Buck brought this LA Times Article up last month as a sign that the Give Up philosophy of state activism and a retreat from seeking federal solutions to problems is historically common strategy to progressive movements.

But a counter-cyclical trend toward government activism is thriving in the states governed by Democrats and moderate Republicans. This isn't a new pattern. In earlier periods when conservatives controlled Washington, such as the 1890s, 1920s and 1980s, state-level activism flourished, notes Richard P. Nathan, director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York. And these state initiatives, Nathan argues, usually provided the foundation for the next surge in federal activism.

"When conservative coalitions controlled national offices, programs that were incubated, tested and debugged in liberal states became the basis for later national action," Nathan, a former aide to President Nixon, writes in a paper to be released this month.

Nathan has a strong case. State-level innovations such as child labor laws and public health reforms during the late 19th century helped inspire the Progressive Era outpouring of federal initiatives under presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal built on state experiments in the 1920s that established minimum labor standards and public relief for the destitute.

Further, there is evidence liberals have become too reliant on federal policymaking to the detriment of our goals. The reason? The great society got us hooked on the federal government so we failed to maintain state-based power structures. In the absence of federal control for such a long period of time, however, states are reasserting themselves as powerhouses of progressive goals and strategies.


Two of the most intriguing, and widespread, priorities in the activist states are the promotion of energy independence and the combating of global warming. Here the contrast with Washington is especially stark.

Apart from some subsidies for the development of cleaner energy, the energy legislation Bush and the GOP Congress fashioned last summer excluded every systematic effort to reduce the emission of gases associated with global warming. Caps on carbon emissions, increases in automotive fuel economy, requirements for utilities to generate more electricity from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind: all were rejected.

But in the states, those ideas are advancing — under both Republican and Democratic governors. "There is ever more interest and states are imitating and learning from each other," says Judi Greenwald, director of innovative solutions at the nonpartisan Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Twenty-one states have approved measures requiring utilities to generate more of their electricity from renewable energy sources, which would reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuels. In a parallel initiative, the Western Governors' Assn. is completing a plan to increase the production of renewable energy more than tenfold across the 18 Western states by 2015; by then, it hopes renewable sources will provide as much as one-fifth of the region's power.

Ten states are poised to follow California in mandating that cars and trucks reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by 30% by 2016 — if the California standard survives a court challenge from the auto industry.
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But the ideas now germinating in the states may increase the pressure on Washington to address these concerns — especially when the cycle in national politics next tilts back toward greater federal activism. When the countryside rumbles, sooner or later the capital always shakes.

Sounds like Give Up no? Give Up on the federal government, blue states rule!