Each Saturday, this feature links and excerpts commentary and reporting from a dozen progressive state blogs in the past seven days around the nation. The idea is not only to spotlight specific issues but to give readers who may not know their state has a progressive blog or two a place to become regularly informed about doings in their back yard. Just as states with progressive lawmakers and activists have themselves initiated innovative programs over a wide range of issues, state-based progressive blogs have helped provide us with a point of view and inside information we don't get from the traditional media. Those blogs deserve a larger audience. Let me know via comments or Kosmail if you have a favorite you think I should know about. Standard disclaimer: Inclusion of a diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement or endorsement of its contents. |
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Texas Kaos,
Libby Shaw takes a dig at
The Texas Taliban: Hard at work in Washington D.C. and Austin:
The Republican Texas Taliban are hard at work doing what they do best. They continue to ignore the interests and needs of their constituents while they
kowtow to the 1% of billionaires, millionaires, lobbyists and their crony donors. In the case of Ted Cruz, he sucks up to the NRA and the gun lobby but he is also is driven by his anti-government right wing extremism.
The junior Senator from the once great of Texas, Ted Cruz is apparently at war with his own Party. He called his colleagues squishes for having the nerve stand by their constituents' desires for more gun control in this country.
You didn't win Mr. Cruz. The NRA and the gun lobby did because of sock puppets like you.
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West Virginia Blue,
PubliusWV writes
AG Morrisey: This Out of Stater Using West Virginians for Personal Gain Getting Old Fast:
West Virginia's current Attorney General is not one of us. He came to our state with a load of out of state cash and got himself elected. His ambition obviously takes him back out of the state, probably a run for Congress. That is all sour enough but the fact that Morrisey is so willing to disabuse the people of West Virginia on his personal path to fame and glory is too much to stomach.
His entire time in office so far has been spent doing pretty much everything but representing the state of WV as our Attorney General. He will gut the office of consumer protection before it is over and bring in his out of state cronies at six figures so he can keep from having to deal with people from WV as much as possible.
An example of Morrisey's lack of care for the people of WV, speaking of today's Medicaid expansion decision in West Virginia, Morrisey would have had us believe that West Virginia should have left 166,000 of our own without health care coverage. He would have had us believe that we should have turned down the thousands and thousands of WV jobs generated by all the additional funding. He would have had us believe that given his superior birth, coming from outside of our poor state, he knows best.
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KnoxViews of Tennessee,
R Neal shouts
Hey all you dumbasses on the Interstate:
Reduced visibility in a rainstorm + longer stopping distance on wet pavement = you need to drive slower and more carefully, not faster and more stupid. Did you not attend your high school physics classes? Mass, velocity, friction, etc. Ring any bells? Driver's ed? Anybody?
Plus, would it kill you to turn on your lights in the rain? It's the law in the states we drove through today. Maybe you like being invisible but it doesn't make you invulnerable. Especially at 80 MPH on my left or at 40MPH in front of me in pouring rain.
At Raging Chicken Press of Pennsylvania, Sean Kitchen writes Facts be Damned, Governor Corbett’s Apologists Come to Defend the Governor’s “Drug Epidemic” Statement:
After Governor Corbett’s drug use statement that scapegoats the unemployed in our Commonwealth, the governor’s henchmen are coming out in full force to back up this misinformed claim. As you already know, Governor Corbett went on the PAMatters.com radio program earlier this week and said:
The other area is, there are many employers that say we’re looking for people but we can’t find anybody that has passed a drug test, a lot of them. And that’s a concern for me because we’re having a serious problem with that.
And now, Corbett’s campaign donors apologists are coming out of the woodwork to support these factually incorrect claims. First up on the list is an editorial, “Guilty of Honesty” from PhillyBurbs.com who agrees with Governor Corbett.
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My Left Nutmeg of Connecticut,
ctblogger writes
Are Top State Education Officials trying to circumvent CT FOI law by using personal email accounts?
Yet another source has confirmed that certain high-ranking officials in the State Department of Education are using their personal computers, personal email accounts or texting on their personal phones to conduct state business.
Unfortunately from time to time, government officials have tried to side-step Connecticut's Freedom of Information laws by using their personal computers or personal email accounts to conduct the public's businesses. Others have used their personal phones to text information that deals with public issues.
In all those situations, when the necessary evidence has been provided, the Freedom of Information Commission has been absolutely clear. Public records are public, even if officials use their private computers or phones.
The problem is that most Freedom of Information requests only seek copies of emails that have been sent via state accounts. Without evidence, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, for the Freedom of Information Commission to know when public officials are using their private accounts to conduct public business.
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Green Mountain Daily of Vermont,
jvwalt opines
The Republicans' Best Friend:
If Lenore Broughton had actually hired a smart political operative to run her Big Bucks Bonfire, Vermonters First, the op's first move would be to start sending camera crews to Governor Shumlin's news conferences.
Because the Governor is making the conservative anti-tax argument as well as, or better than, any Vermont Republican in sight. Can't you just see the 2014 Vermonters First attack ads, with Shumlin railing against Legislative Democrats for trying to "raise every single broad-based tax in Vermont," aiming to "stall our economic recovery," and "asking Vermonters to pay more taxes than they need to pay"? (Quotes are all from last Thursday's presser.)
Great stuff. It oughta be far more effective than the warmed-over Tea party crapola that wasted a million bucks of Broughton's inheritance in 2012.
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BlueOregon,
Chuck Sheketoff writes about
The Misguided “Small Business Tax Cut”:
The desire to help small business owners is understandable, as they are an important component of our economy and communities. However, the granting of preferential tax treatment for people reporting “business income,” as some lawmakers are considering under a banner of “helping small business,” is a terribly misguided idea.
Neither of the two arguments for cutting taxes on income derived from owning a business — spurring job creation and improving affordability of capital — stands up to scrutiny.
Lowering tax rates for income derived from business will not create jobs. Why? For one, the tax savings are far too little to pay for a new employee.
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NorthDecoder,
Chet asks
How Awful Is It To Work For Kevin Cramer?:
Lesson Number One for political public relations professionals is that if you have bad news, release it on Friday afternoon, after it's too late for the press to do anything with it. By monday, the morons in the media will have either missed it in the Friday afternoon bad-news dump, or they will not have recognized the significance. Here's one that's been missed by North Dakota's crack squad of investigative local news losers: North Dakota Congressman Kevin Cramer is losing staff left and right. He issued a positive-sounding press release late on Friday of last week. His announcement was that he had lost key Washington D.C. staff. But he didn't put it that way. [...]
If you were a skilled journalist in Bismarck or in Washington, when you got that press release last Friday, wouldn't you have been a little curious as to why Cramer is losing his staff so quickly? Shouldn't someone be asking questions?
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SquareState of Colorado,
Jason Salzman reveals that a
Columnist can't cite evidence to support assertion that election-day registration favors Dems:
In The Denver Post over the weekend, former State Senate President John Andrews wrote that if Colorado has election-day voter registration, as proposed in the election-modernization bill winding its way through the State Legislature, Democrats would "presto" have "tilted the electoral playing field permanently their way. Republican chances for regaining power and repealing any of this stuff will fade."
Presto? As in presto-change-o? [...]
How is same-day registration going to change elections in favor of Democrats? Experts who've studied the topic, even a guy like Curtis Gans who's been associated with right-leaning institutions, agree that same-day registration doesn't favor one party over the other. And they say fraud is not a problem in a place like Colorado.
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Calitics of California,
Brian Leubitz writes
Sen. Boxer Pushes to Label GMOs:
California's food labeling measure, Prop 37, was defeated by less than two points (51.4-48.6) last year, and that's with a mountain of industry cash against a small group of determined activists. California would have been a launching ground for the labeling of genetically modified food, But with an issue like food, maybe it is better to bring at the national level.
And that's just what Senator Boxer is doing with the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act. Along with a strong bipartisan coalition, including such interesting inclusions as Sens. Lisa Murkowski(R-AK), Jon Tester (D-MT), Rep. Don Young (R-AK), and a slew of progressive Congress members.
According to surveys, more than 90 percent of Americans support the labeling of genetically engineered foods. That is until a campaign comes along, dumps a bunch of cash into confusion, and suddenly things change. That being said, many consumers are surprised to learn that GE foods are not already labeled.
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Blue Virginia,
lowkell writes
Will Cuccinelli Emerge from Bunker to Appear in Court Tomorrow?
Aside from his “no cameras or recorders” Friday afternoon media availability last week, at which the candidate admitted to thousands of dollars in unreported Star Scientific gifts, the Cuccinelli campaign has gone to great lengths to keep their candidate from explaining his ethical lapses to Virginians.
That hide and seek approach raises the question of whether Cuccinelli will step into public tomorrow at 2:00pm to argue his motion to recuse himself from the embezzlement trial of former Governor’s mansion chef Todd Schneider in Richmond Circuit Court.
Ken Cuccinelli won’t resign because he says he made a promise to be Attorney General for 4 years. Will he be bothered to be the Attorney General tomorrow in court when the time comes to explain why he can’t be the Attorney General in Todd Schneider’s embezzlement case?
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Appalachian Voices,
Davis Wax reported that a
Rushed Anti-Renewable Energy Bill Stalls In Committee:
A bill in the N.C. House that would repeal the state’s Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (REPS) failed today in the House Committee on Public Utilities and Energy by a vote of 18-13. [...]
The bill was expected to fail in the committee. In the two months since its introduction, it has become apparent to lawmakers and the public that the legislation was grounded in the flawed findings of think tanks including the John Locke Foundation that the renewable portfolio standards are costing North Carolinians by raising the cost of electricity.