Just as states with progressive lawmakers and activists have themselves initiated innovative programs over a wide range of issues, state-based progressive blogs have helped provide us with a point of view, inside information and often an edgy voice that we just don't get from the traditional media. This week in progressive state blogs is designed specifically to focus attention on the writing and analysis of people focused on their home turf. Let me know via comments or Kosmail if you have a favorite state- or city-based blog you think I should be watching.
Inclusion of a diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement or endorsement of its contents.
At The Left Hook of California, Brett Bymaster writes—Great Bastion of Journalism…No More:
The San Jose Mercury News has become a victim of its own ideological homogeneity. The San Jose Mercury news was once a great bastion of journalism. Described in the 90′s as “a middle-of-the-road political cast slightly tilted to the Democratic side,” the paper more recently leans decidedly right. Throughout the 80′s, 90′s and early 2000′s, the paper reigned as one of the best in the country. It won two Pulitzers, first in 1986, again in 1995, and then it scored three Pulitzer finalists between 2001 and 2005. But the awards stop there, as the paper slid from balanced journalism to become the de facto Chuck Reed / Sam Liccardo political campaign vehicle. Reed took office in 2006, the year after the newspaper’s accolades ceased.
As evidence of the downhill spiral, the daily got scooped on the biggest San Jose story of recent times. A small local paper first broke the George Shirakawa scandal, a story which culminated in the influential county supervisor spending time in the slammer for gambling and corruption.
The Merc fell in love in with Mayor Chuck Reed, lost its way in a lovesick daze, and slowly but surely got sucked towards the Right Wing Democrats. The newspaper’s writers became close friends with one faction of the city government. Scott Herhold was observed advising Liccardo on how to run his mayoral campaign over a personal lunch. It all happened under the guise of being liberal, after all Santa Clara County leans democrat with a margin of 2:1. Between attrition and hiring, the Merc let any diverse opinion writers slip away until everyone had the same point of view. On the important local issues the journalists and editors speak with a unified voice: anti-union, pro-charter school, small government. The problem is that everyone at the Merc leans the same way. They are racially homogenous, ideologically identical. The lack of diversity is appalling, and let’s face it, boring.
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The Mudflats of Alaska,
Shannyn Moore writes—
What Could Go Wrong? This:
There’s a game most of us play. It’s called “What Could Go Wrong?!” You know, like I’m going to hand my nine year old an automatic weapon – “What Could Go Wrong?!” Or, why not go bare-headed and drive a motorcycle really fast? “What Could Go Wrong?!” Then there is the always present, Why don’t we build a giant mine at the headwaters of the largest sockeye salmon fishing run in the entire world? “What Could Go Wrong?”
Many Alaskans have asked this question over the last decade regarding the proposed Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay. When the state government seemed to answer, “Nothing could go wrong,” tribes, fishermen and environmental groups pleaded with the Environmental Protection Agency to study and report.
I attended the EPA hearing held in Anchorage a few weeks ago. “What could go wrong?” had indeed gone terribly wrong at the Mount Polley Mine in British Columbia just last month. A breach in the dam had dumped millions of cubic feet of toxic waste into a tributary of the Fraser River—a salmon-bearing river. In a stroke of irony, the town closest to the impact zone is named Likely. The experts have said the damage done is irreversible. That means it’s a waiting game to see if any fish at all return to, or survive the toxic soup.
Oh, and here’s a real shocker—engineers Knight Piesold are saying it’s not their fault because they aren’t working for that mine anymore. Oops. Sorry about your bad luck.
Below the orange gerrymander you'll find excerpts from more progressive state blogs.
At Juanita Jean's of Texas, Juanita Jean writes— Thank You, Daddy Cruz, For Helping The Black Folks:
Rolling stinkin’ hellfire on tumbleweed, Daddy Rafael Cruz is schoolin’ the black folks on how to be good Republicans.
I have not heard talk like this unless it was coming from under a white hood.
The Western Williamson Republican Club had a meeting encouraging people to come hear Raphel Cruz speak about American exceptionalism.
The father of Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said black people “need to be educated” about Democrats, so that they will vote Republican. Cruz, who made the comments at the Western Williamson Republican Club August meeting, added “the average black does not” understand that the minimum wage is bad. [...]
Dude, the average black understands slavery. The average black knows that without a minimum wage, you’d pay your workers a quarter an hour. Yeah, Cruz, the minimum wage is bad because it’s too little pay for a fair day’s work.
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DemocraticDiva of Arizona,
Donna writes—
Tea Party Candidate for AZ House Jill NorGaard's position on abortion is more radical than Cathi Herrod's:
Arizona [Legislative District]18, which encompasses Ahwatukee and parts of Chandler and Tempe, is where I used to live for over a decade and is believed to be a somewhat competitive district. Democrat Rae Waters got elected to the House there in 2008 and Democrats continue to express optimism that they’ll be able to turn the district in the near future. The Republicans who get elected there have tended to be very right wing but smart enough to avoid “legitimate rape” gaffes and occasionally vote against their caucus on something high profile, such as this year’s Medicaid vote. Guys like Bob Robson and Jeff Dial are not actual centrists (as their total voting records amply demonstrate) but they feign it well enough to pass muster since pleasantness is so often mistaken for moderation here.
LD18 has an open House seat due to John McComish retiring from the Senate and Rep. Dial running for his seat. Rep. Robson will be running for reelection along with a new candidate named Jill Norgaard. Norgaard is a proud Tea Party patriot who shared her radical (and often incoherent) views with a thing called Liberty Storm Radio for nearly an hour this past June. [...]
And then there’s her Center for Arizona Policy Questionnaire, in which she responded to this question:
4.Prohibiting abortion except when it is necessary to prevent the death of the mother.
with this:
Question 4: Prohibit abortion, no exceptions
[...]
A good rule of thumb with anti-choicers is to assume that the most extreme thing they’ve said or done with regard to the issue is their true position. For example, when Jeff Flake was running for Senate he told the AZ Republic ed board that he was for rape and incest exceptions and they bought it without looking at his voting record in Congress, where he voted for no exceptions on abortion bills right along with Todd Akin. With Norgaard, you have her saying “no exceptions”, not even for the woman’s life, to a written survey where she had plenty of time to consider her answer. I have a feeling if someone got her talking about the subject we would hear some pretty disturbing opinions about her fellow women from Jill.
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Cottonmouth of Mississippi,
Ryan Brown writes—
Nuclear Waste Storage Showing Up Again:
Just when you thought the issue of nuclear waste storage in Mississippi had gone away (again), here we go once more!
Tomorrow in Atlanta, a panel discussion will be held to discuss the impacts of consolidated nuclear waste storage on communities. A representative on this panel is none other than Patrick Sullivan, President of the Mississippi Energy Institute. Let's not forget that Brent Christensen, Phil Bryant's right-hand man at the Mississippi Development Authority, is still on the Mississippi Energy Institute's Board of Directors.
When I hear "consolidated," I take that to mean they are not just planning on storing Mississippi's nuclear waste in southern Mississippi. It means that Mississippi could be the consolidated dump for nuclear waste from places like California, New York, and Florida.
The Mississippi Public Service Commission, in a bipartisan way, has gone on record to say that we do not want nuclear waste stored in Mississippi, especially around our neighborhoods, forests, and waterways. Even Republican U.S. Representative Steven Palazzo is opposed to nuclear waste storage in Mississippi.
Nearly a year has gone by with the public and regulators in opposition to this idea, yet Sullivan continues to advocate Mississippi as the best place to go for dumping nuclear waste.
Phil Bryant even went as far as to say concern over this issue is an "overreaction." Once again, Phil Bryant and his cronies continue to ignore the will of Mississippians while helping his friends make a buck at the expense of our state.
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Michigan Liberal,
Eric B. writes—
Terri Lynn Land doesn't understand why federal taxation is a good idea:
Terri Lynn Land's column wrote a column today on how to fix roads. She wants to fund road repairs ... by cutting taxes.
First, let’s gradually reduce the federal gas tax. Under the current broken system, we are taxed 37 cents per gallon of gasoline—just over 18 cents a gallon from Washington, D.C., and 19 cents a gallon from Lansing. Rates for diesel are even higher.
Over the next several years, we should reduce the federal gas tax to around 4 cents per gallon and allow Michigan to decide how to best fund our infrastructure needs.
When most people say that Terri Lynn Land has turned out to be an awful candidate, they're talking about her ability to run a campaign. When I say that she's a terrible candidate, it's because it is the single most painful campaign I've ever had to watch. It's not the gaffes or her unwillingness to debate, it's just the avalanche of terrible, stupid, unworkable, ignorant things that her campaign says: Attacking Gary Peters for being rich and then saying that he is beholden over investments of $19,000, her "Really" ad and now this.
This is just beyond stupid. It's as if she doesn't understand how road repairs get funded or even who has responsibility for repairing what roads, or that the idea that if you cut revenue you don't get more money. It's also as if she is entirely unaware of the role that our ongoing experiment in the Dunning-Kruger effect has in funding road repairs or how their intransigence on fixing how Michigan funds its own road repairs is really what's causing our roads to fall apart. It's just awful, and they keep doing it because our political press has given up on the job of telling people what ideas will work and which ones are just silly.
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Bleeding Heartland of Iowa,
desmoinesdem writes—
IA-03: David Young wants to "bring a dose of Iowa reality to Washington":
Republican Congressional candidate David Young has launched his first television commercial of the general election campaign. I've posted the video and transcript to "Good Meal" after the jump. Echoing his opponent Staci Appel's promise to "bring Iowa common sense to Washington," Young's new ad vows to "bring a dose of Iowa reality to Washington." Speaking to the camera, Young separates himself from beltway insiders who are mismanaging the government: "I get it, and you get it. Why can't they?"
Campaigning against Washington is standard practice, but this rhetoric is real chutzpah coming from a guy who has spent most of his adult life as a Congressional staffer based in the capital. The fundraising e-mail that accompanied today's ad release glossed over Young's professional background, asserting, "Washington needs David," and urging supporters to "Help send David to Washington," as if Young hadn't spent the better part of two decades there. [...]
P.S.- While many voters would probably agree with Young's claim that the federal government "overspends" and "overtaxes," Young is smart enough to know better. Fact is, the federal tax burden on most American households is at historically low levels, whether you look at federal income taxes only or total federal taxes. By the same token, total federal government spending as a share of U.S. gross domestic product has "fallen dramatically" since the Great Recession ended, and the federal government "outside Social Security and Medicare is already significantly below its historical average size."
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Progress Illinois,
Ellyn Fortino writes—
Housing Needs Grow for an Aging America; Low-Income Illinoisans Struggle to Find Affordable Rentals:
In 2012, one-third of U.S. adults aged 50 and older — or almost 20 million households — were cost burdened, meaning they payed more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs. That same year, nearly half of those 20 million households were severely burdened, or spent more than half of their income on housing costs.
Thirty-seven percent of adults aged 80 and older faced high housing costs in 2012, including 20 percent with severe burdens.
Older households paying off a mortgage as well as those with lower incomes were more likely to be cost burdened, the report showed. Seventy-seven percent of older households earning less than $15,000 a year, as well as 54 percent of those with annual incomes between $15,000 and $29,999, were burdened by housing costs in 2012.
Cost-burdened households tend to cut back on food, health care and other necessities, according to the report. Additionally, adults in the 54 to 60 age range with high housing costs often spend less on retirement savings compared with those living in affordable housing.
In general, older homeowners tend to be in a better position financially than older renters to pay for care later in life. According to the report, 70 percent of adults who will reach the age of 65 will need some form of long-term care as they age.
"The typical homeowner age 65 and over has enough wealth to cover the costs of in-home assistance for nearly nine years or assisted living for six-and-half years," the report ["Housing America’s Older Adults—Meeting the Needs of An Aging Population"] reads "The typical renter, however, can only afford two months of these supports."
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Delaware Liberal,
cassandra_m writes—
It’s Labor Day and Someone Forgot About Winning Hearts and Minds:
Today was the Labor Day Parade in Downtown Wilmington — a long-standing tradition of organized labor, their families and supporters and (during an election year) politicians who want to be seen supporting labor marching down King St.
This year, the union rat was also on parade courtesy of the Building Trades (I’m told — I was not at the parade this year) and this year, they put the face of John Kowalko on it — in protest of his not supporting the Newark Data Center. Pretty despicable behavior — especially towards someone who is routinely supportive of labor issues in Dover. Even more delusional when you factor in the fact that Rep. Kowalko was actually representing his constituents in the Data Center matter. Even union members can get that sometimes the people that actually vote in an area are pretty important to hear — and in the long run, it isn’t as though they’d be able to replace him with someone who is more committed to labor issues.
I’ll also point out that these folks taking the cowards’ route in criticizing Kowalko today haven’t been able to find anyone who could credibly run against him — and seriously labor folks, if you think you can get someone more supportive of your agenda AND make those residents happy, then man up and get that person to run against Kowalko. Otherwise, what you did today was not worthy of what today is supposed to represent and it was just basic bullshit. [...]
There are genuinely better targets for this critique today — starting with the entirety of the Delaware General Assembly, who ran away from making the Transportation Fund whole (with the jobs that would do the work of fixing and expanding the state’s infrastructure gone) and who also ran away from establishing a fund to clean up Delaware’s waterways, also a potentially rich vein for decent construction jobs. What legislators are out there that you routinely support and who routinely let you down? Get serious folks — there are real fights to be had and you were largely unheard from on the Transportation Tax issue.
I should also say I didn’t have a dog in this fight, except to push back against the hype. Your plant is not “State-of-the-Art” if it is burning fossil fuels. And it looks from here that the community got the outcome it wanted, so I don’t see that as a bad thing.
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KnoxViews of Tennessee,
R. Neal writes—
23 States paying 37% of the Medicaid expansion cost for other states:
McClatchy: States that decline to expand Medicaid give up billions in aid.
If the 23 states that have rejected expanding Medicaid under the 2010 health care law continue to do so for the next eight years, they’ll pay $152 billion to extend the program in other states—while receiving nothing in return.
This massive exodus of federal tax dollars from 2013 through 2022 would pay 37 percent of the cost to expand Medicaid in the 27 remaining states and Washington, D.C., over that time.
According to the study, Tennessee will miss out on $22.5 billion in funding and will instead pay out $7.8 billion in taxes for expansion in other states.
We were told that Gov. Haslam is a smart businessman. Apparently he's not very good at math.
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Intelligent Discontent of Montana,
Don Pogreba writes—
The Ryan-Daines-Zinke Budget Will Make College Unaffordable for Montana Students:
Given that both Representative Steve Daines and State Senator Ryan Zinke have expressed enthusiastic support for the Paul Ryan budget, with the former voting for it and the latter suggesting it doesn’t go far enough, it seems warranted to look at how the budget that both men support would affect the people of Montana.
Over the next few days, we’ll take a look past the abstract idea of the budget to the specific implementation here in Montana, starting with college affordability.
The Ryan-Daines-Zinke budget will cap Pell Grants at their current maximum for the next ten years:
Under the proposal, the maximum Pell Grant award would be frozen at the current $5,730 amount for the next 10 years. The budget would also leave all of the Pell Grant program’s funding up to the discretion of Congress each year, eliminating the mandatory funding stream that currently funds part of the program
Anyone with a passing familiarity about the cost of colleges knows that tutition and fees will certainly not be frozen over the next decade. In fact, between 2008-09 and 2013-14, tuition and fees at public four year colleges and universities increased by 27% over the rate of inflation. Freezing Pell Grant amounts will result in fewer students being able to afford to attend college. [...]
Despite claims that the cuts are to ensure that Pell Grants are only for the “truly needy,” the Ryan-Daines-Zinke cuts ignore the reality that Pell Grants are primarily awarded to students who come from families with low incomes.
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Blue Jersey,
deciminyan writes—
Belgard Releases First Television Ad:
Thanks to election campaign laws that favor the moneyed interests, the media war in New Jersey's Third Congressional District is not being played out on a level field. In a district that spans the first and fourth most expensive television markets in the nation, getting a candidate's message across on the airwaves costs dearly.
One candidate, Republican Tom MacArthur, has stated that he will spend whatever it takes to get elected. I'm sure the CFOs of the Philadelphia and New York television stations are happy to hear this. MacArthur has already put $3 million of his own fortune into the campaign, and sources tell me that if the polling is close, he will also have the opportunity to tap into the virtually unlimited bankrolls of Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers.
Democrat Aimee Belgard, whose grass-roots campaign relies on thousands of small contributions, will never be able to match the MacArthur media blitz. But Belgard has won past contests where she's been outspent by a 9 to 1 margin (including races in which opposition funds came from the aforementioned Sheldon Adelson).
Today, Belgard released her first television commercial. It's a thirty-second piece that introduces Aimee as an advocate for the middle class and talks about how people are forced to choose between housing and medical care.
The interesting thing about the television commercials from both sides in this contest is that they both feature Aimee Belgard. MacArthur's commercials are negative attacks containing falsehoods, doctored video, and misleading information. Belgard's convey a positive message. Think about the type of person we should be electing to a dysfunctional House when you watch these commercials.