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—Could hemp turn buffers into moneymakers?
Last year, the Minnesota legislature passed a bill allowing the study of growing industrial hemp, though not permitting farmers across the state to grow the plant.
Buried in a Alexandria Echo Press story, Farmers face troubling times ahead, we found this item under the subhead, Hemp Market:
Rep. Franson said she's working with DFL Rep. Phyllis Kahn on a bipartisan bill that would allow farmers to grow industrial hemp.
She said because hemp is associated with cannabis, which is considered a controlled substance, they're running into some difficulties and it's doubtful the bill will be approved this session.
Industrial hemp has a wide variety of uses in making rope, clothing, food, even concrete, Franson said.
She added that industrial hemp could also be grown as part of the new requirements for buffer strips. "I'm really excited about this," she said.
We suspect the goldfinches would probably get excited as well, though the ones we see in the field tweet loudest when they find catnip going to seed--though feral hemp is a treat for finches and pheasants alike.
Like the political alliance over hemp between Franson and Kahn, catnip seed-loving birds is just one of those things.
At FortBoise of Idaho, Tom Van Alten writes—Opening up suction dredge mining with no regulation:
Rep. Paul Shepherd (R-Riggins), from down where the Little Salmon flows into the main Salmon River, below the so-called "River of No Return" and the swath of wilderness across the middle of Idaho, has cooked up a little something called HB 510 to (as the Statement of Purpose puts it) "recognizes the de minimus nature of suction dredge mining and tries to free this important small business vocation from unreasonable regulation." It also says that "We" (the Legislature as a whole, speaking for all of the people of Idaho, really?) "recognize that environmental laws have been effective statewide and no unnecessary burdens are warranted on the suction dredge mining community for undocumented harm to aquatic habitat and assumed harm to free swimming fish."
Ok, then... what? It turns out that state law already provides a threshold for sucking up rocks, sand, gravel, micro- and macro-organisms and ok, maybe some small fry in hopes of finding something shiny and valuable. I don't know the history, but a five inch diameter intake has been set as a threshold for what regulation there is.
Shepherd's bill proposes upping the ante from that to an eight inch diameter hose, which doesn't sound like all that much difference, except when you wonder about "intake" versus "pipe," and do the math to see that that's a 150% increase in the cross-sectional capacity. The amount of material considered de minimus now is 2 cubic yards an hour; Shepherd wants to raise that to 5 cubic yards an hour, that same 150% increase. A nearby Dodge Ram 2500 pickup truck has a handy volume scale: the bed is about 2.8 cu yards. The old limit is less than three-fourths of that; the new limit would be almost two full loads. (Don't fill it that full though: half full with a yard and a half of gravel would put you at the 3,000 lb capacity of that manly pickup truck, assuming you didn't suck up some wet sand, too.)
So yippee tie one on, and lets double the size of the hose small business vocationalists can use to suck up the bottom of our rivers, because we just can't imagine that would have any environmental impact or be cause for any sort of regulation.
At Beach Peanuts of Florida, Martha Jackovics writes—Marco Rubio Finds "Waterboard Hillary" Suggestion Amusing:
Marco Rubio claims he wants to be President, yet he's still afraid to take on Donald Trump, but that hasn't stopped him from stealing Trump's bottom of the barrel carnival act to take an ugly and indirect swipe at Hillary Clinton.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio appeared to chuckle at a supporter’s suggestion Tuesday that Hillary Clinton should be waterboarded at a campaign rally in South Carolina.
As Rubio was discussing his proposal to keep the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, open indefinitely during his stump speech in North Myrtle Beach, a member of the more than 500-person audience shouted out “waterboard Hillary,” referencing the tactic, widely considered to be a form of torture, performed on several terrorist suspects who were later imprisoned at the base.
After the easily audible outburst, Rubio responded with a chuckle before seeking to extricate himself from the thorny situation. “I don’t want to know what he said — please don’t, because then — whatever — the press is here,” the GOP presidential hopeful said. “I didn’t even hear what they — I didn’t hear what they said. I know it wasn’t a bad word, that’s all that matters.”
Yes, that would be "positive campaigner" Marco Rubio, getting quite the chuckle from a supporter who suggests torturing Hillary Clinton, because...why not?
Sure, he tried to backpedal afterwards by pretending he didn't hear it, but "let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that Marco Rubio doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing.”
At Capital & Main of California, Sasha Abramsky writes—Gentrification in the Bay Area:
Grade-school art teacher Melissa Jones is attending the opening of an exhibit called Roofless: Art Against Displacement at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa. It is a cold, rainy night in early January. Jones is a single mother; she and her 12-year-old son live in a one-bedroom basement flat in the nearby rural community of Forestville, for which she pays $825 per month plus utilities. She is desperate to move into a bigger place, but for many the rents in Sonoma County have become unaffordable.
Among other problems, too few apartment buildings have been built in recent years. Developers say they have been hampered by huge impact fees that can run as high as $100,000 a unit, that cash-strapped localities in California, operating in a tax-raising environment straitjacketed by Proposition 13, have imposed on builders. The collapse of redevelopment funding has further reduced local governments’ ability to build enough subsidized housing. What homes do exist are, increasingly, snapped up by cash-rich real estate migrants from San Francisco looking to live on transit corridors easily linked to their work places in San Francisco or Silicon Valley. In the city of Sonoma, two bedrooms go for upwards of $1,700; in Santa Rosa for $1,800-plus.
Jones has a couple of art pieces on display in the Roofless exhibit. One, titled “Urgency,” looks like a monopoly board, each square showing the cost of renting an apartment in a particular Sonoma County town. Attached to the board is a mock bomb, made of fake dynamite sticks strapped to an old alarm clock. Under the bomb is written, “Sonoma County for rents. A super-stressful game of never having enough.”
“I have two degrees, [including] a master’s in education,” says the 45-year-old teacher, who grew up in Portland, Oregon and has been living in Sonoma County for the past several years, always in cramped accommodations that don’t afford her or her son much privacy. “I’m having a hard time believing I can find a second room for him. I feel like in some way I’ve failed. I’m trying really hard and it’s not enough.”
At Blue NC, scharrison writes—The switch to nat gas power plants a climate nightmare:
And we're going to end up paying for it:
This is not an isolated repurposing from Duke, but merely the beginning of a wave as Duke seeks to build 15 or more such plants across North Carolina in the coming years. As welcome as the news was for us locally that our toxin-spewing, mountain-destroying coal burner would soon be put out to pasture, this new development is hardly an improvement. Statewide, Duke is simply trading in one destructive, extractive energy source for another while continuing to milk legally guaranteed profits from its outrageous monopoly privilege over North Carolina ratepayers.
Like many of my environmental friends, I have been pleased to see the closure of several old and dirty coal plants in Duke Energy's "fleet." They closed more than I thought they would, which brought me to (at least) two realizations: 1) They're up to something, and 2) They had a hell of a lot more capacity than they have claimed. Another realization: Even with these closures, they are still able to provide for current power demands. Meaning, the smaller incremental addition of renewable energy generation via wind and solar farms (and waste-to-energy projects, geothermal, etc.) could easily keep up with increasing demand. But guess what? Large power plant construction projects are moneymakers. Billions, which is the only unit of measurement Duke Energy pays attention to. But forget about money for a second while we examine the climate change dangers of ramping up nat gas plants:
At Eclectablog of Michigan, Chris Savage writes—Michigan Republicans create all-white, all-male committee that has something to do with the #FlintWaterCrisis:
Republican Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof and Republican Speaker of the House Kevin Cotter have formed a committee called the Joint Committee on the Flint Water Public Health Emergency that has something to do with the public health catastrophe in Flint. They plan to hold hearings, looking into all levels of government from local all the way up to federal.
The committee is made up of two Democrats, Rep. Jeff Irwin and Sen. Jim Ananich, along with four Republicans, Rep. Ed McBroom, Rep. Ed Canfield, Sen. Jim Stamas, and Sen. Joe Hune.
The role of the committee seems to be in some dispute. For one thing, they don’t plan to ask for subpoena power. In fact, the Chair, Rep. Stamas says it’s not an investigation, at all. Instead they’ll hold hearings to “make sure that we find solutions for Flint and make sure we find solutions for all of Michigan”. Rep. Ananich, however, is going to push for the ability to subpoena witnesses and have them testify under oath.
Here’s a Fun Fact about the committee: they are all white men. Just a bunch of white dudes, looking into the poisoning of a majority black city.
Seriously, guys? You couldn’t find one black person or one woman?
I really do long for the day when our legislative leadership joins us in the 21st Century
At Blue in the Bluegrass, Yellow Dog writes—Matt Bevin Doesn't Know What the Fuck He Is Doing, Part 16:
The repugs do it every time, and voters never learn: tax cuts mean service cuts.
From Zandar:
Bevin's proposed tax cuts are running into reality.
Meanwhile the state’s new Medicaid commissioner said that the cost of the Medicaid program — one of the largest expenditures in the budget —will cost about 20 percent more over the next two years, rising to over $3.7 billion.
Rep. Jim Wayne, another Louisville Democrat, said that the state could afford these programs and more if it revised its tax system.
“If people who are as wealthy as the governor would pay their fair share in state and local taxes, we know that these type of programs could easily be sustainable,” Wayne said.
So either Bevin gets his tax cuts, or he'll throw 20% of state Medicaid people off the rolls. Guess which one this sudden change of state benefits in two weeks to an
all online site does in a
state with one of the lowest percentages of home internet use in America?
At Blue Oregon, Chuck Sheketoff writes—It’s time to shake up Oregon’s infrastructure investment trend:
With campaign season in full swing, there’s no shortage of candidates talking about the need for quality jobs. Add that to headlines about a massive earthquake predicted to strike the Pacific Northwest, and you’d think Oregon would be investing heavily in upgrading our public infrastructure.
Instead, Oregon’s investment in infrastructure has been shrinking, relative to the size of the state’s economy.
That’s one of the findings of It’s Time for States to Invest in Infrastructure, a study published today by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It shows that nationally, state and local spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP, or “the economy”) is at a 30 year low. The study helps explain why the American Society of Civil Engineers rates the whole of U.S. infrastructure as a D+ or “poor.”
Oregon is no exception. Between fiscal years 2002 and 2013, Oregon state and local infrastructure investment as a share of GDP decreased. Oregon’s decline was the 14th greatest (worst) of all the states. In 2013, Oregon’s infrastructure investment made up just 4.2 percent of total state expenditures.
State infrastructure spending, as the study makes clear, is crucial to maintaining our nation’s bridges and roads. In fact, state and local governments “own over 90 percent of non-defense public infrastructure assets, and although the federal government assists in the building and maintenance of these assets, state and local governments pay 75 percent of the cost of maintaining and improving them.”
At Dakota Free Press, Corey A Heidelberger writes—Rep. Craig Flips on Fake Religious Freedom Bill, Asks Committee to Table HB 1107:
Holy cow—is the process working? Are Republican legislators realizing they could lose their seats if they don’t listen to the people and the law?
Rep. Rev. Scott Craig just walked into Senate Judiciary and asked the committee to table House Bill 1107, his bigoted, dangerous, and boycott-brewing “religious freedom” bill to let people discriminate against single parents, unmarried couples, homosexuals, transgender folks, and anyone else not conforming to Rev. Craig’s sexual mores. Senate Judiciary complied, and HB 1107 is mostly dead.
Withdrawing HB 1107 is Rep. Rev. Craig’s third major reversal this Session. Two weeks ago, Craig withdrew his anti-refugee HB 1158 after hearing from refugee resettlement experts who said his bill was unnecessary. This week, he provided one of the two crucial GOP flips that kept the Governor’s regressive sales tax for teacher pay alive.
Rep. Craig also saw the democratic and Christian light yesterday and voted against the payday lenders’ nasty trick bill HB 1161. Next thing you know, he’ll be trouping down to the Second Floor to encourage Governor Daugaard to open his heart to our transgender neighbors and veto HB 1008, the paranoid potty bill.
I don’t know what’s gotten into Rep. Rev. Craig—or what’s gotten out!—but whatever it is, Scott, keep listening to it!
At Nebraska Appleseed, ozabih writes—Yet another worker survey reveals crippling conditions and abuse in poultry plants:
The Northwest Arkansas Workers’ Justice Center (NWAWJC) recently released a superb report on Arkansas’ poultry industry called “Wages and Working Conditions in Arkansas Poultry Plants.” The report, which examines a large industry in Arkansas – the state ranks second in the U.S. for broiler production– comes soon after an excellent report on the poultry industry from Oxfam America.
NWAWJC surveyed an impressive 500 Arkansas poultry processing workers and also conducted in-depth interviews with 30 workers. To no one’s surprise, its findings echo what researchers, academics, worker safety organizations, and government reports have found for years: that the meat and poultry industry houses some of the most dangerous working conditions in the country.
And the report finds that workers who experience this grueling work environment every day – at the cost of devastating repetitive-motion injuries to their bodies – earn poverty-level wages, are without basic benefits like sick days, and face continual discrimination and harassment.
According to the poultry workers surveyed, more than half of cutters, deboners, and hangers – positions that require the most repetitive motions – have suffered from a work-related injury due to the intense speed of work. The average processing speed documented in the surveys was 46 pieces per minute. One worker reported feeling like they were expected to work like robots.
At Louisiana Voice, tomaswell writes—After 30 years, Louisiana still pursues its failed industrial inducement policy that only serves to empty state treasury:
And for at least three decades, Louisiana along with the rest of the South, has insisted on following the same outdated industrial inducement policies first warned about in a 1986 report by MDC, Inc. (Manpower Development Corp.) of Durham, N.C.
One of the members of the MDC Panel on Rural Economic Development which produced the 16-page report Shadows in the Sunbelt was Dr. Norman Francis, then President of Xavier University and Chairman of Liberty Bank in New Orleans. gri.unc.edu/...
That 1986 report was followed up in 2002 when MDC published a 44-page report entitled The State of the South. mdcinc.org/...
Both reports said much the same thing: that the market had dried up. There were, the reports said, 15,000 industrial inducement committees in the South chasing 1500 industries—and if they relocated at all, it would be whether inducements in the form of tax incentives were offered or not. “At best, the states have assisted businesses in doing what they wanted to do anyway,” the ’86 report said.
“The factors which once made the rural South attractive (to industry) are now losing relevance,” it said. That’s because the South, which once boasted an abundance of low-cost labor, can no longer complete in the global market. Where American apparel workers would earn $6.52 an hour (remember, this was in 1986, but the numbers are still comparable), their counterparts in Korea and Taiwan earned $1 and $1.43, respectively, and Chinese workers made about 26 cents per hour.
At Ohio Daily, Anastasia Pantsios writes—The Profoundly Sexist John Kasich Just Can't Help Himself:
Ohioans are familiar with the patronizing attitude John Kasich has toward women. His condescension is barely concealed; he exudes the kind of "Who can figure out those crazy dames" attitude that reeks of ’50s standup comedy and old Playboy cartoons. He's waaaaaaay out of his time, whether making a comment about his "hot wife" in the State of the State address or telling a young woman who rises to ask him a question at a townhall meeting, "No, I don't have any Taylor Swift tickets" or saying something like "It's not easy to be a spouse of an elected official. You know, they're at home, doing the laundry and doing so many things while we're up here on the stage getting applause, right?"
Yeah, right.
He's done it again:
www.nbcnews.com/...
"How did I get elected?" said Kasich, talking about his first run for the state legislature. "Nobody was — I didn't have anybody for me. We just got an army of people, many women, who left their kitchens to go out and go door to door and put up yard signs for me. All the way back, when you know things were different. Now you call homes and everybody's out working. But at that time, early days, it was an army of women that really helped get me elected to the state senate."
Ah yes, all the way back, the "early days," back when women were little housewives and knew their place, and any work they did was strictly volunteer, unpaid because after all, that's about what they were worth.