Leslie Graves's blog

I've been playing around with a few formats on Sunshine Review for capturing updated information about the state budget crises in the various states that are experiencing them:

State budget crisis, 2009-2010 is in a rough, preliminary form. What information should the chart try to capture?

Information on the manifold issues with the California budget is more developed. What should be added? Are any of the major proposals for addressing the $42 billion shortfall missing?

What do you know about your state's budget that could be added?

The progressive movement has a small group of very wealthy donors who:

• Focus on state-based infrastructure.
• Invest in a capacities-based model of building new political infrastructure.
• Build outside the Democratic Party. This gives these donors many more opportunities to ensure that the organizations they fund stay true to the political ideas they care about.
• Are mission-based. They are investing because they care about the results, not because they care about transient power, glory or bragging rights.
• Provide day-in and day-out leadership.

Pro-liberty forces can expect losses in the future that make November 4 look like a stroll in the park in the absence of:

• Empowered, mission-based leadership from donors.
• A focus on investments in states.
• The same quantity of cold hard cash in infrastructure.  The left's investment in this area has exceeded investments by those who are pro-liberty in the last four years by at least ten-to-one.
• Adoption of a capacity-based perspective on how to effectively engage in the modern political environment. 

There are just as many very wealthy people who believe in the pro-liberty vision as there are very wealthy donors who believe in progressive ideals.  Does the pro-liberty side have a group of visionary, committed donors like Tim Gill and Pat Stryker in Colorado?

Many people in the traditional center-right movement who have access to donors appear at times to be conveying a message to those donors resembling:

• If you give us more money, we'll take care of this problem for you.
• Otherwise, don't worry your pretty little head.

What must instead urgently be conveyed to pro-liberty benefactors is a vision that they:

• Adopt an empowered leadership approach to political investments.
• Invest in their state, looking for other donors to collaborate with.
• Invest outside the party structure so people and organizations can be held accountable to a mission-based, pro-liberty perspective.

I believe in political ideals that assert the fundamental role of individual liberty in a society where human beings flourish.  I also believe that the alternative progressive vision will lead to widespread misery, against the wishes and hopes of those who promote this way of ordering society.    The stakes are high.   We need empowered, active donors to create a level playing field in the contest between these two competing visions.