There will be no sentencing and parole reform coming out of Sacramento this year.  Do you know what that means?  It means that this man will be in our state’s corrections system for the next 12-20 years because military doctors addicted him to opiates.

Sargent Binkley is a high school classmate of ours and West Point graduate who is currently facing twenty-odd years in prison for robbing a Walgreens under California’s minimum sentencing laws. He used a gun (unloaded) and robbed the drugstores of only Percocet – no money, harming nobody.

Here’s the kicker — he was addicted to the opiates after smashing his hip while serving abroad in the Army — the military medical system kept misdiagnosing him, and feeding him more of the painkillers. Add in some serious PTSD (he guarded mass graves in Bosnia from desecration at one point) and he spiraled down.

Sargent turned himself in, has been in a rehab program in county jail for over a year and a half while he awaits sentencing, and by all accounts is doing well. The Santa Clara DA wants to chuck the book at him, and he’ll be gone.

Because the leadership in Sacramento – Republicans and Democrats – have no sense of how to legitimately deal with the crisis in our jails, and would rather look like tough guys and gals while putting sick people in prison.  Sargent Binkley is a sick man.  He needs treatment and aid from a nation which has abandoned him.  Because of our mandatory minimum sentencing law, an angry DA is going to make him spend the next 20 years in a crowded cell.

over..

Sargent was sent to Bosnia after his graduation, where he served as a peacekeeper by guarding the mass graves of genocide victims. From there he was sent to Central America, where he participated in drug interdiction operations. At one point he was ordered to open fire on a truck that contained a civilian teenage boy, an act that haunts him to this day. While on duty in Honduras, he fractured his pelvis and dislocated a hip. This injury was consistently misdiagnosed by Army physicians over the next several years, resulting in chronic pain and an addiction to prescription painkillers.

This is a textbook example of where we are today in Sacramento.  There’s a complete failure of seeing beyond narrow political gamesmanship rather than stepping up to solve problems.  Sentencing commissions have worked all over the country.  They have succeeded in returning corrections systems to its mission, of rehabilitation and treatment.  The current system threatens public safety and needlessly puts sick people behind bars.  If you want to know why nothing gets done in Sacramento, look no further.

It’s beyond obvious that we’re going to have a federal takeover of our prison system.  Schwarzenegger tried to prevent any cap on the population but that was blocked on Tuesday.  The three-judge panel is going to have to take it away from these mewling children who can’t look past their next election to actually do their jobs.

P.S. THE PHARMACIST SARGENT BINKLEY ROBBED is on the record supporting him.  You can support him too.  And one way is to demand that the politicians we elect actually move the state forward instead of this ugly slow motion.  If not, we’ll get new politicians.

Whatever you do don’t be ladylike:

Barbara Ehrenreich was channelling Mother Jones when she gave this advice to 1,000 nurse activists gathered in California this week, but she really didn’t have to worry. Like her the nurses were channeling the famous labor leader, as the emotional gathering marked the true birth of a national nurses movement, whose women (and men) have made “elegant militancy” their calling card. 

We’ll take a look at some of the glowing press coverage and consider the implications for the important healthcare battles in California and the nation after the flip.
…cross-posted at the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association’s Breakroom Blog, as we organize to make 2007 the Year of GUARANTEED healthcare on the single-payer model.

Here’s the deal: NNOC/CNA is the fastest-growing union in America, and we are dedicated to improving patient care with the kind of guaranteed, single-payer healthcare succeeding in nearly every other industrialized democracy.  In order to make that happen we aim to continue our rapid expansion, and nurses around the country are responding to our themes of patient care and nurse activism, and joining the union. 

In the words of Barbara Ehrenreich:

“Registered nurses have got to be at the forefront of the struggle for a just and egalitarian healthcare system in this country for the simple reason that you are the last generalists in the healthcare field…as well as the strongest, boldest, loudest voice for genuine healthcare reform in this country today.”

Unfortunately, RNs have never had a say at the national level, or any kind of real representation.  That’s why NNOC/CNA’s rapid growth is so important.  Over the last ten years, we’ve grown 350%.  Since 1992, we’ve gone from 17,000 members in California alone to 75,000 members in all 50 states, with nurses now active in numerous healthcare struggles, as well as sponsoring the key single-payer bills.

That’s why Media News Group says,

When the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee opens its convention today in Sacramento, it’ll do so as a darling of the national labor movement.

At a time when labor unions seem to be on the ropes …the CNA/NNOC’s explosive growth seems almost miraculous.
How’d this happen?
“We stopped looking at our role as patient advocates solely at the bedside,” CNA president Deborah Burger RN said Friday. “We’re patient advocates for the entire society, for the community as a whole. 

The LA Times suggests the impressive organizing success fuels the guaranteed healthcare movement:

From intensive care wards to the halls of Congress, they’re exerting growing influence over hospital practices and patient treatment. With the clout they’ve gained through unionization, they’ve raised their incomes and their profession’s profile.

Now they’re lobbying for a radical change to the country’s healthcare system, starting in California.

On Monday, hundreds of members of the California Nurses Assn. marched on the Capitol in Sacramento and pledged to continue to campaign for universal healthcare coverage.

The nurses actually marched *into* the Capitol Monday to protest an insurance-industry-friendly fake healthcare reform proposal, with 1000 nurses participating in the kind of dramatic protest not seen there in recent years.  Pics here.  One reporter called them “militants in tennis shoes.”

Why are we fighting so hard?  Because the insurance industry is about to see a bill passed in California that purports to reform healthcare but will in fact only entrench the failed, for-profit insurance companies right in the heart of our healthcare service. 

It is a concept that has to end here.  Governor Arnold and Assembly Speaker Nunez have between them taken almost $1 million from the insurance industry.  As a result, they’ve set the terms of the debate thus: should employers be forced to purchase expensive, wasterful, corporate health insurance for their employees or should individuals be forced to purchase it on their own?  The problem is neither choice is successful, and each will only delay the arrival of genuine healthcare reform.  We know how to fix this mess; we just need the political will.

The good news?  We’ve likely going to the ballot.  The public trusts nurses, likes unions, and looks to nurse unions for leadership on healthcare questions.  Our polling shows that the legislature’s “healthcare reform plan,” AB 8, starts at 49% support, but drops to just 25% when the public finds out nurses are opposed to it.  We led the defeat of Arnold’s anti-worker ballot measures in 2005 and we’ll do the same thing in 2008.

We’ll still have a healthcare crisis once the fake-reform ballot measure is defeated.  But we will have put the insurance industry in their place, taught politicians they need to grow spines, and further built the national movements of nurses and patients…setting the stage for day we can end the unnecessary pain and suffering inflicted on millions of patients by this cruel, broken system.

To join the fight for guaranteed healthcare (with a “Medicare for All” or SinglePayer financing), visit GuaranteedHealthcare.org, a project of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.

This can't be good for the term limits measure.  Every organization, club, and importantly, newspaper is talking about how terribly unproductive this session was. Sure, the Assembly alone sent 583 bills to the governor's desk, but numbers alone rarely make anybody happy. There was no signature big-name legislation. Healthcare reform was stymied (AB 8 is DOA), and so we get a special session. It's kinda like calling “Do Over!” or something. 

But, I'll just go through and link to as many of the articles about the end of session as I can. Flippio.

There are plenty of more stories throughout the media, but, well, that’s enough time reading all those depressing stories.  You have to think that it’s desperation time on finding some sort of solution for healthcare so that the legislators can show some sort of accomplishment before the February term limits vote.

(An excellent comment by Former Asm. Hannah Beth Jackson of SpeakOut. The LA Times editorial is spot-on. Perhaps now would be a time for post-partisan Arnold to lead by voicing support for a legal scholar of the highest order. UPDATE: In the interim, Speaker Nunez has written Mr. Drake a letter (PDF) protesting the unhiring. Text of the letter in comments. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

When I learned that UC Irvine had just hired Erwin Chemerinsky to become the first dean of their newly created law school, I was very impressed. It’s quite rare for any law school to get one of the greatest legal scholars of our day as its chief. To get someone of Chemerinsky’s stature to be the first dean of a new law school is an even greater coup. This is the real deal-  a person who is going to put a beleaguered UC Irvine on the map and very quickly.

I didn’t think for a moment, “Wow, and now we’ll start putting out progressive lawyers to match the thousands being rubber-stamped out of conservative institutions, like those overrunning the federal government and the executive branch, in particular.” What I thought, and apparently like so many others who have worked with  Chemerinsky or heard him speak, is that this University will become an institution of excellence and pride, with thoughtful and quality lawyers. With a dean of Chemerinsky’s reputation, this school will quickly put itself on the map. Go UC Irvine! … Not.

Just a week after announcing that the position had been offered to Chemerinsky, who then accepted the offer and planned to return to California after a 4 year hiatus at Duke University Law School,  the Chancellor  of UC Irvine, Michael V. Drake, rescinded the offer. This questionable act sets academic freedom and integrity back into the Bush era. Professor Chemerinsky is a great legal scholar, an academic expert who the L.A. Times says stands out not for his liberalism, but for “the intellectual rigor of his analysis and the effectiveness of his argument”.  For more on this excellent editorial, click here

Apparently he is too controversial and too independent for the Chancellor’s liking.  What?  You’ve landed one of the best constitutional scholars of our day, an expert in an area of the law which is fast disappearing into hysterical oblivion, and you decide he’s “not the right fit for the University”?  That, of course, begs the question: What is the right fit for this University?  Is it the embarassing controversies that have befallen the institution and in particular, its ethically challenged medical research facilities, that have plagued the school for over a decade? Is it the inadequate way UC Irvine handled the Muslim/Jewish furor this past spring? Or is it the school’s mediocre standing in the ranks of the University of California? Whatever the case, here comes an enormously well-respected legal scholar–by conservative and liberal scholars alike–to bring excellence to the school and he’s unceremoneoulsy dumped because the Chancellor suddenly decides he’s too liberal?  What has happened to academic freedom? When did it become wrong to express one’s beliefs and opinions—especially in defense of the constitution of this country? What happened to the pursuit of excellence in America-whether academia, politics or any other field of endeavor?

I am sure the irony of this is lost on very few. Here, in this day and age when the Bush adminstration has successfully stifled free speech, whether through FCC sanctions or uncontrolled wiretapping of people and organizations with whom it disagrees, we have seen our first amendment rights diminish almost daily. Whether through fear or intimidation, we are becoming a nation of lemmings. With the announcement that Ken Burns 14 hour documentary on war now has two versions, just in case the FCC disapproves of the language used by our soldiers in battle (as honestly portrayed in this documentary), we can only wonder what has happened to the most precious of our fundamental rights in this nation?

The irony here is that censorship is now being imposed by a public law school on a constitutional scholar because that esteemed scholar insists on exercising his constitutional rights. Is the fear of Professor Chemerinsky that he  will bring in legal scholars who will assure that the students at this school understand what those rights are and seek excellence in their pursuit of it? Isn’t that exactly what a law school is supposed to do? After all, what is freedom if it isn’t the right to speak out without fear of retribution or sanction? Isn’t public discourse and debate exactly what this nation is founded on and what has made this nation great?

Michael Drake should be ashamed. This is a travesty. As a long-time supporter of the University of California, I am both embarassed and outraged at this turn of events. As California taxpayers, I think we all should be so.

The Regents of the University of California must take action. Their duties require nothing less than a full investigation of this matter, and the reinstatement of Professor Chemerinsky to the position he had been offered and had accepted. As conservative legal scholars are quickly coming to his defense, it is clear that this injustice and embarassment must be rectified. 

If the University of California is to continue serving the people of California as the place where ideas and values are to be nurtured and promoted, where excellence in academia is pursued, where intellectual discourse is encouraged without fear or retribution, it must respond. If there is, indeed, any legitimate justification for its recission of Chemerinsky’s contract, then the University must divulge it and explain its actions fully. Anything short of that only reinforces the taint on the Chancellor’s actions. Otherwise, this act will be viewed as a dangerous precedent that will only weaken the University, both as an academic institution and as a bulwark of academic freedom.

With all the scandals it has endured recently, the Board of Regents must stand up quickly and loudly in the defense of its fundamental mission of seeking excellence and intellectual honesty. And, by the way, in this instance, it’s all about our Constitution as well. Maybe somebody with public responsibilities today will take a stand to protect that document. We can’t expect that from our Congress, apparently, but we can expect and demand it from our UC Regents. Time to act, folks, our academic integrity and future are at stake here.

Not wanting to miss out on the growing uproar over the Dirty Tricks Initiative plan, The Hill breaks down the plans of California’s Congressional Delegation to get involved.  Representative Darrell Issa sounded less than enthusiastic about members of the Republican delegation getting involved, saying “We barely mention them until they qualify…Usually they’re just talked about to get us to spend money.”

Democrats on the other hand sound ready to battle.  Rep. Waxman leads off:

“We’ll all be part of an effort to fight it,” Rep. Henry Waxman said of his fellow California Democrats. “We’ve been successful in beating back efforts in the past.”

And then Rep. Lofgren starts talking strategy:

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the state’s Democratic delegation, estimated that all California Democrats in Congress “are going to oppose it.”

She emphasized that the campaign is a long way away but said Democrats are taking the effort very seriously and plan to let their constituents know about its true intent: helping Republicans elect the next president.

On the flip, analysis and a Republican acknowledges reality, even in passing.

Obviously this is getting the attention it warrants straight to the top and Democrats (for once) sound ready to fight.  There’s more to this iniative than just ensuring it doesn’t pass.  There’s a real opportunity to beat it convincingly and, if framed properly, deal a direct blow to Republican electoral shenanigans.

California Congressional Democrats are talking the talk.  The issue is being framed as a naked partisan power grab, and the enthusiasm and lack of equivocation is an encouraging sign that maybe this one is such an easy one to hit out of the park that everyone’s going to line up to take a few swings.  This is likely not going to be an issue that will impact congressional races significantly, so it affords opportunities for members of both parties to score points with their base while getting national attention.

But one thing which becomes clear is that this fight will not lack for high-profile attention or money.  Safe districts and unopposed candidates have something to keep them busy and on the fundraising circuit, and the entire party is lining up to make sure that the rank and file of the party get their education and stay on the reservation with this one.

An interesting sidenote is the prospect of a united Congressional caucus.  This is an easy issue for everyone to be “locking arms along party lines” over.  As the media desperately pushes the “divided Democrats” storyline and the fervor rises for pressure on conservative Democrats, this offers an excellent opportunity to unite the party.

This clearly doesn’t have a smooth route to passing next year, even on the presumably low-turnout June ballot.  But it’s just threatening enough for everyone to tee off on it, and that’s a good start.  This is such an obvious illustration of everything that’s wrong with the Republican electoral playbook that every Democrat should be excited to get into the fray.  The netroots/grassroots partnership has quickly helped establish the way this issue should be talked about, and the template has plenty of power players ready to go.

But before writing off the entire Republican side of the Congressional aisle, I’ll leave you with a rare glimpse of reality from the Right:

Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) said the initiative faces a “tough sell,” noting the ardent resistance from the Democratic establishment.

“Normally, unless it’s over 50 at the very beginning, it’s going to be hard to get it passed,” Lungren said.

This should be a fun one.

As a humble blogger here, I appreciate our discussions about how to progress politics. But when the right wing begs for our SF bureau to get blown up, it doesn’t help the discourse.

This entire right-wing wacko meme that it is open season on San Francisco for terrorists needs to stop. First, it was Bill O’Reilly begging that the terrorists blow up a monument to the firefighters.

Now, I just saw via Atrios neocon suggesting the Golden Gate Bridge should be blown up.

Unlike the right-wing bloggers, I don’t wet myself when it comes to terrorist threats. Shit happens, Bush makes it happen worse. I get that, I read the newspaper.

But still, the wingnuts need to stop suggesting that San Francisco is fair game. American’s don’t like losing major cities, that is why we are so pissed at Bush losing New Orleans.

Everyone realizes that all of the few dead-enders remaining have jumped the shark, but if they are going to continue making asses of themselves I’d prefer they didn’t beg the bad guys to blow me up.