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 Jan. 20 edition. Inclusion of a blog post does not necessarily indicate my agreement with—or endorsement of—its contents. |
At Blue Virginia, lowkell writes—Here We Go Again; Virginia LG Justin Fairfax Leaves Dais as GOP Senators Extol Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee:
This is really getting ridiculous. The other day, Virginia Republicans were busy honoring Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson. Today, it’s another Confederate General, this time Robert E. Lee. I’ll post video shortly of Virginia Republican Senators Richard Stuart and Tommy Norment extolling Lee and asking that the Senate be adjourned in his memory. For now, though, here’s a photo of Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax, Virginia’s only statewide elected African-American, sitting down instead of presiding over the Senate as he normally does, because he left the dais in protest of the honor to the top general in the fight to continue slavery indefinitely (although Sen. Stuart ahistorically and bizarrely denied that the war was about slavery). Thank you to Justin Fairfax for his moral leadership, and shame on Republicans for this continued nonsense in the year 2018.
P.S. Stuart said, “Robert E. Lee and his fellow Virginians did not go to war to preserve slavery. Virginia’s secession convention voted twice against secession, until Abraham Lincoln called on states to send men to form a force to march across Virginia to invade the seceded states….Then and only then did Virginia choose the route of secession...”
At Louisiana Voice, Tom Aswell writes—City of Covington in St. Tammany Parish retains big name law firm to go after pharmaceutical industry in opioid fight:
The City of Covington has hired a local Louisiana law firm, Porteous Hainkel & Johnson LLP to take on America’s pharmaceutical industry for knowingly mislabeling and misrepresenting their opiate-based drugs which have resulted in a spiraling addiction crisis across the nation, according to a news release from the Brylski media relations firm in New Orleans.
The epidemic has resulted in thousands of deaths and rising costs in safety, public health and other local services needed to treat the problems created, according to attorney William Lozes.
On January 16, 2018, the Covington City Council gave Mayor Mike Cooper the authority to retain Porteous, Hainkel & Johnson LLP for representation in a civil action lawsuit against opioid manufacturers and distributors.
Porteous, represented by local attorneys Ralph Alexis and Lozes, is part of a national leadership team of attorneys that includes lead consultant Stuart Smith LLC, Kevin Thompson, Kevin Malone and Kent H. Robbins. Their clients will consist of hospitals, parishes, counties, cities, non-profit health providers, drug rehab centers, coroners, foster care agencies, and other public third-parties like local police departments in states from Missouri, West Virginia, New York, Florida, Ohio, Minnesota and Texas.
“The legal team will help local governments like Covington in attempts to recoup the unreimbursed expenses for dealing with a drug crisis which is reducing American’s life-expectancy and resulting in a death-rate that now out-paces violent gun deaths in the nation’s largest cities,” Lozes said.
At Capital & Main of California, Charles Davis writes—UN Housing Official Shocked by L.A.’s Homelessness:
“You almost forget you’re in Los Angeles,” Leilani Farha remarked, looking up at a shabby hotel with a cartoon palm tree on its sign — a reminder of Southern California, the dream, in a part of the city better known as a nightmare. Skid Row is a place thousands of people sleeping in tents call home. The United Nations’ special rapporteur on housing, Farha stepped over trash and around the many people camped out on the sidewalks in a quest to better understand this otherworldly America, just blocks from luxury condos. [...]
“The way to deal with homeless people is not to criminalize them,” Bush said. “The way to deal with encampments is to provide us with services: education, food, clothing and shelter.”
In March 2017, Los Angeles County voters approved a ballot measure that was sold as a means to pursue that gentler approach, with a quarter-cent sales-tax hike that would raise over $1 billion in three years to fund services for the homeless, including 10,000 units of affordable housing. But the extent of the problem far exceeds the proposed solutions.
Nearly 58,000 people are homeless in Los Angeles County, according to a 2017 count — a 23 percent increase from the year before. “The reason for the number of people living in encampments and in their vehicles is very simple,” Shayla Myers, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, testified at the forum. “The City of Los Angeles is 560,000 units short of affordable housing for very low- and extremely low-income households.”
Myers said city officials talk the right talk, while primarily concerning themselves with the wishes of the well-to-do, especially when touting urban renewal that results in gentrification.
At Blog for Arizona, AZ BlueMeanie writes—GOPropaganda machine turns to McCarthyism to defend Trump:
“McCarthyism” is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence.d
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, Donald Trump accused FBI agent Peter Strzok, the Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, of “treason.” Trump Accuses FBI Agent of ‘Treason’. Agent Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team last summer following the discovery of anti-Trump text messages he exchanged with a FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair, who was also assigned to Mueller’s team.
Trump’s McCarthyism should come as no surprise to anyone as his long-time attorney (consigliere) for many years was the disreputable Roy Cohn: Joe McCarthy’s henchman and Donald Trump’s mentor. Roy Cohn was eventually disbarred by a New York court for conduct that was ”unethical,” ”unprofessional” and, in one case, ”particularly reprehensible.” The apprentice learned well at the feet of his master.
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are the cause célèbre in one of several conspiracy theories that have been ginned up by the Trump administration in coordination with its allies in Congress and its GOPropagandists in the conservative media entertainment complex, in particular FAUX News (aka Trump TV).
The mighty Wurlitzer of the right-wing noise machine has been in overdrive this month cranking out multiple conspiracy theories with which to discredit federal law enforcement officials at the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Special Counsel’s office in defense of their “Dear Leader.”
At ProgressNowNM, Stephanie Maez writes—New Mexico Oil and Gas Association speech LEAKED: You won’t believe what they said:
At the most recent convention in October of 2017, the [New Mexico Oil and Gas Association] Executive Director Ryan Flynn gave his keynote address to his members, highlighting the return of higher per-barrel oil on a worldwide level, the increased growth of wells and production in New Mexico, and towing the line that their work was critical to the success of the state.
About halfway through his half-hour remarks, Flynn gave a nod to his former boss and her role in the Oil and Gas Industry’s continued success in New Mexico.
“Susana Martinez, my former boss, she’s embraced an all-of-the-above approach to energy policy. Probably the most consistent benefit to our industry over the last 7 years is that we don’t have to worry when we walk into each legislative session about a harmful piece of legislation getting signed into law,” he said.
Yeah, that’s right, Flynn is the former Secretary of Environment under Martinez. [...]
His words aren’t anything surprising from a major Big Oil executive, but his brazenness about his industry’s political willpower is nothing less than shocking.
“NMOGA is going to be the most powerful organization in the state of New Mexico, period. We are going to compete with our opposition at every single level, and in every single arena, and we are going to win these fights as we move forward,” he said. “And we need to act with a sense of urgency to ensure that we are driving the policy discussions. We’re driving public discourse; we’re driving election discussions and debates. We’re not just waiting for the dust to settle and being pushed in one direction or another.”
At All People Have Value of Texas, Neil Aquino writes—Big Sticks Holding Up Signs at Protest Merit a Warning, But Giant Guns Are Just Fine—Stuff Is Messed Up in This Society:
On the left are Houston police officers addressing the issue of size of the sticks on the big banner in the photo as a violation of a City of Houston ordinance regarding sticks at protests. The police officers issued a warning.
This was at a protest yesterday at the Houston office of Senator John Cornyn in support of the Dreamers.
On the right is a gentleman at a Houston protest in 2017 who had with him a giant gun. This is fully legal.
This was at a protest against Confederate statue in a Houston city park.
The issue here is not so much the officers, but rather the absurdity of the laws passed by the Texas Legislature.
How can an open gun like we see here be legal, but some poles on a banner be worthy of being addressed?
Stuff is messed up in this society.
At Montana Cowgirl, Montana Hat writes—Episode II: Just What is Going on With Corey Stapleton?
Being Montana’s Secretary of is a big job. Unfortunately, our Secretary of State Corey Stapleton has turned it into a joke in short order. [...]
But this week Stapleton might have bit off more than he can chew. [...]
This week, Stapleton sent out an e-mail, from his official SoS office, blasting the media. This wasn’t a campaign e-mail. This wasn’t a fundraising pitch. This wasn’t a drunken message board post on Breitbart under the alias TooTall4UCorey. It was a taxpayer funded attack on the media.
This e-mail went out to every business that registered with the Secretary of State. If your business wants to be able to file taxes, you’re going to be registered with the Secretary of State. Not really the audience for a poorly written attack on the media.
Montana’s media took it personally. The Missoulian editorial board pushed around Stapleton.
“It’s hard to know where to begin to respond to such a diatribe. What on earth motivated Montana’s secretary of state to write this? More importantly, why did he think disseminating this message was a good use of public resources. Let’s start by acknowledging what should be obvious: Stapleton has no idea what he’s talking about.”
At ColoradoPols, a staffer writes—Cory Gardner To DACA Kids: Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes:
ABC News reporting from an interview with Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado yesterday, in which Gardner makes assurances to undocumented immigrants presently covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that we don’t think he has any ability to guarantee:
“I don’t believe anybody is going to be deported,” [Pols emphasis] Gardner told ABC News’ Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl and Political Director Rick Klein on the “Powerhouse Politics” podcast, of the formerly-protected undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as youths. “There’s not going to be this mass deportation on this. That’s first and foremost. Please know that Congress is working very hard to solve this.”
Gardner worries about the 800,000 people that are in the midst of turmoil and fear because their legal status is set to run out on March 5. The Trump administration has announced the U.S. would end in March the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival which would bring an end to the temporary protection extended to these undocumented migrants. [...]
In typical slippery Gardner style, he undercuts his initial strong statement that “I don’t believe anybody is going to be deported” by saying right after that there won’t be “mass” deportations—a significant yet also conveniently vague qualifier. What Gardner leaves out of this rosy forecast is the fact that thousands of DACA beneficiaries have already lost protection after their authorizations expired after Trumps’s announcement of the program’s ending and were not renewed.
At Dakota Free Press, Cory Allen Heidelberger writes—Mickelson, Pischke Want to Kill Initiated Amendments:
The Republican Legislature has moved from sniping at the edges of our initiative power to firing cannons right at the heart of our right to legislate.
Today Speaker G. Mark Mickelson (R-13/Sioux Falls) filed House Joint Resolution 1007, which would repeal citizens’ ability to initiate amendments to the South Dakota Constitution. Amendments would still ultimately be decided by the voters, but only the Legislature could place an amendment on the ballot.
Rep. Tom Pischke (R-25/Dell Rapids) filed HJR 1008, which doesn’t take away our power to initiate amendments but does require the Legislature to approve any amendment that the voters pass. That’s pretty much as bad as Mickelson’s plan: allowing 54 legislators to veto an amendment passed by, say, 200,000 South Dakota voters eliminates citizens’ ability to check an overreaching or unresponsive Legislature… which of course is what Pischke, Mickelson (a co-sponsor of HJR 1008), and other elitist Republicans want.
If he can’t ban or veto citizen-initiated amendments, Mickelson wants to drag us into a legal morass with HJR 1006, which would impose a single-subject rule on constitutional amendments. We could still propose amendments that create, strike, or modify multiple articles but they’d all have to deal with the same subject.
Mickelson’s obvious target here is Amendment W, the 2018 version of Initiated Measure 22, which Mickelson, Pischke, and GOP friends repealed last session. They would love to have forced Amendment W’s anti-corruption reformers to circulate separate petitions for campaign finance reform, a state ethics commission, and protection of initiative and referendum, thus increasing their costs and workload. They would also love to have one more legal handhold to drag future amendments into court, forcing grassroots initiative sponsors to spend big money on lawyers to argue that their proposals cover just one subject and not whatever separate subjects Mickelson and his citizen-quashing legislators argue they encompass.
At Uppity Wisconsin, Scott Gordon writes—Gaps, Guardrails And The Fast-Advancing Math Of Partisan Gerrymandering:
The arguments driving a potentially landmark court case over partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin may already be outdated.
Argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in October 2017 and due for a decision by June 2018, the lawsuit Gill v. Whitford centers around several different mathematical formulas that attempt to quantify the effects of redistricting on voters' rights in a representative democracy. One prominent aspect of the case is a concept called the the efficiency gap, which quantifies the difference between the partisan makeup of the popular vote and the partisan makeup of the winning candidates across a number of legislative districts. Those ballots cast that do not contribute to the election of a given candidate are known as "wasted votes," with that figure and the total number of votes used to calculate the efficiency gap figure.
The creators of the efficiency gap propose a formula that determines whether a party's candidates received more wasted votes in a given legislative election. If votes for one party's candidates are wasted to a level that sufficiently exceeds another's, that may be evidence that partisan gerrymandering has gone too far. Proponents of the efficiency gap test aren't necessarily saying it should be impossible for one party or another to have an advantageous map of legislative districts — they're saying there's a measurable point at which maps are so skewed that they make competitive elections impossible and violate the principle of one person, one vote.
However, the Supreme Court has generally held that politically-motivated gerrymandering is constitutional, as long as it's not racially discriminatory. While justices have at times inveighed against it, the Court has no standard for intervening when a district map merely creates a partisan advantage. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who plays an instrumental role as a swing vote on the court, has hinted in previous cases that he'd be open to a partisan-oriented standard. But as of 2017, nothing in the case law even offers justices a road map for determining when a party has gone too far in redistricting to its own advantage. Formulas like the efficiency gap are one response to this challenge.
At Blue Delaware, Cassandram writes—Now Is The Season to Smack Around Progressives:
The season is officially open here in Delaware now that we have Senator Coons in front of every TV camera possible dismissing the votes of some of his colleagues as posturing for a 2020 Presidential run. You can see this in the two clips I posted below. No recognition of the real crisis here — 800K young people whose futures are up in the air while the Senator is busily punching progressives. There is some recognition that 4 months after the close of the government fiscal year, that there is not a budget — which means that the entire government is operating on hold.
Senator Coons wants you to know that yesterday’s victory was in getting back to bipartisanship. Even though those of us who follow these things know that Mitch McConnell’s word isn’t good for much. Senator Coons wants you to know that if you are fully committed to the Dreamers and a solution for them, that you are probably running for President and not working on today’s problems. Which is DACA, that runs out in early March. Senator Coons wants you to know that if you are a Senator who represents a great many Dreamers (Harris, Booker, Gillibrand) that you are just running to the left, rather than showing up to represent your constituents. As if the civil rights issue of our time (thank you Senator Durbin) is just too far to the left. 55 years ago, Senator Coons would have been one of the folks Martin Luther King was writing his Letter from a Birmingham Jail to. Think about that for a minute.
Progressives are working on solving problems NOW. March 5 is coming up quickly and that timeline is the same whether or not any other Senators are running for President. People are going to want to vote for people who not only solve problems, but do so in line with Democratic Party values. None of our values are on display in either of these interviews — disrespecting all of the work that progressives and others have done to push for a DACA solution. We’re all just supposed to shut up and go away because the bipartisan adults are here.
At Plunderbund of Ohio, Joseph writes—We Are Ohio Slams ‘Dirty Half Dozen’ Anti-Worker Policy Proposals From Becker And Riedel:
The non-partisan, citizen-driven, grassroots organization We Are Ohio on Tuesday condemned a package of anti-worker proposals from state Reps. John Becker (R-Union Township) and Craig Riedel (R-Defiance), known as the “Dirty Half Dozen.”
Becker outlined his plan in a co-sponsor letter at the end of 2017, describing six constitutional amendments that he would like to put in front of Ohio voters. The amendments read like a wish list for the anti-union crowd:
- implement so-called “right-to-work” laws for the private and public sector
- repeal prevailing wage laws
- prohibit government employers from withholding union dues
- prohibit unions from spending on political activities
- prohibit contracts that require union labor
- require annual public-sector union re-certification.
Following a press conference in Columbus where Reps. Becker and Riedel said they anticipate the package of proposals to be on the ballot in Ohio in 2020, We Are Ohio spokesperson Dennis Willard issued the following statement on behalf of the organization:
“Right to Work is wrong for Ohio, wrong for working families and wrong for all of us.
“In states where they’ve passed these anti-worker proposals, these are the facts: workers earn less and they are maimed and killed on the job at alarmingly higher rates because they have lost their rights to speak out.
“Reps. Riedel and Becker are carrying water for out-of-state interests like the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council. There are no workers lining up behind these dangerous, divisive and disastrous ideas for Ohioans. Right to Work is wrong for Ohio. Don’t trust it.”