(cross-posted from Working Californians) I also have a post up on dailykos that combines this one and yesterday’s.

New details about the Blue Cross concern troll campaign are trickling out.  It turns out that the print ad was produced by Goddard Claussen.  Who you ask?

The ad was produced by Goddard Claussen, the political firm that created the famous “Harry and Louise” ads that helped sink Hillary Clinton’s health care reform proposal in 1994. Those ads, funded by health insurance companies, featured a middle class couple raising alarms that Clinton’s plan would unleash a confusing national health care bureaucracy.

They are using the same exact fear tactics over again, in attempt to secure their massive profits, while millions go with out care and coverage.  Only this time people know exactly what they are up to and are well prepared to parry their attack.  Schwarzenegger responded directly to the campaign yesterday, without prompting.

“Blue Cross has already put up an ad where they threaten people and scare people and say `don’t change anything,'” Schwarzenegger said during a meeting with high-tech executives at Seagate Technology’s office in Sunnyvale. “But we don’t pay attention to that.”

Actually, you are paying attention quite closely, anything less would be a huge mistake.  They were successful back in 1994 and it will take a great deal of effort to overcome their determination to scuttle reform, more than a decade later.

“We always knew there would be people who would like to hold on to the status quo; they don’t want changes; they don’t want to insure everybody,” Schwarzenegger said.

Now that is more accurate.  Blue Cross is notorious for cherry picking the healthiest and denying coverage to others.  It is among their most odious, but profitable practices.

Anthony Wright has continued to do some excellent fact checking of the wildly inaccurate Blue Cross ads.

After a raucous meeting in downtown LA, where FIFTEEN HUNDRED bus riders converged to protest, the Metropolitan Transit Authority nevertheless approved sweeping fare increases for bus and rail riders, though not as high as their initial plans.  But it’s a significant increase, with rates going up around 50% for most riders over the next two years.  The meeting included fiery exchanges, not only between the citizens giving testimony, but between the LA County Board of Supervisors and the Mayor (all of whom sit on the MTA Board of Directors).

The decision by the MTA’s Board of Directors marks a stinging defeat for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who had tried to broker a compromise that would have raised most fares only 5% a year. But the board roundly rejected the mayor’s proposal, saying it would leave the agency with a deep operating deficit and would delay future rail projects […]

Villaraigosa was hoping to bring the board together on a compromise that would soften the blow for riders. Instead, he drew strong criticism from Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who called the mayor’s stance disingenuous.

During a heated exchange, Yaroslavsky said Villaraigosa had indicated that he would support a fare increase in a closed session last summer after the MTA board agreed to a new contract with bus drivers and mechanics.

A visibly angry Villaraigosa shot back, accusing Yaroslavsky of mischaracterizing private conversations and then lashing out at the supervisor for sitting in his office while the mayor was in Sacramento on Wednesday trying to get more transportation funding.

Villaraigosa then said Yaroslavsky didn’t have the courage to propose his own fare increases, calling him a “sheep who walks in wolf’s clothing.”

over…

For the record, the Mayor’s final proposal would have included lots of borrowing to deal with the MTA’s major operating deficit (sounds like Schwarzonomics to me). 

The problem is that state and federal funding for mass transit continue to stagnate while California continues to build more roads.  And it’s evident why this happens when you hear the median income for Los Angeles’ bus and rail riders:

An MTA survey showed that the median household income of rail riders is $22,000 a year, compared with $12,000 for bus riders.

That’s well below the poverty line for bus riders.  Those people don’t have lobbyists in Sacramento or Washington.  They don’t throw fundraisers in their homes for Presidential candidates.  They have their own voice, and they used it in force yesterday (1,500 people at a municipal meeting is astounding), but in the end it didn’t matter.

As I’ve said before, a budget is a moral document.  What you prioritize for spending suggests what you value in society.  In a time freighted with the threat of global warming, we should be prioritizing mass transit and smart growth extremely, not making it harder for the people already using mass transit to afford it.

Steve Lopez has a great column about this rate hike, a compromise that will do nothing in the long term.

I shouldn’t pin all the blame on the MTA, even though it’s tempting after the defeat of Villaraigosa’s proposal had him sniping with fellow board member Zev Yaroslavsky to the benefit of no one. State and federal officials are culprits in the collective failure to support transit, despite the growing social and economic cost of congestion and pollution-related illness. Where’s bold, creative leadership when you need it?

Would the option of a few high-speed toll lanes for Los Angeles motorists raise enough money to buy the buses the MTA needs?

Is it time to mandate that large companies offer transit vouchers to employees and eliminate free parking?

Does the efficiency of smaller transit systems in Santa Monica, Culver City and the foothill cities suggest that the MTA should be broken into smaller regional agencies?

Is it time to increase the 18-cent federal gas tax or use more of it to fund transit?

Should developers get bigger incentives for building near transit centers? […]

It’s time for the MTA board and the Southern California Assn. of Governments to lead a discussion on these kinds of solutions and fight for their support here, in Sacramento and Washington. As it is, they’re on a slow bus to nowhere.

Bus fares is an issue that typically has very little impact on politicians whose voters aren’t typically riding them.  But it should.  Urban planning is one of the most important issues of the 21st century, and how we go about it will affect the very health of this planet.  There will be resistance, and when nobody speaks for the bus rider, not just by borrowing to keep fares down but by prioritizing a sea change in how we transport ourselves, the resisters will win.  And the working poor will lose.

(people seem to have issues with official records today – promoted by juls)

Rep. James Oberstar had an OpEd in our local paper, The Desert Sun, today.  Seems the Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure doesn’t appreciate Mary Bono’s attempt to hide her incompetence by smearing him.

Her statement that I “was simply unwilling” to include the project in the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) legislation that was passed by the House on April 19 is not only a mischaracterization of my personal conversations with her, but it is contradicted by the official record of the floor debate on the bill.

Translated from DC euphemese:  Mary Bono is a bald-faced liar.  She failed to follow through with her constituents’ major concern, the Salton Sea, last year.  I helped her out, and promised to fix it for her, and this is how she thanks me.

Kudos to The Desert Sun for printing it, that surprised me.  Now if they’ll just allow more sunshine on Mary Bono’s overall record, the voters might wake up in the CA-45th.

Brian Joseph has a frightening tale for us in today’s “Capitol Watchdog” column in The OC Register. He was just trying to figure out how much the County of Orange was spending on lobbying expenses. He ended up diving into a maze of total confusion.

I had downloaded lobbying expenditures from the Secretary of State’s Web site and found that over a little more than six and half years the County of Orange had spent $5.1 million on lobbying – more than the Irvine Co., Pacific Life Insurance and the Walt Disney Co. combined.
According to the state’s official numbers, Orange County ranked 32nd out of 4,321 lobbying interests, just seven spots behind British Petroleum ($5.9 million) and 10 behind Verizon ($6 million).

Wow. Doesn’t that sound crazy? Well, what if I told you that Orange County ACTUALLY DIDN’T spend $5.1 million on lobbying? Follow me after the flip for more on this story of disclosure gone wild…

Hold on a moment. So Orange County didn’t spend $5.1 million on lobbying Sacramento? Well, it depends on how one counts the money.

Digging much deeper, I found the state’s reporting standards for government agencies differ from other lobbying interests. Governments, unlike other groups, are required to report membership dues to organizations that spend more than $15,000 or 10 percent of their annual expenditures on lobbying. So while a county has to count its membership fee to a politically active chamber of commerce, a business doesn’t have to.
That might not sound like a big deal, but $3.5 million, or nearly 70 percent, of Orange County’s reported lobbying expenses appear to be membership fees or other organizational costs. Over the six full years I examined, Orange County spent an average of $560,000 annually on fees to a total of more than 150 organizations. Only about $1.5 million went to direct lobbying.

$3.5 MILLION?! Is there really a $3.5 million discrepancy between what the county might have actually spent on lobbying and what the county has to report to the state on lobbying expenses? Is this for real?

Moreover, some organizations charge different dues depending on the size of the member. In 2005 and 2006, for example, Orange County paid a total of $333,051 to the California State Association of Counties while Contra Costa County, a third of Orange County’s size, paid the organization $110,496.
Then there’s over-reporting. Governments, not surprisingly, might not know whether an organization meets the $15,000 or 10 percent lobbying threshold. So in the interest of full disclosure, I’m told some agencies report dues to all organizations – regardless of whether they qualify.
All of which makes the state’s publicly available numbers grossly misleading.
You can compare expenses for businesses and other groups, but you can’t accurately compare them to governments or even compare one government to another. You could, I suppose, read the fine print and subtract membership dues, but that also could eliminate costs for indirect lobbying.

So then, what good are these numbers? What good are these numbers if they can’t give us an accurate representation of how much our local governments are actually spending on lobbying Sacramento? What good are these numbers if we can’t compare how much my local governments is spending to how much your local government is spending?

Now I guess disclosure is good. It’s good for us to know how much money our local government is spending on lobbying expenses. But then again, what good are these numbers if they don’t give us an accurate portrayal of what’s actually happening?

Maybe Shirley Grindle is right…

“In my book, `disclosure’ … is just another word for confusing the public. Just give `em a bunch of numbers that don’t make any sense.”

Is Shirley Grindle right? Is disclosure just meant to confuse us? Is there a better way to disclose? What do you think?

As noted by me first here and then here last night, I’m very disappointed in Susan Davis’ vote yesterday.  She has a strong record of opposition to this war, which makes this vote all the more frustrating.  I’d be much more willing to work on moving forward if it weren’t for her justification of her vote:

WASHINGTON – Congresswoman Susan Davis released the following statement on her vote to continue funding current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the coming few months.

“As someone who voted against going to war and supported a timeline for bringing home the troops, there is no doubt in my mind that we must end this war.  The reality is opposing this bill would not end the war.

“Cutting off war funding today will not only impact the troops in the field, many of whom are from San Diego, but will also impact military families at home as President Bush would take funding from other sources to fund his war.

“I look forward to supporting measures that will end the war and will not put our troops at risk.”

I’m sorry Rep. Davis, but I do not accept your premise.  I do not accept the notion that this bill would leave troops undersupplied because 1. they already are, 2. there’s a lot of money in the Defense budget already and 3. this isn’t the last bill you can send to the President.

But most of all, I don’t accept the fundamental defeatism here.  Susan Davis has just said, in so many words, that no matter what Congress does, Bush cannot be stopped.  She has just conceded the complete impotence of Congress.  Well you know what?  Do your job.  The President’s approval rating is reaching all-time lows, 76% of the country thinks the war is at least going “somewhat badly” and Americans keep dying faster and faster in Iraq.  Do your job.

Bush and his policies are not inevitable.  He is not an irresistable force any more than you are an immovable object (and clearly, you aren’t).  If he won’t sign this, then he’s abandoning HIS troops (in addition to being The Decider, he’s also the Commander in Chief, remember?).  If he takes the money from somewhere else, stop him.  If he tries to accuse Democrats of failing the troops, ask why his previous funding requests were too low to provide for the troops.  Ask why he doesn’t want veterans to receive benefits.  Ask why he doesn’t think troops should be fully combat-ready before being deployed.  Ask him how patriotic THAT sounds.  But DON’T GIVE IN.

Don’t presume that you can’t beat him.  The entire country wants you to beat him. They’ll give you every opportunity to beat him.  Every political wind that’s blowing in this country, from Left, Right and Center is desperately trying to run out the clock and escape the debacle of this administration.  We did the best we could in 2006- majorities in the House and Senate and a clear mandate for change.  We want you to get tough.  We want you to be angry.  We want you to be obstructionist.  Why? Because when you cut this President the slightest bit of slack, he takes a mile and flat out kills people with it.  Saying that Bush would just find some other way to beat you is pathetic.

You aren’t in office to throw up your hands and run out the clock.  Your job is to stop the violent deaths of American soldiers.  You say you want to support a measure that “will not put our troops at risk” but lemme go ahead and ask the obvious question: In what world does a fully-funded, open-ended deployment of our troops to occupy a hostile country with substandard equipment, preparation, support, civilian leadership and veteran’s services not “put our troops at risk?”  And if you think that, of ALL PEOPLE, George W. Bush is too skilled a political tactician to be overcome when everyone and their mother wants him stopped, you need a new line of work.

I don’t doubt Susan Davis’ desire to end the war.  Her record is strong on the issue, and has been from the beginning and I give full credit where it’s due.  But if she, like apparently many other Democrats, is afraid to tangle with Bush, what more is there?  To go way, WAY back to Olbermann’s ESPN days, we’ve got a Congress who’s looked at Bush and decided that you can’t stop him, you can only hope to contain him.

Well I call bullshit on that.  Do your job.  Stop him.

The fact that Blue Cross of California is leading the insurance company effort to stop any reform in the state’s health care system makes me smile broadly.  There couldn’t be a more reviled corporate entity around these parts than Blue Cross, the team who systematically tried to throw any sick person off their rolls and reduce any effort to get them to actually pay for medical treatment, which after all is their entire job.  Health Access picked up on this and noticed that Blue Cross tried to use the Enron energy crisis as a scare tactic (“Unintended consequences do happen”), when in fact nobody is more like Enron than… Blue Cross.

Because there are so few rules on insurers now, Californians are concerned now they are one job change or life event away from facing a blackout of coverage. We have over 6 million Californians in a coverage blackout. Frankly, we have tolerated deregulation for too long: new and fair rules would increase the security that Californians have now with their coverage, so they are not denied because of their health status.

BlueCross’ ad campaign may backfire with the public. They won’t believe BlueCross, and they will make it clear to Californians what we can win with health reform.

I don’t think it’s may, I think it’s will.

Nobody’s going to buy this for a second.  That’s why the campaign is only in Sacramento and not statewide.  If our leaders in this state are anything like Democratic national leaders, they’ll immediately drop all health care reform plans for fear that Blue Cross will continue to be mean to them.  But having Blue Cross argue about responsible health care policy is like having Tony Soprano argue about gun control.  And it’s up to us constituents to let the politicians know that.  If Blue Cross is the face of health care status quo, I’d say change is a-comin’.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and his cronies claim to have solved the state prison crisis, but that is very far from the truth. Sure, we are spending billions of dollars on building new prisons. (All the better to incarcerate 1% of our population) However, we still can’t seem to find the cash to actually treat the mentally ill in our prison system.  Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ordered pay hikes to all mental health professionals at our state prison system to help ease the staffing shortage in the department:

The federal judge overseeing reforms in mental healthcare for California prisoners has ordered the Department of Mental Health to significantly raise salaries of all clinicians at state mental hospitals who treat the sick prisoners.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton had indicated at a Sacramento hearing Monday that he might require pay raises only for psychiatrists. But his written order, released late Wednesday, is far more sweeping – applying also to psychologists, licensed clinical social workers and the psychiatric technicians on the front lines of day-to-day care. Still, it remained far from clear Thursday when or how the raises would be implemented and whether the majority of hospital workers would even receive them.

The move came after Karlton’s December order to sharply raise pay for prison clinicians inadvertently helped trigger an exodus of staff from the state hospitals – which treat some of the same prisoners whom Karlton’s court aims to protect. {LAT 5/25/07)

So, the raise at the prison system just made it clear that we heavily underpay our mental health professionals at the state hospitals.  I know nobody really wants to go back to the halcyon days of behemoth state hospitals and the high rates of institutionalization, but there needs to be some balance.  Clearly our homelessness rates have been affected by the massive cuts to mental health care, and this in turn leads to additional prisoners.  We keep treating the symptoms and ignoring the disease.  So, let’s build more prisons, that’ll do it. That’s way more practical than addressing the underlying root causes.  Because my mama always said, “A pound of ineffective ameliorative care is worth jack squat.” Oh, hmm, is that how that goes?

My member of Congress, Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), did something pretty amazing yesterday. She voted against four additional months of funding for Bush’s failed war in Iraq. She actually stood up and voted against keeping our brave troops in the middle of someone else’s civil war for any longer. Loretta did the right thing, and as a constituent I am proud.

(After the flip for more…)

Now unfortunately, she was not in the majority. The Republicans were nearly unanimous in voting to continue George W. Bush’s failed war. In the House, they were able to pull away enough Democrats to succeed in passing a bill that gives Bush four more months of carte blanche. That was enough to send the bill to the Senate, where it passed with bipartisan support.

This is a bittersweet moment for me. I am proud that my Congresswoman did the right thing yesterday. I am proud that the vast majority of California Democrats did the right thing in the House yesterday. I am proud that Senator Barbara Boxer was one of fourteen in the Senate to do the right thing. However, I am NOT proud that Congressional Republicans would not budge in allowing Democrats to override Bush’s veto of legislation that would have actually put an end to this ridiculous war. They enabled Bush to succeed yesterday in temporarily thwarting the will of the American people.

Even though I am proud of what my Congresswoman did yesterday in listening to what the wishes of Orange County voters and the will of American voters, I am ashamed that most of Congress would not listen.

Now this is not the first time when Loretta Sanchez has demonstrated real courage on the House floor. She voted against the “PATRIOT” Act that has done nothing to secure this country, and everything to destroy our Constitutional rights. She voted against authorizing that invasion of Iraq that Bush so wanted. She voted against the “Partial Birth Abortion” Ban Act that did nothing to save lives, and only succeeded in destroying women’s reproductive rights. She voted against the “PATRIOT” Act again when it came up for reauthorization in 2005. She voted against a “Secure Fence” Act that did nothing to solve our immigration problem. And last fall, she voted against the Military Commissions Act that allowed Bush to completely disregard the Constitution. When others took the easy way out, Loretta Sanchez stood up and made the tough choices. She voted her conscience, and voted for what’s best for this district and this nation.

And of course, Loretta’s courage doesn’t fade away when she leaves the House floor. She has stood strong against human rights abuses in Vietnam. She even traveled to Vietnam to meet with the wives of jailed political dissidents, only to have the Vietnamese government block them from even seeing her. She stood strong for preserving our precious natural resources when she helped pass the Davis Amendment in the Armed Services Committee, ensuring that Trestles beach is protected and that TCA obeys state law in extending the 241 Toll Road. Even when the Orange County business lobby was putting pressure on her to vote against this amendment, Loretta fought for the rule of law and for the protection of our coast and our environment… AND SHE WON (and so did we)!

Sometimes Loretta wins the fights, and so do we. Sometimes, we don’t. Unfortunately yesterday, we didn’t win. However, Loretta stood strong. And I am still proud.

This failed war and bungled occupation of Iraq has been a complete disaster for this nation, and for Iraq. George Bush has now created a humanitarian crisis in Iraq. He has caused so much pain and suffering for all the families who have lost loved ones in this war. Iraq has descended into complete civil war, and this occupation is doing nothing to help the situation. This war needs to end. We cannot allow Bush to simply “shift tone” on Iraq while he only continues his same old failed strategy.

So I hope Loretta Sanchez continues to work to end this war. I hope that all her Democratic colleagues do the same. When the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Authorization bill comes up in Septmeber, I hope that they turn up the pressure on the Congressional Republicans to not enable George Bush to continue thwarting the will of the American people. The people want this war to end. Loretta Sanchez knows this, and so do most Congressional Democrats. I guess I also hope that more Republicans start to realize that, too.