Florida blocks Healthy Start

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday August 25, 2012 · 11:41 PM PDT

2012/08/25 · 23:41

The federal government was poised to give the $4.9 million to programs around the state that provide in-home visits to parents in areas with high rates of premature babies, poverty, crime, substance abuse, joblessness, child abuse and other issues.
The in-home visits are designed to combat those problems by deploying professionals who teach parenting and other skills.

The Florida legislature blocked the state from accepting Healthy Start funding. It's a program that provides targeted, in-home education and other support to new parents who are in trouble, helping them learn how to properly care for their new children. It's proven highly effective, and is fully funded. So they're not saving the state any money, just screwing up the lives of hundreds of families that are benefitting (or would have benefitted) from the education and other assistance that this program provides.

For Dudley, the Clearwater woman in the program, she said the assistance was life-changing.
"My baby was a methadone baby," she said.

Her Healthy Start workers helped her with drug treatment, parenting classes, clothes and keeping her family together.

She wasn't happy to learn the grant money was turned down.

"If I had the money, I would pay them back tenfold and I would provide more," she said. "There's plenty of mothers out there that need this help."

As far as I can tell, the only logic is that they want to kill the program in order to force people to be dependent on the church instead of being able to rely on the government to help them. WTF do they think we created the government to do?

These people are crazy - harming kids, purely to pursue their political agenda.

Florida turns down $4.9 million from federal government designed to strengthen parenting.

Nader and Barr don't change anything

laird

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday June 09, 2008 · 3:25 PM PDT

2008/06/09 · 15:25

CNN Poll published on Friday shows how Nader and Barr affect the votes. I haven't seen it diaried, but if I missed it, let me know and I'll delete this.

The poll shows that Obama (49) narrowly beats McCain (46), leaving 5% "other". That is, Obama +3. And since the poll has a 3% margin of error, that's statistically a tie.

But with Nader and Barr added, the results are Obama (47), McCain (43), Nader (6) and Barr (2), leaving 2% "other". That is, Obama +4. Interestingly (to me, anyway) the 8% that went to Nader and Barr came from 2% from Obama, 3% from McCain, and 3% from "other", so it looks like there are a fair number of people that don't like either Obama or McCain. Perhaps Ron Paul supporters?

Based on those numbers, even if Nader runs and Barr doesn't, assuming that Nader's votes all come from Obama, the result might be a very narrow Obama (47) lead over McCain (46), with Nader (6) and 1% "other". Obama +1. Ouch.

More fun, the results if Barr runs could be Obama (49), McCain (43), Barr (2), with 6% "other". That's Obama +6.

The poll is at http://www.cnn.com/... .

British Conservative MP Backs Clinton

laird

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday May 29, 2008 · 5:51 PM PDT

2008/05/29 · 17:51

The BBC has just run this story:

"The Conservative MP Simon Burns has been campaigning in American presidential elections since he backed George McGovern in 1972. This year he is backing Hillary Clinton, and he tells us why."

The article is interesting reading: http://news.bbc.co.uk/...

They do explain this:

It is too easy and wrong to generalise that the Republicans are the Tory party in the US and the Democrats are New Labour or Lib Dem.

We need an America that is once again respected, not hated, in the world; an America where everyone has access to health care rather than the current situation where approximately 40m working Americans cannot afford health insurance and an America where all benefit from its economic success - not just the super rich who have disproportionately benefited from the Bush tax cuts.

Then the rest of the article goes horribly wrong. My analysis is below:

Poll

74 votes Show Results

Should non-citizens campaign for US candidates?

74 votes Vote Now!

Should non-citizens campaign for US candidates?

Sure, everyone gets to have an opinion

16 votes

Yes, the President of the US affects everyone, so they should be able to affect our elections

7 votes

No, they don't live here, and shouldn't meddle in our elections

48 votes

Pie!

3 votes

Obama/Edwards ROCKS!

laird

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday May 27, 2008 · 1:58 AM PDT

2008/05/27 · 01:58

Survey USA has performed a series of surveys of how the various combinations of president-VP candidates performs relative to each other in a series of states. In all of them, the best performing pair for the Democrats is Obama/Edwards, beating McCain+anyone by huge margins. Admittedly Edwards has name recognition that the others lack, so things would certainly change over time, but the numbers are stunning. And this hard data certainly contradicts the "conventional wisdom" that John Edwards didn't help last time.

It was also a bit amazing how much the VP slot mattered in the results. In many of these states, Edwards gave a 15 point advantage to Obama, flipping losses into victories.

I'll admit that I'm a big Edwards fan, but these numbers are stunning!

Poll

214 votes Show Results

Who should Obama's VP be?

214 votes Vote Now!

Who should Obama's VP be?

Hegel

10 votes

Rendell

5 votes

Sebelius

30 votes

Edwards

165 votes

Clinton

4 votes

Did primaries "used to last a lot longer" than this one? No.

laird

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday May 25, 2008 · 1:35 PM PDT

2008/05/25 · 13:35

Let's focus on the logical core of Hillary Clinton's argument: "Primary contests used to last a lot longer which would mean that this primary's length is typical, so there's no reason for the party to put pressure on her to drop out. So I collected the lengths of the previous primaries and compared them to this year.

The average length of the contested primaries between 1980 and 2004 is 3.3 months, which we're well past already. More than that, this year's primary has already run longer than any since the disaster in 1980.

Most primaries have been much shorter, including both of Bill Clinton's. So they didn't "run longer" - they were shorter than this primary, which promises to be the longest primary in my political lifetime (or hers). And all of the relatively long primaries (i.e. contested to the convention) were disasters for the Democrats.

This doesn't seem like much of an argument in favor of continuing her run.

Details below.

Poll

55 votes Show Results

Should this primary be over by now?

55 votes Vote Now!

Should this primary be over by now?

Yes, Super Tuesday was supposed to end the primaries

3 votes

Yes, once Obama got the majority of elected delegates it was over

41 votes

No, it's over after the last primary votes

2 votes

No, it's over once the super delegates declare preferences

1 vote

No, it's not over until the delegates vote at the convention

5 votes

I want Hillary to run as an Independent. It worked for Joe...

1 vote

I love politics, and I want to go on forever

2 votes

RSS