Scott County, Indiana, the center of an exploding HIV outbreak, has been without an HIV testing center since early 2013, when the sole provider — a Planned Parenthood clinic — was forced to close its doors. The clinic did not offer abortion services. The Scott County clinic and four other Planned Parenthood facilities in the…
Category: State Government
TRP News – Progressive News & Info – Weekly Digest – March 30, 2015
This week’s topics are Senator McConnell’s efforts to undermine EPA regulations about coal and the global treaty on climate change, Indiana’s religious freedom law and the disingenuousness of Governor Pence, the state of the Loretta Lynch confirmation, and an update on the Iran nuclear negotiations. View video on youtube for relevant supporting links in the…
TRP News – Progressive News & Information – Weekly News Digest
This week we have updates on the Iranian nuclear negotiations and the Tom Cotton letter, Medicaid funding to the states, the Clinton emails, and another edition of “Why Vote?” – red versus blue states and policy versus popularity, and why you should not vote third party.
Cross-State Health Plans Prove Popular But Unsuccessful
Despite the potential to make more money, companies haven’t jumped at the opportunity in states that have lowered barriers. Insurance department officials in Georgia, Maine and Wyoming told Governing that no out-of-state insurers have expressed interest, and no such policies have been sold. Denise Burke, a senior policy and planning analyst with Wyoming’s insurance department, suspects…
Officials: Kansas Faces $279M Budget Gap By July
For the next fiscal year, the new projection was $5.8 billion in revenues — short of the nearly $6.2 billion that legislative researchers had been assuming in their unofficial forecasts. The projected shortfall of $436 million is about 7 percent, and higher than the $282 million gap estimated unofficially. The new revenue projection for the…
Appeals court strikes down GOP plan to cut early voting in Ohio
A federal appeals court on Wednesday cleared the way for voters in Ohio to begin casting in-person ballots as early as Tuesday, 35 days before the November midterm election. A three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Peter Economus earlier this month that…
NAACP accuses Mississippi country clerk of failing to process thousands of voter registrations
Mississippi NAACP President Derrick Johnson announced at a press conference Tuesday morning that an unknown number of voter registrations have gone missing in Hinds County, Mississippi, and urged voters to cast what is known as an affidavit ballot if they arrive at the polls and find that they are not listed. According to the Jackson…
Ohio lawmakers want to limit the teaching of the scientific process
Science educators have recognized that teaching science as a large compendium of facts, without reference to the scientific process and theories that bind them together, simply leads to uninterested and uninformed students. So it’s a bit mind-boggling to discover that an Ohio state legislator is attempting to block educators from teaching anything about the scientific process. And…
Ferguson – You’re Doing It Wrong
Last night someone shouted. Last night someone moved a traffic cone. Last night someone stood in the street. Someone threw a bottle, threw a rock. Last night someone threw their hands in the air. Today, people are waking to closed schools and a state of emergency. They are waking to military troops and military vehicles. Some walk through streets…
Judge Myron Thompson rules Alabama abortion clinic law unconstitutional
U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson today ruled an Alabama law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals is unconstitutional, saying that it poses an undue burden on women’s right to abortion.Abortion providers sued to block the law, passed in 2013, saying it would force three of Alabama’s five abortion clinics to close.The…
Right Wing Policies Getting People Killed All Over Texas
It seems quite evident that Texas is the canary in the coal mine for the United States when it comes to right-wing/libertarian regulatory ideals. Lax power plant pollution rules in the east have been disturbing enough. In this report, Rachel Maddow explains that not only does the State of Texas not have ANY fire codes,…
New Orleans Becomes Nation’s First All-Charter School System
According to the Post, the Orleans Parish school district fired some 7,000 employees after Katrina, most of them African-American, while the teachers hired for the charters have been much more demographically white, many drawn from Teach for America. The fired teachers have won a judgment for wrongful termination, with expected penalties and compensation to amount…
Lawmakers help oil industry duck pollution liability – Maddow
Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, (ret.) talks with Rachel Maddow about how Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal and state legislators protected the oil and gas industry from being held accountable for pollution that has destroyed vital protective coastal wetlands.
California lawmakers reject bill requiring labeling on GMO foods
California lawmakers on Wednesday rejected a bill that would require labels on foods made with genetically modified organisms GMOs, the second time in two years such legislation has failed to take hold in the state. Proponents of the bill had sought to make California the second state in the country after Vermont to require GMO…
Ohio Is Poised To Be The First State To Roll Back Its Renewable Energy Standard
Ohio’s first-term Republican Governor John Kasich said in a statement earlier this month that the renewable energy standards “are simply unrealistic and will drive up energy costs for job creators and consumers.” He made the case that the bill was a compromise from scrapping the RES entirely, and by “temporarily holding at our current level…
Right vs. Left in the Midwest
MINNESOTA and Wisconsin share much more than bone-chilling winters: German and Northern European roots; farming; and, until recently, a populist progressive tradition stretching back a century to Wisconsin’s Fighting Bob La Follette and the birth of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. But in 2010 these cousin states diverged. By doing so they began a natural experiment that…
Kansas Gov. Doubles Down On Taxing The Poor More Steeply Than The Rich
Gov. Sam Brownback R will soon sign what he calls the “fabulous package” of sales tax hikes and income tax cuts passed by the Republican-dominated legislature over the weekend. The sales tax rate increase will apply to food as well as other purchases, making it even more targeted at the lower end of the…
Texas legislature passes tax cuts for businesses
Texas lawmakers sent Governor Rick Perry more than $1 billion in proposed business tax cuts shortly before the end of the biennial legislative session on Monday. The tax-cut package – the final piece of which was approved by the House and Senate late on Sunday – includes an extension of a business franchise tax…
Virginia GOP Nominee For Attorney General Would Force Women To Report Their Miscarriages To Police
If a woman in Virginia has a miscarriage without a doctor present, they must report it within 24 hours to the police or risk going to jail for a full year. At least, that’s what would have happened if a bill introduced by Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain R had become law. And yet,…
Medicaid Opinions: Several State Leaders Come In For Heat For Not Moving Toward Expansion
Editorials and columnists in several papers around the country pressed officials toward accepting a Medicaid expansion and offered suggestions about implementation. Also, comments continued about a recent study on Medicaid. Los Angeles Times: A Public Health Compromise For California The Legislature is poised to offer health insurance to millions of additional low-income Californians, with…