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I'm Magna Chakra-Bardi, and this is the Jackpot, where on-point news analyst Jack Beattie helps us connect history, literature, and politics in a way that brings his unique

clarity to the world we live in now. Hello there, Jack. Hello, Megna. We are at episode

96. What's your headline? Across the panhandle. Okay, many possible panhandles come to mind. Which one

are you talking about?

Well, you know, with Washington, D.C. paralyzed, the locus of remedy and reform is shifting to the states,

or at least states that are of a mind to do that. And a recent jackpot, we talked about the state of Washington, how it had adopted the nation's

first social insurance program for long-term care for the elderly and disabled. Crucial reform

because only 4% of Americans have private insurance. and majority of Americans wrongly believe that

Medicare will pay for long-term care. It won't. Medicaid will, but only after you've essentially

spent every dime you have except what's in your house. So Americans don't understand the need. They think things are

going to be fine. They're not Washington State acted to deal with that problem with its social

insurance scheme for the elderly and disabled. So now we leave Washington State and cross the 45-mile Idaho Panhandle to Montana.

And there, again, we see a reform that sort of lights up ever so slightly a possible America. You know, in the darkness of this Trump

time, we need to look ahead. We need to think, my God, something else is possible.

Yeah.

And in Montana, there's a proposed ballot initiative that would essentially deny corporations the power to spend in political campaigns.

Huh.

Now that would fly right in the face of the Citizens United 2010 Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates to corporate money in politics. But the Montana plan

tries to step around that whole, you know, First Amendment issue by going to a power that the

state has. States have the power to charter corporations. And the Montana plan says,

in their website, they say, we will stop corporate and dark money cold. If Montana can do it, your state can too. And they go on, citizens

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