Oh man, when mom gets home we're gonna get it!

5:30pm PDT, May 6: The assimilated no-longer-scary lesbians have officially broken through something.

Marriage equality bills pass in two statehouses (Maine and New Hampshire), buoyed by majorities who couldn't vote against the cute kids and their moms--who kept mobbing their offices to ask nicely for their rights, often carrying baked goods.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans warn that Obama better not nominate a qualified, experienced expert on constitutional issues who also happens to have a case of the gays. Or that other one neither, because good Gawd, she is also a liberal prevert.

Literally on the same day. I kid you not.

That cracking sound? We have broken the Overton Window, but don't worry--we'll pay for it.

New Mexico's DP Bill Dies, Part 3: An open letter

Dear pragmatic negotiators,

Some compromises are not savvy, bottom-line solutions that take the best part of opposing ideas and leave both sides somewhat dissatisfied. We've all been there. Sometimes when you've wanted something very badly for a long time, you can forget that your willingness to overlook what's being sacrificed may result in finally getting it done--very badly.

If you need a visual representation of how to know when you're being snookered, try to figure out which of these people you are emulating.

As shown in the Archdiocesan-sponsored reverse auction of Feb. 2009, you can't bargain with people whose goals are so far away from yours.

It's like sitting down for a settlement conference and finding that one party wants a million dollars and the other side is prepared to offer ten: Pack up your briefcase, you're going to court.

New Mexico's DP Bill Dies, Part 2: Losing Forward

The loss of a vote that we had been told was 'going to be close', by such a lopsided score, brings up some questions. Mainly, Tell me again why we're not running a marriage equality bill through a couple of committees only to get whomped on the floor?

Let's look at the tape:

At 2pm, the lobbyist representing herself as the lead on the DP bill described the substitute bill she was announcing: "We have changed the bill to try to accomodate the concerns of the religious organizations. So there are no references to spouse, to marriage, all that language is gone and we're just referencing statues now."

The substitute bill was dropped on the Senate floor at 3pm.

It was posted to a web site by a reporter who photographed a press copy, at roughly 4pm.

The citizens who had been sitting in the Senate gallery all day, to support the DP bill, didn't see the new improved bill until they got home.

Good thing it died, because the damn thing was a disaster.

It was designed to overcome every objection.

We need votes from Pinto, Lovejoy and Muñoz, whose Senate districts are mostly or all Navajo Nation land? Okay, tribes and pueblos can ignore the DP status. That'll be a nice surprise for lesbian couples who get end of life care from the Indian Health Service.

We need to prove this isn't just marriage by another name? Okay, it forces couples who are currently getting equal treatment, using marriages from elsewhere, to give up their marriage certificates to get that same equal treatment. Just swear you're not married and the health insurance keeps working.

Catholic Charities might have to start paying its gay employees the same as their straight peers once their relationships are legalized? Okay, 'religious entities' are exempt from 'recognizing' DPs.

Bonus points if you figured out that many of New Mexico's hospitals are Catholic and could claim to be exempt from recognizing domestic partnership certificates as anything. Gosh, I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd need my rights as next of kin recognized by a Catholic hospital, so that's no big deal.

The substitute bill was a fire sale, an attempt to give away whatever it took to get the votes. And there weren't enough buyers at the price.

This process, and product, are a great example of why legislative politics, the art of compromise, has been exhausted.

Now we have no DP law, just like yesterday and last week and last year.

We also have a chain of events that suggests our advocates are willing to give away anything, and anyone, in order to say they got something for us. Now that's painful.

We won't always win by pressing for what we deserve.

But clearly, compromising our goals is no guarantee of victory either.

And if we have to lose, why not lose asking for equality? Why not lose while making an open, aboveboard and straightforward argument for our full citizenship and our full human dignity?

New Mexico's DP Bill Dies, Part 1: Basics of Selling

The DP bill lost today, in a 25-17 stunner.

Considering that the Lt Gov was running the show in the Senate because she wanted to break the tie and pass the bill, the vote count itself is probably an indicator that our side coughed up the ball.

Beyond that, the advocates for LGBT New Mexicans received this spanking after they had given away the store in desperation.

This was mishandled profoundly, at so many levels, that it's hard to name them all, but I'll try. First installment:

Selling against objections, state politics edition.

The first thing you learn in selling any complex intangible is how to listen for the objection. The first three things that come after 'Can't do it because...' are excuses. Keep your prospect talking and you'll learn what the real barrier is, and if it's a negotiable item you may be able to overcome the objection.

Rookies confuse the first thing the prospect says ('That's too much car for my 17 year old', 'I'm not sure this isn't just marriage for the gays') with the real objection. Then they reveal their inexperience by fixing the product to overcome the objection ('This model is a 4 cylinder', 'It says right here they're not married').

But since the real barrier was deeper and more fundamental, sometimes changing the price or the product or the terms just can't make the sale. Sometimes they just don't want what you're selling.

Giving away married couples, Indians and anyone who is taken to a Catholic hospital...in exchange for promised votes that weren't delivered...is the kind of mistake I made in my first year on the job. Wet-behind-the-ears bullshit.

And the proof is in the pudding here--the next Governor of the state moved her schedule around, so she could break the tie on this close vote.

25-17. Learn to whip count, kids.

Bad Ideas in Today's NY Times

I can't really conceive of these intellectually compromised men being taken seriously as having the right they're claiming here, to waive civil equality for my kid. But their work product is published in today's Times.

So I'm replying with an open letter to Jonathan Raush, whom I once respected:

Jonathan,

You apparently think that because you're gay and a conservative philosopher, you can understand both sides of a debate that doesn't exist.

You've imagined up a compromise between real families, like mine, and imaginary people of good will who fear something that can't happen.

These imaginary opponents of marriage equality are so scared of being forced to treat my family as equal to one that their churches endorse, they are willing to let me exchange my child's right to her inheritance for their bad dreams to stop.

What a deal! Where do I sign?

Seriously, Jonathan, you owe me an apology.

I have quite a bit of experience engaging politically with the extremists who wish to limit my rights to conform with their religion. You either know less about them than I do, or you're deeply irresponsible.

First, you failed to lead your editorial with the fact that you get paid to spin ideas by a center-right think tank, as their token homosexual. This itself speaks of bad faith, but I won't speculate further on what personal circumstance might have led you to think that publishing this piece was wise or even ethical.

Your motive to keep your job is obvious, in a time when national organizations fighting for gay rights are desperately gutting their budgets to stay afloat. I'm not opposed to anyone selling his services to a willing customer. However, it's indicative of your influence among gay people that no group organizing for our families was interested in paying you to promote this strange idea of compromise, even back when they had plenty of money.

Regardless, it is evident that you need to be publicly criticized, so that future attempts to give away the store on behalf of our movement will be understood as the empty gesture that they are.

So let us begin with the common ground: I understand that it's tempting to propose compromise with people who are impervious to legal, logical and humanitarian claims for our equality. I too want my friends living in Florida to have basic rights to hospital visitation and Social Security benefits.

But I'm not naive enough to expect the other side, which is imposing the 'nothing' my friends have now, to hold up their end of a compromise enforcing those basic rights throughout this country.

You've failed to understand the extremism of those who claim that marriage is their sticking point with the gay-rights movement. You cite a couple of so-called 'problems' that civil marriage equality creates for religious organizations, but they're cherry-picked to make this silly compromise a solution.

Yes, Jonathan, some religions want the right to waive equal-employment laws for gay couples, just as they already do with gay individuals. But churches have that right, today.

Yet they fight tooth and nail against any protections for our families whatever. (See the NM, HI, NH, ME, or NY state legislatures for more data on this point.)

That tells me your contacts in the religious right, including your co-author, have identified you as a convenient sucker who is so ignorant of what's happening in our fight for equal citizenship that you'll buy anything.

We are fighting for a right that has been recognized as so basic, convicted murderers are entitled to exercise it; our opponents are a tax-exempt movement of anti-American extremists. They will not accept that their dogma is merely one set of beliefs that deserves respect from a pluralistic society.

Listen to them. Read Rick Warren's sermons. Read the Alliance for Marriage's brief on the Iowa marriage case. I'm not alleging a conspiracy; they will happily, openly tell you that they want to live in a Christian nation. I don't. Do you?

I have been fighting these retrograde fantasists for 15 years, and I know them. Some of them are nice enough people, who want every child to be born healthy to two married, church-going parents. That's a fine thing to want, and they're not wrong to want it. But it's not going to happen, regardless of what laws we pass about marriage as they conceive it being special and holy.

And anyone who is asking for the state to single out my family to be mistreated, because their God doesn't recognize my marriage, is engaging in discrimination of the foulest kind. They've identified our families as acceptable to stigmatize, unlike single parents, divorced parents, adoptive families or infertile couples--all of which are equally debased by extreme interpretations of Christianity.

They are political extremists who want this country to waive the 14th Amendment any time it conflicts with one of their beliefs. They will speak any lie, in violation of their own Commandments, to accomplish this goal. (Again, see the state legislatures and court cases where they expound truthfully on their beliefs and falsely about the scientific support for those beliefs.)

That is who we're dealing with, and that's why I don't have to reject your compromise--they will.

Once they get a federal law that indicates Congress's intent to legislate the dissent in Lawrence, we've given up all of our leverage in the federal courts for a generation or more.

By proposing compromise with the extremists, you've conceded that Scalia's opinion in both Bowers and Lawrence was correct--that indeed there is a gay exception to Constitutional protections, because some people find gay sex icky. As long as they deeply believe that God agrees with them, they have a point, according to the logic you've adopted.

Where do our efforts to enforce existing employment protections at the state level go from that point--let alone the movement for ENDA? Housing protections? Where does this slippery slope end?

Because political history indicates that we're close to a win--we can reverse the federal DOMA and within a decade will get our Loving--this compromise would be outdated even if the claims against civil marriage equality were being made in good faith, which they aren't.

Today it's not necessary to cede our fundamental equality in order to win. It is simply necessary to continue with what we're doing and stop giving away ground by suggesting that we haven't already met our opposition in the middle. Every time I pay my Social Security tax, Jonathan, I'm making a real compromise. My family can't currently benefit from that social safety net, yet I'm funding it out of my pocket--that IS the middle ground and it's wrong, unacceptable and unconstitutional.

In closing, Jonathan, the right thing to do is clear: Donate the three pieces of silver that you were paid for this excreble mess to the Freedom to Marry Foundation.

Then sit quietly and let the responsible adults address this issue in the future.

Where to wave a sign?

Let's start with What Not to Wear: anything that expresses hostility to Mormons.

Yeah, they're underwear-worshipping god-botherers who are a danger to our civil society. It's a matter for IRS investigation that the donation records appear to show a national network gathering funds for a political goal--and that's called a PAC, not a church.

But why would we fool around with the Mormons at the street level? Yes, they interfered in politics illegally. But it's not up to them to restore our rights. I don't get picketing them--it validates and dignifies Mormon interference in the state's activities. While I understand their wish to control state law, I don't understand why we would behave as if our rights exist at their pleasure.

Their most effective lie is, These unreasonable queers are going to force us to marry them in our own CHURCH! Since that isn't true--churches run church weddings under their own rules--and isn't what we're demanding, it plays into their hands to protest their existence.

The greatest threat to organized religion isn't being victimized--that's its greatest marketing technique, you know--it's being ignored. So let's get started on that!

No more Mr. Nice Gay.

I'm a terrible advocate for marriage equality. Because I am too angry to be effective.

It is unacceptable that we are being asked to beg for our basic human rights. I am an adult. I pay my taxes, run a business that supports four families, volunteer at my kid’s school, and drive sober. I can change a cloth diaper without waking the baby wearing it, tune a carburetor, design a database and clean a fish.

I am a citizen of this country, and I have an unconditional right to choose my next of kin. That right wasn't discovered by the Supreme Court of CA and it can't be voted down by my neighbors. It was imbued upon me by my Creator, as the man once wrote.

The point of marriage equality is not to gain approval from strangers for our choice of life partners. It is to allow all of us to gain the dignity of choosing who will share our debts and successes.

It is to bring our lives inside the shelter of the state and the protections only the state can offer us, which is a choice many if not most couples want to make for themselves and their children.

The self-appointed moralists who want to fence my family outside of marriage will not stop there. What we’ve seen is that they will not stop until they have walled us out of every form of protection that exists.

In cooperating with religious nutters to send us the message that our families are less moral, California voters are complicit in disinheriting my child and burdening my mother with the responsibility of being my closest relative for the rest of her life.

The notion that I am expected to politely supplicate my fellow citizens to prevent them from permanently reducing me, and everyone who shares my minority orientation, to a conditional status that is not quite full adulthood, is just repellent.

I don’t want another chance to plead for fairness from voters—I want to set something on fire.

How dare they suggest that we are less entitled to the only available system to protect our children’s inheritances and fundamental rights? How dare they imply that I chose to go without the protections of community-property law, by being born this way?

It’s outrageous that they assault our families and expect us to be polite in our dissent. My marriage is not a political question on which reasonable people can differ. Only an unreasonable bigot could think otherwise.

'Gay people should be as unhappy as the rest of us.'

Why do we need marriage? I think it was Robin Williams who summarized it as, Why shouldn't gay couples be as unhappy as everyone else?

Your mileage may vary, but: I needed marriage because I might need divorce.

Like a lot of same-sex couples with kids, we decided that it would be best for our family to have a stay-at-home parent for early childhood. The complications for us included finding health insurance for our family, as well as selecting one of us to leave the work force and lose her connections and skills. The 'mommy track' isn't just for two-mom families, but the risk to an unmarried parent in making that sacrifice is larger.

If I had needed the practical benefits of divorce, which include making the outcome fair for the parent who loses out on current and future income to take care of the family, this would have been vital to my future. Marriage protected me, while my kid was small, from the possibility that I would be thrown out of my home by my girlfriend, who had found someone she liked better. As long as we're 'girlfriends', I'd have no way to recover financially.

For the 55,000 kids being raised by their same-sex parents, marriage is a big deal.

Not only because they have as much right as all the other kids to see their families reflected in the curriculum of public schools.

Not only because tax systems favor married couples, allowing them to pass more wealth to their kids.

And not only because California's same-sex couples in every race and ethnic group are raising their kids on less money than their married peers.

Because our kids didn't choose their parents, and because we're not perfect people, it's only fair to open up marriage to all couples who want it.

Yes, we can too.

Sitting down to stand up is a fine tradition.

If we want our rights, we're going to have to do quite a bit more of this. Making the mushy 20% in the middle feel uncomfortable and bothered by our suffering IS the solution, regardless of which branch of government we're trying to influence.

The good news is, we're probably not going to be required to risk our lives or allow our children to be sprayed with fire hoses. All we will be called on to risk is our freedom, for short periods of time. And that process will strengthen our movement, our resolve and our political power.

Johnson didn't ask MLK to the White House because he had heard something on the FBI phone tap that interested him. The access to power we will need to solve our political problems grows from the root of making people aware and uncomfortable. We can do this.

After action report

Within our community it's time for a little After Action Reporting. This is something we tend to get confused with blamestorming--but we have to know what went wrong.

Specifically, we need to explore why a strategy that was reliant on polls of voters being accurate could be executed without anyone raising that we know voters lie. The Bradley Effect is dead, but the Wisconsin Effect is still with us.

Hiding from the attacks on our families, behind a comparison to interracial marriage* and pleas for fairness, could only have worked if we were ahead outside the margin of error plus the undecideds. Whoever planned this gets sent back to sophomore year Marketing Statistics.

I'm tempted to rant on the racial aspects of the incompetence, which was perpetrated as far as I can tell by white men, but will say this: You do not need to be black to know that Obama's presence on the ballot was going to drive turnout way up among black people, and that therefore they might represent a larger portion of the voters than your model predicts and that therefore...you might want to try doing outreach in Oakland's bazillion churches!

Have a damn hat sale as a fundraiser, half the proceeds for the church's action fund, make custom designs by SOMA guys, put that auction in the East 14th AME and you're making connections with voters who get to see who we are and what our lives are like.

*Loved the Samuel L. Jackson ad. But that knife cuts both ways. Yes, this is a lot like interracial marriage, which Oakland's church ladies LOVE so damn much that had they been polled, their response to the statement 'Marriages between blacks and whites were once illegal in CA' would probably have been 'Good!'--but apparently no one asked them. Why associate ourselves with something that everyone doesn't actually agree on, when anymore the strongest adherents to the statement 'I'd prefer that my children marry within our race' are going to be...people of color and immigrants. Exactly the people whose votes we wanted to move. So in the After Action Report: Did a conversation happen in which someone raised this objection and it was addressed, or was there no one in the room who knew to raise it?

Some thoughts on Prop 8

1) What I saw in the campaign against Prop 8 was a set of California families with an emotionally-accessible legal problem get absolutely destroyed in the (paid and earned) media by backward-compatible nutters who think that their magic underwear lets them baptize dead folks.

In July we had a lead and 12% undecided. Roughly all of the 600,000 voters who weren't sure what they thought when Prop 8 went on the ballot voted against us, which is valuable feedback on how well we spent 28 million dollars of support for marriage equality.

Had 'our side' been united about the importance of this fight, we might have been able to create a more effective campaign. But we failed to move even some gay voters to get off their barstools and vote, with the theoretical, abstract equality-based arguments the No on 8 campaign insisted on.

I'm guessing here, but perhaps suburban moms in Fresno would be more responsive to ads featuring our adorable children and well-kept yards than to a boring, factual wonk-fest.

What we know for sure is that this focus-grouped fairness crap has now failed everywhere it's been tried. As it turns out, no one is emotionally moved to purchase soap due to its superior bubbling qualities. Who could have predicted that a recitation of past inequalities against people of color would be outgunned by kindergarten kids throwing flowers at their teacher's lesbian wedding? You cannot overcome an emotional appeal with facts, or we'd be discussing how the second term of John Kerry would compare to the Dukakis years today.

If we want to win, we're going to have to use marketing and psychological techniques to manipulate the feelings of low-information voters. If we want the moral high ground of sticking to the legal issues, maybe we can ask for a Schoolhouse Rock segment on Adam and Steve.

2) Next one to blame Oakland's church ladies for this loss gets a tall cold glass of Shaddup. This campaign was basically doomed from June 21st, when we already knew that Obama was the candidate. We knew Prop 8 was on the ballot, and we knew that turnout among the 6% of CA voters who are black and reliably Democratic was going to be extremely high.

We have several large problems as a community, and one is that we're ignorant of the history of our country's most successful civil rights movement.

I'll even go further: As a white person I have had the cringe-inducing experience of listening to white gay men compare themselves to Freedom Riders more than once. They never respond well to a mild mention of how ignorant and disrespectful that is, which is indicative of how far we have yet to travel as a community.

While there are parallels in the moral dimension between the two movements, I think we're in desperate need of further education. Until then, no one is allowed to speak for gay people who doesn't understand that in the practical dimension it's simply rude to compare our situation with that of sharecroppers who couldn't vote.

Before we can move votes among black women, we need a vocabulary to describe our problems that doesn't rely on inaccurate metaphor. If we hope to ever again face a referendum with better results, that's job 1.

3) The GLBT movement has played itself out. This was all predictable and therefore preventable. For 28 goddam million US dollars, this performance was pitiful. At that budget level, you don't use Wisconsin data that's two years old to determine message and tactics. You run an A, a B and a C test mailing on postcards and let the responses TELL YOU what the message is; then you let that successful message drive your tactics. So from my perch as a successful marketer of every damn intangible in the world, who has been thrown out of the GBLT community's treehouse so many times I've got grass stains on my scalp, I've had it.

My position is: What I want is legal equality for my family. If that's what you want we can work together. If what you want is 'something' for the community to feel better about how we're treated, or the right to a health care power of attorney, you can't lead me because we're not going to the same place. That was what I wanted in 1993, 'something'. Today I want citizenship and I don't plan to settle for less.

If you want to time travel backward to a point where hospital visitation rights and adoption (may not be valid in all states) are the goals, lead on--but don't expect to be followed.

I refuse to be led by people who will settle for any old thing as long as their own places at the feet of the Democratic Party are secure. This is just embarrassing. 'Equality organizations', you're fired.

Well, hell, maybe we CAN.

If you didn't listen to Obama talk to Americans about race as if we were grownups for 45 short minutes--as Jon Stewart put it last night--it's an experience.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BarackObamadotcom

So, yes, we can.

I can't prove we can't, anyhow.

I had such a good time reading that speech that I watched it with my second-grader. Who was rapt. For 38 minutes. It's a special occasion to watch adult TV, and an even more special one to get to listen to adult ideas addressing the concerns that are on her mind.

During February, and around MLK Day, she learned about the civil rights movement at school and had to come home and reality check: Mama, Ms. Teacher said that back when Gramma was little, people with different color skin couldn't ride on the same part of the bus. That can't be true. Can it? She said that this lady Rosa Parks went to jail for sitting in the wrong part of the bus. That didn't really happen, did it?

My 8 year old lives in a reality in which legal segregation, and therefore the violence and struggle surrounding its end, are literally senseless. And that's good.

But I have never, in my adult life, heard a politician who had a shot at winning the race for dog-catcher make the claim: Economic desperation and habit, rather than malice, are driving the train around the loop of racism, racial thinking and acts of prejudice that keep us all in our own cars on that train, with our own kind.

And to stop that train we need to stop fueling it, and discuss the hell out of why the tracks seem to keep us going in circles.

I was amazed by the speech. I assumed that Pam Spaulding shared writers' credit with Tim Wise, because everyone knows that professional politicians can't think this stuff through let alone speak it aloud.

It was a relief and a triumph. Long overdue.

A long, long time ago...

...when I was but a lil' phoenix, I learned something from my big sister's first boyfriend that seems to apply to our national malaise.

I refer here to the trend toward homeowners who have no equity and a painful house payment choosing to walk away from the house. Sending 'jingle mail' (an envelope with the keys) instead of a check.

This came to me in the form of a joke I heard about the mindset of borrowers whose houses have lost value, told by a mortgage broker:
Bank: Mr. Borrower, we're calling because we haven't received your last mortgage payment.
(Soon to be Former) Homeowner: Oh yes you have!

I was also fascinated by an interview with the CEO of Wachovia, whose bank holds or sold about 7% of 'the housing bubble' in form of various types of lending. He was shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that his bank had lent money to the sort of people that would pay a car payment or a credit card bill while allowing their homes to be foreclosed.

This reminded me of Adrian, the first boyfriend. He was big, tough, motorcycle-riding and (as we said back in the day) black. I recall a conversation we had when I was about twelve, sitting on my parents' front porch. He was spinning a tale about his cousin's new ride, which was a gold (gold!) Lincoln, dropped, on 17 inch rims. He referred to this cousin as 'East Side trash' and laughed at how nice the car was considering that the young man's mama was living in squalor.

I asked him what he was talking about and he leaned over and said very quietly: Well, you gotta understand that my people know how to be broke. You can live in your car, but you can't drive your house.

I love this country, but it scares me that we've become a nation living by the values of a 17 year old being raised by his grandparents in the worst neighborhood in town.

We can live in our cars, but as it turns out, we can't drive our McMansions.

Satellite shot down successfully

Here's the conversation with Mrs. Phoenix:

Her: So, what's with this headline, US military shoots down satellite? Is there something to it beyond the fact that the Navy wants to play with the big missiles?

Me: Well, hard to know. I read that there are four steps to the life cycle of a satellite, and that this one failed after the first stage. So it launched, but can't steer itself down to a harmless landing, and that's why it needs to be shot down. (long pause) But now that you ask, I wonder what motive the US military might have to take delivery on a spy satellite which had not been tested on all its critical systems?

And they launched it without checking it adequately. And now they get to show off their spy-satellite-assault capabilities.

Which I think may have been sold to them by the same company that built the failed satellite.

Nah, nothing to see here.

Mmm, popcorn!

John McCain, the front-runner and presumed Republican nominee, has been described by the NY Times as having had problems with his campaign staff in 1999 related to his 'romantic relationship' with a lobbyist for the telecommunications industry. A lobbyist for whom he did a number of favors.

As one of my internet buddies put it: "McCain is a senile old dolt of a goat, easy prey for whoever gets his ear."

Yes, this particular goat seems quite vulnerable to any 30ish perky blond female. It was an issue when his first wife was recovering from an accident and 'gained some weight', when the goat was 40ish. Still worked 20 years later, according to this story. Probably works today.

Gosh, I'm glad nobody who wants undue influence over the CoC can possibly hire a perky 30ish blond to work in his office in any capacity whatsoever! Because that could be unhealthy for children and other living things.

Does the NYT and the rest of the liberal media need our help framing this story? Because it's not about the sex or the hypocrisy.

It's about the foolish old goat thinking that the perky blonde loves him for his inner sensitivity and would never manipulate him.

On a cultural-studies note: This story is sure to be a hit with the swing block known as Hispanic voters. 'Mira el cabron' is a familiar phrase, no? The narrative through which Hispanics are likely to read these facts is, Typical aging man who has power and money, he thinks he's still attractive to the young ladies for his looks and brawn. The fool, does he think he was the only one that lobbyist slept with? She's a woman of loose character and he's being led by his...nose.

Pop the palomitas, y'all, I'm calling my contact at the Spanish language daily in SoCal.

Sub-prime lending restrictions

As we know, the crisis in the housing sector of our economy has one cause, once all the bull has been pitchforked.

Lack of regulation in the lending sector allowed the almighty financial markets to collateralize mortgage debt.

As a result, investors around the world were able to effectively lend money to folks who wanted a 4/2 split level in Modesto but couldn't pay for it in nickels. Flowing from that availability of money, banks and brokers to come up with a bunch of complex mortgage products to distribute the cash to people who couldn't afford a down payment or a reasonable monthly principal payment.

They came up with ideas like negative equity mortgages (yes, for all the math whizzes in the house, that means getting paid to become a homeowner) and medical underwriting (can you fog a mirror? good, how would you like an interest-only ARM that resets in 3 years?).

Downstream from those products being aggressively marketed to a financially illiterate public, we've swirled into a crisis caused by the predictable result of creative financing for the cash-strapped: Foreclosures are up. Way up. No, lean back for a better view of that stack of envelopes containing house keys, not house payments.

I don't blame anyone who is sending in jingle mail and saving first, last and a deposit plus U-Haul rental fee. They were sold a peanut-butter-and-poison sandwich. However, some of the lenders seem a bit put out that the folks who have no equity in their homes who they chose as business partners are acting like this is a business deal gone bad.

A few of those stiffed lenders want to regulate their way into better underwriting standards so that the few responsible banks that actually kept the debt on their books won't get dragged into a mess like this again in the future. Of course, this is the kind of rule-setting that would have been nice to have before the game began and is now superfluous, the market having added financial underwriting to its practices just a few years too late.

However, when you want to close and latch and lock the barn door after all the horses are gone, the superheroes who will carry that out for you can be found...(trumpet blast)...at your friendly volunteer State Legislature! So we had a sub-prime lending reform bill carried that made it through two hearings before dying of sheer incompetence. This bill would have legislated underwriting that the most conservative lender might want to use, in addition to outlawing several proven financing techniques that get those of us with erratic but sufficient income streams into homeownership.

Bad bill, right? Well, those who had an interest in stopping it were happy to make a deal.

At the House Business committee meeting on January 29th, who to our wondering eyes should appear but Paul G. Decoff, new chief of lending for Thornburg Mortgage.

His lobbyist, JD Bullington, walked in the great man himself, to explain to the lowly Members on the committee that the bill had to include a carve-out for the Santa Fe-based 'jumbo ARM residential specialists' at Thornburg.

Because otherwise the sub-prime lending reforms, referred to by members throughout the hearing as 'the predatory lending bill', would affect the wealthy.

Apparently, in Saturday's closed-door re-write session, Thornburg demanded--and got--an exemption to the new regs for any loan valued above 300K.

Guess the committee didn't like that too well, because they asked a bunch of questions before tabling.

Perhaps the highbrows who 'offer financing to the sophisticated borrower' should study up on their French philosophy. I believe it was Anatole France who first said, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.".

It's not a conspiracy if they do it all right out in front of you.

The other Mary Garcia

One of the fun parts of the New Mexico Legislature is the cultural aspect.

The quote of the day from the Clinton rally:

"Among those attending were Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, state Auditor Hector Balderas, State Reps. Lucky Varela, Debbie Rodello, Rhonda King, Mary Helen Garcia, Danice Picraux, Donna Irwin and Elias Barela, Senate Dem Whip Mary Jane Garcia, State Sens. Phil Griego, Richard Martinez, James Taylor, Pete Campos, Linda Lovejoy, and Bernadette Sanchez, Santa Fe Mayor David Coss, and former Secretary of State Rebecca Giron-Vigil."

Our statehouse has a Mary Helen Garcia, not to be confused with the Senate Majority Whip Mary Jane Garcia.

James Taylor is Hispanic and a former county ward boss from Albuquerque, not a white guy who sings.

Bernadette Sanchez is one of four women named Bernadette at work in the Roundhouse, all of whom are under 50 years old.

We have three guys named Campos (Joe, Pete and Juan) plus a Fields, for good measure and that mix of Anglo diversity you were looking for. (Where I get into trouble is mixing up Jose Campos and Joe Fields, but that's me.)

And finally, the guy named Lucky Varela? His legal name is Luciano, but his nameplate for his committee hearings says 'Lucky'. Which he may be, despite having carried a couple of health care reform bills that were doomed from the start due to the fact that they would have nibbled at the edges of reforming some aspect of health care.

The first rule of politics in this land which was once Mexico: Your name says a lot about you. Like Senator (Fran)Cisco McSorley. And when you're counting your votes, it's always wise to measure twice and cut once.

Which is why the most frequently heard phrase in the hallway is: No, the OTHER Martinez.

Ethics reform passes the House

This bill, which was carried by the OTHER Mary Garcia--not the one who ran the table to outlaw human trafficking, about which more will be said--would make it illegal to hand out suitcases full of hundreds on the Roundhouse floor even if you're not a registered lobbyist.

I think that's what it says, anyhow.

Legislative roundup

It's all over but the howling. (Yes, that was a Lobo joke.)

The Governor, in his infinite patience, has now officially pissed on:
-The state Senate, who didn't pass the health care reform bill he wanted, amended like he wanted it;
-the state House, who stripped the teeth out of his health care reform bill because they want single payer and plan to hold their breath until they have it;
-the Lt Gov, who has been doing his job for him since January 2007 and can't get the State Police to provide her with the security the Senate budgeted, because Bill said no to it;
-the Attorney General, Gary King, who was happy to issue a finding that the Governor is not allowed to hide from the appropriations bill because he's at the Pit watching a Lobo basketball game;
-the Senate again, who are happy to see him in NM's highest court to resolve the question of whether the Governor can close up shop and head to the Pit in order to begin vetoing line items form the budget on his preferred schedule rather than the Senate's;
-The 400,000 New Mexicans who don't have health insurance and aren't going to get any until someone shows leadership in the form of compromise; and finally
-the gay couples who were counting on him to exert some leverage to get them family rights to each other's credit card debt.

No, I'm not an expert in who the folks are in that last category, in the sense that I haven't heard a riotous clamor in favor of the 'responsibilities' aspect of the Domestic Partnership Rights and Responsibilities Act', but they must be out there.

Details to come on health care reform, the sub-prime lending bill, the DP bill and the fun of having a Governor who thinks that he can work the process like a deadbeat avoiding service of process on foreclosure papers! I'm proud.

AZ constitutional amendment

At one time, this would have been a windmill not worth tilting at: The Arizona branch of Focus on the Fetus is once again pushing a bill to re-super-duper-power-ban same-sex marriages from being usable in AZ. This time the mechanism is an amendment to the state constitution to be approved by voters next fall.

Yes, the plan is to let the neighbors vote on who's your next of kin! Seriously! You're wondering, what ever happened to minding your own bidness, as my Grandpa Ed the Arizonan would have said it?

That MYOB hands-off stuff used to be part of the ethos of the west, and then Arizona (and southern CO) got full of refugees from SoCal who wanted cheaper houses and whiter schools.

Now it’s more of a hands-on, Republican-government-small-enough-to-fit-in-your-bedroom situation in which a bunch of tilt-up-church-going busybodies wear big hats and $400 boots while explaining the frontier spirit to the rest of us.

Since they are God’s Servants ™ they will continue carrying the amendment through the Lege until it’s on a ballot, and it won’t matter whether it’s on for the 08 election or not. McCain will carry AZ and whenever the no-gay-marriage amendment is presented to voters, they’ll approve it.

Despite having made a successful stand against the DP ban in AZ, the only fight against a referenda that we’ve ever won anywhere, even the LGBT equality orgs are clear that to oppose this thing is to waste Tim Gill’s hard-earned donations.

Not that we won’t fight it, because it’s going to be a nasty, id-filled vituperation of any family that isn’t mommy-daddy-homemade babies…but we’ll lose.

That’s the spirit, you’re thinking. Well, if I don’t got hope, maybe that’s because I got facts.