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, Bob Lord writes—Two Very Different .01 Percents:
Most readers here know about the top .01%. They’re the richest of the rich, the top 1% of the top 1% in America. They number about 33,000. They control over 10% of the nation’s wealth and about 6% of our income. They are responsible for the lion’s share of contributions to both political parties. Call them the lucky .01%.
I’ve given a lot of thought to the lucky .01% in my work regarding the concentration of wealth in America.
For the past few days, thought, I’ve been thinking more about a different .01% of us: the 33,000 or so Americans who will lose their lives to gun violence next year if our gun policies and our “gun culture” does not change. They’re the unlucky .01%. [...]
What if we knew in advance that the lucky .01%, as a group, was destined to become next year’s unlucky .01%.
How would we do things? Would we change our gun laws? Would we do anything more than we are doing today to bring the number—33,000 gun deaths per year—down in a hurry?
Check below the orange gerrymander for more state progressive blog excerpts and links.
At Capital & Main of California, Marc Haefele writes—Eli Broad and the End of Public Education as We Know It:
If there were still any doubt about Eli Broad’s desire to gut traditional public education, it has been erased by his much-discussed “Great Public Schools Now” initiative, a draft of which LA Times reporter Howard Blume obtained last month.
Broad’s 44-page proposal outlines plans to replace half of LAUSD’s existing public schools with charter schools. “Such an effort will gather resources, help high-quality charters access facilities, develop a reliable pipeline of leadership and teaching talent, and replicate their success,” states the document. “If executed with fidelity, this plan will ensure that no Los Angeles student remains trapped in a low-performing school.”
According to the proposal, Broad wants to create 260 new “high-quality charter schools, generate 130,000 high-quality charter seats and reach 50 percent charter market share.”
(Actually, LAUSD has 151,000 kids in charters now: 281,000 out of 633,000 LAUSD students is 43 percent. This isn’t the only imprecision in the proposal.)
The estimated cost of this LAUSD transformation would be nearly half-a-billion dollars.
By his own account, Broad is the fourth-richest resident of Los Angeles, with $7 billion in wealth. So he could easily finance this proposal out of pocket and still pay his property taxes in Brentwood.
But that’s not the plan.
At
My Left Nutmeg of Connecticut,
ctblogger writes—
The Malloy Administration's stunning attack on unions, professors and the future of CT State Univ:
In a stark reminder that action speaks louder than words, Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy's administration has dropped a stunningly anti-union, anti-faculty, anti-Connecticut State University proposal on the table as it begins its contract negotiations with the CSU Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), the union that represents faculty and a variety of education professionals at the four universities of CSU.
This development comes on top of the news that Malloy's political appointees on the University of Connecticut's Board of Trustees have authorized a contract with an extremely controversial, high profile, anti-union, Governor Chris Christie affiliated New Jersey law firm to lead the negotiations against the UConn Chapter of the AAUP. That contract could cost taxpayers and students as much as $500,000 or more.
The Malloy administration's approach to the faculty who teach at Connecticut's State Universities is particularly troubling since there has already been a growing recognition that Malloy's initiative to merge the Connecticut State University and the Connecticut Community College System into the Board of Regents has been an utter failure.
In just three years, the first two presidents of the Board of Regents were forced to leave under a cloud and Malloy's political appointees on the Board of Regents have wasted millions of dollars in taxpayer funds on out-of-state consultants and some of those contracts apparently violated state law.
At
Progress Illinois,
Ellyn Fortino writes—
Parents, Daycare Providers Rail Against Rauner's Child Care Cuts At Chicago Hearing:
Nearly 5,000 Illinois children have been denied access to state-subsidized daycare and at least 100 child care providers in Cook County alone have closed their doors since the Rauner administration drastically reduced eligibility for the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) on July 1.
Illinois Action for Children President and CEO Maria Whelan provided those numbers Wednesday afternoon as she testified at an Illinois Department of Human Services hearing in Chicago on the CCAP changes.
"We ask parents to take care of their children, we expect parents to take care of their children. The parents we have just heard from are doing just that," Whelan told the single state official who took testimony at the hearing. "I think it's an abomination for us to pull this absolutely critical, central safety net from under their feet." [...]
According to DHS, a new CCAP applicant has to be one of the following to be eligible for the program: a Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) recipient; a teen parent enrolled full-time in elementary,high school or GED classes; from a family with a special needs child; or a working family with a monthly income up to 50 percent of the federal poverty level.
New applicants had previously been eligible for CCAP if they earned up to 185 percent of the poverty level.
At
Hillbilly Report,
Berry Craig writes—
Matt Bevin And Seniors On The Draw:
In the gubernatorial candidate debate at Centre College, Republican Matt Bevin deviated slightly from his campaign MO: [...]
This time, Bevin got a little chippy with his Democratic opponent, Attorney Gen. Jack Conway. Okay, he’s castigated Conway before.
Anyway, Conway asked Bevin if he favored random drug testing for Medicare recipients. Bevin responded by saying that Medicare recipients are “on the draw”and that he believed “we should have random drug testing for people who are on social benefits.”
Bevin also bristled at Conway: “We’re talking about Medicaid in this instance, Jack. And you know that’s what we’re talking about.”
No sooner had the debate–co-sponsored by the American Associaton of Retired Persons– concluded than the Kentucky Democratic Party blasted out an email with a video showing Bevin at a Louisville Tea Party forum in April declaring unequivocally, “I firmly believe we frankly should drug test people that are on Medicaid and Medicare. We just should.”
At
The Progressive Pulse at NC Policy Watch,
Robert Schofield writes—
Recent floods ought to be another wake up call for state leaders:
The murky flood waters haven’t all receded yet in South Carolina (or parts of North Carolina for that matter), but it’s already crystal clear that our state’s shortsighted attitude toward climate change, rising sea levels and investments in infrastructure have been powerfully refuted once more. The Associated Press reports:
“Long before the historic floods of the past week, crumbling roads, bridges and dams and aging drinking water systems plagued South Carolina — a poor state that didn’t spend much on them in the first place and has been loath to raise taxes for upkeep.
Now the state faces hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars’ worth of additional bills to fix or replace key pieces of its devastated infrastructure. [...]
In other words, much as we’d like to chalk disasters like the destructive floods of recent days up to “acts of God,” the plain and undeniable fact is that they are actually part of the new normal on our warmer, more populated and increasingly paved-over planet. Moreover, we avoid preparing for them and attempting to preemptively mitigate them at our own great peril and expense.
Tragically, however, this painfully obvious reality continues to escape our state’s political leaders and the “free market think tanks” on whom they rely for policy advice.
At
HorsesAss of Washington,
Goldy writes—
What’s Next, Bruce? Walking-Around Money?:
Seattlish has the scoop on some very shady goings on in my own political backyard:
Bruce Harrell’s campaign may be in some hot water following allegations that they essentially bought the 37th District Dems endorsements for both him and Pamela Banks.
An SEEC complaint alleges that, before the deadline to become a voting member of the organization in time for endorsements, 15 new memberships were paid for in one batch, with sequential money orders purchased at the same location.
It gets sketchier: These new memberships came on the heels of the Harrell campaign calling and asking if it would be OK for them to pay for new memberships (they were told it was not). … Just after the vote, it was determined that at least five of the new members shouldn’t have been permitted to vote at all, because, per the 37th Dems themselves, they didn’t even live in the 37th LD.
This is the sort of sneaky, manipulative Democratic machine politics that might earn Harrell fear and/or respect in Chicago or New Jersey or my native Philadelphia, but here in squeaky-clean Seattle, not so much. In fact, it pretty much confirms the worst suspicions of the disaffected, young, left-leaning voters Democrats so desperately need to bring to the polls.
At
Plunderbund of Ohio,
John Michael Spinelli writes—
In Virginia, Gov. Kasich Again Shows His Totally ‘Un-cool’ Self:
Kasich got his attention, though, but but for all the wrong reasons. Captured by Kayla Solsbak for The Collegian, her article titled “No, John Kasich, I don’t want Taylor Swift tickets” cast the Ohio governor as an old guy out of touch with young voters when he spoke at the University of Richmond.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have any Taylor Swift concert tickets,” Kasich said, according to reports and videos. “The older members of the audience chuckled as my friends’ jaws dropped to the floor. It was astonishingly clear that Gov. Kasich did not come to Richmond for my vote,” Solsbak wrote.
Doing what most candidates do, Gov. Kasich, who polls show would place third in his own home state to Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson, was true to form performing before a friendly GOP crowd, as he’s done since he announced his candidacy in early July in Columbus.
Solsbak wrote that Kasich was condescending, and that he chose not to listen to students in his forum. Most of the questions came from older members of the community, she said, many vocalizing their support of Kasich before throwing him a softball question. Delivering his anti-Planned Parenthood pitch, Ohio’s Music Man governor dismissed the young woman who posed it, Solsbak wrote. She added, “…and [Kasich] derided me when I had the audacity to raise my hand. Kasich came to Richmond to pander to retired Republicans. He could gain points by belittling me and my peers, so that’s what he did.”
At
Burnt Orange Report of Texas ,
Andrea Greer writes—
Where, Exactly, Does Texas Stand on Abortion Access?:
Monday, the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) reported that laws and policies restricting access to abortion have increased the amount of time it takes for a person to secure an appointment with one of the dwindling number of providers in Texas.
Wait times have gotten particularly long in Dallas and Ft. Worth after a large-volume clinic closed in June 2015, with women having to wait up to 20 days on average in these cities. There were 8 facilities providing abortion care in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolitan area in April 2013; now there are only 4. Wait times have also been as long as 20 days at some clinics in Austin, while wait times have been stable and short in Houston and San Antonio.
TxPEP documented what most people intuitively understand: when you limit access to a service that people need, the service become harder to obtain, driving costs up and forcing people to consider other means of obtaining the service which might not be safe or legal.
Also intuitive but worth making explicit: teenagers, undocumented people, and poor people in Texas, especially those living in areas already under-served by the healthcare safety net, and especially those working low-wage jobs that do not provide sick leave or paid time off, will suffer more than anyone else because of these delays.
At
Left in Alabama,
countrycat writes—
Interesting Parallels Between State Auditor Jim Zeigler, Bob Whitaker, & HSV Street Preacher:
Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler & presidential candidate Robert Whitaker could almost be twin brothers. They have a lot in common: a tendency for self-aggrandizement, connections with white supremacists, nostalgia for the Old South, and distaste for abortion. Wow… if you throw James Henderson, Huntsville’s least favorite street preacher, into the mix perhaps they’re triplets.
Robert Whitaker’s on our radar because he’s currently running a particularly noxious robocall in Alabama. A horrified LIA reader alerted me to it last night, and we found an announcement about the robocall campaign on Whitaker’s Web site. We refuse to favor him with a link. Here’s the text of the call:
We robocall you at home because the media won’t carry our message.
Asia for the Asians, Africa for the Africans, but White countries for EVERYBODY?!
Flooding ALL & ONLY White countries with the third world overflow IS White Genocide.
Recently, Senator Jeff Sessions openly opposed flooding the U.S. with third world non-white refugees.
Bob Whitaker, the American Freedom Party’s candidate for president, LAUDS Senator Sessions for his stance, and adds that “DIVERSITY,” is chasing down the last White person.
If you support the present policy of flooding all White countries with third world non-whites, YOU are anti-WHITE.
Diversity equals White Genocide.
Join the American Freedom Party today and support Bob Whitaker for President. [...]
180,000 Alabama households are getting this drivel; fortunately, our house has been spared. So far.
At
Blue Virginia,
Lowell writes—
When it Comes to Science, You Can't Get Crazier or "More Stupider" than Cooch:
I mean, we all know that Ken Cuccinelli has been a climate science denier and - not coincidentally - tool of the fossil fuel industry, basically forever. And we also know that Cooch's willful ignorance when it comes to climate science, even persecution against great climate scientists like former UVA Professor Michael Mann, knows no bounds. But this latest line of "reasoning" (using that word extremely loosely) -- arguing that since there are new indications regarding the possible health impacts of milk fat in our diet, that this clearly means NO science is ever "settled" and that we can ignore whatever we want to ignore, apparently - really hits a new low in terms of dishonesty and/or just plain stupidity.
I mean, by this utterly brain-dead "reasoning" (again, using that word extremely loosely), I guess if a few scientists argue that the world is actually flat, or that the earth doesn't really revolve around the sun, or that they don't "believe" in evolution (one of the greatest scientific theories ever, with voluminous evidence supporting it), etc., then we can all just throw up our hands and say, "oh well, I guess we can't know ANYTHING at all. That includes the massively well-supported scientific evidence behind: a) the greenhouse effect; b) the impact of increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere on said greenhouse effect; and c) the absolutely clear, definitive case that human burning of fossil fuels has increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmsophere and driven rapid global warming. But no, go ahead ignore all that and point to something about milk fat, mock the whole concept of "settled science" and spew CO2 into the atmosphere and oceans forever, trashing the only home we have in the process. Sounds like a great plan, huh?
At
Blue Oregon,
Matt Witt writes—
Oregon Needs Its Own Bernie Sanders:
Oregon needs its own Bernie Sanders-type candidates to run in the upcoming Democratic primaries for governor and U.S. senator.
Serious primary challengers could keep Kate Brown and Ron Wyden from taking Democratic voters for granted and moving right to please corporate campaign contributors. And who knows, maybe candidates committed to bold action on Democratic issues might even win!
For example, a credible challenger to Brown could point out that states and cities in the rest of the country are responding to the national movement to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and ask why our Democratic governor failed to help even bring the issue to a vote in this year’s session of our Democratic legislature. Debates would require Brown to commit whether she will lead on this issue next year.
As governor, Brown could have used her position to crisscross the state campaigning for a raise for the working poor that would boost our economy by putting more purchasing power in their pockets. Instead, she parroted the corporate line, publicly worrying that making companies like Walmart and McDonald’s pay struggling workers a living wage could “harshly impact our currently growing economic recovery.”
A knowledgeable primary challenger could also shine a light on Brown’s failure to take a strong stand for action on climate change by opposing the two fracked liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals and pipelines proposed for Oregon by out-of-state companies.