Defending homes

A determined group from northern California took to the sidewalks of Market St. in San Francisco today to demand that the U.S. Army Engineers honor their obligations to the Pomo tribe and rein in Caltrans. See previous post.

Singing raises spirits.

Priscilla Hunter from the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians spoke with the media.

A few demonstrators blocked doors.

Taking a stand can be a tiring business. ***Around a corner, a few blocks away, another protest was going on.

The outcry from the dispossessed was not really that different.

For these tenants as much as the Pomos, the legal system seems rigged against them.

Bulldozing Native history

Another day, another demonstration in San Francisco to deter official malfeasance. After watching Caltrans bungle construction of the new "signature" Bay Bridge for 25 years, it is not hard to believe that they've bungled again and run afoul of their own rules for protection of historic Native sites while constructing a highway bypass near Willits in Northern California. Pomo Indians are coming to town to protest.

This ABC news report is remarkably clear on what is taking place.

Local tribes say seven Indian villages once dotted the Little Lake Valley all over the area being torn up by construction along the six mile freeway route. Then in the mid-1800's European settlers changed everything. Hunter says, "They brought the army in and took our land and killed our people."

The native people who survived were forced out, but the ground around Willits is full of things they left behind -- 5,000 years of history protected by federal law. Now Indian artifacts are turning up all over the construction site and on Caltrans property that's being dug up to comply with environmental requirements.

... The local tribes say Caltrans is playing catch up with sacred history because the staff did not do an adequate job finding or protecting Native American sites before construction started last year. Fitzgerral said Caltrans "hired all these experts and they failed."

If they can build a bridge whose fundamental construction flaws are still coming to light now that it is open, it is no great surprise that they don't follow the rules about preservation of tribal history.

Torture travel interrupted by popular eruption

Erudite partner was supposed to fly to Mexico this week to talk about torture with philosophy and education students at the UNAM -- the National Autonomous University in Mexico City. She's not going; her hosts are teachers of education students and, like much of the country, they'll be on strike the day she was to give her talk. The short video from AlJazeera+ narrated by our friend Francesca Fiorentini gives a sense of how high inflamed feelings are running in Mexico and around the world. As well they should.

But Rebecca Gordon is still actively spreading the word about torture here at home. Tonight, Monday November 17 at 7 pm, she is talking at Folio Books on 24th Street in Noe Valley.

On December 10 (that's a Wednesday) she's participating in a national webinar along with Professor Juan Mendez, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, sponsored by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture to mark Human Rights Day. Registration required.

Morning glory in the MIssion

Sunrise over the BART plaza at 24th Street this morning. Too busy to write today. Back tomorrow.

Reflections on law and U.S. history

It turns out Louisiana -- and thus New Orleans -- really is different. During the bookapalooza, Rebecca spoke at the law school at Loyola. Our hosts gave us a strange little gift -- it looks almost like a children's book -- from the Louisiana Bar Foundation.

So I actually read it. Apparently the civil law in the Bayou State is

almost as different from the rest of American law as the metric system is from the English system of measurement.

Because of its French history, the state has inherited a Civil Code that expressed the drive of the French bourgeoisie to upend and replace all vestiges of feudal and religious ordinances that encumbered private property. That's one way of describing what the French Revolution of 1789 was all about. By the time an embattled France sold off Louisiana to President Thomas Jefferson in 1803, a civil code expressing the bourgeoisie's optimistic rationalism had become the region's law. Proponents of this sort of Code, called "civilians" in this little book, look to statutes to deduce and order how citizens (male property owners, really) ought to organize their affairs. The rest of U.S. law which derives from the English common law tradition, building a frame for legal behavior inductively out of accumulated generations of particular instances or "cases."

The civilians' debate with common lawyers about the best way to make law reflects their antithetical assumptions about the power of generalized rules over men's lives. These assumptions, in turn, are linked to the civilian's preference for deduction and the common lawyer's attachment to induction as ways of reasoning about legal issues. The civilian, unless he assumed that the code stated generally valid standards, could not deduce a result by manipulating its provisions. By contrast, a common lawyer would not bother with close analysis of individual precedents if he thought their meaning could be captured for all time in a terse code provision. The differing assumptions about the power of inductive and deductive reasoning are linked to contrasting assumptions about the unfolding of history. As we have noted already, a civilian must believe that history is orderly enough to permit terse generalization. A common lawyer is much less confident than his civilian counterpart about the predictability of history.

Most of us are so steeped in a world shaped by the common law's assumptions that utilitarianism and pragmatism come naturally. Might this be a different country if the ideological assumptions of the Code Civil -- the belief that legislators can prescribe a right society -- had shaped our laws?

UN review puts US on the hot seat about torture treaty

Over the last two days, US State Department representatives have tried to answer questions from a United Nations expert panel in Geneva about our compliance with our obligations under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (often called CAT).

Their job hasn't been easy. It's hard to put lipstick on a pig.

Legal advocates who have long represented Guantanamo prisoners and other human casualaties of our global war on our fears raised the resort to torture the Prez has admitted, the use of brutal force-feeding on inmates, and indefinite captivity.

Advocates for US domestic prisoners charged that widespread use of solitary confinement violates our treaty obligations. So does police brutality.

Numerous civil society groups who know perfectly well that they are not heard within the United States -- gays subjected to "reparative therapy," transgender people, homeless citizens, Chicago youth members of We Charge Genocide (pictured) -- seized the opportunity to make their case.

Mike Brown's parents came from Ferguson to testify to the brutality of militarized law enforcement.

The best account of the two-day hearing I've seen is from Newsweek. Extensive excerpts follow:

• Where does the U.S. think it is restricted by its CAT obligations?
  Alessio Bruni, one of the committee’s experts, asked the U.S. representatives to elaborate on whether the government believes the prohibition on torture applies to its officials “abroad without geographic limitation.” But in answering the question, the U.S. reiterated its vague position.
  
  Representatives responded that the CIA no longer operates secret detention facilities and clarified that the U.S. understands the CAT obligations to only apply “where the U.S. acts as a governmental authority,” by which they meant on U.S. soil, in Cuba, and on ships and aircraft.

• What parts of CAT does the U.S. adhere to abroad?
  The experts cited instances in which the U.S. violated CAT abroad, and asked for clarification “as to whether the U.S. considers all aspects of the convention to be applicable.”
  
  Bruni wondered how the U.S. was able to reconcile the force-feeding of Guantanamo prisoners with the terms of the treaty, and how it could claim it was not operating secret facilities when it fails to register detainees, calling registration “a first step to prevent torture since his or her identity and location are a sort of deterrent against any form of ill treatment, which needs secrecy to be carried out with total impunity.”

• Has anyone been prosecuted for torture?
  Since the U.S. last reported to the committee in 2006, more evidence of violations have been reported by the media or alleged by human rights groups. But the U.S. has done little to demonstrate that it is holding the top officials who gave the orders to torture accountable. Groups like the Advocates for U.S. Torture Prosecutions say that the United States is shielding those responsible, which is in direct violation of its CAT obligations.
  
  “It’s is at the heart of everything,” Deborah Popowski, a clinical instructor at the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School and a member of Advocates for U.S. Torture Prosecutions said in an interview with Newsweek.

• Do U.S. domestic prison conditions align with CAT?
  The committee brought up the U.S. prison system and inquired as to how current practices can be justified in light of the country’s CAT obligations. Among the concerns were the use of solitary confinement, the treatment of minors and those with mental health disorders in particular, the lack of accountability for prison officials who have been accused of sexual abuse, and the sentencing of those who have committed nonviolent offenses to life without parole.
  
  U.S. representative Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Bitkower said that solitary confinement is not imposed with the intention of inflicting psychological harm on inmates. The U.S. could not provide a number of inmates in solitary confinement.
  
  The U.S. representatives also touched upon minors in prison, saying that 7,400 juveniles were in adult prisons in 2011 and followed with the claim that sexual assault is higher in juvenile facilities than in adult prisons. The delegation also assured the committee that if states do not adhere to federal standards regarding the sexual abuse of prisoners they lose funding.
  

• What about police brutality and militarization at home?
  Jens Modvig, another expert serving on the committee, asked whether anything was being done to prevent police from using excessive force or if any steps were being taken to review the distribution of military equipment to local law enforcement, especially in light of the events that occurred over the summer in Ferguson, Missouri or the prolonged gun violence in Chicago.
  
  Voicing concerns about the treatment of black people in the U.S. is a rare occurrence at the U.N.
  
  As the U.S. delegation skirted around these questions about police misconduct, youth from Chicago staged a silent protest to commemorate those killed by law enforcement.

The United States Human Rights Network took the lead in this country on organizing community groups for this periodic review.

Friday cat blogging

As colder weather arrives, Morty hunkers down amid the cushions.

From the 'hood: life amid death

Over Dia de los Muertos, a lovely memorial to Gloria Anzaldua hung in the window of a gallery on a corner.

Near Buena Vista/Horace Mann school where he had studied, the family of this murdered young man asked us to speak up in his memory. Details here.

Our local oracle posts his wisdom on the parking signs.

Sending a message; throwing down a challenge

After an election won, in some part, through successful Republican efforts to prevent African Americans, Latinos, poor people and young people from voting, this seems a statement.

President Barack Obama announced 19 recipients Monday of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, including three civil rights workers killed by the KKK in Mississippi in 1964.

... The medal will be awarded on Nov. 24 to the families of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were killed on June 21, 1964, near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Clarion Ledger, Jackson, MS

Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered while organizing black citizens to vote in the town of Philadelphia in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

Another president took notice of those murders. Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 campaign at the Neshoba County Fair. Former Times columnist Bob Herbert described the scene:

The murders were among the most notorious in American history. They constituted Neshoba County’s primary claim to fame when Reagan won the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1980. The case was still a festering sore at that time. Some of the conspirators were still being protected by the local community. And white supremacy was still the order of the day.

That was the atmosphere and that was the place that Reagan chose as the first stop in his general election campaign. The campaign debuted at the Neshoba County Fair in front of a white and, at times, raucous crowd of perhaps 10,000, chanting: “We want Reagan! We want Reagan!”

... Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

The current President undoubtedly knows he is making a statement for our times by including the murdered civil rights workers among the medal recipients.

Veterans Day 2014: how many more?

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimated 22 veterans died of suicide every day in 2010, according to a 2013 report that reviewed suicide rates in 21 states between 1999 and 2011.

The number is likely even higher. Not every state tracks whether a deceased person was a veteran. Even that most recent and comprehensive federal review of veterans suicide was missing complete data from large states such as Texas and California. The review had only partial data from Ohio.

... an investigative journalism project by college students, found veterans committed suicide at more than twice the rate of the civilian population. The review of 48 states between 2005 and 2011 found 30 suicides for every 100,000 veterans compared with 14 suicides for every 100,000 civilians.

Veterans who died of suicide tended to be older, between 54 and 59 years old, than those in the civilian population who committed suicide, who averaged 43 years old at death, according to the VA report.

Jessie Balmert, Ohio Gannet News reporter

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) states that the nation’s homeless veterans are predominantly male, with roughly 8% being female. The majority are single; live in urban areas; and suffer from mental illness, alcohol and/or substance abuse, or co-occurring disorders. About 12% of the adult homeless population are veterans.

Roughly 40% of all homeless veterans are African American or Hispanic, despite only accounting for 10.4% and 3.4% of the U.S. veteran population, respectively.

Homeless veterans are younger on average than the total veteran population. Approximately 9% are between the ages of 18 and 30, and 41% are between the ages of 31 and 50. Conversely, only 5% of all veterans are between the ages of 18 and 30, and less than 23% are between 31 and 50.

America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, the Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq (OEF/OIF), and the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America. ...

...the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates that 49,933 veterans are homeless on any given night.

National Coalition for Homeless Veterans

We honor veterans by not making more of them.

Belief stripped down; essences remain, or do they?

In an extraordinary opinion piece in the New York Times, historian and commentator James Carroll, a faithful if questioning adherent of the Roman Catholic Church, ponders Pope Francis' broad appeal and the contemporary vocation of his church. He wonders where people from his branch of the Christian tradition can locate spiritual, intellectual and moral authority in these times.

More than a century ago, the church was thrown for a loop by the mind of modernity, and even now struggles to assimilate the established ideas that change is essential to the human condition; that truth is always seen from a particular point of view; that all language about God falls short of God.

Carroll propounds answers for himself: he takes seriously the witness of Jesus, both as God and as a man with and for others, especially the poor and suffering, and finds meaning in the community of humankind. That all sounds a little vague compared to the baroque edifice of Vatican courts and curia, of rubrics and ceremonies, but it works for him.

This echoed a book I've been reading which explores another spiritual terrain. This book throws its author into a somewhat similar space despite exploring what might seem different problems. Here too intellectual inquiry fails to deliver certainty but an uncertain faith remains. In Feminist Edges of the Qur'an, Professor Aysha A. Hidayatullah describes the rigorous intellectual struggle of Muslim feminist scholars to elaborate readings of Islam's revealed text that affirm justice and equality for women. She sympathetically, but cogently, points out the limitations of their readings. Yet she holds out hope for women and men within Islam to reconcile contemporary understandings of justice with their tradition.

I imagine that for many Muslim women, it is their belief in the divinity of the Qur'an that so passionately motivates them to try to redeem the text from sexist interpretations in the first place. The starting point is that God is just, and that the Qur'an is the word of God, so then the Qur'an must also be just (in a way that upholds the absolute equality of men and women).

But if, as it turns out, we cannot be sure that the text upholds the justice we seek, then we are left to question whether the Qur'an is really a divine text. If we do not question the divinity of the Qur'an, then we are left to question whether God is just (in a manner that upholds female-male equality). Both questions are, of course, deeply disturbing, even unbearable for some ...

There have been times in the past when I have feared that questioning the certainty of the Qur'an's justice for women would send me headlong into an abyss of uncertainty that would inevitably result in the end of my faith and my demise as a Muslim feminist. It was unthinkable to admit that feminist exegetical thought had reached dead ends in some places. It was only after allowing myself to ask questions that were once unthinkable, reassessing many of the most basic principles of feminist exegetical thought, that I have been able to look into the abyss of uncertainty and see it as a place of life and not only death. ...

Embracing "an unknowing" is always a risk, as I am confronted with "a beyond that I cannot ever fully construct, author, or control," but this confrontation might also be the best way to think the unthinkable...In the journey of writing this book, I have come to see uncertainty as a mercy in the face of the daunting finality of certainty and the permanence of its limits. ....

This is an almost unthinkably brave assertion in the current context in the United States. Ordinary Muslim citizens have to worry about recurrent abuse and even physical threats from bigoted or ignorant neighbors. Muslim-haters are quick to try to co-opt the idea of "liberating" Islamic women to attack the religion. Public honesty about spiritual uncertainty might seem to betray family and community under siege. But Hidayatullah seems impelled to go where inquiry leads her, without repudiating her faith. I hope there will be more from this scholar ...

Full disclosure: Hidayatullah teaches at the same university where my erudite partner works; I have had the privilege of hearing her speak on these issues.

Catalan independence?

News media report that one million residents of the Catalonia region of Spain have participated in an unsanctioned, non-binding referendum on independence today. That is, they've been part of a highly organized, non-violence protest led by civil society organizations.

I don't claim to understand much about the drive for Catalan independence. The region is more industrialized and more prosperous than much of the country. Many people believe they pay more into the central state than they get back. The area has a somewhat distinct history from some other parts of Spain having resisted fascism longer and been more viciously repressed by last century's Franco dictatorship. Or so Catalans say.

The BBC tries to explain the area's strong independence sentiment:

There is also a pervasive sense that the central government never listens to Catalans and treats them with contempt - menyspreu, a much-repeated [Catalan] word here.

And the Catalan language really is distinct from either Spanish or French. Signs are often in both Spanish and Catalan or even just Catalan. This banner we spotted on a public building in Girona last year reveals something of the contradictions in the situation.

Pro-independence Catalans very much want to be part of Europe and are willing to express themselves in English to promote the cause -- the cause of maintaining local distinctiveness. I don't think that Catalans are alone in our global society in struggling to navigate these contradictions. In fact, I suspect they are more sophisticated than most of us.

A reminder that what's coming could be worse

It's a precarious place, the Big Island of Hawaii.

"Ultimately anything we build on the volcano will be consumed by Kilauea..." Hawaiian volcanoes are not like any images you may have formed of the destruction of Pompeii by the unexpected eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. When they erupt, the destruction moves slowly. But their lava just keeps on pushing inexorably toward the sea. The video is very much worth your time.

H/t Hattie who is watching and chronicling the current flow into the Puna region from an adjacent slope outside the danger zone.

Dumb and dumber

The Prez is sending more U.S. troops into harm's way in Iraq. What's he going to do when someone blows them up? For that matter, do we even have a clear enough understanding of who is friend and who is foe to figure out who the bomber was?

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is authorizing the U.S. military to deploy up to 1,500 more troops to Iraq as part of the mission to combat the Islamic State group. ...

The White House says the troops won't serve in a combat role, but will train, advise and assist Iraqi military and Kurdish forces fighting IS.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest says Obama has also authorized the additional personnel to operate at Iraqi military facilities outside Baghdad and Erbil. Until now, U.S. troops have been operating a joint operation center setup with Iraqi forces there.

AP

Last thing the guy needs is another war; he's already got one in Washington.

San Francisco: we revert to the mean

Going forward, it seems I will be represented in the California legislature by the best Assemblyman that real estate developer and tech money could buy.

This will be a bit of a shock. San Francisco has long been fortunate to produce quite a few politicians motivated by some necessity in addition to their personal advancement -- especially gays and people of color. They were individuals who couldn't emerge from anywhere else. Our retiring Assemblyman, Tom Ammiano, has been the finest exemplar of the type. Oh, we've sent off our share of colorful crooks (looking at you, Willie Brown) and the US Senate's sanctimonious grande dame (our former mayor Diane Feinstein). But these characters were at least interesting, even when doing evil.

In this election we've apparently elected the little man of no accomplishment but great ambition who sucked up to the money. How ordinary.

Chart by way of Mission Local which, despite being some kind of offshoot of the SF Chronicle, occasionally produces interesting neighborhood journalism.

Correction: Mission Local was formerly a project of the UC Berkeley Journalism School; now is on its own and asks our support.

Friday cat blogging

This bold creature seems to think I've intruded on his/her 'hood. Encountered in the course of my San Francisco precinct photography project.

One more anomolous election item

Spotted in a San Francisco precinct

The one group that appears to have shifted significantly compared to the last midterm were members of “other religions” — Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, etc. In 2010, three out of four voted Democratic, while this time around it was two out of three. And given that their proportion of the vote increased from 8 percent to 11 percent, that was not a trivial number of votes.

You’re wrong, however, if you think that this shift came from Jewish voters disillusioned with the Democratic Party. Jews voted Democratic by 65-33 yesterday, as compared to 66-31 in 2010. Its the other Others who shifted.

Mark Silk

What's this about? Members of those "other religions" usually qualify as Those People among Republicans.

Frustratingly, mainline Protestants and evangelicals are lumped together in these findings -- though since most are older white people, both groups likely voted Republican, probably at somewhat different rates.

Election afterthoughts

So I read a lot of pundits today and I learned very little.

Click to enlarge.

Yes -- turnout was very low and the electorate skewed old. Because the Boomer demographic bulge is moving into the over 65 category, we can expect that segment to get somewhat larger than in past elections. But on Tuesday this, the most white, segment of the electorate was seriously disproportionally represented and called the tune. In 2012, young voters more nearly equaled the proportion of elders; this time the young were one third as large a fraction of the whole. And those older voters don't like Democrats in power or even their own kids.

... what this represents is a backlash against a change that is coming anyway – a vote by the older generation against the America that the younger generation seems to represent and want. Or a rising up of white America against the browns and blacks.

Andrew Sullivan

Communities of color still voted for Dems, but this election showed some weaknesses among those supportive constituencies that may point to greater future problems than the normal low midterm election turnout.

Even among African-Americans, the target of highly visible voter suppression measures, the GOP percentage increased from 6% in 2012 to 10% in 2014. Among Latinos, the GOP vote share jumped from 27% to 35%. And most startling of all, among Asian-Americans Republicans improved from 26% in 2012 to 49% in 2014. Add all these numbers up, and they begin to matter.

Ed Kilgore

Republicans have been allowing their high profile bigots to drive off any people of color who might be be attracted to rapacious "free market" policies. They elected some new prize specimens yesterday; think Ernst of Iowa and Cotton of Arkansas. But even numerically small moves toward the GOP threaten the Democratic coalition.

I didn't need anyone to tell me why so many of us are in a "throw the bums out" mode: we are assured that we are in an "economic recovery," but somehow our prospects and those of our young people feel as if they've gotten worse, not better, since we elected a Democratic president in 2008. And we are not deceived. No one except the plutocrats is really doing well.

This is not particularly President Obama's fault; it is not even entirely the Democratic Party's fault, though the one percent certainly have their Dem accomplices. Republicans have done everything they could to ensure that the government failed to give people an economic leg up. But this underlying, appropriate, sense that people have been fooled sure made it easy for the billionaires to channel popular discontent against a leader for whom many citizens harbor racial disdain.

How dissatisfied was the electorate? According to the national exit poll, fifty-nine per cent of voters said that they were angry or disappointed with the Obama Administration. Seven in ten said that the economy is in bad shape, and just one in three said it is improving. Sixty-five per cent of respondents said that the country was seriously off-track. That last figure is twelve points higher than the equivalent finding in the exit poll taken during the 2012 Presidential election.

John Cassidy

We're a very unhappy (very rich, very privileged) country and on Tuesday Republicans and billionaires took advantage. So there we are.

It doesn't have to be this way. But getting better results from our democracy is going to take work.

A good result amidst the bloodbath

Shanthi Gonzales was handily elected to the thankless post of member of the Oakland School Board from District 6 yesterday. She won the old fashioned way: she talked with every voter she could find for six months; she won endorsements from organizations that care about the schools, especially the teacher's union; and she rallied her friends and neighbors to spread the word about her to voters. There wasn't any big money in this one, so she took it with nearly 60 percent of the vote.

Why do I care? Because I've known Shanthi ever since she was a young person in public school campaigning to push back against the wave of racist state initiatives in California in mid-1990s. (California looked more like North Carolina and Georgia do today in those days than we wish to remember, suffering election after election driven by older white voters' fear of demographic change.)

Now she gets to try to make some of our suffering public schools work.

And the winners are ...

On this nasty election night, it seems appropriate to share my friend Sarah Lazare's insightful piece from Common Dreams:

In an election marked by record outside spending, including "dark money" sources, a clear winner has already emerged: the corporate television stations making windfall profits from political advertising.

Cable news stations have nearly doubled their sales in political ads since the last midterm elections in 2010, according to figures from Kanta Media ad tracking firm, which were provided to Reuters. TV stations across the U.S. will bring in approximately $2.4 billion from local, state, and federal elections ads, they report. These numbers are just slightly behind the 2012 presidential election, which saw $2.9 billion spent on TV ads.

A recent Pew Research poll finds that, for local TV stations—which remain one of the sources people in the U.S. depend on most for their political news—the 2014 elections could turn out to be one of the most profitable ever.

According to Cecilia Kang and Matea Gold writing for the Washington Post: "This year’s deluge of political ads is being driven largely by super PACs and other independent groups seeking to shape the hard-fought battle over control of the U.S. Senate."

An estimated 908,000 TV ads regarding the U.S. Senate elections aired through late October, the Center for Public Integrity reports. In seven key Senate races, dark money groups are behind 20 percent of all TV ads. A new analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project finds that only 26 percent of these Senate ads are positive.

Michael Beckel, reporter at the Center for Public Integrity, told Common Dreams that the 2010 Citizens United ruling was a "game changer" for political campaign spending. "That ruling has enabled non-party groups to become ever more prominent and we have seen a proliferation of super PACs and politically active nonprofits that endorse candidates and sling mud in attack ads. This election is on pace to be most expensive midterm in history."

TV stations are mandated to offer candidates their lowest rates, but the same rule does not apply for outside organizations. Therefore, the proliferation of super PACs is boosting profits, because TV stations can charge them more for their ads. "Some news stations have been airing additional news programs in order sell more ads," said Beckel. "Selling political ads has been very lucrative."

Ahead of the 2014 elections, media companies bought up local stations, anticipating these windfall profits. This resulted in "massive" media consolidation, contributing to the national trend of growing conglomerates and a "narrowing" news perspective, argues Reed Richardson in the Nation.

"To elect our nation’s leaders, wealthy 1-percenters and mega-corporations have been given carte blanche to secretly fund organizations that spend obscene amounts of money advertising on TV stations owned by other mega-corporations and wealthy 1-percenters," writes Richardson. "In short, our political finance system has become little more than an income redistribution model for the ultra-rich and a no-lose proposition for big media corporations."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

I suspect, when the dust settles that careful students of elections will discover that television advertising has declining importance in determining winners and losers. The medium is losing its dominance. Concurrently, there is so much money floating around that well-financed campaigns can run out of useful things to do with it.

But for both political consultants and broadcasters, this is where the easy profits are to be found.