Primary elections, the two-party system, and a bipartisan option

If you’re reading this, you know Pennsylvania has a primary election on Tuesday, May 21.

In theory, parties stand for different principles, and primaries give Republican and Democratic voters the chance to choose who best represents their principles.

Pennsylvania has closed primaries, that is, only R’s can vote in the R primary and only D’s vote in the D primary.

Then, in the November general election, those voters (of any or no party) who take the trouble to vote (usually around 1 in 4 in an off-year) choose the winners.

In the May 21 primary, suppose you are a registered Democrat. All candidates on your primary ballot are Democrats, right? Wrong!

Through a bizarre fiction, judicial and school board elections are considered non-partisan, so that R’s can “cross file” by submitting D signatures to get on the D ballot for those positions, and vice versa.

See what your ballot looks like by downloading it at the County Voter Services site.

If you want to know before voting which are the D’s and R’s on the ballot for the cross-filed positions, check online in advance or ask outside the polls. Once you’re inside, it’s too late.

But now here’s the surprise: as in 2011, a bipartisan team is running candidates for West Chester Area School Board. In 2011, a totally unprecedented write-in campaign resulted in the first Democrat ever being elected to the board. It could have been a R; the point is that the bipartisan team all supported and support public education as a vital resource that reflects and enhances the community and its values (including home values).

That’s what school board members should do, right? On a school board, more than anywhere, we need citizens who care about education, have good judgment and open minds, and listen to all constituencies and diverse views. There are other cases of bipartisan collaboration in school boards; for example, two current members of the Unionville-Chadds Ford school board ran as a bipartisan team in 2011. That should be less rare. And above all, board members need to be able to work together productively.

Many Pennsylvanians (and 47 other states) don’t think school boards should figure in partisan primary elections. Under bills currently filed in Harrisburg, board candidates would get the required signatures over the summer and face off in November. Then voters would choose the most qualified candidates, those with a commitment to advancing public education without regard to outside ideologies—and yes, even those who are neither R’s nor D’s might actually have a chance to serve their community as board members.

The partisan hostility that, with some exceptions, is eating away at all levels of our representative government comes from the two-party system. And where does the two-party system come from? From winner-take-all elections.

Other systems such as proportional voting and run-offs, used in some other countries, ensure that a candidate that a majority of voters don’t like doesn’t win. But here, suppose that for a given position three candidates (say, a D, a R, and a Green) pretty evenly divide the vote. One of them will win with, say, 35% of the vote. And suppose that one has won a very divided primary against several others. What is the word for the opposite of a mandate?

Local voters need to do their part to break down partisan gridlock. Tuesday would be a good time to take further steps in that direction.

Selling alcohol without a license? (West Chester, May 4, 2013)

In “Warned, ignored, busted: beer party leads to disturbance”, May 4, 2013, on the recent melt-down in the 400 block of S. Walnut St., the Daily Local News reported that:

One witness from the party said people paid $15 to 20 to get into the party. The witness said the party-goers “felt robbed” because the police arrived before 1 p.m. and told them to leave the area.

According to some people at the South Walnut Street party scene, a $5 cover is usually required for entry to a party or red Solo cup for beer. The larger fee was considered expensive but the attraction was the promise of an all-afternoon party.

Similarly, about a party-goer whose car was the one flipped over, at West Chester Patch, 5/6/13:

According to the Action News report, the victim had paid a $15 admission fee to get into the party….

Other reports and editorials mentioned various offenses and causes for the arrest of two or three, but none that I have seen mention selling alcohol without a license.

 

 

Photo from Andy Hachadorian, “WCU mini-riot shows the power of social media — unfortunately for some,” From the Editor’s Chair, Daily Local News blog, 5/6/13, staff photo by Tom Kelly IV

 

According to the Pennsylvania State Police, “Liquor Control Enforcement” (red color added below):

Unlicensed Investigations

Investigations of unlicensed establishments, commonly referred to as “speakeasies,” are investigations to determine if sales of liquor, alcohol, or malt or brewed beverages are occurring without a license being issued to do so by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. After establishing probable cause of the illegal sale of alcoholic beverages, seizure and criminal proceedings may be initiated.

Unlawful sales of liquor, alcohol or malt or brewed beverages occur when a license is not issued by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board and a monetary condition is requested in order to obtain liquor, alcohol or malt or brewed beverages.

Examples of unlawful sales are as follows: A ticket price that includes food, entertainment, and liquor, alcohol or malt or brewed beverages; an event where an entrance fee (monetary payment) must be made in order to obtain liquor, alcohol or malt or brewed beverages.

A person who sells or offers to sell any liquor or malt or brewed beverage without being licensed is in violation of sales without a license (PA Liquor Code Title 47, Sections 491.1, 492.2, and 492.3) and shall, in addition to any other penalty prescribed by law, be sentenced to pay a fine of two dollars ($2.00) per fluid ounce for each container of malt or brewed beverages and four dollars ($4.00) per fluid ounce for each container of wine or liquor found on the premises where the sale was made or attempted. The amount of fine per container will be based upon the capacity of the container when full, whether or not it is full at the time of the sale or attempted sale. In addition, all malt or brewed beverages, wine and liquor found on the premises shall be confiscated. If a person fails to pay the full amount of the fine levied, the premises on which the malt or brewed beverages, wine or liquor was found shall be subject to a lien in the amount of the unpaid fine if the premises are owned by the person against whom the fine was levied or by any other person who had knowledge of the proscribed activity.

It seems, from the Daily Local’s report and from many comments over the years, that being charged an entrance fee to consume alcohol at parties is a regular occurrence in the Borough.

West Chester University president Greg Weisenstein knows that happened on May 4, since in his letter of apology directed to the citizens of the Borough of West Chester (download here: Open letter to WC Borough – May 4 incident), he says:

…alcoholic beverages were made available to adults and those under the age of 21 years old for an entrance fee.

At $2 per ounce of beer capacity, the penalty could mount up, if the police save all containers in which alcohol was served, but that’s only money; I would have thought, especially in a state that controls the sale of alcohol, selling alcohol without a license would involve further penalties, like jail time.

Ah yes, here we are, penalties for any violation of the liquor code, in the PLCB Liquor Code

SECTION 7-751. Penalties

Any person who shall violate any of the provisions of this article, or who shall engage in any fraud or fraudulent practice, as defined herein, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction thereof, shall be sentenced to pay the costs of prosecution and a fine of not less than one thousand dollars ($ 1000), nor more than five thousand dollars ($ 5000), or undergo imprisonment of not less than one year, nor more than five years, or both, at the discretion of the court.

Perhaps some educating of students and others by the University and Borough on the consequences of charging admission to parties where alcohol is served would be in order?

Killing workers: business and consumption as usual?

On September 16, 2012, I posted “Burning up workers,” beginning:

When a society undergoes disasters, it can learn and change, or not. Our society isn’t so good a changing, at least not for the better, any more….

I really should have written “Our world….”

At the end of that post, I included the earlier post “The 1911 Triangle Fire / PBS / American workers,” ending:

You can bet that more disasters for the all-time high list are in the making.

“Wrenching events,” in the Times’ expression, happen around us all the time today, in fires, shootings, car accidents, environmental disasters, wars, and the steady erosion of our social fabric. Will those too have “a profound influence”? Or is our society totally adjusted to them as a cost of doing business?

There too I could have written “our world.” Enormous disasters are one of the many costs of globalization. If you feel a morbid need to see how bad disasters can get in various fields of human endeavor, check out “List of industrial disasters” in Wikipedia. Disasters have always existed, but they are bigger now, and poor countries are ever more desperate to export products to rich countries.

Those ready-to-burn and ready-to-collapse factories in Pakistan or Bangladesh or wherever else sell clothing to brand name distributors in the US and other economically developed countries.

The September 12. 2012, fire in Pakistan killed over 300 workers. Now, way topping that number, last week’s building collapse in Bandladesh killed over 400, with up to 1,000 still missing. The count could be nearing one full Titanic unit (1502 dead, 4/15/1912).

According to “As Bangladesh Toll Hits 400, Calls Grow to Grant Workers the Same Protections as Labels They Make” at Democracy Now!, 5/1/13:

…The collapse is now being described as the deadliest accident in the history of the garment industry and marked Bangladesh’s third industrial accident in five months. The building’s owner has been arrested, and a Bangladeshi court has frozen the assets of the owners of the five garment factories that were inside. Most of the workers reportedly earned an average annual salary of $38 a month — roughly 21 cents an hour — to make apparel for a number of Western companies….

What clothing brands were involved? According to Amy Goodman,

Western clothes companies linked to the Rana Plaza factory so far include The Children’s Place, Cato Corp., Joe Fresh, Papaya Denim, “Free Style Baby,” Benetton, the Irish company Primark’s Denim Co. and Cedarwood State, and others….

According to “Bangladeshis Burn Factories to Protest Unsafe Conditions” in the New York Times, 4/27/13:

Labor groups in the United States on Friday distributed photos showing that they had discovered garments with labels from J. C. Penney and El Corte Inglés, the Spanish retailer, at the site of the collapse.

A November, 2012, fire in Bangladesh killed 120+ workers in a factory whose customers included WalMart (see “Bangladeshi Labor Activist Finds Burned Clothes with Wal-Mart Labels at Site of Deadly Factory Fire,” Democracy Now!, 11/27/12.

And “Some Retailers Rethink Role in Bangladesh” in today’s New York Times reveals that as a result of the November fire, Disney “in March ordered an end to the production of branded merchandise in Bangladesh.”

A few companies may decide avoiding embarrassment trumps the desire for the cheapest labor, but unfortunately, it’s hard not to share the cynicism of Amy Goodman’s interviewee Charles Kernaghan of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, who says:

…it would be amazing if our government had the guts to stand up and say, “The workers in Bangladesh have suffered enough. They deserve the internationally recognized worker rights to freedom of association, the right to organize a union and to bargain collectively.”

And it’s not just a question of workers’ rights abroad, but of US workers’ jobs as well. In the last twenty years–thanks again to globalization–millions of US manufacturing jobs have been outsourced to factories abroad, in large part because of exploitative working conditions and pay scales in developing countries. As Goodman mentions:

…the link between what’s happening in, for example, Bangladesh and what’s happening in the United States is rarely made. The issue of if workers can get—what is it? something like 21 cents an hour in Bangladesh, how can workers in the United States compete?

Some may argue that we are providing employment for Bangladeshis who need it, I find it hard to maintain the position that our purchases are helpfully perpetuating a system of utter exploitation that Pope Francis, quoted in the New York Times, yesterday, termed “slave labor.” Ultimately, the attitude, with long resonances in US history, that “the slaves are better off this way” can no longer be taken seriously.

So here is one more paradox in a society unable to change: we buy cheap foreign goods, thereby driving up industrial exploitation and accidents abroad (which of course we and our leaders all deplore), depriving ourselves of jobs, and enriching industrialists who buy up the politicians, here and abroad, who could have helped solve the problems.

Are we totally adjusted to such disasters as a cost of doing business and maintaining our supply of cheap T-shirts?

Or, eventually, will we pull ourselves together to assert one of our few remaining rights: to buy or not to buy?

Bin Laden is dead but…

On May 2, 2011, I posted a blog entitled “‘Bin Laden Is Dead,’ motives for 9/11, & his ‘Letter to the American people’.”

As I pointed out two years ago,

…As is well known, Bin Laden worked with the Americans (to purge Afghanistan from Western influence) before he worked against the Americans (ditto).”…

It is always worth trying to understand hostile people and movements–even, or perhaps especially, fanatics. Europe would have done well to pay more attention to Mein Kampf, which Hitler began writing in prison and which clearly sets forth the plan that he soon set in motion, with horrendous consequences for the world.

So, what did Bin Laden say about his own intentions, with horrendous consequences for the world?…

For Bin Laden’s own 2002 analysis and radical rhetoric, see his “Letter to the American people,” published in translation by The Guardian (UK) on 11/24/02. Obviously, seeing what he said is not the same as endorsing or agreeing.

He starts with what he terms U.S. attacks or support for attacks against Islam and Muslims in Palestine, Somalia, Chechnya, Kashmir, and Lebanon….

And so on. But did you catch the reference to Chechnya? That was a part of the world most Americans weren’t paying a whole lot of attention to, but over the years, it seems two brothers of Chechen origin were (see “Chechnya connections build picture of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: Boston Marathon bombing suspects never lived in Chechnya but republic’s struggle played a central role in their lives,” The Guardian, 4/19/13).

And further, according to “Boston bombing suspect cites U.S. wars as motivation, officials say” in the Washington Post, 4/223/13:

The 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told interrogators that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated him and his brother to carry out the attack, according to U.S. officials familiar with the interviews.

Bin Laden wrote, among his long catalog of US actions he condemned:

…We also advise you to stop supporting … the Russians against the Chechens….

…you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya….

Now, of course, the US needs to choose its own foreign policy and can’t be blackmailed by fanatics, whether foreign or domestic, whether religious or non-religious, or whether just plain crazy.

But one does wonder whether the State Department, Pentagon, CIA, and White House (it’s not really clear who has been and is in charge of policy) have been paying enough attention to the consequences of their actions.

People don’t like being bombed, or tortured, or executed, or suffering sanctions and embargoes, or what may seem to some such a little thing as being disrespected. And they don’t like seeing their friends, relatives, compatriots, and members of their own faith groups subjected to those either.

Whether or not you think the US should do those things, it seems to me clear that we should get the consequences clearer in our minds and should not attack or antagonize others unnecessarily. Don’t we already have enough enemies (a lot more than in 2001, unfortunately)?

Perhaps it’s time for the State Department, Pentagon, CIA, and White House–and yes, Homeland Security–to reread Bin Laden’s 2002 tirade. It might help to predict the next strike against us.

To end, let me note that a letter in yesterday’s New York Times says exactly the opposite of what I have written above:

Oliver Bullough suggests that the radicalization of the Boston Marathon bombers and other people of Chechen origin is due to displacement and oppression. This reasoning may be applied to any number of violent extremists — from I.R.A. terrorists who fought to liberate Ireland, to Palestinian suicide bombers in the occupied territories.

As someone whose brother was murdered by Chechen hit men, I find such explanations abhorrent.

To rationalize terrorism is to invite more of it.

PETER KLEBNIKOV
New York, April 20, 2013

With all respect for the writer’s loss of his courageous brother, I still don’t see that trying to understand extremists helps advance their twisted mission. On the contrary, I think it can help thwart it.

For further reading from various viewpoints, see the online comments on Bullough’s April 20 op ed.

Bad days

Few Americans look forward to April 15, income tax day.

Abraham Lincoln died of assassination on April 15, 1865.

The Titanic sank on April 15, 1912.

And now the Boston Marathon bombing, April 15, 2013.

All unrelated, one supposes.

September 11 is another bad one.

September 11, 1777: The Battle of Brandywine, right here in Chester County. George Washington didn’t expect the British to cross upstream and attack his right flank. The British won and occupied Philadelphia.

September 11, 2001: the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon

All unrelated, one supposes.

Look up any day here. All have good and bad associations, but the two days just mentioned seem particularly bad.

Why no primary election for jury commissioner this year?

As we can read today in “Judge rules no primary to pick jury commissioners” by Mark Solforo (AP), Daily Local News, 4/5/13:

HARRISBURG — A state judge has ruled that county jury commissioner races will not appear on next month’s spring primary ballot and the candidates instead will be chosen by the political parties…

But this is an elective row office? The two part-time jury commissioners by law have represented both parties, traditionally in order to reassure residents that jury selection is not tainted by political bias.

In an age of scandal in all institutions, who would be surprised if, somewhere in our great state where jailing political leaders is common and even a Supreme Court Justice is on her way to jail for public corruption, an unelected bureaucrat beholden to those in power made accommodations in a jury pool?

Those wishing to abolish the office say that computers do all the work anyhow. Some argument (as in the national effort, happily quashed in Chester County, to take away voting by paper-verifiable ballots). Then why not turn a whole lot of elective offices over to robots? Do we want robocracy or democracy?

So why are residents in danger of losing the reassurance of fairness and why did voters lose their rights this year?

I see two underlying reasons:

1) The Corbett administration and legislators friendly to his ideology have been eager to pare back government, and it was easy to pick on jury commissioners (of which, in Chester County, a Democrat has long been the lone non-Republican row officer, in addition to one commissioner out of three, also required by law).

The current snafu thus lines up with a whole list of Corbett-Harrisburg overreachings, such as the Voter ID mess, still tied up in court; the highly partisan redistricting in 2011, also overturned in court; and Corbett’s rescission of adultBasic health care, recently overturned in court (see my comments in “Court upholds rule of law and adultBasic Care“).

2) The two-party system, which is an artifact of our predominant “winner-take-all” vote count.

How did the court dare turn a democratic process over to the two parties? Because they are the only game in town.

Why? Because Independents aren’t doing their job, which is to counteract excessive partisanship and keep minds open to non-partisan considerations.

Let’s take the Chesco part of the West Chester Area School District. It has 11,031 registered Independents and Other (meaning anyone who is not a registered R or D). How many of those voted in November 2011, the last time county row officers were on the ballot? 1258, or 11%. How about 2009, when jury commissioner was last on the ballot? 814, or 7%.

Because of voters moving, you can add 1% a year to these turnout figures, but they are still anemic even compared to the ever undernourished overall off-year turnout rates, whose rose in the School District from 21% to 26% in 2001 compared to 2009.

So in short, what off-year candidate and what court is going to pay attention to a group of voter–Independents and Other–who overwhelmingly don’t care anyhow?

Personally, I think it’s time for Independents and Other to occupy a row office seat, a Court of Common Pleas seat, and Commissioner seat. But, until they get more active, they won’t. That’s just how it is.

But won’t all voters get to choose jury commissioners in November as usual, you may ask?

No, because candidates will not be vetted in a primary election, and the candidate chosen by the two major parties will automatically be elected in November.

Theoretically, an Independent or Other could get on the ballot by filing papers over the summer, and D’s and R’s could vote for that candidate if they don’t like their own party’s pick, but the chances of that are vanishingly small.

A dubious “Domestic energy” survey

I just can’t resist reproducing this one, from the Daily Local News web site:

Where to start?

What about solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and hydroelectric energy? Aren’t those worth talking about?

What is “domestic energy”? Do sun and wind not count because we don’t extract them from American soil?

What sort of public support? Tax money? Relaxing pollution regulations (more energy, less health)?

How does one “support” energy? By giving money to multinational corporations? Funding basic research? Subsidizing current prices to consumers? Developing new energy sources?

Does any energy source deserve public support? Some readers might even believe in the so-called free market.

Why isn’t there a “none of the above” option?

One reason this is on my mind is that during a recent trip to Virginia (on which I actually got to visit Sherwood Forest plantation, which I had written about last year in “John Tyler’s grandchildren and the sense of history“) I heard trains hooting by the motel in Williamsburg about once an hour all night.

In the morning I asked the man at the motel desk if the trains were carrying supplies down to the military bases at Newport News.

No, he said, those trains are carrying coal from West Virginia for export to Europe.

As usual, if I had known more history, I wouldn’t have been surprised. From “Newport News” in Wikipedia:

In 1881, 15 years of explosive development began under the leadership of Collis P. Huntington, whose new Peninsula Extension of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway from Richmond opened up transportation along the Peninsula and provided a new pathway for the railroad to bring West Virginia bituminous coal to port for coastal shipping and worldwide export. With the new railroad came a terminal and coal piers where the colliers were loaded.

So much for “energy self-sufficiency”! We are always being told we have to make environmental sacrifices such as destruction of mountains and valleys West Virginia–not to mention deaths of coal miners–for the sake of “our energy needs.” But for company profits and other countries’ energy needs doesn’t sound so appealing, does it?

How about the industry-proposed Keystone XL Pipeline Project, which would promote the production and consumption of particularly messy bitumen-laden petroleum and cut across a lot of sensitive territory and aquifers to deliver tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast?

A lot is being written about that every day. All I can say is that if the Obama administration imposed a rule that none of the contents of that pipeline can be exported (as in: China, India), it would be a lot less attractive to the fossil fuel industries and the Koch Brothers.

Ah, others say, but TransCanada would export its oil to Asia anyhow by enlarging an extant pipeline or building a new pipeline from the Tar Sands to British Columbia (also at great environmental cost, of course). You know, we can’t control all other countries. But why should we help other countries to promote global warming when we are already doing such a great job of it ourselves?

And about the results of that poll… I should have chosen “No Strong Opinion” while I had a chance (even though I do have a Strong Opinion) because that particular pseudo-survey has already disappeared. Just as well–it was an embarrassment and an insult to the Daily Local’s readership.

I suppose it will cycle back in a while but I don’t have time to waitl You can give your opinion on marijuana, abortion, and the US constitution, though, if you want. I suppose all these surveys are conducted by outside organizations that then use the results to “prove” that Americans favor more coal production or whatever.

PS 4/6/13 about the profitability of energy exports,

…Increased production has lowered US prices of crude oil and natural gas, which refiners use to make gasoline, diesel and other fuels. Crude in the US has been selling for $20 per barrel cheaper than international crude. With lower input costs, US refiners are making enormous amounts of petroleum-based fuels and selling them on the international market at a huge profit.

from “US trade deficit narrows to $43 billion in February” by Martin Crutsinger AP, Boston Globe, 4/5/13