Map drawers get ready to roll with recent Supreme Court decision

The latest Supreme Court ruling considering the Texas gerrymandering case of 2003 will have serious political implications.

What the court basically said was that gerrymandering was okay or at least something for the states to decide its legality, unless it happens to non-white people.

If you're non-white, you cannot have your voting power diluded. If you're white, Republican, Democrat or what have you, well then tough. You can be stacked and packed wherever the politicians decide to put you.

Talk about reverse descrimination. Oh well, you get used to it.

In any case, I can just see the map drawers sharpening their pencils 2007. State legislative elections are going to be huge now, more so then ever before because control of the legislature along with the governor's office controls the U.S. House of Representatives. Isn't it funny that once upon a time control of the legislatures meant control of the U.S. Senate because Senators were picked by the legislatures (which I'm all in favor of going back to)now, if one party sweeps to power in the state capital, incumbent congressmen could very well be in danger by the next election cycle, because redistricting, instead of the traditional every 10-year process, can now be an every two-year process if there's one-party control.

Thus, elections this fall in Illinois, Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arizona, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Ohio and Michigan will be huge because both governor's chairs and statehouses will be up for grabs, which means Congressional seats for 2008 will also be up for grabs.

For non-major parties, the result of the decision means that gerrymandering is going to get a lot worse. But that's fine. That allows such parties to be the official opposition in the fall. Or they can take their chances in the party primaries running in coaltions with like-minded fellows of the major parties. The recent Utah GOP Congressional Primary was a good example of that. If you can secure that party label, in most cases, your ticket to high office is already punched.

Book review from the left: Progressive Review

This review came from Sam Smith's Progressive Review online version called Underground News.

--Sean Scallon

BEATING THE POWERS THAT BE
Sean Scallon

Are third or non-major party politics a dead end in this age of two highly polarized major political parties? New author, Sean Scallon, argues no and shows why in his new book Beating the Powers that Be: Independent Political Movements and Parties of the Upper Midwest and Their Relevance for Third Parties of Today. Scallon shows examples of successful, non-major parties that have organized themselves on the basis of local economies, ethnic groups and religions. He highlights three of them that happen to be from the region he calls home, the Upper Midwest. They are the Non-Partisan League of North Dakota, the Farm-Labor Party of Minnesota and the Progressives of Wisconsin. In so doing, he provides examples and ways current, non-major political parties and independent political movements can fulfill their traditional role in U.S. politics. Anyone involved in third party politics or interested in their impact will want to read this book.

He has my vote

I may not agree with Russ Feingold on a lot of things (other than the war in Iraq) but this exchnage from an interview with Vogue has already sold me on Russ. This was posted by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter Craig Gilbert on their political blog. Any politican that pleads ignorance of celebrity is a winner with me.

---Sean Scallon

The new GQ includes an interview with Russ Feingold, who was profiled in January by another fashion magazine, Vogue. According to the headline, Feingold is “The Real Maverick” and “Mad as Hell.” But the interview itself is pretty jocular. (Asked Tuesday if Sen. Feingold was in fact, "mad as hell," Feingold answered through an aide, "No, I'm happy as a clam.") His conversation with GQ ranges from wiretapping and the Patriot Act to more personal matters.

“What’s it like to be a single senator?” Feingold is asked.

“It’s new to me. You sort of end up working a whole lot,” says Feingold. Pressed on whether he’s “dating,” Feingold responds, “Um, that’s, uh, classified?”

“Are there women throwing themselves at you?” he’s asked.
“I certainly wouldn’t say that.”

There’s also this exchange:
Question: “OK, real quick. Jennifer or Angelina?”
Feingold: "Jennifer? Jennifer who?”
Question: “Oh, come on, Senator! Jennifer or Angelina?”
Feingold: “Jennifer who?”
Question: “Aniston. (silence). Oh God, you don’t read the tabloids, do you?”
Probably not the fashion mags, either.

A kind word or two

As writer you need all the kind words you can get so I made sure to get this one up from fellow paleocon Clark Stooksbury, who I just put in my links section.

---Sean Scallon

I put a link to Sean Scallon's blog a few days ago. Those of you who subscribe to Chronicles will recognize him as a contributor to that magazine. I also just got a copy of his book, Beating the Powers that Be : Independent Political Movements and Parties of the Upper Midwest and their Relevance for Third Parties of Today . I have only skimmed it, but it looks good. As the subtitle suggests, it is about political movements organizations such as the Non-Partisan League in North Dakota and the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota. It looks like a good companion read to Bill Kauffman's Look Homeward America.

Old rightist Redick takes to LP line in Wisconsin U.S. Senate race

This story is from Madison Capital Times political reporter/columnist John Nichols about David Redick. Redick was willing to run for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate even if to be a sacrificial lamb against Herb Kohl. But after telling Redick they didn't want him or would support him, he said screw you to the GOP and agreed to take the Libertarian line. He'll get my vote.

For the Republicans not to have anyone run against Kohl is an embarressment. He hasn't been that good a U.S. Senator to deserve a free pass. A good gassroots campaign could make for a spirited race. But the state GOP is too scared of Kohl's money and the silly theory that he would flood the state with cash to the Dems if he was challenged seriously, which he hasn't been in 12 years.

This isn't an unusual situation around the country when you have popular incumbents running unopposed against a major party candidate. Thank God for the Greens, Constitutionalists and Libertarians to provide some actual democracy in our election system.

---Sean Scallon


GOP loses out by stiffing Redick
By John Nichols - Capital Times

There was never any question that David Redick was the most interesting Republican seeking statewide office this year. The U.S. Senate candidate was a genuine, "old right" conservative in the tradition of Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater.

A fierce critic of big government, Redick outdid his fellow Republicans when it came to condemning tax hikes and federal spending. But he did not stop there. He also criticized the excesses of big government that most Republicans fail to challenge: military adventures abroad, particularly the war in Iraq, and the assaults on basic freedoms at home, such as the Patriot Act and the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. And he rejected the religious right dominance of the GOP, arguing that a party that claimed to be for individual freedom ought not be policing the bedrooms of Americans in order to enforce its false morality.

It was not necessary to agree with Redick on every issue to recognize that he was a refreshing Republican who offered a genuine alternative to the tendency of too many GOP stalwarts to march in lock step to the drumbeat of the Bush administration, even when the march leads the country over a cliff and into the abyss.

There was something attractive about the prospect of fall debates among Republican Redick, Green Party candidate Rae Vogeler and Democratic U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl. Instead of the petty personality squabbles and recitations of partisan talking points that are sure to dominate the gubernatorial debates, it seemed as if the Senate candidates would offer Wisconsin something that is all too rare in politics: a clash of ideas and principles involving a real conservative (Redick), a real progressive (Vogeler) and a real centrist (Kohl).

Unfortunately, the Republican Party was not interested in putting up an honest and consistent conservative as its candidate against Kohl. Party leaders offered no welcome to Redick. Indeed, they signaled that they wanted nothing to do with his across-the-board criticisms of government excess.

Redick took the hint. Last week, he quit the GOP and joined the Libertarians, who have invited him to run for the Senate on their ballot line.

Says Redick: "The Republican Party nationwide is 'off course' compared to its traditional values, and Republican leaders at the state and county level seem to like it that way or, at least, (they) will settle to be submissive and abused 'loyalists' to D.C. The far-right religious groups, corrupt congressmen and warmonger 'neocons' have taken over in D.C., and it seems no one is willing or able to push them back. (The GOP) is now the war, big-spending and homeland spy party. My campaign efforts to gain support for reform have been fruitless, but revealed the depth of trouble the Republicans are in. While they engage in self-serving denial to hide problems, the cliff of the November 7 election is fast approaching. Pollsters predict many losses.

"Hence I have left the Republicans to their well-earned fate and joined the Libertarian 'party of principle.' It embraces my philosophy of limited government, fiscal conservatism and peace, along with social liberalism consistent with the Bill of Rights."

More power to Dave Redick for standing on principle rather than bending to the dictates of Republican partisanship. If he secures the Libertarian nomination, as seems likely, he'll still be able to contribute ideas and energy to the fall debates.

As for the Republicans, they have shown by their actions that their party is no longer the "big tent" of the Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush days. More and more, the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower is starting to look like a narrow-minded cult of personality that loves its current president more than it does the conservative principles it purports to cherish or the country it purports to lead.

John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times. E-mail: jnichols@madison.com
Published: June 15, 2006

Just received a nod from my UW alumni mag

The following blurb appeared in On Wisconsin magazine which is the University of Wisconsin alumni magazine:

Two ’90s grads recently
shared news of their books,
both about the politics of the
Midwest. Journalist and freelance
writer Sean Scallon ’94
of Arkansaw, Wisconsin, was
pleased to announce his premiere
work, Beating the
Powers That Be: Independent
Political Movements and Parties
of the Upper Midwest and
Their Relevance to Third Parties
of Today (Publish America),
and Madisonian Jon Kasparek
MA’97, PhD’03 has written
Voices and Votes: How Democracy
Works in Wisconsin
(University of Wisconsin Press).

Our ticket out - Zarqawi's death, Haditha incident could lead to Iraq exit

White House officials have become lousy liars as of late (once you lie too often, you're easy to spot). They say these all important "war council" meetings President Bush II has called with his "war cabinet," a group of outside Iraqi and Middle East experts along with officials with the new Iraqi government over the next two days at Camp David will not talk at all about U.S. troop draw downs or withdrawals or even timetables for withdrawals.

Sure they won't. As if the politics of the situation can somehow be separated from the war itself and not even discussed. Bush II may not have a PhD, but even his rudimentary political knowledge realizes that any substantial withdrawals of U.S. troops will have political benefit at home before the November elections.

Anyone with any sense knows U.S. citizens are just plain tired of the war in Iraq. They've have virtually tuned it out and turned it off when it comes to war coverage on the television or the radio and have skipped the page in the newspaper or magazine. But every now and then the war has a way of grabbing your attention no matter how unwanted. Like for those residents of Pierce County, Wisconsin where I work as another soldier, this one a 29-year old female Naval Reservist killed by a roadside bomb last week and who leaves behind a nine-year old daughter, was killed in Iraq, the third such soldier from Pierce County to die. As one county resident put it on a local newscast (paraphrasing): "People around here are wondering what we are still doing there, whether our soldiers are dying needlessly in a place we don't need to be in."

Especially now since the Iraq's Al Qaeda franchise leaders Mohammed al-Zarqawi is now dead. The latest in a long line of U.S. boogeyman (although a legitimate one considering his barbarism) who we couldn't leave Iraq's fate to if we left, his fate was sealed when two 500-pound bombs were dropped right on top of him last week thanks to a tip from one of his own supporters. Seems even Al Qaeda couldn't stomach his bloody terrorism and that's saying something. Many in Iraq and the Middle East were no doubt pleased to see him die.

And so now that he is dead, the question remains what are U.S. troops still doing in Iraq? If Al Qaeda's Iraq franchise has been rendered leaderless when Zarqawi and some of his supporters were whacked, certainly the U.S. can legitimately claim a "mission accomplished" and begin the process of preparing the pullout of U.S. troops. After all, what are they supposed to do now? Solve the thousand year-old conflict between Shiite and Sunni? Guard soccer fields in the hot sun? Build more water purification plants? Keep the Kurds from declaring independence?

What is left of the U.S. ill-defined mission in Iraq can be handled by the Iraqis themselves or sorted out in any fashion at least. What's left of the U.S. mission is nothing more than pure nation building rather than chasing Al Qaeda terrorists. Again, something the Iraqis will have to tackle on their own eventually. The U.S. by itself alone fuels that nationalist portion of the insurgency, one that received plenty of gas in recent days over the Haditha incident where U.S. Marines allegedly massacred Iraqi unarmed men, women and children. How will keeping U.S. troops in Iraq solve that problem? And yet you still here the War Pigs talking about "retaking Baghdad" or increasing the number of U.S. troops to finally crush the insurgency. Its if though the ghosts of General Navarre and the battle for Algiers haunt the American Enterprise Institutue.

Certainly President Bush II will hear such fantasy talk during his Camp David meetings. Hopefully it will not obscure the opening the Zarqawi death and the Haditha incident provide as the U.S.' ticket out of Iraq. There is a consensus building both in the U.S. and Iraq to remove U.S. troops. What better time than to start the process now in the wake of the Zarqawi kill? So long as U.S. troops remain in Iraq there will be a nationalist insurgency that will kill U.S. soldiers and attack their bases and so long as the U.S. remains in Iraq the government will never gain any legitimacy among its people and will always be seen as U.S. puppet (at least from the Sunni point of view) because the strings pulled in Washington and U.S. bayonets are the frames holding it up. And for good measure, the fewer U.S. troops remaining the less the chance that another Haditha takes place or another checkpoint incident that kills an unfortunate driver. The longer the U.S. stays the worse it will be for the Iraqi government that eventually replace it for it will be so dependent on the U.S. direction and support that it will be lost without it and like South Vietnam, collapse of its inability to get by without the Yankees.

Our ticket out of Iraq is right on the table if we wish the take it. All it takes is for the President to rely on his gut instincts instead of his advisers and experts. If he uses it, he could begin to repair his presidency before it expires in January 2009. If not, then the war will pass on to his successor and his legacy with it.

--Sean Scallon

Good debate on Third-Party Watch about Jeffers' GOP primary campaign

There's a good debate going on Austin Cassidy's Third-Party watch about Sue Jeffers plans to run in the GOP primary agains Gov. Tim Pawlenty. I think it its the right thing to do in accordance with my book Beating the Powers that Be By running in the GOP primary, she make coaltions with like-minded Republicans upset with the direction their party is going in, get support from the Republican Liberty Caucus and the Club for Growth and have a bigger platform to speak on libertarian issues than she would just being the LP's endorsed candidate. And I think the LP can still put her on the ballot if they just write-in her name if they wish and provide support for her candidacy as well. It got to be better than just scratching and clawing for 1% of the vote. It may also lead to such future primary campaigns from other non-major parties into major party primaries (Constitutionalists in the GOP, Greens with the Dems) Good luck Sue!

Here's a story from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on the Jeffers campaign.

---Sean Scallon


Libertarian-minded bar owner will enter GOP governor primary

Sue Jeffers had been endorsed by the tiny Libertarian Party, but says the two-party system rules.

By Conrad DeFiebre, Star Tribune

Last update: June 06, 2006 – 9:31 PM
Sue Jeffers, the libertarian-minded bar owner who was denied a chance to challenge Gov. Tim Pawlenty for Republican Party endorsement at last week's state convention, will take him on in the GOP primary election Sept. 12.
"We're going to take it to the people and let them decide," Jeffers said Tuesday. In opting to enter the Republican primary, she will forgo her endorsement by the state Libertarian Party, which has been a tiny force in Minnesota politics. "The system right now doesn't favor anything but the two-party candidates," Jeffers said.

Meanwhile, Ken Pentel, endorsed Saturday for a third run at the governor's office by the Green Party of Minnesota, said Tuesday that he is confident of gaining the 2,000 signatures he needs next month to get on the Nov. 7 general election ballot.

The Greens' weak showing in the 2004 election cost them major-party status in Minnesota, automatic ballot access and public campaign financing. But Pentel, 45, of St. Paul, said his petition drive July 4-18 "will be a good way to get people energized and out in the field."

He said his campaign will emphasize Minnesota's nearly $7 billion portion of the cost of the war in Iraq as well as environmental problems. In his first run for governor, in 1998, he won 0.3 percent of the vote. In 2002 he got 2.2 percent, but he acknowledged Tuesday that Green Party focus and energy were higher then than now.

At the party convention Saturday in Duluth, about 100 delegates also endorsed Michael Cavlan for the U.S. Senate and musician and health care activist "Papa" John Kolstad, who is not a lawyer, for state attorney general.

Jeffers, 49, of New Brighton, owns Stub & Herb's bar and restaurant in Stadium Village in Minneapolis. In the past she has crusaded against indoor smoking bans, but she took on Pawlenty chiefly over his support for a taxpayer subsidy for a new Twins ballpark.

She says that she has voted as a Republican since 1976 but that she also has been a leader of the fringe Libertarians, whose last gubernatorial candidate, Frank Germann in 1998, got 0.1 percent of the vote. Jeffers' GOP candidacy will be a "win-win" for both parties, she said.

"The Republicans get a candidate who's going to look out for the taxpayer," she said. "And the Libertarians get their message out there, too."

Got my first book review

Thanks to Gary King, editor of the The Inter-County Leader based out of Frederic, Wisconsin, for providing me my book review on Beating the Powers that Be. The Leader is the first cooperative newspaper in the country formed during the midst of the Wisconsin milk strikes of 1933. I worte extensivly about the paper in my book and visited its archives two years ago. Again thanks for the review and a good one its is.

---Sean Scallon

Third party power

Gary King 24.MAY.06 Inter-County Leader Editorial

Are third or nonmajor party politics a dead end in this age of two highly polarized major political parties?

Sean Scallon, a writer from Beloit, has written a book that illustrates some ways current non-major political parties can fulfill a “traditional” role in national politics.

Scallon wrote “Beating the Powers that Be,” recommended reading for those who are not finding what they need from the Democrats or Republicans - and for those who simply find political history fascinating.

Scallon stopped by the Leader office in Frederic a few years ago to pursue the newspaper files, finding a treasure of information - apparently - for his book. The Inter-County Leader itself found it beginnings in the workings of a non-traditional political party movement - that of angry dairy farmers.

In 1933 dairy farmers in the area - and across the state - were banding together to protest what they felt were low prices they were being paid for their milk. In February of that year they began to refuse to sell their milk to local dairies or have it shipped to other parts of the country. In fact, they dumped it - vast gallons of it - all over the ground.

“Given that Wisconsin was the leading producer of surplus milk and dairy products in the country, the situation was serious,” Scallon writes.

Statewide there were clashes between strikers trying to prevent dairies from taking in milk not dumped in the strike and police, bombings, blockades and National Guard deployments, Scallon writes, “showed a state in upheaval.”

Polk County - he notes - experienced less turmoil - but turmoil just the same.

Local smalltown newspapers in Polk County attacked the strikers in editorials and news stories, tying them in with the violence occurring in other parts of the state. A group of local farmers - feeling unfairly mischaracterized, thought it was time someone spoke up for them and their interests. By November of 1933 - with help from $5 from each interested farmer - the Leader was born.

“...the first ever cooperative newspaper in the nation,” Scallon writes.

The book does a good job at making us think about how entrenched we’ve become with the two-party system.

“One can make a valid argument that the two-party system has served the country well by channeling all its diversity of people, economics and views into two competing factions rather than have them dissolving into multiple political units that could lead to instability and upheaval,” writes Scallon. “This legitimacy makes it hard to almost impossible to dislodge the system short of a nuclear holocaust or asteroid strike on earth.”

The book makes for interesting reading and is available through www.publishamerica.com

Mayor Nagin and the Chocolate Factory

It almost came full circle.

Moon Landrieu was the last white mayor of New Orleans in the early 1970s.

Yet his son Mitch almost became mayor himself in the recent election.

That he came so close shows how much Hurricane Katrina affected politics and its main fuel demographics in the Crescent City.

Or should I say "Chocolate City."

Yes, just like the old candymaster Willy Wonka, Ray Nagin has fallen in love with chocolate. So much so that he wants entire city of chocolate to rule over just as Wonka lorded over his magical chocolate factory.

Nagin took the first step by beating Landrieu and being re-elected to the mayor's office. Now to make his world of pure imagination come true, he's going to need billions from Washington in order to allow his oompa-loompas to come live in the Chocolate City.

Or it will never come to be.

In a day and age when supposedly such appeals cannot be made anymore, Nagin made one. A blatant one as has been uttered by any politician. He said back in February he wished New Orleans to be a "Chocolate City," meaning of course, majority African-American so that he could continue to be mayor.

No white politician could ever say so bluntly today what Nagin did. Heck, they couldn't have said such a thing 30 years ago. If it's true that white politicians have used code words in order to entice votes based on race there's been a reason for it. Popular political discourse and political correctness forbid such stark language from ever being said compared to say, the pre-1970s. Of course they would want to get around the rules to make their point.

But Nagin, honest man that he is, said what he said and made no apologies for saying what he honestly felt. And in so doing he secured another term as mayor, despite the fact his performance in office, especially during the hurricane, is hardly one that would win a Profiles of Courage award. Indeed, you believe Tulane University History Professor Douglas Brinkley's new book, Nagin is more akin to a drama queen than to a statesman.

But that's ancient history, even if its 11 months in the past and the lower Ninth Ward is still in ruins. What matters is who's going to be running things in New Orleans and if African-Americans wish to retain their political power, despite the fact they are now a minority of persons living in New Orleans, then Nagin was the only horse to ride on.

Even from long distance.

What made the difference in the election and subsequent run-off for Nagin were the votes of expatriate Orleans residents now scattered to the four winds in Baton Rouge and Houston and Atlanta and thousands points across the country. The Nagin campaign did an effective job organizing these voters and getting them to vote despite the distances in between. By making his raw appeal for racial solidarity and racial power, he got them motivated to cast a ballot.

Lester Maddox couldn't have done it any better.

Now Nagin better deliver the golden ticket. For if the city cannot be rebuild as it was before the storm, if the levees cannot stand a Category 5 hurricane and maybe beyond, then few Nagin's voters will come back and he will no doubt be the last African-American mayor in town.

And while the city may very well still be chocolate, it will be of the white kind.

---Sean Scallon

Summer is here

My apologies for not posting at all the past two weeks but family and work come first and both have kept me very busy. Plus, I didn't really have a lot of ideas to write about as my mind was occupied. But with the arrival of summer the logjam has been broken and I hope to blog more often.

See, my years run not from Jan 1- Dec. 31 but from the middle of August until the middle of June, basically the same as a school calendar because local school spotrs is what I predominantly cover. The Pierce County Fair in early August for me is like one beig New Year's Eve celebration because the Monday afterwards, that's when football starts and it begins all over again.

So with more time on my hands I hope to write my column weekley now and still provide posts and links about individuals, groups, and parties that are fighting the Powers that Be. I also hope to get this blog linked on to more likeminded sites and hope to have some news and reviews about my book.

Summer's here and hopefully the blogging will be easy...
**********************************************

I do wish comment upon this Unity 08 story. There was an article recently in New York magazine about this group of ex-Carter and Ford campaign officials along with a few other centrists detremiend to run a centrist candidate for President in 2008. (Like that hasn't been tried before.) I wrote a letter to the author of what was a good and ineteresting story in a series of stories about a new party that what they were describing was not a party at all but a presidential campaign. That's all fine and good but what happens after that even if they managed to win however unlikely? Do they have candidates ready to run for mayor of New York in 2009, or for govenor of Virginia? or for seats in the New Jersey Assembly? The major parties are already thinking ahead to such races because it is their business to do so. Politics is their business, that's what they do and they don't take breaks. The next campaign is never far away. Besides trying to define what a centrist voter is or does, such groups like Unity 08 had better think about that before they even get themselves off of the ground. Are they going to be a brand new party, or just someone's vehicle to run for President. There's a big difference as Ross Perot showed.