This week at 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. Here is last Saturday's edition. Inclusion of a blog post does not necessarily indicate my agreement or endorsement of its contents.
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At The Wheeling Alternative of West Virginia, waner writes—News from the war on coal and coal miners:
Last month, the New Republic's Emma Foehringer Merchant asked "Is It Game Over for Coal?" The article began by noting that the state of Oregon recently became the first state to phase out the use of coal for electricity generation (by 2035). While the article questioned how many states would follow Oregon's lead, it did suggest that change is coming.
In the article, Merchant quotes Bob Keefe who is executive director for E2 which is a partner of the Natural Resources Defense Council:
But according to Keefe, rhetorical assaults designed to boost coal are a waste of time. “If I’m a coal state politician, instead of harping about some other party’s ‘war on coal’ I would be trying my best to help those workers,” he said. “Getting them some worker retraining programs and more importantly getting more clean energy … in my state.”
While Keefe may be biased toward renewables, his point about retraining makes sense.
Merchant concludes by examining the implications of coal's decline in the upcoming presidential election:
In the short term, Clinton is correct—coal will remain part of the energy mix in both the U.S. and around the world. But market trends imply that won’t be the case for much longer, even if a President Trump does everything in his power to prop up Big Coal.
At the Green Mountain Daily of Vermont, Sue Prent writes—A movement, not just a campaign:
Faced with the seemingly insurmountable challenge of winning at the delegate game, Bernie needs to use his bully pulpit in the remaining primaries to advocate strictly on policy issues. The relatively few months that were available to him to introduce himself to the entire U.S. voter population and bring media attention to the issues about which he cares most deeply, were never going to be enough to realize a complete revolution in the Democratic Party, and now they are drawing to a close.
Bernie himself acknowledged that to the people who flocked to his rallies, from the very first one which we were privileged to witness in Burlington. A single election cycle would never be sufficient to change the politics that have condemned the U.S. to growing income inequities,declining opportunities, social injustice and the quashing influence of big money on any possibility of meaningful reform.
His candidacy is the vanguard of a new political movement that is still evolving on the left in the footprints left by Occupy Wall Street. It’s adherents are mostly younger, with much of their voting life ahead of them. If the Democratic party fails once again to live up to the progressive expectations of this base, like the Republicans before them, they can look forward to declining influence as young voters demand effective third and fourth party options within the primary process.
At Bluestem Prairie of Minnesota, Sally Jo Sorensen writes—Rolling out the unwelcome wagon in Little Falls: Somali family moves in, another Branstner talk:
One Somali family has moved to Little Falls, Minnesota, prompting freak outs among the more fearful among Morrison County residents.
Meanwhile, the Central Minnesota Tea Party is hosting another talk by anti-refugee speaker Ron Branstner:
You're invited to attend- REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT AND AGENDA 21 By RON BRANSTNER, LITTLE FALLS BALLROOM, 15870 MN 27, LITTLE FALLS, MN, FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2016, 6:30 – 9:00 PM. Mr. Branstner has been traveling the central MN region educating on the cost and effects of immigration to small communities. He believes freedom isn’t free and neither is charity if your hand is in some one else’s pocket.
Lovely.
In Judge people on character, not race or religion, Morrison County Record editor Tom West concedes that perhaps "family of Somali Muslims enrolled seven children in the Little Falls schools" ought not be held responsible for the litany of terrorist attacks he eagerly shared with his readers.
West writes:
For more than a year, a rumor has been flying around town that up to 1,000 Somalis are moving to Little Falls. This week, the number was 41.
The newspaper has checked repeatedly with city and county authorities, the people who would know, and our conclusion is that it just isn’t true. [...]
At this point, we suspect that Minnesota's anti-refugee folks enjoy the emotional rush they get as they expose and fondle their fears, sharing that emotional flooding with their like-minded neighbors.
At Blue in the Bluegrass of Kentucky, Yellow Dog writes—Matt Bevin Doesn't Know What the Fuck He's Doing, Part 21:
For forty years, it's been standard repug operating procedure to put the foxes in charge of all the public services henhouses: public health, worker safety, education, environmental protection, you name it. But the one that they really slaver over because of the potential to obscenely enrich the already wealthy at the expense of consumers is the Public Service Commissioner.
The PSC regulates all the fundamental services the people need to live: water, electricity, natural gas, phone service.
The PSC decides how much of a rate increase the corporations that control those services get to cram down your throat to increase their profits. The PSC decides which fracking companies get to run explosive, toxic chemical pipelines through your front yard without your permission. The PSC decides how much it costs to heat or cool your home, bathe with clean water, call 911 in an emergency.
The last thing you want to do is appoint to the PSC "bidnessmen" who will let utilities run roughshod over Kentuckians.
So of course that's what Governor Lying Coward has done.
At Delaware Liberal, jason330 writes—The Probable Nominee Vs The Trouble Maker:
At some point early on in the primary season people around here picked sides. If they picked Hillary they quickly stopped viewing the race as a contest people people with policies and ideas, and viewed it as a race between the “Probable Nominee” (PN) and the “Trouble Maker.” (TM) I don’t blame anyone for this choice and the mindset that resulted from it. That lens is exactly how I would have viewed the race if I had picked Clinton, and trust me I was within a single micron of picking Clinton.
Like the Clinton supporters here, I would have viewed any attack on the policies of the PN as a weakening the PN in the upcoming general election. I would have looked at TM with scorn and shut out his transparently liberal and Democratic message because it was not something that “helped” the PM in the long run. I would have had an a moral compass that narrowed my thinking to stark black and white and provoked venomous pronouncements that supporters of the TM were reading off of Mitch McConnell’s play book.
But that is all behind us now. Now the trouble maker can be viewed as a man named Bernie Sanders. Now we Democrats can look at his policies and proposals in the clear light of day and ask ourselves if they are things that we Democrats, that all Americans who value peace and justice can support. We can turn our attention to the genuine enemies of a rational and just America and work together to make sure that we live up to the ideals enshrined in founding documents. That we sincerely and diligently work to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.
Because if this campaign has proven anything, it has proven that the country needs at least one political party that is steadfast and unshakable in its conviction that all men are created equal. It needs one party to be the party that does not take our prejudices as a given, but takes it as a given that we can, we must, and we will do better in the future.
At Burnt Orange Report of Texas, Andrea Greer writes—Foster Care in Texas: Horrifically Worse Than You Could Imagine:
Children drugged into submission, tied up and put into dank basements, and sexually abused by adults and other children. These are not scenes from a gory television series, or tales we tell about other people in other countries to make ourselves feel smugly superior.
These are stories described on record in Stukenberg v. Abbott, a case brought by former foster care kids against the Governor and the cruelly, ironically-named Department of Family and Protective Services, decided in December in the Corpus Christi Division of the Southern District of the U.S. District Court. [...]
We owe it to the children in the foster care system, both the named plaintiffs in this case and the children past, present, and future whom they represent, to read this decision and understand the true implications of under-funding state services to children in desperate need of protection. [...]
This disgusting and horrific abuse is the real-life result of slashing budgets to prioritize tax breaks for corporate property owners and the political aspirations of a few gubernatorial and presidential hopefuls.
It is the result of our state government’s despicable inability to take action despite numerous reviews that indicated the system was in complete free-fall.
At Show Me Progress of Missouri, WillyKay writes—Kurt Schaefer just cost Missouri $8 million dollars:
I wrote last week that the Planned Parenthood showboating of state Senator Kurt Schaefer and his pals in the legislature was going to be costly to Missouri taxpayers. The observation was prompted by a explicit warning from the Director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services that cutting Planned Parenthood funding from Medicaid funds would be illegal and, implicitly, actionable. I speculated that few Missourians would be happy to have to foot the bill for a losing lawsuit, especially when incurred in an obvious attempt to further Schaefer’s political career – he is running for Attorney General and has been on a crusade to endear himself to the powerful anti-abortion contingent in the GOP.
The good news? Schaefer and pals decided not to risk an illegal maneuver.
The bad news? They decided not to wait for a lawsuit but to force Missouri taxpayers to shoulder the charges up front:
Missouri lawmakers passed a budget last week that spends millions in state money to block Planned Parenthood from accessing federal funding. [...]
And it isn’t just taxpayers who will feel the burn from Schaefer’s finagling, but women who rely on Planned Parenthood’s services. Although Schaefer contends that women can get the same services elsewhere, evidence exists to show that that the “county health departments, rural health clinics and federally qualified health centers,” that he insists are alternatives to Planned Parenthood, don’t really fill the bill
At Democratic Diva of Arizona, Donna writes—Channel 12 Simply Can't Say No to Anti-Choice Goose-Chase:
Last month there was a big buzz in the local anti-choice rumor mill about a “born alive abortion” that had allegedly occurred at a Phoenix clinic. I reported on the absurdity of the whole allegation at that time and how the MSM ought not allow themselves to be played by wild-eyed anti-abortion zealots. But, apparently, Channel 12 in Phoenix sees a real public interest in helping those zealots to harass abortion providers and in giving out potentially identifying information about a patient (her age), as they did on the Thursday 10pm broadcast.
The police reports shows the mother, 27, had been scheduled for an abortion, but went into what the report called, “spontaneous labor.” The doctor at the clinic near downtown Phoenix told police she had checked for a fetal heartbeat before the procedure and found none. She said she believed the baby would be stillborn.
The reports said a nurse went to weigh the fetus, which is standard procedure, and thought she saw it move and struggle to breathe. “Oh my God this fetus is moving,” the reports claim she said.
Staff at the clinic then called 911 and paramedics began CPR while transporting the baby to Banner University Medical Center, the report said. But doctors there did not find a heartbeat and pronounced the baby deceased within a few minutes. [...]
So it appears that this was not even an abortion but a stillbirth that happened to take place at a clinic, where the staff there did everything they were supposed to do in that situation. 12 News could have left it at that and redeemed themselves with a mea culpa for having been suckered by anti-choice conspiracy loons. Sadly, no, they could not do that. Instead, they ended the segment by interviewing some gross anti-choice dude from his book-lined office and let him insinuate that something criminal had indeed taken place at that particular clinic and also that any pregnancy outcome that is not a full-term healthy infant is cause for suspicion.
At Nebraska Appleseed, Jeff Sheldon writes—Roots of Appleseed – Gretchen Obrist:
Throughout our 20th Anniversary year in 2016, we will be taking a look back at the influential people who helped Nebraska Appleseed grow into the advocacy organization we are today. These “Roots of Appleseed” helped shape our mission of fighting for justice and opportunity for all Nebraskans.
Gretchen Obrist was one of the early leaders of Appleseed’s litigation work on behalf of low-income families. When Nebraska Appleseed’s earliest advocacy programs were beginning to take shape, our organization needed guidance, a plan, and the energy to follow through.
Appleseed found all of it in a tireless college student named Gretchen Obrist. While still a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Gretchen started as a part-time employee at Appleseed in 1998, and would become instrumental in our earliest efforts to stand up for the rights of Nebraska women with low incomes.
“Gretchen was the first paralegal for the Welfare Due Process Project, and that meant she really was the driving force behind what we would focus on and how we would do it,” said Milo Mumgaard, Appleseed’s founding executive director. “Gretchen came to Appleseed with extremely well-developed advocacy skills and a strong concern for the legal rights of low-income women, and she became the model for Appleseed’s work from there on out.”
The projects Gretchen helped develop have since become the core of much of the work done by Appleseed’s Economic Justice program. At Appleseed, she developed a resource manual and economic needs assessment tool used by front-line domestic violence and sexual assault advocates, crisis centers, and other direct services organizations throughout Nebraska. [...]
At the Orange Juice Blog of California, Tyler in Irvine writes—Why the Coastal Commission will Approve Poseidon:
The LA Times reports that Poseidon is paying over a quarter million dollars per year to the Coastal Commission’s premier lobbyist.
Poseidon is close to receiving final approval on its billion dollar stick-up of Orange County Rate payers. The largest remaining obstacle is Coastal Commission approval. The Los Angeles Times has a great storyon Susan McCabe, the Coastal Commission’s premier lobbyist. From the article:
In 2009-2010, Poseidon Resources, which builds desalination plants, topped the list [of McCabe clients] at $262,013.
McCabe still represents Poseidon’s interests, including a $1-billion project in Huntington Beach
She compiles detailed briefing books for the panel and, according to regular attendees, her team delivers recommended revisions to commissioners who sometimes adopt them with little or no public review or discussion.
As always, Poseidon uses its enormous lobbying budget to further a project that can not stand on its own merits. Given the recent changes at the Coastal Commission, the project will probably be approved 7-5 when it comes up. There is still time to fight the project, however, as it does not appear on the May meeting agenda.
At Louisiana Voice, tomaswell writes—Insight into Nungesser’s contempt for laws revealed in his blatant disregard for public records demands, other actions:
How would a public official, say a parish president, manage to skirt the Louisiana public records laws and ignore votes of the parish council and get away with it?
Well, if you’re Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, and if you had 18 writs of mandamus pending against you for non-compliance, you would simply ride out the storm until your newly-elected, hand-picked council takes office and have a friendly council member move to rescind any pending adverse action.
That’s precisely what Nungesser did in late 2010. He blatantly ignored the law and waited out his adversaries. And it apparently worked.
No wonder he thought he could do an end run around Gov. John Bel Edwards by conspiring with State Republican Party Chairman Roger Villere in that completely embarrassing Iraqiscam-super tanker-proposal-to-cure-Louisiana-of-its-fiscal-problems that left him—and Villere—with a little something more disgusting than egg all over their faces.
With ample evidence of his contempt for the law prior to becoming lieutenant governor and his willing violation of protocol since becoming the second-highest elected official in the state, can there be any reasonable expectation of significant change in his conspiring makeup during the rest of what is almost certain to be a single term.
At Leftwing Cracker of Tennessee, Steve Steffens writes—It's time to drop the BIG ONE on the SCDP:
Let's face it, we have all been in denial for a while now. The Shelby County Democratic Party has been dying for several years right under our noses, and all of us, INCLUDING ME, have been whistling through the graveyard while pretending that it actually meant something.
Don't think so? Really? When is the last time a Presidential Campaign sent money to Memphis for a national campaign? 1996, that's when, the last re-election campaign of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. It was also the last year Harold Ford SENIOR was in office (to distinguish himself from his succeeding offspring, who looked just liked him but voted NOTHING like him). That was the last year something that could reasonably be called the Ford Machine existed; most of those who helped Senior from 1974 in his historic campaign for election have gone to meet their maker or retired from politics.
The political kids Senior raised tried to keep it going, but found themselves out-organized by different groups such as those led by Sidney Chism or Desi Franklin. The last of the old-time chairs was the late, lamented Rep. Kathryn Bowers, whose term came to a premature end due to the TENNESSEE WALTZ Scandal. She knew not only how to raise money, but to increase turnout, which she did without any DNC money for the 2004 elections.
This, of course, was also the beginning of the end for Democratic dominance in Nashville, which accelerated when Senator Rosalind Kurita, having just been shafted by the DCCC in her race against Harold Ford JUNIOR in 2006 (Kiss My Ass Chuck Schumer), got her revenge by flipping her vote for Lieutenant Governor from the aging John Wilder to the pro-business, pro-Randian Ron Ramsey of Blountville. The downward spiral reached its nadir with the 2010 elections, when white people who had always voted Democratic because THOSE DAMNED YANKEES THAT KILT MY GREAT GREAT GRANDPAPPY were astonished that the Party of Lincoln was now the Party of Jefferson Davis and that Democrats had gone and elected one of them (BLEEP)S as President.