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 the November 19 edition. Inclusion of a blog post does not necessarily indicate my agreement with—or endorsement of—its contents.
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lowkell at Blue Virginia writes—Arlington Dems Chair: “Focus on grassroots politics as opposed to heavy spending on television advertising”:
I couldn’t agree more with my friend Kip Malinosky, chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee (ACDC), from this month’s “Voice” newsletter [...] Also, congratulations to Kip and ACDC for racking up a huge margin of victory (71,830 votes!) for Clinton/Kaine in Arlington, accounting for “more than a third—33.9 percent for those who seek precision—of Clinton’s statewide margin of victory of 212,030.” Impressive! Now, if we had only had that kind of margin from heavily Dem areas of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton would be announcing her Cabinet picks right now and Republicans would be licking their wounds…
This has been one of the most difficult losses I have ever experienced. The consequences for climate change, health care, raising wages, and our diverse, inclusive country could be devastating. I hope that I am wrong and President Trump is not as bad as his campaign made him seem, but we need to prepare for tough times ahead. Democrats must win as many elections as we can between now and 2020 when we hopefully defeat Trump. How do we do it?
The short answer is honing a better economic message, revitalizing the 50-state strategy and systematic grassroots organizing at the state and local level. This is easy to say and difficult to do, but in Arlington and Virginia we are already putting these strategies into practice. They were crucial to our record turnout and margin for Democrats in Arlington and in Hillary Clinton winning Virginia by a larger margin than President Obama won in 2012. Across the country, however, we fell woefully short.
Tom Van Alten at FortBoise of Idaho writes—Don't feed the troll:
The seven deadly sins come to mind every so often, especially with pride at the front of the list. We take pride in our accomplishments, generally, is that a problem? Perhaps not if taken in moderation, same as "all things," according to FF BF, he of quotable virtuessometimes honored in the breach.
Pride is of course what goeth before the fall. And greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth lubricate the slippery ledge. It seems a minority of voters (with a sufficient plurality in just the right places) have elevated an exemplar of at least six of the seven not-to-do list. He doesn't seem slothful, at least, even though we can imagine him working his tweeter with three tiny fingers. (This morning's you-didn't-see-this-coming troll is about flag-burning, that great cancer on the republic. "Perhaps loss of citizenship" should be the penalty.)
We all know virtue is harder than vice. (The list is twice as long.)
Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
As Wikipedia reminds us, "Franklin did not try to work on them all at once," but "believed the attempt made him a better man."
Let's keep our eye on the ball. Consitutional virtues of free speech, freedom of the press, freedom from corruption and bribery at every level of government, freedom from the whims of a king, dictator, buffoon, or other sorts of charlatans.
Help us Obi-wan Senate Republicans. You're our only hope. You knew this was a con; you said as much. “Delusional narcissist,” you said. “Utterly amoral.” “A pathological liar.” Don't give in to the dark side. There is a lot more than inflammatory protest at stake. Medicare. Social Security. Whether or not we'll work to keep the planet habitable.
Anne Lindberg at Saint Peters Blog of Florida writes—Pinellas cities slow to take action on location of medical marijuana dispensaries:
Earlier this month, Florida voters overwhelmingly approved the sale of medical marijuana.
But that doesn’t mean those who qualify for the medication under Amendment 2 will be getting it anytime soon. That’s because the Florida Department of Health needs to develop regulations and the Legislature is expected to take up the issue in the upcoming session.
Even after those hurdles are cleared, it’s unlikely that sick people will be able to drive down to a store on the corner to have their prescriptions filled. That’s because cities and counties will decide where dispensaries can be located.
Thus far, few of the county’s governments have taken any action, according to a survey by Forward Pinellas. Forward Pinellas is the countywide agency that oversees land development and transportation.
According to Forward Pinellas, Madeira Beach passed an ordinance last year that basically requires anyone who wants to open a dispensary there to go through an approval process. Among the items that city officials would look at – compatibility with neighbors and how close the dispensary would be to schools, churches, parks, day cares and the like.
More recently, Pinellas Park passed a six-month moratorium.
Trish Nelson at Blog for Iowa writes—Help Stop Eminent Domain Abuse In Iowa:
Dakota Access came to our state two years ago and began trying to buy off landowners and farmers to get permission to run a pipeline roughshod through their property.
Those who resisted were subjected to eminent domain law, which says that the state has the right to take their land — even against their will — for projects that benefit the “public good.”
But our government officials are far overreaching their authority in order to help their rich and powerful friends. A pipeline that benefits a private company and would transport oil mostly for export is not for the “public good.”
Now, nine Iowa landowners who continue to resist construction of the pipeline on their land are suing the state and Dakota Access to stop this abuse of eminent domain law. [...]
The outcome of this lawsuit will affect whether the pipeline construction moves forward, and whether eminent domain can be abused in the future in this state. Iowa should be a place where families who’ve lived here for generations are respected and have the right to decide what to do with their private land.
What’s more, the Dakota Access pipeline would be a disaster for our land and water. It disrupts precious soil that’s been farmed by our families for generations, and a leak would threaten over 200 waterways, poisoning the water we drink and that farmers use to grow our food. Bakken oil also contains cancer-causing chemicals that are a direct threat to human health.
Margot Black at Blue Oregon writes—Chloe Eudaly’s Election Victory is a Mandate for Action on Tenants Rights:
Portland’s political establishment is reeling. Chloe Eudaly’s “most stunning City Council upset in three decades”, wasn’t supposed to happen; an incumbent hadn’t been unseated since Bud Clark in 1992. Since that time, Portland’s well-oiled political machine of monied power brokers have effectively developed a calculated protocol that has prevented such upsets. The city’s kingmakers assumed they had nothing to worry about, and they lined up behind incumbent Steve Novick. But they were wrong. [...]
To put Eudaly’s win squarely on the back of dissatisfaction with Novick is to make broad and unfounded assumptions about the 2016 voters and their motivations. It assumes that whether those filling out a ballot for the first time or seasoned members of the electorate, voters necessarily require stronger reason to vote against the incumbent than to vote for their opponent. It assumes voters care as much or more about potholes as they do about paying the rent. It assumes the electorate observes or understands or cares about how elected leaders navigate the opaque local political terrain to address said potholes, and that they were more motivated by voting against Novick, than for Chloe. In short, attributing Chloe’s victory disproportionately to Novick’s street-fee blunder is to deliberately ignore the real reason for her victory.
Voters weren’t looking for establishment experience to address the issues that the establishment themselves created and perpetuated. Instead, they were searching for a champion — someone who recognized and understood their struggles, and who would assign these struggles their proper urgency, rather than take hefty campaign donations from those interested in dismissing their struggles. Chloe was one of these voters, she knew their struggle, she was running for office to fight for them rather than to pay status quo lip service to their pleas for meaningful action.
She aligned her sails uncompromisingly to the powerful winds of the housing crisis; a crisis she and her friends and neighbors across every demographic and neighborhood were all experiencing — ever more so as city council only appeared to fall more deeply asleep as it unfolded in front of them. It was this strategy, a sincere commitment to a populist message from a candidate of the people, not her opponent’s past mistakes, that won her a landslide victory.
Katie Singh at Burnt Orange Report of Texas writes—Fighting Back by Giving Back: Texas Organizations That Need Your Support:
Texans, there’s no way around it — for the next four years, we’re going to have to fight like hell, even more than we’ve been fighting already.
For those of us who have time or money available to give, one thing we can do is look out for the Texans who will be most vulnerable in a Trump administration. It’s vital now to support our local organizations who will be on the front lines of protecting Texans. Trump has already shown that he’s coming for the most vulnerable among us first, and an important way to resist is by stepping up to protect them.
For those who want to take action, here’s a list of Texas-based organizations who will need your support in the coming months, with links to donate. (If there are any we’ve missed, let us know in the comments and we’ll add them.)
If you’re donating, consider making a recurring donation — not only does this ensure a steady stream of funding for the organization, it helps minimize administrative overhead for processing donations.
We’re all in this together, and now more than ever, we must stand up for our fellow Texans.
Vivian Rothstein at Capital & Main of California writes—No Wall on Her Life’s Work: The Legacy of Immigrant Housekeeper Delmy Falla:
On Election Day, I joined a group of housekeepers at the end of their shifts on a small street behind Le Merigot Hotel, a luxury beachside resort in Santa Monica. These women had decided they wanted a union and announced their desire to vote for one in a National Labor Relations Board election. In order to win representation, a majority of the workers employed in the housekeeping department had to vote in favor of the union. I was there with other local residents to show my support for their organizing efforts and to stand with them if their employer started to frighten or discourage them.
Unbeknownst to the mostly immigrant hotel workers that day, they were following in a tradition begun by a diminutive Salvadoran woman, Delmy Falla, who was a model worker at the then-Santa Monica Miramar Sheraton Hotel back in the mid-1990s. Falla, who died October 10 at age 49 after a long illness, was one of those employees who worked hard, never was tardy, won employee of the year and had a personnel file that was “clean and pure,” according to UNITE HERE hotel organizing director Kurt Petersen, who knew Falla well.
“She was a bright light who everyone loved,” said former community organizer Stephanie Monroe Napoli, who feels there was no other person who was more important in organizing hotel workers in Santa Monica. [...]
The labor battles in Santa Monica became a national flashpoint in the emerging debate over living wages and working poverty — issues that echoed in our recent presidential election nearly two decades later. Back in 1996 there was only one union hotel in Santa Monica, while the tourism industry was growing by leaps and bounds with mostly low-wage jobs. The Miramar Sheraton pushed for an election in which employees would decertify the union and kick it out of the hotel. Even though union benefits at the time were modest, employees led by Falla decided to take a stand.
Not long after the organizing began, Falla was fired for allegedly injuring a 6-foot-3-inch security guard, vindicated and reinstated two years later by the Labor Board, fired again when she came to claim her job, and then brought back when the union ultimately prevailed. “Despite all the intense losses, throughout Falla always held her head high even through the tears,” said Napoli. According to union director Petersen, “Delmy represented the hope that they’d win and things would change. Her presence permeated the whole workplace.”
Tomaswell at Louisiana Voice writes—Washington think tank lists major recipients of government-sponsored corporate socialism; Louisiana definitely a player:
Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C.-based national policy resource center, has released an extensive study entitled Megadeals: The Largest Economic Development Subsidy Packages Ever Awarded by State and Local Governments in the United States.
Lou
Louisiana, with giveaways totaling $3,169,600,328, ranked sixth behind New York, Michigan, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington in the total dollar amount of so-called megadeals, the report shows, $65 million more than much-larger Texas, which had $3,104,800,000.
Louisiana, with 11, tied with Tennessee for fifth place in the number of such budget-busting deals behind Michigan’s 29, New York’s 23 and 12 each for Texas and Ohio.
The report, authored by Philip Mattera and Kasia Tarczynska, is somewhat dated in that it was published in 2013 but it still offers some valuable insights into how states, Louisiana in particular, was more than willing to give subsidies worth millions upon millions of dollars to corporations in the name of new jobs that rarely, if ever, materialized.
The subsidies included in the report, it should be noted, do not include tax incentives, which is another type of inducement. Accordingly, Wal-Mart, which has received more than $1.2 billion in total taxpayer assistance, is not included because its deals were worth less than $75 million each. Good Jobs First has documented giveaways to Wal-Mart in a separate report.
D.C. DeWitt at Plunderbund of Ohio writes—The Price Is Wrong: Trump’s Health Secretary Pick Will Cause Untold Pain:
For millions of Americans, President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, as Secretary of Health and Human Services represents the worst kind of news: A completely uncertain and volatile medical future.
Price, an orthopedic surgeon from the suburbs of Atlanta, has been a leading opponent of President Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, peddling his replacement proposal – the Empowering Patients First Act – in recent budgets.
And what is the Empowering Patients First Act? A hodgepodge of warmed-over Republican “free market” leftovers that will hurt millions of people in the interest of insurance companies’ bottom lines. This includes voucherizing Medicare, block-granting Medicaid and installing high-deductible Healthcare Savings Accounts as the beau ideal for the individual market.
In short, they will rip away health insurance from millions of people by creating a system that prices individuals out of good, affordable insurance and cuts benefits for the old and the poor.
On, the incoming Trump government marches: The pain is on its way, its way, hoorah hoorah
Price and House Speaker Paul Ryan unveiled their replacement plan back in June, and it’s a doozy.
Jason330 at Delaware Liberal writes—How Tom Carper’s Votes and Positions Screw People and Help Rethugs to Screw People. Volume 1:
I think a lot of people view Tom Carper as an essentially well-meaning, if occasionally eccentric, public servant. That includes a lot of Democrats and plenty of liberals who I know. They are wrong.
His votes and stated positions, all a matter of public record, and easily discovered via a simple Google search, reveal that he largely ignores the needs of those who routinely vote for him. He does, however, pay fealty to those who finance his campaigns, and he also gives away votes on behalf of his search for bipartisanship. That search, like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football held by Lucy, never comes to fruition.
Carper’s desire to ‘reach across the aisle’ becomes even more dangerous in the era of Trump and Republican-controlled government. He could well end up as the key D who enables the gutting of Medicare and Social Security.
So, while it will take several pieces to flesh out his many sins of commission and omission, let’s get started.
Tom Carper and the Keystone Pipeline:
Tom Carper initially took the position that he would honor the Obama Administration’s stance on this issue. Fair enough. However, when President Obama decided in early November of 2014 to reject the request to build the pipeline, Tom Carper couldn’t flip fast enough. So, later that same month, during a lame-duck session of Congress, Carper reversed his position and voted to end cloture on the bill that would preempt any and all impediments to the building of the pipeline. This wasn’t a ‘freebie’, the outcome was very much in doubt. [...]
Donna at Democratic Diva of Arizona writes—Colin Jost and the Problem with Bloodless Opposition to "Identity Politics":
On the Weekend Update portion of the November 19 SNL broadcast Colin Jost made a joke a lot of viewers of the show found offensive. [...]
The dating app Tinder announced a new feature this week with gives users 37 different gender identity options.
It’s called “why Democrats lost the election”.
I rolled my eyes at the joke but I charitably figured he wasn’t just chiding Democrats for being too inclusive of out groups (which is terrible of him). I wanted to believe he was also talking about people voting Republican out of spite over things like this. It’s akin to losing one’s shit over hearing “para español, oprima el numero dos” when calling the cable company. It’s ridiculous.
But it turns out – at least according to his defense of the joke – Jost wasn’t kidding and his remark was directed at Dems, whom he believes lost the election due to an over-reliance on “identity politics”.
For some reason, Jost remained steadfast and decided to *gasp* explain the joke. Not only that, he also tweeted a link to an instantly notorious New York Times op-ed by Columbia professor Mark Lilla called “The End of Identity Liberalism,” which accused identity politics of perverting liberalism and destroying its electoral viability.
Lilla’s breathtakingly bad essay, which Jost claimed in a tweet “expanded on this idea” (referring to his joke), has been rebutted and debunked by far more talented people than I, so I let them do that at the links I provided.
What I noticed right away about Lilla’s piece is how he – like many of those whom Darren Hutchenson calls “post-identity commentators” that we’ve been hearing a lot from topic post-election – leans heavily on the theoretical and carefully avoids describing concretely what it looks like in practice going forward to move beyond “identity politics” in such a way that Democrats win elections again.
Cory A. Heidelberger at Dakota Free Press writes—Notes from SDDP Aberdeen Meeting:
Scott Ehrisman is documenting and responded to South Dakota Democratic Party’s “How do we fix it?” meeting in Sioux Falls Saturday. I attended the Aberdeen installment of the SDDP tour last night with eighteen of my neighbors. Here are the most important things I heard:
1. SDDP chair Ann Tornberg said she and her staff are planning more listening stops after this week’s Sioux Falls–Brookings–Aberdeen–Rapid City tour. They’ll hold a similar meeting with Clay County Democrats on Wednesday, December 14, at the Vermillion Public Library at noon. Another meeting is planned in Hughes County (I’m checking on date and time). It sounds like party leadership is open to invitations for more dates.
2. Everybody is talking about message, but former SDDP chair Deb Knecht, striking a pessimistic Newquistian tone, wondered “if it matters what we say.” She cited District 8 Democratic Senator Scott Parsley, who sounds nothing like the “New York liberals” that her husband Randy said can’t win in South Dakota, and Senator Parsley still got beat by a rookie twenty-something whose only advantage of Parsley is the “R” in front of his name. Deb Knecht also cited the President-Elect, who has shown that one can win the most powerful elected position in the world despite the foul words spewing from one’s mouth.
3. Responding to calls from attendees to go negative hard and early, high school debater and former Heidelberger campaign intern Briggs Tople said we should focus our negative campaigning on the Republican voting record of burdensome taxes, wasteful spending, and other dollar-figurable decisions. [...]
5. High school debater and Democratic activist Sulaiman Jamal said the fear of bullying keeps some of his fellow students from getting involved in Democratic politics. Tople added that it’s hard for his fellow students to join the losing side and find it easier to just graduate and leave South Dakota.
My summary here is subjective and non-exhaustive. I invite other attendees to submit their observations on the meeting; I invite non-attendees, even “New York liberals”, to contribute their thoughts on how South Dakota Democrats can win in 2018.