* Patty Berg is officially out of the Insurance Commissioner Race. She hadn't been really campaigning, and her campaign account shows less than $3,000. Her listed consultants are now informing reporters that she is officially out of the race.
There, I said it. Former Asm. John Laird is neither flashy nor overly charismatic. But when it comes to quietly doing the work of the people, nobody works harder, knows his stuff better, or really understands the budget better than John Laird. And honestly, we really need him in the Senate.
So, as the Calitics editorial board has pointed out before, the Legislature should approve the nomination of Sen. Abel Maldonado to Lt. Governor. And while the race is going to be competitive, Laird has the horses to win the race:
Laird, a Santa Cruz Democrat, said Monday that the poll gave him a lead "in the low single digits." Respondents were asked twice about the theoretical match-up, first near the beginning of the call with pollsters, then again "after every conceivable thing was thrown and him and me both," Laird said. He said the lead grew slightly after potential negatives were given to respondents. (CapWkly)
This is a winnable race. And a winnable race for a solid progressive that will work his ass off to improve this state. For me, it's an easy call what you do here. But some see otherwise, saying that it's too big of a risk, that it gives up too much. Here's Asm. Pedro Nava:
I will be voting "no" to confirm state Sen. Abel Maldonado to the second-highest constitutional office in California, a heartbeat from the governor, that of lieutenant governor.
Much has been made of his congenial personality, his friendly demeanor and his one vote to increase the minimum wage. But in order to take Sen. Maldonado's true measure, you need to examine over 150 votes on issues of great significance to all Californians - laws that impact farmworkers, health care, civil rights, labor, women, consumers, seniors and the environment. (SacBee)
Look, if given the choice, I doubt there are too many people that would vote for Abel Maldonado for dog catcher around here. Yet, that isn't what this is about. This is a confirmation hearing, not a test of whether you like the guy. Clearly, progressives aren't going to like him, but the same was said of Bruce McPherson when he took over the (arguably more important) SecState gig. The Assembly confirmed him then, including a vote from Asm. Nava. As Sen. Steinberg mentioned last week, this is a vote about whether Maldonado is competent to assume the LG job, and it's hard to argue that Maldonado is any more or less competent to assume that rather powerless gig than any of the candidates in the race for 2010.
Sen. Maldonado's votes are bad. Very bad. So, let's get him out of the Senate where he is casting those votes and into a short stint as LG.
SD-15 needs John Laird. California needs John Laird. A few months of incumbency in a rather banal gig is a risk worth taking. The calculus doesn't actually seem that hard. Confirm Maldonado, and let's get to the business of electing Sen. John Laird.
I'm no fan of the current con-con initiative that's being circulated, but if this is true, it is deeply troubling:
Repair California, the Bay Area-based business group behind two initiatives that would convene a Constitutional Convention, has accused five firms of blacklisting their petitions, shouting down their volunteers, destroying valid signatures and intentionally submitting fake signatures.
"We have had hundreds of reports from all over the state," said Repair California spokesman John Grubb. "I even received a death threat."
*** *** ***
But The Economist magazine quoted Fred Kimball, owner of Kimball Petition Management, in its online edition, saying he opposed the Constitutional Convention measures and was blacklisting signature-gatherers who carried those petitions. Most are contract workers who carry multiple petitions.
The industry leaders fear a Constitutional Convention could result in reforms or the elimination of the initiative process that would hurt their business. (CoCoTimes)
Even if you are highly motivated, have great grassroots and financial networks, it is now exceedingly difficult to qualify an initiative without using paid gatherers. If the firms are blacklisting your petition and not allowing people they pay to carry yours, it is nearly impossible.
And this right here is the long-awaited logical conclusion of where the initiative process has taken us. Now not only does money play the most important role in initiatives (see PG&E's Prop 16), but the signature gatherers are now acting as a gatekeeper for innitiatives they don't like.
The process is now clearly morally and politically bankrupt. If ever there was a reason to fix the initiative system, look for this as Exhibit One.
There may be no better illustration of how corrupt our politics have become than the efforts of the Mercury Insurance Group to change a landmark consumer protection law that they are apparently violating on a regular basis. In 1988, California voters passed Proposition 103, a sweeping reform of the state's auto insurance industry. 22 years later, as insurance companies have become one of the nation's most reviled villains thanks to the murderous practices of health insurers, Mercury has put Proposition 17 on the ballot, which would raise auto insurance rates for many Californians.
Several years ago Mercury Insurance wanted to raise rates on customers who had a lapse in their insurance coverage. In 2005 California courts prevented this from happening. In Nevada, rates increased by 73% on customers with even a day's lapse in coverage. Mercury wants to do this here in California, and authored Prop 17 to change Prop 103 to allow it.
A high-profile California insurance company that is backing a controversial insurance measure on the June ballot has engaged in practices that may be illegal, including deceptive pricing and discrimination against consumers such as active members of the military and drivers of emergency vehicles, according to a state report obtained by The Chronicle.
The report, obtained through the state Public Records Act, alleges that Mercury Insurance Group may have violated Proposition 103, the landmark consumer protection law approved by voters in 1988. The measure limited the cost of policies and made civil rights and antitrust laws apply to the insurance industry.
The report referenced in the article shows that Mercury is the embodiment of the "evil insurance company" trope that has been so widely discussed in recent years. They're charging higher rates in violation of the law until they get caught and slapped on the wrist by Steve Poizner, the state's Insurance Commissioner and wannabe governor.
And what does Mercury do with those ill-gotten gains? Turn around and spend it on getting Prop 17 on the ballot and approved in order to legalize some of their most odious and destructive practices.
Mercury and Prop 17 are just one way in which the June election will be a battle over corporate power. Prop 16 is another effort by a large corporation, PG&E, to change laws and undo democratic rights that have obstructed their pursuit of limitless profits. And Prop 15 offers a chance to fight back by creating a publicly funded election for the Secretary of State races in 2014 and 2018 as a proof of concept to show that clean money can work in California - and that it is desperately needed.
The financial news in recent weeks has been dominated by concerns about the possibility of "sovereign default" in several key Eurozone countries. Often known as the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain, sometimes called PIIGS when you throw Italy into the mix), their high levels of unemployment and debt are claimed to be a ticking time bomb for the euro currency and the European Union as a whole.
In recent weeks Greece has been forced into promising "austerity" - meaning huge budget cuts - in an effort to bring its debt levels down. Portugal is exploring similar options after a debt sale didn't go as well as expected, and now Spain is expected to follow suit with the Socialist government proposing its own spending freeze.
The parallels to California are obvious, but that doesn't mean they'll always be drawn properly. One observer that does so is Gregor Macdonald, who points out that California's problem is owed largely to overdependence on cheap oil:
I've identified seven large US states by four criteria that are sure to cause trouble for Washington's political class at least for the next 3 years, through the 2012 elections. These are states with big populations, very high rates of unemployment, and which have already had to borrow big to pay unemployment claims. In addition, as a kind of Gregor.us kicker, I've thrown in a fourth criteria to identify those states that are large net importers of energy. Because the step change to higher energy prices played, and continues to play, such a large role in the developed world's financial crisis it's instructive to identify those US states that will struggle for years against the rising tide of higher energy costs....
The seven states to make my list are California, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, and New Jersey. Each has a population above 8 million people. Each has had to borrow more than a billion dollars, so far, to pay claims out of their now bankrupt unemployment insurance fund. Also, each state currently registers broad, underemployment above 15% as indicated by the U-6 measure for the States. And finally, each state is a large net importer of either oil, natural gas, electricity, or all three of these energy sources....
21st century energy prices overlaid on a 20th century economy? That's no fun at all. The mainstream economics profession, perhaps unsurprisingly, still does not pay enough attention to the interweaving of long-term stagnant wage growth, higher energy inputs, and the resulting credit creation that OECD countries took as the solution to resolve that squeeze....
My seven states of energy debt represent a full 35% of the total US population. As with other US states, they face looming policy clashes between protected state and city workers on one hand, and the growing ranks of the private economy's underemployed on the other. The recent circus at the LA City Council meeting was a nice foreshadowing that the days of unlimited borrowing by governments-against future growth based on cheap energy-is coming to an end. Washington can print up dollars and fund these states for years, if it so chooses. But just as with the 70 million people in Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, the 108 million people in these seven large states are probably facing even higher levels of unemployment as austerity measures finally slam into their cashless coffers, and reduce their ability to borrow.
Over the flip I explain what all this means, and why Europe's response to the problems with the PIGS shows why California and the US should not repeat it.
That's the report coming out of a meeting yesterday in Southern California with Diane Watson, who currently represents the 33rd District in Congress. A Swing State Project user diary from someone who attended the meeting, augmented by our own BruinKid who also was at the meeting and wrote about it in the comments to yesterday's open thread, explains the story:
Just left a CA delegation meeting with Cong. Diane Watson was quietly telling Members that she will not be running for re-election.
Word is that Former CA Assembly Speaker Karen Bass will immediately enter the race following Watson's announcement. Further proof of this plan --- Bass is scheduled to be in DC next week for a series of meet and greet events with potential financial supporters.
This would be a welcome development. Karen Bass brought a lot of progressive potential to the Speaker's office in 2008, but ran immediately into the brick wall of the state budget crisis, the 2/3rds rule, and the breakdown of California's system of government, all of which frustrated her agenda.
Term limits mean we'll never know how Bass would have taken those lessons and applied them to state government. But if the reports are true, she would be able to bring the experience of trying to revive an economy and protect the most vulnerable people in a truly broken political system to another institution, the US Congress, that is quickly going the way of the California Legislature in terms of Republican obstruction and inability to properly function.
Bass would certainly be both more progressive and more activist than Watson, who has not been very visible in her district in recent years. Bass would be a strong advocate for federal aid to state budgets, as she's seen the impact of budget cuts on core services.
The filing deadline is February 16th, just over two weeks from now, so we will soon learn whether these reports are indeed accurate. If so, the California Congressional delegation and the people of the 33rd District will be getting a good progressive leader to represent them in Congress.
The only downside, and this isn't Bass's fault, is that it shows California government, once regarded as the nation's best, is experiencing a worsening brain drain. Bass would join former Lt. Governor John Garamendi in going to Congress, and many other legislators are looking for more stable positions in local government. Term limits in particular have eviscerated our government, making it almost impossible for anyone to get the kind of experience and knowledge that is needed to help fix our ever-worsening economic and political crisis.
In some ways, the Legislature is becoming a kind of political graduate school, where those interested in public service go to learn the craft of representative government and then scramble to find a position in a tight job market that has a glut of folks competing for positions. That's not the kind of governance that the nation's largest state and one of the world's largest and most important economies needs.
Conservatives would claim that term limits are doing their job and making it difficult for "career politicians" to hog elected offices, and enables citizen representation. Not only has that not been the actual outcome of term limits, the notion that it produces citizen government is particularly absurd given the fact that huge sums of money are still needed to win a state legislative race. The same conservatives who claim term limits are needed to produce citizen government also support the Citizens United decision that allows almost unlimited corporate spending to influence our elections.
In short, while community organizers like Karen Bass are pushed out of the legislature just as they've come to understand the nature of our problems and have started to envision lasting solutions, the only "citizens" who actually have lasting power and influence in this state are the large corporations. Once again it becomes clear that to the right-wing, feudalism is the ultimate goal, not democracy. Power and representation should only go to the wealthy, and the rest of us should be grateful for the privilege of serving them.
Anyhow, rant over. I wish Karen Bass well should she decide to run for Congress. The House will be a better place with her in it.
If all goes right, this video window will allow you to watch the California Young Democrats Bay Area Regional Statewide Candidate Forum that's starting at 1 pm today. I'm tweeting at http://twitter.com/Brian_Leubitz
Most of the statewide Candidates will be coming to the California Young Democrats Bay Area candidate forum on Saturday at 1PM in SF. Here's the Facebook event. If you can't make it in person, you can watch it online on VidSF or right here at Calitics. Pretty sweet. Anyway, I (Brian) will be there, so it's sure to be a blast.
Here are some links for your weekend:
* Jerry Brown's office was cleared in wrongdoing in the secret audio tapes made of calls with reporters.
* Tom Berryhill's right-wing opponent, Heidi Fuller, in the senate primary to replace Dave Cogdill, is suing to block Berryhill from the ballot. He's just now moving to the district and Fuller says that doesn't meet a one-year residency requirement. Berryhill says that the one year rule is unconstitutional under a Supreme Court case striking down a similar law in Tennessee.
* The Republican primary for the Senate race could be getting really ugly. It seems the Demon Sheep has triggered something between Campbell and Fiorina. Meanwhile, the radio right-wingers John and Ken surprised Carly Fiorina with a call from Chuck DeVore.
* Speaking of Campbell, he's going around proposing a "revenue neutral" carbon tax instead of cap and trade. His proposal is to eliminate or restructure the federal payroll tax (FICA) and replace the revenue with the carbon tax. I (Brian) won't argue with him that the carbon tax is more efficient than cap and trade, that much is abundantly clear. However, replacing FICA is a bit more troublesome.
An interesting scandal is unfolding over in the California Republican Party, involving its chair, Ron Nehring. As the SacBee reports, a San Diego Republican official is the target of a removal effort for asking questions about charges Nehring was "brutalizing a former romantic partner":
This week the San Diego Republican Party executive committee, led by Tony Krvaric, chair of the San Diego party, called a meeting for Feb. 8 to discuss the removal of Michael Crimmins, an ex-officio member of its central committee. The executive committee recommended Crimmins' expulsion, in part for sending an e-mail to state party leaders that raised concerns about behavior by Nehring and Krvaric.
Crimmins, a retired Marine Corps officer and congressional candidate in the 53rd District in San Diego County, referenced allegations, initiated in an anonymous e-mail broadly disseminated to the party and media last fall, that Nehring brutalized a former romantic partner.
Keeping it classy, Nehring is also accused of trying to intimidate the woman in question into staying silent:
A separate, anonymous counterpunch was distributed via e-mail Thursday among party activists announcing a news conference after the Feb. 8 meeting that purportedly would call for the removal of Krvaric and Nehring from their posts. One justification, the e-mail stated, was that the two men allegedly harassed Nehring's former partner for considering bringing her story to legal authorities.
This isn't exactly a "pass the popcorn" moment since we are dealing with allegations of undefined brutality against a woman, but it is revealing that Republicans are trying to keep this as quiet as possible. Instead of ensuring Nehring answers all questions, they're trying to shut down any discussion of the matter.
You know how the Republicans are all super excited to block "ObamaCare"? Which, to be honest, more resembles McCain's plan during the election than Obama's own plan. Well, this is what the tea partiers are fighting to preserve here in California:
Anthem Blue Cross is telling many of its approximately 800,000 customers who buy individual coverage -- people not covered by group rates -- that its prices will go up March 1 and may be adjusted "more frequently" than its typical yearly increases.
The insurer declined to say how high it is increasing rates. But brokers who sell these policies say they are fielding numerous calls from customers incensed over premium increases of 30% to 39%, saying they come on the heels of similar jumps last year. (LA Times)
If my own experience with Kaiser are any guide to what the individual market is as a whole, premiums have gone up around 125%. It's completely unsustainable.
I don't normally post vague, unsourced rumors, but I think this is a general sense of those around the Capitol. Specifically, the rumors of Dianne Feinstein entering the governor's race are heating up once again.
It's hard to keep genuine interest, especially from somebody as noticeable as DiFi quiet very long. However, as Robert noticed, DiFi does seem to want people to keep noticing her. I'm not sure all that much has changed since Robert wrote that post back in November, but it seems her attention to the governor gig has increased over the past few months.
So, how's that for some blind rumors on a Friday morning?
Remember last year when the Republicans laid out the price of a budget deal and it was a giant tax cut for the biggest corporations? So in the middle of a revenue crisis they forced ... less revenue. Well, imagine that you are a struggling small or medium business in California, and the Republicans gave your nemesis even more power to crush you.
* Ted Lieu is going anti-Toyota and buy-American after Toyota's recent troubles. He wants legislators to buy American cars as their "pool vehicles." Hey, the Ford Fusion Hybrid is a pretty sweet little ride.
Some Republicans, including some legislators, are doing their best to repeal one of California's landmark pieces of legislation: AB 32. The climate change bill is now finally being put into action. Arnold, while getting off to a rough start with the implementation, has allowed Mary Nichols and the team at the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to do their jobs.
But, businesses and the right, well, they are apparently a tad bit chilly and would prefer a warmer clime with less water. So, they filed an initiative that would cease implementation until unemployment reaches some arbitrary figure. Here's the title summary from the AG:
SUSPENDS AIR POLLUTION CONTROL LAWS REQUIRING MAJOR POLLUTERS TO REPORT AND REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS THAT CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING UNTIL UNEMPLOYMENT DROPS BELOW SPECIFIED LEVEL FOR FULL YEAR. INITIATIVE STATUTE.
Suspends State laws requiring reduced greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, until California's unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent or less for four consecutive quarters. Requires State to abandon implementation of comprehensive greenhouse-gas-reduction program that includes increased renewable energy and cleaner fuel requirements, and mandatory emission reporting and fee requirements for major polluters such as power plants and oil refineries, until suspension is lifted. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Potential positive, short-term impacts on state and local government revenues from the suspension of regulatory activity, with uncertain longer-run impacts. Potential foregone state revenues from the auctioning of emission allowances by state government, by suspending the future implementation of cap-and-trade regulations.
This pretty much exactly describes the measure. Short-term small gains, long-term stupid. But Asm. Dan Logue disagrees, claiming the damned, dirty (or clean, as the case may be) environmentalists are behind this summary:
"I wonder if he's running for governor," Assemblyman Dan Logue (R-Marysville), a backer of the initiative, quipped after reading the summary. "This looks like he handed this over to the environmental community and asked them to write this summary for them." (LA Times
Logue says they might sue over the summary, but that happens with pretty much every summary. The AG has wide discretion over title and summary, and the case has to be outside of that discretion to be changed by the courts. In other words, it has to not really address the proposition. In this case, I'm not sure which of the points they would argue is factually incorrect.
The fact is that this measure would actually hurt our long-term economy. AB 32 stands to put California at the front of the green economy, but Logue and his ilk want to push us back to the days of coal and soot.
After his outrageous opinion in Citizens United, freeing corporations to spend willy-nilly on politics, Justice Anthony Kennedy wasn't my favorite Justice. (Justice Breyer currently holds that title for his dissent in the Prop 8 trial youtube decision.) But, give the man credit for some honest talk at a forum at Pepperdine Law School. While Republicans in the state are, shall we say, going in another direction, he encourages some real soul searching on our penal system.
"California now has 185,000 people in prison at $32,500 a year" each, he said. He then urged voters and officials to compare that expense to what taxpayers spend per pupil in elementary schools.
"The three-strikes law sponsor is the correctional officers' union and that is sick!" Kennedy said of the measure mandating life sentences for third-time criminal offenders. (LA Times)
Also of note was his remark that American prison sentences are eight times longer than European sentences. You'll see with a casual glance at the statistics that the additional expenses for the sentences are not really an efficient use of resources.
