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 July 21 edition. Inclusion of a blog post does not necessarily indicate my agreement with—or endorsement of—its contents.
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Cory Allen Heidelberger at Dakota Free Press writes—Trump Sabotage Causing Premium Increases That Wipe Out Tax Cuts:
While Trump gets ready to hand out welfare checks to buy the farm vote, perhaps he should throw some money toward the Americans whom he’s pricing out of health insurance.
According to Affordable Care Act enrollment analyst Charles Gaba, unsubsidized enrollees in the ACA marketplace are paying an average of $960 more this year on health insurance premiums due to Trumpublican sabotage. Now, as preliminary rate filings are becoming available for states (not South Dakota yet) calculating the additional impacts of the repeal of the individual mandate and other Trumpublican sabotage of the ACA. In 26 states for which data is available, Gaba projects sabotage will cost these policyholders an average of $625 more through 2019.
Now read Gaba’s analysis carefully. He’s not saying that if Trump weren’t trying to wreck the ACA, premiums wouldn’t go up at all. Gaba is actually calculating how much of the premium increase is due to inflation and other factors and separating that increase from his sabotage analysis. Add his 2018 and 2019 figures, and you can say Donald Trump is costing the average unsubsidized ACA policyholder $1,585 more .
Under the Trump tax cuts, the typical family in the second-best income quintile, averaging $86,400 a year, will see its 2019 tax bill drop by $1,040. In other words, that average family sees its unnecessarily, recklessly, maliciously increased health insurance costs wipe out their tax cut and then some. By 2027, those premium hikes will only be worse, and the tax cuts will go away, meaning Trump leaves that upper middle class family paying more in taxes and health insurance premiums.
Start writing checks, Donald! You have a lot of people to pay back for the damage you’re doing.
Eric Page at Capital & Main of California writes—Priced Out: The Crushing Cost of Living in California:
There’s an insidious force chipping away at a historic pillar of modern America.
This force is all around us: in the car repairs we put off; the medical visits we delay; the vacations we can’t afford to take; the healthier food we don’t buy; the homes we can’t afford and in the rest of our financial shpilkes, or anxiety. It is the increasing economic fragility of middle-income America.
How else can we explain a housing market that is vacuuming up savings that many of us used to put away for retirement? Today companies frequently distribute profits to shareholders that traditionally funded employee pensions. Beyond that, in the increasingly gig-driven economy, we have less and less access to good and affordable health care, paid vacations, workers comp, job stability or even true career trajectories.
This is particularly true in California. We fuel up on some of the most expensive gasoline, spend massively on transportation in general, put out big time for the costs of parenting and pay the nation’s highest real estate costs. California’s median home list price has exceeds $600,000–far surpassing the typical cost of a home in New York state and nearly doubling the national number, according to data from the home-buying site Zillow. And 10 of the nation’s 15 most expensive real estate ZIP codes are in California.
Forget planning for the future, warns Alissa Quart, the author of Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America, a book detailing the shame, isolation and other psychological tolls of middle-class decline. “Just surviving, she summarized in a recent interview, “is all most of us are trying to do now.” [...]
Tom van Alten at FortBoise of Idaho writes—You know who should be expelled?
Charles S. Pierce tackles "the Goobers and Gomers claque" with aplomb: Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan Should Be Laughed Out of the House for This, "this" being the livy-livered articles of impeachment, which, struggling to keep up here, have apparently already been set aside. Just 11 of the 236 Republican members (slightly more than 200 short of what they'd need to proceed to trial in the Senate) had signed on.
House Oversight Committee chair and star of the Benghazi witch hunt, Trey Gowdy had a good question: "Impeach him for what?"
"In the end, however, Meadows decided not to carry out that threat — for now, at least. He did not file a privileged motion for impeachment, and House Republicans announced Thursday morning that they would not vote on the matter before they leave for a month-long recess."
First things first!
After recess, maybe they'll settle for a contempt declaration, and Jim Jordan running for Speaker of the House, a position that keeps getting set below a lower bar.
But you know who really ought to be kicked out of his job, is Devin Nunes. Don't take my word for it, listen to Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. He figures Meadows and Jordan have only been "utterly reckless," and they don't have the leadership post that Nunes does, head of the House Intelligence Committee. (Which, while he's in charge, you can't spell without "oxymoron." As of yesterday, he still had not read the FISA application for surveillance of Carter Page.)
AZ BlueMeanie at Blog for Arizona writes—Dezinformatsiya or doublespeak, Donald Trump is Orwellian:
Russian asset Donald Trump is fully invested in Papa Joe Stalin’s dezinformatsiya (disinformation) black propaganda. He is turning America into George Orwell’s dystopian vision in 1984.
In a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars no less — patriots who have served their country honorably in military service — Trump slammed the news media as “fake news” for not upholding his preferred interpretation of the success of his administration. The New York Times reports:
“Stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” Mr. Trump said at the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, as part of the crowd booed and hissed in the direction of the press corps.
“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” the president added.
Winston Smith in 1984 lamented:
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right.
A spokeswoman for the V.F.W., which is nonpartisan, said in a statement after the event that organizers were “disappointed to hear some of our members boo the press.”
This is the pernicious power of black propaganda — even the minds of patriots can be confused and warped by a dangerous demagogue.
Juanita Jean Herownself at Juanita Jean’s of Texas writes—Steve Stockman:
Former Tea Party Republican Congressman from Texas, Steve Stockman, was indicted last year on 28 counts.
The charges included mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission and money laundering, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Mr. Stockman, a Republican, solicited $1.25 million in charitable donations from May 2010 to October 2014 that was later used for other purposes, the Justice Department said.
And then this year, he was tried and convicted of 23 of those counts – all felonies.
He’s a mess. He would have stole the gold out of his grandmother’s teeth if she would have sit still for it. His campaign headquarters was in a former motorcycle shop where city officials found 14 fire code violations and no permit. He had put up bunk beds in it and his “staff” was living there. It was filthy.
The felony counts should result in several decades in prison.
Joseph at Plunderbund of Ohio writes—Renacci Attacks Constituents On Social Media
[Republican Senate candidate] Jim Renacci likes to play up his experience in the business world as a key qualification for political office. But it’s clear there is one lesson Renacci never learned during his time running nursing homes and car dealerships: the long-cherished business mantra about the customer always being right. [...]
For example, when Ohio voters ask questions on Renacci’s campaign Facebook page, they are personally attacked and called liars; and their questions and concerns are summarily dismissed by Renacci as “fake news” or “Democrat talking points”. [...]
In fact, Renacci has long supported major destructive changes to social programs. In 2011, for example, Renacci supported Paul Ryan’s budget proposal that would turn Medicaid into a block grant program, and eliminate Medicare in favor of vouchers for private insurance.
Tom Aswell at Louisiana Voice writes—Keep your eye on Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District race: things could get interesting in race against Higgins:
Facing discipline that included recommendations of demotion, reassignment, removal from the SWAT team and a 160-hour suspension without pay, he RESIGNED from the Opelousas Police Department.
When he next popped up, he was working as a public information officer for the St. Landry Sheriff’s Office where he tried to transform his image into that of some sort of John Wayne-George Patton clone.
But that went south as well when it was learned that his salary was being garnished by the FBI because he had paid NO FEDERAL INCOME TAXES for several years and that he was about $100,000 behind in his CHILD SUPPORTpayments.
So, it was only natural that Clay Higgins would benefit from the 2016 Trump wave that would sweep him INTO OFFICE as U.S. Representative from Louisiana’s Third Congressional District.
During the 2016 campaign, he was taped by his ex-wife in a TELEPHONE CONVERSATION in which he said, “I’m just learning really about campaign laws…but there’s going to be a lot of money floating around.”
Higgins has established himself in the same mold as state and federal offices-holders Leander Perez, John Rarick, and David Duke in the two short years he has served in Congress.
Rory McIlmoil at Appalachian Voice writes—The burden of rural home energy costs:
Rural households spend 40% more of their income on energy costs than households in metropolitan areas, according to a comprehensive new report.
On July 18, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy and Energy Efficiency for All released a landmark report on rural energy burdens titled “The High Cost of Energy In Rural America: Household Energy Burdens and Opportunities for Energy Efficiency.” The report comes one year after ACEEE published a similar study focused on energy burden for urban households.
The new report analyzes the energy cost burden — or portion of gross household income spent on home energy costs (not including transportation) — for rural households across the nine major Census regions of the United States. [...]
The findings, while not unexpected, paint a stark picture of how deep of a problem energy costs can be for rural communities. Through our own work, Appalachian Voices has also identified residents with energy burdens as high as 50% in the winter months when heating costs skyrocket. But the report also provides a solution, stating that “with the right policies and initiatives, those with high energy burdens could see some relief. Energy efficiency upgrades can lessen these energy burdens by as much as 25%, resulting in more than $400 in annual energy bill savings for some households.”
Patrick at The Last Ogle of Oklahoma writes—Edmond House Candidate’s walk card accurately portrays GOP views on women…
The handsome squirt who looks like he once tried to sell your dad insurance is Edmond resident Brad Martin.
Brad is a Republican candidate for House District 82. He emerged from a crowded field in the June election to face prohibitive favorite Nicole Miller in the August 28th runoff.
Although his website doesn’t really delve into too many issues, Martin appears to be your typical conservative establishment Oklahoma Republican. He’s white, lives in Edmond, graduated from SNU, and based on his political walk card, he doesn’t have time to care about the issues facing Oklahoma women or educators.
Check this out:
Yep. “Brad Martin will lead the fight to ensure success for Oklahoma’s schools… by texting his buddies about fantasy football while some female teacher blabbers about her silly problems.”
In all honesty, I’m not 100% sure what type of device Brad is looking at. It could be his phone or it could be a phaser, either way, is that the best photograph they could come up with? I know listening to the voices and concerns of women has never been a strength or priority of GOP political candidates, but at least use the pic where Brad is mansplaining to the woman about how and why the gender pay gap really isn’t that big of an issue.
Alby at Delaware Liberal writes—Green Delaware: Carper’s Environmental Record Has Always Sucked:
Alan Muller of environmental watchdog Green Delaware read Tom Carper’s claim last week that Delaware’s environmental problems come from upwind coal-burning power plants and smelled revisionist history. So he penned this handy recap of Carper’s record, which boils down to the same policy Delaware’s Democrats have always had towards the environment — fuck it, let’s get some dirty jobs.
One of my co-bloggers wondered last week why Muller always supported Mike Castle. Simple — Castle, like Republicans Bill Roth and Russell Peterson before him, was more environmentally conscious that any Democrat who’s held any statewide or federal office in the past 40 years.
Dave Bradley at Blog for Iowa writes—Cindy Axne: Coming On Strong:
There were some surprising fund raising numbers for Iowa’s congressional candidate released early in the week.
Perhaps one of the biggest surprises was Cindy Axne in Iowa’s 3rd district outraising incumbent David Young by over $100,000.
Perhaps even as surprising was a poll released Monday showing Axne leading the incumbent. While it is certainly early this is very good news.
Cindy Axne is an excellent candidate who is campaigning on the kitchen table issues that affect Iowans every day. Those issues are affordable and effective health care for every body, good jobs with good pay including equal pay for women, great public education including access to post secondary affordable education, protecting Iowa’s farms and rural communities, protecting Social Security and Medicare and making sure our veterans are properly taken care of.
While Axne is running a positive campaign her opponent is having to try to sidestep questions about promising to vote one way and then voting another. He is having to do the dance that many Republicans are finding tricky this year – that is supporting Trump for one group while trying to pretend he doesn’t support trump when talking to other groups.
James Rowen at The Political Environment of Wisconsin writes—Of dead zones in WI waters. Also in certain officials' policies, photos:
Scottholes are what you get when you let the roads and their budgets rot.
Contaminated drinking water - - some blue-green and/or brown - - is what you get when legislated rot allows manure or agriculture chemicals to flow into groundwater, adding to the broad damage to Wisconsin wildlife, rivers, streams and lakes which are [Gov.] Walker dirty hallmarks.
And when enough of that gubernatorial, legislative and bureaucratic special-interest rot is allowed to flow into, say, Green Bay in Lake Michigan—which communities pump for kitchen taps and industries blend into fresh and processed foods and swimmers use for a dip on a hot day and anglers ply for game fish and dinner—you get something medieval sounding: a "dead zone." Explored in a Journal Sentinel update.
Algae blooms plaguing Green Bay are more than just a nuisance. When that material dies and decays, it burns up massive amounts of oxygen that can lead to "dead zones"
Noted earlier in this summary of Walker's environmentally-destructive tenure, here. You want to see another dead zone? Between the ears, below.