Author Archives: MarilynColburn

Scott Walker Is Running for President. Here’s What You Should Know About Him.

by MarilynColburn Posted on July 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Gov. Scott Walker is set to announce his presidential candidacy on Monday in Waukesha, Wisconsin, joining a crammed filed of GOP hopefuls.

In a few short years, the two-term governor has rocketed from obscurity to become a Republican frontrunner thanks to his conservative—and often controversial—stewardship of Wisconsin. After taking office in 2011, he set the tone for his governorship when he rammed through legislation that drastically curbed the power of public employee unions, setting the stage for a showdown with organized labor that made national headlines. As a result of anti-union effort, Walker became the only governor in Wisconsin history to face a recall election. During his tenure, Walker has implemented a hit list of right-wing measures. He signed controversial voter ID legislation, a state budget that defunded Planned Parenthood, and, this spring, a bill that made Wisconsin a right-to-work state. As Walker launches his presidential campaign, he faces an investigation into whether his campaign violated election rules during the recall campaign by coordinating with outside spending groups.

Ahead of his announcement on Monday, here are the things you should know about Walker, from Mother Jones‘ archives:

Walker’s office was recently involved in a failed effort to change Wisconsin’s open-records law in order to obstruct access to government records, including his.
Walker thinks implementing mandatory ultrasounds for women considering abortion is “just a cool thing.”
In April, the Walker sent memos to fifty-seven environmental agency employees, warning them that they might face being laid off as a consequence of his budget over the next two fiscal years. The kicker: he did it on Earth Day.
Gov. Walker and the Koch brothers agree on many things, but are at odds over whether taxpayers should pay for half of a new basketball arena for the Milwaukee Bucks.
One time, Scott Walker fell for a crank-call from a fake David Koch. Seriously.
The real David Koch is apparently a pretty big fan, though.
Scott Walker promised to negotiate with public-sector unions, and then launched a surprise attack on them.
Scott Walker is not a huge fan of same-sex marriage.
Scott Walker is even less of a fan of making voting simple and easy.
Walker and his allies stacked the deck in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Here’s a guide the scandal that could tank his presidential hopes.
And don’t forget that time he compared Islamic extremists to Wisconsin protesters!

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Scott Walker Is Running for President. Here’s What You Should Know About Him.

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Strom Thurmond’s Son Just Called for the Removal of the Confederate Flag

by MarilynColburn Posted on June 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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On the floor of the South Carolina Senate Tuesday, the son of longtime US Senator and segregationist Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond made an impassioned call to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse.

Republican State Sen. Paul Thurmond looked past his own ancestry—and at least two of his colleagues in the Senate who have told the Post and Courier they would vote to keep the flag. He told his colleagues that the “time is right” to remove the symbolic flag from above the statehouse one day after Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Lindsey Graham called for its removal. Thurmond eulogized his friend and colleague state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who was leading Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Church when he was killed, alongside eight other black churchgoers, in a mass shooting on June 19. Authorities have charged 21-year-old Dylann Roof.

Reflecting on the June 19 shooting, Thurmond said:

I cannot comprehend the hate that was visited upon the Holy City, but I can respond with love and unity and kindness and maybe show others that their motivation for future attacks of hate will not be tolerated, will not result in a race war, will not divide us, but rather will strengthen our resolve to come together as one nation, one state, and one community under God.

Though he said nothing in his speech about his father, who is arguably most famous for his day-long filibuster against civil rights legislation in 1957, the longest in US history, Thurmond discussed his ancestors’ place along General Robert E. Lee when the Confederate army surrendered at Appomattox Court House and said he could not fathom how “anyone could fight a civil war based, in part, on the desire to continue the practice of slavery.”

Here’s an excerpt from his speech:

I think the time is right and the ground is fertile for us to make progress as a state and to come together and remove the Confederate battle flag from prominent statue outside the Statehouse and put it in the museum. It is time to acknowledge our past, atone for our sins and work towards a better future. That future must be built on symbols of peace, love, and unity. That future cannot be built on symbols of war, hate, and divisiveness.

I am aware of my heritage. But my appreciation for the things that my forebearers accomplished to make my life better doesn’t mean that I must believe that they always made the right decisions and, for the life of me, I will never understand how anyone could fight a civil war based, in part, on the desire to continue the practice of slavery. Think about it for just a second. Our ancestors were literally fighting to continue to keep human beings as slaves and continue the unimaginable acts that occur when someone is held against their will. I am not proud of this heritage. These practices were inhumane and were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Now we have these hate groups and the symbols that they use to remind African Americans that things haven’t changed and that they are still viewed as less than equal human beings. Well, let me tell you: Things have changed. Overwhelmingly, people are not being raised to hate or to believe that they are superior to others based on the color of their skin. My generation was raised to respect all people, of every race, religion, and gender.

I have often wondered what is my purpose here, in the Senate. I’ve asked God to guide me and strengthen me. I have prayed that I will be able to make a difference for this state. I have prayed that I will leave this place better for the future generations. I am proud to take a stand and no longer be silent. I am proud to be on the right side of history regarding the removal of this symbol of racism and bigotry from the statehouse. But let it not satisfy us to stop there. Justice by halves is not justice. We must take down the confederate flag, and we must take it down now. But if we stop there, we have cheated ourselves out of an opportunity to start a different conversation about healing in our state. I am ready. Let us start the conversation.

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Strom Thurmond’s Son Just Called for the Removal of the Confederate Flag

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Republicans Maybe Not as Inept as We Think

by MarilynColburn Posted on July 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Paul Waldman thinks Republicans have become a bunch of bumblers and idiots:

Think about it this way: Has there been a single instance in the last few years when you said, “Wow, the Republicans really played that one brilliantly”?

In fact, before you’ll find evidence of the ruthless Republican skillfulness so many of us had come to accept as the norm in a previous era, you’ll need to go back an entire decade to the 2004 election. George W. Bush’s second term was a disaster, Republicans lost both houses of Congress in 2006, they lost the White House in 2008, they decided to oppose health-care reform with everything they had and lost, they lost the 2012 election—and around it all they worked as hard as they could to alienate the fastest growing minority group in the country and make themselves seem utterly unfit to govern.

In fact, in the last ten years they’ve only had one major victory, the 2010 midterm election.

Hmmm. It’s true that the GOP has had a rough decade in a lot of ways. The number of self-IDed Republicans has plummeted since 2004; their standing among the fast-growing Hispanic population has cratered; and their intellectual core is now centered in a wing of the party that believes we should return to the gold standard. This isn’t a promising starting point for a conservative renaissance.

Still, let’s not kid ourselves. If Republicans were really as woefully inept as Waldman says, then Democrats should be kicking some serious ass these days. I haven’t especially noticed this. They won in the sixth year of Bush’s presidency, when out parties always win, and then won in 2008, when an economic collapse pretty much guaranteed a victory for anyone with a D after their name. Then they had a single fairly good year—followed by an epic blunder that lost them a sure seat in Massachusetts, and with it control of the Senate. They got crushed in 2010. They won a squeaker in 2012 against an opponent who made a wedding cake figurine look good by comparison. For the last four years, they’ve basically gotten nothing done at all.

And what about those Republicans? Well, they have a hammerlock on the House, and they might very well control the Senate after the 2014 election. They’ve won several notable Supreme Court victories (Heller, Citizens United, Hobby Lobby, etc.). They control a large majority of the states, and have passed a ton of conservative legislation in areas like voter ID and abortion restrictions. Their “Just Say No” strategy toward President Obama has tied Democrats in knots. They won an all but total victory on spending and deficits.

Nor is it really true that today’s GOP is notably more bumbling than it used to be. The myth of “ruthless Republican skillfulness” in the past is just that: a myth. George H.W. Bush screwed up on Supreme Court picks and tax hikes. Newt Gingrich—ahem—sure didn’t turn out to be the world historical strategic genius everyone thought he was in 1994. George W. Bush—with the eager backing of every Republican in the country—figured that a war in Iraq would be just the ticket to party dominance for a decade. Ditto for Social Security reform. Republicans were just sure that would be a winner. By contrast, their simpleminded Obama-era strategy of obstructing Democrats at all times and on all things has actually worked out pretty well for them given the hand they were dealt.

Make no mistake: It’s not as if Republicans have been strategic geniuses. There’s no question that they have some long-term issues that they’re unable to address thanks to their capitulation to tea party madness. But if they’re really so inept, how is it that in the past 15 years Democrats haven’t managed to cobble together anything more than about 18 months of modest success between 2009-10?

I dunno. Republicans keep getting crazier and crazier and more and more conservative, and liberals keep thinking that this time they’ve finally gone too far. I’ve thought this from time to time myself. And yet, moving steadily to the right has paid off pretty well for them over the past three decades, hasn’t it?

Maybe it will all come to tears in the near future as the lunatic wing of the party becomes even more lunatic, but we liberals have been thinking this for a long time. We haven’t been right yet.

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Republicans Maybe Not as Inept as We Think

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