Each Saturday, this feature links and excerpts commentary and reporting from a dozen progressive state blogs in the past seven days around the nation. The idea is not only to spotlight specific issues but to give readers who may not know their state has a progressive blog or two a place to become regularly informed about doings in their back yard. 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 and inside information we don't get from the traditional media. Those blogs deserve a larger audience. Let me know via comments or Kosmail if you have a favorite you think I should know about. Standard disclaimer: Inclusion of a diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement or endorsement of its contents. |
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Burnt Orange Report of Texas,
Chaille Jolink cheers because
First Blue Ribbon Lobby Day a Success:
On a very busy day at the capitol on Tuesday, over 400 advocates for women met with their respective elected officials and other democratic leaders to show their support for issues like women's healthcare, funding for public education, Medicaid expansion, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay in Texas. [...]
The movement stemmed from the history of Republican women lobbying the capitol every year wearing red. This year Democratic men and women from all across the state, knowing now more than ever that their voice needs to be heard in the Pink Dome, decided to show up in full blue force.
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R.I. Future.org,
Samuel G. Howard opines
State Bank Idea Is Back (As A Bill This Time):
The major thing to me, 1919 North Dakota’s state bank wasn’t hatched by a lawyer talking to their representative. North Dakota’s state bank was part of a platform created by socialists and populists within the North Dakota Republican Party, called the Nonpartisan League (this is why you need to watch political names). These were highly popular farmer socialists and populists, who managed to control both houses of the North Dakotan legislature and governor’s office and pushed through the creation of the bank as well as a state-run mill and grain elevator and a railroad, and also banned corporate farming. That deep-red North Dakota continues to hold onto most of these socialist legacies may prove that they’re red in more ways than one.
2013 Rhode Island contains no such socialist/populist movement, much less one that is politically organized enough to seize both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office. It also lacks a single dominant jobs sector like North Dakota’s agricultural economy of early 1900s. Virtually all of North Dakota’s economic structures put in place were to benefit farmers; the bank to provide credit, the mill and grain elevator to create a market for produce, and the railroad to get produce to market, plus a number of other laws like hail insurance or the ban on corporate farming.
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Eclectablog of Michigan, somebody named ... uh ...
Eclectablog warns
While pundits are busy anointing Gary Peters for Senate, Debbie Dingell puts up strong poll numbers:
Let’s take a breath here for a minute, shall we?
You can’t read an article or blog post about the race to fill departing Senator Carl Levin’s seat without hearing how Gary Peters is the leading contender, almost as if the seat is his if he wants it.
While Peters is, without question, a great candidate and certainly someone to watch, Debbie Dingell actually came out 5 points ahead of him in a recent Mitchell poll commissioned by the Detroit News.
Please check out the other progressive state blog entries below the fold.
At Rural and Progressive of Georgia, Katherine Helms Cummings writes Wilcox County students say ‘Love has No Color”:
The students in Wilcox County are tired of segregated private proms, so they are doing what their parents and school leaders won’t do: organizing an integrated prom so everyone can get dressed up and have fun, together. It will be the colors of their dresses and bow ties that matter the night of April 27, not the color of their skin. They set up a page on Face Book and are raising money for their dance, which will be held in Cordele. [...]
Since they couldn’t get the support of their high school or many of their parents, they’re just going to do it themselves. [...]
here are two things you can do to help right now [...]
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Calitics,
Brian Leubitz reports in
Going After Anti-Gay Tax Exempt Status:
Sen. Ricardo Lara, Chair of the Legislative Latino Caucus in addition to being a member of the LGBT caucus, is working with a number of LGBT focused organizations to strip California tax exempt status from discriminatory groups:
The Youth Equality Act, sponsored by Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Long Beach, would deny tax-exempt status to youth groups that discriminate on the basis of gender identity, race, sexual orientation, nationality, religion or religious affiliation.
That means those groups would have to pay corporate taxes on donations, membership dues, camp fees and other sources of income, as well as sales taxes on food, beverages and homemade items sold at fundraisers.(Lisa Leff/HuffPo)
The Boy Scouts cite the many good things they do, which are many, as a reason to keep their tax exempt status. But apparently, those good things don't apply to gay teens.
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Delaware Liberal,
Delaware Dem asks
If you could rewrite the 2nd Amendment, how would you do it?:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
It is as if Yoda was a Founding Father, and if he was that would be awesome, but we are still left with awkward backward sentences. In my mind, when I read the second amendment, it looks and sounds like two sentences got smashed together in a head on collision. [...]
So against that backdrop, how would we rewrite the 2nd Amendment to reflect the Court’s decision in Heller?
How do other countries write their constitutional guarantees on the right to bear arms? Well, actually, only three other countries currently—Guatemala, Mexico and Haiti— have a constitutional right to bear arms.
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Blue Hampshire,
William Tucker takes a look at internecine battling in the
N.H. GOP: ‘A criminal subculture of bullying & extortion’:
An explosive email exchange between New Hampshire GOP chair Jennifer Horn and party treasurer Robert Scott has exposed a profoundly dysfunctional party organization.
The email messages, first reported by James Pindell and published in full by Skip Murphy, document a bitter dispute over Horn’s access to party bank accounts.
[...] It became so heated that Scott ultimately asked Horn what she planned next and reminded her:] We are the party of Ronald Reagan not Mario Puzo.
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Blue Lyon of Nevada,
Carissa Snedeker asks
My only question is, when are we going to march on Washington?:
Oh hell. Out of retirement already.
I just have to post this. For all those “progressives” that think Barack Obama is playing some kind of 11-dimensional chess on Social Security, he’s not. He’s wanted to do this for years. From the very beginning of his presidency. [...]
President-elect Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare “bargain” with the American people, saying that the nation’s long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.
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Blue Virginia,
lowkell offers up some praises in
Thank You to Senators Kaine and Warner for Voting "Aye" on Background Checks:
The 68-31 Senate vote this morning was on cloture ("on the Motion to Proceed"), so that the Senate can proceed to debate the Toomey-Manchin gun buyers' background checks bill ("A bill to ensure that all individuals who should be prohibited from buying a firearm are listed in the national instant criminal background check system and require a background check for every firearm sale, and for other purposes."), and other gun-violence-related amendments. Both Senators from Virginia - Tim Kaine and Mark Warner - voted "aye," and I thank them for doing so. Not that this took enormous courage, given that 90%+ of Americans support universal background checks for prospective gun buyers, but still, I'm glad to see Senator Warner in particular, despite his nauseating NRA "A" rating, voting the right way on this bipartisan compromise legislation. (note: Tim Kaine's been generally strong on gun violence issues since he was Mayor of Richmond)
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Left in Alabama,
countrycat writes TVA Privatization: "Small Government" Republicans Doing The Pretzel Twist.:
For decades, North Alabama's been getting a pretty sweet deal on electricity rates, courtesy of the Tennessee Valley Authority. But President Obama's budget proposal released yesterday may change that. The budget suggests that debt concerns make make it necessary to sell TVA to private businesses.
The privatizing of TVA "can help put the nation on a sustainable fiscal path," according to Obama's budget. The passage addressing TVA closes by saying his administration intends to review options for TVA, "including the possible divestiture of TVA, in part or as a whole."
You have to wonder if this is an actual proposal, or a shot across the bow of the Republican deficit hawks who hate all federal expending - that doesn't directly affect their districts.
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4&20 Blackbirds of Montana,
lizard writes
Guns, Mental Health, And Medicaid:
Part of this [gun legislation] discussion has included the need to increase access to mental health services. Here in Montana, that would mean passing medicaid expansion, something most state Republicans are still against:
In a dramatic turn of events Tuesday, a coalition of Senate Democrats and five Republicans resurrected and then narrowly endorsed a bill to expand Medicaid in Montana — but GOP senators supporting the move said they’re not for expansion.
Instead, they said they’re looking for a “Montana-made solution” to extend more affordable health coverage to the poor. The Medicaid expansion bill needs to stay alive as a possible vehicle for that solution, they said.
That legislative action—where 5 rational Republicans acted honorably to keep the chance to help 70,000 Montanans get access to health care alive—happened April 2nd, before all the drama last Friday.
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Nebraska Watchdog,
Deena Winter writes
Nebraska’s Chambers tries unique move to repeal sales tax option:
[Independent] State Sen. Ernie Chambers [nicknamed "angriest black man in Nebraska" by some] made an unorthodox, and ultimately unsuccessful, move to try to pull out of committee his bill repealing a law passed last year that allows cities to increase sales tax rates up to a half-cent. [...]
Chambers wants to repeal a law passed last year, during his four-year hiatus from the Legislature, because he opposes sales taxes in general, which he call regressive taxes that hurt poor people.