Americans everywhere are fed up with the state of politics. At the federal level, political paralysis and polarization prevent Congress from solving pressing issues every day.  At the state level, it can be just as frustrating.

Yet, while polarization and paralysis impede the progress of many state legislatures, one in particular seems to be heading in the right direction and actually getting things done -- California.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YuReziwss0

Sen. Bernie Sanders is currently fighting to transition the US to a single-payer health care system – a system whereby the government provides one plan for insurance coverage to every single American. While it may struggle to gain traction at the national level, California may offer Sanders an ideal starting point.

A Gallup poll published Wednesday shows record support for marijuana legalization in the US. According to Gallup, support is at 64 percent, up 4 points from last year and 14 points compared to 2011.

This follows a mostly consistent trend as more states consider their own policy on recreational and medical marijuana. Eight states, plus the District of Columbia, have laws legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

Gary Johnson and Jill Stein plan to file a cert petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on October 26 in Johnson v. Commission on Presidential Debates. On the same day, Johnson will hold a rally on the steps of the Court.

This case should not be confused with Level the Playing Field v FEC, which is still in U.S. District Court. Both cases challenge the presidential debate exclusion, but the two cases depend on different legal theories.

As we do each election cycle, FairVote has projected the partisan results of the next elections to the U.S. House of Representatives, and the results show a shocking lack of competition or fair representation. Since our first edition in 1997, we have called this biennial report Monopoly Politics - with good reason.

Independent gubernatorial candidate and Maine State Treasurer Terry Hayes released a statement Tuesday condemning the delay and potential repeal of ranked choice voting (RCV) by state lawmakers.

“Maine voters deserve more voice and more choice in our democracy,” said Hayes.

The first official debate between the top four Democrats running for California governor took place in Anaheim over the weekend.

The event was hosted by the National Union of Healthcare Workers and fittingly, the only issue the candidates had significant disagreements on, was healthcare.

John Chiang, Anthonio Villaraigosa, Delaine Eastin and Gavin Newsom debated affordable housing, immigration and Washington D.C., among other issues.

VILLARAIGOSA "NO PIE IN THE SKY"

For someone who ardently believed in witches and sea monsters, the puritan firebrand Cotton Mather was a surprising advocate for advanced medical science.

When some sailors brought smallpox to Boston in 1721, Mather forcefully promoted a new and dubious-sounding preventative, called “inoculation.”

He had first heard about the procedure from one of his African slaves.

The process involved smearing puss from the corpuscles of infected people into wounds deliberately cut into healthy people. Understandably, lots of 18th Century Bostonians thought this idea was nuts.

Washington is a mess. Our politics doesn’t work. Politicians are pointing at the voters as the problem -- that somehow we’ve become less civil, more polarized and less able to come together across partisan divisions.

But we know that’s not the case.

I love baseball. I really love baseball. I love that when I turn on a game I see the same players every day and the images of thousands of people in the stands whom I will never see again.

I love bearing witness to the joy on a young girl’s face as she catches a foul ball unexpectedly in a life changing ‘dream come true’ instant. I love the role weather plays in a game, the umpires who often frustrate me, and the fact that the players hit a ball in the hope to get “home.”