I was going through some of Albany County's public data servers and found an up-to-date (in theory) map of election districts in the county. While this will change after redistricting, still kind of handy to have for now for various projects.
For too long, he was the car-wreck that everybody had to gawk at. I loved checking his Twitter feed, getting my dose of White Trash from the White House. Not because I agreed with much of his politics, but because it was so juicy to see who he was throwing under the bus in some kind of pseudo-conservative fascist rant of the day. I will say he was good on Second Amendment, except when he wasn’t, and you could get .22 ammunition easily for a few years.
But I don’t think he was good for the cause of democracy or fairness. While government has rife with personal ambitious financial and else-wise, patronage, and partisan ideology since the time of the founding fathers, former President Trump amped it up another degree. While no politician can be expected to full untie the personal from the public and professional as we are all human, Donald Trump had not qualms of essentially stealing from the taxpayer to benefit himself personally. Patronage — a central part of power — should not be center stage, nor should patronage ever get to point as it did under Trump that it was explicit and a central part of his administration. The power of contracting can grease the skids, but grease shouldn’t be larger then the public benefit.
Much like the wrecker-rig hauls away the junked car and the ambulance hauls the corpse to the mortuary and ultimate burial, it’s finally time to look away and re-open the lanes on the highway so the world can move on. A little drama can make politics interesting and fun, but it shouldn’t be all consuming as it was under Donald Trump. We can disagree with others over our central priorities and values, but we shouldn’t be disagreeable as much of politics was during the Trump years.
Some elected officials shut down their campaign funds when they leave office, but many don’t. Some enter the private sector with substantial sums of campaign cash, which they can use largely as they see fit. Ken Kruly, Investigative Post researcher and publisher of Politics and Other Stuff, reviewed the campaign finances of 32 former elected officials in Western New York. Here he looks at the top 10 — as it happens, five Democrats and five Republicans — whose campaign accounts are still active.
While I hadn't seen this film yet - in part because of my ignorance - and in part because of internet censorship, it's worth a watch. It really does have all the marks of fascism, something out of the propaganda film in the The Parallax View. I actually hope it's preserved for history and discussed in social studies classes in the context of how democracy prevailed over fascism.
Fascism is a patriarchal cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by a treacherous and power-hungry global elite, who have encouraged minorities to destabilize the social order as part of their plan to dominate the “true nation,” and fold them into a global world government. The fascist leader is the father of his nation, in a very real sense like the father in a traditional patriarchal family. He mobilizes the masses by reminding them of what they supposedly have lost, and who it is that is responsible for that loss – the figures who control democracy itself, the elite; Nazi ideology is a species of fascism in which this global elite are Jews.