Yesterday I praised Sen. Gil Cedillo for pushing on the hospital dumping bill (SB 275). That is a vitally important bill. But there’s something else that Sen. Cedillo has been up to for a long time, that is attempting to ensure the safety of California’s streets be ensuring that all drivers of the state have passed the proper driving tests and have a valid license.  Sen. Cedillo was even successful for a while…until Arnold came in and repealed SB 60.  For his efforts, Sen. Cedillo has been labelled “One-Bill Gil”. It’s true you can google it. I did and I got this racist website and this racist website, oh and this racist website. Wonderful!

Anyway, Sen Cedillo has been working for quite a while on this bill, and much attention has been focused on it.  So, nobody knows much about his skill as a legislator. First, to get SB 60, the law that DLC Davis signed in 2002, was momentous.  However, he has been successful on other fronts as well.  Why, just today, he got a new zoning bill passed off the Senate floor.  SB 2 bill calls for cities and counties to address housing and services for the homeless in their general planning process.  Wow, what a novel idea. This is just one more cool idea from a Senator that’s chalk full of good ideas.

Wow, that was ebullient. Maybe I should try to cut him down for something so that people don’t think I’m going soft.  All right, here’s something: Gil Cedillo is not from San Francisco. And that, I must imagine, must be killing him every day. Check the flip for the SB 2 Press release.

SEN. GILBERT CEDILLO’S FAIR SHARE ZONING BILL (SB 2) PASSES SENATE FLOOR VOTE

Fair Share Zoning (SB 2) was heard on the Senate floor Thursday passing by a vote of 27 to 11. The bill will be referred to an Assembly policy committee sometime in June or July.

Cedillo has been working with agencies, municipalities and stakeholders from around the state building consensus on the bill which calls for cities and counties to address housing and services for the homeless in their general planning process. Supporters of SB 2 include the California Council of Community Mental Health Agencies, the California Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, the San Diego Housing Federation, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The Los Angeles City Council is moving a resolution in support of SB 2 through the council and the San Francisco City Council has passed a resolution which Mayor Gavin Newsom will sign. Also, the California Democratic Party adopted a resolution calling for “housing as a basic human right” as part of their policy agenda for the 2008 election cycle.

The Schwarzenegger administration has released its own ten-year plan to address homelessness in the state which shares many common principles, key among them strengthening the law to require that local jurisdictions incorporate chronically homeless-related needs and strategies. SB 2 is an ideal legislative vehicle for accomplishing these priorities and Cedillo’s office has been in discussions with the Department of Housing and Community Development on administration’s plan. The administration’s homelessness plan is being circulating for comment with an update expected to be released sometime this month.

Additionally, graduate students at the USC School of Social Work are conducting research into specific demographics of the homeless population statewide including veterans, emancipated youth, and recent parolees. Their research is intended to increase awareness of the pre- and potential homeless populations.

“Homelessness is an issue that impacts the entire community, and every community is affected in some way. While local officials may not feel homelessness is an issue in their communities, the interrelated issues that cause homelessness – mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, adequate housing and health care – are everywhere,” said Cedillo.

“I speak Spanish very well and (the letter) was offensive,” she said. “And it was offesnive and intimidating to many voters who talked to our office.”

She also said the law seemed to by on Nguyen’s side — for better or worse.

“If you read the state and federal laws, it’s very difficult to get a conviction. The laws are vague,” she said.

That was my fabulous Congresswoman, Loretta Sanchez, speaking to OC Register reporter Martin Wisckol about Attorney General Jerry Brown’s decision NOT to pursue criminal charges against Tan Nguyen for intimidating over 14,000 LEGALLY registered voters. Now maybe it really is quite difficult to get a conviction for a charge like this, but it shouldn’t be impossible. Chris Prevatt took another look at state election law at The Liberal OC, and he arrived at quite an interesting conclusion.

Follow me after the flip to see the law for yourself, and decide whether Jerry Brown really wants to enforce the law here…

Here’s what Chris dug up at The Liberal OC:

18540.  (a) Every person who makes use of or threatens to make use of any force, violence, or tactic of coercion or intimidation, to
induce or compel any other person to vote or refrain from voting at
any election or to vote or refrain from voting for any particular
person or measure at any election, or because any person voted or
refrained from voting at any election or voted or refrained from
voting for any particular person or measure at any election is guilty
of a felony punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for 16
months or two or three years.

  (b) Every person who hires or arranges for any other person to
make use of or threaten to make use of any force, violence, or tactic
of coercion or intimidation, to induce or compel any other person to
vote or refrain from voting at any election or to vote or refrain
from voting for any particular person or measure at any election, or
because any person voted or refrained from voting at any election or
voted or refrained from voting for any particular person or measure
at any election is guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment in
the state prison for 16 months or two or three years.

18543.  (a) Every person who knowingly challenges a person’s right
to vote without probable cause or on fraudulent or spurious grounds,
or who engages in mass, indiscriminate, and groundless challenging of
voters solely for the purpose of preventing voters from voting or to
delay the process of voting, or who fraudulently advises any person
that he or she is not eligible to vote or is not registered to vote
when in fact that person is eligible or is registered, or who
violates Section 14240, is punishable by imprisonment in the county
jail for not more than 12 months or in the state prison.

  (b) Every person who conspires to violate subdivision (a) is
guilty of a felony.

OK, the law seems quite clear. This letter clearly violates state law. So why didn’t Jerry Brown take this case to court, and at least try to achieve justice for all the voters in Orange County who were nearly scared away from the polls by Tan Nguyen?

I have to concur with Chris here:

We all know that the letters went to 14,000 legally registered voters.  As registered voters these individuals are entitled to the right to vote, without intimidation or obstruction by anyone.  The only way a voter may be challenged is if an  elections official has specific and compelling evidence that the voter is not eligible to vote.  Elections officials are the only people who may directly intervene to stop someone from voting illegally.

I’ve got ju[s]t one question for AG Moon Beam and his Senior Assistan[t] AG in San Diego; How on earth can you conclude that section 18543 was not violated when eligible voters were challeneged without probable cause, by a mass and indiscriminate mailing to legally registered voters?  I cannot find anything in the code that talks about “intent.”  It is that act of intimidation that is the crime.  From what I can see, intent is nothing more than icing on the cake.

I just don’t get their reasoning here.

Neither do I, Chris. Neither do I.

June 2nd is going to be a huge day in San Francisco politics. Gavin Newsom is kicking off his signature gathering with a rally and Chris Daly is holding is “convention” to try and force somebody to make it a race. At last night’s fundraiser, I heard from two very knowledgeable progressive supervisors about the state of the race. One insisted that Matt Gonzalez was going to run and make it a re-match. The other insisted that there was no way in hell Matt Gonzalez was going to run. In unrelated news, a reliable source told me that Alex Tourk was seen having dinner with former Mayor Willie Brown last night (BTW, section 3.101 of SF Code says, “There shall be no limit on the non-successive terms that a person may serve”). Could be an interesting race…

(Oooh! Sounds like it was a lot of fun! : ) – promoted by atdleft)

Howie and Irwing came to talk to Democrats of the Desert yesterday, and it was fantastic.  Howie has an encyclopedic knowledge of our district, our neighboring districts, and the interests that the DCCC and PFAW have in challenging our GOP incumbents.  Our members are longtime veterans of local politics in most cases, and they were amazed at how much they didn’t know about the current landscape.  I’m still getting emails about how great it was, and as I hoped, more people want to get active in the blogosphere. 

Howie told how he got into blogs, gave us a bit of his own history of political activism, and took many questions on what we can do here in Riverside County: how to stop eating our young, how to overcome the blind paternalism that Mary Bono enjoys, what’s coming next for crooked Jerry Lewis, and many other great questions that I lost in my previous draft diary.  Damn.  More good stuff on the flip:

Here’s Howie helping Renee and Eleanor find a Sinatra single that Eleanor has been trying to recover for years.

Irwing vlogged the session (so sorry, blogswarm, I forgot to post a reminder – I am covered in shame).  Highlights:

Our members were all active in David Roth’s campaign last year, and they knew of Blue America’s support, but hadn’t fully understood its impact.  As Howie noted, he only started working with David in the last month of the campaign.  Had we engaged the netroots earlier, who knows? 

Amalia DeAztlan came and thanked Howie for his great work on behalf of David Roth.  They hadn’t met in person before, so that was lovely.  Richard Roth, David’s father, came, too.  Howie emphasized how crucial it is that David run again now that he has name recognition and a good campaign behind him.  David’s working overseas right now, but we’re all still hoping for a rematch. 

Our treasurer, Art, asked when Howie was going to run (he does have that facility with electoral details and an easy humor that many candidates lack) and Howie answered, “I did, and I won.  I was the freshman class president of my high school.”  But no dice, we failed to recruit Howie, despite the universal admiration of the audience.

The LA Times gets downright progressive about voting reform, in the wake of the horrible turnout for Tuesday’s school board runoff, where $9 million dollars in voting infrastructure and campaign expenditures yielded a 6% turnout.

A much better solution is to use instant runoff voting, an electoral method that elects a majority winner in a single election.

Here’s how it works: Voters rank the candidates in their order of preference instead of just picking one candidate. If a candidate wins a majority of first rankings, the election is over, just like now. But if no candidate wins a majority of first rankings, voters’ other rankings are used to determine the winner instantly. The candidate with the fewest first rankings is eliminated, and voters who ranked that candidate first can now have their second choice counted. All ballots are recounted in the “instant runoff,” and the process of dropping the last-place candidate continues until one candidate has a majority of the votes […]

Because this method of voting would save millions of tax dollars, part of that money could be used for an expansion of Los Angeles’ public financing system, which might produce more candidates and more competition – which could induce higher voter turnout.

Los Angeles also could change to an all vote-by-mail system. Oregon votes this way, as does Burbank, and it has led to higher turnout in non-November elections. It also saves tax dollars by avoiding the high costs of setting up polling stations and hiring election workers.

Color me shocked.  over…

Maybe it takes a disaster like the school board election to make people see the light.  Of course, IRV and vote by mail and public financing have been around for decades.  They were seen as flaky Birkenstock ideas at one point; only some hippie commune like San Francisco could use Instant Runoff Voting, right?  But if the staid LA Times can figure out that IRV is efficient, smart and leads to better campaigning. 

I am very hopeful that this work will get done in Los Angeles to make voting more in line with the 21st century.  Now there’s one more hurdle to clear.  We just need the Governor to sign the National Popular Vote bill that would reform the electoral college by eliminating the outdated and anti-democratic idea.  The Governor has taken no position on the bill this year.  He ought to be urged to sign it.

“The right to vote is fully protected under the XV Amendment of the US constitution. Anybody that uses any intimidation tactics should be prosecuted with the full power of the law. When Mr. Nguyen or anybody else uses the printing materials such as letterhead of an anti-immigrant organization it shows intent to intimidate. How more clear can it be? I feel disappointed that it was LULAC that had to call the State Attorney General’s office to find out the results of the investigations rather than the AG call us. When I spoke with Mr. Schons he said that the case was closed back in February, they really dropped the ball. We are going to ask the US Attorney General to fully investigate this issue.”

That was Orange County LULAC President Benny Diaz, speaking to The Liberal OC about how he found out that Jerry Brown would not be pursuing a case against Tan Nguyen for illegally intimidating over 14,000 legal voters. So why didn’t Jerry Brown follow through on the case that Bill Lockyer was trying to make? And what do the people in Orange County who had the misfortune of having front-row seats to the Tan Nguyen debacle have to say about what happened yesterday?

Follow me after the flip for more…

Here are a couple more comments from The Liberal OC on Tan Nguyen and Jerry Brown’s decision not to prosecute him t the fullest extent of state law:

While Tan Nguyen is clearly not out of the woods yet, given the federal voting rights investigation that is still ongoing, he has clearly gotten a pass from Attorney General Moon Beam.

Frank Barbaro, Chairman of the Democratic Party of Orange County commented tonight saying;

“This is a classic case of wrong without remedy. Everybody agrees that what Tan Nguyen did was very wrong, and was done with the intent to discourage people from voting.”

Democratic Party of Orange County Vice-Chair Rima Nashashibi, who is an American-Palestinian born in Jerusalem, was a bit more blunt;

“The letters were offensive, to me and they were offensive to the legally registered voters who received them. At the time Tan Nguyen’s involvement in this attack on the voting rights of U.S. citizens was revealed, both Democrat and Republican leaders condemned his actions. Despite the decision of the State Attorney General on this matter, I hope GOP Chairman Scott Baugh will continue to stand by his repudiation of Tan Nguyen’s acts of voter intimidation.”

Tan Nguyen has never apologized for his actions and he needs to be held accountable. Hopefully, this will occur at the federal level. Only time will tell. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Yes, Tan Nguyen should be held accountable for sending this letter to over 14,000 legally registered voters in Central Orange County. So why didn’t Jerry Brown do that? Why didn’t he pursue a case against Tan Nguyen? Why didn’t he stand up for Californians’ right to vote… And NOT be intimidated away from doing so?

I really don;t like speculating about these matters. That’s why I’d like an answer from our Attorney General. Why didn’t he do his job of prosecuting those (like Tan Nguyen) who commit crimes against innocent people (like scaring them away from the polls)? Why, Jerry? Why?

From the Courage Campaign

California’s prisons are in a serious crisis.  California’s prisons are massively overcrowded, and more people are being sent there than ever before.  The conditions inside the prisons have deteriorated to the point that the health care system is already under the control of a federal court (three inmates died just this last December due to poor health care).  The courts have threatened to take over the rest of the system if urgent reforms are not implemented.  As Total Recall (the Courage Campaign governor watch) has noted, prison reform was a key part of Governor Schwarzenegger’s campaign promises both in the 2003 recall election and his 2006 reelection.  But Schwarzenegger took almost no action to fix our prisons in his first term as Governor, and he didn’t release a detailed plan to fix the problem until after his reelection, in December 2006.  Schwarzenegger’s first major prison bill has finally been signed, just this month.

More Prisons, And Billions More For Prisons

Nearly every expert agrees that sentencing reform – stopping the huge increases in the prison population – is desperately needed in California.  For Governor Schwarzenegger to fulfill his promise to fix our correctional system, he needs to provide bold leadership and resist the calls for “tough on crime.”  We simply cannot afford to send so many people to prison, and there’s no evidence that locking up 170,000 people (and the number keeps getting higher) has made us any safer.

Rather than enact bold reforms, on May 3, 2007, Schwarzenegger successfully pushed through a plan to build tens of thousands of new prison cells, which together with a few new treatment programs will rack up a cost of some 7.4 Billion Dollars.  Despite the rejection of voters, again and again, for bond dollars to build new prisons, the plan hailed as a success by Schwarzenegger spends more than 6 Billion just on construction alone — operating cost estimates will come later.  Schwarzenegger did not do what almost every expert on prisons has said he must do: institute immediate reform of the sentencing system to stop sending so many people to prison.  The 7.4 Billion Dollar plan does nothing to relieve the crisis in the immediate term.  Rather than a permanent fix to the broken system, this plan is a 7.4 Billion Dollar bandage.  Did I mention that the cost of this plan is 7.4 Billion Dollars?

Health Care for Inmates: Still Cruel and Unusual

The construction of new prisons is just the first part of the massive cost that we will have to pay to maintain a prison system housing 200,000 human beings.  Last week, the person appointed to fix the health care system in the prisons released his proposal to bring the system out of “cruel and unusual” territory.  The proposal had no price tag, but experts say it will take nearly 20 years and billions of dollars to fully implement.

Death Chamber Controversy

Adding a new dimension to Schwarzenegger’s prison failures is the recent controversy over a secret new death chamber at San Quentin prison.  Governor Schwarzenegger and his staff apparently knew of the plan to build this new chamber well before it was made public — but Schwarzenegger made statements to the contrary.  John Myers has an excellent description of the unfolding controversy here.

Total Recall

This series is dedicated to keeping you informed of how well Schwarzenegger’s actions live up to his promises.  We’ll keep you updated on developments as they happen.

Last night, I saw the old master, Willie Brown in his element. He was smooth, confident and in command and had the audience eating out of his hand. Tonight was Gavin Newsom and the contrast could not have been sharper if it was night and day. Newsom sat down as though he was in a bad mood and ready to argue with the host, and that’s what he did. Whereas Brown handled tough questions with a charming evasiveness, Newsom sat there red-face and behaved like a child try to stumble his way out of the corners he found himself in. It was almost like the difference between Bill Clinton and George W Bush.  I don’t even want to bother going over what he said because he was so pissy all night long. When you look at the two, it looks like we have a boy trying to do a man’s job.