Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

We still have time to mess this up!

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

White supremacy is terrorism.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / We Have A Balloon Juice Angel (!) for the High School Students & PA Supreme Court Race

We Have A Balloon Juice Angel (!) for the High School Students & PA Supreme Court Race

by | 74 Comments

This post is in: 

Update 2:  Almost Retired’s Angel Match is complete, and we met our $25,000 goal for The Civics Center!  The $25k we raised brought in $35,000 in external matches, for a total of $60k for this group.  We are the little engine that could.  Thank you all!

Update:  frosty’s Angel Match is complete, but we have another Angel Match from Almost Retired.  Details in the comments.

frosty has stepped forward once again with an Angel Match!

Note from frosty

I hate to see this stall out and lose the $5,000 external match. This is my state* and it’s going to hit close to home if we lose.

* Actually, Commonwealth, for all you pedants out there.

Matching up to $50 per person for a total of $500!  That means that frosty matches your $50 turns, turning it into $100.  Then the external match matches the $100, for a total of $200.  ($25 = $100, $10 = $40, $5 = $20)

That’s 4x matching, assuming we hit the $5k goal to get the external match!  

We can do this, right?

The PA Supreme Court Race Is Every Bit As Important as the One In Wisconsin

The United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit (LIVE AUDIO)

Why do these retention races matter so much?

  • This is not your typical judicial retention election, where we can blithely say that judges are almost always retained, so no big deal.
  • The Rs have mounted a very aggressive campaign to turn out MAGA to vote NO, and everything is on the line in PA in this election.
  • If we don’t keep these 3 Supreme Court seats, I don’t want it to be because we didn’t try hard enough, or because we didn’t realize what the consequences of a loss would be.

If Dems don’t retain the seats

  • Republicans will likely retain control of the court well into the 2030s.
  • Voting rights will be undermined; thousands of ballots will no longer be opened.
  • Return to brutal  gerrymandering of legislative and congressional districts.
  • Good public education? Who needs that?
  • There will be nothing to hold back the MAGA agenda.

If we win, the Democrats will likely retain control of the court well into the 2030s.

This is a win-win.  Even if the worst happens and the Dems don’t retain their seats, we will have helped register TONS of young voters who are likely to remain engaged in the political process – and they can vote in 2026 and 2028, and every election in between.

 

Reader Interactions

74Comments

  1. 1.

    WaterGirl

    Anything above the $50 that will be matched by frosty will still be matched by the external match.

    *Assuming we raise the $5,000.

    As we start this Angel match, the thermometer reads 21,212.12!

    Less than $3,000 to go. :-)

    Update: frosty’s Angel Match is complete! The external match is still in place.

    Update 2: We have another BJ Angel! Almost retired has just offered a $500 match, up to $50 per person!

  2. 2.

    Another Scott

    +$50+

    Thanks frosty, WG, jackals, matchers, and everyone in the trenches.  It’s important!

    Forward!!

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  3. 3.

    JaySinWa

    and they can vote in 1016 and 2028, and every election in between.

    We’ve got time traveling teens who are going to undo our past mistakes? Cool, cool.

    ETA in for 50 to fire up the time machine. I’ll be very disappointing if this just turns out to be a typo

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    frosty just sent me another note that I want to share with you.

    When I moved to PA 20-odd years ago my Representative was Todd Platts, a Conservative Republican, who in retrospect seems sane and maybe not that bad. Somewhere around Tea Party time he retired and was replaced by Scott Perry. I knocked doors on at least three elections to beat that SOB but he always won easily, in part because of the gerrymandered districts.

    And then, AND THEN, the Democrats got on the majority of the Supreme Court. They ruled that the district boundaries were unconstitutional. PENNSYLVANIA unconstitutional so they couldn’t be overruled by SCOTUS. The boundaries were ungerrymandered, I got a new Rep and Perry got bumped into the district that included part of Harrisburg which was much more competitive. He won last year but it was much closer, around 10%. Maybe we oust him in 2026 … if we can keep the same districts.

    So let’s keep the court we have. It matters!!

  10. 10.

    WaterGirl

    That’s $275 toward frosty’s match already!  Thank you.

    We are just over 50% of the way to meeting frosty’s match.

  12. 12.

    JaySinWa

    @WaterGirl: So sorry! We flew forward in time just a moment ago.

    So you’re willing to use your time machine to fix typos but not elections? No wonder we’re in such a fix. I am very disappointed.

  17. 17.

    WaterGirl

    Am I allowed to confess that these are way more fun to track when things are moving along? :-)

  19. 19.

    WaterGirl

    @Tom Levenson: Thank you!

    Did you see my note about a zoom for your new book?

    Not sure if no answer means “not interested” or if it means you have too much email!

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    We are at $475.  Just $25 left on the frosty match, but the external match is still going.

  22. 22.

    WaterGirl

    And frosty’s match is complete!

    Big thanks to everyone who jumped in! And thank you, frosty!

    This place was jumping for about 15 minutes. :-)

  25. 25.

    frosty

    I ducked out to the grocery store and missed all the excitement! Things move a lot faster when there’s an angel with an internal match doubling the donations. I’d like to encourage all of my fellow jackals who might have some spare cash doing nothing to chip in.

    I feel like this doubles the amount of money I would have donated anyway, one piece at a time. It’s very satisfying. Give it a try.

  27. 27.

    WaterGirl

    Thank you!

    Gosh, just over $1,000 left to meet our goal

    *remember, one of our Angels donated by check, so $24k in the thermometer is really $25k.

  34. 34.

    WaterGirl

    @frosty:

    Hey frosty, I think you inspired Almost Retired – who just offered a $500 Angel Match on the same terms as yours.  Up to $50 per person.

    If Bj peeps donate for this match, that should take us to our $25,000 goal.

  35. 35.

    WaterGirl

    Okay, big thanks to everyone who made frosty’s match such a success.

    New match from Almost Retired is in place.  Let’s do this.

  40. 40.

    frosty

    @frosty: ​I just did the math*. The thermometer was at $22,966 when my match finished and it started at $21212.12 (LOL) so the match generated $1,254 in other donations.  Holy cow, that’s a triple match! You people are awesome, thanks so much!

    *Actually, since I was an almost-math major, I have to say this is just arithmetic, not math.

  42. 42.

    Almost Retired

    @frosty:  I hope to reformulate my nym in 2026, when I will change my status with the California State Bar to “inactive” and will no longer give two shits about solving anyone’s legal problems.

  44. 44.

    Barbara

    I donated $100.  I’m not keeping track of matches but hopefully all donations help.

  45. 45.

    Kristine

    Shoutout to whoever suggested Department Q. I’m enjoying it. Limiting myself to one episode per night, but tomorrow is the penultimate so I will probably watch the last one as well.

    The cast is great. I remember Matthew Goode from A Discovery of Witches, but everyone else is new to me.

    Never heard the word ‘fuck’ so many times in an hour, but according to one of my FB friends it’s a Scottish thing.

  49. 49.

    Barbara

    @Kristine: ​I’m also watching. Fortunately the weird stuff doesn’t overwhelm the normal police procedural scenes. If you like this you might like the Scandinoir series it seems to be premised on. I can’t remember the name, but it’s a weird detective and his misfit assistants.

  50. 50.

    WaterGirl

    @Kristine: Netflix keeps telling me to watch Dept Q.  Is it just one season?  Will there be a second?  I always kind of like to know before I start, it helps set expectations!

  54. 54.

    Kristine

    @WaterGirl: Just one season/9 episodes, each around an hour more or less (usually less).

    Reviews are good and it seems to be popular. No second season as of yet but in one interview I read Goode said he’s interested in doing more.

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    @Kristine: Thank you for that info.  I try not to get too attached to characters if I know we’re only seeing each other for a short while. :-)

  58. 58.

    Almost Retired

    Just put in my match even though I don’t know if it was met.  I don’t want to do math.  Off to watch the Tony Awards.

  59. 59.

    WaterGirl

    @Almost Retired: Thank you so much for the match!

    And thank you, frosty, too, for getting us going today!

    You both rock.

    Just $189 $39 left to meet our goal for The Civics Center!

  60. 60.

    Kristine

    @Barbara: I should dig more into Scandinoir. I’ve watched some of Wallander and read and watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but the bleakness gets to me a little.

  63. 63.

    lowtechcyclist

    * Actually, Commonwealth, for all you pedants out there.

    Trivia question: what other states call themselves Commonwealths? I think there are three besides PA.

  64. 64.

    WaterGirl

    Almost Retired’s Angel Match is complete, and we met our $25,000 goal for The Civics Center!  

    The $25k we raised brought in $35,000 in external matches, for a total of $60k for this group.  

    We are the little engine that could.  

    Thanks to all of our BJ Angels, and thanks to Laura Brill at The Civics Center for finding all those external matches, and to everyone who donated!

    Thank you all!

  67. 67.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lowtechcyclist: Massachusetts and Virginia are two of them.

    (But I think it’s wrong to object to them being “states”, because in every way they are states. The word doesn’t mean the same thing as in the case of Puerto Rico, not a state.)

  70. 70.

    lowtechcyclist

    @frosty:

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I grew up in Virginia (and spent a good chunk of my adult life there as well), so I know about that one.

    Even if I hadn’t already known about Massachusetts, reading Charlie Pierce would have filled me in on that one, with sentences like “Long Island out in Boston Harbor is one of the most interesting places in the Commonwealth (God save it!).”

    Not sure where and when I noticed about Kentucky, but it’s the third.  I assume that it kept that appellation when it was split off from Virginia, but I don’t know for sure.

  71. 71.

    dnfree

    @WaterGirl: Thank you for your efforts and thanks to all the matching angels and donors!  I gave some too, but no e of us alone would be able to have the effect we do combined!

  72. 72.

    rekoob

    @lowtechcyclist: @frosty: @Matt McIrvin: Indeed, as you’ve noted, the four Commonwealths in the United States are:

    Kentucky

    Massachusetts

    Pennsylvania

    Virginia

    In Virginia, District Attorneys are Commonwealth’s Attorneys. We have a primary on 17 June for those.

    Virginia is also unique in that it has a number of Independent Cities that are separate from counties. That is, the City of Richmond is independent and *not* part of the surrounding counties (Henrico [Hen-RYE-co] and Chesterfield). Fairfax City and Fairfax County are two separate jurisdictions within the same geographic space (as is Falls Church), and Richmond City and Richmond County are separated by about 52 miles (Warsaw is the county seat of Richmond County).

    There are other states (Colorado and Pennsylvania come to mind) that have city-county combined jurisdictions, but I believe Virginia has had them separate from the outset.

  73. 73.

    frosty

    @rekoobe:. PA is a nightmare compared to Virginia. 67 counties, 2,560 municipalities (township, borough, town, city). And then there are school districts that sometimes cross all these lines.

    In my career, I worked on NPDES stormwater permitting. In Maryland? Piece of cake – just the counties. In Virginia? A little more difficult, e.g. it was Fairfax City or Fairfax County. In PA? Not by County, but at the municipal level. Oy. Cleaning up the Susquehanna and the Chesapeake By was orders of magnitude more complex.

  74. 74.

    WaterGirl

    Thanks again to everyone!  So nice to wake up and know that we have done our part for this!

Comments are closed.