On November 19th, 52 UC Davis students were arrested after peacefully protesting the new 32% fee increases established by the UC Regents. As a second year undergraduate, I was hopeful that students were beginning to see the bigger picture: California is broken.

   Students, so far, have been forcing most of the blame on the UC Regents. While it is true that the 20 Regents who voted for the increase certainly deserve a heaving portion of the blame for borrowing tens of millions (from a non-CA bank, NY Merrill Trust) while forcing students into a cycle of debt in order to protect UC’s eerily superb bond rating, the only way for students to move towards enacting change is to recognize that UC’s woes are symptomatic of the larger disease that has infected the entire state.

   The UC student, to widen the umbrella for a movement that might have the capability of rallying support for reform, should understand that he or she risks turning people off by angling attacks towards the Regents and the Regents only. It is important to recognize that while it is a travesty that UC is becoming an unaffordable option for many California families, it is nearsighted to think that UC fees are anything more than a slice of the pie that is California’s broken political system. The state workers that have been furloughed, the elderly Californians that are losing their access to Medicare, the thousands of previously middle-class Californians that have had their homes foreclosed, and the over 12% of California that is unemployed might tell students that UC is not the only government program that is underfunded, mismanaged, and increasingly unavailable to the people who need it.

 To the single mother making $30,000 a year or the undocumented immigrant working in poor labor conditions for a less-than-legal salary, the plight of the students might seem distant and unimportant. The reality of the situation is that students are making valid points, but they are doing so in a way that turns off the millions of Californians that should be turned on by the students’ overarching message of reforming California.

   When the student recognizes that the immediate and long term problems caused by UC’s fee increases are tied together with the struggles of working families, immigrants, the elderly, homeowners, borrowers, the unemployed, water drinkers, and dozens of other California communities and interest groups, then, perhaps, we will see forward progress.

   The first point that needs to be made by students (that might catch on) is that the programs that made our state great in the 50s and 60s cannot continue to exist without proper funding.

   The message should be loud and clear: raising revenue does not mean higher taxes for everybody, it means looking at who and what gets taxed in this state, and what kind of people are hurt when programs lose funding. Here are three problems that have been generally accepted among the progressive community to be at the heart of the problem:

   Lack of an oil-severance tax in California. Who wins? Big Oil. Who loses? The People. AB 656 (Torrico) would use a 9.9% tax on Gross Product to generate up to $1 billion annually for programs like UC, CSU and CCC.

   2/3rds majority required to pass anything that raises revenue. Who wins? The CaGOP and Big Business. Who loses? Again, The People. Republicans who are indebted to special interest groups that represent Big Business are able to crush the programs that help make the California Dream a reality for many working Californians. AB 656 is expected to be an easy kill for the Republican minority, even though California is the only state in the union that does not have an oil severance tax (including Sarah’s AK and GWB’s TX).

   Proposition 13. Who wins? Big Business. Who Loses? The People. The remains of the Jarvis Taxpayer Revolution act as the most regressive and harmful tax policy in the state. With the veil of providing economic safety for elderly residents without a fixed income, the anti-tax era cursed California’s future with budget shortfalls and program cuts. It is apparent, now, that Californians can’t have our cake and eat it, too.

   So, students should be asking the question: Why is it that Chevron, Monsanto, and Walmart are allowed to raise revenue while the State of California isn’t? Why is it that CEOs are getting pay raises while the People are getting both pay cuts and program cuts?

   The students are right: the State of California has left them for dead, but they are not alone. Almost every Californian uses some sort of state-sponsored program, whether that be a UC, a public elementary school, a library, or the DMV. If you’re one of those people, and if you haven’t gotten a pay raise, then you should be ticked off, too.

(Posted by Steve Smith, California Labor Federation)

The campaign to repeal the egregious corporate tax giveaways that were part of the last budget deal is gathering steam. Thanks to Brian and David for their coverage of this issue – it seems to being having some resonance with folks who are fed up with sweetheart deals for corporations at the expense of the rest of us.

To continue the momentum, the California Labor Federation is organizing statewide actions tomorrow at Chevron gas stations to raise awareness about how desperately flawed these tax breaks are. The actions come on the heels of last week’s letter to the governor and legislative leaders, signed by 75 organizations,  calling for the repeal of corporate tax breaks before an additional dime is cut from services.

Why Chevron? Because there couldn’t be a better example of how upside down our budget process has become.

(Edit by Brian, see the flip)

As Calitics has noted, the last budget deal included corporate tax breaks that will cost the state billions in revenue, including a tax giveaway just like the one that Chevron’s been lobbying to get for years. These giveaways amount to $2.5 billion a year, every year, permanently, to Chevron and a handful of the world’s largest corporations.

To get those huge tax breaks, Chevron has invested heavily. Chevron has six separate lobbying firms working for them in Sacramento. They racked up more than $6 million in lobbying bills in just five years. And that doesn’t include the $48 million they’ve on spent California campaign contributions since 2005.

It’s clear that all the corporate tax giveaways and high-powered lobbyists are paying off for Chevron. During just three months of 2008, Chevron raked in $7.9 billion in profits – more than doubling their profits from a year earlier.

Chevron’s abuse of corporate tax breaks is costing us all. Because Chevron’s not paying its fair share, we’re looking at fewer teachers in our classrooms, fewer firefighters and police protecting our families, and almost a million more kids without health insurance.

We hope you can join us tomorrow to shed some light on how these corporate tax breaks are impacting all Californians. You can find all locations and times for the actions at our Facebook group, No More Budget Cuts Until Corporate Tax Breaks Are Shut Down . And if you haven’t signed the online petition to repeal corporate tax giveaways, please take a second to do so.

• AD-10: Alyson Huber gets some earned media for her paid media in a “Ad Watch” column.

• There are tons of stories today about increases in voter registration. San Bernadino County, Santa Clara County, and Sacramento County.  These are numbers we’ve been expecting. Much of this registration is Democratic heavy. In fact, San Bernadino County now reports 10,000 more Dems than Republicans on the voter rolls.

• One of Arnold’s vetoes could quite literally kill people. He vetoed a bill to increase the size of the medically uninsurable risk pool, against the advice of his own appointees on the board that oversees the pool. Arnold’s reasoning: we can’t do anything if we don’t do everything.

The governor said “the only solution for our healthcare crisis” is a complete overhaul of the state’s healthcare system along the lines of his $14.9-billion plan that the Legislature rejected last January as too expensive.

“We supported wholesale health reform, but this is a population that has nowhere else to go, and he’s leaving them high and dry,” said Elizabeth Landsberg, legislative advocate for the Western Center on Law & Poverty, a Los Angeles nonprofit. (LA Times 10/28)

Disgusting.

• A fascinating legal case is going to trial in San Francisco. A group of Nigerian villagers are suing Chevron over a protest on one an oil rig in the Niger Delta. The plaintiffs accuse Chevron of drastic human rights violations. Oh, and Chevron is now the #3 oil company in the world.

Some of these items may have been covered here, some not, but I didn’t get to post a lot throughout the week, so here’s some fresh meat (apologies to CMR) for those interested in Golden State politics:

• Last week the LAT reported on the rise of private prisons as an answer to crises like the overcrowding situation in California.  Of course, the last private prison in the state I can remember, the city lockup in Seal Beach, had to be closed down because it WASN’T MAKING ENOUGH MONEY. 

• Meanwhile, Robert Sillen, who’s overseeing the prison health care system after a federal judge threw it into receivership, got a somewhat favorable writeup in the New York Times.  Sillen is going a little outside the boundaries of his mandate to improve the facilities for prisoners, including going outside state budget requirements.  He also spoke a little truth:

Mr. Sillen says California politicians are reaping what they have sown. He attributed the state’s prison problems to tough-on-crime lawmakers who made political hay out of sentencing laws that filled the state prisons without expanding either the facilities or their services.

He has a standard diatribe concerning the criminal justice system that includes issues like the neglect of poor neighborhoods and the lack of alcohol treatment programs.

“I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for the politics,” Mr. Sillen said. “No one gets elected in Sacramento without a platform that says, ‘Let’s get rid of rapists, pedophiles and murderers.’ “

• Which is why it’s doubtful that two bills soon to be on the Governor’s desk that would create independent sentencing commissions with the ability to modify sentencing laws will be signed.  Schwarzenegger is as wedded to the tough-on-crime myth as his Republican pals, and he thinks that privatization, along with building on credit, is the answer.  None of those measures attacks the problem at the root, however, which is why we’ll be back here in five years.

• I attended the press event where the Speaker announced legislation aimed at stopping oil industry market manipulation on a variety of fronts.  Turns out those bills have been denuded, and I can’t help but wonder if it has anything to do with all that oil money pouring in to the CDP and various legislators, including the Speaker himself.

• Another bill that appears unlikely to be signed by the Governor is Sen. Perata’s bill that would put the occupation of Iraq to a vote in Feburary 2008.  Backers of this bill think they have squeezed Schwarzenegger, and if they jump on the result then maybe they’ll get something out of it, but reasonable people agree that this is a meaningless feel-good measure that would have no impact on actual policy, and the Governor can merely say that those interested in ending the war already have a voice in Washington, call your representatives, etc.

• There is supposedly something in the works on health care reform, another closed-door deal mandated by a forced-bottleneck process that results in a Big 5, Little 116 state government.  I wonder if the 30 million-plus citizens NOT represented by Sens. Perata or Yacht Boy Ackerman, or Asms. Nuñez or Villines, feel valued by such a process.  As for the actual bill, it’s apparently a mix of approving the plan now with the funding (including fee hikes) in a ballot initiative later.

• There’s also a redistricting ballot initiative in the works.  Hey I’ve got an idea, how about we have an election a week and “let the people decide” everything!  Wouldn’t it be so democratic, to run a nation-state based on 30-second television ads?? (also, people redistrict themselves, this measure will end up being FAR less spectacular than everyone believes, and also the political map has changed in 8 years, and the gerrymandering itself is not a good enough reason not to contest everywhere, it’s just a convenient cop-out that allows the CDP to unilaterally disarm.)

I’d better stop writing before I get myself in more trouble…

This is about the eighth time I've seen a report simliar to this one that undisclosed donors are financing a Schwarzenegger trade mission.

Fifty-two business delegates will join Schwarzenegger on the trip, according to a list the Governor's Office released Friday. A third of those going represent interests that have donated to Schwarzenegger's campaigns.

The governor's trip will be financed by the California State Protocol Foundation, a tax-exempt organization not required to disclose its donors. California Chamber of Commerce leaders, including President Allan Zaremberg, serve as the group's officers.

The foundation is not required by law to disclose its contributors and has not done so. In 2005, the last year for which IRS forms were available, the group received nearly $2 million in revenue. It reported $1 million in travel expenditures that year after Schwarzenegger led a weeklong trade mission in China.

The excuse put forth by the Governor's spokespeople is always the same: this SAVES taxpayer money because they don't have to finance these trade missions!  Really?  What about all the corporate welfare checks that get cut as a result of this access?  What about all the watered-down regulations that cost taxpayers, not only with money but with public health and quality of life?  What about the state contracts that could go to lower bidders who don't have the same relationships (read: bribery poke) with the Governor?

over…

Frank Russo is right:

Take a look around and you'll see that this is a bipartisan problem that needs fixing–the same way that a true reformer, Hiram Johnson– took on the railroads which controlled our state a hundred years ago. His legacy is a California Constitutional prohibition against accepting any gifts of free transportation from railroad or other transportation companies. It needs to be extended to cover today's corruption, subtle and otherwise, of our elected officials. […]

We've seen a record of obscene campaign contributions in California the last election cycle–topping $600 million dollars. The next campaign season is upon us, and the Governor has proposed bans on fundraising during certain months of the year when the budget is being considered and at the end of the session and bill signing times. The California Progress Report has railed against the influence of campaign contributions on the political process and the corruption of state government. But these other “gifts” to public officials also need to be scrutinized.

 

Action is needed, not because our elected officeholders are corrupt–any more than anyone else–but because they are human and influence is why campaign donations and private funding for trips and the like are given by private interests in this state. The same was true in when bold Progressive Reforms were needed in 1911 and human nature is the same today. Only now it's not the railroads.

 It should frankly be outlawed for a private company with business before the state to finance the Governor's travel, especially when it's supposed to be official business.  This is government for sale from the guy who was supposed to be such a big reformer because he was richer than dirt.  This is also why I've been so adamant about the CDP-Chevron donation.  Influence peddling in the capital is an epidemic that needs to stop.

Jamie Court and Judy Dugan of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights pen an extremely troubling piece today about Big Oil, particularly Chevron, outright buying our government and its leaders.  This is not limited to Republicans, but certainly the Governor is the biggest recipient of this largesse.

Take Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once claimed that he was so rich he did not need anyone else’s money – and who isn’t running for another office. Yet as gasoline prices were breaking last year’s record of $3.38 a gallon, Schwarzenegger collected a $100,000 check May 1 from Chevron, the West’s largest refiner. The company certainly had the cash on hand. Just three days earlier, it reported a $4.7-billion first-quarter profit, up 18% over the same period last year.

The contribution brought Schwarzenegger’s take from Chevron to $665,000 (making it his 15th largest donor) since 2003, and his total political tribute from the energy industry is now $4 million. According to a recent Schwarzenegger fundraising solicitation, Chevron’s $100,000 buys the company special briefings with the governor, something that beleaguered motorists aren’t getting.

In all, oil companies delivered $90 MILLION dollars to political campaigns and parties in 2006, and while a lot of that went to block the corporate tax-for-alternative energy Prop. 87, plenty was spread around to political leaders and parties.  And that seed money ensures that there is no investigation into practices like this (over):

Like power plant owners during California’s 2001 electricity crisis, refiners such as Chevron have discovered that they can make more money by producing less gasoline. So they do. They have, over more than 20 years, deliberately reduced their capacity until they can barely meet California’s needs under the best of circumstances. Industry spokesmen defend this as efficiency. But there is no slack in the production system, which shorts the market and raises prices.

Any planned or unplanned refinery outage, pipeline break or power failure causes prices to jump.

Take the case of a possum and a raccoon that, in March, bit through power substation lines feeding two refineries in the South Bay. The critters expired, but the outage caused a 7-cent jump in local wholesale gasoline prices. The cost of refining gasoline is stable over time, so these price spikes equal pure profit for Chevron and Co […]

Chevron refined 22% less oil in the U.S. during the first quarter of this year than in the same quarter of 2006 because of longer “planned maintenance” downtime and accidents. Yet its total profit on U.S. refining increased 66%. Making less gasoline, it made much more money.

Last week, the CDP took $50,000 from Chevron.  Court and Dugan also detail a junket that Schwarzenegger chief of staff Susan Kennedy took with Speaker Fabian Nuñez in Rio, a 12-day conference paid for by Chevron and other oil interests.

During the 12-day conference, Chevron’s lobbyist got an entire day on the official agenda, which the public knows about only because of our Public Records Act request. Nuñez, who last year was highly critical of oil companies, seems to have nothing to say this year.

The FTCR have a long track record detailing this kind of takeover of our government.  And we all know about the inordinate power that corporate interests have in Sacramento.  This editorial makes it plain, and it’s really shocking to see it so starkly. 

Remember my facetious post excusing Californians for blaming Chevron for gas prices…well, I think I just meant for gas prices.  Because, while they might have some role in the manipulation of gas prices, it’s certainly not solely under their purview.  But, the fact that they destroy the environment of developing nations and then run away from it? Well, that is their fault.

Vanity Fair ran an article entitled “Jungle Law” concerning a lawyer who was suing Chevron for damage that Texaco (now part of Chevron) wreaked upon their environment:

In a forsaken little town in the Ecuadorean Amazon, an overgrown oil camp called Lago Agrio, the giant Chevron Corporation has been maneuvered into a makeshift courtroom and is being sued to answer for conditions in 1,700 square miles of rain forest said by environmentalists to be one of the world’s most contaminated industrial sites. The pollution consists of huge quantities of crude oil and associated wastes, mixed in with the toxic compounds used for drilling operations-a noxious soup that for decades was dumped into leaky pits, or directly into the Amazonian watershed.(Vanity Fair 5/07)

Follow me over the flip for a little Arnold connection…

What is that Arnold connection? C’mon seriously, you haven’t guessed yet? It’s money of course.  Since his entry into politics, Arnold has taken over half a million dollars from Chevron.  Yeah, um, that’s a lot of money.  Like a whole lot of money.  Hey Chevron, can I have some money? I’m going to run for governor any day now! 

Well, now decision time for the good Greenantor.  Are you really green? Well, how about some help for a lawyer who is trying to get clean drinking water for villages poisoned by the actions of Chevron (née Texaco) From today’s LA Times:

“I would like to invite you personally down to Ecuador to look at what Chevron has done to the rain forest here,” wrote Pablo Fajardo, the attorney. “I would plead with you to bring your friends who are executives at the company so they can explain to you what they have done here. And finally, I am asking for your public help in supporting the fight against this company.”

Fajardo added: “I have faith because I know you are a man of the environment.”

The attorney plans to visit California next week and wants to meet with the governor. A spokesman for Schwarzenegger said the governor has yet to receive the letter and would not comment.

So, Arnold, what are you going to do? You want to bring attention to the plight of thousands of people who have been harmed by one of your contributors?  I’m not holding my breath on this one…