Halloween is a bigger deal than the election

When you live and work in a big city and don't have children, it is almost possible to be oblivious to Halloween. Almost. But that gap in an urban dweller's acculturation can be quickly cured by a visit to nearby suburbs to walk precincts or otherwise visit where most of the electorate live. Every time I work an election, I rediscover that these things take place right after this semi-holiday and marvel at the creativity and energy many folks unleash.

The Financial Times' resident cultural anthropologist (and derivative decoder) Gillian Tett is apparently living for awhile in the United States and she marvels at our Halloween:

US Halloween spending is projected at $8bn, more than the sum being spent on the 2012 election

Yes, I know that for anyone outside the US, particularly over the age of 12, it might seem peculiar that a pumpkin-focused festival could provoke much interest. And I daresay there are still a few kid-free – or politics-obsessed – people here in the US who have somehow failed to notice the orange buzz.

But for anyone with a family, or who is plugged into a social media network, it is almost impossible to ignore the looming shadow of Halloween. Walk along the streets of New York, and you are regaled with specialist shops selling ghoulish masks and costumes. Hail a cab, and the back seat television screen will proclaim that the city is celebrating Halloween all month. ...

In the US’s postwar years, Halloween was an event primarily focused on children. But in the past two decades it has expanded fast and this year, according to the National Retail Federation, a record 72 per cent of the population will celebrate (up from 69 per cent last year). It will cost Americans $80 per person on average, and total spending is projected at $8bn. Astonishingly, that is more than the sum being spent on the US election (estimated to be some $5.8bn right now). “By the time Halloween rolls around each year, it’s safe to say Americans have already spent two months preparing for one of the fastest-growing and most widely loved holidays of the year,” says Matthew Shay, NRF president. Yes, you read that right: two months.

Like Tett, I had no idea.

But I can share a few recent snapshots from (mostly) the 'burbs where Halloween flourishes:


We don't seem to know whether this is a harvest festival or a remembrance of the dead -- but much of its observance is decidedly cheerful.


The mere display of the orange autumn fruit -- yes, this squash is a fruit -- is mostly too tame, though they can be lovely.


Lawns sprout rising skeletons.


Some of our ghosts are ghoulish.


Others announce themselves cheerfully.


This shot is urban, spotted several weeks ago at dawn. Happy Halloween, wherever you live!.

Come on Californians -- this isn't working …

Or worth the insane cost! From the Wall Street Journal Law Blog today:

A federal appeals court set aside the capital sentence of California’s longest-serving death row inmate on Monday. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit tracked that of a lower court, which found that a lawyer for Douglas Ray Stankewitz failed to investigate circumstances leading up to the murder of Theresa Greybeal – namely Mr. Stankewitz’s abusive childhood and long history of substance abuse.

Mr. Stankewitz, a Native American, has been on death row in California since 1978, when he was convicted in the kidnapping and murder of Ms. Greybeal. (He was one of the first people sentenced to death after the state reinstated capital punishment in 1978. Thirteen people have been executed since then.)

In a 2-1 decision Monday, the Ninth Circuit upheld a court order that Mr. Stankewitz’s death sentence be vacated unless California officials seek to retry the capital phase of his case within 90 days or resentence him to life without parole.

“We are faced, however, with a situation in which counsel’s failure to investigate and present mitigating evidence cannot be rationalized on any tactical ground,” Judge Raymond C. Fisher wrote in the opinion, saying Mr. Stankewitz’s lawyer at the time failed to conduct the “most basic investigation” of his client’s background.

My emphasis. Let's just vote for Prop. 34 and skip the rigamarole.

Romney campaign shows itself clueless

Now I have more insight into why I keep getting these mailers:

All targeting carries the risk of missing the mark, and there are regularly voters whose actual attitudes defy the predictions of statistical models. But regular misfires by Republicans -- which at best only waste resources and at worst mobilize Democrats who might not have voted otherwise, or provoke a backlash among those still persuadable -- illustrate a gap between how the right and left practice politics in the 21st century. Contrary to the wishful intimations of ... Post and Times stories, while the groups on the right could conceivably catch up with Obama and his allies in the scope and funding of their ground-level activities, in terms of sophistication they lag too far behind to catch up in 2012.

Sasha Issenberg

I sure hope this assessment is correct. That I -- a long time registered Democratic dyke in San Francisco -- have been getting Romney fund appeals all year certainly suggests it might be. When you make yourself ignorant of science, as contemporary Republicans have, you are tying your own hands.

Issenberg's article is fascinating if you want to understand how data-rich campaigns work to get out the vote these days. I'm lucky enough to be using some of this stuff in our current campaign. After the election I'll try to summarize what this old time field warrior learned about contemporary possibilities -- and what I think we all still have to learn.

Storms near and far

Two years ago, when the San Francisco Giants won the World Series, like so many others I ran out into the crowds, simply enjoying the raucous mood. Last night, there was a whiff of something in the air that warned us off. There were fireworks, horns honking, much shrieking -- but it didn't feel quite right.

The headline in the morning paper (where this picture was published) catches the scene: Delirium, Destruction in SF. I can't say whether the heavy police presence around the corner helped or hurt. But the scene felt wrong.

So we didn't go out -- until we heard loud bangs at the back of the house and on the roof. Somehow a group of young people had climbed over from somewhere, tried to get down in our yard, broken through a fence and back gate. One girl had fallen/leaped from about 16 feet high and landed on her back on the pavement. She was lying there moaning. The others were hurriedly trying to get away or standing over the girl. We tried to keep her down, but her only desire was to have her friends drag her away and eventually they did. Let's hope there were no broken bones or permanent damage from a moment of delirium.

I nailed up the broken gate. Destruction and delirium happens.***Meanwhile the East Coast waits for Hurricane Sandy. Let's hope (government-organized!) preparations preserve life and limb.

Sandy will disrupt the election, though how much we won't know for awhile. But I can testify what it is like to be working on an election through a major earthquake. In 1989 we were in the final stages when the Loma Prieta shake knocked down a section of the Bay Bridge and several freeways, killing 63 people. San Franciscans seemed numb in its aftermath. It took a week to meet individually with all the people working to get out our vote, share experiences, allow ourselves to settle. We forged on, but it was a struggle to overcome inertia -- not what you want in mid-campaign.

We had three weeks. Folks working on East Coast campaigns have only a week. I am thinking especially of the efforts for marriage equality in Maryland and Maine. They almost certainly depend on volunteer energy. Let's hope Sandy doesn't knock these folks off a promising track.

Election Day should be a Big Disruptive Deal

Does this look like voter suppression?

Phil Keisling, a former Secretary of State for Oregon -- that means he ran the state's electoral apparatus -- thinks he has the answer to raising voter turnout. And he is certain he knows that what impedes voting:

In 48 states, there’s a far more effective voter suppression strategy than requiring photo IDs at the polls. It’s requiring polling places, period.

In 1998, Oregon voters decided to abolish these Norman Rockwell-esque patheons to civic virtue - and force the government to send their ballots directly to them. (Washington switched fully to this system in 2012).

The result? Consistently high - often, the nation’s highest - turn out rates of registered voters. If all 50 states used this system, at least 20 million additional votes could be cast nationwide each two-year election cycle- and perhaps as many as 50 million.

While I don't doubt having the government send a ballot to registered voters increases turnout, especially among people who would probably vote anyway, I wish enthusiasts like Mr. Keisling would acknowledge the weakness implicit in this, called by some political scientists "convenience voting."

First off: note that important word registered. That's where the true voter suppression takes place: citizens are forced to jump through bureaucratic hoops (of smaller or lesser extent depending on the politics of their state and locality) just to get into the registered voting pool. If you are a citizen, you should be able to vote. Period. More on this topic here.

Also, universal vote-by-mail -- and universal vote-from-your-home-computer when it arrives as I am sure it will -- undermines the experience of collective civic participation that is central to democratic citizenship. If voting is something we do alone, whenever we get around to it, how much sense of solidarity do we feel with our community, with all that messy, sometimes fractious, group of folks who make up our democratic polity? Not much.

The era of highest turnout in U.S. history was the latter half of the 19th century when

political machines created grassroots organizations to mobilize their supporters. While much of the folklore about this era focuses on the abuses of voting buying and other corruption, it is instructive to understand that modern political scientists regard these sorts of grassroots organizations as the most effective means by which to get people to vote.

There wasn't any convenience voting in those days: people had to be got to polls on Election Day. The day itself was a Big Disruptive Deal! Some jurisdictions closed the bars; others opened them early. Nobody thought citizenship, doing the voting thing, was a minor inconvenience in what was otherwise a normal work day.

If we were serious about democratic participation, Election Day would be a holiday. We would create civic festivals to celebrate our enthusiasm for our democratic exercise of the franchise. Want a parade? March around on Election Day. We would also implement universal, adult citizen voter registration. We might even imitate the Australians who fine (lightly) people who don't vote (though it is perfectly legal for individuals to secretly spoil their ballots if they don't like the choices.)

Voting shouldn't only be made easier -- it should be made more universal, more collective, more prominent in our lives. (That's not the same as saying we should be more afflicted by campaign ads. After a fairly low bar, those are about how much money campaigns can corral, not about democracy.) When a voting reform is suggested, let's stop looking at whether it can "increase turnout" and look, instead, at whether it aims toward increased civic participation. If it doesn't increase social solidarity -- the awareness we are all part of the same diverse country -- it is not about democratic reform. It is just tinkering at the edges.***Off to another day of getting out the vote for Prop. 34.

Best effing Yes on 34 video yet

Off to get out our voters!

Listen to the women!

… if I have to listen to one more gray-faced man with a two-dollar haircut explain to me what rape is, I'm gonna lose my mind. … Tina Fey

Apparently the right wingers are freaking out about this one. I think she's adorable.

Friday cat blogging: Morty endorses

Morty has finally decided to leave the thinning ranks of undecided voters.

He's had a hard time making up his mind. Both candidates seem to be dog people. Morty doesn't like dogs. He does not easily warm to people who like dogs. Dogs are to be intimidated, or failing that, escaped from and taunted.

However on balance, this one seems to like the animal he lives with. The other one treats its animal like a piece of furniture. Of course furniture doesn't poop, but apparently that fellow didn't anticipate this fact of nature. That's not very smart of him.

Morty would prefer that his humans stop paying attention to either of these guys and get back to their proper role: paying attention to him.

An exclusive club

These guys really do not believe adult women are full human beings. Human life consists of people with their plumbing and zygotes?

One more thing on the San Francisco ballot

I think this is a student journalism project. Yes on G. Via Mission Local.

Why the election matters ...

... if they win, we can wave goodbye to not only a woman's right to choose, but quite possibly legal access to hormonal contraceptives as well. If we win, Roe will likely remain in force, but they can continue to constrict access to abortions in many states.

... this election is like a bet that we've got a 2/3 chance of winning, but if we win, the duck comes down and gives us $100, while if we lose, we lose the house, the car, and the retirement fund.

low-tech cyclist

Let's do away with voter registration

Monday was the last day to register to vote in California. Workers from the local Department of Elections were out during the commute shouting to passersby: "Ready for the election?" Some people evidently weren't ready and stopped to update their paper work.

The whole rigamarole of voter registration is something our democracy could and should do without. A sensible society would issue each citizen a voting card and, more importantly, an individual ID number when the person reached voting age or completed naturalization. The number would stay the same for life. On election day each person could present themselves to any polling place, provide their ID number (probably punching it in, much as we do at ATMs), declare a current address, and be allowed to vote an (electronic) ballot suitable for the jurisdiction of residence. The technical capacity to run elections this way either exists or is not far away. If we wanted an easy, inclusive, voting system, we could have one.

Reforms can bring us closer. It is now possible to register online in California though the old deadlines remained in force this year. Next election we'll join the more civilized states that practice same day voter registration at the polls. Citizens will be able to walk in, declare their address, and vote. The state that brought the nation Silicon Valley is beginning to catch up to the technical possibilities.

Making voting easy is hard to achieve because of the country's historical attachment to localism. The control of elections by each state under its own rules is written into the Constitution, modified only by successive amendments that gave the vote to Blacks and other people of color, women, and everyone at age 18.

Once upon a time, people thought their privacy was preserved because we didn't have national identity cards. But in a world where all our personal quirks float around for all to see on Facebook and Twitter, it's hard to take personal privacy very seriously. Big Brother knows where we are and what we eat for breakfast; we might as well get the advantages as well as the threats to our autonomy.

A welter of jurisdictions and partisan election officials like the obstacle course we currently have. They live inside it. But just because we've always done it one way does not mean we can't find a better way.

Since the dwindling party of angry old white guys -- once known as the GOP -- doesn't like much of the population, they are working to make it harder for the people they don't like to vote. Alec MacGillis reports on the current campaign to steal the state of Ohio for mendacious Mitt. As long as we can't standardize democratic procedures nationally, we'll have to worry about pockets of politically motivated voter suppression. GOP efforts to ensure a whiter and more affluent electorate must motivate yet another voting rights movement. That's our history, a long struggle toward wider inclusion in the democratic body politic.

Will I live to see voter registration become a quaint memory? I think I might. The foundation is there -- let's end the registration barrier to voting!

Freedom

If you are in California, there's a good chance you'll see this on TV in the next two weeks. It is playing in the San Francisco and Los Angeles markets.

Yes on 34 is also on radio in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Time to vote! Proposition opinions in profusion

I need to mail in my ballot now, so as to have maximum energy for getting out the vote for Prop. 34. If you are working on a campaign (and if you haven't participated in some way, you are letting other people make decisions for you that you may not like), it's always a good idea to get your own vote into the mail early!

Over recent months working on a California initiative myself, I've had to become more conscious of what the other 10 items are about; people often assume that if you're knowledgable about one measure, you can be a source of information about others. In this welter of propositions, that's probably not true. But here are the choices I've made and why:

• Prop. 30 - Yes Popularly called "the Governor's tax measure," this one raises revenue from high-income taxpayers and hits all of us with a quarter percent sales tax levy through 2019. We have to pass on it because of the stupid rule that requires a two-thirds vote in the legislature for tax measures -- and the Republicans (the angry white guys' party of tax resisters) still hold one vote more than a third of the seats in Sacramento. If we don't want to have to vote every time the state needs money to keep the doors open, we need to kill the 2/3s rule. Meanwhile, we have to vote for this if the state wants public schools.

• Prop. 31 - No This is an attempt at structural reform of state budgeting that dodges the real problem: slightly over one third of California's citizens refuse to contribute to the general welfare and have organized as the Republican Party to keep it that way. Various "good government" fidgets won't strike at the root of the problem; they just multiply the hoops in the way of governing.

• Prop. 32 - NO The same people that don't want to pay taxes for the general welfare want to kill off the few forces that stand in their way, the most organized of which is the labor unions. This lying measure would gut union political power while doing nothing to inhibit corporate spending on elections. It's a con.

• Prop. 33 - No Cars matter to Californians. Consequently, we've managed to pass some pretty good regulations to make mandated auto insurance rates somewhat fair. The guy who runs Mercury Insurance wants to change the rules so he can make more money by overcharging people who for some reason go without insurance for awhile. Take a temporary assignment for a job in another state -- end up paying through the nose for auto insurance when you come back. Is that fair? Of course not -- just more insurance company gouging.

• Prop. 34 - YES If you read this blog, you know about that one.

• Prop. 35 - no Every ballot seems to contain one like this: something that could have been worked out in the normal manner by the legislature but which attracted a rich sponsor fulfilling a pet interest. Nobody wants to be soft on human trafficking -- that means pimping and slave labor -- but this is one of those overblown, ill-drafted, emotionally attractive laws we'll have to back away from someday.

• Prop. 36 - yes We passed the three strikes law in a moment of panic about repeated dangerous criminal offenders, but we didn't really mean to lock up petty criminals for life. But that's how it has worked out too often; this would require that a third strike conviction be for something violent or otherwise serious.

• Prop. 37 - yes I wrote this one up here. Big agriculture doesn't like it, but we've got a right to know whether they've been monkeying with the genome for enhanced profits.

• Prop. 38 - no I find it hard to vote against a tax to be used for the schools. Goodness knows, the schools need the money. But this is the ultimate vanity proposition (see also Prop. 35 above). A rich person decided she knew better than all the political forces in the state and has invested millions in her pet scheme, even though she couldn't sign on the folks who are the most important factor in education: the organized teachers. That smells bad to me, so, unhappily, I've vote no.

• Prop. 39 - yes This will force companies that do part of their business in California to pay taxes on that part in California. Seems simple, but somehow they've been enjoying a big loophole and Republicans won't let the legislature plug it, so we, the voters, have to.

• Prop. 40 - yes This affirms the State Senate boundaries we're using in this election -- they were redrawn to conform to one person one vote rules after the census. Some Republicans didn't like the results and put this on the ballot, but then realized it was hopeless and orphaned it. But we still have to vote on it.

Are you tired yet? I am.

This election I'll spare you the local measures, except to urge San Franciscans to vote Yes on A to keep City College alive!

Who's best for empire?

The "foreign policy" debate on Monday night -- this event could more accurately be labelled the "imperial management" debate -- is going to be painful for those of us who think we've had enough wars and that the U.S. should get out of the business of telling people in other countries how they ought to organize themselves. Four years ago most voters were war-weary; we'd spent a decade frittering away lives and treasure for no particular purpose in Iraq and Afghanistan. We picked a president who seemed to understand that better than the other guy, even if he had to pay some homage with the ever-present flag pin on his lapel to imperial rituals.

Without ever breaking verbally from the pattern, Obama has delivered a measure of realism to our international doings. David Sanger spelled out some of the differences:

… Mr. Obama is out of the occupation business. He seemed to take to heart the parting warning of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, the Republican who served under the last two presidents. On his way out the door, Mr. Gates said that anyone in his job “who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

Obama knows we can't afford unlimited empire; Romney and the Republicans insist enough bluster and accompanying death and destruction in other people's countries will work out just fine. There's a clear lesser evil choice here: no matter how disappointing Obama has been, his administration offers more room for sanity than the alternative.

No doubt Obama has been disappointing. He's developed and deeply embedded among the executive branch's powers the facilities for making war on the cheap: drone attacks on those we define as "enemies" even in other people's countries; unconstrained secret global spying including on our own citizens as part of "security" business as usual; permanent detention without trial for official enemies (see Guantanamo and Bagram); and secret cyberattacks on governments we don't like such as Iran. It's quite a catalogue and we don't know the half -- we're not supposed to know about any of it. When someone lifts the curtain, the leaker can expect to end up locked away: see Bradley Manning. Permanent secret war and its crimes have become the accepted norm under this president.

But mendacious Mitt wants to take us back to the glory years of the U.S. imperium. Sanger memorably calls this "Eisenhower envy." That's probably why he has occasionally blurted out his hostility to Russia -- he's never gotten over thinking the (no longer extant) Soviet Union is our great competitor. Since he can't really be that dumb and he demonstrably feels no obligation to tell the electorate any truths about what he really intends in any arena, I don't imagine we'll learn anything much about what he'd do as President from the "foreign policy" debate.

What's even more distressing than the positions of the candidates is that openness to another war -- an attack on Iran -- seems to be gaining in the electorate:

The most recent NBC/WSJ poll finds that 58 percent of Americans believe the US should initiate military action to destroy Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons if Iran continues its pursuit of nuclear capabilities, compared to 33 percent who would oppose military action. Remarkably, 44 percent strongly support such an action, compared to 23 percent who strongly oppose. Support for military action against Iran has steadily increased throughout the Obama presidency. In 2008, opponents of war outnumbered supporters by 5 points, 41-46. By March 2012, supporters had seized a 12-point lead. Over the last six months, that margin has doubled to 25 points.

Nate Cohn, TNR

We wouldn't like the aftermath if we did it. The military establishment seems to understand this better than the civilians -- not only in the United States, but even in Israel where the impetus for war originates. The institutions that would have to do the dirty deed have learned to recognize a quagmire when offered one.

As long as there is not a durable political consensus among U.S. voters that imperial wars are not worth it -- unaffordable, can't' be "won," and simply wrong -- our politicians will bluff, weave and posture trying to uphold the illusion of world-dominating empire. And our social services, safety net, educational institutions, roads, and lives will continue to deteriorate. But we can't entirely blame the politicians so long as the people continue to thrill to the siren song of empire. It's over, folks. Learn to live with it.

Gays out in the world

Charles Blow ponders the meaning of the findings plotted here in the Times. I'm sure the social scientists will come up with some explanation. Older gays of color and mixed race folks seem more willing to name themselves than presumably more economically and socially secure white older gays. He finds this a mystery.



I find it much easier to fathom: as Janis Joplin sang, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose ..."

Time for a full and fair trial

A Founding Father and architect of some of the Constitution's major compromises agrees:

I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.

-- James Madison, To G.F.H. Crockett, November 6, 1823.

Via Charles Pierce.

Busy with the Prop. 34 campaign today.

Friday cat blogging

Mr. Morty was restless last night. Here he looms over my shoulder on the back of an overstuffed chair.

Perhaps he is reacting to the unusual autumn heat in San Francisco which has us cracking the windows open; the tear may be an allergy to the unfamiliar scents of the yard. He tries to stick his head out, but we won't let him.

He spent the night wandering over me and nuzzling my feet. Now he's sound asleep on the bed -- and I'm tired.

Liberal warmongers gulp Kool-Aid

There's more to life than a U.S. election. Really. The headline in the Times today reads Denial Is Slipping Away as War Arrives in Damascus. The Damascus I glimpsed dimly in 2006 is under siege. Even then I knew I was seeing almost nothing of the forces below the bright surface of that proud ancient capital. But I know it was full of people getting by, however they were managing. And today they are in danger and however their lives once worked, their future will be different and most likely not better.

Helena Cobban has been watching Syria for years. She tried to sum up some of what we in the United States don't know in an essay last month.

… I weep for Syria and its people, caught up as they are in the madness of this internal/external war... A war that is horrifyingly similar to the one that I lived through in Lebanon 35 years ago-- and to the one that Iraqis went through in 2006-2007-- and indeed, to some extent until today.

The present war inside Syria was absolutely avoidable. And if the vast majority of the peaceful opposition people from inside the country had had their way, it would have been avoided. But no. The Sunni-ist ideologues of the Syrian diaspora-- many of whom had been living in the Gulf countries since the horrors they escaped in Hama and elsewhere back in 1982-- backed up by their co-ideologues from the governments of Qatar, Saudia Arabia, and sadly also Turkey seemed determined to make this an armed conflict. Washington, which under Obama as under George W. Bush has been fundamentally supportive of "regime change" in Syria, gave them all a green light.

And, most shockingly of all to me, large numbers of people in the "progressive", "human-rights"-oriented movement inside the United States-- including large portion of people who had been in the movement that always opposed the U.S. war in Iraq-- were cheering them all on from the sidelines. ...

By and large, most of these people do not know a lot about Syria and its history. They (like me) had cheered on the popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Then, regarding Libya, most of those people cheered on not only the multifaceted popular uprisings there but also the NATO attacks that led to Pres. Qadhafi's collapse. In Libya, the use of external (in that case, western) military force was presented to and by many people on the "left" in the west as not only "necessary" but also a speedy, decisive, and effective way to "save thousands of lives". ...

For the liberal warmongers (who prefer to use the mendacious term "interventionists"-- as though war is the only kind of "intervention" possible!), supporting NATO in Libya was their gateway drug to supporting Saudi and Qatari-instigated acts of violence in Syria. And then they had recourse to all those lying arguments about "no alternative", "only protecting peaceful protesters", etc etc.

What makes me extremely sad is how quickly so many of those people who were at the forefront of the western antiwar movement regarding Iraq seemed to have forgotten what they seemed to know so well in 2002-2003 about the counter-productive and quintessentially anti-humane nature of war. Somewhere along the way they had drunk great gulps of the pro-war Kool-Aid.

After everything that we've seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan over the whole of the past decade, there are still so many armchair "liberal interventionists" in the United States who think that a salutary little war could be good for Libya's people... or for Syria's???? What on earth are they smoking? And why should anyone anywhere in the world take their views and their analyses seriously?

The whole is worth reading. Cobban is one of the more informed, more principled anti-war activists left. She sees the dying as much as the "policy."

Hey, did you know there is an election going on?

I know nothing about this pugilistic gentleman. There's an incumbent in the district; whoever he is, this guy's chances aren't great. But his poster sure catches the feel of where this long season has brought us these days.