Author: Chris Kromm

As The Four Seasons said, “Oh, What a Night!”

Yesterday’s primary elections were marked by big anti-incumbent upsets, and one of the most interesting was the Democratic U.S. Senate contest in Arkansas, where incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln received only 45% of the vote, forcing a run-off with upstart challenger Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who got 43%.

What happened in Arkansas? Was it, as labor and progressives say, a populist uprising against Lincoln’s conservative and corporate-friendly voting record? Was it part of the overall anti-Washington mood of the masses?

In reality, Lincoln’s weak showing was due to a variety of factors, some of which offer conflicting lessons

* THE LABOR FACTOR: Only 4.2% of Arkansas workers belong to unions — the second lowest rate in the country — but labor was a huge factor in mobilizing support for Halter. Prompted by Lincoln’s votes and positions on labor’s key issues like health reform (against), the Employee Free Choice Act (against) and financial reform (all over the place), national unions poured major resources into the race and got results.

At its peak, AFL-CIO’s Working America had 45 paid staff in Arkansas, and it claims to have contacted 90,000 people and sent 1.75 million pieces of pro-Halter mailers. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) spent $1.5 million in the state and says it reached another 85,400 in the state.

In response, Lincoln was left with complaining about the role of unscrupulous “outsiders” (read: carpetbaggers?) in trying to influence voters. But in a race where Halter and Lincoln were separated by less than 5,000 votes, the direct voter contact and media publicity labor was able to generate for Halter was pivotal in enabling him to force a run-off.

* THE RURAL/URBAN DIVIDE: But the fact that labor flexed its muscle in this race is far different from the conclusion that Politico comes to, which is that liberal “activists” were the reason Halter forced a runoff.

On the contrary, Arkansas’ progressive Democratic strongholds (such as they are) aren’t what propelled Halter to his strong showing.

Take, for example, Pulaski County — home of Little Rock, one-third African-American, a key Democratic base and the most voter-rich county in Arkansas. If Halter is a favorite of progressive Democrats, this is just the kind of place he should have won.

But Lincoln won Pulaski County with 52% of the vote; Halter only got 40%, even though it’s his home base. This suggests the pre-election analysis put forward by Arkansas columnist John Brummet may have held: Whatever their disillusionment with Lincoln, Democratic voters stayed with the known-quantity incumbent against a challenger they viewed as too risky.

* ANTI-BLANCHE, BUT PRO-WHAT? The fact that Halter beat in Lincoln in conservative, rural districts but lost in the progressive strongholds suggests that something else was at work. The Arkansas Blog credits Republican mischief, or GOP voters who crossed over in the open primary to vote for the Democrat they thought they had the best of chance of beating in November.

There’s also the reality of Lincoln’s low poll numbers, which drove even conservative Democrats to vote for an ABB (Anyone But Blanche). That “anyone” included D.C. Morrison, the right-wing Democrat who took third place in the primary with 13% of the vote.

So in the Lincoln vs. Halter runoff, where will the Morrison voters, anti-Blanchites and even the few stray cross-over Republicans (who will be much less of a factor, given that they’ll have no other races of interest) end up?

There’s no way of telling, but it likely won’t neatly follow the “liberal vs. moderate” narrative the national media wants it to follow.

In Arkansas’ closely-watched primary today for U.S. Senate, the polls and pundits are saying embattled incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) has a big enough lead to win against labor/progressive-backed challenger Bill Halter, maybe by enough points to avoid a runoff.

Long-time Arkansas political watcher John Brummett (who voted for Halter) says that if Lincoln wins, it’ll be because she’s getting the votes of Democrats who think she has the best shot of beating the Repulicans in November.

But what do investors think?

Given recent events, the phrase “wisdom of the market” may seem like an oxymoron. But traders in the prediction markets like those at Intrade, where investors can essentially bet on a candidate’s chances of emerging victorious, they have a decent track record of picking the winners.

And right now, traders are bullish on Lincoln’s chances of winning the primary. She’s currently trading at 80, which means investors give her about an 80% chance of being the Democratic nominee:

INTRADE: Arkansas – Democratic Senate Primary
Blanche Lincoln to win the Democratic nomination for 2010 Arkansas Senate Race

But what about November? Not so much. The market is showing little confidence in Lincoln’s prospects. Right now Lincoln is trading at 11, which means traders think she has an 11% chance of winning the general election:

INTRADE: Arkansas (Incumbent: Blanche Lincoln – D)

Democratic Party candidate to win

 

On the other side, the trend lines for the Arkansas GOP are all up and up: Intrade has Republicans with a 90% chance of winning the U.S. Senate seat.

What about the other big primary today in Kentucky? Republican Rand Paul is considered a safe bet for locking up the GOP nomination for U.S. senate: The traders are giving him about a 95% chance of winning.

After that, the traders think Republicans have about 66% odds of winning in November.

Facing South’s report last week on a protest last week by the conservative group Americans for Prosperity — which targeted the Center for Responsible lending, a champion of financial reform, as a symbol of “Wall Street corruption” — has made quite a splash.

A quick recap: Last week, 20 some members of AfP descended on the offices of the Center in Durham, NC, saying the consumer non-profit was tied to Wall Street scandals. How so? Several years ago, the Center received a $15 million gift from John Paulson, a hedge fund tycoon now implicated in the Goldman Sachs inquiry. The Center also used to employ Eric Stein, who now works in Obama’s Treasury Department.

That’s all the protesters needed to know: They demanded that the Wall Street reform bill in Congress be stopped, a full Congressional investigation be launched, and that Stein be fired (or, to make it rhyme, “Stein Must Resign!”).

I talked with several of the AfP protesters (you can see the video here); none I interviewed knew where Paulson’s $15 million went. But the Center said it was no mystery: It launched the Institute for Foreclosure Legal Assistance, which gives training to legal clinics about how to help families facing foreclosure. It isn’t even based at the Center; it’s run by the National Association of Consumer Advocates.

And the Americans for Prosperity members definitely didn’t mention that their own organization is one of several business-funded groups that have much closer ties to Wall Street and financial interests than consumer groups like the Center.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC took our report one step further — and used our video from the AfP rally in North Carolina — to look at another front group, the Consumer Rights League. Despite its innocuous name, and an acronym identical to the Center for Responsible Lending, the Consumer Rights League was created and funded by banking interests to oppose reform.

Check out Maddow’s report here:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Consumer Rights League has its own ties to the controversy: As Facing South reported and Maddow mentioned, the founder of the League is Michael Flynn — currently an editor at BigGovernment.com, a conservative website that has led the charge against the Center and Stein.

Teasing out these connections among the myriad front groups opposed to Wall Street reform was the focus of another excellent follow-up piece in The Independent Weekly, an award-winning paper based in Durham, NC.

Lisa Sorg and Samiha Khanna of the Indy pulled together this useful chart of the ties between these organizations, which together are designed to give the appearance of widespread opposition to policies like cracking down on Wall Street (click on the chart for a bigger version):

If anything, the Indy’s chart may
understate the close web of relationships between these groups. For
example: The
John Locke Foundation, a conservative policy group in North Carolina,
has a more direct tie to Americans for Prosperity, aside from their
common
benefactor Art Pope. This became clear at last week’s AfP rally,
which was led by North Carolina conservative activist Chad Adams. AfP-NC
recently hired Adams to help raise
money, although he’s

still listed as the director of the Locke Foundation’s Center for
Local Innovation
and as a Locke employee.

Adams has another connection that’s
relevant to the Wall Street reform debate: Last year, he ran — and narrowly
lost — to be chairman of the N.C. Republican Party, basing his
campaign among Tea Party
groups
and other GOP insurgents.

Yesterday, Republicans relented on a five-day filibuster that aimed to stop movement of the Wall Street reform bill. But AfP is staying resolute: It just released a broadside via podcast — apparently by Phil Kerpen, an AfP leader and Fox News contributor who’s also targeted the Center and Stein — calling it a “very, very bad bill” and encouraging the GOP to once again vote to end debate.

In 2008, President Obama had enough traction in the South to win a third of the region’s Electoral College votes and convince millions of other Southerners to pick him for the presidency.

But since then, the trendlines have been all downhill, and — as Facing South has reported before — the South has emerged as Obama’s achilles heel.

Consider the latest DailyKos/Research2000 poll, one of the few to provide regional breakdowns of its data. Their latest survey shows that, across the country, growing numbers of people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction:

As you can see, every region of the country believes the country is headed in the “wrong direction.” The South is definitely the leader, but the Midwest and West are strongly in negative territory.

But how do these regions view President Obama? When it comes to the president’s approval ratings, only those in Southern states show a net disapproval:

The difference is striking: People across the country are concerned about the direction of the country, but the South is the only region where a large majority seem to be holding President Obama responsible.

Contrast this regional dislike of Obama to how different regions view Congressional Democrats. According to the DailyKos/Research2000 poll, Southerners aren’t fond of them, but the same is true for other parts of the country:

The South still leads the pack, but other regions outside the Northeast are just as likely to be disenchanted with Democrats in Congress.

Only one region — the South — focuses its displeasure so intently on the president.

Of course, as we’ve written before, the not-so-hidden element here is race. Not all Southerners disapprove of Obama’s performance: The president still enjoys 91% favorable ratings among African-Americans and 69% among Latinos nationally, and while there’s no regional breakdown in the DailyKos/Research2000 poll by race (the sample size would likely be too small to be reliable), I’m not aware of any data to suggest the approval of those groups is significantly lower in the South.

Which means that once you isolate for race, a stark reality becomes clear: White Southerners don’t like Obama, and more than anywhere else in the country, they think he’s to blame for moving the country in the wrong direction.

Yesterday, about 20 members of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity — with nearly as many members of the media in tow — gathered in downtown Durham, North Carolina to protest “Wall Street corruption” and the financial reform bill now moving through Congress.

Why Durham? Because it’s home to the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer advocacy group that has pushed for tougher banking rules. The Center is also the former employer of Eric Stein, a leading voice for financial reform who now works in President Obama’s Treasury Department.

You may be wondering: How do you link the Center and Stein, staunch proponents of Wall Street reform, to “Wall Street corruption?” By painting the advocates as the ones who are too cozy with bankers and financial interests.

Taking a cue from a now-famous memo by Republican strategist Frank Luntz [pdf] — which argued back in January that, because financial reform is popular, “the single best way to kill [financial reform] legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout” — the Durham protesters called the Congressional bill “permanent bailout legislation.”

(As the fact-checking group Politifact points out, the bill doesn’t include bailouts: It creates a trust, funded by taxes on large financial institutions, that would enable the closing of failed banks.)

In particular, Americans for Prosperity zeroed in on $15 million given to the Center for Responsible Lending by John Paulson, a hedge fund manager implicated in the current federal investigation of Goldman Sachs. The demonstrators said Paulson’s “dirty money” was reason enough to demand Stein’s removal (“Stein must resign!”) and halt the financial reform bill until Congress investigated Stein, the Center and Paulson.

Facing South asked some of the Americans for Prosperity protesters why they were demonstrating at the Center’s offices in Durham, and received a wide range of responses, ranging from “Wall Street corruption” to concern about the $15 million deal and dislike for ACORN (which isn’t connected to the Center):

The demonstrators Facing South interviewed were unclear about the nature of the Center’s connection to Paulson. Of the $15 million Paulson gave to the Center, one man demanded to know “where the money went;” another assumed it went to Center “salaries and things like that.” At one point, the protesters chanted “give the money back!”

A Center spokesman says it’s hardly a mystery: The $15 million from Paulson was used to launch the Institute for Foreclosure Legal Assistance, which trains local legal aid centers to help families facing foreclosure. The Institute isn’t even run by the Center for Responsible Lending; it’s managed by the National Association of Consumer Advocates.

As for the Center’s and Stein’s ties to Wall Street, big banks certainly don’t see them as helpful allies. The financial industry has dispatched over 1,500 lobbyists to Washington to defeat the financial reform bill these advocates support. Payday lenders, which the Center has targeted for charging up to 400% interest, spent over $2.6 million in lobbying last year to ensure they’re not regulated under the bill, up 75% from the year before.

Given their common opposition to reform, it’s perhaps no surprise that John Paulson and banks are more closely aligned to Americans for Prosperity and other conservative groups. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, nearly 60% of Paulson’s campaign contributions have gone to Republicans, who are opposing the reform legislation.

Americans for Prosperity itself has direct links to banking interests. James C. Miller III, who is listed as one of Americans for Prosperity’s directors, served as the executive director of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush’s Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief. He also served on the board of the J.P. Morgan Value Opportunities Fund and as a consultant to Freddie Mac. James E. Stephenson, another AfP director, serves on the board of the Republic Bank of Georgia.

For conservative websites like BigGovernment.com, which has helped publicize the Center/Stein/Paulson allegations, the attack almost seems personal. One of BigGovernment’s editors is Mike Flynn, former leader of the Consumer Rights League — a front group supported by payday lenders to oppose reform which shares an office with the tea party-connected group FreedomWorks.

Meanwhile, a Senate vote on the financial reform bill is expected within days, and as the Los Angeles Times reports, “Wall Street is battling aggressively against the legislation.”

Sue Sturgis assisted with reporting for this story.

PHOTO: Americans for Prosperity demonstrator in Durham, NC (Chris Kromm)

In 2008, two-thirds of Latinos in the U.S. voted for President Obama. That margin proved critical in states like Florida, where Latinos made up 14 percent of the voters, and 57 percent pulled the lever for the president-elect.

But barring an unlikely change, Republicans will soon be making the decisions about how growing Latino communities are politically represented in Florida and other key Southern states.

That’s because the GOP controls many of the state legislatures in places where the Latino population is the largest, putting Republicans in the driver’s seat for drawing new state and Congressional political lines in 2011, after this year’s Census numbers are released.

Right now, the state legislatures in the three Southern states with the largest Latino population — Texas, Florida and Georgia — are controlled by Republicans, a reality that is unlikely to change in the GOP-favorable 2010 elections.

The following chart shows which Southern states have the biggest Latino population and how that sizes up against the control of the state legislature:

As you can see, the states with the largest Latino communities are more likely to see their state legislatures dominated by Republicans.

This will impact both the political lines for state districts and U.S. Congress. For state redistricting, only one Southern state — Arkansas — uses a separate commission to redraw political lines. That means the GOP-controlled legislatures in states with the biggest Latino populations will decide who wins and loses with the new maps.

When it comes to redrawing U.S. Congressional districts, the irony will only deepen.

Four Southern states are projected to gain Congressional seats after the 2010 Census numbers are released: Texas (four seats) and Florida, Georgia and South Carolina (one seat each).

In each of those states, Republicans will almost definitely be in charge of deciding where and how those new Congressional seats are drawn — even though a big reason those states are gaining Congressional seat is because of their fast-growing, Democratic-leaning Latino population.

Here’s a chart from the New Democrats think tank showing how much states owe their rising Congressional clout to their growing Latino communities:

Percent in the U.S. who believe President Obama has “raised taxes” or “kept taxes the same”: 74

Percent of tea party supporters who believe this: 94

Percent of working people — those with wages or other earned income — who received tax cuts under Obama’s stimulus bill: 98

Average tax cut received by working families and individuals under the stimulus bill in 13 Southern states: $1,049

Total cost of tax cuts under the Bush administration: $2.5 trillion

Percent of those tax cuts that went to the richest 5% in the country: 53

Percent by which companies receiving U.S. military contracts increased their use of offshore subsidiaries to lower their U.S. tax burden between 2003 and 2008: 26

Percent of U.S. corporations that paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005: 66

Total amount of federal, state and local taxes paid in the U.S. in 2007, the latest year for which figures are available: $3.8 trillion

Percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, which measures the total size of the economy, that represents: 27

Average percent of GDP that taxes represent in world’s 30 richest countries: 36

Number of demonstrations organized by groups associated with the tea party movement on Tax Day 2009: 800

Percent by which whites in Southern states are more likely to be sympathetic to the tea party cause than whites in other parts of the country: 12

Percent of those who “strongly support” the tea party who believe African Americans are “intelligent”: 45

Percent of tea party supporters who believe global warming will have “no impact” or “doesn’t exist”: 66

Percent of tea party supporters who believe President Obama is moving the country “towards socialism”: 92

Percent of tea party supporters who agree with the statement “the benefits from programs such as Social Security and Medicare are worth the costs of those programs for taxpayers”: 62

Percent of tea party supporters who rely on Fox News Channel for “information about politics and current events”: 63

(Click on figure to go to the original source.)

How important is the 2010 Census to Mississippi? And with over 11 percent of Mississippians out of work, what impact could the economic recession and housing crisis have on the Census count — and the billions in federal dollars linked to Census data?

I’ll be on “Mississippi Edition” on Mississippi Public Radio today at 8:35amCST/9:35amEST to talk about these issues and more. Come listen live here. If you miss it, they’ll have a podcast of the show up soon.

For more Institute coverage on the 2010 Census, see our recent report, “Counting in a Crisis,” which uses North Carolina as a case study to look at the impact of job losses, home foreclosures and other economic woes on the 2010 Census count.

You can also see more Facing South coverage of the Census here.

Today, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) — chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor — released a list of 48 mines identified by federal officials last fall as facing possible sanctions for repeated violation of worker safety rules, but which had yet to be targeted by federal officials because of unresolved appeals from mine operators.

The list includes the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia owned by Massey Energy, where 29 miners died from an explosion on April 5.

As Miller’s office explained in a press release:

Under current law, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration issues a letter to frequent violators warning them that they may be sanctioned under a so-called ‘pattern of violation’. Once a mine is notified that they may be under a pattern of violation, the mine must take immediate actions to reduce future violations – approved by federal mine safety officials – or face drastic sanctions including mine closure for any future significant and substantial violation.

The list released by the committee today are those 48 mines that would have received this notice of a potential pattern of violation sanctions in October 2009 but for contested citations that had not been resolved due to delays caused by the backlog of more than 16,000 operator appeals.

“Pattern of violation” investigations aren’t just for occasional rule violations, but for mines believe to be habitual offenders: Criteria for targeted companies includes mines that receive at least 20 significant and substantial violations, at least two elevated enforcement actions, and one unwarrantable failure violation over the previous 24 months. On top of that, targeted mines must have a violation rate that is 25 percent higher than the industry average over the same period.

Below are the mines on the MSHA’s list. All but five of the mines are located in Kentucky or West Virginia:

Tea partiers are gearing up for Tax Day protests this Thursday, which marks just over a year since the new conservative movement exploded on the scene.

For tea party leaders, one goal this week is to distance themselves from unpleasant scandals involving tea-linked candidates and reassure the public they’re not a fringe cause, but just engaged citizens like you and me.

The idea that the tea party is “going mainstream” has been the headline message (at least for Fox News) coming out of two recent polls of the tea party movement, one by Rasmussen and the other by Gallup. But based on these and other polls, what do we really know about the tea partiers who will be congregating this week?

First, it’s clear the tea party movement has grown. The Rasmussen survey found 24 percent in the U.S. as identifying with the tea party cause, up from 16 percent a month ago. This jibes with the Gallup poll, which finds 28 percent calling themselves a “supporter” of tea partyism.

Now, it’s clear that any movement which can garner support from one out of four Americans can’t be simply written off as “fringe.” And it’s also true that, despite being a bit older, more male, wealthier and whiter than the rest of the country, the demographic differences aren’t as big as you might think.

But drilling deeper into the data, the limitations of the tea party’s appeal become a bit clearer, which suggests they may be hitting the ceiling of their political influence.

THE COLOR OF TEA

The most obvious limitation is race. Gallup finds that 79 percent of tea party supporters are white, compared to 75 percent of U.S. adult population and 62 percent of the country overall. (Interestingly, six percent of “non-Hispanic blacks” and 11 percent who identify as “other” also put themselves in the tea party camp.)

But it’s not just the racial makeup of the movement, it’s also their racial attitudes. While racist antics among tea party protesters have made this an article of faith for many on the left already, the racial character of the tea party got some scholarly backing from a multi-state survey released this week by Christopher Parker at the University of Washington.

In Parker’s survey of 1,015 residents in seven states, he found that “those who are racially resentful, who believe the U.S. government has
done too much to support blacks, are 36 percent more likely to support
the tea party than those who are not.”

Tom Schaller at 538.com put these findings into helpful graphs, which show how the racial views of white tea party sympathizers vary from those who oppose the tea party:

The views of white tea partiers is also deeply at odds with white opponents of the movement on the subject of immigration:

Last fall, Crystal Lee Sutton — a woman whose bravery in organizing textile workers in the 1970s was immortalized in the film “Norma Rae — died of brain cancer after battling her insurance company for years.

As Facing South wrote in January:

Formerly Crystal Lee Jordan, Sutton was fired from her job folding towels at the J.P. Stevens textile plant in her hometown of Roanoke Rapids, N.C. for trying to organize a union in the early 1970s. The firing came after she copied a racially divisive flier posted by management warning that blacks would run the union.

Her last action at the plant was writing the word “UNION” on a piece of cardboard and standing on her work table, leading her co-workers to turn off their machines in solidarity. The incident was memorialized in the 1979 film, in which the character inspired by Sutton was played by actress Sally Field.

Below is a video of a moving memorial service held in Sutton’s honor in Greensboro, N.C. in January, 2010, featuring friends, family and labor activists.

Among the speakers was Ajamu Dillahunt, a long-time Southern union activist and co-chair of the Institute for Southern Studies board, whose comments start at the 4:00 mark:

Dillahunt, who began his speech by saying “In 2010, we need hundreds and thousands of Crystal Lee Suttons,” went on to say the following:

Today we join those assembled and thousands around the world to lift up the amazing and courageous life of Crystal Lee Sutton, the real “Norma Rae.”

Her death in September of last year brings to an end a life that was inspirational to all those who love justice and deplore oppression.

Sister Sutton’s determined efforts to empower workers in her textile plant will forever remain a part of working class history that is too often hidden from those who have benefited from it and those who need to learn its lessons.

We are compelled to say that that history is connected to the black freedom struggle in the South that fought, and continues to fight, for civil, human and democratic rights.

Her work in Roanoke Rapids, against great opposition, was side by side with African-American workers who suffered under the harsh working conditions in the plant and in society. She united with them, and them with her, to fight the employer. This is as it always should be.

As life would have it, Crystal Lee Sutton in her final years, as a victim and a fighter, became a leader in the struggle for a decent and humane health care system. She raised her voice to let people know about the disgusting and criminal practices of the health insurance industry, as they delayed a decision approving critical medications to treat her cancer.

She was not only standing up for herself, but was shining light on an enemy of the working people in this country at a vital time in our struggle for universal health care.

Crystal Lee Sutton, presente.

The reverberations continue from Monday’s tragic disaster at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia. Here are some new pieces of information and perspectives on the situation:

* LATEST RESCUE CALLED OFF: Ken Ward, Jr.’s excellent Coal Tattoo blog remains the best source of up-to-the-minute information on rescue attempts and what’s happening at the mine, and the news isn’t good. Ward reports that rescue workers were pulled back from a third rescue attempt early this morning, what could have been their last chance to rescue four miners who have yet to be accounted for.

* A LIFE LOST: Ward links to an obituary in today’s Charleston Gazette for one of the miners who died:

Jason Matthew Atkins, 25, of 112 Shaw Branch Road, Foster, died Monday, April 5, 2010, in a mining accident at Performance Coal Company. Jason was born September 19, 1984, in Charleston, the son of Robert and Shereen Bowles Atkins of Racine.

He was an employee of Performance Coal Company, Montcoal, and a member of the Racine Volunteer Fire Department. Jason was a 2003 graduate of Sherman High School, where he was a member of the first team on the All-State Football Team and a special honorable mention on the All-State Baseball Team. Jason also attended West Virginia Institute of Technology, where he played baseball. He was an avid WVU sports fan and enjoyed playing golf with his brother. Jason loved life, his family and his truck and was always a happy person who cared for everyone else first.

* SOLIDARITY FOREVER: West Virginia miners are no strangers to tragedy, and that shared experience leads to touching acts of solidarity.

Yesterday, three family members of Marty Bennett — one of 12 men killed in the 2006 Sago mine disaster — drove to Raleigh County to stand with families of the Upper Big Branch mine. They took aim at the cold economic calculations of mine owners that undermine safety:

Vicki Sharp said that a big problem seemed to be that MSHA [Mine Safety and Health Administration] has written minimum requirements and when a coal company is cited for violating those minimum requirements, they bargain the fine down.

“To a coal company, if they have to pay $500, $1,000, what is the incentive?” she said.

“They are venting the mine now, why couldn’t they do that before?” Kevin Sharpe asked.

Earlier in the week, Sara Hamner — whose father George “Junior” Hamner also died at Sago in 2006 — had this to say:

My heart goes out to them, knowing what they are experiencing now and what they will continue to face through this tragedy. I also feel sorry for them having to deal with Don Blankenship and Massey because I know that shortly after Dad died in the Sago mine explosion, he called their deaths “statistically insignificant”.

I believe him to be a cold-hearted, detached individual and I just hope the families and miners find the strength to endure. I am listening to a reporter on CNN say that Don
Blankenship and Massey are at the top of the game in mine safety but in fact I know different. […]

I know that Don Blankenship/Massey is among America’s top five coal producers and is production and profit driven. In truth, Don Blankenship’s mines are known to have spotty safety records. It may be too early to tell, but my feeling is leaning toward the fact that this will probably be found to be a tragedy that could have been prevented.

That’s a lot different view than you’d gather from the hagiography of Blankenship in The New York Times.

* BLANKENSHIP: JUST A BAD APPLE?The evidence continues to pile up that this week’s disaster could have been avoided, and how Don Blankenship of Massey Energy in particular has spent millions of dollars to influence politics and weaken regulations that could have protected mine workers’ lives. Mark Schone of ABC News has a good overview of Blankenship’s political influence.

It’s convenient to have a villain — and Blankenship plays the role well. But the bigger story may be what Blankenship represents: The extreme laissez-faire, anti-government ideology that has taken a stranglehold in national politics, most clearly since the age of Reagan.

Barb Shelley of the Kansas City Star has a damning editorial that looks at this important larger picture:

Coal baron Don Blankenship is the ultimate free marketeer, a trendy niche in this day of seething resentment against government big and small.

He has clever names for environmentalists (greeniacs) and brainless congressmen (scarecrows).

His outspoken hatred of taxes and regulations won him a seat on the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. […]

Blankenship is a brazen member of a club that promotes its own interests by tearing down any individual or institution that might stand in its way.

The spin is working. Americans have heard so much about “corrupt” unions, “greedy” trial lawyers, “activist” judges and “job-killing” regulators that a good percentage of us think we’d be better off without any of them.

We wouldn’t. In fact, safety inspectors and regulators need more clout to protect workers in dangerous jobs. Judges need a separation from big money and electoral politics. Unions need more authority to insist on safe conditions for workers.

No one was cheering Don Blankenship’s blustery, free-market principles this week. According to The New York Times, he prepared to address a crowd outside his mangled mine but was shouted down.

People accused him of putting profit ahead of workers’ lives. Someone threw a chair. Police officers escorted the coal executive from the scene.

Blankenship should have heeded the judges, unions and regulators whom he so reviled. Turns out they could have protected him.

When Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell declared April as the state’s Confederate History Month, Republican operatives likely thought it was a safe and symbolic gesture that would please the state’s older conservatives.

Instead, it’s exploded into a national news story, raising sharp questions about how race is used in politics — and how the South’s Confederate past still haunts its political present.

The scandal getting the most attention has been the proclamation’s glaring omission: Not once, in five “whereas” clauses, did it mention slavery. McDonnell batted away the criticism about this oversight, saying:

“There were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”

By the end of the day, after critics including national conservative pundits to the GOP-inclined Richmond Times-Dispatch denounced him, McDonnell shifted gears and added another clause stating “the institution of slavery led to this war and was an evil and inhumane practice.”

But it was too little, too late — and didn’t hide that McDonnell’s “omission” clearly wasn’t an accident: As Adam Sorensen at Time points out, earlier Republican proclamations for Confederate History Month by did include references to slavery; McDonnell just cut them out of his version.

NEO-CONFEDERATES AMONG US

For Southerners, the McDonnell affair is hardly Big News. As historian James Loewen documented in his excellent book Lies Across America, Southern states are filled with thousands of historical markers, tourist sites and other remembrances of the Confederacy that downplay, or entirely omit, the essential racism behind the Confederate project.

In other words, Southerners grow up surrounded by such one-sided history etched into their very
landscape. The attempts to romanticize and rehabilitate the Confederate past in the South can take on near-comical proportions. As Loewen wrote for Southern Exposure magazine in 2000:

Although many Confederates were conquered in spirit in 1865, between about 1890 and 1930, neo-Confederates declared victory on the landscape all across the United States, including places that never existed or never were Confederate during the war. A Confederate monument dominates the lawn of the east Bolivar County courthouse in Cleveland, Mississippi, for example, “To the memory of our Confederate dead, 1861-65.” The only problem is, Cleveland, Mississippi, had no Confederate dead. Cleveland did not exist during the Civil War or for some decades afterwards.

Of course, these memorials usually go way beyond remembering Confederate “heritage” and end up glorifying the Confederacy.

Consider the Arlington Confederate Monument, where even President Obama felt obliged to lay a wreath in 2009, like all presidents before him. As leading neo-Confederate scholar Ed Sebesta pointed out in a letter to Obama at the time, the goal of the monument was not just to remember the Confederate dead, but to champion the Confederate cause.

Indeed, the Arlington monument’s Latin motto is “Victrix causea Diis placuit, sed victa Catoni.” That translates into, “The winning cause pleased the Gods, but the losing cause pleased Cato” — the implication being that Cato, the stoic advocate of “freedom,” would have sided with the Confederacy.

The same is true with the Museum of the Confederacy, also in Virginia (Richmond). As Southern Exposure reported in 2000, then-candidate George W. Bush was a donor to the museum’s annual ball, which each year draws hundreds of all-white guests in period costumes.

The Museum of the Confederacy is hardly an innocent history operation: its book store is stocked with far-right literature on race and politics, and in 1993 it appointed new-Confederate
ideologue Ludwell Johnson as a “museum fellow” — author of “Is the Confederacy Obsolete?” and other calls for revival of the old Southern system.

Sometimes, the racial motives of neo-Confederate remembrances are subtle. Other times, they are crystal clear, as with the timing of the decision to adopt Confederate flags in Georgia (1956) and South Carolina (1962). Today, historians agree it was a statement of protest by white leaders against the growing civil rights movement’s attack on the South’s Jim Crow system.

So McDonnell’s antics are hardly new, or news, in the South. But the scandal does pose some hard questions for Republicans and conservatives: How will such thinly-veiled racial codes by Southern politicians play out nationally? What does this do to their efforts to reach moderates and independents?

And as the South and country grow more racially and ethnically diverse, how do appeals to Old South racial politics help conservatives’ long-term political prospects?

IMAGE: Painting of Nathan Bedford Forrest, leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee and Confederate cavalry leader. Forrest has more historical markers in the country than any other figure, according to historian James Loewen.

Today is Census Day. Yes, it’s also April Fool’s Day (whose bright idea was that?), but the 2010 Census count is serious business.

Why? For one, the economy. Communities simply can’t afford not to be counted in the 2010 Census — especially in the wake of the Great Recession.

As the Census Bureau has taken pains to point out, each year over $400 billion from 215 federal programs flows to states based on Census data.
That’s money that goes to roads, schools, hospitals and other critical community needs.

This is especially important to areas still reeling from lost jobs, shuttered homes and lost tax revenue from the economic downturn. Losing their fair share of federal funds would plunge local budgets deeper into the red and make a tough economic situation even worse.

And like voting, every person counts. Think that you’re just one person, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t get your Census form back in the mail? Think again: A recent study by the Brookings Institution found that, for every person not counted in the Census, states stand to lose up to $1,000 in Medicaid funding alone.

A VICIOUS CYCLE? The Economy and the Census

Unfortunately, the bad economy also puts areas at higher risk of being undercounted in the Census. Looking at North Carolina as a case study, the Institute for Southern Studies released a study this week revealing how job losses, home foreclosures and other economic dislocation puts hard-hit N.C. counties at risk of not being fully counted in 2010.

North Carolina — already struggling from massive job losses in manufacturing earlier this decade — has been hammered by the recession. Twenty-eight counties have unemployment rates of 13 percent or higher. Plant closings have wiped out up to one out of 10 jobs in some counties.

And while the housing crisis hasn’t hit N.C. like California or Florida, the state’s been far from immune. Home foreclosures rose 136 percent between January 2009 and January 2010. Over a third of North Carolina counties have seen 10 percent or more houses go under since 2005.

This economic upheaval poses a big risk to the 2010 Census count. Years of research by Census experts have shown that dislocation makes an area much more likely to not be fully counted.

The most obvious example is home foreclosures. In North Carolina, 5 percent or more of homes are vacant in over a third of the state’s Census tracts. Census forms mailed to those houses likely won’t reach anyone, and Census outreach staff will have a hard time finding them, too.

But vacant homes aren’t the only way the economic woes can hurt the Census count. Laid off workers may suddenly move to a cheaper house or find a new job, making them harder for the Census to find. Job losses and poverty can lead to homelessness or moving in with family members — both of which, Census data shows, increase a person’s risk of not being counted.

It’s a vicious cycle: Communities struggling the most from job losses and lost homes are at greatest risk of not getting counted by the Census — putting our most vulnerable residents in danger of losing the funding and programs they need.

REPRESENT! The Census and Politics

The 2010 Census count is important for another reason: politics. After the 2010 Census data is collected, Washington will send the data back to the states, who will then use the information to redraw political lines — and determine how you get represented.

At the federal level, Census data will be used for reapportionment: deciding which states gain, and which states lose, Congressional seats and Electoral College votes for president.

Right now, Southern states are projected to pick up six Congressional seats: three in Texas, and one each in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

That’s the biggest gain of any region in the country: Western states are likely to pick up four Congressional seats. The Northeast is projected to lose four, and the Midwest five — part of a decades-long shift of political power to the South and West.

At the state level, the 2010 Census count will be used for redistricting: the drawing of new political lines that determine how you will be represented.

As the Brennan Center points out in its excellent guide to redistricting, in most states — and all but one in the South — the battles in drawing those lines are fought out in the state legislature by whoever is in office in 2011 (another reason the 2010 elections are so important).

And as anyone who remembers the 2003 Texas battle, when Democratic lawmakers fled the state and holed up in an Oklahoma hotel to protest what they charged was a Republican power grab, the struggles to redraw political lines can get pretty intense.

The stakes are even higher in Southern states, where legal challenges to the Voting Rights Act have thrown questions of racial equity and representation into the center of the redistricting debate.

WILL EVERYONE GET COUNTED?

Fortunately, a network of government, faith and civic groups has stepped up efforts to make sure everyone gets counted. The Census has rolled out a major advertising campaign, including the much-discussed $340 million Super Bowl ad.

Grassroots groups are using even more innovative approaches: In Wake County, North Carolina, African-American ministers were deputized as “Soul Census Ambassadors” to reach out to “Hard-to-Count” populations.

So far, the Census is reporting a 52 percent “mail participation” rate nationally. That’s a new statistic the Census created for 2010 that takes out the bad addresses caused by the housing crisis.

Upper Midwest states are firmly in the lead, with “participation” rates of 60 percent or more. Deep South states are lagging behind the national average.

As households continue to mail back their forms, the Census will be dispatching armies of outreach workers to catch those who haven’t yet replied. It will be a massive undertaking, complicated by a dismal economy and political hysteria.

But the message to residents and communities is clear: In 2010, getting counted is more important than ever.

Yesterday, the Institute for Southern Studies released a report showing how the economic crisis could spell trouble for the 2010 Census count, looking at the example of recession-rocked North Carolina.

You can read the full report here, and check out news coverage of the study here, here and here.

Here’s the upshot: Census experts know that economic woes — losing a job, losing a home, falling into poverty — all make Census counts more difficult.

Some of the reasons are obvious: When you have to give up your home and the household is vacant, that makes it hard for Census forms in the mail, or outreach workers on foot, to reach you.

But vacant homes aren’t the only problem. Getting laid off from your job might cause you to move in with family across town to trim expenses. Being in poverty often means living in multi-family dwellings, where it’s easy for Census forms to get lost.

And overall — as the Tea Party phenomenon is teaching us this year — disenchanted people have less interest in returning forms or answering Census door-knockers.

Yet despite this knowledge, much of the Census Bureau’s targeting for “Hard-to-Count” populations doesn’t factor in the Great Recession or housing crisis. The government has developed fantastic databases showing which Census tracts had high “Hard-to-Count” populations in 2000, but that doesn’t reflect the immense dislocation that’s happened since.

Our report ranked all 100 counties in North Carolina to determine which stood at the greatest risk of being undercounted when you factor in recent economic changes. Here’s a helpful North Carolina Census Index to get a sense of what’s at stake:

NORTH CAROLINA 2010 CENSUS INDEX

Amount of federal funds given to U.S. states in 2008 (the latest data available) that were based on data collected by the U.S. Census: $446.7 billion

Amount of federal funds that North Carolina received in 2008 based on U.S. Census data: $11.7 billion

North Carolina’s national rank among states receiving the most federal funds based on Census data: 13th

Estimated amount of federal funding that North Carolina will lose in Medicaid funds alone for each person not counted in the 2010 Census: $987

Year in which North Carolina’s state legislative districts will begin to be redrawn based on data collected from the 2010 Census: 2011

North Carolina’s average unemployment rate in 2008: 6.2

The state’s unemployment rate in January 2010: 11.1

Rank of North Carolina nationally among states with biggest increases in unemployment since 2008: 6th

Number of North Carolina homes that began foreclosure proceedings between January 2005 and January 2010: 260,667

Percent increase in number of N.C. foreclosures between January 2009 and January 2010: 136

Out of 1,564 Census tracts in North Carolina, number in which 5% or more of the housing units are estimated to be vacant: 340

Number in which 10% or more are vacant: 94

Percent by which the African-American population nationally is estimated to have been undercounted in the 2000 Census: 2.7

Number of people that represents: 628,000

Rank of African Americans among racial/ethnic groups undercounted in the 2000 Census: 1

Percent of North Carolina counties where the share of the population that is African-American is higher than the national average: 61

Percent of houses nationally that returned Census forms in 2000: 67

Percent of houses in North Carolina that returned Census forms in 2000: 64

North Carolina’s rank nationally among states and the District of Columbia for percent of 2000 Census forms returned: 42nd

Percent of N.C. counties in which 2000 Census mail response rates were below the national average: 84

For more data and information on sources, read the full report [pdf].

As the nation prepares for Census Day on April 1, the Institute has released a new report [pdf] which finds that areas of North Carolina are at high risk of not being fully counted in the 2010 Census due to the economic recession and housing crisis that have hammered parts of the state.

The study, “Counting in a Crisis,” measures how North Carolina counties have been affected by job losses, business layoffs and home foreclosures — economic troubles that officials say make it difficult to get an accurate Census count.

Using these economic warning signs combined with other indicators, the report ranks all 100 N.C. counties by their risk of being undercounted in the 2010 Census. An undercount could cause counties to lose millions of federal dollars tied to Census data.

This is the first study to show how the “Great Recession” and housing crisis put communities at risk of not getting a full Census count in 2010, and hopefully will be a wake-up call to officials and civic leaders to redouble their outreach efforts in hard-hit areas in North Carolina and the country.

You can read the full report here [pdf]. Among the findings of the report:

A FULL CENSUS COUNT IS CRITICAL: Over $400 billion in federal funds each year are distributed to states based on Census data. In 2008, North Carolina received $11.7 billion in funding tied to the Census. The state stands to lose $987 in Medicaid funding alone for each person who’s not counted in 2010.

JOB LOSSES PUT COUNTIES AT RISK: 28 counties have jobless rates of 13 percent or higher, and in 20 counties the rate has increased three percentage points or more in the last year. Mass layoffs have devastated counties like Rowan and Scotland, where nearly 10 percent of the workforce has been hit by permanent job cuts.

THE HOUSING CRISIS POSES A BIG CHALLENGE: Home foreclosures make it hard for Census forms and outreach staff to reach residents. Since 2005, 37 N.C. counties have seen 10 percent or more of residents’ homes go into foreclosure. In 10 counties, the foreclosure rate has shot up 90 percent or more over the last year.

Here’s a map of how North Carolina’s counties rank in terms of economic dislocation:

The report also shows why Census officials, state leaders and civic groups need to consider recent changes in the economy if they want to boost Census participation.

Many Census outreach efforts in 2010 have targeted areas that had large “Hard-to-Count” populations in the 2000 Census. But using data from 2000 may miss areas hard-hit by the recession and housing crisis, which started in 2007. For example, the Census Bureau’s list of 25 N.C. counties with the largest “Hard-to-Count” populations doesn’t include 15 counties that have lost the most jobs and homes since 2005.

Here’s a map showing the overall undercount risk North Carolina counties face when you combine economic and other risk indicators:

This much is clear: In the coming months, an accurate Census count will depend on groups reaching out to the new “Hard-to-Count” populations created by the big changes in North Carolina’s economy.

If hard-hit counties end up losing federal funding because job layoffs and vacant homes depressed their Census count, it will make a bad situation even worse.

For a sortable online table ranking all 100 North Carolina counties by 10 Census risk factors, visit here.

As we head towards April 1, 2010 Census Day (sidenote: whose bright idea was it to put it on April Fool’s Day?!), the Census Bureau has launched a nifty mapping tool so you can see how many people in your area are mailing back their Census forms.

The national “mail participation rate” as of today is 34 percent. What does that mean? Out of the millions of forms the Census Bureau mailed out earlier this month and were not returned (because of vacancy, wrong address, etc.), that’s the percentage of households that returned a completed form.

So how is your state doing so far? Here’s a chart showing where states rank as of today:

As you can see, states in the Upper Midwest/Great Plains are creaming the rest of the country. The highest-participating state, North Dakota, is getting counted at twice the rate of the lowest-ranked state, Alaska.

As a region, the South is falling behind, echoing our earlier analysis that the South ran the greatest risk of being undercounted in the 2010 Census. Seven out of 13 Southern states presently rank below the national average.

You’ll notice that there are many more states above the national average than below it. How can that be? It’s because some of the largest states — including the four biggest, California, Florida, New York and Texas — are all stalling in getting their forms back, pushing down the national average.

NEW MATH AT THE CENSUS AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

One important thing to know about this data: “Mail participation rate” is a new statistic, replacing the old “mail response rate” used in the last Census. What’s the difference, and why the change?

The old stat, “mail response rate,” was simple: It took how many forms the Census mailed out, and compared it to how many they got back. Mail 1,000 forms to a town, get back 600, that’s a 60% “response rate.”

But with the recent home foreclosure crisis, the Census Bureau realized lots of forms would end up at vacant or otherwise “bad” addresses, pushing down an area’s “response rate.”

So they created “mail participation rate,” which looks at how many forms are mailed and don’t get returned due to vacancies or other problems, and compares it to how many get mailed back. Under the new figures, if the Census mails 1,000 forms, 200 end up being vacant houses (a realistic figure for places with lots of foreclosures), and 600 forms come back, the response rate is now 75 percent (600/800).

The new math will boost morale in areas rocked by high foreclosures, ensuring they won’t be penalized for lots of recession-caused bad addresses as they compete to get a higher rate.

The downside, though, is that it may artificially inflate the numbers and mask how much the housing crisis and recession are dampening response for the 2010 Census. Areas with a high “participation” rate may in fact be missing lots of residents who lost their homes, putting them at a higher risk of being undercounted.

That will make the second phase of the 2010 Census — door-to-door outreach — all the more important to ensure everyone is fully and accurately counted.

This afternoon, the Senate will take a final vote on the health reform bill before sending it back to the House for several minor fixes. Two Democratic U.S. senators are expected to vote “nay” on the reconciliation bill — although their opposition will only be partially due to health reform.

Sens. Ben Nelson (NE) and Blanche Lincoln (AR) are opposed to the bill due to a largely overshadowed, but just as important, measure that would dramatically reform the student loan industry.

[UPDATE 3/25 3:20pm: As expected, the Senate passed the bill 56-43, with Nelson, Lincoln and Sen. Mark Pryor, also from Arkansas, the only Democrats voting “nay.”]

As Facing South reported, just two weeks ago six senators wrote to President Obama outlining their “concerns” over the loan reform proposal that would stop private lenders from being allowed to originate student loans, which they make virtually risk-free thanks to federal subsidies.

By Wednesday, most of the reluctant Democratic senators had shifted gears and signaled their support for reform, mostly to avoid the negative optics of being on the wrong side of health reform.

But Lincoln and Nelson appear to be holding out in defense of the for-profit student loan industry. Why?

PERSONAL AND POLITICAL TIES

The answer is likely found in a report released this week by Kevin Connor of the Institute for America’s Future, which details a dense web of personal and political relationships between major private lenders and the two senators.

First the political: Lincoln and Nelson have been two of the biggest beneficiaries of campaign contributions from the student loan industry:

Nelson, for one, is a top recipient of Nelnet [a large lender based in Nebraska] cash. The company’s PAC has given him $19,000 over the years, and executives Jay and Mike Dunlap gave him $3,000 late last year. Sallie Mae’s PAC maxed out to Senator Blanche Lincoln’s primary account in 2009.

But it’s also personal, thanks to a revolving door between Lincoln and Nelson’s senate offices and the lobbying operations of the student lenders.

As part of a massive $15 million lobbying push, Connor notes that the loan companies “made a number of key lobbying hires in order to open lines of communication” to target senators:

Among their hires: Kelly Bingel. Bingel is Senator Blanche Lincoln’s former chief of staff and a longtime aide to the Senator. She is lobbying on behalf of an obscure group called the “Student Loan Coalition” and John Dean, a lobbyist for the Consumer Bankers Association. The CBA’s membership includes Citigroup, Chase, Wells Fargo, and a number of other large student lenders.

A recent Roll Call article described Bingel as Lincoln’s “alter ego.”[…] Lincoln is the godmother of Bingel’s son [and] both members of the same sorority, Chi Omega.

Another connection: Lottie Shackelford, one of Lincoln’s major donors, is a lobbyist for Sallie Mae, the biggest student lender in the country lobbyist. Shackelford, the former mayor of Little Rock and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, has given Lincoln $3,750 over the past five years, including $2,000 in 2009. She first began lobbying for Sallie Mae in 2007.

Sen. Nelson has similar ties: Amy Tejral, his former legislative director, is now a lobbyist for Nelnet, Nelson’s largest campaign contributor and a lending company with a strong interest in maintaining the status quo.

ARVEST BANK AND THE WALTON EMPIRE

Sen. Lincoln has another close tie to the student loan industry back in her home state not mentioned in Connor’s report: Arvest Bank, based in Fayetteville, Ark. and chaired by none other than Jim C. Walton, youngest heir to the Wal-Mart fortune and ranked by Forbes as the 11th-richest person in the world.

According to Arkansas state records [pdf], Arvest is by far the biggest student lender in Arkansas, responsible for $9.6 million in student loans last school year and $9.2 million in 2009-2010.

Arvest is also a big supporter of Sen. Blanche Lincoln. According to OpenSecrets.org, individuals and PACs connected to Arvest were among the top 50 contributors to Lincoln’s campaign committee in the 2010 election cycle, pitching $11,700 into her campaign coffers.

But the big gun here is Mr. Walton, whose political clout in Arkansas and nationally goes far beyond Arvest Bank. Wal-Mart has been the 3rd-biggest financial supporter of Lincoln’s political career, investing $75,500 in her since she took office in 1989.

Jim Walton doesn’t give much money to Democrats — only 1% of his donations since 1980 — but he’s personally made an exception for Sen. Lincoln, personally donating $4,600 to Lincoln in her last election run.

But that’s obviously just a fraction of Walton’s political influence. Over the last 12 years, he’s personally donated $51,550 to the Arvest and Wal-Mart PACs, significant chunks of which made their way back to Lincoln.

And with the Waltons, politicians are always aware there’s plenty more where that came from — especially after the Supreme Court expanded the ability of corporate players to influence elections.

Sensing the opportunity, Arkansas Lt. Governor Bill Halter — who launched a surprise primary challenge to Lincoln this spring — has announced his full support of the student loan reform measure.

Democrats called it “historic,” Republicans called it “armageddon,” and Vice President Biden was caught whispering to President Obama that, in his estimation, it was “a big f***ing deal.”

But to over a dozen newspapers around the country, the House’s passage of a landmark health bill on Sunday was barely a blip on their radar — and definitely had little news value compared to local Boy Scout awards, brewing debates over seat belts on buses, or the dreaded prospect of snow flurries.

The Wrap looked at 406 newspaper covers from Monday to see what stories were featured on the front page. All but 15 featured a story about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act the day after the bill’s passage.

Here’s the list, along with what stories they DID feature as the top story the next day:

Benton County Daily Herald, Bentonville, Arkansas
Spring
snowstorm.

Northwest Arkansas Times, Fayetteville,
Arkansas
“Overnight accumulation leaves Northwest Arkansas
roads slippery.”

The Morning News, Rogers, Arkansas
Spring
snowstorm.

Stars and Stripes, Washington, D.C.
NCAA
“bracket busters.”

Palm Beach Daily News, Palm Beach,
Florida
“Census Forms Arriving in the Mail.”

Tampa
Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Florida
A story on Hollywood’s
suddenly feeble leading men pegged to Ben Stiller’s “Greenberg”
character.

Commercial-News, Danville, Illinois
Photos
of a maple syrup open house.

Herald-Press, Huntington,
Indiana
School staff reduction.

Peru Tribune,
Peru, Indiana
A local cattle show.

Wabash
Plain Dealer, Wabash, Indiana
Fatal car crash at
intersection kills two.

Cecil Whig, Elkton, Maryland
Fire
destroys home and runaway emu found.

AMnewyork, New York
City
Teen subway mugging.

The High Point
Enterprise, High Point, North Carolina
“Bus seat belts not
likely.”

The Mount Airy News, Mount Airy, North Carolina
“Boy
Scouts learn skills at Merit Badge College.”

Bluffton
Today, Bluffton, South Carolina
Construction of a new middle
school gym.

To be fair, most of these are smaller operations that likely had early deadlines which made covering a late-breaking story difficult.

But if you go to the Newseum website, you’ll notice that many small papers DID manage to get something about the vote on their front pages, most of them by running an AP wire story.

It’s also notable that eight came from Southern states where Congressional members went against the grain in voting against health care.

Now, back to those Boy Scout merit badges …

Sunday afternoon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi marched to the capitol arm-in-arm with Rep. John Lewis of Georgia for the health care vote — a bit of political theater designed to draw parallels between health reform and the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

Tea party protesters unwittingly helped make the connection when they shouted “nigger” at Lewis during a Saturday rally. But whether or not HR 3590 should be put on the same level as, say, the Civil Rights Act, one point is indisputable: Yesterday, as in 1964, the South ended up on the wrong side of history.