Arkansas: New York

Frank Rich looks at the election results Tuesday and joins the list who thinks it says more about what President Obama has failed to do, rather than what he has done. He enjoys the teabaggers' defeat in upstate New York, but thinks it will be good for the Republicans if they get the message that the party needs a broader outlook.

The system is going back to the way it was with a vengeance, against a backdrop of despair. As the unemployment rate crossed the 10 percent threshold at week’s end, we learned that bankers were helping themselves not just to bonuses as large as those at the bubble’s peak but to

Frank Rich has a pretty good summary of the fratricidal GOP battle for an upstate New York congressional seat. Already, a solid Republican has been driven out of the race by  a torrent of attacks from the Club for Growth/Beck/Palin conservative candidate.

I should add that the conservative is the chosen candidate of Jackson T. Stephens Jr. of Little Rock, a Club for Growth moneybags. Stephens may buy himself a seat in upstate New York. If he does, it won't be of much help to locals, not that Jacko cares. The candidate is a carpetbagger who doesn't live in the district and knows next to nothing about it. But he's solid on the starve-government orthodoxy of his patrons.

The opposite of progressive is regressive, right? So the Jackson (Steve) Stephens-engineered ad that paints a New York Republican candidate as "progressive" -- pro-gay, pro-stimulus -- in order to cost the candidate votes says a lot about today's ultra right. They like dirty tricks, and their politics are backwards.

Here's the story reported on several blogs, including Politico: An organization called Common Sense in America, headed by Stephens, is running TV ads in New York that appear to endorse Republican Dede Scozzafava for Congress.

“Dede supports President Obama’s efforts to stimulate our economy. Dede supports organized labor’s drive to expand membership. And Dede is the only candidate for Congress who supports marriage equality.

An iconoclastic sort writes this morning. He asks why Arkansas doesn't offer -- as the state of New York does -- a searchable database on state pension payments to school teachers. (And I'd add public employees, too, particularly to see the effects of multipliers for legislators, etc.). The pensions are funded in part by public money. It would follow, in a rational world, that this information should be made public to the people who paid the dough. Cagey language was inserted in the law that has been interpreted, so far, as a bar disclosure of the information.