Just to brush up on the facts here, the National Organization for against Marriage (NOM) is a key organization in the anti-equality movement, playing a key role as a front group for Mormon donations. Of course, you can check out their NOM Summer Tour on the Courage Campaign's NOM Tour Tracker. See, they are travelling all over the nation, spreading their message that equality sucks or something like that.
Now, this is where Carly Fiorina enters into the story. NOM teamed up with two other Right-y organizations to found the "Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles". Here's the press release:
The Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, an organization of conservative Hispanics, today announced the details of a $1 million campaign in support of California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina at a press conference in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, July 27. ... The campaign is being coordinated by our Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, in collaboration with the Susan B. Anthony List and the National Organization for Marriage.
Poor Susan B. Anthony...having her name dragged through the mud like this. It just ain't right.
Nonetheless, if there was any facade of moderation with Carly Fiorina, this is where it should stop. Sure, this is an IE. But these folks know exactly what they are buying. They simply don't use their money on people that aren't "one of them." That's just not the way it works.
Of course, it would be nice if there were, you know, actual Latino organizations involved in this effort. But there's a reason for that. She's become a reactionary nativist on immigration policy, and she is just all wrong for California.
Every year tens of thousands of people in California are arrested for simply possessing small amounts of marijuana. These arrests overload our already stressed courts and jails. They also divert scarce public safety dollars that could be used to address violent crime. California's Proposition 19, on the November 2010 ballot, offers a remedy that will move marijuana policy in a direction that makes sense. The California Legislative Analyst's Office explains that the passage of Proposition 19 would allow redirection of court and law enforcement resources to solving violent crimes.
Remember back to early June when Carly Fiorina called climate change "the weather"? Well, it seems that while Carly might have impressed the GOP base with that message, it's not really a winning message for the general electorate.
PPIC just released its "Californians and the environment" poll, and while the numbers could be better for Boxer, who is leading Fiorina by a 39-34 tally, there is still a lot to like here. A few tidbits:
The Weather: Two-thirds (67%) favor AB 32. However, 42% would favor Prop 23's goal of holding off until we hit better job figures(53% oppose). Of course, this is why Dan Logue's measure plugs in this ridiculous 5.5% unemployment number for several quarters. He wants to kill AB 32, but doesn't want to say that flat out. So, he'll use some artificial threshold (actually below what most economists consider to be equilibrium for unemployment) and put lipstick on that pig.
In the end, even the lipstick is only producing a modest uptick.
More Climate Change: Also of concern to Logue must be the numbers of Californians that think AB 32 will not hurt our jobs numbers. 45% think it will result in more jobs, with only 23% saying fewer jobs. Further, 48% of Californians say the state isn't doing enough to combat climate change (52% for the feds). This electorate flat out does not look prepared to overturn AB 32.
Carbon Tax: It turns out that most people haven't heard the details of the proposals. But when they do, they know how the world really works. After hearing brief descriptions of cap and trade and a carbon tax, 60% said they would support the carbon tax, with only 50% supporting the cap and trade.
Off-shore Drilling: Rather unsurprisingly, this is where Mother Nature made her biggest public opinion gains. Most Californians now oppose more offshore drilling (59% oppose, 36% favor)-a 16-point increase in opposition from last year (43% oppose, 51% favor). Also coming from the land of Obvious, very few people trust the government's response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Of course, PPIC also did some political numbers. I mentioned Boxer's 39-34 lead, but Brown also holds a small lead at 37-34. I'll have to say that these numbers should start concerning Whitman soon. Brown hasn't really done much to combat all of her TV spending, and he's still got himself in a decent position. When Brown goes up, you have to figure these numbers only move in his direction. Oh, and the state still really dislikes Arnold (25% approval) and the Legislature (15%).
There is a lot of work to do not only for November, but also for the greater theme of protecting the environment. But, all in all, I am rather encouraged by these numbers. If we are able to muster some sort of a field campaign, California might just end up as a bright spot for Democrats in the 2010 elections.
* Carly Fiorina got some new Latino support. Or well, maybe it's Latino support, because just exactly where the money is coming is entirely unclear. Carla Marinucci points out that one of the headliners of the campaign was a grand marshall at the 2008 SF Pride parade ... should go down perfectly with the right-wingers.
* Boaters near the San Francisco area are being warned about being careful near whales. A huge krill explosion in the area is attacting large numbers of humpback whales. A young humpback was found dead today, killed by the propellors of a boat.
(cross-posted with permission from my post on DailyKos)
There are few things worse for a politician than an unpaid tax lien, especially in a state like California where our perennial budget crisis makes it even more important for our politicians to demonstrate their commitment to paying their fair share.
Enter Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, who was appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger to the position after John Garamendi won the special election created by the appointment of Ellen Tauscher to the position of Undersecretary for Arms Control.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Abel Maldonado has had a substantial tax lien placed on his family farm:
The single-page IRS lien indicates that Maldonado owes the government $111,146 for underpaying a category of taxes that include Social Security, Medicare and federal withholding contributions for employees on his 6,000-acre farm in Santa Barbara County.
An IRS spokesman declined to comment on the ongoing case.
Maldonado's people claim that this lien actually arises from a dispute about whether certain vehicles are for public or private use. But as someone who has administrated tax payments for small businesses, this seems like a strange defense: the category of taxes that the IRS is claiming that Maldonado owes are "form 941" taxes, which withhold income taxes, social security taxes and Medicare taxes from employee paychecks. It is possible for this form 941 withholding lien to be the result of a dispute over whether a vehicle is for personal or business use, as the IRS explains in its employer's guide:
You may choose not to withhold income tax on the value of an employee's personal use of a vehicle you provide. You must, however, withhold social security and Medicare taxes on the use of the vehicle. See Publication 15-B for more information on this election.
So this is apparently what this dispute is about. But even if we grant Maldonado the benefit of the doubt here, there's a much larger problem: the tax lien is over $111,000. Do you realize how much the IRS would have to have been estimating the value of the "company vehicle use" he had been engaging in to rack up a tax bill that high? Simple mathematics based on the applicable tax rates would indicate that the total valuation of the "vehicle use" would have to have been in the high six figures, which is unconscionable in and of itself.
Bottom line is, Maldonado has some explaining to do. And it's not even the first time:
It is the ninth time since 1992 that federal, state or local tax collectors have resorted to liens against the Santa Maria Republican's family farm in an effort to compel payments totaling more than $240,000, public records show.
For Lieutenant Governor, California has a much better choice in San Francisco mayor and marriage equality hero Gavin Newsom.
Public Policy Polling (PPP) has been polling California this week, and found some very favorable news for Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown.
In their Senate polling, PPP found that Boxer has a 49-40 lead over Fiorina, up from 45-42 back in May. They also found that Fiorina's negatives are rising, with 28% having a favorable view and 40% having an unfavorable view. Independent voters in particular have shifted against Fiorina, with Boxer leading there 48-38.
Fiorina's inept campaign and her desire to run as an extreme right-wing candidate, combined with her support of high unemployment and mass layoffs, means that if we continue to work hard, Boxer should be able to win this race.
PPP found similar numbers for the governor's race, with Brown up 46-40 over Whitman. Whitman's massive TV ad barrage may have backfired, with 50% of voters having an unfavorable opinion of her (30% are favorable). Like Boxer, Brown also leads among independents, 47-31.
One reason why Whitman and Fiorina aren't doing so well: Californians really do not like the idea of rich people buying public office. 52% think there should be a cap on how much money a candidate can give to their own campaign.
If there's any difference between the two races, it's that Brown is doing a bit less well with his own party than Boxer is with Dems, or Whitman with Republicans. Boxer leads 77-13 among Dems, and Whitman has 76% of Republicans - but Jerry Brown has only 69% of Democrats.
I can understand why some Democrats might not be enthused about Jerry Brown. Like I said earlier this week, the best we can hope for from him is an Obama-style presidency where we can have an opportunity to play offense. Brown will never be a progressive leader, and he will propose some things we'll have to fight against.
But there's really no good excuse for Democrats to support anyone else, especially Meg Whitman, who is determined to destroy what remains of the California Dream and use the state as a launching pad for her own White House ambitions.
Brown has to do some work to get Democrats to strongly back his campaign. And he needs to do much more to encourage Democrats to get engaged - running a "Rose Garden" campaign isn't going to inspire the broad and deep California progressive grassroots to work to elect Brown and beat Whitman.
But if that convergence does happen, the PPP poll suggests Meg Whitman might well spend $150 million on a losing effort. And that would be a very good outcome indeed.
So it's been almost a month since the 2010-11 state budget was to have been enacted, and yet so far there's been hardly any movement or action at all on the budget. With Prop 25, restoring majority rule to the budget process, Republicans would be out of the picture and Democrats could negotiate directly with the governor. With a Democratic governor, majority vote budgets that involve the use of fees could be approved and signed without a single Republican vote being needed - that is, if Prop 26 fails.
The common thread here is that Republicans, in the governor's office and in the state legislature, are all actively prolonging the state budget mess. Why? Because it's in their interest to do so.
Prior to 2008, the longest budget standoff in California history was in 2002. Republican legislators prolonged the standoff into September in order to undermine Governor Gray Davis's re-election campaign. In 2006, however, when Arnold Schwarzenegger sought re-election, Republicans quickly agreed with Democrats and passed one of the only on-time budgets in recent history.
Obviously, Republicans feel they can score political points by making the state government look ineffective, perhaps boosting Meg Whitman's chances. She's already positioning herself as an outsider and Jerry Brown as an insider, so a long budget standoff could play to her advantage.
There are also the usual shock doctrine goals of the Republicans at work here, as Shane Goldmacher reports:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has demanded overhauls of the public pension system, the state tax code and the budgeting process, on top of the annual budget-balancing struggle. He has said he won't sign a spending plan that lacks those things, and California could languish without one until he leaves office - in 2011....
Schwarzenegger proposed deep cuts this year, including the elimination of welfare, to close the deficit. Democrats have countered with some tax increases, mainly on oil companies, and the rollback of some corporate tax breaks.
This is all quite similar to the 1995 budget standoff in Congress, where Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich shut down the government in order to force President Clinton to cave. Clinton didn't mind being thrown in that briar patch, knowing that the public really does want their public services and wants them to continue, and Gingrich folded.
Democrats are indicating they've learned the right lessons from Clinton and are refusing to give into Arnold's demands, with Sen. Darrell Steinberg calling Arnold's bluff.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will impose unpaid furloughs through executive order on most state workers again beginning in August, according to a union official who was briefed on the plan by the administration.
As usual, this isn't necessarily designed to force a budget solution. It's designed to force Democrats and labor unions to cave to Arnold's shock doctrine demands.
This is why passing Prop 25 is so important. It won't solve the entire state budget mess. But it will bring an end to these shock doctrine-style demands, especially if Meg Whitman is elected governor this fall.
On the left, we tend to cast aside anybody who has a stain on their record fairly quickly. On the right, they celebrate their hatchet men. Of course, I'm referring to the Breitbart/Sherrod debacle.
For those of you living under a rock, rather than really getting into the story I will summarize the incident in two sentences. Andrew Breitbart edited a video tape to falsely characterize a speech that Shirley Sherrod gave to the NAACP as racist. The White House, acting out of shear fear of FOX News, fired her, then re-hired her when Breitbart's editing was shown to be a crock of feces. For more than that, you'll have to see Little Green Footballs. Yes, I really did just link to LGF...it's changing over there. Long story short, the whole right-wing went crazy (including arguing that the extra-judicial beating and murder of Sherrod's relative wasn't actually a lynching because there wasn't a rope involved).
The net result of all that is that Breitbart himself is a man who was outed for exactly what he is, a GOP hatchet man that has little regard for the truth. But, the GOP loves their hatchet men! In fact, Breitbart is headlining an RNC event in Beverly Hills in mid-August that will also feature some pretty high ranking California Republican officials. Jeff Denham, Wally Herger, SoS candidate Damon Dunn, and more. And, oh yeah, the so-called "moderate" Abel Maldonado.
Abel Maldonado needs to denounce the tactics of hate that emerge from Breitbart and his compatriots. If the RNC is to ever gain any sort of credibility with Latinos, it needs to do more than run one elected leader on a statewide ticket. Despite St. Abel thinking he's already being deified (and behaving as such during the budget fight), it's far from the truth. The fact is that on issues that matter, Abel has sided with the GOP base.
For the next few months, Maldonado has a fight on his hands to give the people of California any reason to retain him. He's been a man of obstruction and fighting for what's best for him (and occasionally his new BFF Arnold).
As a blogger, respect and appreciation that come easily. So, it's always nice to get a little of both. With the announcement of the annual Best of the Bay Awards in the SF Bay Guardian today, Calitics gets a little of both. (And hey, we'll even forgive the minor error of our locations. I'm in SF, and Robert is in Monterey, but we both think the East Bay is a great place nonetheless.)
BEST POLITICAL SHIT-SIFTERS
Political websites are full of crap. Cranks, crooks, straight up sensationalism ... We love it all, of course. But when we want to know what's really going on in the down and dirty, smoke-filled backrooms of California politics, we click our way to progressive open source news site Calitics.com. East Bay keyboard-clackers Brian Leubitz and Robert Cruikshank stay well abreast of Sacramento's whiz-bang wool-pulling, and you can get a bead on the biggest stories all around the state from the site's open threads and links. Yet Calitics offers a lot more than shit-sifting: these folks understand what the news really means. Their analyses and interpretations are far more acute than those of the state's lumbering daily newspapers. And Cruikshank is one of the few writers of any political slant who actually understands economics. Now, can they please work on getting some visuals up there? Photos, people, photos!
I've been clacking on this here keyboard (well, not this specific one, but one just like it) for nearly 5 years. It's not for a profit motive, that much I can assure you. Both Robert and I, and all the front pagers that have come and gone, do this out of a commitment to make our state a better place. We all saw the problem of a lack of attention to that in-between layer of governance, and wanted to do what we could to correct that problem. Along the way we've had an up-front view of a slow motion disaster, a few moments of historical significance, and the day-to-day drama of Sacramento.
As we said at our panel at Netroots Nation last week, everybody knows that Sacramento is dysfunctional. After all, it was designed to be inoperable. But California can be better, and one way or another, we'll break through the downward spiral. And, you know, hopefully, we'll be there to chronicle that as well.
And just to give the people what they want, how's about a photo of Robert and I with Assembly candidate Melissa Fox.
UPDATE by Robert: This is a pretty damn awesome award. (And in fairness to the Bay Guardian, I was an East Bay resident in 1997-2001, so I'll take the honor!)
The Bay Guardian played a formative role in shaping my own politics when I was a young pup just starting out at UC Berkeley in the late '90s after spending my first 18 years in the middle of then-conservative Orange County.
One of the reasons I went to Berkeley was to search for a workable left-wing politics. I didn't really find it in Berkeley itself. But I did find it in the pages of the Bay Guardian, where writers like Tim Redmond and, later, Steven T. Jones laid out a progressive agenda (and they were one of the first to use the term "progressive" to mean "anti-neoliberal politics") for the city of San Francisco and for the greater Bay Area. Their writing helped me formulate my own social democratic thinking, which I now return to you all in the form of Calitics.
While working on my still-unfinished dissertation on SF politics in the 1960s and 1970s, I had the pleasure to read every issue of the Bay Guardian from their first one in 1966 up to November 1980, and saw that they played a crucial role in pushing SF to the left and helping position the city's left to survive the crises of the 1980s, including Dianne Feinstein's terms as mayor.
So this is pretty damn meaningful to me. It's great when people whose work I respect say we're doing something of value here at Calitics. So I think I'll just keep on doing it!
* Looks like there will be three debates between Whitman and Brown. Brown had previously accepted ten invites, but Whitman was looking for a little less airtime.
(This is an important resolution to this chilling story. The diary comes from Carla, a longtime friend of Calitics who is working to help raise the profile of California's end-of-life laws to ensure these stories never happen again. - promoted by Robert Cruickshank)
Full Disclosure: I am the Online Community Builder for Compassion & Choices, the nation's consumer advocacy organization for improving care and expanding choice at the end of life.
Regardless of age or health status, none of us knows when a future event might leave us unable to speak for ourselves. The LGBT community faces additional challenges on this front, as there are few places where the community is afforded the same civil rights as married couples. Yet many in this community do not have advance directives or understand the potential need for a Hospital Visitation Authorization.
Sonoma County resident Clay Greene and his partner of 20 years Harold Scull did understand these needs. They had all the proper paperwork that's recommended so that partners can make health care decisions. But the County ignored the paperwork, denied the couple's partnership, sold off their possessions and kept them apart until one of the men died and the other was forced to file suit.
Scull was hospitalized in April 2008. Greene said his partner fell down the front steps of their Sebastopol home. The county public guardian's office said Scull accused Greene of domestic violence, an allegation disputed by Greene's lawyers and a representative of Scull's estate.
According to the lawsuit, the public guardian's office went to court to obtain conservatorship of Scull, whose mental health was deteriorating, and described Greene in court papers as Scull's roommate, ignoring the powers of attorney both men had signed.
After moving Scull to an assisted living facility, the guardian's office had Greene confined in a nursing home, falsely describing him as demented and referring to him in his presence as a "crazy old man," the suit said.
County officials proceeded to terminate the men's lease on their home and auction off all their possessions, including art works, furniture, heirlooms and their bank accounts, the suit said.
Scull died in August 2008. Greene's lawyers said the partners never saw one another after they were separated.
Sonoma County denied violating the men's rights. But last Friday, Greene's lawyers said the county and a nursing home had agreed to a $653,000 settlement with Greene and the estate of Harold Scull.
This kind of elder abuse is tragic and horrible. Perhaps this settlement will be a warning to other entities to honor the end-of-life wishes of everyone, including gays and lesbians.
Compassion & Choices has a wealth of free tools and information (including state-approved advance directives) to help identify priorities and ensure wishes are honored. We encourage everyone to download our many free materials and get started right away. Our toll-free End-Of-Life Counseling service is also available to help at 1-800-247-7421.
San Francisco's Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting is holding a meeting to discuss how to best change the taxation of commercial property. It's in just a few hours, at 6pm, at Oakland's Laney College. I went to the event in San Francisco a few months back, and it was a worthwhile opportunity to discuss the issues.
Over the last few budget cycles, the inevitable became reality. We started spending more money on prisons than on higher education. Tuition (oh, sorry, that's not tuition, those are "fees") skyrocketed as we stopped subsidizing education for the next generation of California's leaders. Sure, we aren't the only state doing so, but the magnitude of our cost increases should make any one shudder.
For example, as I entered UC Berkeley to get my policy degree, the school had just tacked on a $5,000 "professional fee." That's just another 5 grand that will be tacked on to the loans of students that really aren't gearing up to make millions. Sure, the federal government, over the last few years, has radically changed the student loan system in a number of beneficial ways. (Including some forgiveness for public employees) However, the sheer amount of debt for students is becoming unmanageable.
And of course, we shouldn't be surprised to hear that we reap what we sow:
For many college students and their families, rising tuition costs and a tough economy are presenting new challenges as college bills come in. This has led to a little-known but growing population of financially stressed students, who are facing hunger and sometimes even homelessness. (NPR)
The story (listen up top) goes on to chronicle the plight of some of these students. They end up skipping meals, couch surfing through the semester, working two jobs, or being forced to drop out. These are the choices that we are offering to our students.
Schools like UCLA will work with students to help out, but the fact that many students simply won't talk about these issues along with the growing numbers mean that not every student will get the help that they need.
Lest anybody think that we haven't raised any taxes, just check out the fee bills of our students. Sure, call them fees with a thousand different names, but taxes are what they really are. Instead of using a more fair and progressive taxation structure, we're piling on debt to the backs of our students, and really, our future.
I'm glad that the Chamber is spending so much time trying to protect their $1.5 billion tax cut they got last year. Perhaps they can hire some of the unemployed students in their "extra time" to help out with that campaign. I hear they are looking for some jobs.
PPP is out with a new poll on Prop 19 showing more favorable numbers than other recent polls, including Field, have shown. PPP found Prop 19 has a 52-38 lead, which is closer to the numbers SurveyUSA found (50-40 in support) than to Field (44-48 against).
PPP also found that the strongest support of California's ethnoracial groups comes from African-Americans, who back Prop 19 by a 68-32 margin. PPP reasons that this is because of the way marijuana laws are enforced:
Despite representing 7% of CA's population, African Americans represent 50% of prisoners in California on marijuana charges.
This too is in contrast to the Field Poll, which found African Americans opposing Prop 19 by a 40-52 margin.
What explains the contrast between PPP/SUSA and Field? Nate Silver argues that it has to do with the fact that PPP/SUSA polls are automated, whereas the Field Poll is not:
Nevertheless, it's possible that we're seeing some sort of Bradley effect in reverse, which I've reluctantly dubbed the "Broadus Effect" after the given name of the rapper Snoop Dogg, himself a frequent consumer of cannabinoid-rich products.
The original Bradley Effect, named for former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, occurs when respondents in surveys are asked about socially desirable behaviors, such as being free from racial prejudice. Although the racial version of Bradley effect itself is probably a thing of the past, social desirability bias may manifest itself in other ways. Automated polls have sometimes shown relatively lower levels support for gay marriage initiatives, for instance, in states like Maine and California. Homophobia is fairly common, but has become socially undesirable; the purveyors of the automated polls have sometimes claimed that their respondents are free to be more honest when there's not another human being on the line. If the theory holds, automated polls might also provide a setting for voters to be more honest about their feelings on marijuana use, another behavior that is probably more widespread (and privately tolerated) than it is socially acceptable. If so, that would be good news for Prop 19.
In other words, it might be the case that given the very real threat of incarceration for marijuana possession and lower levels of social acceptability, respondents are freer to be honest in responding to an automated poll than to a human being about whether they've used marijuana and whether they would support its legalization.
If Silver is right and there is a "Broadus effect" at work, it does raise another question: is the "Bradley effect" dead? Taken in its broadest form, are people more willing to say they'll support marijuana legalization in response to an automated poll than they're willing to go out and vote, or vote yes on Prop 19 when they're filling out their ballots?
That's a question better suited for voters and activists than the pollsters. The PPP and SUSA polls both indicate that it is possible to pass Prop 19 - if we can organize Californians to fill out their ballots for the November election. Like every other race on the ballot this year, victory or defeat is a matter of who can get out the vote.
On the left, we tend to cast aside anybody who has a stain on their record fairly quickly. On the right, they celebrate their hatchet men. Of course, I'm referring to the Breitbart/Sherrod debacle.
