* California Watch looks at Roy Ashburn's record and considers whether he's been more anti-gay than his district. Meanwhile Bigot Randy Thomasson is calling for him to resign. Apparently Thomasson doesn't believe anybody is "actually gay" and it's all simply a matter of infidelity. Except, Ashburn has been divorced for several years, and won re-election after his divorce.
* Asm. Nathan Fletcher (R-San Diego) is pushing for a full review of our sex offender laws following the murder of Chelsea King. Here's hoping that we see a balanced approach that respects the rule of law while doing what is possible to make the community safe. This time, let's try to make sure that we get laws that work, not ones that just sound tough.
* The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the front group that hides where the money opposing marriage equality is coming from, kicked in $5000 to John Eastman's campaign for AG.
Carla Marinucci rolls with the punches. The veteran SF Chronicle reporter can ask a tough question now and again; she plays by the book. But, even as her job is rapidly changing, now involving some "Shaky Hand Video Productions", she is still responsible for doing the job of a reporter, getting answers to questions, and presenting information to the public. Meg Whitman apparently wants to change the way this system has "worked" in past. She wants to talk at reporters, who then dutifully write down what she says, and the world will be a better place.
Reporters from Bay Area media outlets -- TV, print and radio -- turned up for Whitman's advertised campaign stop in Oakland, where the former eBay CEO had announced a campaign stop and press event.
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Then came the news that Whitman also wouldn't take questions; reporters had been called in to "see" her make statements on "how she could be helpful as governor" on jobs and the economy, Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei said.
Veteran reporters, who included KTVU's Randy Shandobil and KPIX's Hank Plante, were among the crowd that wasn't amused. Question: is Whitman a candidate for governor, or a museum piece to be "watched" by reporters?(SF Gate)
Of course, Whitman did give a half-hour interview to establishment right-wing columnist Debra Saunders. I'm sure there were some really tough questions there.
So what is the plan with all of this? Sure, she can buy all the media time she wants 30 seconds at a time. She doesn't need the earned media in the same way everybody else does because she can just throw another bucket of cash at the problem. But, really, you are going to piss off the entire press corps by sending them to an industrial facility and then blow them off?
Whitman's people tried various tactics to spin eMeg's 874th refusal. This time she was running late, but when that failed to stop the reporters, it became against UnionPacific's policy to take questions at their facility. Ummm...except it's not:
A Whitman spokeswoman said Union Pacific had asked that no news media accompany Whitman on her tour of the facility; Moore told one reporter that it was the campaign's decision. (InsideBayArea)
Is she really that scared of the media? Exposing the fact that she really doesn't understand any of the state's problems, even after running for governor for the last 8 months?
Perhaps Whitman is trying to make Jerry Brown look like a media superstar? Maybe recycle the ol' Paris Hilton ad from the McCain campaign. That worked well.
Senate Republicans got the Legislative Analyst's Office to deliver an assessment of AB 32's impact on jobs that would, on the surface, seem to validate their claims that AB 32 will hurt jobs. The LAO hedged as much as they could, saying that much of the impact of AB 32 was uncertain, but did argue that some job losses would occur:
While CARB did not estimate job impacts for other time periods, it seems most likely to us that the implementation of AB 32 through the SP will result in the near term in California job losses, even after recognizing that many of the SP's programs phase in over time.
We'll almost certainly hear a lot about this analysis from the right and the global warming deniers. But is it accurate?
A closer look suggests it's not. The LAO analysis fails to actually explain their projected job losses in any great detail. There's no accounting of which industries might see near-term job losses or how many jobs might be lost, or which regulations would lead to these job losses. There is a rather vague and general discussion of possible impacts of things such as increased fuel economy standards, but overall there isn't really anything in the report to justify the headline claim that AB 32 will cause near-term job losses.
Further, the LAO did not assess how many green jobs AB 32 has already created. The LAO did charge that the California Air Resources Board "overstated" the number of jobs AB 32 would have created by 2020, but their case is quite weak. The LAO argues that the economic modeling assumptions used by CARB have been questioned by some economists, and that the overall impact of the regulations aren't yet well understood.
While that might be true, the LAO has merely asserted that the CARB projections could be in error - they have not conclusively demonstrated this to be the case. The LAO is raising some questions that would be good for the statisticians and economic modelers to debate, but that's about as far as it goes.
More problematically, the LAO did not contextualize this discussion at all. There is no discussion or analysis whatsoever of the costs to the state's economy of unchecked global warming, estimated by Next10 to be possibly as high as $4 billion per year for the rest of the century. Nor is there any discussion of the potential loss in green jobs if California suspends AB 32 indefinitely and other states and nations take the lead in creating those industries.
Instead the LAO's analysis seems to assume that the status quo is just fine, and that there are no major economic threats that AB 32 might help address. We all know the status quo is not acceptable, and that doing nothing on global warming, as the AB 32 opponents would have us do, is a recipe for ruin.
The LAO analysis does not really bolster the opponents' cause, though Republicans are already claiming it does. Still, the LAO would have been better off not delivering this flawed report, and waiting until they could provide more detailed evidence of their assertions about AB 32's near-term job impact and CARB's job estimates, as well as properly contextualized that discussion against the backdrop of a global race to innovate green jobs and the costs of the climate crisis.
Prop 14, Maldonado's jungle primary law, is getting pulled in all sorts of directions over the last few days. As mentioned in the open thread last night, CSEA filed suit to change the ballot title and summary, claiming that the language as written by the Legislature was biased. Thing is, everybody in the Legislature, except Maldonado, hates Prop 14. Rather than spending their own resources to fight the legal battle, they simply agreed to settle the case. Here's the complaint (PDF).
Now, however, Arnold wants to intervene in the lawsuit, saying that the Legislature is just trying to kill the measure with the settlement. Boo-hoo, poor Arnold. Unsurprisingly, the Legislature wasn't really down with the attention that they were getting, so Leg Counsel wrote a letter supporting Arnold's intervention in the lawsuit (PDF).
Thing is, the ballot title and summary are really ridiculous. First, the measure went outside of the normal process. Instead of going through the AG's office, the Legislature itself wrote the summary and title. While the AG process occasionally results in somewhat favorable titles to left-leaning initiatives, and not so good titles for right-leaning measures, there is always some relation to a provable reality. In other words, there is concrete facts that the AG can point to for his interpretation. But check out this monstrosity:
ELECTIONS. PRIMARIES. GREATER PARTICIPATION IN ELECTIONS. Reforms the primary election process for congressional, statewide, and legislative races. Allows all voters to choose any candidate regardless of the candidate's or voter's political party preference. Ensures that the two candidates receiving the greatest number of votes will appear on the general election ballot regardless of party preference. Fiscal Impact: No significant net change in state and local government costs to administer elections.
"Greater Participation in Elections"? What they didn't want to name it the Mom's Apple Pie Measure? Or was that already taken?
Fact is that Prop 14 won't really make much of a difference in how the Legislature works. It will simply favor more "establishment" candidates that can raise a bunch of money to horde media time. So, if you're looking for a not all that less partisan, but way more corporatist government, well, Prop 14 is for you!
Otherwise, it's a heaping helping of confusion, played up by goo-goos that haven't really spent much time looking into how the system actually plays out in reality.
Yesterday the California Department of Education released its list of "persistently lowest-achieving" schools - schools whose test scores have been low for several years and, unless improved, will be closed. The Tier I list makes it clear where these schools are concentrated - in California's low-income communities and communities of color.
Let's take two counties. First, my home county of Orange. You'll note that Tustin Unified, where I spent all 13 years of my K-12 education, has no schools listed. The only schools listed in all of Orange County are three in Santa Ana Unified - Century High, Valley High, and Willard Intermediate. 80% of Santa Ana residents are Latino and the median family income is $41,000 (statewide the median family income is $76,000).
Here in Monterey County, where I currently live, ten schools are listed. 8 of them are in the Salinas Valley, another two in Seaside. The Salinas Valley is 70-80% Latino and has median incomes in the $35,000 range. But you won't see Carmel or Pacific Grove schools listed here. In fact, Carmel schools rate among the best-performing in the entire state.
Santa Ana and the Salinas Valley are the type of communities whose schools are going to be closed under No Child Left Behind rules. Just as the entire teaching staff at a high school in Rhode Island's poorest community was fired last month. And when this happens in California's low-income communities of color, President Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan will applaud it the way he applauded the firings in Rhode Island.
The impact on these communities could be devastating. In Chicago after one of Arne Duncan's mass firings of teachers, described as "hitting the reset button," the results were an increase in student crime and no discernible improvement in student achievement. As schools closed and experienced teachers were fired, one of the only stable institutions in a community that generally lacked such places was destroyed, and the community suffered.
Over the weekend at Open Left, Paul Rosenberg made a very good analogy regarding Arne Duncan's slash-and-burn tactics. Applying the logic of Duncan's reforms to crime, Rosenberg asked why not fire the entire Oakland Police Department? Unemployment is high in California; perhaps we should fire the entire Employment Development Department. We were just in a drought; perhaps we should fire all the state hydrologists and water district managers.
That doesn't happen because those workers aren't the target of a deliberate effort to destroy their careers, as Attorney at Arms has so brilliantly explained. But it does demonstrate the ridiculousness of the concept of closing a school because it isn't performing well.
With the publication of the list of schools that could be closed in California in a few years, we can start to see just what kind of damage those ridiculous ideological dogmas are about to produce - and we can see exactly who will be hurt by it. It's not going to be California's prosperous population, and it's not going to be the white suburbs. Yet again, the poor and communities of color are going to be the targets of right-wing policy.
We have time to stop this. But it requires repealing the "reforms" made in the service of right-wing doctrine. Let's hope Sacramento is up to the task.
(A truly brilliant post worth reading and considering. One of the best overviews of the political background of the education crisis I've yet seen. - promoted by Robert Cruickshank)
Note: I am a labor attorney. My wife is a school principal. My mom and mother-in-law are veteran teachers and I was raised on a single teacher's salary. That is my perspective on this.
There has always been resistance to public education. It was a demand of The Communist Manifesto. And even though it became mainstream in most of the industrialized world, so did universal health care. By way of that example, I mean to suggest it is not something we should take for granted.
But there was no organized political resistance until 1955. No, I'm not trying to write yet another reductionist account of the modern conservative movement that explains everything as a reaction to civil rights (though it does explain a lot). It's just that's what we are dealing with now and it's when a grand strategy was organized. Of course the moneyed interests were always pushing back on certain elements of the New Deal and by 1948 they had achieved a major walk-back of the National Labor Relations Act in the Taft-Hartley amendments. But as much as we have fought back against our capitalist overlords, they aren't behind this, at least not directly. No, they don't want to destroy public education-they want to not pay for it and have it produce obedient workers, but they do not want to see it destroyed.
But the Christian right and the Civil Rights resisters (i.e. racists) are. They nearly fomented a rebellion in Little Rock over school integration and launched a political reaction that finally took all of the teeth out of Brown by the early 70s. By then, the Supreme Court had said that busing and tax revenues have to stop at arbitrary district and municipal boundaries drawn by the legislators then in power. This is why 5 years ago we all looked back on the 50th anniversary of Brown wondering what might have been.
But this isn't an article about civil rights, this is an article about the destruction of teaching as a career and how it fits into that strategy.
* CSEA filed suit to change the wording of Prop 14, the top-two primary. They've apparently succeeded, but proponents are resisting the settlement out of fear that taking out the bogus "give voters more choice" statements might make it harder to get voters to approve it.
* A recently discovered fault near PG&E's Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County is delaying renewal of the plant's license. Building nuclear power plants in earthquake country never really was all that bright an idea to begin with.
It was an idea so audacious that even the Bush Administration didn't dare try it. Arne Duncan, President Obama's radical Education Secretary, pushed for and received $4.35 billion in stimulus funds for K-12 education. But Duncan didn't plan to just hand the money out to states desperately in need of federal funds just to keep the schools open and teachers in the classrooms. He linked the stimulus funds to a series of right-wing educational "reforms" designed to even further emphasize testing, link teacher pay and performance to those tests (regardless of the other qualifications and achievements of those teachers).
The most stunning piece of this program, which was called "Race To The Top," was that states had to adopt these reforms without any guarantee they'd get a dime for their trouble. The Race to the Top grants were competitive in nature, so states were being asked to make fundamental changes in the way their schools operated merely for a chance at a sliver of federal funds.
The right response would be to repeal the reform bills passed in January in order to conform to the terms of the grant. California should set its own school policies based not on Arne Duncan's effort to shove his unproven methods down our throats, but on our own assessments of what will help our schools.
It cannot be denied that the number one need of California schools is more money. As districts across the state prepare mass layoffs for the second year in a row, recent API scores indicate that the best predictor of how a district will score is the amount of money they spend on their students. If districts are cutting classes and firing teachers, they're not going to be in any position to effectively implement any other reform. Students learn best in small classes, not in classrooms packed with 40 students because the district had to lay off teachers.
Other reforms are worth considering. I'm open to charter schools and giving parents more power, but too many people see these things as a sure salvation. More importantly, these types of reforms are often used to blunt arguments that more money is needed for schools, in order to prevent the fortunes of the wealthy and large corporations from being taxed to properly provide for our state's educational needs.
That isn't to say every education reformer is driven by anti-tax politics. Many are driven by a genuine desire to improve schools. But there needs to be an appreciation of the need to better fund education if any reforms are going to be successful.
Progressive education activists will also need to develop a new set of messages that can reframe this discussion. In the last week many of the discussions I've had on education, including here at Calitics and on various progressive talk radio stations (including KRXA 540 in Monterey) wind up drawing out people who want to change the discussion away from one of funding to either bash teachers unions, claim teachers are overpaid, complain about tenure rules, or make some other kind of attack on teachers and their defenders.
These right-wing frames have become deeply embedded in the public consciousness, and are there to both prevent the kind of progressive taxation we need to save our schools and to undermine one of the most successful, effective, and necessary examples of a strong public sector. If we are to repeal the changes made in order to chase the Race To The Top mirage, we'll need to provide the kind of messaging that can show the value of progressive education and explain why market-based solutions won't work for our schools.
Despite his failure to win confirmation in the state Assembly, state Sen. Abel Maldonado is likely to become California's interim lieutenant governor sometime in May.
In the weeks since the heavily Democratic Assembly refused to confirm him, Republican Maldonado has met repeatedly with new Democratic Assembly Speaker John Pérez.
Pérez told Maldonado to sit tight and wait, "until cooler heads prevail."
Those in the know tell us the "cooler heads" will prevail around the end of April. If lawmakers wait that long, Maldonado's Senate replacement would be chosen in the November general election, rather than in an earlier special election that would yield a lower turnout.
With a big turnout, Democrats believe they'd have a better shot of winning Maldonado's district, which runs from just south of San Jose all the way to Santa Barbara County.
One of the main reasons we'd heard that the Assembly rejected the Maldonado nomination last month was concern about how John Laird, the likely Democratic candidate for SD-15, would fare in a special election that would coincide with the June primary. I am absolutely confident that Laird would have won anyway. But a November runoff (with an August/early September first round) would probably have an electorate that's more favorable to Democrats.
While nobody in California may get the same kind of turnout in November 2010 that we saw in November 2008, the registration numbers are favorable, as is the fact that nearly 60% of SD-15 lies north of the Monterey-San Luis Obispo County line. That's Laird country, and is strongly Democratic. Sam Blakeslee, the likely Republican candidate, comes from the southern half of the district, representing San Luis Obispo. Laird can and will run a strong and competitive campaign there, and a November race gives him time to build that out.
As we've said before, confirming Maldonado would be the right move. I agree it's distasteful to confirm one of the Legislature's most frustrating members, who has made deals for himself at the expense of everyone else in the state. As one of Maldonado's constituents, I have more cause to dislike him and his politics than almost anyone.
But the big picture remains: in November 2010, Monterey County and the rest of SD-12 and SD-15 can bring us a 2/3rds majority in the State Senate. That is a Holy Grail worth seeking.
In what amounts to a political epitaph, state Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) admitted what much of the Sacramento establishment has known for a while now.
Republican Sen. Roy Ashburn, who has been on leave from the Senate since his DUI arrest last week, confirmed today that he is gay.
"I'm gay," Ashburn told KERN radio host Inga Barks in an interview this morning. "Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long."
Ashburn's announcement follows reports that Ashburn was leaving a gay club before he was arrested for driving under the influence last week. (SacBee CapAlert)
The closet is a soul-crushing, debilitating place to be. It rips you apart, and eventually, you will do something stupid. When you try to hide something so important to who you are, it will eventually consume you. And, to be clear, this is most assuredly about more than just sex, it is about who you love, who you want to share the rest of your life with, and who you are.
The closet cracks in more or less dramatic fashion. For Ashburn, it was more dramatic because of his history of support for anti-gay causes. For people like Bill Postmus, the damage can lead to self-medicating with drugs or self-destructive behaviors. But in the end, the closet will always take its toll. It will always win; control your life in some way or another. You simply can't control your life if you are trying to hide who you are.
Ashburn tries to cover for his hypocrisy by pointing out that his constituents would want it that way. But constituents don't elect a set of political positions, when they are voting on candidates, they are choosing a person. A person with failures and faults, and a sense of morality. Ashburn was so busy trying to hide who he was that he forgot to mind his conscience and whatever sense of morality to which he subscribes.
Time will move on, and Bakersfield will likely elect another anti-gay Senator come November. Ashburn will end his political career in disgrace and shuffle off to play the Sacramento third house games in some way. But, he will do so as an openly gay man. And he will soon discover that telling the truth means more than the ability to go to a gay bar in peace, but also a sense of liberty that you just don't have in a stifling closet.
In the wake of Charlie Rangel's problems with the House Ethics Committee, Congressman Pete Stark (CA-13) was in line to temporarily head the House Ways and Means Committee. That won't happen, unfortunately, but it was enough to get Daniel Weintraub, former columnist for the Sacramento Bee and now writer for the New York Times, to call Stark "his own worst enemy" in an article on the Congressman:
But 3,000 miles away, where his district is stacked with liberals who share his outrage, his words barely caused a ripple. A lack of respect for decorum when addressing Republicans is hardly the kind of thing to get a man in trouble in Hayward or Fremont.
And if Mr. Stark's outbursts have made him less effective than he might otherwise be as a representative, his constituents have a hard time ever hearing about it. His district is in something of a news media vacuum, across the bay from San Francisco and squeezed between San Jose and Oakland. No major media outlet covers him closely.
Mr. Stark's district is a mix of blue-collar workers and employees of the growing number of high-tech companies around Fremont. It is so heavily Democratic that Mr. Stark has never attracted a serious Republican opponent. For a Democrat to oppose him in a primary would take tremendous financial resources and, probably, greater sins by Mr. Stark than he has committed to date.
The problem is that Weintraub misses the point, almost entirely. Pete Stark represents his district quite well. CA-13 residents, like other Bay Area residents, aren't interested in ridiculous DC concepts like "decorum." They are left-of-center folks who expect their federal representatives to do the things Stark does: call out Republican bullshit when he sees it, and press strongly for progressive causes such as the public option.
CA-13 is not Marin County or the Berkeley hills. Cities like Hayward and San Leandro are working-class and very diverse, full of the kind of people who are the bedrock of Bay Area liberalism - working people who know that conservatism and Republicans are not on their side, despite the slick sales job the right puts on to convince working people that they are. Stark's outspoken opposition to the right's agenda is exactly what those residents want, and he delivers.
It's also worth noting that House Democrats' refusal to let Stark chair Ways and Means is more likely due to his own run-ins with the Ethics Committee than with any concern about his outbursts or his liberalism.
Weintraub's trying to paint Stark as someone out of touch with his district and his fellow Democrats, but that just doesn't hold water. But it is another example of the media treating left-of-center politicians who speak the truth as being somehow deviant or controversial. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, not an accurate reflection of reality.
We learned on Friday that California may be on the verge of jobs growth. 32,000 jobs were created in the state in January 2010, including in construction and manufacturing. However, the unemployment rate also went up to 12.5%, as more people sought work. It's a sign that any economic recovery that might be under way is anemic at best, and that we still have a VERY long way to go to solve the problems of what may be persistent unemployment.
Unfortunately, this economic recovery is not only anemic, it may be transitory. And even if it were to continue to pick up steam and last for a while, it will not be a true "recovery" in the sense of creating broadly shared prosperity. Instead we appear to have experienced another dramatic ratcheting downward of economic opportunity for most Californians, while creating conditions that both ensure we will have another nasty crash and that many more people will suffer when it happens.
This phenomenon is not unfamiliar to California. Since 1980 we have experienced four recessions that have frayed the safety net, fueled anti-government sentiments, and created more inequality and economic vulnerability, all of which mean that the subsequent recession hits harder than the one that came before it. The recoveries from each recession have been largely driven by unsustainable asset bubbles that benefit the wealthy but create little if any actual wage growth for everyone else.
All indications are that we will experience the same here in 2010 - that is, if this halting recovery even lasts. Below are some thoughts on the ongoing economic problems California faces and what needs to be done to actually solve them, instead of ignore them in the face of another asset bubble.
• Any current economic recovery is driven by massive federal economic stimulus, and will collapse if and when it is withdrawn. Since California has done absolutely nothing to stimulate economic recovery, any job creation currently being experienced is due solely to the Obama Administration's 2009 stimulus plan. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem likely to be renewed, as both the White House and Senate Democrats are putting deficit reduction ahead of recovery. They're afraid of teabaggers whining about deficits, so instead they're going to repeat the error of 1937 and drive the state and nation deeper into recession by taking away government support. We need a second stimulus that is larger than the first if recovery is to happen, and it must be aimed at creating jobs, not at pointless tax cuts.
• Austerity budgets and policies designed to protect creditors leave debtors less able to participate in and fuel economic growth. Last week's student protests were very similar to recent protests in Spain and Greece in that they shared a common enemy: austerity budget cuts made in the name of appeasing creditors. Just as economic commentator Simon Johnson believes Europe risks global depression with these austerity policies, so too does California risk another downward slide with its ongoing slashing of government spending and programs. As average Californians are being told to spend more money for health care, education, and transportation so that government doesn't have to tax the rich and the large corporations to pay those costs, that makes it more difficult for those Californians to clear away their household debts, rebuild savings, and power the recovery through sensible spending choices.
• Policies that favor large corporations at the expense of small business leave the state more vulnerable to recession and fail to create good jobs. Small businesses in California need things like universal health care, affordable transportation, worker-friendly labor laws, and above all, a well-paid customer base that is able to sustain locally owned business. Instead California's current policies all favor large businesses, who get the tax breaks and bailouts and are able to block reforms that could make it easier for people to start and maintain businesses. Small businesses drive a greater share of job creation, are far less likely to outsource or offshore work, and tend to keep profits in the community. They need to be emphasized, not screwed over by policies designed to keep costs low for the big businesses, who can then crowd out their smaller competitors.
• The state budget is still in permanent, long-term deficit, and austerity appears to be the solution for years to come. Just as more government spending is needed to sustain any nascent recovery that might be under way, more spending is also needed to sustain a fairer, more prosperous economy. If people can't afford an education, can't afford health care, can't afford to get around the region for work, then they will be vulnerable to the next downturn, which will come much sooner than expected. California is projected to still have budget deficits for the next 3 years, of about $20 billion per year. If we cut another $60 billion in spending, California's economy will be left in tatters, since the programs that help keep down the cost of living for Californians will no longer be there. Now is the time to raise taxes by a large amount on the wealthy and on large corporations, to close the deficit and make it possible to restore and grow government services to strengthen and lengthen any economic recovery.
I'm sure there is more that can be examined and that must be done, but these are some general principles to keep in mind. If there is any economic recovery over the next 12-18 months, however weak and uneven it is, Sacramento will be tempted to avoid tackling the deep problems and implementing the solutions we need to a 30-year long downward spiral.
That wouldn't be good. Because if the status quo remains in place, most Californians will not see lasting benefits from this recovery. Sure, they might be able to find a job, but it won't be enough to pay the bills, eliminate the debt, build up savings, and help build a more sustainable economy for the future.
* The Capitol Notes Podcast features an extended interview with Jerry Brown. It's certainly not geared for progressives, as he's hitting on Whitman's turf.
* CalBuzz is annoyed that they went out and praised Poizner for his first stand on the the above bill, only to get the ol' flipity-flopity. In other news, they are glad to see Jerry Brown's eyebrow shaping.
* Karen Bass took some heat for handing out pay raises to 20 Assembly staff members. But, honestly people, do legislative staff have to live under a situation where they can never be promoted? What kind of job situation is that? Would you want to work where you had no chance of promotion? All but a handful of these staffers made under $50,000. This isn't gold-plated toilet seats we're talking about, it's people striving for achievement, something conservatives claim to respect.
* The LA Times did a profile of Speaker Perez, focusing not on his work for the downtrodden, but for some of the more deep-pocketed types around the state. Look, in today's political world, there is no purity any more.
John Fensterwald has a great story in the Educated Guess about what the parents in Cupertino are facing for their children. The district is K-8 only, and as the area is pretty wealthy, and fairly progressive, they've been able to pass a couple of parcel taxes for the district. In fact, last year they passed one for $4 million. But, that's not going to be enough:
But now this K-8 Silicon Valley district, home of Apple Computer and some of the highest performing schools in the state, is facing a $9 million deficit for next year. And that's putting in jeopardy many of the programs parents consider essential: small classes, summer school, the GATE program for gifted children, librarians.
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To that end, the Cupertino Educational Endowment Foundation is asking parents to help put an initiative on the November ballot that would lower the threshold for passing a parcel tax from two-thirds to 55 percent to make it easier to pass the next parcel tax. And organizers are asking every family to donate $375 toward a goal of $3 million to keep small classes in grades one to three while saving 105 teachers who've been told they'll otherwise lose their jobs.
Even in a place like Cupertino, where the district has always been able to find a way, there just aren't the answers that there used to be. Sacramento has cut them out at the knees, and they're trying to recover the best they can. Will Cupertino still have decent schools come next year? Probably, but if even the so-called "rich districts" are struggling to make ends meet, what does that say for the districts that are dependent upon the state?
If Meg Whitman wants to talk about too much state spending, how about she actually takes a look at our schools? You know, because hers went to private school, she's not so familiar. And with each cut, with each lost resource, times become harder.
I have a friend who teaches at a public school in San Leandro. It's a working class area these days, and the economy has hit the community pretty hard. Students are coming to school completely without supplies, and the districts simply don't have the money to pay for everything. But, the teachers aren't going to let the kids sit there with no pencil, and they end up footing the bill. While the Right wants to talk about how teachers are so spoiled, the fact is that they aren't exactly making Kingly ransoms. And honestly, I can't think of a profession that deserves every cent they earn more than teachers. But, even with that being said, teachers are being forced into spending hundreds of dollars each semester to provide simple school supplies for their classrooms.
West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon, an Assembly candidate who was ultimately defeated by Mariko Yamada, has come out swinging against Roy Ashburn. The insteresting part of this, Cabaldon's Facebook status update from six months ago:
It wouldn't bother me so bad to see Roy Ashburn at Badlands with a boy if he didn't have such a bad voting record on gay rights.
The interesting thing here is that Cabaldon, and basically gay male in Sacramento, knew about this guy months ago. Ashburn always was a creep, but now, there are people tracking down his "passenger."
Boy Culture has new information that suggests Ashburn's mystery passenger is an openly gay 29-year-old San Jose man (he looks several years younger) who was visiting Sacramento for work and who did not know Ashburn is a senator. He is a Latino, which fits nicely with the supposition that Ashburn was picked up outside Faces-Tuesday was Latin Night. (BoyCulture)
For future reference, if anybody sees a Republican "family values" Senator at a gay bar in Sacramento, feel free to post a diary here at Calitics. I'm a little hesitant to write up anonymous emails, but if somebody else wants to write about their first hand experience, Calitics is a community blog that accepts content of all stripes.
