Runner’s diary, Tuesday

Three miles while listening to Garagepunk.com podcast — Sonic Nightmares #14, which featured this set of songs:

  1. The Gorgons – I Want You – Hog Maw Records
  2. Man Made Monster – She On LSD – Squoodge Records
  3. The Cormans – Live Radio Performance – tracks available on Vinyl Rites Records
  4. Rob K – Bad Gita – Unsound Recording Company
  5. The Swingin’ Neckbreakers – Daddy’s Little Girl – Hartbeat
  6. Ponys – Pop Culture – Solid Sex Lovie Doll Records
  7. Figures Of Light- It’s Lame – Norton Records
  8. Michiya Mihashi & Takeshi Terauchi – Kurou Hitomi (Black Eye) – Seven Seas
  9. ?Mystery Track?
  10. Paul Hampton – I’m In Love With A Bunny – Battle
  11. Ricky Nelson – Teenage Idol – London
  12. Odetta – Jumping Judy – Amadeo
  13. The Carter Family – Big River – Columbia
  14. Mr. Quintron – Live With Life – Crypt
  15. Die X Agenten – Wanderer- Reflektor
  16. Stiv Bators – Circumstantial Evidence – Bomp!
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"Mis"-ruling putsNJ clean elections on hold

Electoral reform a major hit last week — one that has reverberated here in New Jersey.

A federal judge in Arizona ruled Friday that a key provision of that state’s clean elections program was unconstitutional, leading New Jersey Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts to announce that plans to continue and expand the Garden State’s public-financing experiment would be put on hold until the 2011 legislative elections.

U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver said in her ruling that a recent U.S. Supreme Court

that struck down a federal campaign-finance law intended to level the field for U.S. House candidates facing wealthy opponents. The so-called “millionaire’s amendment” law let opponents accept larger individual contributions than normally allowed and receive unlimited coordinated party expenditures when opponents spend more than $350,000 of their own money.

Silver wrote that the matching funds part of the Clean Elections law is substantially the same as in the Supreme Court case cited by the Republicans.

Silver also noted that Arizona’s matching funds provision can be manipulated in several ways. For instance, an outside political action committee may deliberately run ineffective ads so their favored candidate can collect matching funds.

The decision appears to be a misreading of the Davis decision — the Supreme Court ruling that tossed out the “millionaire’s amendment.” That decision focused on spending limits and the notion that money equals speech. Matching funds, however, do not limit the ability of anyone to spend money; they just provide clean-money candidates with extra cash to maintain a semblance of a level playing field.

The idea that the provision favors

The judge also offered an interesting take on the potential for shenanigans — one so absurd it seems shocking that a judge could have crafted it.

(T)he judge noted the law also provides matching funds when anyone else
spends money on behalf of the privately financed candidate, even without
permission. That, she said, “opens up new avenues for possible corruption.

“For example, Silver said, a political action committee can surreptitiously
help a publicly funded candidate by running “ineffective, unwished for
advertising” for the privately funded foe. “That generates funds for the
participating candidate to use at her discretion,” the judge said.

This offsets the public benefit of the public-financing system, she says. Of course, this assumes, of course, that a candidate would be willing to raise significant private money and then spend it to attack himself — a proposition that seems outside the realm of logic.

(She also has a concern — and this is legitimate — that candidates could run as a slate, with only one taking public money and the other taking private cash, creating a situation in which spending limits can be skirted.)

The Arizona decision is not final, as The Arizona Daily Sun points out:

The judge’s ruling is not the last word. While she concluded the evidence presented to her at a Thursday hearing leads her to conclude the matching fund provision is unconstitutional, Silver legally remains open to considering arguments defending the system at a full-blown trial — something that would not occur until after the November election.

So, after a full trial, it is possible that Silver might change her take on clean elections and, even if she doesn’t, the case could make its way up the judicial food chain to the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, New Jersey is tabling its clean elections program to give it time to figure out how to craft a program that will withstand a constitutional challenge, Speaker Roberts said.

“Putting the program on hiatus next year will give Congress and the courts more time to sort out the many issues that have been raised and the ability to give states clear guidelines to follow. It is disappointing that an activist court half a continent away has thrown such a huge obstacle in the way of a good government ethics reform that was making real headway in changing politics in New Jersey for the better.”

I can understand the decision, though I think it may make more sense to push ahead and force the courts to rule on the New Jersey plan, rather than allow it to lay fallow for a year and have any momentum created by its successful piloting in the 14th District this year go to waste.

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Obama’s theory of government

I want to get back to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech from last night because I think it deserves a little more attention, especially with much of the media being focused on McCain’s announcement that Sarah Palin would be his vice-presidential candidate.

Let’s cut through all the peripheries — the exceptional delivery, the massive crowd, etc. — and look at the meat, as they say.

After outlining why most Americans say that the nation is heading down the wrong road — war and joblessness, increasing bills and foreclosures — he reminded the crowd of a very important point:

America, we are better than these last eight years.

He’s right. But what does that mean?

The criticism of Obama has been that his message of hope and change has lack specificity. That is a media meme built on a line of attack used by Hillary Clinton during the primaries and picked up by the GOP, but anyone who has been paying attention knows that Obama has offered a far more detailed plan for the future than his Republican opponent.

That said, it was important that the speech find some way of combining his soaring rhetoric with his specifics — which I think he accomplished, an opinion with which most observers agree.

He defined the mission of government, the “American promise,” as saying

each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It’s a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours — ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.

That’s the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.

It is a theory of government that says we are only as good as we treat other people and it is government’s job to act as our surrogate.

It is within this framework that Obama offers his proposals, some quite progressive and some I find troubling. He’s talking about a tax cut for the middle class and small businesses, which seems sensible at a time of economic meltdown. And he is pushing for alternative fuels — though his openness to nuclear power is difficult to understand.

He promised equal pay for equal work and health care for all — something that the Republicans do not view as important.

Ultimately, he made the strong case that he best understands the troubles we are facing and that the Republicans do not, cannot and never will in a way that neither John Kerry nor Al Gore did.

Following the speech, I told Annie that, for the first time, I felt that Obama was likely to win, that he would win over the electorate and that McCain ultimately would be shown to be out of touch. I even started thinking that the election might not be as close as people think.

I have a more sober reaction today — after hearing from some Obama opponents — but I still sense that the Democrat will win the White House come November.

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