This week at progressive state blogs is designed specifically to focus attention on the writing and analysis of people focused on their home turf. Here is the Sept 2 edition. Inclusion of a blog post does not necessarily indicate my agreement with—or endorsement of—its contents. |
At Better Georgia, Regina Willis writes—Georgia Power wants to proceed with (nuclear) Plant Vogtle:
The energy companies backing the Plant Vogtle expansion have begun a hail mary move to keep the project going. In addition to asking the federal government to extend a tax credit and offer loan guarantees, the owners of Plant Vogtle are asking the Georgia Public Service Commission to approve their new plan for completing the project. Three other plans for new nuclear reactors have already been scrapped this year, leaving Plant Vogtle as the sole new nuclear power project in the nation.
Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Co., now predicts that completion will take an additional 29 months and $4.5 billion in new capitol costs, plus another $4 billion in financing costs. According to an analysis done by The Augusta Chronicle, the total cost for the project [could] exceed $30 billion.
In a somewhat unusual move, Gov. Nathan Deal decided to weigh in, supporting the nuclear expansion project continuing.
“I’m extremely pleased to learn the co-owners of Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4 have recommended completion of construction,” said Deal in a press release. “Georgia Power, Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power and Dalton Utilities have made the right decision for our state. These new units will provide clean and affordable energy to Georgians for more than 60 years while creating 6,000 jobs during project construction and 800 well-paying, permanent ones after.”
But not everyone sees it that way. Criticism and concern comes from the likes of Sierra Club — an opponent to the project from the start — as well as bond rating agencies like Moody’s Investors Services and Fitch Ratings.
“By hiring more than 70 lobbyists and passing Senate Bill 31 in 2009, Georgia Power has now managed to steal over $2 billion in ratepayer money for financing and profit on Vogtle,” said Mark Woodall, the Sierra Club’s Georgia Chapter vice chair for conservation, in a press release.
At Blue Virginia, lowkell writes—Since 2001, Only 7 Incumbent VA GOP Delegates Have Lost; Will 2017 Be Different?
The point of this post isn’t to get everyone all depressed, but simply a reality check – based on Virginia House of Delegates elections since 2001 – regarding what we’re up against this November. That includes the fact that Virginia House of Delegates Republicans have a large fundraising advantage over Democrats
Important caveat: this year could end up being very different than previous Virginia elections, for two big reasons. First, we’ve got a very unpopular Donald Trump is in the White House, something that has energized Democrats ‘bigly,” as Trump might say. Second, we have an unprecedented number of Democrats running for House of Delegates this cycle against Republican incumbents OR in open seats that are currently held by a Republican (e.g., HD-2, HD-28, HD-42, HD-56, HD-64, HD-72): a whopping 56, according to VPAP, compared to previous highs of 39 in 2013, 32 in 2009, 29 in 2007, 28 in 2015 and just 16 in 2011.
With that, here’s a short review of Democrats since 2001 who have unseated Republican incumbents. [...]
What lessons should we draw from these historical results? First, I’d argue that the more Republicans we challenge, the better. Second, of course, we need strong candidates and well-funded, well-run campaigns. Third, it’s very hard to defeat incumbents for a variety of reasons ($$$ being a big one, as well as the fact that at least some voters might split their ballots – Dem for statewide offices, Republican for House of Delegates). Fourth, this year might – emphasis on MIGHT – be different, given how many districts in which Democrats are challenging Republican incumbents, also the intensity advantage Democrats demonstrated on June 13. The question is whether Republicans’ big money advantage and more experienced candidates/campaigns will be able to counter what COULD be a “blue wave” on November 7. Finally, we need as big a win as possible at the top of the ticket, both to help elect Justin Fairfax LG and reelect Mark Herring AG, but also to pick up as many of the 17 House of Delegates districts won by Hillary Clinton but currently held by Republicans…
At BlueNC, James writes—The Usurpers, revisited:
"If the usurper legislature does attempt to override the veto," Carter wrote in the letter dated Friday, "it opens itself up to litigation wherein the North Carolina State Courts may be asked to issue a declaratory judgment that the law is facially unconstitutional and void ab initio."
In an effort to block the legislature from allowing widespread polluting of our rivers, the Southern Environmental Law Center has challenged the very legitimacy of more than 75% of the Senate and roughly 66% of the House. That's the number of legislative districts that must be redrawn because of the US Supreme Court's Covington ruling.
Why is SELC doing this? Because most of those in office were elected using districts the courts have found invalid. And according to North Carolina law, any legislation passed taken by officials AFTER a court finds them improperly elected ... any legislation! ... is null and void. The official date of their illegitimacy is June 30, 2017, the day the Covington judgment was handed down.
Happily, North Carolina law also has a word for such dastardly fellows. They are called Usurpers, a fitting name if ever there was one.
Every public interest group that has issues being addressed by the legislature should be on them like stink on a skunk. They should be challenged at every turn on every action they try to take. There is a good chance that nothing they do is legitimate. Sue the hell out of them.
This is not an issue with federal jurisdiction. It's only about the state constitution and state law.
What are Republicans saying as defense? They argue that they've been behaving in good faith.
At Blue Mass Group, thegreenmiles writes—Democrats Can’t Support Baker AND Wonder Why Voters Stay Home:
Several top Democrats have all but endorsed the re-election of [Republican] Gov. Charlie Baker, and I want to talk about just one reason why that could potentially cripple the party’s effort to convince people to register, turn out, and vote Democratic.
There are massive racial disparities in America’s criminal justice system. African Americans are more likely to be arrested on drug offenses, more likely to be held in jail awaiting trial, more likely to be sentenced to prison (and longer prison terms), and more likely to have their probation revoked, often for unexplained reasons.
African Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at a rate that is 5.1 times the imprisonment of whites, according to The Sentencing Project. Latinos are imprisoned at a rate that is 1.4 times the rate of whites nationwide, but Massachusetts has the worst disparity in the entire country – here, Latinos are imprisoned at a rate 4.3 times the rate of whites. Misguided criminal justice policies and prison-packing mandatory minimums have gotten so bad that a bipartisan coalition is pushing for major reform.
Yet part of Gov. Baker’s response to the opioid epidemic is to try to make mandatory minimums even worse. He wants to sentencing some drug dealers as killers. [...]
But this is the best part, and by best I mean the atrociously, horribly worst:
Defense attorneys praised Baker’s efforts to tackle the opioid crisis but worried that mandatory minimum sentences could wind up criminalizing drug addiction.
“The intent is good,” said Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel to the Massachusetts Bar Association. “We hope this is targeted more to actual traffickers, instead of low-level dealers who are addicts themselves.”
Doesn’t that make you feel better, disproportionately-targeted communities of color? The Massachusetts Bar Association supports expanding powers that have a long track record of being abused in racially-biased ways, but they’re hoping things will be different in the future, because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯! Note that the MBA’s leadership is 100% white and 83% male.
The anonymous blogger at The Wheeling Alternative of West Virginia writes—Of hypocrisy and bridges The Intelligencer goes “all in” on Trump:
This morning’s Intelligencer editorial, “Trump Abiding By The Oath He Took,” clearly demonstrates the extent to which the Wheeling “newspapers” will go to defend the Trump administration. According to the editorial, yesterday’s action by Trump (actually AG Jeff Sessions standing in for the President) was not about fulfilling his campaign promise to his base. No, he was upholding the law and the Constitution:
But that is not the point of what Trump did this week, in announcing he will halt the program in six months. That, he emphasized, gives Congress time to enact a replacement constitutionally, should lawmakers choose.
Perhaps they should. But Trump, in placing that burden on their shoulders, is merely abiding by his oath to obey the Constitution.
Yes, more hypocrisy on executive orders from the Intelligencer. Here is Patricia Murphy, writing in Roll Call, earlier today:
Is the president really just standing up for Congress’ right to decide which groups of people can come and go from the country? That certainly wasn’t his position earlier this year when he announced his “Muslim ban” to restrict the travel into the United States by anyone from a list of seven, then six, Muslim-majority countries.
It’s also hard to believe that Trump wanted to defer to Congress’ will when he signed an executive order authorizing the construction of a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico or on the array of controversial topics that the president has tackled, but Congress has not. Those include Trump’s executive order “to begin to ease the burdens of Obamacare,” which Congress put in place six years earlier and never rescinded.
For eight years, local editorials (and Myer columns) regularly criticized President Obama for his use of executive orders. Trump has demonstrated in just eight months that he is even more of an “imperial president” but our local papers have said nothing.
At Plunderbund of Ohio, D.C. DeWitt writes—Trump’s Obamacare Sabotage Devastates Foodbank Efforts To Help Most Vulnerable:
The Trump Administration, in its unending cruelty, is continuing to sabotage Obamacare, with 90 percent cuts to efforts to educate consumers about health coverage options, many being hungry Ohioans using food banks. This move will dismantle years of progress and harm untold thousands of Ohioans.
One of the primary populations served by the Affordable Care Act navigator program are Ohio’s most vulnerable people – those hard-to-reach people struggling in hunger and poverty without healthcare.
Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director for the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, took the Trump Administration to task for this careless, heartless harm they are inflicting on people whose lives are already plenty hard enough.
Hamler-Fugitt gave all the horrifying details about what this will mean to the already difficult task of trying to help hungry families in Ohio. [...]
Hamler-Fugitt said the Ohio Association of Foodbanks has been proud for the past four years to partner with a statewide consortium of community organizations to implement Ohio’s largest federal navigator program.
“Our navigators have built relationships with consumers and community partners over that time and are widely known across Ohio as trusted assisters who can provide one-on-one, comprehensive support to vulnerable, hard-to-serve populations,” she said. “We are a critical part of a larger effort to ensure that Americans don’t go without affordable, quality health care.”
At The Mudflats of Alaska, Shannyn Moore writes—Your Stupid is Showing:
A few years ago, a conspiracy-minded man called in to the radio show. He was quite sure I wouldn’t hear him out because of me being a liberal and all. He had a theory he tried hard to sell. Here’s how it went: Barack Hussein Obama had a Manchurian candidate carry out the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School because he wanted to win his second election and obviously to take away all of our guns.
My producer, sitting on the other side of a glass window, was banging his head on the desk and rolling around like he’d been tazed. I waited for the man to be done with his rant and let dead air sit for a second.
“Are you still there, lady? I knew you’d hang up.”
“Um … I’m here and I listened. I have a few issues with your premise.”
“That figures. What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, for starters, Obama won his election in November, six weeks before the shooting at Sandy Hook.”
I waited. “Sir?”
“That’s just your opinion, lady.”
At Blog for Arizona, AZ BlueMeanie writes—World’s ‘greatest negotiator’ gets rolled by Democrats, throws GOP leadership under the bus:
During the campaign, Donald Trump sold himself as a great deal maker and great negotiator, and enough of the low information rubes voters who don’t know any better bought that con job and made him president.
The self-proclaimed “greatest negotiator” met with GOP and Democratic leadership on Wednesday to negotiate a budget deal, raising the federal debt ceiling to avoid a default at the end of September, nd hurricane relief aid for Texas.
The GOP’s alleged boy genius and Ayn Rand fanboy, Paul Ryan, “the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin,” made the GOP position clear at a press conference earlier in the morning. Ryan and the septuagenarian Ninja Turtle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, just assumed that Trump would tow the GOP line since he, you know, is the leader of the GOP.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made the Democrats’ opening low-ball offer, and the world’s “greatest negotiator” said “fine, we’ve got a deal,” throwing his own GOP leadership under the bus without even making a counter-offer or attempting to negotiate. I’m sure Chuck and Nancy must have given each other a confused look that said “Wait, did we just win? This is way too easy.”
At Blue in the Bluegrass of Kentucky, Yellow Dog writes—War on Women on Verge of Major Victory in Kentucky Court:
Had to be Mississippi, right? The first state to lose its last and only abortion clinic? Or Kansas, where the freakazoids murdered Dr. George Tiller. Oklahoma or Idaho or Alabama. One of those deep-red, backward, shitty states full of slope-headed, mouth-breathing morons who can't abide women having control over their own bodies.
Not Kentucky.
Its survival on the line, Kentucky's last abortion clinic is bracing for a pivotal legal showdown with health regulators and the state's anti-abortion governor that could determine whether Kentucky becomes the first state in the nation without an abortion clinic.
The licensing fight, set to play out in a Louisville federal courtroom starting Wednesday, revolves around a state law requiring that EMW Women's Surgical Center have agreements with a hospital and an ambulance service in the event of medical emergencies involving patients.
State regulators defend those conditions as "important safeguards" to protect women's health. The clinic in downtown Louisville counters that the requirements lack any "medical justification" and amount to an unconstitutional barrier to abortion.
But the case's significance goes beyond a debate about state law.
"The stakes in this case couldn't be higher: the very right to access legal abortion in the state of Kentucky is on the line," said Dr. Ernest Marshall, who opened the clinic in the early 1980s.
At Raging Chicken Press of Pennsylvania, Sean Kitchen writes—#PAGov: That Time Scott Wagner Cut a Thousand Dollar Check to Lyndon Larouche’s PAC:
Federal Election Commission reports show that Pennsylvania’s leading Republican gubernatorial candidate Senator Scott Wagner donated $1,000 to Lyndon LaRouche’s Lyndon LaRouche PAC in October 2011. Senator Wagner made this contribution before he became a public official.
In the wake of the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, it took Senator Wagner almost an entire week to issue a statement on the white supremacist violence. The Senator published an op-ed with Pennlive condemning the violence but also making himself the victim of dirty politics for having to do so. In the op-ed, Wagner stated “in my private life, I have been a strong supporter of our Jewish community in York, financially supporting anti-hate programs,” but the following week, Wagner told a tracker that George Soros is a “Hungarian Jew” who “made a fortune” but has a “hatred for America.” Despite calls from the religious community, Senator Wagner has refused to apologize for the statements about Soros.
So, exactly what conspiracy theory was Lyndon LaRouche, a perennial presidential candidate from 1976 to 2004, and his pack of cult-like followers peddling around the time of Scott Wagner’s 2011 donation?
Well, it was a political poster campaign with former President Barack Obama sporting an Adolf Hitler mustache. Underneath mustachioed Obama, there were slogans like “Obama Must Be Removed,” “Invoke the 25th Amendment,” Impeach Him Fast and Furiously,” “I’ve Changed” and probably plenty of others. According to the Anti-Defamation League, LaRouche supporters used these signs at a number of 2009 Congressional town halls opposing the Affordable Care Act. In 2012, Nancy Lack, an elderly woman from Connecticut, was arrested for removing these posters due to their “casual use of Nazi symbolism.” Lack told a local news outlet at the time that “my generation went through the Second World War, and Nazism is about the worst there can be.”
Of course, this wasn’t the first time LaRouche’s movement was accused of using anti-semitic rhetoric.
At Colorado Pols, a staffer writes—Hey, Another Dumb Redistricting Effort!
Here we go again.
Back in late 2015, there was a short-lived “bipartisan” [cough, cough] attempt at putting forward a redistricting initiative for the 2016 ballot. This boneheaded proposalstumbled out of the blocks and was quickly abandoned because it would have actually dis-empowered voters of color and created new legislative and congressional districts that were actually less competitive than they are now.
Many of the same people behind that effort — which was briefly known as “Initiative 55” — are back with another set of proposals to change the process of redistricting and reapportionment, and it’s still a jumbled mess. When we say that this is the same group of people, we mean that literally; one of the issue committee that supported “Initiative 55” was called “End Gerrymandering Now!” and has just been renamed “Fair Districts Colorado.”
This new redistricting/reapportionment effort includes three ballot proposals — two statutory changes and one Constitutional measure — all of which run into similar problems when you look at the details. We certainly wouldn’t argue that our current system for drawing district boundaries is in great shape, but if you don’t make the right changes in a new proposal you run the very real risk of making things worse than they are now. That’s exactly the problem with these new proposals.
At Louisiana Voice, tomaswell writes—17-year-old girl raped in Union Parish jail cell files lawsuit; meanwhile, AG still hasn’t completed probe after 17 months:
The 17-year-old girl who was raped twice in a Union Parish jail cell in April 2016 has filed suit in Third Judicial District Court, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by LouisianaVoice.
The Third JDC comprises the parishes of Lincoln and Union.
Meanwhile, nearly 17 months after the rapes occurred, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office still has not completed its investigation.
The girl, who was thought to be high on meth, was being held in an isolation cell when Demarcus Shavez Peyton, 28, of Homer, who was awaiting sentencing after being convicted of aggravated rape in a separate case, was allowed to leave his cell and assault the girl twice in her cell.
Named as defendants in her lawsuit are the Union Parish Detention Center, the Union Parish Police Jury (which operates the detention center), the Union Parish Detention Center Commission (made up of Union Parish Sheriff Dusty Gates, District Attorney John Belton and Union Parish municipal chiefs of police).
The lawsuit says another prisoner, Darandall Eugene Boyette was also allowed into her cell with the intent to sexually assault her but “departed before committing any criminal act.” [...]
And while Attorney General Landry on Tuesday issued one of his regular press releases in which he “applauded President Donald Trump’s decision to phase out of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program,” he still has not wrapped up what should be a routine investigation of a rape that occurred in the limited confines of a jail cell, a case where he knows the identities of the victim, the rapist, and witnesses.