Maine Democrat proposes internet privacy regulations News & Observer A Maine Democrat says her bill would ban internet service providers from selling their customers' online browsing data to third parties without explicit consent. Roughly a dozen states have taken up measures in the last two months to enhance internet ... |
Link:
Maine Democrat proposes internet privacy regulations - News & Observer
Los Angeles Times | Democrat targets California Rep. Knight for House seat News & Observer An attorney who challenged California Republican Steve Knight in one of last year's most contested congressional races says he's running for the same seat again. Democrat Bryan Caforia announced Saturday that he will run to represent the 25th ... Democrat Bryan Caforio looks for a rematch with Rep. Steve Knight in 2018 |
Read more:
Democrat targets California Rep. Knight for House seat - News & Observer
She has proved that to be nothing more than an empty campaign promise or a blatant lie.
We can go into mundane voting records where she votes routinely with the Democrats in Washington and how she regularly supported the Obama agenda on health care, (high) taxes and more. But that's an old game where we all know the ending.
Frankly, most of us only care about how she votes on the big issues facing our state. This week, one of those votes happened.
On the way out the door, the Obama administration cracked one last home run in their anti-energy agenda: the Bureau of Land Management methane rules. But the North Dakota energy industry has made the case loud and clear that these rules do more harm than good. They raise little new royalty revenue for the federal government while causing a decrease of $240 million annually in production, $24 million in state production and extraction taxes and $39 million less to the state's mineral owners.
Since the economic benefits of the energy industry reach every North Dakota community, numbers such as these should give serious concern.
We have jobs in manufacturing, engineering and construction across the state that rely on the Bakken, and our universities and local schools have benefited greatly from the Bakken's tax revenue.
Thus, supporting the repeal of the BLM's rules seems to be an easy no-brainer.
Yet, U.S. Sen. Heitkamp, D-N.D., voted against the health of our energy industry.
On May 10, the Senate held a vote to repeal the rules, and the vote failed on a 49-51 vote. Heitkamp could have been the 50th vote that would have protected our energy industry, protected the state's tax revenue and the many programs it supports and protected opportunities for our careers and families.
Instead, Heitkamp voted in with the rest of Washington's Democrats, showing her true colors and that, for her, politics reigns over North Dakota's best interests.
Heitkamp has failed to keep her promise to be a moderate Democrat, and she has failed the people of North Dakota.
North Dakota's "moderate Democrat" experiment on Heitkamp has failed, and our economy will pay the price.
Streyle, a Republican, represents District 3 in the North Dakota House.
See the article here:
Republican legislator: North Dakota's "moderate Democrat" experiment has failed - Grand Forks Herald
Democrats still have yet to fully reckon with their partys shocking 2016 defeat at the hands of Donald Trump (above).
WASHINGTON News broke by the second. The nightly TV upended programming. The White House press secretary briefed reporters in the dark by the West Wing shrubbery. Russian photographers outwitted the White House and ended up filing dispatches from the Oval Office.
In a string of tumultuous weeks in the Trump administration, the week that FBI Director James Comey was fired by the president of the United States for investigating his own campaign was by far the most bizarre and, for many, the most alarming.
Advertisement
As the White House swirled with conflicting narratives on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Democrats, who are in the minority in both chambers of Congress, tried to focus their fury and marshal all their muscle.
The result? The partys Senate leaders invoked an obscure parliamentary rule that bars committee meetings after the Senate has been in session for two hours unless all 100 senators agree. It meant several hearings were postponed.
Thatll show em.
Get Ground Game in your inbox:
Daily updates and analysis on national politics from James Pindell.
The response by the opposition party, more a cup of weak tea than a double-espresso call to arms, was a vivid reminder of the power shortage among Democrats, who currently lack leaders who can speak credibly for the entire party and present a forceful counterweight to President Trump. Much of this relates to their disastrous setbacks of 2016, with Hillary Clinton losing the presidential race and the party failing to gain control of the Senate.
The minority party cannot control the congressional agenda, lacks subpoena power, and cant drive the direction of House and Senate investigative hearings. High dudgeon on Face the Nation or the Senate floor only gets you so far.
Theres no person head and shoulders above other Democrats right now, said Dick Harpootlian, a former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. If you look to Congress ... theres nobody there who is really generating any enthusiasm or excitement on opposing Trump.
Advertisement
I dont see anyone out there beating the drum in a way that resonates.
If anything, last weeks dismissal of Comey, Trumps crisis of credibility, and the tepid responses from Democrats may have given the country more cause to wonder if either party is up to the demands and needs of this political moment.
Certainly, GOP leaders dont seem about to stand up to Trump when their adversaries cant or wont. Even though the president acknowledged in an NBC interview that he fired the FBI director because he objected to the investigation into his campaigns possible collusion in Russias election, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have resisted calls for an independent commission or special counsel to investigate.
With partisan divisions wider than ever, there are few voices in the middle who can or will speak to the frustration of most Americans. Instead, electoral warfare dictates the message.
Recent fund-raising e-mails from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee arrived with the following subject lines: NO ONE saw this coming this is a disaster and U-N-B-E-L-I-E-V-A-B-L-E. And these overheated messages all arrived before the news dropped about Trump firing Comey.
Harpootlian noted that in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, Americans picked a president from far outside the Washington quagmire: President Jimmy Carter, a Georgia Democrat.
There is somebody out there who will come out of this morass in four years or sooner, Harpootlian predicted.
Democrats know they need to get busy building a bench. Their numbers in state legislatures have reached historic lows. They hold 16 governors offices.
Yet in 2018 in Washington, the number that matters most is 24. That is how many seats Democrats need to gain to recapture control of the House of Representatives (the Senate is rated out of reach, for now). And when it comes to district-by-district campaign tactics, the absence of a strong national Democratic leader may not matter that much.
One of the oldest rules in politics is when your opponent is killing themselves, dont get in the way, said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who helped engineer Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. They are digging their own grave. Let them keep digging.
A Quinnipiac University poll released May 10 has Trumps job approval rating at 38 percent, a near-record low for the president. Should those kinds of numbers persist, Devine and other Democrats predict a wave election that will sweep them into the House majority.
After Republicans voted 10 days ago to repeal President Barack Obamas health care plan, the political handicapper Cook Political Report shifted its rating of likely victors in 20 House districts all in favor of Democrats.
Pressure has to come from the states and outside D.C., and we are seeing a ton of that around the fight against the Republican health care plan and for a special prosecutor, said Mindy Myers, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. With enough public outcry, Congress cannot ignore [it].
But Democrats still have yet to fully reckon with their partys shocking 2016 defeat. Party operatives and lawmakers still point to Clintons popular vote win as evidence of the partys underlying national appeal. Clinton herself gave a recent interview in which she blamed Comeys October public statement on the e-mail investigation for the presidential result, a view that gives short shrift to Democrats profound failures in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, where working-class voters turned on the party.
Republicans, after taking an electoral pounding in 2012, Obamas reelection year, took a hard look at what led to their losses.
And while they may not have followed the recommendations from their 97-page campaign autopsy report it called for greater outreach to women, immigrants, and minorities, among other things they at least examined the cadaver.
Democrats will huddle this week in Washington at an ideas conference sponsored by the left-leaning Center for American Progress. It will feature some of the names that generate the most enthusiasm from the partys base, including Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Kamala Harris of California.
But the venue for the conference speaks volumes. At a time when many are calling for more Democratic outreach to the working class, the gathering will take place at The Four Seasons Hotel. The party still looks to be reaching inward, rallying its base of activists, insiders, and wealthy donors, but unready to broaden its reach and effectively take on Trump.
Read the original:
Democrats lack strong voice amid Trump's Russia investigation meltdown - The Boston Globe
One of two Democrats named to President Donald Trumps commission to investigate voter fraud said even though he disagrees with Trumps claims that millions voted illegally in November, hes willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt and is in a much better position to influence the effort by serving on the panel.
When the White House announced the voter fraud investigation on Thursday, many voting rights groups were quick to denounce the effort as a sham. Critics also said any serious election expert should stay as far away from the commission as possible to avoid lending it credibility. Although state election officials consistently have said extensive voter fraud is extremely rare, Trump has claimed without offering any evidence that it was widespread in the 2016 election.
But Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap (D) said that for him, it was more important to have a seat at the table to influence the panels work. Dunlap told HuffPost on Thursday that while he didnt believe voter fraud occurred, he wanted to hear the presidents case for it.
Calling himself an institutionalist at heart, he said that whether I agree or disagree with the president or vice president, you know, they are the president and the vice president and you give them a little bit of the benefit of the doubt.
We are talking about politics in the panels formation, Dunlap said. If we find not very much voter fraud and theres an effort to conflate that into some major public policy crisis, I think Im better postured to counter that from my own understanding and knowledge from within the circle than I am from without the circle.
Trumps commission is headed by Vice President Mike Pence. Serving as vice chairman is Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), who has pushed an extremely restrictive voting law in his state and has a long history of exaggerating the extent of voter fraud.
Six people have been named to the commission so far; the other Democrat is New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner. The White House said the panel eventually will have about a dozen members, and the commission announcement noted its bipartisan nature.
Dale Ho, head of the ACLUs voting rights project, said any election expert who participated in the commission risked undermining their credibility.
Theres nothing for them to investigate, Ho told HuffPost. Trump and Kobach ``already believe that there is this massive fraud, despite the fact that there is no evidence of it. If you participate in that process, all youre doing is lending your credibility to a process thats going to arrive at that pre-determined result to justify unnecessary restrictions on the right to vote.
The final count of the popular vote showed Hillary Clinton leading it by about 2.8 million.
Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama, wrote in a blog post that Dunlap and Gardner were being used by the White House and that election administration experts should keep their distancefrom the panel.
Their cooperation will allow for the administration to pretend to have had serious bipartisan support for its work, which can be expected to result in politically charged claims and legislative and other proposals to restrict the right to vote.
Dunlap said he hadnt yet been told what the commissions focus would be, nor had he had time to speak with Gardner. He also said he wouldnt hesitate to quit if he believed the panels work was partisan.
If I felt that this was getting me absolutely nowhere and it was a press farce, then yeah, I probably would say enoughs enough and Id probably say something to that effect publicly, Dunlap said. If we get to the very end of it, and they issue a report that I adamantly disagree with, I will speak to that.
He said his interview with HuffPost highlighted the significance of serving on the commission.
If youre not in a position to counter it, then no one is going to be paying attention to you. I mean, would you be calling me today if I was not part of this? he said.
View post:
Why A Democrat Is Participating In Trump's Voter Fraud Investigation - HuffPost