Here’s a sampling of some of the more noteworthy items that have streamed into my rss blog feeds lately:
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee
The PCCC is a new PAC dedicated to helping bold progressive candidates run first-class campaigns and win.
It is led by former MoveOn staff, union organizers, top staff from Darcy Burner and Tom Perriello’s 2008 House campaigns, and the co-inventor of RSS and Reddit.
Vermont News Guy (Jon Margolis)
Margolis was the national political correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and is an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Vermont. I first saw him recently on VT This Week and he blew me away. As you may have read here on GMD, he has a new blog about VT politics that is a must read.
He’s a straight shooter:
The Democrats, then, are starting out a lot earlier and with many more possible candidates than they did two years ago, when at first nobody would run, and then finally nobody did run, though in this case nobody was also known as Gaye Symington. No reflection on her character or intelligence; she was just one of the worst statewide candidates ever. Not just in Vermont ever, either. In the whole country ever.
…
And digs where we would:
This crop looks better, though it’s hard to say which one would be strongest or how the field would shape up. Spaulding seems to be, in his own words “slightly more centrist” than the others, perhaps meaning he’d be most likely to win the general election if he could win the primary, in which liberal voters dominate.
But Racine indicated that he, too would try to appeal to centrist voters.
“I lost my race in the middle,” he said. “There are a lot of folks out there sort of in the middle.”
more below…
I’m sure many of you read The Prog Blog, even if some aren’t eager to admit it! C’mon, we can admit that they often say exactly what we wish our folks would say, and what we secretly hope they really mean even though they never say it quite exactly. Ya know?
Sometimes they just nail the argument on the head, like this post detailing the impact of Douglas’s proposals:
Douglas’s Proposed Tax Increase by Martha Abbott
The following examples illustrate the effect that repeal of Act 60 and Act 68 would have on four average Vermont households: All four are couples who have household incomes from $46,500 to $81,700 and whose homes are assessed from $200,000 – $258,000, 2 in urban towns and two in rural towns.
A couple with a household income of $81,700 in Burl owning a $258,000 house would rise by $860 (1% of household income)
A couple with a household income of $46,500 in Lincoln owning a $200,000 house would rise by $2047 (4.4% of household income)
A couple with a household income of $75,800 in Richmond, owning a $218,000 house would rise by $1,319 (1.7%)
A couple with a household income of $52,000 in Winooski owning $220,000 house would rise by $1297 (2.5%)
The Left Coaster is where I go when I want to feel like a moderate. Or maybe a conservative. If I post there, it’s usually to blast someone who has just insulted me or anyone who would possibly be so Neanderthal as to take an extremely stupid position like mine, like saying that we should wait to see what Obama actually does in office instead of starting an impeachment hearing based on rumors of moderate appointees.
It’s fun!
They do have some good thoughts mixed in though, and the …ummm, challenging environment leads in some cases to well-supported arguments:
What Kind of Stimulus Projects Should Be Considered?
My favorite program would be to fund Green Jobs to insulate, repair and make more energy efficient homes for people in our cities, our rural communities and our suburbs. Not only would this provide jobs for lots of people, it would be a great boon for those citizens who are struggling to pay their bills. As California has shown, programs that produce energy efficiency pay off for decades and make it easier for us to address global warming.
Joseph Stiglitz also thinks there could be a lot more bang-for-the-buck if the focus was just making sure states didn’t have to layoff personnel or shutdown their programs. After all, it’s in the middle of recessions that public services become more important.
Matthew Yglesias is one of those young, opinionated, liberal, uppity bloggers that the right loves to hate. I picture him as a recent college grad with time on his hands and nothing better to do with it than all the reading, research and blogging that I would do if I didn’t have to, you know, take care of kids and work for a living and all that.
In The Costs of Ideological Correctness, he points out the lengths that politicians will go to to avoid the health care plan that makes the most sense:
…the Commonwealth Fund has a write-up of some Lewin Group analyses of different congressional health care bills.
(coverage chart)
Pete Stark’s bill, the most left-wing of the lot (it’s sort of a “Medicare for many more” proposal) covers the most people.
And here’s their impact on health care costs:
(savings chart)
Stark’s is the best again. And yet there’s no chance whatsoever that we’ll actually do this because his plan, though the most practical, is also the most left-wing. Far too left-wing for the United States of America.