PDHblog
This is a place for members of Progressive Democrats of Hawai‘i to express their thoughts
and exasperations about political happenings. The opinions and views are not necessarily
those of PDH's steering committee or membership as a whole.

If there are resos you want to see introduced to the Democratic State Convention dealing with environmental issues, post your ideas here. Better yet, post draft ideas, or outlines for resos here.

Ideas, drafts and comments on resos relating to Education can be posted here.

Submit ideas, drafts and comments on resos for this committee here.

This is the place to raise issues for resolutions for this committee.

When crap like this happens, I wonder why I ever bother to submit testimony on bills. What is the point when legislators can and will change bills to suit their interests no matter what the public says?? A bill that would enact public financing of elections was amended, after all public hearings, to included a provision that would lift the corporate contribution cap to $25,000!!

Here is the deal: HB661 seemed to be the best chance yet for for Hawai‘i to get some sort of comprehensive public financing of elections enacted. From the official description:

Creates a pilot comprehensive public funding program for elections to the Hawaii county council in 2010, 2012, and 2014.

This bill had been left over from last year, when it passed in the House but wasn’t heard by the Senate. This year, the bill was revived and amended to apply only to Hawai‘i County Council races and passed both the JDL and WAM committees of the State Senate. It seemed that all was left was for it to go to conference committee, iron out a few minor differences between the House and Senate versions and then pass it on to the Governor’s desk. I was really hopeful that it was actually going to have a chance this time. Until this.

Yesterday, a “floor amendment” was offered and adopted by the Senate. The most significant part of this amendment comes in section 27 (amended text is underlined):

SECTION 27. Section 11-204, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by amending subsection (b) to read as follows:

“(b) No person or any other entity shall make contributions to a noncandidate committee, in an aggregate amount greater than $1,000 in an election[.]; except that, in the case of a corporation or company using funds from its own treasury, a contribution by the corporation or company to its noncandidate committee shall not exceed $25,000 in an election. A corporation or company shall not contribute any funds directly to a candidate, candidate committee, or party.“

Anyone remember the “corporate cap” bill (SB2204) that lawmakers were trying to repeal? Well, after a significant amount of coverage and negative public sentiment , that bill failed to pass (StarBull: 2/27, 2/29, 3/1, 3/5; HonAd: 4/1). So rather than let the issue go for another year, they decided to just insert the language into another bill when the public wasn’t paying attention. That is just wrong.

So now we are left with a bill that would enact comprehensive public financing of elections, which I think is good, yet at the same time would lift the cap on corporate contributions to $25,000, which I think is bad. Beyond just the good/bad aspect… the original intent of the public financing bill was to create a system where a candidate doesn’t have to seek out large contributions at all, corporate or otherwise. So this amendment goes completely against the intent of the original bill. The bill that I thought merited enough importance that I actually took a vacation day from work so that I could go down to the capitol to testify on it.

Why should normal citizens like myself bother interrupting their normal work days to comment on legislation when legislators can do whatever they please with the bills anyway? It is very frustrating.

Larry Geller adds his thoughts on this matter on his blog here.

let me start by first saying that i don’t currently support, nor subscribe to, either of the remaining democratic presidential campaigns.  the candidate i supported was forced to drop out prior to super tuesday and since then i’ve been a man without a candidate.  however, given the groundswell of support from progressives countrywide, i do tend to lean ever so slightly toward senator obama.

given that, i still have problems with both candidates and their apparent attitude of ‘do what it takes to win’ whether it might actually be right or fair.  there is no doubt that campaign politics are not for the faint of heart.

i read this morning an opinion article from salon titled, why hillary clinton should be winning.  if you’ve never visited salon before, let me tell you my impression is they are a open-minded, fair, and progressive news source.

the author raises a question which, having not asked it myself, i thought was interesting.  why don’t the democratic primaries function under the principle of ‘winner take all’ as do the general elections?  the author lays out his case that, if the democratic primaries functioned more like the general election, it would be hillary, not obama, that would be winning.  and not just winning; she’d have a commanding lead and would likely and easily clinch the nomination months prior to the national convention in august. (more…)

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) has launched a campaign called “Healthcare Not Warfare“. Essentially the idea is to encourage people to speak out in droves, calling on our U.S. Congress to prioritize funding for healthcare, specifically by passing H.R. 676, rather than continuing to fund the war.

Coincidentally, this clever animation just reached my inbox via two different sources. It illustrates how money can gain you access to lawmakers while, “regular Bill” sits around waiting to be heard. In particular, he wants to reform the American healthcare system. Check it out.

http://www.wisdc.org/crock.php

OK… counts are in, so people are connecting the dots and speculating as to what the official delegate counts may be. We know that Hawai‘i awards delegates proportionally rather than winner take all… should be simple to figure out, right?

Statewide tallies were roughly 75% Obama to 25% Clinton. We have 20 delegates that are allocated proportionally… split that 3/4 to 1/4 and you get 15 Obama delegates and 5 Clinton delegates… right? Wrong. As you may have seen in the media accounts (Hon Adv, Star Bull), based on the preliminary vote counts that have yet to be verified, the projected delegate count sits at 14 Obama and 6 Clinton.

It is a tad more complicated to figure out than one may think on the surface of things. Read more if you want to know more about the geeky aspects of delegate allocation… (more…)

As a precinct president, I helped staff my Democratic Caucus in Honolulu (District 25), and it was a phenomenal night! I brought a friend with a disability and arrived early, about 5:30 (voting was to begin at 7 PM). At that time, almost everyone there was a volunteer worker, but soon people coming to vote were arriving early. People had gotten word of a possible huge turnout. We had a huge line of new voters, and another huge line of people registering as Democrats for the first time– so many that we ran out of Democratic Party registration forms! If we had designed the influx better, we might have had a third line for registered voters who are already members of the Democratic party, but weren’t sure which precinct they were in (we could have processed everyone faster.) Some came expecting to vote early, registered, and then had to leave before voting even began.

Everyone had to go to their precinct table to await the official time for the caucus vote, 7:00 - 7:30 PM. Our tables were filled to overflowing. Some precincts quickly ran out of Precinct Sign-in forms, and I barely had enough. The procedure was that when the District Chair gave the go-ahead, everyone had to get a ballot from a precinct officer and vote. Unfortunately, we had no microphone or loudspeakers in the room full of hundreds of people! The poor district chair had to try to shout over the din to let us know when it was time to vote. Once balloting started at 7:00, there was mayhem for a while. There were FOUR names on the ballot: Clinton and Obama, of course, but also Kucinich and Edwards, even though they had dropped out, and “Uncommitted.”
(more…)

A few more thoughts to put down about last night’s Democratic caucuses that didn’t make it into my last post. Perhaps best that they are split anyway… the last one was full of elation, this post will have some of my gripes and annoyances.

I went to bed last night thinking that considering the chaos, there seemed to be relatively few complaints. Most people seemed to understand that we were doing our best. I have been perusing other blogs that posted reports from different locations last night and just got around to checking Jerry Burris’ reports at HA. Many comments coming in are from people complaining about their site’s lack of preparedness. Let me respond to one that was directed at my district. I think these complaints are probably representative of how many others felt across the State. I can only speak for myself, but I imagine my response is likely similar to that other organizers across the State would make as well. (more…)