(One person’s views on why this election is important and why Phil Angelides is the best man for the job. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Here’s the Research:

Angelides supports the clean energy initiative. The iniative will reduce oil consumption by 25% and tax oil companies by $4,000,000,000 over the next ten years and would make it illegal for the oil industry to pass the tax on to consumers (especially with its record profits).

Angelides supports the clean money iniative, which would provide public finances to candidates who can obtain at least 750 $5.00 contributions from voters and who have participated in at least one primary and two general election debates. It would also place new restrictions on contributions and expenditures by lobbyists and corporations.

Angelides was complimented by Elliot Spitzer for getting CalPERS (the nation’s largest public pension fund) to only do business with investors who seperate research and investing practices. Spitzer said, “I applaud Treasurer Angelides for his actions. Today’s announcement is an important first step in ensuring that these reforms become the new market standard.”http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/…

CalSTRS (the nations third largest public pension fund) approved Angelides’ motion to divest from sudan to pressure an end to the government backed genocide in sudan.

Angelides called on the California State Legislature to pass AB 2584, which calls for an end to the loophole that allows corporations to escape taxes by relocating offshore.

Angelides wrote Barbara boxer a letter asking her to support net neutrality.  

Angelides has called for the basic right of shareholders to nominate directors (William Donaldson, chairman of the SEC, instead caved to anti-reform pressure by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable).  Angelides says the push to privatize public pension funds is largely in response to the new trend of public pension funds calling for socially and environmentally responsible investments.  

From Angelides’ website: California State Treasurer Phil Angelides today called on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to adopt tough rules that would make permanent the ban on the stock market abuse of spinning – the practice where a favored executive receives a preferred allocation of stock in an initial public offering (IPO) from an investment bank that does business with the executive’s company.

http://www.angelides.com/…

The executive directors of four major environmental groups criticized Westly campaign ads against Angelides, saying, “All of the environmental organizations who do endorsements believe Phil has the vision to be the greenest governor California has ever had. Don’t let Steve Westly’s attacks prevail over the environmental movement’s best judgement in this election.”  http://www.angelides.com/… They also criticized Gary South in the letter. Westly endorsed Angelides after the primary.

Angelides said he will legalize gay marriage (california has the first legilature to approve of gay marriage but Arnold vetoed it).

Angelides has called for a rollback of the significant student financial aid cuts and calls for an expansion of grants.

=Quotes=

For to live in an oil-dependent society is to live in fear.  The fear of terrorism funded with the very dollars we spend at the gas pump.  The fear of war to defend or defeat oil-fueled regimes in the Mideast.  The fear of what happens to our families and our jobs when, inevitably, oil prices soar out of sight. The fear of what is happening to our planet and the legacy we are leaving to our children and grandchildren.http://treasurer.ca.gov/…

I believe President Bush is running deficits in Washington very deliberately. His plan is to finally run up so much debt that it inevitably creates pressure on the funding of things that count, in terms of the long-term strength of the society: educating kids, retirement security for American families. A mini version of that is going on in Sacramento. http://www.pensionsatwork.ca/…

On Arnold’s gay marriage veto: “Just as Wallace, Thurmond and many other segregationists came to regret their errors, I hope that Gov. Schwarzenegger will come to change his views.”

“The merger should not be approved unless the executive compensation package is stripped out…”

“Imagine if we said no to HMO profiteering, expanded health care for working Californians and their children, and then moved on to universal health care — making our state a model for the nation.”
http://www.powerpac….

“It takes more than empty soundbites to educate a child, more than scorched-earth rhetoric to balance a budget, more than celebrity swagger to care for the sick and the aged.”

The city of San Diego has become the poster child for the effects of Republican municipal leadership. Once hailed as “America’s Finest City,” San Diego is now being called “America’s Cheapest City” or “Enron by the Sea.”

Simply put, San Diego is the victim of the Republican approach to civic governance that is the outcome of two decades of drinking the Ronald Reagan/Grover Norquist cool-aide. Averse to pay as you go government and incapable of taxing anyone but tourists through hotel and car rental fees, the city of San Diego managed to drive itself to technical bankruptcy in ten years thanks to the Republican dominance of its public administration.

San Diego’s financial woes date back to 1996, when the city’s Republican leaders decided to systematically under fund its city employee’s pension fund in order to meet the city’s current financial obligations. This was a pattern of behavior that went on for several years, as successive Republican administrations failed to balance the city’s books. Exacerbating the problem, pension fund managers routinely took actions, some potentially criminal, to increase the city’s pension obligations to future retirees.

The city’s finances began to unravel in 1996, when the City Council voted to increase pension benefits while underfunding the retirement plan. A vote in 2002 continued the practice. The benefit increases, along with the underfunding, stock-market losses and settlements with retirees, have contributed to a pension system shortfall of $1.4 billion.

[…]

The fiscal meltdown that resulted sparked investigations by the U.S. Justice Department and the SEC in early 2004. Five former city and pension fund officials were charged with federal fraud and conspiracy in January.

How the 1996 GOP national convention helped put San Diego on the road to financial ruin and more follows.

To make matters worse, while the city’s Republican leaders were stealing money from the city workers pension plan they were illegally shifting the cost of the managing the city’s sewer system from corporate users to the city’s households.

In a $20 million report presented to the city last week, risk management company, Kroll Incorporated lays out the city’s malfeasance and names names. The report stops short of alleging criminal misconduct by city leaders, but it comes very close.

San Diego city leaders “fell prey” to the same type of “corruption of financial management” that afflicted Orange County before it sought bankruptcy and corporations like Enron before it collapsed, the 266-page report issued by Kroll Inc. stated.

 

The report, which cost the city more than $20 million and took 18 months to produce, outlined numerous cases of wrongdoing by San Diego’s city officials related to the city’s fiscal crisis and offered recommendations to improve fiscal management and accountability.

We didn’t pull any punches,” Arthur Levitt, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the head of the Kroll team, told the council and audience.

Two sections of the report concern violations of law concerning the wastewater system and the pension system.

The report names dozens of current and former city officials, both elected and administrative. It doesn’t paint a flattering picture.

Levitt said his group found the past city leadership committed violations of the California Constitution, the city’s charter and municipal code, and federal securities laws.

He decried a culture in which the city’s budget decisions had a lack of transparency and were marked by “artful manipulation.”

“In my judgment San Diego’s problems are not economic, they are political,” Levitt said. (emphasis mine) 

Saying there was a “prevailing culture of political expedience,” Levitt said city officials made a concerted effort to water down a Blue Ribbon committee report that evaluated the city’s financial problems.

“Concern was expressed that disclosure of the truth would derail the city’s effort to issue bonds to build a new baseball stadium,” he said.

Levitt also said the city overcharged homeowners on their sewer bills to subsidize large industrial users. Those actions, according to the report, left the city liable for the return of $265 million in state funds.

According to the report, the city’s pension system was thrown into crisis “by years of reckless and wrongful mismanagement involving any number of city and pension board officials.”

The report said that the renewal of the city’s pension under funding plan in 2002 was “unlawful for a number of reasons,” a contention that City Attorney Michael Aguirre has made repeatedly since he took office in 2004.

This is not a single instance of mismanagement of misconduct. What the Kroll report clearly defines is a ten year history of willful illegal conduct. Conduct that resulted in amended city financial reports that have devastated San Diego’s credit rating.

In Sunday’s San Diego Union Tribune, one of the factors that started the city down the road to financial ruin is identified. According to the UT, the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego forced the city to dig deep to come up with sufficient funds to pay for all the frills the national party demand of the convention’s host city.

The convention is now seen by some auditors and investigators as among a string of events that strained San Diego’s tight city finances, leading policy-makers in 1996 to balance the books by paying less into the city pension system than was needed to meet its future obligations to thousands of retirees.

[…]

Kroll connected the dots in a 266-page report delivered Tuesday. It cited the convention among a few key things that “put a particularly severe strain” on the city’s ability to meet its annual pension-payment obligation. The other strains were benefit increases and a new method of calculating the city’s retirement costs.

It is indeed ironic that in a community where elected and appointed Republicans have for years proclaimed their belief in law and order and conservative fiscal policy, that financial disaster has been inflicted by these same politicians decisions to steal money from homeowners and retirees. Adding more bitterness to the irony is the fact that the Republican National Convention that the city’s Republican leaders so assiduously courted was one of the unpaid bills that forced those fiscal conservatives to begin their financial ponzi scheme.