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 Blog for Arizona, Donna Gratehouse writes—Don’t mistake McCain getting revenge for moderation of the AZ GOP:
Politico reported that Sen. John McCain is purging the Arizona Republican Party of his ardent detractors.
Nearly a year ago, tea party agitators in Arizona managed to get John McCain censured by his own state party. Now, he’s getting his revenge.
As the longtime Republican senator lays the groundwork for a likely 2016 reelection bid, his political team is engaging in an aggressive and systematic campaign to reshape the state GOP apparatus by ridding it of conservative firebrands and replacing them with steadfast allies.
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The reaction I’m seeing to this news ranges from delighted anticipation (on the part of AZ lefties) to misplaced optimism that a new era of moderate Republican unicorns and rainbows is upon us. I’m sorry to break it to everyone but this move on McCain’s part, which cost an eye-popping $300K to pull off, is nothing more than John McCain (who is known for being vindictive) punishing the activists who censured him and staving off a potential primary challenge in 2016.
Even the fact that 50 Vietnamese-Americans won precinct committee spots is not a reason to expect a saner Arizona Republican Party. If most of those new PCs are non-radicals they will quickly become uncomfortable in the cesspool of super-charged racism that is the AZ GOP. On the other hand, it’s as likely as not that a lot of those Vietnamese-American Republican activists are radical right wingers themselves. Reactionary authoritarians exist in every group.
Below the orange gerrymander are more excerpts from progressive state blogs.
At Voice of OC of California, Adam Elmahrek writes—Clock Running Out On a Criminal Charge Against Pulido:
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas has until the end of this week to decide whether to charge Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido with a misdemeanor for voting in January 2011 to approve a city contract with a local auto parts dealer just months after he had consummated a real estate deal with the businessman.
If Rackauckas does not file charges then one of several possible crimes relating to the real estate deal, which is being investigated by the DA's office as well as state and federal authorities, will be off the table.
In 2010, Pulido swapped a downtown parking lot he owned with his family for a house in Westminster owned by Rupen James Akoubian, who also owns NAPA Orange County Auto Parts, a longtime city contractor. The house was worth more than twice the value of the lot, according to public records, and the mayor would in 2012 sell the house at a $197,000 profit.
Between the time Pulido engaged in the swap and sold the house, he voted for two separate contracts with the car parts vendor. The first vote was to renew an agreement that made NAPA Orange County Auto Parts one of many parts suppliers for the city’s vehicle fleet.
Then, in December of 2011, Pulido voted for a no-bid, $1.35 million contract that made the vendor the city’s exclusive parts supplier.
Voice of OC revealed the series of suspicious transactions in November of 2013, and the city commissioned its own investigation early this year.
At
Colorado Pols,
Colorado Pols writes—
Top Ten Stories of 2014: So Much For Those Recalls (#5):
As readers know, the legislative battle over gun safety resulted in the first-ever successful recalls of two sitting Democratic state senators in September of 2013. Senate President John Morse, the former police officer who fearlessly led the fight to pass these bills, lost his urban Colorado Springs seat by a very narrow margin to city councilman Bernie Herpin. In Pueblo, Sen. Angela Giron fell victim to Byzantine local political squabbles egged on by the gun lobby's vengeance–losing her "safe" Democratic seat by a much greater margin than Morse to former Pueblo cop George Rivera. For a time, it certainly looked like the Independence Institute's Jon Caldara was correct: a "wave of fear" from these historic recalls would chill gun safety efforts across the nation: and maybe persuade frightened Colorado Democrats to roll back the laws pass in 2013.
Unfortunately for the gun lobby, something happened between the September 2013 recalls and the start of the legislative session in 2014. Republicans introduced repeals of the 2013 gun safety bills, but unlike the previous year, the massive protests that had surrounded the state capitol and nearly brought the workings of the legislature to a halt did not materialize. In a surprising development that local media almost completely failed to pick up on, testimony in the hearings for the gun safety repeal bills were dominated by supporters of the original legislation. The excuse we've seen offered is that the gun lobby knew the repeal attempts would fail, and didn't want to rally their members for a futile effort.
If that was the gun lobby's reasoning, it was a major miscalculation. Especially once the general election campaign was on this year, guns became more or less a non-issue. This is well illustrated by the shift in the message from Rocky Mountain Gun Owners-supported Republican candidates for the legislature in swing districts. Where guns had factored heavily in GOP primaries, by the general election, Laura Waters Woods and Tony Sanchez were changing the subject. What these candidates discovered is, outside a small, dedicated base that could be rallied to win a recall, the gun lobby's message doesn't win general elections. The polling, once you get past the overheated and deceptive rhetoric, is actually very strongly with Democrats on the issue.
At
The Seminole Democrat of Florida,
Vin Fl writes—
Obama to Disband the Marine Corps:
On a flight home I sat in between two individuals, a Marine and boxing promoter. The boxing guy was an older gentleman, and told interesting stories, such as meeting Don King. Both men were very pleasant and that helped make time pass on the flight. We were all combat veterans and all Southerners, so we had a lot in common. Then the discussion, inevitably, turned to politics.
The older guy turned to the Marine and said "You know Obama is getting rid of the Marine Corps, right?"
The Marine was puzzled. He hadn't heard this news. Neither had I. "Yeah, Eric Holder just had a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. Obama is going to disband them by Executive Order."
Hooooo boy. We are going to do this now, are we? Putting aside for the moment why the head of the DOJ would be involved with restructuring a military department in the DoD, I said: "I don't think any president can just disband a branch of service. Also, this would be pretty big news. Don't you think it would be all over the news instead of a message board?" I assumed it was a message board because I follow GOP conspiracy theories on rightwing sites, and never heard of this one. Even the Marine, who was no Obama fan, agreed this sounded very stupid and we moved on to other topics. […]
Sure enough, I got back home and did some checking on the interwebs. Although I couldn't find anything about Obama disbanding the Corps, I did find a story that Obama was going to disband the National Guard and Reserves by fall of this year, a post that Hillary Clinton is, in fact, going to dismantle the Marine Corps, and various other hysteria/delusions in the mind of a brainwashed conservative.
I thought about the flight and wondered, how can such a seemingly intelligent, normal man suddenly suspend logic and spout such nonsense?
How can, on one hand, we discuss rationally our jobs, our cars, our families, and then BOOM, a switch goes off and FEMA camps, immigrant take-over, birth certificate time-travel, Sandy Hook being a hoax, and the ever present secret army of "jack-booted thugs" (you know, the bad kind who take your guns away, not the good kind who shoot unarmed brown people).
At
Blue in the Bluegrass of Kentucky,
Yellow Dog writes—
Repugs Can't Budget Without Cheating:
Bloomberg:
Republican lawmakers who have questioned the office’s analysis were unmoved. They agreed with calls from incoming House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price for a new director who might introduce so-called dynamic scoring to CBO analysis.
Dynamic scoring is the idea that policy changes can induce significant macroeconomic effects, such as tax cuts partially paying for themselves. Democrats say the method is unproven and relies on too many assumptions.
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"Dynamic scoring" is a thumb on the scales. It's the intelligent design of budgeting. It's like demanding you get paid for the time you spend sleeping because that's recharging your batteries for work.
It's bullshit. But it's the only way repugs can create a budget of gargantuan giveaways to the filthy rich and defense contractors that doesn't reveal a $100-trillion deficit.
At
My Left Nutmeg of Connecticut,
ctblogger writes—
Bridgeport principal brought in by Jumoke's "Dr." Michael Sharpe arrested for first-degree larceny:
When Stefan Pryor, Governor Malloy's Commissioner of Education and Malloy's political appointees to the Connecticut State Board of Education voted to hand Bridgeport's Dunbar Elementary School over to the FUSE/Jumoke charter school chain, the man formerly known as "Dr." Michael Sharpe began by firing all but 4 of the school's 19 teachers and hired Baton Rouge, Louisiana principal and "turnaround expert," Marilyn Taylor, to serve as the principal of the Jumoke Academy at Dunbar.
Less than sixteen months later, Marilyn Taylor has now been charged with stealing more than $10,000 from Dunbar's school's fundraising account and spending the money gambling at casinos in Mississippi and Connecticut. […]
At the time the Malloy administration and the Bridgeport Board of Education decided to hand the school over to Jumoke/FUSE, Bridgeport Board of Education member Maria Pereira, "cast the lone dissenting vote, saying she wondered what the district could accomplish on its own with the money."
Then, only a few months later, the Hartford Courant broke that story that "Dr." Michael Sharpe never received a doctorate and that, in fact, he had served a lengthy prison sentence for embezzling funds from a public agency in California.
Now Sharpe's hand-picked principal, Marilyn Taylor, is out on bail after posting a $20,000 bond and Interim Superintendent of Schools Fran Rabinowitz has told the CT Post that, "Marilyn Taylor will not be returning to work as a principal in Bridgeport. I don't want to say more at this point."
At
CenLamar of Louisiana,
Lamar White Jr. writes—
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise Was Reportedly an Honored Guest at 2002 International White Supremacist Convention:
Twelve years ago last May, the spacious but plainly appointed conference rooms of the Landmark Best Western Hotel in Metairie, Louisiana, a 16-story, drably-colored octagon-shaped tower that juts into an empty skyline and hugs Interstate 10 so tightly that it serves, in a way, as a type of gateway monument into the city of New Orleans, were filled with dozens of people from all over the country. They had each spent between $35 and $45 for the opportunity to participate in a two-day conference on “civil rights.” Many of them had likely decided to also take advantage of the Bestbwlandmark Western’s generous $89 a night block rate. Even though the President of the sponsoring organization was a Louisiana native, he wasn’t attending the conference in Metairie; instead, he was hosting an identical event in Europe, which, through the magic of technology, would be simulcast on the projectors rolled out and draped from the ceilings of the Best Western conference rooms.
It was an ambitious undertaking for the fledgling organization, a truly international conference. The organization was named, innocuously enough, EURO, an acronym for European-American Unity and Rights Organization, and its leader was a man named David Duke. Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, former Louisiana State Representative, and former Republican candidate for Louisiana governor, was attempting to rebrand his movement into something more palatable and less incendiary, and the ambiguous-sounding EURO seemed to do the trick. […]
On the weekend of May 17th-18th, 2002, Steve Scalise was a 36-year-old Louisiana State Representative. Six years later, he’d become a United States Congressman. Six years after that, after only three terms, Steve Scalise would become the House Majority Whip, arguably the third most powerful and influential member of the United States House of Representatives.
But on that weekend in May, Scalise was reportedly armed with a microphone at the Landmark Best Western in Metairie and talking about tax policy to an international convention… of white supremacists and neo-Nazis. According to a commenter who used the name “Alsace Hebert,” Steve Scalise was a highlight of the convention.
At
Intelligent Discontent of Montana,
Don Pogreba writes—
Hate Group to Speak at Lewis and Clark Library Next Week, Capitol Building on Sunday:
As part of a tour across the state, Wisconsin’s Pastor Matt Trewhella will be presenting a talk at the Lewis and Clark Library on January 5, to discuss his special homophobic brand of the doctrine of nullification to the faithful. Even better, he will be presenting an “election sermon” on Sunday at the Capitol Rotunda at 2:00 p.m.
Trewhella is an advocate of what he calls the Lesser Magistrate Doctrine, which hold that God wants states and counties to resist, even actively, decisions of the federal goverment they disagree with. From his web page:
The doctrine of the lesser magistrates declares that when the superior or higher civil authority makes an unjust/immoral law or decree, the lesser or lower ranking civil authority has both the right and duty to refuse obedience to that superior authority. If necessary, the lower authority may even actively resist the superior authority. |
What makes “Pastor” Trewhella stand out in the shallow sea of nullifiers is that his particular concern seems to be the oppression of straight people by the advocates for the gay agenda.
Trewhella is so crazy that he approvingly played the 1961 Boys Beware PSA to his audience of dullards, suggesting that it demonstrated the appropriate societal response to and attitude towards people who are gay, calling homosexuality something that “needs to be supressed through the force of law.”
At
Blog for Iowa,
Paul Deaton writes—
Step Forward:
Meeting so many people since 2012—in politics, in retail sales, in farm work, and in writing—my understanding of how society works, and the attitudes of people who live in it has grown. Society is not what I thought—at all.
My formative years began when in 1959 I secured a card for the public library bookmobile that stopped near our house. I read biographies about people important to the growth of our culture. There were a lot of them, although the names I remember are the Ringling brothers, Thomas Edison and George Washington Carver. I gained an understanding that through personal industry, thrift and good ideas, a person could create things that mattered in society and made life better.
I wasn’t the only person who learned this as the ideas grew from the founders and persist. Matthew Josephson articulated this American idea in his 1934 book The Robber Barons.
In a brief cycle, the laissez-faire political philosophy of a Jefferson, having given free reign to self-interest, would stimulate the acquisitive appetites of the citizen above all. These, whetted by an incredibly rich soil, checked by no institutions or laws, would determine the pattern of American destiny. The idealism of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, and his Inaugural address of 1801, would be caricatured in the predatory liberty of the “Valley of Democracy” where, as Vernon Parrington has said, Americans democratic in professions, became “middle class in spirit and purpose;” where freedom came to mean “the natural right of every citizen to satisfy his acquisitive instinct by exploiting the natural resources in the measure of his shrewdness.” |
With minimal modification, Josephson’s language could describe attitudes of an electorate that in the same year brought us U.S. Senator Joni Ernst and Representative Dave Loebsack. It elected State Senator Bob Dvorsky and State Representative Bobby Kaufmann. It is a spring which nurtures dichotomies: people worked long hours to elect President Obama while others fly the confederate flag; row croppers manage the land with chemicals while others restore it to prairie; consumers are more connected to the world, while seeking small enclaves to live their lives in isolation. The picture isn’t clear, but clarity is coming.
At
Eclectablog of Michigan,
Tony Trupiano writes—
Detroit’s “Tent City” is Tinsel Town to its “Mayor”, Charles “CJ ” Johnson:
It’s mid-morning on Monday, December 29, 2014. The air is crisp and clear and the light is shining through a slight morning frost/haze as the sun will surely burn it off and present the day. I’m in Downtown Detroit, just off I-75 on East Larned a block behind Jefferson. It’s 26 degrees and the almost empty field in front of me is called Lafayette Park. On a warmer day and, perhaps, at a later hour, the park would have a few people enjoying the setting, maybe eating a box lunch or just enjoying the surroundings. But today that scene is more spartan with not a person in sight save a small enclave of pop-up tents off to the side of a line of barren trees that are serving as the home to a sprouting community of homeless people. In fact, even though the trees are barren and the park is empty, if you are not looking, chances are you might not even notice what has quickly become know as “Tent City”
A Fish & Chips dinner that was shared by the entire community of Tinsel Town
Last week I posted to my Facebook page an article from the Detroit Free Press, a story about a small group of homeless people who have set up camp here in an attempt to have a place to stay. There are eight tents that make up “Tent City”, and the “residents” there are, to a person, friendly, well presented, and quite kind to this guest to their community. For the most part they are gracious, open, and willing to share their stories, at least to a degree. It might be a bit surprising to some of you readers to learn that, in spite of the cold temperatures, the members of this community, who slowly appear from their tents the longer I am there, are happy people. They greet each other they way most families do upon awakening. Good morning and a hug or two. A handshake and a nod of the head, or just a recognition that another day is upon them. […]
I am there to interview Charles Jones, known as CJ. He is “almost” 51, and he made sure he emphasized the word almost, not quite there yet and in no hurry for the calendar to turn on him. If you think living on the street for nine years, as CJ has, adds years to your life, it skipped CJ. He is energetic, enthusiastic, and looks much younger than his almost 51 years. He welcomes me with a hug and a handshake and breaks into a soliloquy that is reminiscent of poetry, in many ways. He speaks words with passion, recognizing that God gave him an ability to speak well, and he does. CJ is not proud or arrogant. He is not hell-bent on you agreeing with him and, in fact, doesn’t really wait for a reaction or a response from you as he speaks his truth. CJ has a message to share, and he will share it with whoever will listen.
At
Burnt Orange Report of Texas,
Ben Sherman writes—
Wendy Davis: I Regret Supporting Open Carry During Campaign:
During her first extended interview since last month’s election, Wendy Davis told the San Antonio Express-News that there’s one campaign decision she completely regrets.
“There is one thing that I would do differently in that campaign, and it relates to the position that I took on open carry. I made a quick decision on that with a very short conversation with my team and it wasn’t really in keeping with what I think is the correct position on that issue.” |
It doesn’t come as a surprise that her decision to supporting open handgun carry was a simple political one. But it was also not a surprise that taking the position didn’t help her at all. In 2014 especially, Democrats across the country made the mistake of adopting Republican Lite positions. And they all lost terribly.
The idea of violating your base’s core principles to win in a difficult state is the kind of obvious, unscientific thinking that anyone could do. But it’s entirely untied to the reality of what it takes to win. Luckily, the open carry stance was the only such position Davis took during the campaign. And it’s undeniably good to see her take it back.
Unfortunately, Democrats across the country took Republican Lite a whole step further. Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu fought on behalf of the Keystone pipeline. She got slaughtered by her Actual Republican opponent. In Arkansas, Democrat Mark Pryor made an embarrassing bible-thumping ad and railed against federal agencies. He got slaughtered by his Actual Republican opponent. In Kentucky, Democrat Allison Grimes refused to say whether she voted for President Obama and made an awful ad in which she both shoots guns and reiterates her opposition to Obama. She got slaughtered by arguably the most corrupt politician in Washington, Mitch McConnell.
At
Plunderbund of Ohio,
David DeWitt writes—
An Anti-Poverty Warrior Reflects On 40 years In The Trenches:
A battle-hardened veteran of the anti-poverty effort in Ohio, Jack Frech maintains a genial disposition. He speaks with the soft, compassionate tones of a person used to helping people who may feel embarrassed to find themselves in desperate need.
In the 1980s, Frech transformed the concept of the local county welfare department in Ohio, turning the agency he was hired to oversee in Athens County into one that actively sought to help poor people, and to advocate on their behalf. No longer would the agency stigmatize poverty or begrudgingly hand out benefits. Under Frech’s stewardship, it would take the poverty problem head on. He embraced unionization, and he fought in state budget after budget for more resources to help poor people.
Often, Jack Frech has fought in vain, ignored by politicians uninterested in helping a population that doesn’t show up in large numbers at the polls, and barely has the resources to stay fed, let alone to pay million dollar lawyers to lobby on their behalf in Columbus, Washington, or anywhere else. Nevertheless, every budget cycle, Frech showed up to testify to the General Assembly, and to advocate, not simply for resources for his own agency, but for resources for every agency fighting against poverty, for a united effort to provide true opportunity and dignity to all Ohioans.
Now, after 33 years at the helm of Athens County Job & Family Services, Jack Frech is retiring. “It takes its toll on you,” Frech said in an interview last week.