Independent Presidential Candidate Deadlines

Oh I know, you're thinking; "Yeoman. . . I didn't realize that a person can still get in the game like Kanye. . . I want to run for President. . .but am I too late?"

Well, dear reader, here's the scoop on that.

State              Signatures  Date                   Comments.

Alabama	5,000	8/20/2020
Alaska	3,212	8/5/2020
Arizona	37,769	9/4/2020
Arkansas	1,000	8/3/2020
California	196,964	8/7/2020
Colorado	pay $1,000	8/5/2020	7/9/2020 by petition of 5,000 signatures.  But why bother if you can just pay $1,000?
Connecticut	5,250	8/7/2020
Delaware	7,118	9/1/2020	Deadline for petitions to be circulated and executed is  7/15/2020
Florida	132,781	7/15/2020	Kanye didn't make this deadline, and he would have had to round up a lot of signatures.
Georgia	5,250	8/14/2020
Hawaii	4,347	8/5/2020
Idaho	1,000	8/24/2020
Illinois	25,000	7/20/2020
Indiana	44,935	6/30/2020
Iowa	1,500	8/14/2020
Kansas	5,000	8/3/2020
Kentucky	5,000	9/4/2020
Louisiana	pay $500	8/21/2020
Maine	4,000	7/25/2020
Maryland	10,000	8/3/2020
Massachusetts	10,000	8/25/2020	Deadline to file petitions with registrars of voters for signature verification is 7/28/2020
Michigan	12,000	7/16/2020
Minnesota	2,000	8/18/2020
Mississippi	1,000	9/4/2020
Missouri	1,000	7/27/2020
Montana	5,000	8/19/2020	Deadline to file petitions with county officials for signature verification is 8/12/2020.
Nebraska	2,500	8/3/2020
Nevada	9,608	8/14/2020	Deadline to file petitions with local officials for signature verification is 7/10/2020
New Hampshire	3,000	9/2/2020	Deadline to submit nomination papers to towns or cities for signature verification is 8/5/2020
New Jersey	800	7/27/2020
New Mexico	3,483	6/25/2020
New York	30,000	7/30/2020
North Carolina	70,666	3/3/2020	Seems like North Carolina doesn't want independents running.
North Dakota	4,000	8/31/2020
Ohio	5,000	8/5/2020
Oklahoma	pay $35,000	7/15/2020	Kanye just dropped the coin for this yesterday.
Oregon	17,893	8/25/2020
Pennsylvania	5,000	8/3/2020
Rhode Island	1,000	9/4/2020
South Carolina	10,000	7/15/2020	Hmmm. . . Kanye likely missed this one.
South Dakota	3,393	8/4/2020
Tennessee	275	8/20/2020
Texas	79,939	5/11/2020
Utah	1,000	8/17/2020
Vermont	0	8/3/2020
Virginia	5,000	8/21/2020
Washington	1,000	8/7/2020	Last day to hold convention: 7/25/2020
West Virginia	7,145	8/3/2020
Wisconsin	2,000	8/4/2020
Wyoming	4,018	8/25/2020

And there you go.

The Death of American Poster Art, Governor Cuomo, and the "New York Tough" poster.

New York City was once the premier American city and it's never gotten over it.  Nor has New York state.  The Big Apple is the Big Apple to New Yorkers, but to the rest of the nation New York City is more defined, and no doubt unfairly, by 1970s vintage films like The French Connection.  New Yorkers don't realize that, and have a really strong tendency to see themselves like the The New York Times sees itself.  Leading the pack. 

It doesn't.

It did lead the pack in early Coronavirus infections, peaked early, and seems to have that under control in comparison to states that are now peaking.  There's a lot of politics and virology to that, but it's a fact, and New York is now taking some steps that it objected to early on, such as trying to keep people out of New York from high infection states. Earlier it objected to efforts to keep New Yorkers in.

Anyhow, New York is now celebrating and Governor Cuomo is doing the really odd thing of releasing a really bad poster.

I'd post a photo of the poster here, but it's likely protected by copyright and the state is trying to sell copies of it.

I like poster art, and as somebody who does, there's no denying that American poster art peaked in the 1910s, remained strong through World War Two, and has died since then.  After that new media came in and people just weren't as interested in posters and what they had to say.  Color photography became a major feature of U.S. Government posters, and while that's understandable, it just isn't the same as a good illustration.  After 1945 good poster art became the domain of rock bands and Communist governments, but rock band posters died by the mid 1970s and of course Communist governments, never admirable, largely disappeared, with a couple of notable unfortunate examples, by the 1990s. 

Some state efforts are exceptions and you'll see them from time to time, usually recalling an art style of the past.  But by and large, governments in the US don't issue inspiring posters.

New York has issued a self praising and really weird one.

I don't know enough about New York's COVID 19 response to comment on it, other than to note that for those on the East Coast Governor Cuomo came across like a hero, and to those who lived outside of that area he came across as a carnival barker.  It's one of our real regional differences.*  Now that the big crisis seems to have passed in New York, he's calmed back down and appears, to outsiders, much more reasonable.

And now there's this poster, about which he's stated:

I love history. I love poster art. Poster art is something they did in the early 1900s, late 1800s, when they had to communicate their whole platform on one piece of paper. Over the past few years I’ve done my own posters that capture that feeling. I did a new one for what we went through with COVID and I think the general shape is familiar to you. We went up the mountain, we curved the mountain, we came down the other side and these are little telltale signs that, to me, represent what was going on.- Governor Andrew M. Cuomo

Okay. . .

Well, first of all, "New York Tough" is something that's no doubt a proud self evident thing to say if you are in New York, but its not apparent to those of us outside of New York.  It's like the phrase "Boston Strong" that circulated a few years back which, to native Westerners, didn't make sense at all as Boston's response in that circumstance didn't look strong at all.  The "toughness" of New York is missing to outsiders here. 

The poster has on the top of it "Wake Up America!  Forget the Politics!  Get Smart!", but it's political.  Cuomo puts his fellow New Yorker on the poster sitting on the moon and takes a shot at him.  Maybe the shot's deserved, but the fact still is that the comment is political, and to outsiders, Cuomo and Trump both share the same really loud, brash speech characteristics that New Yorkers love to think makes them frank and honest but which to outsiders makes them appear self centered and rude. 

"Love wins" is at the top of the poster in homage to the phrase of the LGBQT community's phrase, along with the rainbow, which is political itself.  No matter what a person thinks of that cause one way or another, it's not mixed with this cause.  That's just Cuomo throwing a bone to his supporters, another political act.  The "Out of state ban" presents an irony, as efforts early on to keep New Yorkers out were opposed by New York.  Pointing out three excluded states is just snarky, as is the blaming of the infections on Europeans flying into the state.  Maybe it did come in on airplanes. There's a good chance of that, but we don't know that, and the same political forces that are generally aligned with Cuomo were critical of the ban on Chinese travel when it was imposed early on.  A fellow New York Democratic politician stated “I mean this with 0% snark: how is this not wildly offensive? This is an artful monument to death and tragedy being sold by the state. I’m legit perplexed.”

The Washington Post, in noting Cuomo's poster, also noted art critics, who termed the poster "an incoherent mess".  The New York Times, itself a bit of a mess right now, compared it unfavorable to the graphics of a Tik Tok video.

Mostly it's just really bad poster art.

Back in the early 1980s when the band the Talking Heads was around they released an album called Little Creatures that featured some horrifically bad poster art that was supposed to be profound, but in fact was just flat out bad.  It's almost as if that has returned. 

Let's hope not.
________________________________________________________________________________

*Something odd has happened with New York political speech in that the type of erudite clipped speech that was once common of New York politicians, such as Theodore Roosevelt, Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt and Nelson Rockefeller has completely disappeared.  The current crop of New York politicians, such as Donald Trump, Cuomo, and Bernie Sanders (a transplanted New Yorker) all have very odd sort of quasi street speech as their speaking style, save for Sanders who comes across that way due to his heavy Brooklyn accent. Now, every New York politician tends to sound like they're auditioning for a role in the film Goodfellas.  Sanders no doubt come by his accent honestly, but as to the remainder a person has to wonder if the cinematic trope of "tough New Yorker" hasn't bled over into how public New Yorkers portray themselves in the same fashion that the movie The Godfather actually caused an improvement in the fashion's affected by 1970s mafiosos. 

This speech pattern, as noted, impacts different people differently.  I recently had an interaction with an elderly woman who had grown up in the industrial East of the 30s, 40s and 50s and who was very much a Trump admirer.  She noted that "he speaks just like us". 

Bari Weiss resigns from the New York Times and raises the topic of press bias.

While we're on the topic of newspapers, this week has seen the news that Bari Weiss of the New York Times editorial staff has found that the paper is so blisteringly biased that there's no place for anyone who isn't a Hard Left True Believer.  In departing, she wrote and published a resignation letter that's an editorial on the NYT itself.

You can find her full letter there, which is well worth reading, but a couple of things it states really stand out.  For example.

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else. 

 * * *

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.  

* * *

I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative. 

* * *

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm. 

What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.   

Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired.

* * *

It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed “fell short of our standards.” We attached an editor’s note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it “failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa’s makeup and its history.” But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.

* * *

The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its “diversity”; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

This shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone familiar with the Times or for that matter major news, or maybe the media in general. The media has traditionally made at least a pretext at being an honest information broker, but in recent years its departed more and more from this. The New York Times has in fact occasionally been honest about this and actually has flat out states that certain opinions are to be regarded as facts in the Times.

A person doesn't have to be political to see how true this has become. The left has frequently condemned Fox News, which I don't watch, but MSNBC shares the same problems that Fox does in being ideological so that its quality as news must always take that into account. Beyond that, however, its spread to newspapers in a way that is now endemic.

Last year the press here hosted a seminar on the "perception" of press bias. While some outside figures were invited to it, with at least one resigning in disgust as the process went on, the event had the hallmark that all inside "why do they think that" type efforts do. Efforts by lawyers, for example, to address why the public perceives lawyers as self interested threats to societal well being fail to recognize that a large measure of that claim is accurate and not based on a misunderstanding, but experience. The same is true of the perception that the press is often inaccurate and that by and large it has an agenda that's far to the left of the general public's. While that may not show up in a daily paper in every story, there's more than a little truth to it.

Now, this can be taken too far. It isn't the case that the Press was free of bias until recently. Indeed, the phrase "yellow journalism" is an old one and defines a biased sensationalist press. But there was a move towards better reporting from the highly biased papers of the late 19th Century to fairly balanced ones mid 20th Century.

Indeed, the progress, and then the decline, of the Press is highly analogous to the what also occured in the law, which also had an early 20th Century movement to improve the quality of the profession. Both probably reached their high point in that regard mid 20th Century, but following the 1960s a variety of factors operated in the opposite direction, although those factors are not identical for both fields.

One feature of them, however, is that they both are fairly self isolated and their educational foundation is generally slanted to the left. In the case of the Press this is very much the case and it's compounded by the evolution of education in a field which at one time featured a lot of writers with native writing talent, but no advanced education. Having said that, a lot of them did have a higher education as well. The problem is that, just as with law students who entered that intended field prior to law school, their education is often fairly narrow in a field that's extremely broad. Compounding that, as time moved on and technological pressures in the form of competing media came along, specialization in journalism has tended to decline.

Newspapers are now under incredible pressures and many are failing. The internet, which is full of news sources, many of which are self selecting and unreliable, has created an enormous problem for the field. At the same time the leftward drift of the editorial room is driving off readers who aren't in the camp, which in turn is making the editorial room more and more left leaning, but unable to see that.

This doesn't apply to all newspapers, of course. But for major print journals that formerly may have been left of center, but for which there was still room in the center, such as the NYT or The New Republic, the decline really has set in. Unfortunately for these once great journals, they're unlikely to be able to see that.

Down to five days

The state's largest newspaper that is.

A lot of papers of a century ago published on a five day schedule, often omitting Sunday and Monday.  But that was at a time when there were no statewide papers, there were two local papers, and the town's population was less than 1/3d of its present number.

It was also, however, a time in which there were no other sources of news.

Now there are, and that's a big problem for print.

The paper did announced that its on line edition will continue to be published seven days a week reflecting, it claims, a shift in reader preference.

It will amplify that preference.  Readers who still subscribe to the paper now will have to subscribe to the online variant if they want news seven days a week, which actually print subscribers can already do, as it includes the online paper.  But you can also subscribe only to the online paper, which many who were teetering on the edge of doing that for a variety of reasons, including simply the costs of the paper, will do. And that will include me.

July 14, 1920 Summer camp.

A few of the boys for summer school, arriving at Naval Training Station, Naval Base, Hampton Roads, Va., July 14, 1920

Youth summer camps are something I'm wholly unfamiliar with as I never went to one as a kid, and I never knew any other kids who did either.

How about you?

Where have all the students gone?

According to the Tribune, the University of Wyoming is expecting a massive decrease in students this Fall, with an overall 20% reduction overall and over 30% for graduate students.

What's going on?

Well, in Wyoming what's going on is the double Covid/Energy Sector economic slump.  It's really hurting things.  Parents are out of work and there aren't any jobs for students.

This means, of course, a drop in revenue for UW, which already was seeing a big cut in funding from the legislature.

Blog Mirror: Budget Cuts Approved by Governor Gordon total more than $250 Million

Budget Cuts Approved by Governor Gordon total more than $250 Million 

Governor signs Executive Order to consolidate Human Resources Personnel

 for additional savings

CHEYENNE, Wyo. –  Governor Mark Gordon has announced deep budget cuts for the current two-year budget cycle totaling more than $250 million, or nearly 10% of the state’s general fund budget. This comes after revenue projections showed an almost $1 billion shortfall for the general fund and another $500 million for school funding. The budget reductions will include state employees losing their jobs, as well as mandatory furloughs, a reduction in major maintenance spending and the consolidation of human resources personnel across state agencies.

“This is an incredibly difficult task but we must respond to the financial circumstances the state is facing,” Governor Gordon said. “These cuts will impact families across the state, will affect the services we provide and will have an effect on dollars that flow into the private sector.”

The Governor approved 10% cuts for most state agencies, boards and commissions. The Department of Health, with the state’s largest budget, will see a 9% cut totaling approximately $90 million. He stressed that the impacts of the budget cuts will be felt outside of state government as well. The budget cuts include significant general fund dollars that enter the private sector in the form of contracts, and also mean some services available to the state’s seniors, disabled and low-income residents won’t be available or will be reduced.

“The repercussions to our communities and the businesses of our state are significant,” Governor Gordon added. “While they are necessary, these cuts weaken our ability to deliver the critical services and functions of our state government that Wyomingites depend on.”

To help create additional budget savings, the Governor has instituted a mandatory furlough day for six months beginning in August for those executive branch employees on the higher end of the pay scale. As an additional cost-saving measure, Governor Gordon signed an Executive Order on Friday directing the Director of the Department of Administration and Information (A&I) to coordinate the immediate consolidation of all human resources personnel to be housed under the Department. The process is expected to take several months and will eventually lead to a reduction in state human resources personnel.

The budget cuts still leave a forecasted budget shortfall of more than $600 million. The Governor has directed agencies to prepare preliminary proposals to cut an additional 10% from their budgets and submit those concepts to him. He has previously stated that he will be considering a range of options to fund an appropriate level of government services, since merely cutting services will not be enough to address the scope of the shortfall.

A copy of the Governor’s Executive Order is attached and can be found on the Governor’s website.

--END--

There's a lot of blawg and op ed commentary right now about why conservative justices aren't reliable, the way liberal ones are. . .

in terms of their sticking to the ideological side of their supposed camp.

We've discussed this before, so this is an instance where we're ahead of the debate curve.  The answer to it, at any rate, is fairly simple.

There aren't any "conservative" justices in terms of philosophy.

Okay, that's an exaggeration, but there are very few reliably conservative justices in terms of philosophy.  Justice Thomas may be about it.

The reason that this surprises people is that political conservatism and philosophical conservative are confused all the time and, like any set of philosophies, even political conservatism is really more than one stream of thought.

At any rate, judicial conservatism would require a fundamental, even metaphysical, concept of the law.  This was in fact at one time common in the law and on the courts.  Even as late as the 1970s some justices would cite metaphysical concepts in a decisions.

That doesn't happen anymore.

Starting with perhaps the failed confirmation hearing for Robert Bork, what we started to get instead was "strict constructionist" and "textualist".  These justices may be politically conservative in general and even somewhat judicially conservative, but at the the end of the day they are not concerned with metaphysics and the law.  There's no "is there a Law greater than our law" type of analysis as you can find, for example, in The Antelope.  These topics aren't debated.

In contrast, liberal justices tend to seamlessly blend their metaphysical concepts with their opinions.  It's even fairly open most of the time.

Hence we have two interesting examples, on totally different topics, over the past decade.  This past term the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, in McGirt v. Oklahoma that about half of Oklahoma lies in a reservation and therefore the state of Oklahoma cannot prosecute crimes against Indians in that part of Oklahoma.  How this plays out is not yet known but those who are inclined to wish not to be too concerned simply assume that the holding is limited.  In my view, it isn't.  It's fully expansive and it'll take a couple of decades and at least one more visit to the Supreme Court to work this out.

Now, it's easy to see how the liberal justices would vote in this fashion, but Gorsuch was the swing vote and author of the opinion.  How could he?  Easily enough, Gorsuch, as his prior decisions have already demonstrated, ia s pure textualist.  He reads and applies the text, and doesn't worry about much else.

Now, in fairness, there isn't a set of greater metaphysical questions immediately presented by this case. . . although there are some.  One would be whether a separate set of laws pertaining to Indian residents of a state alone is really just.  I.e., is this a type of legal apartheid in the United States, and if it is, should it be maintained?  Is it even moral to do so?  In this context, few realize that the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to Indians on reservations.  Shouldn't it?

In contrast we have Obergefell from a couple of years ago.  In that case Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote at the time, authored the opinion in what was clearly a results oriented opinion.  It's impossible to read the case without coming to the conclusion that the liberal opinion was designed to create a state of law which was what its authors thought should be the law, rather than basing the opinion on any actual law at all.

And this breaks down the two basic judicial philosophies on the Court.  One holds that we read and apply what is there, informed by what we know about the original authors.  It's conservative, but not in a metaphysical, what about Natural Law, sense.  The other holds that we look at the law and apply it the way that progressive minds would have the law read.  It's into metaphysics, but only shallowly.

Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

Horses for War: A Market for Wyoming Stockmen

Showing just how clueless on sports I am. . .

I see a Twitter thread on Paris' Notre Dame cathedral and I put in "Notre Dame" in a new search and actually think I'll find stories on the cathedral, rather that the university football team.

Sigh. . .

Realism

Our age which has boasted of realism will fail chiefly through lack of reality.

G.K. Chesterton