Many posts have discussed what Americans do and do not know about their government.
“We’re getting calls about polls being closed,” Kentucky’s Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams posted Tuesday on X. “They are closed because we do not have elections today. Kentucky votes next year. You cannot vote today in Kentucky for the mayor of New York City or the Governor of Virginia. Sorry.” (In a subsequent post, he mused about the importance of civics education.)
The 2015 election is over. (You may not have known it was even happening.) And it proved one thing: Republicans have an absolute stranglehold on governorships and state legislatures all across the country.
Consider:
* With Matt Bevin's win in Kentucky on Tuesday night, Republicans now hold 32 of the nation's governorships — 64 percent of all the governors mansions in the country. (One race, in Louisiana, won't be decided until next month. Democrats believe they have a good chance of winning that race against now-Sen. David Vitter.)
* Democrats' failure to take over the Virginia state Senate means that Republicans still hold total control of 30 of the country's 50 state legislatures (60 percent) and have total or split control of 38 of the 50 (76 percent.)
That dominance — and what it means to the policy and political calculations and prospects for both parties at the national level — is the single most overlooked and underappreciated story line of President Obama's time in office. Since 2009, Republicans have made massive and unprecedented gains at the state level, gains that played a central role in, among other things, handing control of the U.S. House back to the GOP in the 2010 election.
Liberal super PAC Progress Kentucky is at the center of controversy after a Democratic strategist in the state said activists affiliated with the group bragged to him that they secretly recorded the audiotape of Mitch McConnell’s strategy meeting that was leaked to Mother Jones this week. If true, they could face criminal sanctions. The treasurer of the super PAC resigned this afternoon.
Now, it’s worth stating that we don’t know for sure that Progress Kentucky produced the tape or is involved in any way — this is just the word of one Democratic strategist, who has an interest in distancing his party from the group.
But it’s not the first time the super PAC has gotten into trouble. In late February, they made a series of offensive “jokes” about McConnell’s wife on Twitter, attacking her for being Chinese-American. Even Ashley Judd felt compelled to issue a public condemnation.
But there’s something important you should know about Progress Kentucky: No one took its members very seriously in Kentucky, even before the slurs or the secret tape. I know this because I once quoted Curtis Morrison, who was one of what appears to be only two or three people associated with the group (he resigned in March), and a number of liberal activists in the state told me to never do it again.
The campaign manager for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s reelection bid insisted Wednesday that the Kentucky senator’s office was bugged, comparing the recording of a high-level strategy meeting to the work of the Nazi secret police.
Mother Jones, a liberal magazine, published audio Tuesday of a McConnell campaign meeting in which actress Ashley Judd was discussed. The senator has said that the office must have been bugged by the “political left.”
“This is Gestapo kind of scare tactics and we’re not going to stand for it,” Jesse Benton told radio host Mike Huckabee on Wednesday.The FBI is trying to find out what happened. But it's worth remembering a similar incident seven years ago, where one campaign leaked recordings of its opponent's private conversations. As it turned out, there was no bugging or any other illegal activity.
The campaign of the Democratic candidate for governor, Phil Angelides, said Tuesday that it was the source of audio files containing impolitic remarks by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Those remarks were the subject of a front page article last week in The Los Angeles Times, which led to an apology by the governor.
Mr. Angelides’s campaign manager, Cathy Calfo, said at a news conference in Sacramento that the files had been culled from a Web site accessible by the public and that campaign staff members had not trespassed into a secure area of the governor’s office.
CNET added some detail:
...
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Ms. Calfo called the Schwarzenegger camp’s characterization of the episode “politically motivated” and “outrageous” and added, “We believe these audio files accessed through a public Web site requiring no password are a matter of public record.”
The controversy may center on the design of the Web server called speeches.gov.ca.gov. The California government used it to post MP3 files of Schwarzenegger's speeches in a directory structure that looked like "http://speeches.gov.ca.gov/dir/06-21.htm.htm". (That Web page is now offline, but saved in Google's cache.)
A source close to Angelides told CNET News.com on Tuesday that it was possible to "chop" off the Web links and visit the higher-level "http://speeches.gov.ca.gov/dir/" directory, which had the controversial audio recording publicly viewable. No password was needed, the source said.
Today the Tax Foundation is releasing the 2013 edition of Facts and Figures: How Does Your State Compare?, a pocket-sized guide ranking all fifty states on forty different measures of tax and fiscal policy. Topics include income tax rates, business tax climates, and excise taxes on products like beer, wine, cigarettes, and gasoline. Facts & Figures is edited by Tax Foundation economist Scott Drenkard.
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Each of the forty measures has its best and worst performers. Most favorably ranked states include Alaska, with the lowest combined state and local tax burden; Wyoming, with the most attractive state business climate; and Tennessee, with the lowest state debt per capita. Least favorably ranked states include California, with the highest marginal income tax rate; Kentucky, with the highest excise tax on wine; and New York, with the highest gasoline tax.
