 2016 congressional election cycle, a true public servant for over three decades, first as a police officer, then as a city councilman and later as sheriff of Harris County, third biggest sheriff's department in the country. He has pursued a career in public service to help his community, which had no strong voice fighting for it-- and doesn't really have a strong voice fighting for it in Congress either.

He told us that as a young man, each summer he'd return from school to play basketball in the neighborhood, and his group would lose another friend, another school mate, another neighborhood kid-- lose them to drug use, dropping out of school, joining a gang, etc. Adrian decided that he wanted to work to be a fighter for his community because everyone else had a voice and it seemed nobody was there to speak up fight for them.

Adrian is running for Congress because the people of TX-29 need an active, progressive, effective voice in Washington. Nobody can look at the statistics in the district objectively and think things are ok. 91% of the people in the district-- the ship channel area, Aldina and north Houston, Cloverleaf, Galena Park, Pasadena, and the East End-- don't have a bachelor's degree. Over 50% of students in the district have been dropping out of high school. Over 54% of people in the district don't own a home. Over 24%-- including over 33% of children-- live in poverty. If you ask people who have lived in this district for the last 2 decades, they'll tell you nothing has changed. The bad schools are still bad and the good schools are out of reach. College is nothing but a dream. Day to day life is about mere survival-- economically and socially.

Adrian is working to build a movement within his community to create a new direction. He's asking voters in TX-29 to take a hard look within in their communities-- to see the failing schools, increased gun violence, crumbling infrastructure, and a stagnant economy-- and to realize and embrace that they deserve better. He believes his district needs a change in tone and action. He understands the problems facing voters at their kitchen table because he lived them. He has decided that he cannot stand idly by while another generation of kids gets lost to the cycle of poverty and violence. As an elected official, he believes it is his job to be a proactive fighter that breaks that cycle-- to build a movement block-by-block to show the communities that life can be better and that they can have representatives who take action to solve problems, not just take votes on issues.

Gene Green has been a right-of-center Democrat since 1992. The Energy Sector contributes primarily to Republicans and right-wing Democrats. Since 1992 he has taken $1,221,738 from the sector, more than any other Democrat in the House other than Majority Whip Steny Hoyer. In return, Green carries their water and protects their interests from his perch on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and as the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy. He was an aggressive advocate for war against Iraq and lied on the House floor about Saddam Hussein being responsible for 9/11. He is widely considered one of the worst of the pro-pollution Democrats in Congress and consistently takes the side of special interests rather than consumers and working families.

Since he spent so many years in law enforcement, we asked Adrian to write a guest post about gun violence and solutions to that particular plague. Below is his guest post. If you'd like to help him replace Gene Green in Congress, please consider a contribution to his campaign at the Blue America ActBlue page.


Common Sense Gun Safety Reform In Houston, In Texas, Across America
-by Adrian Garcia
candidate for Congress (TX-29)

I would like to thank Howie, and the whole Down With Tyranny/Blue America community, for giving me a platform to talk about a very important issue: common sense gun safety reform.

As a 30-year law enforcement veteran-- first as a police officer and then as County Sheriff, I’ve come face to face with gun violence, and can tell you Harris County would be safer with common-sense gun safety legislation. When I started on the beat in 1980, police officers were facing .22 caliber pistols; today, they are facing semi and automatic weapons with armor piercing rounds.

One reason I am running for Congress because our country needs to take serious steps to address our problems with gun violence and our unregulated access to weapons of war. In our country, we lose 90 people a day to guns. In 2015, over 60 people were killed by guns in TX-29, including several children who were the victims of accidental gunshots. In Harris County, gun related incidents are now the second highest cause of accidental child deaths. Just in the last week, Harris County has lost two children to accidental shootings. In 2015, there were 582 fatal and non-fatal shootings in the Houston area-- the highest number for any Texas city. An ABC-13 review of Houston Police Department press releases shows at least 87 of the 162 murders in the first six months of 2015 were gun-related. That number is likely higher as the cause of death is not always noted in press releases.

President Obama is right when he says "enough is enough." We need to, and can, find reasonable and practical solutions to the proliferation of military-style assault weapons without impeding constitutionally-protected rights for law abiding citizens. As for armor-piercing "cop-killer" ammunition and similar items, I don’t want that type of weaponry on the streets of Harris County. Our laws should protect good law-abiding citizens and support law enforcement, not allow weapons to so easily fall into the hands of criminals or the mentally ill. When I am elected to Congress, I will be a loud and a strong ally with our next Democratic President in the fight to finish the President’s mission.

That means mandating background checks on everyone who buys a gun, regardless of where they buy it; closing legal loopholes in prosecuting gun related crimes; requiring states to provide all criminal and mental health records to the FBI to provide for more comprehensive background checks, and closing the terror gap to prevent individuals on the no-fly list from obtaining firearms. I will work with other members to ensure that we appropriate enough funds for the FBI and ATF to hire more officers to help speed up the background check process and engage in proper enforcement of violators.

All gun sellers need to be licensed to sell guns. Anyone who sells more than 2 guns in a year is considered a seller. Last, Congress should be encouraging new smart gun technology to improve gun safety, utilizing technologies such as fingerprint scanners and research new and innovative ways to prevent gun violence.

President Obama has been forced to seek Executive Action because Congress has failed. And my opponent, Congressman Gene Green, is part of the problem. The NRA helped elect Gene Green in 1992 and he has never forgotten them. During his career, he has:

• Voted against the Brady Bill, which prevented over 2 million gun sales to those who should not be in possession of a weapon.
• Voted to repeal the Assault Weapons Ban.
• Voted against mandating child safety locks.
• Voted for keeping the gun show loophole.
• Voted to grant gun manufacturers and gun sellers blanket immunity.
• Signed on to a letter with Texas Republicans to prevent the restriction of armor-piercing bullets

It is no wonder the Congressman has a lifetime "A" rating from the NRA; he is their favorite Democrat in Congress. He is part of the reason President Obama has had to use Executive Action to protect our people. When House Democrats reclaim a majority, the NRA will still have Gene Green in their pocket to block progressive gun safety measures. He has been their insurance policy.

President Obama wrote in his New York Times Op-Ed that he would not campaign for any candidate-- Democrat or Republican-- who did not support common sense gun safety reform. We shouldn’t have to accept this in an 80% Obama district. There is no excuse-- I am asking you to take the President’s stand a step further-- help me defeat the NRA’s favorite Democrat.

Adrian Garcia is a former City Councilman and Harris County Sheriff. He is running for in the Democratic Primary for Texas’ 29th Congressional District. To learn more about Adrian's campaign, go to www.adriangarcia.com and to contribute to his campaign... this is the place.