Not only was Kamala’s timing in charging Ed Jew interesting, but it looks like her investigators knew exactly where to go.

Sources close to the case said Tuesday that evidence collected included interviews with Jew’s neighbors — both on 28th Avenue and in Burlingame, where his family lives — as well as voter registration, Department of Motor Vehicle, utility and other records that would show where Jew had actually resided.

The conclusion was that Jew had owned property on 32nd Avenue in District 4 when he first ran for supervisor unsuccessfully in 2002, but that he had sold it soon afterward. By the following year, he was allegedly creating a paper trail for his subsequent run — among other things, registering to vote at the 28th Avenue address owned by his parents.

Yep, Kamala knew where those breadcrumbs were a long time ago. Everyone did, because Jew left them for everyone to see.

What would you do if your American dream had to be deferred? And how would you respond when you find out that your dream must be deferred because of nine digits? Yep, nine digits would be separating you from your plans, your hopes, your wishes, your future. Doesn’t that seem unfair?

Well, it is. It’s quite unfair for all the young people to work so hard to go to college, yet can’t access any financial aid because they are undocumented immigrants. And even if they can somehow make it through college, they can’t get a job because they don’t have those nine little digits. Even though they came here as children, and even though they only remember living here, they are punished for something they had no control over.

So what can be done about this injustice? Follow me after the flip for more…

A couple of days ago, I met this guy named Ricardo. He seemed like a nice guy, and like a typical young professional in Orange County who did everything he was supposed to do to succeed. Yet for some reason, he can’t.

Ricardo did everything he was supposed to do in high school. He excelled in his classes, and he went on to college. He now has a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology. He has a master’s in health policy. He wants to serve people in the medical profession. However, he can’t.

So why can’t Ricardo get a job? He doesn’t have those nine digits. His parents brought him here with them some nineteen years ago, and they all came here undocumented. He was only eight years old. He hardly even remembers Mexico. He’s spent the vast majority of his life in the US, and this nation is the nation he calls home.

Ricardo never sought to break the law. He doesn’t gang-bang. He doesn’t deal drugs. He’s not some “criminal alien”. He’s just a smart guy who did everything right and went to school and planned to do something good with his life. So why must he be “punished” for something that he had no control over.

Unfortunately, Ricardo had no opportunity to receive any financial aid. He started school before AB 540 became the law of the land in California in 2003. And since he didn’t have those nine digits, he had to struggle just to afford his college tuition.

But even now that he’s finished school, Ricardo still has to struggle. He can’t get a job. He still doesn’t have those nine digits. He’s at his wit’s end. Without the nine digits, all his dreams must be put on hold indefinitely.

So what can be done? Ricardo’s just one person who’s been unfairly “punished” because of his immigration status. These young people didn’t make a “choice to come here illegally”. They didn’t just decide to “break the law”. They came here as kids, yet they’re being punished like adult criminals. What can be done to fix this?

Obviously, AB 540 isn’t enough. This only helps immigrant students in California, and it only helps these students go to school. However, it doesn’t help them get jobs after school. That’s why we need the DREAM Act.

So what would the DREAM Act do? Basically, it would give a path to legalization for people who brought to the US undocumented as children by their parents. In order to qualify, they need proof of having arrived in the United States before reaching 16 years of age ,as well as proof of residence in the US for a least five consecutive years since their date of arrival. Oh yes, and they must have graduated from an American High School, or obtained a GED.  Oh, and they must also demonstrate “good moral character,” which is defined as the absence of a significant criminal record (or any drug charges whatsoever).

So what exactly would be done? Here’s a quick rundown from the Wiki entry:

Immigrants who meet the above requirements would be eligible to apply for a temporary six (6) year “conditional” residence permit which would allow them to live legally in the United States, obtain driver’s licenses, attend college as in-state residents, work legally (including obtaining a social security number), and apply for special travel documents which would allow for travel outside of the country for limited amounts of time.

During the six years of conditional status, the eligible immmigrant would be required to either (1) graduate from a two-year community college, (2) complete at least two years towards a 4-year degree, or (3) serve two years in the U.S. military. After the six year period, an immigrant who meets at least one of these three conditions would be eligible to apply for legal permanent resident (green card) status. During their temporary time, immigrants would not be eligible for federal higher education grants such as Pell grants, though they would be able to apply for student loans and work study.

There, now doesn’t that sound fair? Doesn’t this do justice for people like Ricardo who never sought to “break the law”, but just want a chance to do something good with their lives? Don’t they have a right to pursue their dreams? Oh yes, and shouldn’t they finally just have a chance to get those darn nine digits so that they can move on with their lives? Isn’t it only in the best interest of the greater society that they can be productive forces in our society?

So would you like to find out more about the stories of these immigrant students, the story behind the DREAM Act, and why we shouldn’t stereotype immigrants? If you’re in Orange County, you can watch a special play, “9ine Digits Away from My Dream”. You can hear more about Ricardo’s story, as well as stories from other immigrant students in Orange County who are struggling because of an unfair system. And yes, you can gain some more understanding, and find out what you can do to change this.

And no matter where you live, you can urge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) to get the DREAM Act passed in the House. Isn’t it time that we stop deferring these young people’s dreams? Should we allow nine digits to get in the way of these people’s dreams of better lives?

The California Water Conservation Authority announced Friday that it had appointed Ed Jew as California’s first Water Czar.  Jew, a member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, said “I am delighted to share my experience of strict water conservation to help all of California during this difficult time.” 

More on the flip

Jew has a proven track record of water conservation.  As a resident of San Francisco’s Sunset district, Jew and his family somehow were able to live using very little if any water during the entire time they lived there.  And he has the water bills to prove it. 

Jew’s experience goes far beyond residential water conservation.  “Jew’s experience running a flower shop that didn’t even have a water account  will help California’s farmers develop ways to grow plants without the need for water,” said Tap E. Ocha, a member of the California Agricultural Water Board.  After a bone-dry winter, all of California is bracing for a drought this summer.  For example, Sonoma has instituted mandatory rationing and Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District has taken the harsh measure of asking people to please not water their precious Southern California lawns.  Oh the humanity! 

But this is where Ed Jew can help.  “Somehow Ed Jew was able to institute measures that reduced his family’s and his flower shop’s water use to almost zero,” said Q. Rick Lee, the Deputy Commissioner of the Water Conservation Authority.  “We are hopeful that Ed can teach other Californians to live a water-free life like him.” 

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has asked the CWCA to conduct a study of the financial impact of Jew’s water conservation program.  “I believe that by reducing California’s water usage to almost zero, we will be able to sell our water to other states, or maybe even to Mexico, and make enough money to cover the lavish expenditures of the out of control Democrats who want to fund education.” 

Jew is commonly known as “Tapioca Ed,” apparently a reference to the ability of tapioca pearls  to absorb and retain large amount of water.  A rally  is planned for today to launch Jew into his new position. 

Jew was last seen leaving his San Francisco residence singing “Rain drops keep falling on my head.” 

  *********

This is a report of the Calitics Fake News Service.  All facts sated herein and all quotes should be presumed to be made up in a sad attempt at satire. 

In the long history of a California high speed rail plan there have been few more consistent and more effective supporters of the project than the BayRail Alliance. Their executive director, Margaret Okuzumi, has been active in the current fight to save high speed rail, and today offers a very insightful piece at the California Progress Report suggesting that underlying Arnold’s lack of support is a flawed perspective on the project – that he, influenced by his HSR advisor David Crane, is fundamentally misunderstanding the project. Instead of seeing it as a development, he’s seeing it as an investment banker would. Okuzumi explains:

The investment banker’s approach to making money is to first assemble the money, then figure out what investments to make.

The developer’s approach to making money is to design a building and determine if it will make a good return on the investment, then go out and assemble the financing to pull it off.

More on the other side…

Okuzumi goes into detail about how developers approach project financing:

Developers build “things”- buildings, subdivisions, theme parks and even highways and railways. They are used to having some unknowns initially about where the money is going to come from. If the project is economically sound, then they don’t worry about whether they have all the money in hand from the start; they know the investors will materialize as the project begins to become “real”, as the risks are reduced by that initial investment– the land acquired, the zoning and permitting attained, the environmental risk factors analyzed.

In other words, for a developer, getting the ball rolling is they key to project success. Someone has to take the first step, has to seed the project with startup funds – and once that is accomplished then the rest of the funding will typically materialize.

To hear Arnold tell it, we have no assurances that this other funding will appear. But this is not entirely true. As I noted on Wednesday, 2/3 of CA’s Congressional delegation signed a letter written by Jim Costa – including virtually all of the San Joaquin Valley Republicans – expressing strong support for HSR and a commitment to provide federal dollars. Okuzumi reports in her article this morning that every time she’s visited members of Congress to lobby on rail issues more broadly they tend to volunteer their support for HSR without prompting.

Yet Arnold still claims this is not enough. Why is he seeing this from and investment and not a development perspective?

Because, as Okuzumi notes, his liaison to the HSR project, the aforementioned David Crane, is himself an investment banker.

Who is David Crane, exactly?

He is a “San Francisco Democrat” who, like Susan Kennedy and Angela Bradstreet, has forsaken their nominal party affiliation to join Team Schwarzenegger. Since 1979 he worked for investment banking house Babcock & Brown, and today he is Arnold’s Special Advisor for Jobs and Economic Growth. Sunne Wright McPeak, Secretary of Transportation, Business, and Housing, is quoted in a January Capitol Weekly profile as saying that Crane “is involved in all of the key deliberations that I have been a part of.”

Crane is not only reputed to be a longtime and close friend and advisor to Arnold and Maria – but his philosophies are not particularly Democratic. According to the Capitol Weekly profile:

Crane’s economic philosophy sounds distinctly libertarian. He advocates against government intervention in private business and touts his admiration for conservative economist Milton Friedman.

“Governments don’t create jobs, and if they are not careful they can kill jobs,” Crane told an audience of business leaders at a San Francisco
luncheon last summer.

The profile goes on to detail Crane’s right-wing economic views, which hold that public pensions are “special privileges” and that the minimum wage hurts jobs. The Capitol Weekly claims his “abrasive” personality has alienated him from many Sacramento lobbyists and interest groups, which along with his right-wing economic views cost him a spot as a CalSTRS trustee earlier this year.

In spite of this, Crane has been delegated by Arnold to work on environmentally friendly business and development projects, including HSR. Last month he attended a symposium on Low Carbon Fuels Standards at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, where he spoke on a panel on international approaches to low carbon fuels standards. Surely he understands, then, that there are few better low carbon fuels than an electric, high speed train.

The combination of a right-wing approach to government’s role in jobs and infrastructure with an investment banking background makes it unlikely that Arnold will be getting the best advice on HSR from Crane. Of course, it’s still an open question whether Arnold actually supports the plan or whether he wishes to help out his Big Oil contributors by killing a rival plan.

HSR has widespread support among Californians of all kinds, especially those living on the route, their representatives, and in the Congress. They all understand that for job creation, a sustainable and environmentally friendly method of transportation is essential to California’s future. Arnold should show some leadership by supporting HSR instead of killing what is the most important project this state has debated in the last 45 years.

(also in blue)

I had the pleasure of seeing Howard Dean speak at a fundraiser in Los Angeles Wednesday night. He addressed us, a crowd of 100 or so who’d paid $50 each both for the privelege of hearing him and to support the 50-state strategy. That was $50 well spent indeed.

My overall reaction to seeing Dr. Dean this time was to marvel at how deftly he walks the line between the establishment and the activist base. He spoke to us firmly, with optimism, cheerleading as one would expect the head of a party to do, but he wasn’t evasive…he addressed head on the hard question, namely WTF with that last vote on the war supplemental? Only Howard Dean could bring up that vote to the party faithful (including a good number of activists by the sound of it), defend Pelosi and Reid and get out of there alive. He didn’t pander, he didn’t condescend, he spoke to us like the idealist who got a job that requires pragmatism that he is. And the crowd loved him.

Dean got the room going with a solid dose of old fashioned partisan Democratic pride, speaking about the success of the 06 elections, Nancy Pelosi’s being the first woman (and first Californian) Speaker of the House, and hitting on three succinct  points that really seem to sum up the message he’d like us all to spread to other Democrats far and wide:

1. There’s no such thing as a red district anymore
2. We will win when we talk about values
3. Change takes time

More…

The first point will come as no surprise, of course, as it is the heart of the 50-state strategy. Dean spoke eloquently about campaign events he’d headline during his 03-04 race in the middle of red America where he was amazed to see all these Democrats come out to see him. That’s when he knew — there are Democrats everywhere and they need support! And certainly 2006 showed us how important it is to compete everywhere. Dean talked about all the unexpected places Democrats won in November, traditionally conservative strongholds such as Indiana, upstate New York and Arizona. And he spoke about his cousin, Peter Corroon, Democrat and Salt Lake County mayor. If we can win in Utah…

Dean also spoke about values. This is where he really impressed me in a “wow, he gets it” sort of way. At one point during his speech, he touched his chest firmly and said “people vote from here.” The presidential race is not going to be won on the varying points of the candidates’ healthcare proposals, it’s going to be won when the candidates speak about values and appeal to a voter’s gut. Now, I remember, back in 05, going to an event where depressed Democrats gathered in a large room to watch a video of George Lakoff giving a sort of primer on framing. We then were all tasked with coming up with a list of values that defined the Democratic Party that could rival the Republicans’ “smaller government, lower taxes, strong defense” line, which believe it or not, used to actually be the envy of aspiring Democratic framers everywhere. Well, Wednesday night, Dean laid out the values that he believes the Democratic Party represents today:

• fairness
• fiscal discipline
• toughness

What I like about this is that it mixes arguably the central tenet of the progressive movement (fairness, which informs our stances on everything from healthcare to labor to immigration) but then also appropriates two that have traditionally been seen as strengths of Republicans, and in so doing, reveals the extent to which Republican leadership has failed on these two points, thus making them all the more ripe for the picking. When Dean spoke to us about values, it was certainly a message for candidates outside that room, but it was also meant for us, his loyal foot soldiers and our circles’ political taste makers. Dean’s message, albeit unspoken, was that when WE speak about the Democratic Party, we need to do so in these terms.

And finally, Chairman Dean made a really interesting point about the length of time it takes for change to take root. We perhaps have been spoiled, having witnessed a dramatic electoral turnaround in 4 short (although they seem like an eternity) years, but he urged us all not to lose sight of how far we still have yet to go and when it seems like there are setbacks, to just remember, it’s a long struggle. Dean spoke of being in college in 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. He pondered how proud King would be today to see the diversity of the Democratic candidates for president but also noted that it took 40 years after King’s death to get here. This is a point he said it is especially important to make sure young people understand — changing our country is not an instant gratification proposition. The youth vote is crucial to our ongoing electoral success. It was the only demographic John Kerry won and if you get them early, you get them for life.

Needless to say, seeing Howard Dean on Wednesday was awesome as always, and it was really great to be able to actually afford one of these events. Getting an offline perk for giving online is a rare treat for us small-dollar donors. Thanks, Dr. for taking the time to speak directly to us and for sharing your vision, I hope I’ve done it some justice here.

I know the great northern menace has already been chronicled, but this is just too much fun for only a single diary.

Not only is the GOP bench so weak that they need to call upon a bodybuilder to run for the horseshoe, they actually need to bring in people from other countries to fill the jobs that nobody is dumb enough to work.

And now it gets better. Despite the fact that according to the CA Dems website they haven’t issued a statement since May 25th, the CDP may actually still be alive. Just read Roger Salazar’s statement on this hypocrisy.

And when it comes to your enjoyment, the label on my package says to stop the microwave when the popping begins to slow down to about 2 seconds between pops — to prevent scorching (because we already have enough of that today).

Then just sit back and enjoy.

Gov. Schwarzenegger suggests that immigrants avoid Spanish language media if they want to learn English and, presumably, assimilate into U.S. society.  Didn’t stop him from running tons of ads on Spanish television during last year’s reelection campaign of course.  edit: Apologies to Roger Salazar, who beat me to this point, and in much better form.

A new emergency room opened today inside San Quentin prison, a result of a federal receiver controlling medical services inside California prisons.

As California fights to keep its tough gas emissions standards safe from federal meddling, state air regulators voted today to request an 11-year extension to bring San Joaquin’s air up to federal standards.  California is a rich tapestry of contradictions.

The Beastie Boys have an instrumental album hitting stores later this month.  The last time they had an album with lyrics, they weren’t much for George Bush: Beastie Boys – Right Right Now Now

“I’m getting kind of tired of the situation
The US attacking other nations
And narration, on every station
False election’s got me losing my patience”