(Bumped for visibility over my long front-pager(s) – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: November initiative preview, the race for governor (money and TV ads, same as always), the budget process, education stuff, reform stuff, 15% Doolitle, Paid-For Pombo, immigration, typical Republicans, CA-50, CA-45, urban living.

Initiative Preview

John Myers runs down the likely November ballot initiatives, which apparently don’t include the initiative to constitutionalize religious opposition to homosexuality. We’ll be writing more about these as the summer wears on.

Governor’s Race

• More money for Schwarzenegger from the usual suspects.
• More money for Westly from the usual suspect.
• New ad from Phil Angelides, and a promised new pro-Anglides IE ad from the unions. And one more new ad each from both the Angelides and Westly campaigns.
• Greg Dewar wants you to tell him about the campaign mailers you get.

Education

• Assembly Democrats lay out their differences with Governor Schwarzenegger with respect to, vis-a-vis, and regarding the new budget. Alberto Torrico (AD-20), chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee thinks that Schwarzenegger is shorting transportation costs.
• Educational Justice Blog reminds us that the big chunk of education funding in Schwarzenegger’s budget is only there because ABC and the CTA browbeat the Governor into actually keeping his promise. Why is it that Schwarzenegger needed to be pursued by the very people he attacked last year in order to keep a promise he made to the children of California?
• California Progress Report has a guest piece expressing concerns about the high school exit exam.
• The Mad Professah has written a thoughtful (and brief) post on the high school exit exam.
• Randy Bayne is not so impressed with Sheila Kuhl’s proposal to call out the contributions of GLBT folks in California textbooks, arguing that it perpetuates labelling. I would have agreed with Randy once, but the problem is that almost everyone assumes that people (historical or otherwise) straight unless it’s pointed out that they’re not. Not mentioning a difference like that continues the assumption that GLBT folks haven’t contributed.

Reform & Reformers

• Californians are interested in non-partisan redistricting: SCA 3, Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters.
• Debra Bowen would like $25K from the grassroots (which one has to assume includes the netroots). If you give, throw on a penny so they know where it comes from.

Immigration

• Marc Cooper reacts to Bush’s immigration speech: tried to steer a middle course without offending anyone, and in the process, offended his base. The discussion in comments is worth reading as well.
• Tom Hilton points us to a story in which an undocumented immigrant is paid below minimum wage, fights her employer on it, and then, surprise surprise surprise, is “anonymously” reported to INS. To the extend that undocumented immigration may depress wages in certain sectors, that would be why.
• Ms. Geek has Round 2 of an immigration discussion she’s been hosting / having.
• Old Hickory’s Weblog is talking sense, and so is sure to be ignored.
• David Neiwert is not in California, but this post is worth a glance.
• Does anyone remember Cheech Marin in “Born in East LA”? The Republicans do. Papers, please.
• Ooooh, shiny!

Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

• Apparently, Paid-For Pombo is feeling the pinch on his sacrifice of the California salmon fisheries. So, the correct response is? You guessed it: destroy marine sancturies. The guy is a one man cascade failure.
• Paid-For Pombo is all about stifling dissent, both in committee and in his campaign.
• It seems that the Pombo-McCloskey debate was a slugfest. Good.
• If I lived in CA-11, I would not vote for Pete McCloskey in the general, although I don’t think he’s a bad guy. I think a Republican majority in the House is a bad thing. The Republican Party is just too corrupt and too destructive for the few remaining honest Republicans to try to rein in. Pete McCloskey is not really a modern Republican, a charge also made by Pombo’s people. McCloskey takes umbrage and responds, proving that he’s not a modern Republican.
• Jerry McNerney on renewable energy, at Daily Kos.

15% Doolittle / CA-04

• Courtesy of Down With Doolittle, this SacBee graphic showing the CA-04 candidates.
• It’s GOOD to be on the Appropriations Committee!
• 15% Doolittle hearts sweatshops. And sweatshops heart 15% Doolittle.
• 15% Doolittle also hearts his kids, so much so that he pays for their child care out of his campaign funds. Y’know, if 15% Doolittle’s wife didn’t work outside the home collecting the family kickbacks, if they had a more traditional marriage and better family values, maybe 15% Doolittle wouldn’t have to rely on his campaign donors to take care of his children.

General Purpose Republican Corruption

• Just so we’re all clear about Paid-For Pombo and 15% Doolittle, VP Dick Cheney is coming to California to raise funds for them. Three of a kind: self-dealing extremists with nothing but contempt for democracy and civil liberties.
• Still more corruption from California Republicans. This time it’s Ken Calvert (CA-44), with a classic scam: buy some land, legislate to increase the land value, sell some land, repeat until wealthier.
• Down With Tyranny continues to do yeomans’s work on the avatar of Republican corruption that is Jerry Lewis (CA-41). See also this from Pacific Views. California Republicans must be so shameless proud.

The Rest

• Now Bill Hauf is in the CA-50 primary race. Jon Fleischman must be very happy.

Also, AnthonyLA at DailyKos documents the Republican lies in CA-50 and asks, inter alia: “This is the guy that isn’t conservative enough for the California Republicans?”

• Uneasy Rhetoric puts up a good discussion of the perceived costs and benefits of living in a far-flung suburb vs. living in a city center.
• That Mad Professah is talking about AD-45 again. This time it’s about LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s endorsement.
• California Republicans at their finest.

(Bumped from the diaries. Minor edits and title change. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

There is a scandal brewing over insurance regulation and blackmail in the coming California election.  California Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, who is now a candidate for Lt. Governor has called in the California Attorney General and the FBI to investigate a blackmail and extortion charge.  The insurance companies have threatened Garamendi over a proposed regulation that would save California consumers millions of dollars on their auto insurance.  They said if he backs off the regulation they will hold off from spending millions on attack ads smearing him.  The only word for this is extortion.

So much more below the fold.

To learn more, start with Garamendi says insurers trying to coerce him on auto regulations; asks FBI, state to investigate

State Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi accused automobile insurers of “coercion, extortion and blackmail” for launching a $2.4 million campaign attacking his proposed regulations that would cut the cost of some drivers’ coverage in crowded urban areas. He asked the FBI, the U.S. Attorney and state Attorney General Bill Lockyer to investigate his allegations.

Garamendi, a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in the June 6 primary, said he was told that if he backed off pushing the regulation, he would be spared an attack by insurers as Election Day neared. [emphasis added]

Here is another story, and this one has a video clip: Auto Insurers Accused Of Blackmailing Commissioner

The state insurance commissioner says he’s facing threats of blackmail to keep auto insurance rates higher.

John Garamendi came out blasting Monday, accusing California’s largest auto insurers of using political extortion to get him to delay implementing laws that would save California motorists money.

More details are available in a recent op-ed in the LA Times, Auto-insurance ripoff, provides more details,

INSURANCE Commissioner John Garamendi’s allegation Monday that the insurance industry attempted to blackmail him could change California politics. Finally, an official of statewide stature has blown the whistle on the corporate pollution of democracy.

After two terms as a pro-consumer commissioner, Garamendi is in a tight race for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor. By purportedly threatening to finance a multimillion-dollar attack-ad campaign against him unless he derailed an important consumer-protection regulation, the state’s largest insurance companies gambled that Garamendi would acquiesce.

Go read the whole thing.  

The background of the blackmail story is further detailed in an e-mail I received:

By 1998 California voters were fed up with abuses by the insurance industry.  These included such things as high prices and arbitrary cancellations.  One particularly onerous abuse was “territorial rating,” the practice of setting your auto insurance rates based on where you live, rather than your driving record.  In that year California voted to end such abuses by passing Proposition 103, which read in part:

1861.02 (a) Rates and premiums for an automobile insurance policy, as described in subdivision (a) of Section 660, shall be determined by application of the following factors in decreasing order of importance:
(1) The insured’s driving safety record.
(2) The number of miles he or she drives annually.
(3) The number of years of driving experience the insured has had.
(4) Such other factors as the commissioner may adopt by regulation that have a substantial relationship to the risk of loss. The regulations shall set forth the respective weight to be given each factor in determining automobile rates and premiums. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the use of any criterion without such approval shall constitute unfair discrimination.

Unfortunately, a California Court of Appeals in 2000 ruling made these provisions unenforceable.  However, Proposition 103 also made Insurance Commissioner an elective office, an office now held by John Garamendi.  Mr. Garamendi has promulgated regulations that banned territorial ratings, very much consistent with the wishes of California voters and much to the chagrin of the insurance industry.

A group of insurance companies — Allstate, Farmers, Safeco, 21st Century, and State Farm — is attempting to blackmail John Garamendi, who is now a candidate for Lt. Governor of California.  These companies have raised $2.4 million to run a TV ad campaign against Mr. Garamendi asking viewers to “tell Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi to drop this unfair plan now.”  An industry representative contacted him through an intermediary and offered to drop the ad campaign if Mr. Garamendi would withdraw those regulations.

The insurance companies claim that they were merely informing Mr. Garamendi of their campaign out of “courtesy.”  Right.

John Garamendi refuses to be intimidated.  He will enforce those regulations.  He has filed formal requests for investigations of this group by the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the state Attorney General.  He will continue to work for the rights of California consumers as Insurance Commissioner and as Lt. Governor.

And there is information at Consumer Watchdog,

Insurers to Spend Millions Against Garamendi for Lowering Premiums
Auto insurance companies are planning a $2.4 million campaign to attack California Insurance Commissioner Garamendi because he has proposed rules to lower premiums for California good drivers.

They have And a press release: Group Calls on Commissioner Candidates To Stand Behind Garamendi Insurance Regulations To Protect Integrity of Office.  Go there to read the rest.

If you’re still with me, take a look at the PR firm in Sacramento spinning the attack…..Bicker, Castillo & Fairbanks

One last thing — all of this is especially interesting because a previous Insurance Commissioner was forced to resign after an investigation revealed that he had waived billions of dollars in penalties against insurers in exchange for insurance company donations.  HE didn’t call in the law, he took the money and cost the citizens billions.

So go visit John Garamendi’s website at http://www.garamendi.org/.  And, of course, if you want to help him out against the big insurance companies, click here and send him a few bucks!

Hey all,

Just discovered this blog from a link on MyDD. Seems there’s little if any activity from OC. I’ll try to post here occasionally to let you know what I see going on around me, though I definitely don’t see it all. A little about myself: I’m an alternate on the DPOC Central Committee (former delegate), CDP delegate, active in DFA-OC, communications person for a Congressional candidate, and precinct organizer for my city of residence through OC’s incipient involvement with precinctcaptains.org.

More after the jump…

We have some interesting races here, with our only Democrat-held seats (AD-69, SD-34) the only significantly contested primaries. Otherwise, I believe we actually have a great set of candidates this cycle. Most of the state Assembly and Senate candidates came out to DFA-OC’s candidate forum in April. They really surprised me. We also have some great candidates for local office and are finally working on building a farm team for the next decade, when–I firmly believe–Democrats will overtake Repubs as the plurality party in the county. Just you watch!

Please post with questions comments, as well as suggestions for my Congressional candidate.