It’s Labor Day weekend, the schools have been in session about a week, and the disgruntled voices of a minority drone on. Their screeching refrain, often in letters to the editor and talk show call-ins, is familiar:
– Teachers only work half a year.
– Teachers are overpaid.
– Local school districts and their taxpayers shouldn’t have to hold the burden of teacher salaries.
As you probably know, Alan Grayson, a congressman who never sells out or bargains away the legitimate rights of working families, has been the most successful Member of Congress in terms of bringing both parties together in moving sensible, bipartisan legislation. Friday I spoke with a progressive candidate in a pretty red Pennsylvania district, Kerith Strano Taylor and her approach to working across party lines reminded me of the way Grayson does it.
Residents of New England and the Mid-Atlantic states will experience increased rainfall and floods if data analysis by a Penn State meteorologist and long-term projections by a fisheries biologist, with a specialty in surface water pollution, are accurate.
Charlie Dent was first elected to Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley congressional seat (PA-15) in 2004, a D+2 district that had given both Gore and Kerry the narrowest of victories. Dent took the seat when incumbent Rick Santorum ran for the Senate. The district was gerrymandered by the Republican state legislature in 2010 and is now an R+2 district that includes red-leaning parts of Berks, Lebanon and and Dauphin counties.
Let me save Pennsylvania for the end, since that's the one with Democrats. Georgia and Kentucky are Republican affairs, although who the GOP voters pick in each state may influence the outcome of the November elections-- and the control of the U.S. Senate. We'll start with Georgia's 7 dwarves running for the open red Senate seat that conservative Democrat, Sam Nunn's daughter, thinks she has a chance to win.
It isn't likely, but New Dem vice chair and EMILY's List fave, Allyson Schwartz, could still win the May 20, Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary-- and equally conservative corporate shill Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky could win her congressional primary the same day. But that's also unlikely. Both women from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party were dubbed prohibitive frontrunners by the brain-dead Beltway punditry from the outset.
I'm no fan of conservative-leaning New Dem Allyson Schwartz. Earlier today, I mentioned in passing how she was one of the bought-out Wall Street shills who voted with the GOP for Bush's anti-family bankruptcy bill. But there is one area where no one can deny Schwartz's heroic stature and that's when it comes to women's issues. She has been staunchy pro-Choice and a leader in the fight for women's health issues, no small matter.
Pennsylvania state Seantor Daylin Leach was one of the first congressional candidates Blue America endorsed this election cycle. He's right up our alley: thoroughly progressive-- and aggressively so-- compassionate, smart, persuasive… and with a record of accomplishment in the legislature that goes beyond promises. So far this cycle 943 Blue America members have contributed $22,462.68 to Daylin's grassroots campaign-- an average of $23.72.
I hate the money game that American electoral politics has devolved into, drowning out ideas and, in too many cases, all agendas and even visions other than those of the donor class. But it's how the Beltway pundits and the mass media view momentum and electability. And, normally, the candidate with the most money wins-- not always, but most frequently.
This morning, Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed a Democrat running for a House seat in Pennsylvania. Senators don't often endorse in House races and almost never endorse in primaries in other states.
