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 Bluestem Prairie of Minnesota, Sally Jo Sorensen writes—HD47A: Creationist candidate Frey opposed to "intelligent design," claimed sun is shrinking:
In a 2005 presentation at the Yampa Valley Baptist Church in Craig, Colorado, Minnesota House District 47A primary candidate Bob Frey argued against the theory of intelligent design as well as that of evolution. [...]
A Norwood-Young America manufacturer, Gruenhagen associate and former mortgage modification consulant, Frey is battling Waconia mayor Jim Nash for the Republican nod in the August 12, 2014 primary. The winner will face 22-year-old moderate DFLer Matt Gieseke.
Craig Daily Press staff writer Michelle Balleck reported in Speaker calls to Christians: Bob Frey urges end of evolution in schools, 'lying to kids':
Frey said this theory, referred to as "intelligent design," asserts the idea that God created the world and creatures evolved. Frey said he doesn't subscribe to the theory, and he urges Christians to fight to remove evolution from curriculums. [...]
In the Colorado presentation, Frey also asserted that the sun was shrinking, a common claim from Young Earth creationists:
Frey said the sun is shrinking at a rate of five feet in diameter per hour. If scientific calculations are correct, the sun would have touched the earth 11 million years ago, he said. "That would have been pretty hard on the dinosaurs, don't you think?" he said.
More excerpts from progressive state blogs can be round below the orange gerrymander.
At Intelligent Discontent of Montana, Don Pogreba writes—On Swiftboating Steve Daines and the Media:
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the attacks from the Steve Daines camp against Senator John Walsh—and find them more troubling the more I think about them.
The Daines attack machine is directed at Walsh’s military record for one reason: precisely because Senator Walsh has an exemplary record of military service, as Daines himself noted just a year ago. In particular, Senator Walsh was an effective leader for women, offering them advancement opportunities and an atmosphere that treated women with respect.
From Colonel (ret) Nikki Wolfe and Sgt.(ret) Kelly Gallinger of the Montana National Guard:
John was one of the leaders who fought gender discrimination. He stood up to senior male officers who broke the rules. In one of his first acts as head of the guard, John fired an assistant adjutant general for engaging in an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate.
In contrast with the position of these officers who served under General Walsh and his record in the Senate, Montana got a coordinated rollout of an attack ad and op-ed blitz from former Major Cindy Neely, who leveled some vague claims in the direction of John Walsh to serve the interests of Representative Steve Daines, who has committed early to a relentlessly negative campaign to distract Montana voters from his total lack of achievement.
At
Eclectablog of Michigan,
Eclectablog writes—
Snyder campaign caught infiltrating a Schauer event a 3rd time, this time with secret “spy camera glasses”—Republicans even suck at being assholes:
First is was a Republican operative posing as a CNN reporter. Then it was a Snyder intern attempting to infiltrate a Schauer campaign GOTV office. Now we have failed infiltration attempt #3 of Democrat Mark Schauer’s gubernatorial campaign by the reelection campaign of Gov. Rick Snyder.
For the third time this year, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer is accusing Republicans of attempting to spy on his campaign.
But this time, the suspected political subterfuge involves a high-tech hidden camera and a video memory disk that fell into the hands of Democrats.
And Republicans are defending their campaign snooping. [...]
The article goes on to say that Republicans have “acknowledged the state party has been looking for a misplaced video card” and that “this isn’t the first time the GOP has deployed a tracker wearing glasses with a hidden camera.”
At
The Kansas Free Press,
Stuart Elliott writes—
Kansas Senator Pat Roberts Re-ignites Residency Controversy:
With the Kansas primary only a month away, it looks like Senator Pat Roberts has "Lugared" himself with what the right-wing media outlet Breitbart,com called a "Freudian slip" in an interview on radio station KCMO and reported on July 3 in the DC insider newspaper The Hill saying he returns home to Kansas "every time I get an opponent" and proclaiming that he doesn't measure his voting record by "how many times I sleep wherever it is." [...]
Roberts fits the Lugar profile, so Kensinger concern was understandable. Roberts is getting up in years; he's 77. And he's been a Congressman and Senator since 1980 and before that, starting in 1967, a D.C. staffer for Kansas Senator Frank Carlson and Congressman Keith Sebelius.
Roberts made some astute moves to avoid Lugar's fate. He lined up almost every conceivable challenger, virtually every state Senator and Representatives for an endorsement. He shifted his voting record from conservative to very, very conservative.
Despite this, Roberts got a primary challenger: Milton Wolf, a distant cousin of President Obama and radiologist. Wolf is being backed by many of the same Tea Party organizations and media that backed Dave Brat's upset of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Mississippi Senate challenger Chris McDaniel. In fact, Wolf has gone on national right-wing shows like that of Mark Levin to back McDaniel and attack not only Roberts, but the state's other Senator Jerry Moran, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign.
At
Louisiana Voice,
tomaswell writes—
Amendment giving State Police Commander Edmonson extra $30,000 retirement could spark lawsuit by retired trooper(s)
:
State Police Commander Col. Mike Edmonson has been rumored to be priming himself for a run at public office and his latest “Who, me?” pronouncements would seem to indicate that he’s finally ready for the big jump.
Meanwhile, the Louisiana Retired Troopers Association is not happy and appears ready to leap into the controversy surrounding a special amendment giving Edmonson and one other state trooper hefty retirement benefit increases.
Edmonson says he is not getting special treatment, that he did not seek nor was he aware of the $30,000 a year retirement bump he got from an amendment sneaked into an otherwise nondescript bill on the final day of the session.
So, here’s the deal: everyone in the room who believes Edmonson please line up against the opposite wall. Now. Go ahead. Don’t be shy. We’re waiting. C’mon, people …
At
Calitics,
Brian Leubitz writes—
Tim Draper Submits Six Californias Ballot Measure Signatures:
I'll admit that I sort of thought this was some sort of joke that would never make it to the ballot. I was surprised when word filtered out that serious signature gathering was moving forward in the spring and summer. Apparently that has now borne fruit:
Tim Draper said he will file the signatures in Sacramento on Tuesday morning. State officials still need to review the petitions to ensure the initiative can qualify.
"California needs a reboot," Draper's campaign said in a statement on Monday. "With six Californias, we can refresh our government." (LA Times)
Well, he's got the awkward technology lingo thing going on, but just because you can say "reboot" doesn't mean it is a good idea. An LAO report from earlier in the year showed a bunch of flaws in the proposal including higher costs and greater inequalities. Yes, Silicon Valley would be a dynamic and wealthy state, but what about the rest of the state(s)?
And then there is the whole question of this being entirely powerless until Congress acts. With the Senate divided, would either party want to roll the dice on 10 new Senators?
At
Left in Alabama,
countrycat writes—
Consumers & Comedians Were The Biggest Losers In Yesterday's Primary Runoff:
National comedians and Alabama Democrats won't have Dale Peterson & Shadrack McGill to kick around any more. In an astonishing display of good judgment on the part of Alabama Republicans, both lost their primary runoff races yesterday. And it wasn't even close: Peterson got just 35% of the vote for State Auditor and McGill received 37% in his bid for Jackson County Revenue Commissioner.
It's truly a shock that both lost. For years, they've provided a freakish, carnival sideshow spectacle to political observers in Alabama - and some of their antics became nationally famous. Who could forget Dale Peterson and his horse or the McGill family discussing strippers and Facebook hookers on the Today Show? But yesterday, voters declined to nominate a convicted shoplifter for State Auditor or elect a Revenue Commissioner for Jackson County whose only qualification for the job was bizarre ideas on public employee salaries and an creepy obsession with women's reproductive systems.
How annoying was Shadrack McGill? Even Dale Peterson couldn't stand him.
Consumers took a hit yesterday too when Terry Dunn lost his spot on the Public Service Commission. Dunn got into hot water for asking a question you'd think every PSC Commissioner would ask: "Can we get utility rates down?" Alabama Power's answer to that was, obviously, "NO" and they backed Dunn's opponent, Chip Beeker—a man who appeared to think he was running against President Obama.
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Blog for Arizona,
Will B. Greene writes—
Mary Rose Wilcox a Question Mark on Environment:
[Democrat] Candidate for Congress Mary Rose Wilcox is receiving strong financial support from heavily polluting companies, according to her most recent Federal Election Commission filing. Coal industry-backed utility groups including Edison Electric Institute and American Electric Power Committee for Responsible Government have apparently identified Wilcox as a friend, joining a bevy of other utility executives and national fossil fuel interests who have donated to her campaign.
These donations don’t necessarily mean the former Maricopa County Supervisor will be an enemy of the environment, and could be intended more as opposition to her primary opponent Ruben Gallego, who views action on climate change as a moral imperative.
Wilcox fails to list environment, let alone climate change, as an issue priority on her website. One state capitol insider reported that Wilcox is bragging to potential donors about her disinterest in gaining the support of the environmental community, including groups such as Sierra Club, despite their prominence in Democratic circles.
At
The Mudflats of Alaska,
Jeanne Devon writes—
We All Need a Tweditor – Palin Edition:
Before we begin:
WHY must you continue writing about HER, you demand to know. PLEASE stop giving her attention, you insist.
As soon as you pretend she’s not there, she will evaporate into the ether, you delude yourself.
I plead guilty to a personal, professional, and morbid fascination with the enduring social and political impact of the trainwreck from Wasilla. Some people are really into sports, or photograph their lunch, or amuse themselves by taking Facebook quizzes to find out what color aura of what punk rock band’s totem animal they are, or other ultimately inconsequential hobbies. And as long as cable news studios in New York and DC—from MSNBC to Fox—use Sarah Palin as a chew toy, I will resist the notion that I’m obligated to ignore the circus when I can practically see it from my house. I’m just going to wait until my editor lays down the law. Wait, that’s me. [...]
After She Who Makes Sounds With Her Mouth shrieked something about impeachment this week, one of her offspring rose to her feet in rousing support of her mother’s idiocy. It was the offspring named either for the bay of salmon, or the Connecticut home of ESPN (depending on Mama Grizzly’s story du jour) aka Bristol who echoed the call for a coup d’état. [...]
You may or may not agree with our two political scholars’ proposed course of action. I’ll leave that to you. But one thing I noticed while visiting the Twitter profile of The Least Credible Abstinence Spokeswoman in History—Bristol’s tweets are “edited by Nancy French.”
When a message of 140 characters is too steep a linguistic mountain to scale, bring on the Palin family ghostwriter, I say! Why, she’ll turn pablum into nonsense and back again before you can say, “wait…wut?”
At
Capital & Main of California, writes—
Immigration Reform: Murrieta and Its Discontents:
At first glance the Murrieta episode seemed like a major setback for immigrant-rights supporters, but could all of the press coverage of powerless children and raging demonstrators actually help the case for immigration reform? Could this be the push that the reform movement needs to gain widespread support for comprehensive reform?
Emily Ryo, an immigration expert and professor of law and sociology at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, tells Capital & Main she isn’t so sure.
“In social-movement research, there is some evidence that repression and violence can galvanize support for a particular group or cause in unexpected ways by triggering mass public outrage against those seen as responsible,” Ryo says. “But I am not optimistic. Immigration in general is an extremely polarized and polarizing topic that involves individuals perceived to be ‘outsiders.’”
Ryo adds that “comprehensive immigration reform involves a much broader segment of the immigration population than immigrant children and implicates different, and perhaps even more complex sets of issues than the ones raised by the current influx of unaccompanied minors.”
Eliseo Medina, a nationally known labor leader and immigrant rights activist, is more optimistic.
At
Blogging While Blue of Georgia,
bloggingwhileblue writes—
Let’s Stand With Jada:
A recent national survey from more than 300 colleges and universities reflect serious problems in responses to student reports of sexual violence. It also indicates that colleges and universities across the nation are violating federal law by failing to investigate sexual assaults on campus. [...]
It is good that sexual assaults and the reporting of those assaults is now being addressed by higher education and by government. It is critical that the safety and protection of girls be taken seriously no matter what academic stage they are in. Which brings us to the rape of 16-year old girl last week in Houston. Jada is the teenager who attended a house party with a friend who knew the host her rape was recorded and shared on social media. Once the video started to circulate online and her friends began to call her, Jada knew something horrible had happened. The video went viral but that did not shame or stop Jada from telling her story to a local Houston television station. “There’s no point in hiding,” she said. “Everybody has already seen my face and my body, but that’s not what I am and who I am.” Jada was allegedly drugged and passed around by several men who raped her.
One of Jada’s perpetrators mocked her on social media by calling her a snitch and other derogatory phrases, which has encouraged cyber bullying. A disgusting social media trend has users posting photos of themselves bottomless and passed out mocking Jada. Recent reports from the ongoing investigation indicate that there may be other young girls who may have been victims. The police are asking for the publics’ help by asking young girls to call into the station if they see themselves in any videos online.
Jada’s case has gotten some very high profile help from actresses Mia Farrow and Jada Pinkett Smith. Jada Pinkett Smith recently posted on social media,”This could be you, me, or any woman or girl that we know. What do we plan to do about this ugly epidemic? #justiceforjada” Jada Pinkett Smith has also been a vocal public advocate for victims of human trafficking.
At
Blue Mass Group,
donberwick writes—
Block the Partners deal:
The Attorney General’s settlement allowing Partners Healthcare to acquire South Shore Hospital and two North Shore community hospitals is a great and lasting disservice to the future of high quality, affordable health care in Massachusetts. Facing an opportunity to stand up for patients, business, laborers, and communities, Martha Coakley did not just blink; she closed her eyes. [...]
Partners is an important and revered health care leader, but it is also a behemoth, already able to dictate prices and raise costs due to its overwhelming dominance in the market. The Massachusetts Health Care Commission, which is charged to oversee and report in progress toward better and more affordable care, recommended against Partners’ acquisition of both South Shore and Hallmark, but the Attorney General pushed it through without the benefit of truly open and pubic scrutiny.
This agreement will assure continuing high prices for the Partners system. Patients and families will have less choice, constructive competition among providers will decrease, and high health care costs for workers and businesses will continue to drain their resources. Job losses are inevitable, since Massachusetts’ high health care costs are one of the most important reasons that businesses cite for leaving the state, for decreasing their growth, and for not coming to Massachusetts in the first place. Small businesses, especially, suffer from those costs.
Attorney General Coakley should have held the line and insisted that Partners do what an organization of its stature and excellence can do: lead progress in Massachusetts toward better care and lower cost at the same time. Instead, she chiseled the status quo in stone.