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 May 26 edition. Inclusion of a blog post does not necessarily indicate my agreement with—or endorsement of—its contents.
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Kris Nordstorm at The Progressive Pulse of North Carolina writes—With HB 514, legislature unambiguously embraces school segregation:
There’s a word for what happens when majority-white suburbs pull their children from a majority-minority school district and place them into exclusionary, majority-white schools: segregation. With the advancement of HB 514, lawmakers are unambiguously embracing school segregation as state policy.
HB 514 allows four Charlotte suburbs – Cornelius, Huntersville, Matthews, and Mint Hill – the authority to create and operate their own charter schools. These suburbs can then limit enrollment in these schools to municipal residents. Cornelius is 85 percent white. Huntersville is 77 percent white. Matthews is 78 percent white. Mint Hill is 73 percent white. Students in these majority-white suburbs are assigned to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), where white students comprise just 29 percent of enrollment.
To facilitate the funding of the schools authorized by HB 514, a related budget provision (Section 38.8) creates a new authority allowing North Carolina municipalities to spend property tax revenues on any public school that “benefits the residents of the city,” including charter schools. As national school finance expert Michael Griffith notes, similar provisions in other states have led to school funding becoming “divided on class lines and on racial lines.”
It’s quite the one-two punch. First, the General Assembly allows these suburbs to create schools with the legal authority to exclude children from nearby communities comprised mostly of non-white students. Then, these suburbs can then use their out-sized property wealth to provide their racially-isolated schools with resource levels denied to other students in the school district. In other words, these schools will be both separate and unequal.
Authorizing the creation of racially separate and unequal charter schools is not only immoral, it’s educationally harmful, and almost certainly unconstitutional, to boot.
Rosi Efthim at Blue Jersey writes—Harvard says Puerto Rico Hurricane death toll is 73x the federal number – Trump is silent, NJ Dems are not:
A Harvard University study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is bringing a dose of reality to the Puerto Rico death toll after Hurricane Maria in September 2017. The official death toll? Just 64. The Harvard study estimate? At least 4,645 deaths as a direct result of the Hurricane, and a spike in mortality months after the storm.
That’s 73 times what our federal government’s been telling us. President Trump hasn’t found time to tweet about that at all, though he made time to talk about Roseanne Barr, the “rigged Russia Witch Hunt,” and his outrage that he thinks the “Failing and Corrupt New York Times” underestimates his crowd size, all in the day since Harvard’s report came out. Here’s who did manage to put that info out on Twitter to constituents:
New Jersey’s Congressional Delegation responds to the new Puerto Rico Hurricane death toll – or doesn’t
@FrankPallone states plainly that Trump botched the Puerto Rico relief effort. [...]
New Jersey has the 3rd-highest number of Puerto Ricans (434,092), following New York and Florida, per 2010 Census. That number’s higher now. Sen Nellie Pou, chair of the Legislature’s Latino Caucus, says more than 30,000 displaced Puerto Ricans have come here since the hurricane, and life is still very challenging for those remaining on the island; tens of thousands still without power, an economy expected to shrink 8% this year, businesses by the thousands unable to start up again, and a population in flux; 200,000 people moved out, with another 300,000 projected to leave in the next 5 years.
Don Pogreba at The Montana Post writes—Maryland Matt Rosendale’s Literal “No Cattle” Career as a Rancher Exposed:
Matt Rosendale has run one dishonest campaign for the U.S. Senate, filled with lies about Jon Tester meant to hide Rosendale’s own record of not putting Montanans first.
In a series of dishonest statements and actions, though, the most pernicious might be the most central element of the myth that Rosendale has crafted for himself: the claim that, despite the fact he is little more than a landlord, Rosendale has repeatedly told voters that he is a rancher. Perhaps even more significantly, Rosendale started reporting in official campaign paperwork that he is a rancher, suggesting yet another moment where the Maryland real estate developer has shown a willingness to sign a false official statement for personal gain.
A month or so ago, we ran a story calling Rosendale’s ranching credentials into question, using his own words as evidence. Back in 2011, Rosendale told a hometown newspaper in Maryland that he let other people run livestock on his land but didn’t actually ranch himself:
There’s a bunch of irrigated ground and I lease it to one of my neighbors and he grows crops on it, and then there’s dry farmland and I lease that to another neighbor, and then I’ve got all the native pasture and I lease that to another guy who runs cattle.
This week a real reporter dropped in on the story and did the research to show that Rosendale was absolutely telling the truth then and there is nothing about his life that makes him a rancher. Talking Points Memo reported on Tuesday that Rosendale has never owned cattle and didn’t even maintain the brand that was associated with his “ranch” purchase.
Joe Rubin at Capital & Main of California writes—Did Disneyland Try to Sink a Bill Protecting Workers from Lead Poisoning?
When Assemblyperson Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) learned about Capital & Main and USC’s Center for Health Journalism investigation into how hundreds of workers at the former Exide Battery Recycling Plant near downtown Los Angeles became victims of lead poisoning, he created a modest bill to try and ensure it wouldn’t happen again.
Among our report’s revelations was the fact that the California Department of Public Health was aware of thousands of troubling blood tests revealing high levels of lead, but failed to tell the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) about the problem.
Kalra’s bill, Assembly Bill 2963, requires that the Department of Health inform Cal/OSHA when workers have seriously elevated blood levels and Cal/OSHA performs inspections.
The bill has had clear sailing until now, easily passing in the Assembly Labor Committee in March and winning unanimous approval from Democrats on the Appropriations Committee last week. But as the worker-protection measure headed to a crucial floor vote this week, a coalition of industry groups, one of which includes the iconic Disneyland Resort, worked the halls of the Capitol to kill the bill. The lobbying effort nearly prevailed: AB 2963 passed by a single vote Wednesday evening and now faces what is certain to be a battle in the California state Senate.
So why would Disneyland, which hosts thousands of kids every day, be part of an effort to defeat a bill that simply requires reporting of blood-lead levels high enough to produce heart disease and serious brain disorders? A May 29 letter endorsed by 15 industry groups, including the Battery Council International, the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Hotel and Lodging Association (which includes a Disneyland Resort vice president on its board) argues that California’s current system to protect employees, depending largely on voluntary compliance, is working just fine.
At Juanita Jean’s of Texas:
Rodger McDaniel at Blowing in the Wyoming Wind writes—The problem? We didn't get the "Dear John" letter:
The light bulb suddenly went on. Poof. Just like that I got it. It all came clear when a long repressed, teenage memory returned.
I was 15 years old. I had a crush on the pastor’s daughter. The school year ended. She was leaving to spend much of the summer with a grandmother in Seattle. We promised each other we would write every week. And we did for a while.
Actually, I kept writing long after she stopped. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t hear from her. I wrote more often. “Why are you not writing back,” I pleaded. Finally, a letter arrived. “Didn’t you get my letter breaking up with you?”
Turned out Robert, my younger brother, mischievously intercepted that letter and having read it was too embarrassed to pass it along. I couldn’t understand what had changed between us until I learned I had not gotten the “Dear John” letter.
Bingo. That’s why most Americans have such difficulty understanding what happened to our country. We didn’t get the “Dear John” letter, the one where forty percent of our countrymen told us they were breaking up with what we all thought America stood for. [...]
Invenium Viam at MN Progressive Project writes—Democracy in Action: Walz and the NRA:
It’s interesting how Congressman Tim Walz has transformed in a matter of a few short months from a darling of progressives and proof that Democrats can stand by their principles and still win in Deep Red districts into a miserable DINO and shameless political opportunist.
Not that that’s actually the case, of course. Rather, I think what we see is an object lesson in the dangers of getting trapped in your own perspectives. We all do it … and we should all be wary of it.
Take Walz and the NRA for example. His former view of the NRA was as a gun rights advocacy group, which it certainly is. Millions of other Americans still see it that way. It is also a lobbying group for gun manufacturers and a fundraising arm of the GOP, which is how progressives see it. Myself, I see it as an Establishment front for radical political action, potentially including armed insurrection.
While serving as the elected representative of MN-01, accepting money from the NRA wasn’t much of a problem for Congressman Walz. He represented a Deep Red district. But then he started getting strong criticism and pushback from fellow Democrats, other progressives and gun laws advocacy groups. He reacted to that pressure — which he refers to as “a kick in the butt” — by rethinking his position on the NRA and the need for more restrictive gun laws and by changing his position accordingly. After the Las Vegas massacre, with 59 dead and more than 500 wounded, he broke with the NRA and donated all of the money they had contributed to him to a support group for the families of fallen veterans.
For some progressives, his conversion was too slow in coming and too convenient.
But isn’t that the foundation of representative Democracy, that the will of the people made known will cause political candidates and elected leaders to react accordingly and to conform their positions and policies to better accord with that will?
Scott Gordon at Uppity Wisconsin writes—Epic Systems Lawsuit Ruling Has Wide-Reaching Impact On Employee Rights:
Epic Systems, the resident tech giant of Wisconsin's left-leaning Dane County, sits uneasily on its sprawling campus just outside of Madison. The electronic health records company is seen locally as an agent of change for both good and ill, boosting local ambitions to become a tech powerhouse, attracting young and well-educated workers to the area, and contributing to increasing housing costs in Madison. Epic has also become increasingly associated with the labor controversies that arise in the IT industry, a reputation that became enshrined for posterity on May 21, 2018 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in the company's favor in the case of Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis.
In his opinion for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch ruled that federal law allows Epic and other employers to force employees to settle disputes through arbitration — a private system of dispute resolution — rather than through the court system. Further, companies can require each employee to follow the arbitration process on an individual basis, rather than banding together with other workers to address a common grievance. In the case of Jacob Lewis, an Epic technical writer who sued the company, the grievance was that it illegally deprived him and several co-workers of overtime pay.
As Wisconsin Public Television's Here & Now explained in a May 25, 2018 report, Epic workers had to accept arbitration clauses as part of their employment contracts. [...]
"The inevitable result of today’s decision will be the underenforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well-being of vulnerable workers," [Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg wrote [in a dissent]. "Violations of minimum-wage and overtime laws are widespread," she added, referencing two of a variety of issues on which workers may wish to challenge their employers.
Abe at Plunderbund of Ohio writes—Stars And Stripes Forever:
From this day forward, we can fairly assume there will be nothing more heinous than an American president’s wretched tweet that arrived from the draft-dodger’s bizarre notes on Memorial Day.
By tradition, it was left to Donald Trump to honor the dead in the annual display of humble patriotism. But he was instantly taken by the opportunity to honor himself instead at this solemn moment. Here is how he tickled the minds of his feckless base:
“Happy Memorial Day! Those who died for our great country would be very happy and proud at how well our country is doing today. Best economy in decades, lowest unemployment numbers for Blacks and Hispanics EVER (& women in 18 years) , rebuilding our Military and so much more. Nice.”
Nice, indeed!
One can only wonder about the seeds of his nightmarish inferiority complex that forces him to obsess about Barack Obama, a black man who was more popular than Trump; and Hillary Clinton, a mere woman who beat him by three million popular votes – the same woman that Trump boasted was too physically weak to lead the nation in what, after all, was a guy thing.
Michael Bersin at Show Me Progress of Missouri writes a—Public Service Announcement:
“…Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn’t realize how much they’ve been brainwashed…”
That is all. Carry on.
At Democurmudgeon of Wisconsin, John Peterson writes—Pot Head Employees? Sure:
Republicans in Wisconsin didn't take seriously a Democratic bill to remove pot from the list of drugs tested for in employees and applicants. Walker is again, behind the curve:
FPI Management, a property company in California, wants to hire dozens of people. Factories from New Hampshire to Michigan need workers. Hotels in Las Vegas are desperate to fill jobs.
Those employers and many others are quietly taking what once would have been a radical step: They're dropping marijuana from the drug tests they require of prospective employees. Marijuana testing — a fixture at large American employers for at least 30 years — excludes too many potential workers, experts say, at a time when filling jobs is more challenging than it's been in nearly two decades.
lowkell at Blue Virginia writes—Senator Tim Kaine Has More Than $10.5 Million on Hand Entering 2018 Senate Campaign’s General Election:
The key with this race is not taking our pedals off the metal, not getting complacent or overconfident, and working hard to CRUSH whichever nutjob (Freaky Nick Freitas, neo-Confederate Corey Stewart or theocratic bigot Ewwww Jackson) the Virginia GOP nominates on June 12 to face Tim Kaine. Keep in mind that the bigger Kaine wins, the better chance we have of picking up VA-10, VA-02, VA-07, VA-05, etc.
Senator Tim Kaine has more than $10.5 million cash on hand for his re-election campaign in Virginia after raising more than $1.1 million in the seven-week pre-primary reporting period. This period, 75 percent of Kaine’s donors were from the Commonwealth of Virginia, and he brought in more than $192,000 online, through a total of 5,877 individual online contributions. The average online contribution was $33. Kaine has raised more than $17 million this cycle.
Kaine is in a strong position for a general election as Republicans prepare to choose their nominee in a June 12 primary. While Republicans have spent the past few months spending their resources attacking each other and appealing to their far-right base, Kaine has been focused on building a strong organization — including field efforts in targeted congressional districts and swing counties — and spending time in every corner of the Commonwealth building grassroots support for his campaign to make Virginia work for all.