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Rock the boat,
David

You want to see the real-world problems with right-wing extremism? Here’s a good example from Big Sky Country. With Montana facing major wildfires, senior Montana Republican lawmaker John Sinrud - who heads the state House’s appropriations committee - used a legislative hearing this week to attack Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s (D) administration for - get ready for this - trying to prevent homes and buildings from being burnt down. At the hearing, he asks “Why not just let [buildings] burn?” Ah yes, what a refreshing dose of “compassionate” conservatism.

You can listen to the audio yourself right here (h/t Left In the West):

The Helena Independent Record last week reported that Schweitzer is being forced to call an emergency legislative session (at a cost of $65,000 per day) in order to obtain more firefighting money because Republicans like Sinrud previously rejected his efforts to add that money to the budget - all while they advocated for massive tax cuts for out-of-state corporations. The Montana GOP has responded by writing letters to the editor claiming Schweitzer is lying, though the Great Falls Tribune editorial board debunks that claim entirely - showing that it is the GOP that is lying. Here’s an excerpt:

“Gov. Brian Schweitzer called Thursday to advocate on behalf of his appropriation request in the special legislative session he called for this Wednesday in Helena. He rightly disputed claims in a letter to the editor by Rep. Rick Ripley, R-Wolf Creek, that the governor had never requested $25 million for fires. The amount is in Schweitzer’s original budget, and it wasin a bill that was killed, on a party-line vote, by the Appropriations Committee on which Ripley sits. The session is needed, Schweitzer said, because ‘we’ve got bills to pay’ — totaling about $34 million — and the Legislature won’t otherwise meet until 2009. ‘I can’t say to contractors, ‘We’re out of money, sorry.’”

So, to review. The Montana Republican Party is now on record A) Attacking Montana state government for trying to stop buildings and homes from being burnt down B) Rejecting money to better fund firefighting and C) Lying about rejecting money to better fund firefighting.

Should there be surveillance cameras in public parks? Albuquerque, New Mexico is struggling with that question.

Here’s an excerpt from the Albuquerque Tribune report:

"Cameras with the power to zoom in and identify what’s in a pedestrian’s hand will soon be aimed at the heart of Albuquerque’s public space — Civic Plaza. Using $80,000 from the federal Homeland Security Department, the city is preparing to install a first round of cameras to monitor and record activity at the plaza and sidewalks around the City/County Building and police headquarters…’Cameras of that nature (at Civic Plaza) will necessarily have an oppressive effect on people’s willingness to take part in gatherings that take opposition to the government policies,’ Peter Simonson, executive director of ACLU New Mexico, said. ‘The bottom line is that the evidence shows that we sacrifice a great deal of anonymity and, consequently, freedom in return for negligible improvements in public safety.’"

I can see both sides of this one. It is a public space, so it’s hard to actually ban cameras for anyone - police or just regular citizens. Then again, Simonson is absolutely right - the cameras will likely have a chilling effect on political displays there.

I don’t know the ins and outs of Civic Plaza in Albuquerque and whether its specific security needs even require these kinds of measures (which is obviously a huge X-factor in debating this specific story). But assuming for a moment that there really is a need to better secure the plaza, I think it’s fair to say that generically, the better way to go in securing a place a city wants to secure is to have more police patrols rather than surveillance cams, both because patrols are a little less Big-Brother-Is-Watching-ish and police can actually do something if they are on or near the scene and something bad is going on. Then again, increased police patrols are probably more cost-intensive than camera surveillance, and again, we’re talking about public space here - spaces that anyone is allowed to shoot with a camera.

So again, it’s a tough issue. What do you think? Am I some sort of horrible authoritarian fascist for even considering the pro-surveillance side of this? Am I a head-in-the-sand moron, naively believing the threat of criminals and terrorists doesn’t warrant such measures? Anyone who reads my writing knows that I generally tend to err on the protect-civil-liberties side of things. But as I said, I think this one is a close call. Your thoughts?

A new Labor Day report by the Transportation Equity Network highlights some disturbing trends in the construction industry. Here’s the key excerpts from the press release:

“Though it comes at a time when transportation-related construction work is booming, this Labor Day will find African-Americans, Latinos and women being passed over for these living-wage jobs in large numbers, according to a study of 18 American metropolitan areas. In every area studied, white males dominate construction work, regardless of the racial and gender makeup of the local workforce as a whole. The study found that, based on their share of the population, more than 42,000 black workers are missing from the construction workforce. Though half the population, women held 6 percent or less of the jobs, even though construction has become increasingly mechanized. Latinos lagged in at least 5 of the metropolitan areas studied. The report comes two years after Congress directed transportation agencies to ensure that disadvantaged local workers are trained and hired for construction projects as they spend the $244 billion authorized in the 2005 transportation bill.”

Read the whole report here - and make sure to check out the local data.

Two weeks ago, I asked a pretty simple question: What is real-life hypocrisy, and what is faux hypocrisy manufactured by the political Punditburo in lieu of actual reporting? I asked this question in the wake of right-wing Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi screaming from the ramparts about how John Edwards is supposedly a hypocrite for having an ownership stake in an investment fund that has ownership stakes in some subprime lenders. I asserted that just because a candidate wants to change the laws that govern the land (in this case, lending laws) doesn’t mean they don’t live in the current world as it is, and certainly doesn’t mean they are a hypocrite. It doesn’t mean they’ve made a smooth political move - but again it doesn’t even come close to meaning they are a hypocrite.

Shocker, my view hasn’t broken the Washington Punditburo’s fabricate-a-gotcha rituals - though finally, one of the big traditional media outlets has actually taken the time to report the Edwards situation accurately. None other than Time magazine sets the record straight this week about Edwards, and indirectly indicts the absurdly biased and irresponsible behavior by campaign reporters and pundits alike:

“Another challenge is that much of the attention he’s gotten recently has been the unflattering kind, stories that question his sincerity and assail his image as a fighter for the little guy by focusing on his pricey haircuts, huge house and hedge-fund job. These viral attacks, spreading from the Drudge Report and other blogs to newspapers everywhere, make a dumb argument. They assume that someone who’s wealthy can’t be a sincere advocate for poor and working people. By that logic, the healthy can’t speak on behalf of the sick, or whites on behalf of people of color…Here’s what would truly be hypocritical: if Edwards spoke out on behalf of the disadvantaged while pushing policies that benefit the rich. This he does not do. He favors boosting the capital-gains tax rate for families earning over $250,000 and closing the loophole that allows fund managers—like those at Fortress Investment Group, where he earned almost $500,000 in 2006—to get taxed at just 15%. ‘He wants to take money away from the people who paid him,’ says deputy campaign manager Jonathan Prince. ‘That’s not hypocrisy. That’s sincerity.’”

That’s exactly right. No one is saying Edwards’ moves have been perfectly smooth, but the idea that his actions are somehow hypocritical or that they undermine his credibility on the major issues he’s campaigning on (and has made his life’s career about) is just ridiculous.

And let’s be clear: On the flip side, we know what true hypocrisy is. To refresh your memory, here are some examples (in no particular order):

- U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer (R-CO) grandstanding and telling his fellow school board commissioners to disclose their conflicts of interest, and then himself refusing to disclose his own conflicts of interest.

- Mitt Romney (R) campaigning for governor aggressively billing himself as pro-choice to the point where he gets angry at his opponent for saying otherwise; And then, just a few short years later, campaigning for president declaring he’s the greatest anti-choice leader in contemporary American history.

- Presidential candidate Fred Thompson (R) billing himself as a down-home political outsider even though he’s spent most of his adult life as a corporate lobbyist in Washington.

- President George Bush portraying himself as a plain-spoken cowboy and independent entrepreneurial businessman even though he grew up an aristocrat and had his personal fortunes built by massive public subsidies secured by his father’s financial and political network.

- Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani (R) presenting himself as the strongest candidate in the race on homeland security issues, even though his single defining homeland security experience was negligently contributing to the health plight of New York firefighters.

- Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (D) billing herself as the candidate of “change” and the candidate who will represent the middle class, at the same time Businessweek reports that she is allowing Wall Street titans to “refine” her economic policy platform.

Now, I’m not naive. I realize it is probably more fun for reporters and pundits to fulminate about John Edwards’ haircuts and to make up gotcha narratives - all while giving probably the most serious speech in the last last 30 years of presidential campaign politics just 275 words on page A15. It is more fun, and requires no actual work, reporting or thinking - you know, those old fashioned and unfortunately outdated tenets of “journalism.” But at least one magazine managed to get the story right about Edwards - and about the media. It’s not much - but it is a start.

You know, you’d think that Democrats - after winning the last election based on their opposition to the war - would at least give voters the courtesy of PRETENDING to try to end the war. But, no - apparently, the American public which strongly opposes the war and who voted Democrats into office on their pledges to end the war aren’t even entitled to that these days. That’s right, in the face of objective evidence from newspapers and the federal government itself that things are getting worse in Iraq, and even before Gen. David Petraeus gives his pro-surge, pro-stay-the-course update, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D) announced that he will be supporting President Bush’s request for another $50 billion in Iraq War spending.

Here’s the excerpt from the Chicago Tribune:

“In the debate in Washington, the White House reportedly will ask Congress for an additional $50 billion to expand funding for the war in Iraq, a request that seems likely to prolong troop levels at their current elevated number into the spring of 2008, Durbin said. Even opponents of the war, as Durbin calls himself, find themselves likely to vote for the extra money, he said…He said he is likely to approve the increased request.”

This is quite clearly the product of Democrats being totally unafraid not only of their own voters, but really of the vast majority of Americans who oppose the war.

With the exception of the Ned Lamont campaign in Connecticut and a recent salvo at Rep. Brian Baird (D), most major antiwar groups have been afflicted with a horrific case of Partisan War Syndrome. Pressure has continued to be brought to bear almost exclusively on Republicans, with many essentially pretending that congressional Democrats don’t have the power to end the war - even though those Democrats have majorities in both chambers of the very branch of government that controls the power of the purse. They have enabled what I have called the Democrats Innocent Bystander Fable as exemplified in this YouTube video I put together:

As many of us have predicted for months now, thanks to this one-sided, Partisan War strategy, we are sitting here months after Democrats gave Bush his most recent blank check watching Democrats thumb their noses again, apparently lining up to give him another such blank check.

Let’s hope this is finally the teachable moment that ends the Partisan War Syndrome that afflicts the antiwar movement. Let’s hope when this next blank check is inevitably cut, the huge amount of resources being funneled into antiwar groups starts going at least in part towards a serious effort - not a sham effort - to hold congressional Democrats accountable.

UPDATE: Chris Bowers has a good post up at OpenLeft about how, even if the strategy is to attach antiwar language to the $50 billion funding bill, the move by Democrats to preemptively announce they will support the supplemental bill hurts that underlying antiwar objective.

Ezra Klein is out once again attacking progressives in state legislatures for pushing to expand health care. It’s a pretty tired, typical Washington, D.C. argument that attempts to imply that those progressives pushing to expand health care at the state level supposedly oppose efforts to do the same at the federal level - a disgusting, dishonest and factually inaccurate assertion. But what’s interesting about his American Prospect article in particular is how truly negligent his argument is.

The central point of his article is that bargaining power is key to health care. If you have bargaining power, you can drive down the cost of drugs and medical services. I agree with that wholeheartedly.

But here’s where his argument against state efforts to expand health care falls apart. After a 10 second Google search, you find the websites of the U.S. Census Bureau and the CIA World Factbook - and on those websites, you find out that many states are as big or bigger than many of the European countries that he trumpets for using their size to bargain for lower drug and health care prices. As just a few examples, California, New York and Texas each have either the same or more population and economic size than all the countries in Scandinavia…combined.

Hell, look right here in Colorado - a state in the exact middle of the country in terms of population (number 24 to be exact), and a state considering plans to expand health care. Colorado has just a wee smaller population than Denmark, which has universal health care. Then there is Wisconsin, whose state senate just passed a universal health care bill. It is actually bigger population-wise than Denmark. The idea that small countries like Denmark have the size to negotiate lower health care prices, but American states that are roughly as big or bigger than those countries defies logic. It’s just a silly, absurd argument.

Ezra asks, "Do we really want 50 different health care systems, each with their own requirements, regulations, structures, and failings?" Ideally, no - we want a universal national system, and his repeated attempts to imply that progressives are ramrodding the debate into an either/or between state or federal solutions is dishonest - because the only progressives arguing that it is either/or is him.

Why do no progressives other than Ezra make such an either/or argument? Because it is ridiculous and counter-productive. By his either/or logic, states should do nothing at all that the federal government could also do. I’d like, for instance, a federal program to better aid workers that are displaced by job outsourcing. But does that really mean states shouldn’t move forward to do the same thing in lieu of action from Washington? I think not.

In lieu of a national health care program, progress at any level - state, municipal, local, etc. - is progress. If you are in Washington and don’t have to worry about your own health care, it’s easy to say states shouldn’t try to expand health care and that states should just look at the health care crisis, sit on their hands and do absolutely nothing so that we can all just wait for the Wise Old Men of Washington to solve the problem. It’s easy to tell state legislators to tell their constituents without health care, "Sorry, there’s nothing I can do, because Washington pundits tell me we should just do nothing until the federal government comes along and save the day." It’s easy to make such an argument when you are probably not the one 18,000 Americans who will die this year because they can’t get access to health care.

Making a perfect-is-enemy-of-the-good argument against states expanding health care in the face of 18,000 Americans dying a year is, at the very best, out-of-touch and callous, and more honestly, utterly immoral. In the absence of federal leadership to date, states have an obligation to do whatever they can to address the health care crisis. Whether that offends Washington pundits or not is beside the point - placating pundits should come second to saving as many lives as possible.

P.S. I want to make very clear that I do not think Mitt Romney or any other conservatives are right to make this debate either/or, or to try to claim states are the only arena that we can make progress on health care. No progressives I know - except Ezra - are making an either/or argument. Additionally, just because a policy is done at the state level doesn’t mean its a GOOD policy. There are, for instance, a ton of problems with the Massachusetts health care plan. But there can also be really great health care policies at the state level too, such as in Wisconsin.

In dollar figures, how much has the Iraq War cost the 8-state Intermountain American West? About $24 billion, when you add up the numbers from a new report by the nonpartisan National Priorities Project that is being released locally in Colorado today by the Colorado Progressive Coalition.

Let’s put that $24 billion number into context. Since the war started, that’s about $452 million a month, or $14.5 million a day sapped out of this 8-state region. Or, if you like your numbers more granular, it’s about $604,166 an hour every hour since the war started, or about $10,000 every single minute since the war started, or about $166 every second since the war started - again, just from these 8 Mountain West states.

Think of it in per capita terms. There are about 6.7 million individual households in the 8-state Intermountain West. So, every household here has coughed up about $3,600 for the war. That’s about $900 a year, or $67 a month taken by the Bush administration from every household in the region and thrown into Iraq.
Earlier this year when the Progressive States Network headed up the national state legislative push for resolutions against President Bush’s Iraq escalation, the Denver Post published a solid piece on exactly what these enormous costs really mean for states out here.

Where is all the money going? Take a good look at Matt Taibbi’s new investigative report for Rolling Stone to find out. It includes details of how the Bush administration flew $12 billion - or 360 tons - of cold, hard cash into Iraq and started doling it out to Republican cronies. $8 billion of that stash simply vanished - totally unaccounted for. Think of that again back in per capita terms. That’s like taking $1,200 of the $3,600 Iraq surcharge that every household in the Intermountain West is sending to Iraq, and setting it on fire.

But here’s the worst part of all. When Law-and-Order Democrats in Congress proposed to establish a Harry Truman-style bipartisan commission to investigate war profiteering, they were voted down by Republicans. When these same Law-and-Order Democrats proposed legislation to increase penalties and jail sentences for those convicted of war profiteering crimes, Republicans not only voted it down, but Vice President Dick Cheney himself appeared on the floor of the Senate to curse off bill sponsor Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT). Cheney may originally be from out here in the West, but he still draws deferred salary from and still owns stock options in Halliburton - so his tirade wasn’t a shock: He had his company to protect.

By the time you’ve finished this post, roughly another $10,000 has left the Rocky Mountain West’s economy and headed over to Iraq. And thanks to Republicans who have stopped a crackdown on war profiteers and stymied a bipartisan investigation into the abuses, it’s a safe bet that $10,000 is being happily deposited into one of the swelling offshore bank accounts of a Bush-connected private contractor - with little to no actual work being done in exchange.

I don’t get it. Colorado Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave is landing headlines pretending that she cares about low-income people. The Greeley Tribune cited Musgrave’s opposition to the White House proposal to eliminate food bank funding as proof that Musgrave has “worked closely with [food bank] leaders to assure a steady stream of funding to help Weld County’s residents in need.” But, this is the same Marilyn Musgrave who just a few weeks ago voted against the bill to preserve and expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

I can’t figure it out. How do you brag about supporting food banks while voting to slash health care for low-income kids? What’s the rationale? Poor people should be able to eat, but shouldn’t be able to see a doctor?

So what happens when a right-wing pundit like Tucker Carlson goes on television and admits to physically assaulting someone and committing a hate crime because someone supposedly “bothered” him? Why, Tucker’s fellow MSNBC anchors laugh, of course. I kid you not - see the video here.

There’s something really, well, sad about America having to learn its lessons about the free market from communist China. But hey - a lesson is a lesson, right?

In a business section story, the New York Times reports on the shocking - shocking, I tell you! - news that wages actually rise when the supply of labor tightens and the laws of supply and demand are permitted to actually work.

“Chinese wages are on the rise. No reliable figures for average wages exist; the government’s economic data are notably unreliable. But factory owners and experts who monitor the nation’s labor market say that businesses are having a hard time finding able-bodied workers and are having to pay the workers they can find more money.”

This is pitched to us, of course, as horrific news, namely because underneath all their rhetoric about wanting to help bring prosperity to the world, corporate executives were banking on “China’s vast population supply[ing] a nearly bottomless pool of workers” which they hoped would mean “so many people would be seeking jobs at any given time that wages in this country would be stuck just above subsistence levels.” Unfortunately for the profiteers, the basic free market laws of supply and demand are kicking in (though let’s be clear: China still has a way to go - the worker in the article now makes just $263 a month, and the country’s lax labor/wage laws will continue to exert downward pressure on wages there).

Now, I know - if you are an American, you might find this connection between supply of labor and wages strange and unfathomably hard to believe - like a conspiracy theory or something out of a sci-fi movie. That’s natural. You live in a country where corporate CEOs and their right-wing toadies in Washington bemoan a supposedly tight labor market here as an excuse to outsource jobs and to pass immigration laws designed to create new classes of low-wage indentured servants. These same CEOs and politicians, of course, have no explanation for why wages continue to stagnate - even though domestic worker productivity steadily rises. All we know is that labor is supposedly tight, wages stagnate - but CEO salaries continues to skyrocket to 364 times the average worker’s paycheck.

There’s a few things going on here in America that explain this seemingly incongruent trifecta of a tight labor market, high productivity and nonetheless stagnating wages.

First, - the labor market isn’t all that tight. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows, official government statistics purporting to show a super-low unemployment rate do not count all sorts of people who are unemployed. So the labor market still has a lot of cushion in it.

Second, thanks to a raft of Clinton and Bush-backed trade deals that include no enforceable labor, wage, human rights or environmental protections, we have an economic system that actually rewards employers for shipping American jobs to other countries where labor/wage/human rights/environmental exploitation is a viable way to cut costs. Workers who are lucky enough to have decent jobs here in America know that companies can now credibly threaten to just pick up and leave - and that reality has hurt workers’ bargaining power. Its harder to demand a raise if you know it means you’ll probably get canned.

Finally, this same threat-aiding trade policies and a politically connected professional union busting industry has helped crush the labor movement. And as the data shows, workers who are organized to bargain collectively not only secure better wages for themselves, but lift up all wages - union and non-union - in their industries.

Thus, we have now arrived at a seemingly absurd and quite pathetically sad point in our history. On the front page of the New York Times business section - the publication of record for America’s free market fundamentalists - Chinese communists are teaching us American capitalists a lesson about how the free market is supposed to work.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) "called lawmakers into a special session of the Montana Legislature to set aside $55 million to combat the wildfires that have already charred more than 400,000 acres this summer," according to the Helena Independent Record. This is the second special session this year in Montana. Like last time, the Montana Republican Party is once again publicly showing itself to be one of the most inept parties in America (something the Billings Gazette has basically reported already).

For instance, out of the gate, House Speaker Scott Sales is trying to politicize everything, claiming “Every other administration for the past 100 years has been able to pay for fires with (after-the-fact extra money) and moving money around. Every other governor I know of has been able to handle these types of situations nicely without having to have a special session."

Good try, Scott - but you should check your facts before you read your talking points. As the newspaper notes, "In the 1990s, forest fires burned an average of 150,000 acres a year in Montana and cost the state an average of $3.5 million [but] since 2000, fires have been burning an average of 700,000 acres a year in Montana and costing the state an average of $23 million."

Then there’s that little matter of Republicans creating the need for this special session in the first place. The newspaper points out that the Schweitzer administration "has twice tried to increase money set aside for firefighting and lawmakers have twice turned down his ideas, including at the 2007 Legislature." In other words, thanks to Republicans who stopped Schweitzer’s proposals, Montana taxpayers will have to cough up $65,000 a day for a special session.

The Colorado Springs Gazette is one of the two most conservative papers in America (the other being the Waterbury Republican-American). This is no secret to anyone who has either read the paper, or who is in the journalism industry. But the political continuum is a circle, not a line, meaning that on some issues, ultraconservatives and progressives can make common cause. Today’s Gazette editorial on the bipartisan support for warrantless domestic wiretapping and spying is a good example.

Here’s an excerpt:

“What do you do when critics call the legality of your secret spying program into question? If you’re the Bush administration, you defend it, by becoming ever more secretive and by claiming to be above the law. The legal basis for the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which was launched soon after 9/11 to capture conversations of potential terrorists, has always been shaky. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 outlawed warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, and in 2005 it was revealed that the Terrorist Surveillance Program did just that. Though supposedly altered so as to operate within the law, the surveillance program continues to be defended on alarming and seemingly contradictory grounds — that its legality depends on operational details too secret to be revealed, and that legality isn’t an issue, anyway, since President Bush’s powers as commander in chief cannot be so bound by law…We see the justifications of executive privilege as little more than weak excuses. Earlier this month, this same logic of secrecy, which plays on people’s fears, helped excuse a further weakening of the law as Congress, in the Protect America Act, effectively gutted FISA protections against warrantless surveillance…Now that Congress has promised to revise this temporary measure, Bush and Cheney’s continued excuses are all the more intolerable, obstructing Congress’ ability to examine the genesis of the Terrorist Surveillance Program.”

Pundits and Democratic “strategists” in Washington, D.C. clearly have absolutely no concept that issues of privacy, civil liberties and government intrusion do not fit conveniently on their preconceived - and childishly ignorant - notions of “red” and “blue.” They dismiss the vast American heartland as just a Republican Party monolith that supposedly supports all efforts to strip citizens of their freedom, and they believe that in order to start winning in this heartland, they just have to out-Republican the Republicans on these issues.

We know this not just because they capitulated last month by rubber-stamping Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program, but because they all but run out and tell reporters just how totally out of touch they really are when it comes to these issues. Remember how Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) claimed that his efforts to preserve the most odious parts of the Patriot Act were designed to protect “our Democrats in red states?” Remember how the insulated Washington media fawned all over him when he said this, billing him as an amazing political guru? And remember how, at the very same time, Montana’s Jon Tester was campaigning against the Patriot Act as a way to attract support from libertarian-leaning voters? Yeah - in a race that was decided by a tiny margin, had Schumer’s drumbeat been any louder, it may have lost Tester the Montana senate seat and Democrats might not be in the majority today.

I learned the lesson inherent in the Gazette’s spot-on editorial when I watched my friend Bernie Sanders in the House. As Rolling Stone’s terrific profile showed, he worked closely with people like Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and then-Rep. Butch Otter (R-ID) to forge left-right coalitions that passed legislation reforming the Patriot Act over the objections of Republican congressional leaders. Paul and Otter, you may recall, are among the most conservative elected officials in America. They know - sadly, more than many Democratic “strategists” in Washington - that there is nothing “weak” or “politically dangerous” about standing up for privacy and personal freedom and against government power grabs.

In fact, its the other way around: Democrats are exuding weakness and are walking into political peril by subscribing to the cartoonish “red” vs. “blue” outlook of those Washington insiders who claim expertise in a national political topography they clearly do not or do not want to understand. The panoply of privacy and civil liberties issues poses great opportunity for Democrats - but only if they show a shred of foresight and reject the absurd Washington conventional wisdom that says helping the most unpopular president in modern history trample Americans’ freedoms is somehow “good politics.”

Those rabid radical socialists* over at Businessweek are at it once again, filling the world with their anticapitalist manifestos. This one is about the Consumer Products Safety Commission, which has been crippled by budget cuts and chronic underfunding.

Here are the details:

“The Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting buyers from injury and death from some 15,000 kinds of products. Yet while the CPSC has never been more vital, through much of its 33-year history the agency has been chronically understaffed and underfunded. Overseeing 400 recalls a year, most at companies’ requests, the CPSC’s compliance team has less time to initiate its own investigations, which tend to reveal the most serious risks…You would think an agency with such an important role would be a high priority for Washington. Yet its budget is just $62 million, one-seventh the size of the Food & Drug Administration’s funding for food safety alone. The CPSC also operates under rules that prohibit staff from publicizing information about product complaints until the manufacturer O.K.’s the release. Besides handing over a lot of control to companies, this process routinely delays public disclosure of hazards, say critics.”

The magazine notes that while both Democratic and Republican administrations have neglected the commission, the agency has particularly lost power under President Bush. Additionally, Bush has not helped the situation when he “put forward a former lobbyist for the manufacturing industry, the very group CPSC is meant to oversee, as a nominee to chair the agency earlier this year.”

*If you don’t get the sarcasm here, you need to find a sense of humor.

Atrios dutifully debunks The Great Labor Shortage Lie out here in the Rocky Mountain West. Can’t find workers? Try raising wages - you’ll find plenty of potential employees.

A quick update on my post from a few weeks ago. As you can see from this new piece in Editor & Publisher, we’ve now set an official date (9/13) for the launch of my new, weekly nationally syndicated column with Creators Syndicate (past column samples are here on Creators’ website). Your help in contacting your local newspapers asking them to subscribe to the column has been nothing short of amazing. Though I don’t have a full list yet of which publications will be running the column, I am told that the response has been very solid, and that the public’s feedback to local newspapers has been terrific.

As I said before, I am going to do my best to emulate Molly Ivins, who was a friend of mine and a Creators Syndicate columnist. Too many syndicated columnists focus on horse-race nonsense and inane gossip of the political chattering class, rather than the issues most Americans face on a day-to-day basis. That may be a product of national columnists being almost exclusively located in one or two tiny geographic location on the coasts. Or it may be something else. But I pledge to you that my column will be much, much different. Writing from the middle of the country, this column will focus on kitchen-table issues from a regular-person perspective - the issues and the perspective that tend to get short shrift in our celebrity-dominated media.

With your continued help contacting your local newspapers, this column will get out far and wide. I’ll make sure to do a post when the first new column runs. Thanks again for your support!

Back in 2004, I penned a Washington Monthly article about the Montana gubernatorial race and how Democrat Brian Schweitzer (D) forged a coalition between traditionally progressive conservationists and the traditionally conservative hook-and-bullet crowd through his campaigning on issues like protection of public lands and expanded stream access. At the time, I posited that this new conservation coalition could be key for Democrats in cutting into Republican constituencies - if they knew how to play Land Politics properly. Now, it seems like they have another big opportunity here in the Colorado Senate race.

The Grand Junction Sentinel reports that “Sportsmen, a traditionally Republican-leaning voting bloc in Colorado that swung blue in 2006’s gubernatorial contest, are warily responding to 2008 Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer’s ties to the energy industry.” Schaffer is vice president of development for Aspect Energy, which is “a privately held, independent oil and gas exploration and energy investment company.” Here’s some choice excerpts from the article:

“With Colorado on the cusp of another hunting season, former state wildlife officials and sportsmen said last week the Senate candidates’ positions balancing domestic energy production and Colorado’s wildlife and open space resources will be crucial in winning their votes next year. The former Fort Collins congressman’s position as an energy industry executive, sportsmen said, gives them pause…Kochman said the thought that one candidate might be in bed with the industry could push outdoorsmen to support Schaffer’s opponent, 2nd District Congressman Mark Udall, a Boulder County resident with strong ties to the organized environmental movement…Grand Junction resident John Ellenberger, a retired Division of Wildlife big-game manager, said Schaffer’s ties to Aspect Energy likely will prove more of an obstacle for the former congressmen than a boost among sportsmen…Ivan James, vice-chairman for legislation for the Colorado Bowhunters Association, said concerns about Schaffer’s ties to the energy industry will focus most noticeably in and around the Piceance Basin, which includes Garfield and Mesa counties…James said dense energy development has the potential to ruin the habitat for wildlife in the region.”

The piece has some interesting data from Bill Ritter’s 2006 run for governor that shows just how important Land Politics will be in the Colorado senate race:

“Ritter’s strong political showing throughout most of the Western Slope and close losses in some predominantly Republican western Colorado counties — including Mesa County and Delta County — showed how outdoorsmen can swing traditionally Republican-leaning areas toward candidates with pragmatic positions on natural resources. Ritter lost Delta County to Republican candidate Bob Beauprez by 670 votes. He lost Mesa County — the home of Beauprez’s running mate, Mesa County Commissioner Janet Rowland — by 1,969 votes. According to a post-election survey compiled by Colorado Conservation Voters and National Wildlife Action, hunters and anglers voted for Ritter over Beauprez by a nine percentage-point margin. The same survey showed that hunters and fishermen trusted Ritter over Beauprez on wildlife protection issues by a nearly 30 percentage-point margin.”

For his part, Democratic Senate candidate Mark Udall is already way out in front on these issues. Back in 2005, he authored legislation to strengthen states’ ability to protect public lands and the hunting/fishing rights on those lands. This year, he’s been fighting to protect the Roan Plateau against unbridled drilling.

The new conservation coalition is something that Republicans have worked to prevent in years past through what we can call Spotted Owl Tactics - that is, trying to make all conservation issues into a competition between protecting the environment or protecting jobs and economic growth. But as the Rocky Mountain region’s tourism industry grows and as its major economic selling point increasingly becomes quality of life issues (ie. clean environment, access to natural recreational areas, etc.), Democrats have a clear opportunity to reframe the debate. Udall seems to keenly understand Land Politics while Schaffer is going to have some tough questions to answer as this campaign moves forward.

But this issue goes beyond just one campaign in one state. The national Democratic Party has opportunities on this set of issues all over the country. If there is one benefit that came out of the awful Bush Energy Bill, it is that the Bush administration’s silly focus on domestic drilling/mining as the solution to all our energy problems has created a political quandary for local Republicans. They are being forced to decide between their energy industry campaign contributors and their local constituents who want better environmental controls and better protection of public land. That wedge is going to play a bigger and bigger role in politics as the campaign season heats up.

Memo to self-important Capitol Hill staff and political operatives who think they are the story, not their bosses: Landing a story in the Washington Post about how you convinced your boss to make a decision on a Supreme Court chief justice nominee based purely on personal political calculation is not a way to have your boss look principled, or look like he’s a “Washington outsider.”

Just back from my brother’s wedding. What a weekend. For those of you looking for a good laugh, watch Tim Robbins take apart pathological liar Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard here. For some background showing how Hayes’ main claim to fame - the supposed Saddam-Al Qaeda tie - is a deliberate lie, see this article I wrote back in 2004.

Matt Singer is worried about the answer to that question.

Been on a plane most of the day. My brother is getting married, so I’m gonna be out of pocket for the weekend. In the meantime, check out the full Edwards speech that I excerpted earlier this morning. Also, The Nation has a solid review of the economic debate at the presidential level by Bob Borosage and Katrina Vanden Huevel. Check it out here.