Read about it here
The scoop: Last year, Sacramento forced the doors closed on K Street’s Tex Mex restaurant. While the city gave millions of dollars in incentives to an upscale chain restaurant just blocks away, Tex Mex’s owners were never offered the opportunity to stay and improve their business.
UPDATE by Brian: Please use the open threads (which we will try to post more regularly) for one line links. Here is the current open thread. This thread has been closed.
Any defenders?
On September 12, John Boehner said that the cost of the Iraq War has been “a small price to pay.”
…We’re making success. We need to firm up those successes. We need to continue our effort here because, Wolf, long term, the investment that we’re making today will be a small price if we’re able to stop al Qaeda here, if we’re able to stabilize the Middle East, it’s not only going to be a small price for the near future, but think about the future for our kids and their kids.
Meanwhile, nearly 4000 Americans have died, and tens of thousands more have had their lives drastically changed. Not to mention the trillion or so dollars so far.
So which part of that is a “small price.”? John Boehner is the Minority Leader in the House. Republican Representatives have a duty to disclaim this terrible insult to our troops. So, we have 22 of them here in California…time to speak up folks.
Join Glenn Greenwald and Cenku Uygur for the kick off conference call on Monday, Sep 17th, Constitution Day, for the Campaign for Our Constitution. 4-5pm PST. RSVP and more info at www.ourconstitution.net
One instance of silencing a critic for speaking the truth is offensive enough. Two incidents and you start thinking about patterns. So, with the news that Governor Schwarzenegger has asked for the resignation of Fish and Game Commissioner R. Judd Hanna within three months of the firing of California Air Resources Board Chair Robert Sawyer, it made me a little uncomfortable. You see, if this becomes a pattern, it becomes a pattern we are all too familiar with from DC. Silencing critics, scientists, etc.
But Arnold, even after all this time of watching him, still carries an air of mystery. For example, after sacking Sawyer, he hires Mary Nichols to head CARB, who has been doing a pretty good job at pushing the requirments of AB 32, the global warming emissions bill. But the resignation of Hanna looks to have been Arnold tossing a bone to the right-wing of the GOP that is heavily represented in the Legislature. He hasn't been giving them a whole lot else in the way of victories, so why not let the NRA bully a Fish and Game Commissioner who has the temerity to speak up in the protection of, dare I say, fish and game.
UPDATE: Here are the thoughts of the President of the Human Society on Hanna's firing resignation. So we have three more years of Arnold. Flip it
Buth the thing that I wrestle with is how much do we try to work with Arnold. Sure, it aggravated me to no end last year when the Legislature handed Arnold another term in office, with a nice little bow on top. (Well, it could be argued that the bow was the Democratic campaign's shoddy worksmanship, but that's a different story.) But, now we have him in office for another three years or so, so what do we do with that time.
Part of Arnold's appeal is that he sees himself as some kind of visionary for the post-partisan generation. (Except that he hasn't found it within his purview to actually drop the R beside his name). But he has so much potential to leave a lasting mark on the state. For example, with one signature on AB 43, Arnold could become one of the greatest leaders for civil rights in the 21st century by finally granting marriage equality. His initial reluctance could wear down. In 50 years from now, the Randy Thommason's and Fred Phelps will be seen as no better than George Wallace and your everyday, run of the mill Klan wizard. Arnold can be on the fronteir of history, or he can be the last reluctant pol on the bandwagon. Now is his chance.
And marriage equality is certainly the only front of this Arnold self-battle. There's the Dirty Tricks initiative, will Arnold support the “loser's mentality?” There's the lead shot bill sitting on his desk right now. He has in his hands the California Condor's future? Does he care to be a leader and protect our natural resources or will he surrender to the special interests that he so decried in 2003?
Arnold has always had the opportunity to be a truly great leader, but has never lived up to his rhetoric.His position in history is up to him.
(Cross posted on my site, Daily Kos and Open Left. – promoted by David Dayen)
Yesterday I managed to get myself to services for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The familiar rituals and rites of Judaism can be comforting but often lapse into rote recitation. But yesterday, the rabbi’s sermon woke me up and put a new spin on the moral code that underpins all humanity, which is at the heart of not only Jewish teaching, but the foundational premises of our country, principles we are rapidly losing over the course of the Bush Presidency.
The rabbi talked about a little-remarked-upon section of the Old Testament. Leviticus is filled with a laundry list of commandments and guidelines for life in Biblical times. One section focuses on “just weights and measures.”
35 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. 36 Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the LORD your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.
An ephah is a unit of dry measure, roughly equivalent to about 23 liters. The way that business was conducted in this time was that every shopkeeper would have their own ephah, and their own stone, and would parcel out portions of products based on how they filled the ephah or balanced against the stone. It was stressed in the Old Testament that you have ONE ephah, and that it be clean and untainted, so that the measure was the same everywhere anyone traveled. What was commanded was that you never substitute “ephah v’ephah”: having one measure for some people, and a different measure for others.
The rabbi made a strong statement paralleling this commandment for just measures with our present policies on immigration. “You deal with the person in front of you, and you have mercy on them and deal with them and provide for them and care for them as you would anyone else.” This is not a political accomodation but a moral imperative; to do any different would be to put our thumb on the scale. And then the rabbi paused, and said, “I should stop there but I won’t. For I must not be silent about torture.” This is also a violation of “ephah v’ephah.” He said that locking up suspects indefinitely and coercing their confessions through prohibited tactics is a sin against God, an “abomination,” as the Old Testament calls it, and one that was held in the highest seriousness to Hebrew scholars. “We know a lot about that other thing called abomination,” he said, a clear reference to the oft-used line by conservative Christians that homosexuality is an “abomination.” Unlike sexuality, using separate ephahs for separate people CANNOT be rectified through penance. It is as serious a sin as there is in Judaism. And this is perhaps because it gets at the very heart of the measure of a man. If we cannot treat others the same, no matter what the circumstances, we have no basis to call ourselves moral human beings.
The United States has their own “ephah,” called the Constitution. We cannot profess to follow the rule of law while breaking it whenever convenient. We not only damage our credibility, but we do violence to the ancient concept of just weights and measures. For six and a half long years we have seen an Administration throw morality out the window while claiming to have the word of God on their side. They have eliminated the Great Writ of habeas corpus, they have spied on their fellow citizens without warrants, they have incarcerated terror suspects at Guantanamo and secret prisons indefinitely and without charges, they have nullified federal statutes through the questionably legal means of signing statements, and more. And we cannot stand idly by while they use one ephah for their friends and allies, and another ephah for anyone they deem a threat, be it militarily or politically. We must stand up for just measures.
This week, the ACLU of Southern California, in partnership with Calitics, is launching The Campaign for Our Constitution. It is an aggressive effort to restore our Constitution and our civil liberties and reverse the extreme policies of the Bush Administration that have made us less safe and called into question just what freedom we’re supposed to be fighting for abroad. Bloggers, constitutional scholars and activists are joining together in the fight to recapture basic constitutional values. There are going to be a lot of action items you can take in the future, but for now I want to give you the schedule for the coming weeks.
The campaign officially kicks off Monday, Sept. 17, with a conference call with Salon.com contributor and New York Times bestselling author Glenn Greenwald. He will discuss the future of the Constitution with Cenk Uygur, co-host of Air America’s “Young Turks” morning show, and take members’ questions. The conference call is open to anyone who RSVPs through www.ourconstitution.net.
In the next month, the campaign will hold conference calls on Sept. 20 with Dr. Drew Westen, an Emory University psychologist, Huffington Post contributor, and author of “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation” and on Oct. 4 with John Dean, former White House counsel for Richard Nixon and author of the new book “Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches,” just released by Viking Press. There also will be a free screening and discussion with director Robert Greenwald (“Outfoxed,” “Unconstitutional”) in Hollywood on Sept. 25.
“Southern Californians are itching for a fight,” said ACLU/SC field director Susanne Savage. “The U.S. Constitution is our core issue. We intend to lead a campaign that will expose the sad truths about our government’s policies, inspire people to act and give our electeds the political cover they need to stop legislating out of fear.”
There is no more important issue for our country moving forward than to regain the sense of justice and truth that’s been sorely missing for too long. Please visit OurConstitution.net and see what you can do to help. We can and must return this nation to one where there are just weights and measures.
The Merc is reporting on a new strategy from the CDP to disrupt signature-gathering for the Dirty Tricks Initiative:
“We’re asking volunteers and activists to be fraud busters,” Art Torres, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said in a telephone conference call, “to help stop Republicans from stealing the White House.”
Torres said he’s calling on party volunteers to help find the location of signature gatherers and post them on the state party’s Web site “so everybody can see where they are, and we can proceed to the locations to offer rebuttals or register Democratic voters at the same time.
“Our intention is not to harass, nor to engage, nor to debate people collecting signatures,” Torres added. “This is the first time I’ve authorized a ‘do not sign’ campaign, which we want to be not only non-violent but non-intrusive on anybody else’s First Amendment rights.”
If it is what he says it is, then fantastic. When was the last time there was a debate in the public square over policy and politics? But I can’t imagine that this actually plays out in the manner Art Torres envisions. If this evolves into a significant network of volunteers statewide, there’s going to inevitably be inappropriate behavior and confrontation that results from passionate people disagreeing. It’s already being described by Republicans, predictably, as harassment of signature gatherers and signers.
I applaud the energy, and I’m encouraged by the underlying goal of fighting this every step of the way, but I do wonder just how far California Democrats can carry the scorched earth strategy here without the eventual voter disenchantment coming back to bite Democratic efforts.
All that said…I’ll probably end up volunteering for it at some point.
This diary is part of the candidate series on MyDD for Bill Richardson. I am Californian supporter of Richardson. I am not part of his campaign.
Congressman, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Secretary of Energy and in his second term as Governor of New Mexico after a landslide victory in November 2006, Governor Bill Richardson is running for President to heal America and restore our place in the world. He possesses the experience, vision and leadership skills to be a great President.
Richardson is goal-oriented, assertive and confident. He has the ability to quickly evaluate a situation but is not rigid in his thinking and will modify policy when necessary. He takes a practical approach to governing, focusing on solutions to problems rather than ideology.
Richardson has been called a “force of nature.” When he served in Congress, he was regarded as one of the hardest working members, respected for his intelligence and detailed knowledge of the issues. In a profile earlier this year, Democratic state Senator Mary Jane Garcia stated, “It just never stops; it’s busy, busy, busy. He’s got an agenda like you can’t believe.” New Mexican Republican Representative Dan Foley added, “People shouldn’t count him out. You won’t find a person who works harder.”
Richardson fights for the principals he believes in. I offer two of many examples:
First, while Secretary of Energy, against opposition in Congress and even criticism from within the Clinton Administration, Richardson acknowledged the Energy Department’s long history of denying responsibility for workers’ injuries at the nation’s nuclear weapons plants. He stated, “We need to right this wrong.”
Richardson successfully lobbied Congress to enact legislation providing payments and medical benefits to the workers that developed cancer and other serious diseases.
Second, in April 2007, Richardson spoke at Rally to Save the People of Darfur in San Francisco. He was the only Presidential candidate that attended, even though they were all in California that weekend for the California Democratic Party Convention. Prior to speaking, a reporter asked Richardson why he was there. Richardson’s response was an inspiration to all fighting for social change: “You have to be part of the causes you believe in.”
Richardson has been to Sudan three times visiting refugee camps and negotiating the release of American aid workers and journalists. He has never given up on Africa.
Richardson has had an outstanding record as Governor of New Mexico. He increased school funding, expanded health care coverage, extended civil rights protections to include sexual orientation, made New Mexico a model for the rest of nation in promoting clean energy and fighting global warming, while cutting taxes to promote sustainable growth and balancing the state budget. For his commitment to protecting the state’s environment, the Conversation Voters of New Mexico gave Richardson “a solid A.”
Richardson understands that the Democratic Party must be the party of economic progress. He has assisted the private sector in New Mexico in creating new, high paying jobs. He calls on Democrats to “stand for policies that encourage innovation and expand economic opportunity.”
On education policy, Richardson understands that No Child Left Behind sets up our public schools for failure. Unlike the other major candidates that want to somehow fix and preserve NCLB, Richardson’s approach is simple and clear: scrap it. Richardson writes::
NCLB has failed. It has failed our schools, it has failed our teachers and it has failed our children. The Bush administration claims victories, but upon closer scrutiny it becomes clear that the White House is simply dressing up ugly data with fancy political spin. Far from leaving no child behind, President Bush seems to have left reality behind.
On global warming and energy policy, Richardson has set forth the most detailed and aggressive plan of all candidates – calling for a 90% decrease in greenhouse emissions by 2050. Dave Hamilton, the Sierra Club’s Director of Energy and Global Warming program, stated Richardson’s “18-page energy policy is much more aggressive than anything we’ve seen so far from the candidates. It is also significantly better-elaborated in theory with regard to where we end up.”
Richardson is the product of two nations, Mexico and the United States. His childhood friends included many of the poor in the neighborhood where his family lived in Mexico City. He saw first hand the devastating impact of poverty on families and children. His bi-national upbringing necessitated understanding and then bridging two cultures. This laid the foundation for Richardson as an adult to become a peacemaker among nations and an expert in the art of diplomacy.
Richardson has articulated a new foreign policy for America which starts by recognizing the new challenges we face in the 21st century:
Jihadists and environmental crises have replaced armies and missiles as the greatest threats, and globalization has eroded the significance of national borders. Many problems that were once national are now global, and dangers that once came only from states now come also from societies-not from hostile governments, but from hostile individuals or from impersonal social trends, such as the consumption of fossil fuels.
Richardson calls on the U.S. to foster “the cooperation needed to solve the issues that face the modern world. The U.S. government needs to see the world as it really is – so that the United States can lead others to make it a better, safer place.”
On Iraq, Richardson has eloquently stated:
The War in Iraq is not the disease. Iraq is a symptom. The disease is arrogance. The next President must be able to repair the damage that’s been done to our country’s reputation over the last six years. It’s why experience in foreign affairs has never been more important.
Richardson has the best plan for ending the war in Iraq. He is only major candidate that has repeatedly and unequivocally called for the complete withdrawal of ALL American forces from Iraq.
The others candidates lack the confidence to stand up to the military and political establishment and follow the will of the American people. They accept the argument that a complete withdrawal of all American forces would be “irresponsible.” As Richardson wrote wrote in a recent Op Ed, “On the contrary, the facts suggest that a rapid, complete withdrawal — not a drawn-out, Vietnam-like process — would be the most responsible and effective course of action.”
The fundamental difference between Obama, Edwards and HRC verse Richardson on Iraq is that Richardson understands that by the U.S. remaining in Iraq, we unwittingly perpetuate the war. Our troops have become the targets in a civil war. The Iraqi government has become dependent on the U.S. for security the Iraqis should provide. Richardson notes: “The Iraqis won’t take the necessary steps toward political reconciliation until the U.S. makes it clear that it will leave the country for good.”
Likewise, without the direct and committed action by the President of the United States, Iraq will remain in chaos. Richardson is the only candidate with a track record of foreign policy success. Richardson will lead a diplomatic offensive to bring peace and stability to the region.
That we must exit Iraq now is a message Richardson constantly delivers to voters. He doesn’t tailor his message to the audience. Yesterday, Richardson spoke on ending the war at two town halls in Iowa. The first was at the National Guard Armory in Council Bluffs and second at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post in Sioux City.
In closing, with Richardson we get two for the price of one: an energetic, can-do leader on domestic issues and an experienced diplomat on foreign affairs.
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Remind me again how much
of California’s economic growth since the end of the boom has been
based in real estate…
The CA Dem Leadership’s
Pet Project and other “Reform”
Local Motions
Watching the Governor
Everything Else
(full disclosure: California Teacher’s Association has hired me to do online outreach on NCLB)
There are a lot of things wrong with NCLB, so why are George Miller and Nancy Pelosi insisting on adding new problems. More specifically, adding a federal merit pay program for teachers. First of all, studies have shown that merit pay just does not work. It leads to divisiveness in the teaching ranks, makes hiring more difficult and tends to go to teachers in affluent school districts, despite promises to the contrary. Just about every school that implements merit pay repeals it down the road.
This is not an isolated problem:
Merit pay comes in many forms and flavors — including extra bonuses for student achievement gains, satisfactory evaluations by principals or committees, acquiring additional duties, gaining new skills and knowledge, and serving in hard-to-staff schools. We’ve looked at dozens of plans in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Guess what? None of them, past and present, has ever had a successful track record. None has ever produced its intended results. Any gains have been minimal, short-lived, and expensive to achieve.
That was from an article in the Boston Globe by two education experts. Yet, still Miller persists on pushing this federal program.
Take for example what is going on in Florida. They passed a merit pay program and promised that there would be no imbalances along racial or income lines. That was the problem with a now defunct earlier problem and the problems are still the same with this new program.
At Palm Lake Elementary, two out of three teachers earned a bonus through Orange County Public Schools’ merit-pay plan.
At Richmond Heights Elementary, the number was zero.
Palm Lake is a predominantly white school in the affluent Dr. Phillips area.
Richmond Heights is a predominantly black school in a poverty-stricken pocket of Orlando.
The two schools illustrate a marked disparity in the distribution of merit bonuses to 3,911 Orange County teachers and administrators uncovered in an Orlando Sentinel analysis of the program.
The Sentinel’s review showed that teachers at predominantly white and affluent schools were twice as likely to get a bonus as teachers from schools that are predominantly black and poor.
The merit pay program in the Miller/Pelosi program was the topic of some controversy during Monday’s hearing. Miller accused teachers, in specific NEA, of reversing themselves on merit pay. At issue was an earlier bill, which NEA reluctantly supported back in 2005 called the TEACH Act.
Toward the end of the almost seven-hour session, NEA President Reg Weaver and AFT Executive Vice President Antonia Cortese objected to proposed alternative pay programs for teachers, which are included in the section addressing teacher quality.
In the Q&A that followed, Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., reminded the union reps that that the pay proposals came from the Teacher Excellence for All Children Act, which the unions endorsed after extensive talks with Rep. Miller and a host of education groups.
“This language was mutually arrived at by various parties,” Rep. Miller said.
In response NEA President Reg Weaver sent a letter to the members of the Education Committe, Nancy Pelosi and George Miller. This is an excerpt from the Miller letter:
In May 2005, prior to the introduction of the TEACH Act, we expressed our concerns in writing to your staff about performance-pay provisions contained in the draft bill, calling for them to be subject to collective bargaining or a 75 percent majority support vote of teachers where bargaining does not exist. Ultimately, the introduced bill did include some labor protections. However, as we stated in our letter of June 2005, we looked forward to continued work with you on making improvements to the bill. We offered your TEACH Act legislation general support because the bulk of the bill was aimed at providing teachers with the kinds of supports they need to be successful, such as high quality professional development, mentoring and induction programs, and incentives to become certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. You are an experienced legislator who understands that “general support” does not translate to support for each and every provision of a particular bill. If that were the case, we would never see passage of most pieces of legislation and legislators would never receive letters of support from interested parties.
They supported the bill at the time, with reservations, with the understanding that they would work on improvements because the larger goals were important. That does not mean that they endorsed the concept of merit pay, particularly as laid out in the current Miller/Pelosi proposal.
After that initial support and earlier this year when Miller’s staff informed them that they would be re-introducing the TEACH act and making it the basis for the re-authorization of NCLB/ESEA, NEA re-informed Miller of their opposition in discussions with his staff. They sent letters and continued discussions. More from the letter:
On August 8 and again on August 16, NEA sent letters (attached) to convey very clearly our position about performance pay plans. At the end of August and over the Labor Day weekend, NEA staff submitted additional legislative language to remedy the serious problems in your draft language; however, those proposals were rejected. Your discussion draft released on September 6 reflects neither the specifications set forth in our letters, nor the legislative language suggestions we have proposed to protect educators’ rights. Furthermore, the Title II discussion draft now contains additional performance pay provisions that were not a part of the TEACH Act (such as in the Teacher Corps program).
Miller knew full well that they opposed the merit pay provisions. Any suggestions to the contrary are just silly. Did they need to take out ads to make it clearer?
To reiterate, we do not support mandating any evaluation or compensation term as an element of a federal program, voluntary or not. We are particularly opposed to any provisions that would require that student test scores be a mandatory element. Therefore, we are simply asking again for labor protections to ensure that a school district cannot impose on teachers without their consent the use of test scores or student learning gains as part of any evaluation or compensation system. As several of your witnesses testified yesterday, educator buy-in is essential to the success of any compensation plan.
We are determined to obtain clear and comprehensive protections in ESEA concerning any aspect of teacher compensation, evaluation, or other employment terms. As I indicated yesterday, our members are hired by school districts, not the federal government. As such, employment contracts must be negotiated and agreed to at the local-not federal-level. This issue, more broadly, is about protecting public employees’ collective bargaining rights under federal law. We will not support any legislation that undermines those rights and sets a dangerous precedent for our colleagues in the labor community.
It is not that teachers oppose any and all pay-for-performance legislation. The crux of it is that it doesn’t happen with out their approval, it should be one of several options for using federal funding and it does not undermine local bargaining agreements.
New federally mandated programs, especially those that are proven not to work are not what we want from the new NCLB bill. We need to fix the problems that currently exist, not create new ones, especially ones that are based on test scores. George Miller needs to stop playing dumb on this one. Teachers do not support this merit pay program, they never have. They have not reversed themselves. It was always a bad idea and it will always continue to be a bad one.
Take Action, contact Miller and Pelosi. More information on the CTA website.
Cross posted from San Diego Politico
That’s the headline from a new issue brief from the Center on Policy Initiatives here in San Diego. A study of 2006 Census data released this week discovered that “about 53% of both renters and homebuyers in this county can’t afford their housing, according to federal standards.” Those numbers according to CPI add up to more than 500,000 households countywide.
Perhaps coincidentally, FoxNews last night ran a story aimed at revealing the “human side” of the foreclosure crisis throughout the county. The story ultimately focused on analysing all the mistakes people make on the way to foreclosure, conveniently blaming those who end up losing in all of this rather than getting particularly ruffled about predatory lending practices or subprime mortgages that have disproportionately hit Latinos and African-Americans with foreclosure (also touched on in the CPI report among other places).
More than half. That’s not an ingredient for economic growth, improved test scores, higher health standards, public safety, or anything else generally considered desirable for a community. The San Diego housing market is already in decline, with dozens if not hundreds of condos sitting vacant and unsold. Where exactly is this county going and why are we in this handbasket?