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At Bleeding Heartland of Iowa, desmoinesdem writes—IA-Sen: Judge playing down, Hogg playing up differences on water quality:

By entering the U.S. Senate race, former Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge ensured that environmental issues would become salient for many Iowa Democrats trying to choose among the four candidates running against Senator Chuck Grassley.

During the past two weeks, Judge has sought to minimize the daylight between herself and State Senator Rob Hogg on the need to address water pollution. [...]

Another side of Judge’s environmentally friendly messaging: she is rumored to be telling potential supporters in private conversations that she and Hogg have the same position on the Des Moines Water Works lawsuit against three northwest Iowa drainage districts.

On its face, the claim sounds preposterous. Hogg is a longtime champion of environmental causes and a past winner of the Sierra Club Iowa chapter’s Public Service Award. Judge is a past winner of the Iowa Farm Bureau’s Distinguished Service to Agriculture award. Soon after the Des Moines Water Works filed its lawsuit last year, she became a board member and media surrogate for the so-called Iowa Partnership for Clean Water, funded by the Farm Bureau and other groups that have opposed various efforts to reduce water pollution.

Nevertheless, Judge’s campaign has managed to insert an equivalency narrative into some accounts of the Senate race.

Transgender Americans might be interested to learn that in the wake of North Carolina’s HB2-induced tailspin, conservatives have upgraded their threat level to humanity—it’s not just about bathrooms anymore. “Trans Mafia Put North Carolina In A Chokehold,” screamed an alarmist headline on the conservative blog The Federalist, complete with stock photo of a bound prisoner with a gun to his head. Welcome aboard, trans folks—first it was the “gay mafia,” now it’s the “trans mafia” that is overtaking America.

“Aided by media that are both incompetent and often transparently biased,” groused Daniel Payne, “along with a burgeoning corporate culture that has discovered the economic benefits of public moral preening, we have what Stella Morabito aptly terms the ‘LGBT mafia:’ a profoundly illiberal social movement rather single-mindedly determined to stamp out even minor and inconsequential dissent from its orthodoxy. It’s not going anywhere. In fact, it’s getting worse.”

Gosh, it’s just a disaster for conservatives now that “corporate culture” is following the dictates of the once-hallowed free market. Turns out unbridled discrimination is a tough sell these days.

Of course, North Carolina is simply the continuation of a story that first made national headlines a couple years ago, when Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich was quickly canned after his monetary support for California’s Proposition 8 became an issue. Conservatives charged that the backlash against Eich was unfair and intolerant, but Mozilla’s board had clearly concluded that they didn’t want the face of bigotry leading their tech-forward Silicon Valley-based company. Public perception had changed, and Eich found himself on the wrong side of it.

The dust has finally settled around this year's rate setting for health insurance premiums, including Obamacare premiums. Contrary to Republican conventional wisdom (and a ton of traditional media reports) they didn't skyrocket. At all. The increases, in fact, are pretty modest, actually. Just 4 percent over last year.

The new information comes from a report that the Department of Health and Human Services released on Tuesday. The report looks specifically at the insurance policies that consumers bought through healthcare.gov, the federally run website serving Florida, Texas, and 36 other states. The report doesn’t include people who get coverage through their employers or those who buy it directly from insurers.

Approximately 9.7 million people got insurance through healthcare.gov this year. The report divides these people into two categories: those getting federal tax credits to offset the cost of coverage, and those who do not. The tax credits are available on a sliding scale, based on annual income, and phase out completely at four times the poverty line — which in 2016 worked out to $47,520 for an individual and $97,200 for a family of four.

That’s a decent income in most parts of the country, and it’s why 85 percent of healthcare.gov consumers got at least some assistance. They are the ones who, on average, are paying just 4 percent more for their insurance than they were last year.

In most of the reporting, and all of the Republican claims of soaring premiums, those subsidies are conveniently left out of the discussion. But here's another thing—even for the people who don't get that help, premiums rose just 8 percent. That's less the average of 10 percent or more in premium increases in health plans in the decade before the law was enacted.

It’s another Saturday, so for those who tune in, welcome to a Saturday Diary of Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic Campaign. Each week, we discuss issues that help drive successful campaigns, and once a month we look into “Horrible mistakes you should avoid” (last Saturday of a month). If you’ve missed prior diaries, please visit our group or follow Nuts & Bolts Guide.

For those who have been following, you know that our candidate, Jessica Jones, is preparing her run for a state senate seat. Jessica has done a pretty good job following the prior steps of this diary series, from making contact to controlling expenses.

Very few steps in a campaign make candidates as uncomfortable as what Jessica Jones is committed to do this week. Jessica Jones needs to commit to her own internal research. Jessica Jones has to prepare herself for what kind of attacks she may face from her opponent this fall, e.g. skeletons in the closet, dumb mistakes of the past, and foolish endeavors, whatever they are.

Candidates try hard to avoid this step. Sometimes it is arrogance, sometimes a lack of understanding, and often a feeling of deep dread surrounds candidates who are afraid to look back at past mistakes. Campaigns that do a good job of actually knowing their candidate are prepared to respond to attacks based on opposition research.

Many Americans have been hard hit by the GOP's fiscal policies, but few places provide as much hard evidence for the turn in fortunes as the Congressional budget, where victims of our nation's wars and trade agreements continue to be underfunded. 

For instance, while Congress has set aside over $1.5 trillion for emergency spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over the last 15 years, no such contingencies have been made for spending on the veterans of those wars, which is considered a "non-defense" need and therefore still subject to the spending caps pushed through by Congressional Republicans in 2011. David Rogers reports:

Indeed, VA medical costs have more than doubled over the past decade, as the aging Vietnam generation converges with the younger Iraq-Afghanistan vets entering the system. The rapid growth far exceeds the pace of inflation. And under the budget caps, this leaves less money on the table for other “non-defense” needs — among them worker training and assistance.

In other words, even very modest increases in spending on veterans have taken money away from other budgetary needs, like training programs that could have helped American workers adapt to the new markets ushered in by trade agreements. For example, if you compare President George W. Bush's non-defense spending allotment in 2006 to President Obama's a decade later, it seems as if Obama has an extra $32 billion to work with.

But what’s overlooked in these calculations is the impact of VA’s rapid growth in this same 2006-2016 period.

If the governor signs bill, Vermont will become the fourth state with automatic voter registration: The three-party Vermont legislation approved the bill Wednesday with nearly unanimous support. Eligible citizens will be registered to vote when they visit the DMV unless they specifically choose to opt out of the process. 

West Virginia passed a similar law in the past few weeks. California and Oregon passed their laws in the matter in 2015, and the latter has already proved it to be a success, having quadrupled registration rates since starting the automatic registration in January. 

“Automatic voter registration saves time and money, increases the accuracy of our statewide voter checklist, curbs the potential for fraud, and protects the integrity of our elections,” said Vermont Secretary of State James Condos. “As Secretary of State, I believe voting is a sacred right – one we must protect and encourage by removing unnecessary barriers. Democracy works best when more people participate. I once again applaud the Legislature for their hard work and thank them for their nonpartisan support.”

Adam Gitlin, counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said, "This reform is a common-sense, no-brainer idea for any state looking to make voting more convenient and accessible for everyone.” Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have considered by not yet passed bills to automatically register voters.

You can read the Brennan Center for Justice’s The Case for Automatic, Permanent Voter Registration for more details on the rationale for this approach.

Vox:

Of course, these numbers are just one way of looking at media bias in the presidential campaign. For instance, while the press has hit Clinton more frequently, Crimson Hexagon also found that it's paid much more attention to her than to Bernie Sanders. And, by design, this kind of analysis may overlook other ways the press can hurt a candidate — like Sanders — by downplaying or dismissing his or her chances.

Still, Sanders's supporters have widely accused the media of being in the tank for Clinton. And these numbers suggest that perception may not square with reality.

Politico on Donald Trump’s NY guy:

Responding to a recent Bloomberg Politics-sponsored poll that showed Trump performing poorly among married women, [Carl] Paladino sniped, "I talk to women. Okay, the women in my area are a microcosm and love Donald Trump, a strong man that will protect their families in the future, their kids and grandkids."

"They love a man that's going to have a strong military and who they can trust to use the military correctly," Trump said. "Okay? Women love Donald Trump. That's nonsense. Tell Mr. Bloomberg to take his poll and go shove it someplace."

New Yorkers by temperament would have been fine with this past Thursday’s Hill-Bern debate. They think Donald Trump is sweet and restrained. Yeah, I know Trump gets his clock cleaned in November, but you can take those polls and… predict with them.

Tom Sullivan at Hullaballoo writes—Derp from Above:

As the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill makes its way through the Senate this week, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) have been arguing for new rules that would limit cargo pilots' flight time tonine hours between rests. We don't want any accidents.   

“Fatigue is a killer,” Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot who executed the 2009 emergency airliner landing in the Hudson River, told a press conference. Then again, if you are a drone pilot in the business of deliberately killing people, workingsix or seven days a week, twelve hours a day is not a problem.

The drone program remains controversial and has its detractors and defenders. Al Jazeera English this week published the confessions of former Air Force drone technician, Cian Westmoreland. He and three other former operators last year called on the president to stop the program, calling the strategy "self-defeating," one that propagates anti-US hatred. Not to mention his own nightmares:

The nightmares encompassed everything I didn't understand. I had nightmares about bombing villages, about being bombed, about killing children and trying to save them.

I was emotionally detached from loved ones and had a battle with alcoholism.

And that's just one part - there's also an insidious part - the moral injury side of things, where the more you learn, the worse it gets. You're trying to figure out what you did, why you did it and what's going on in that country.

That's what brings you to a real point of hopelessness.

Where this story intersects with the FAA reauthorization is Section 334 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012: PUBLIC UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS. For the uninitiated, that section directs the FAA to make plans for integrating law enforcement and military drones into the national air space. There has been little public discussion about safety and privacy issues. And these drones are not the little quadracopters, mind you, but the big Corellian ships. Not that anybody in Congress is paying attention, unless it's to defense contractors:

General Atomics expects to begin training Predator pilots for its overseas customers at the Grand Sky UAS aviation and business park near Grand Forks, North Dakota, in April.

“One of our tenants—General Atomics—is going to commence flight training they believe in the April timeframe,” said Tom Sowyer president of Grand Sky Development Co. “That means foreign countries—foreign militaries—are going to be sending their pilots to Grand Forks, North Dakota, to learn how to fly Predators.”

No one is suggesting the military drones flying over North Dakota, New York, Nevada, and the border with Mexico will be armed anytime soon, or that the NSA will be hacking their video feeds to spy on unsuspecting Americans. But given Sens. Boxer's and Klobuchar's concerns about long hours for cargo pilots, if realism in training is important one wonders how many hours at a stretch General Atomics' foreign customers will be flying their shiny new Predators over Grand Forks.

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At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Paul Ryan's 'welfare state,' everything but tax cuts for the rich: 

On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin & Armando offer up their reviews of the latest debate; a CT court allows the lawsuit by Sandy Hook families to go forward; more discussion on what’s next for Team Bernie; keep an eye and ear on the Internet of Industrial Spies. 

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Deadbeat rancher Cliven Bundy has long been criticized for the “management” of his herd of cattle. The Justice Department noted that his hands-off approach to the herd was borderline cruelty:

The Justice Department describes Bundy's ranching operation as negligent to the point of cruelty in sending half-wild cattle to graze illegally on protected lands without supervision. Unvaccinated and susceptible to illness, the cattle have little contact with humans and Bundy often has no idea where they are, the government said.

The cattle were left out during harsh winters, according to the Justice Department memo, their lives coming down to "fighting off predators and scrounging for the meager amounts of food and water available in the difficult and arid terrain that comprises the public lands" in the Nevada desert.

With winter behind us and the calendar well into the spring months, Bundy’s cows are still roaming the Nevada desert. Untreated, unvaccinated and with very little food or water. Due to Bundy’s negligent “management” over time, the herd has grown from 150 cattle to an estimated 1,000 cattle. And many are apparently slowly starving to death in the Nevada desert.

The Behavior Research Center continues to find a tight race between Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick. This time, the two are tied 42-42; in late January, McCain led 38-37. No numbers were released for the August Arizona GOP primary, where McCain is trying to fend off ex-state Sen. Kelli Ward.

The poll’s demographics don’t make any sense though. BRC has McCain leading with Hispanics by a 50-37 margin. In 2012, Obama carried Arizona Hispanics 74-25: Needless to say, it’s extremely unlikely that McCain could be winning this group while being tied statewide. The geographic breakdowns are also strange. BRC has McCain leading 46-36 in Pima County, the home of Tucson and the second largest county in the state. When McCain was winning re-election 59-35 in 2010, he carried Pima 51-43, and it’s extremely unlikely that he’s wracking up a similar margin there this cycle while only being tied statewide. The two are also deadlocked 42-42 in Maricopa, the state’s dominant county. You would need to look very hard to find a statewide election where Maricopa was more Democratic than Pima.

Unfortunately, we don’t have many other polls here. The only other pollster to release general election numbers in 2016 is the Merrill Poll, which showed McCain ahead 41-40 in March. (Bruce Merrill, the longtime Arizona pollster who conducted that survey, recently died.) Hopefully, some other groups will take a look at Arizona soon to give us a better idea of what’s going on. Daily Kos Elections rates the general as Lean Republican.

Scott Walker might be a loser of a presidential candidate, but he's still doing his damnedest to impose his own horrible vision for the future on the nation. Specifically, more humiliation and punishment for people who are just trying to feed their families.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) and 10 other GOP governors trumpeted the benefits of drug testing food stamp recipients in a letter to Republicans on Capitol Hill this week. 

Federal law doesn’t allow states to drug test Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients, but in February Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) introduced legislation that would pave the way. 

“The legislation authored by Congressman Robert Aderholt confirms states’ rights to drug test SNAP recipients, and we look forward to working with him on this crucial issue and implementing this common-sense reform in Wisconsin,” Walker said in a Tuesday statement.

The federal government has dealt with this before, halting Gov. Nathan Deal's plan to drug test SNAP recipients in Georgia in 2014. It's not allowed under current law, explained regional USDA administrator Robin Bailey. "Requiring SNAP applicants and recipients to pass a drug test in order to receive benefits would constitute an additional condition of eligibility, and therefore, is not allowable under law." That's federal law, which House Republicans are now trying to undermine with the support of Walker and Republican governors from the completely predictable states of Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.

These monsters have a problem with people receiving average monthly benefits of $126.83 per person. To buy food. To survive on. Because kicking people while they’re down is the favorite sport of Republicans.