This just in from The OC Register:

An Orange County judge is expected to set a date for a trial, which should start within 10 days, to decide the contested election for the 1st District seat on the Board of Supervisors.

Judge Michael Brenner today told attorneys for candidates Janet Nguyen and Trung Nguyen to return to his court Monday to select a firm date for the trial.

Brenner also ordered county Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley to provide evidence of 200 contested ballots to both sides, said attorney Steve Baric, who represents Trung Nguyen, said.

So on Monday, we should find out when the trial of the special election recount will actually begin…
And my goodness, will all of us in OC be SO HAPPY TO SEE THIS DAMN MELODRAMA END SOON! But in the meantime, stay tuned for more as the legal melodrama continues…

(As the bumper sticker on my good friend’s car says, “Poverty and health care are moral values.” Now ain’t that the truth! – promoted by atdleft)

That title’s not about some far-off war fought by child soldiers; right here in America, kids without insurance end up being killed off by hospital neglect for the sin of not being attractive customers, according to a new report.  That’s why RNs demand that any healthcare reform guarantee a single standard of care for all patients–something that only a SinglePayer system provides.  And in case you don’t believe that private insurance corporations undermine quality healthcare, Congress just found $65 billion in a budget giveaway that can now be used to actually provide care.  Elsewhere, RNs continue their patient advocacy as Schwarzenegger’s healthcare plan runs into trouble, our public health system is on alert stage red, there’s a die-in in Cook County, and a new nurse-run clinic opens in New Orleans.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of SinglePayer Healthcare.

Healthcare isn’t a commodity, it’s a right-and when we forget that, tragedy follows.  We’re reminded of this again in USA Today, which reports that:

WASHINGTON – Hospitalized children who lack health insurance are twice as likely to die from their injuries as those with insurance, a new study reports.
Uninsured children also are less likely to get expensive treatment or rehabilitation and are discharged earlier, says the study by the health care advocacy group Families USA.

Just one example:

Those with traumatic brain injuries were 32% less likely to receive aggressive treatment known as intracranial pressure monitoring. On average, they were discharged after five days, rather than eight days for insured patients.

This is what’s known as a multi-tiered health system.  Some patients can buy care, others can’t.

Please note that all “individual mandate” plans (requiring everyone to buy private insurance) offered by Romney, Schwarzenegger, Edwards, etc won’t change this dynamic at all.  Some kids will have gold-plated insurance; but poor kids will only have high-deductible, low-cap catastrophic insurance.  For-profit hospitals with cash registers where their hearts should be will aggressively treat the kids with good insurance and passively neglect those with bad insurance.  Only a SinglePayer health plan, like “Medicare for All,” guarantees a single standard of care for all Americans.

Responding to the story, the hospital industry gives us the weasel quote of the day:

“I consider the study irresponsible because it is not sufficiently thorough,” said Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals. “I’m worried that this will get people to focus on hospitals, rather than the kids.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports another way healthcare corporations are killing patients: private insurance corporations lobbied Congress to divert 65 billion care dollars away from patients and into their overhead, CEO paychecks, and lobbying budgets. 

A commission that advises Congress told lawmakers that Medicare spends about 12 percent more for care administered through private insurers than when the same care is provided through traditional Medicare.
The commission recommended eliminating that gap, which would save about $65 billion over five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Rep. Frank Pallone, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health, said the report confirms his belief that the private insurers are overpaid. Pallone, D-N.J., said he wants to steer those overpayments into other health programs.
“The reason they were paid that extra amount is because of their relationship with the Republicans,” Pallone said. “It’s a special-interest advantage that was given to them because of their relationship with the Republican majority. There’s no other rationale for it.”

Stories like this are what motivate Registered Nurses to continue their tradition of taking patient advocacy from the bedside to the statehouse.  Here’s what they’re up to just today: Governor Schwarzenegger is having trouble finding supporters of his incredibly complex health insurance proposal, and is about to be hit with a series of ads from the California Nurses Association (CNA) making clear it makes things much, much worse.  Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the CNA, notes that our public health system is on alert stage red, with Schwarzenegger and Bush threatening to make it even worse.  Cook County RNs from the National Nurses Organizing Committee stage a die-in to fight for their patients after the Board of Commissioners proposes slashing the healthcare budget 17%.  And RNs in New Orleans, helped by CNA funding, have opened their own clinic as they fight to get healthcare to those affected by Katrina and its aftermath.

Finally, don’t think America is ready for SinglePayer healthcare?  America disagrees, as nyceve points out.

If you want to join the fight for single-payer healthcare, sign up with SinglePayer.com, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.  You can share your story about surviving the healthcare industry here, and start contacting media here.

Fabian Nunez yesterday took Governor Schwarzenegger to task for his behavior during the Governator’s recent swing through DC.  “I certainly wouldn’t come to Washington to tell people here how to do their job,” Nunez said, on the heels of Schwarzenegger lauding the virtues of “post-partisan” politics.

“What he’s talking about sounds good theoretically. I think in practical terms the way I read it is it’s just semantics. Post-partisanship – what does that mean? I don’t know. It’s some word he made up,” Nunez said.

“But I think he has a claim, in some ways, to that new term because last year we got a lot of things done. But you know we did it because we reached across the party aisle … Remember, everything we got done were Democratic issues.”

On the same day that post-partisanism was stung as little more than a combination of self-agrandizing deals with Democrats, Nunez is, in his own way, regaining some momentum here.  We need more of this, preferably more bluntly: Post-partisan is just Democratic issues broken by a Republican.  But it goes deeper than that.

If you want post-partisanship in action, this is it.  Schwarzenegger doing his best to look better than everyone else at every opportunity.  If you think Hillary is triangulating, she’s a rank amateur by comparison.  Nunez’s point, and it seems like a good one here, is that California really isn’t so great that it’s time to start lording it over people.  There’s a lot of work still to be done, and a lot of help that either could or must come from Washington.  To take just one example, a new government study has determined that 90% of the National Guard is unprepared to to respond to crises, and that the current course is unsustainable.  So the governor goes to DC and what happens? 800 California Guardsmen and women get mobilized for the Iraq escalation.  Glad that Arnie “lobbied the president, members of Congress and cabinet secretaries on matters of importance to California.”  Preventing death and suffering wasn’t on the list I guess.

To extrapolate further, Nunez is setting an example that several presidential candidates could learn from.  Consistently and clearly drawing a distinction between what Republican leaders (say, George Bush) are doing and what a competent Democrat in the same position could, should and would be doing instead.  Yes, when it comes time for campaigning in earnest, you talk about moving forward.  When you’re establishing the framework for a narrative of better governance coming from the Democratic Party in general, you point out the difference between Republican governance and effective governance.

While Schwarzenegger is bragging about how visionary he is and dropping names like Mahatma Gandhi, Edmund Burke and John F. Kennedy,” it’s Democrats who are actually doing the heavy lifting to improve California.  Post-partisanship is some word he made up.

As noted here a few days back, the California Transportation Commission voted earlier this week to  allocate billions more from the recent highway bond to urban projects, including the widening of the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass.

Unfortunately, to do this, the CTC robbed the rural Peter to pay for the urban Paul’s freeway widening, and the folks in Mendocino, San Luis Obispo, and Fontana are *pissed*. Mendocino, which lost funding for the Willits bypass on Highway 101, had this to say, from the Ukiah Daily Record:

“This is clearly a blatant display of power politics disguised as a competitive process. There’s not any other way of saying it,” Dow said, adding that the nine governor-appointed commissioners, not one of whom lives north of the Golden Gate Bridge, acted as if their function was “to bring home the bacon to whatever community they came from,” rather than address the entire state’s needs.

As elfling pointed out last week here at Calitics:

I lived in Los Angeles for most of my life. The traffic in Willits easily compares to the worst of LA. At some times of day the town is in total gridlock. It’s a safety issue, since there are no alternate routes, and logging trucks and semis compete with people driving to Safeway or ambulances trying to get to the hospital.

If you are driving between San Francisco and Eureka, I suggest allocating 30 minutes to travel the 5 miles through Greater Willits.

Steve Lopez, at the LA Times’ Bottleneck Blog, also describes how Fontana feels the shaft:

Said S.B. supervisor Josie Gonzales: “I think it’s definitely a sign of big government versus small government. As the Inland Empire is becoming a force, we are competing one on one with Los Angeles for the same funds. We are a metropolis in the making, and we are trying not to experience the same problems as Los Angeles.”

Who else lost out? Lopez again tallies the casualties:

San Luis Obispo County watched in vain as $58 million to widen a bridge on Highway 101 across the Santa Maria River evaporated.

This bridge is OLD, and narrow, and a bottleneck between Santa Maria, one of the state’s fastest growing cities, and San Luis Obispo’s South County, cities like Nipomo and Arroyo Grande.

A recommendation that Imperial County get $29 million to build a freeway bypass in Brawley was rejected.

Imperial County, one of the state’s poorest, as well as its most heavily Latino, could have used this as a way to spur economic development and to better connect the El Centro-Calexico-Mexicali region north to the Coachella Valley.

Now I’m not saying that the urban areas couldn’t use the money, or that freeways are the best method of rural transportation (although as elfling notes, the Willits bottleneck IS a huge safety problem as well as an inconvenience). But it does seem unfortunate that urban areas won out over deserving rural projects.

I don’t believe the answer is for us to get involved in a fundamentally neoliberal argument of trying to determine who wins and who loses. We need to find ways to rebuild our infrastructure that don’t force urban and rural areas to fight it out.

Further, this suggests to me that the state and the metro areas need to work more closely on crafting solutions for moving people that don’t rely on freeways. You can only widen the 405 or the 101 so much, before you have a freeway too wide to be functional (and nevermind the inevitable homeowner revolts such a project would cause).

It doesn’t have to look like a dream map of SoCal mass transit – although that’d be nice – but to avoid these unfortunate fights, either we “grow the pie” or we find other ways to move people.

Of course, in the end, it comes back to things out of the control of cities and metro areas. The state needs to sort out its financial priorities, and with a federal government wasting nearly $500 billion on stupid wars, money that could otherwise have been used to build both the Willits Bypass and the subway to the sea, along with a whole bunch of other progressive land use projects.

Not quite as hot as last weekend, but still plenty of opportunity to stir things up offline this weekend.  And as a wise man once assured, it’s all good, from Diego to the Bay, and we’re puttin it down for Californ-I-A.

Bay Area:

Friday, March 2: Mark Leno Campaign Kickoff, 12:00pm

Sunday, March 4: John Edwards in Berkeley, 2:30pm

Orange County:

Saturday, March 3: Military Families Speak Out, 10:00am

Saturday, March 3: HRC in Laguna OC, 11:30am

Saturday, March 3: Peak Oil: What Are We to Do?, 6:30pm

Sunday, March 4: Progressive Christians Uniting Orange County, 3:00pm

Sunday, March 4: Tustin Screening of “The Great Warming”, 6:00pm

San Diego:

Friday, March 2: Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund Luncheon, 11:30am

Saturday, March 3: Meeting of Region 20 CDP Convention Delegates, 10:00am

And as always, Calitics will be here to provide all the news that’s fit to print. Go forth and rectify.

Here are some wild and wonderful stories from behind the Orange Curtain, and across the Land of the OC, that will make you laugh, cry, and scratch your head in total disbelief:

– Flip-flop Romney! So you still don’t believe me when I tell you that Mitt Romney is not a “true believing” conservative? Then go over to The Liberal OC, and see what Dan has to say about our favorite GOP Presidential contender!

– Janet, Janet… Oh wait, no more Janet! Now that Janet Nguyen will likely be moving onto the OC Board of Supervisors, what happens to her Garden Grove City Council seat? Mike Lawson has all the scoop on who may replace her on the GG council at The Liberal OC.

– Do the other four OC Supes want to “cut and run” from Santa Ana? Art Pedroza is now worried that a couple OC Supervisors are seriously considering moving the county seat from Santa Ana to Irvine. And what would happen to the Santa Ana Civic Center, where the county operates presently? Go see Orange Juice for more.

– Overheated and Absurd? Unfortunately, my friend Jubal/Matt Cunningham at OC Blog would rather dismiss all of us as hotheads than to discuss the real problems of the 241 Extension to Trestles. So am I being “overheated and absurd” by presenting some disturbing facts about how the 241 Extension to Trestles wouldn’t ease South County traffic even as it destroys one of the last pristine beaches in SoCal?

And finally…

– OC drops charges over airport profanity… Now why the hell was this person arrested in the first place?

Now ain’t that SURREAL, or what?!

It started five months ago when Mayor Jerry Sanders attempted to eliminate a youth swimming program and slash funding for the homeless.  Today apparently, a deal was brokered between Sanders and the two ranking members of the San Diego City Council to, effectively, give Sanders everything he could possibly want.  Come flip out on the flip.

Council President Scott Peters and Council President Pro Tem Tony Young hammered out the deal with Sanders which, in effect, ensures that Sanders can’t cut the ENTIRE government without approval.

The temporary agreement, which runs through the end of the fiscal year in June, requires Sanders to notify (not get approval from) the City Council if he decides to eliminate “any program or service affecting the community.”  Further, it caps budget cuts at 10% or $4 million per department before the mayor needs to get Council approval.  And even then…would this City Council have the interest in standing up to his budget cuts in a real way?

So essentially, the City Council has decided to grant the mayor power to, if he wants to, cut 10% of the city budget between now and June with absolutely no oversight.  This doesn’t sound like an agreement that protects anything from an “Only Mayor” form of government.  And it sure as hell wouldn’t do much to protect youth swimming programs or funding for outreach to the homeless.  But at least councilmembers will get a memo about it as they watch their authority float away.  It’s like they haven’t been paying any attention to the ENTIRE Bush Administration.

Sanders said of the deal “If we had been locked up in an endless battle then the citizens would have been the ones who suffered from that.” I’m not sure from where he gets the impression that caution when cutting governmental services or responsible legislative oversight is detrimental to the people, but he’s apparently well stocked with enablers in the City Council.