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Posts published in “Day: October 3, 2017”

Adopt Doug Jones

richardson

Tuesday night, Alabama Republicans chose Roy Moore, an extreme rightwing demagogue, as their nominee for the U.S. Senate in the special election to be held this December.

Some pundits assume - I think incorrectly - that Moore will be a shoe-in in the general election because he has an "R" after his name and Alabama is a very red state.

Here's why I think the shoe-in theory is pretty shaky. Alabama Democrats had the good sense to choose as their nominee an exceptional candidate - former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones. I got to know Doug when I was the U.S. Attorney for Idaho, and can attest to the fact that he is smart and tough and principled. And, tempting though it might be, Jones isn’t making the race about Donald Trump. He knows that Trump remains popular in much of Alabama and is focusing on the issues – the economy, jobs, health care, women’s rights and the environment. On each and every issue, Moore is to the right of just about anybody, Genghis Khan included.

The differences between Jones and Moore are stark – especially when it comes to respect for the rule of law. Doug Jones is a civil rights champion. He prosecuted the KKK. He believes in the rule of law. The same cannot be said of Moore, a former state court judge, who refused to follow a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument, which Moore had installed, from the courthouse. The federal court ruled that the monument violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. When Moore disobeyed the federal court, a state panel ruled that he had violated the judicial ethics code and removed him from the bench.

A few years later after being returned to the state bench by a narrow margin, Moore again thumbed his nose at the Constitution when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling legalizing gay marriage. Moore ordered state judges to disregard the ruling and instead enforce the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. In response, a state court panel suspended Moore for the rest of his term.

And Moore is a conspiracy theorist. Most notably, he perpetuated the false “birtherism” narrative exploited by Donald Trump. Unlike Trump, Moore never conceded that “birtherism” was a lie. He defended it as recently as last December.

Alabama may be a red state, and Roy Moore may have an inherent advantage because he is a member of the dominant political party, but Doug Jones is no pushover, and this race will be aggressively contested. Yet, as I watch the national Democrats dither about whether to jump into the race with both feet, I have a troubling sense of deja-vu.

Time and time again, Democrats in Idaho and other red states have recruited capable challengers to Republican incumbents and been ignored by the "we know better" Beltway Democrats. We can have more than a little empathy for a great Democratic candidate running in a red state. This is especially true when some of us live in states, like Idaho, where we won’t have a chance to replace an incumbent GOP senator until 2020 or 2022.

Another Democrat in the U.S. Senate makes it more likely that the Trump-McConnell agenda, including the appointment of another far right justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, will not succeed. Moreover, this race will be decided in a little over two months. Reminded of the old saw, “Strike while the iron is hot,” I have to think the iron is about as hot as it’s going to get.

The Republicans have nominated a venal individual and, in so doing, have given Democrats an outside shot at winning this race. We can’t count on the national party to rally behind Jones. If Jones is going to garner the resources he needs to win, it will be up to the grassroots to provide them.

Rebuilding the right way

stapiluslogo1

The hurricane disaster in Puerto Rico, leaving most of the island with wreckage all over and electricity and running water in too few places, is an unqualified catastrophe.

That still doesn't mean something useful can't come from it.

One of the questions sure to arise there, as happened in New Orleans after the Katrina storm (and more recently in Houston and elsewhere) is: Why rebuild? The recent storm was surely not the last. Why reconstruct what will surely be knocked down sometime to come?

Somehow or another, of course, we have to rebuild. In the case of Puerto Rico, for example, what's the alternative: To tell three and a half million people to go,leave, for somewhere, and leave home behind? There have to be some better answers.

And there probably are. One of them comes courtesy of Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who is suggesting (among other things) using renewable energy technology to work around the hazards of tropical storms.

The framework he outlines is this: “America’s energy grid is in need of an upgrade. These bills will promote a more flexible electricity grid that can respond to power disruptions from natural disasters and ensure reliable, low-cost electricity for consumers now and in the future. They will lower costs for energy storage technologies that make renewable energy more reliable and cost-effective, boost funding for cutting-edge research and reward state and private sector innovations.”

To that end he suggested a batch of bills, backed by a number of utility industry organizations. One of them would "create competitive, cost-share grant programs for new small-scale, grid-connected projects such as rooftop solar panels, hot water heaters, electric vehicles and modernized utility pricing technologies."

Another would "provide funding to the Department of Energy to research and develop ways to lower the cost of energy storage technologies, which make it possible for renewable energy to be used on a more reliable and affordable basis." And a third would help shift job training toward renewable energy methods.

The big advantage of renewables, in a storm context, is that many of those resources can be protected in case of disasters, and a loss in one places doesn't necessarily mean a mass outage. Solar is a great example; an island reliant mainly on solar energy would see significant damage, but not nearly enough to bring the whole area to a standstill.

And if you used that kind of technology to help rebuild Puerto Rico, you could take the lessons learned (and the economies of scale developed) onto the mainland, with back advantages accruing back in the States. It would truly be an investment that could logically pay off in a big way.

In the current Congress, the proposal may not go far. But if the idea gets some attention, it could wind up doing a lot of good down the road. Not that Puerto Rico couldn't benefit from it ... right now.