XPosted 2/13/2008 9:32 PM PST on MyDesert.com on BluePalmSpringsBoyz blog

I just received this invitation from State Senator Carole Migden, Palm Springs Mayor Pro-Tem Ginny Foat, and The Victory Fund to brunch to support Greg Pettis for the CA 80th Assembly District to replace the termed-out Bonnie Garcia.

More below the flip…

Sen. Carole Migden (D-CA 3rd AD), according to Wikipedia:

“represents the 3rd District in the California State Senate, which includes parts of San Francisco, Sonoma County, and Marin County.  She was previously a member of the California State Assembly (1996-2002) and Chairwoman of the California Board of Equalization (2002-2004), the nation’s only publicly-elected tax commission.  She also served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (1991-1996). She also chaired the San Francisco Democratic Party for eight years and is a member of the Democratic National Committee.

“Carole Migden is the Chairperson of California Senate Labor & Industrial Relations Committee and the Chairperson of the Senate Majority Caucus. She was previously the Senate Appropriations Committee Chair. She is the only Lesbian state official in Northern California and one of just ten woman Senators.

Mayor Pro-Tem Foat has served the Coachella Valley in various capacities including as a member of the Human Resources Committee of the Coachella Valley Association of Governments, an Alternate to the Riverside County Transportation Commission, a member of the League of California Cities, and a member of the Sub Committee on Neighborhood Involvement, of the Sub Committee on Convention Center Opening, and of the Sub Committee on Indian Oasis.

The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund is the Nation’s largest LGBT political action committee.  As such, the Victory Fund endorses qualified, committed openly LGBT candidates who can win elected office.

The invitation from Migden, Foat, and The Victory Fund to brunch with Pettis is as follows:

Today’s SF Chronicle examines the turmoil within the “Yacht Party” – the state Republican Party is mired in debt and facing deepening internal divisions. As Carla Marinucci explains:

The troubles of the GOP in the nation’s most populous state – which backers of Sen. John McCain insist could be competitive in the fall presidential election – come at a crucial time. The California party convention is Feb. 22 in San Francisco, and conservatives and moderates will debate the platform and whether independent voters should be allowed to cast ballots in state GOP primaries.

But the most urgent concern for many Republicans is the appalling financial condition of the state party, which is now overdue on repaying a $3 million loan provided in 2005 by Larry Dodge, chief executive of the American Stirling Co.

The surest sign of a party that is deeply divided is when blame gets passed around, instead of folks stepping up to take responsibility (although one wonders when the last time the Yacht Party ever demonstrated responsibility to the state’s voters, finances, and basic rights). Sure enough, we have Jon Fleischmann, who runs some website whose name I forget, explaining that it’s all Arnold’s fault:

“The understanding of the California Republican Party was that the loan would be repaid today – and if it isn’t, that’s concerning,” Jon Fleischman, vice chair of the Southern California GOP, told The Chronicle on Friday.

“The governor made a commitment to resolve the debt. It was incurred re-electing him – and he stood before our convention and said he would take care of resolving it,” Fleischman said. “If we’re still dealing with the debt from Gov. Schwarzenegger’s last campaign, it makes it difficult for us to move forward on the McCain campaign.”

Naturally, Arnold’s people deny responsibility for this debt (as they have with the state’s budget deficit):

But an adviser to Schwarzenegger, Adam Mendelsohn, said the governor is not responsible for settling the loan.

“This is an issue between the California Republican Party and Larry Dodge in terms of finalizing and resolving the debt,” he said….

Sources inside the party said Schwarzenegger negotiated successfully with Dodge months ago to forgive the state party’s debt, and Dodge indicated he would be willing to make substantial additional contributions – if changes were made to party operations.

Among those changes being considered is whether or not to let DTS voters cast a ballot in Republican primaries. As we saw on February 5, DTS voters packed the polls in enormous numbers to cast a ballot in the Democratic primary, and many of those voters will vote for the Democrat again in November. Republicans might have a chance at peeling off some of those voters if their primaries were open, and while the PR effect of their closed primary is negative, most Republicans seem happy with it anyway:

But Spence said conservatives believe otherwise – and will make their views known at next week’s convention.

“I think California Republicans support having Republicans choose Republican nominees,” he said. “There’s been no evidence that allowing (independents) to vote in the primaries has benefited us in a general election.”

Since conservatives captured the California Republican Assembly in the early 1960s as part of their long march through the institutions, they have seen the state party as their exclusive vehicle. Ideological purity is what they prize, and most conservatives remain convinced – against all available evidence – that Californians will come around to their way of thinking.

Whatever the reasons behind this inner turmoil – ideological differences, personal pique, money matters – what’s most important for us is that this gives Democrats perhaps the best opportunity in decades to grab seats from the Yacht Party in the legislature. Earlier this week Fabian Núñez spoke of three seats they were targeting – AD-15, AD-78, and AD-80.

If anything this is probably not ambitious enough. As we saw in 2006, most of the House races Democrats won were not on the establishment radar at this point in the cycle – including CA-11. Dean’s 50-state strategy helped Dems take advantage of the wave that year. Here in California we need a 58-county, 120-district strategy.

A broke and divided Republican Party, forced to defend yacht owners and the screwing of sick children and students, is a sign that Democrats need to take the offensive. Back the Republicans up against a wall, and take advantage of what is going to be a massive Democratic turnout in the November elections to make a bid for 2/3. It’s time for CA Democrats to be bold for a change.

So, what do you think?

I have the greatest respect for Barbara Boxer and the work she’s doing on the issue of global warming.  However, I think it’s a shortsighted approach for working to pass a bill that she thinks George Bush can sign, a climate change bill that would set up a cap and trade system and just give carbon credits away to polluting industries.  There’s been a simmering battle between environmental groups on this bill, and now it’s exploded into the open, with the Sierra Club coming out against the bill, known as Lieberman-Warner (which should tell you something).

Fast-forward to present day: the carbon industries are lobbying to get a deal done this year that would give away carbon permits free of charge  to existing polluters — bribing the sluggish, and slowing down innovation. And  politicians are telling us that while it would be better to auction these  permits and make polluters pay for putting carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, creating that market unfortunately gets in the way of the politics.

We are being urged to compromise — to put a system in place  quickly, even if it is the wrong system.   Given that we only have one chance to get this right before it’s too  late, our top priority must be to make sure that we do not settle prematurely  and sign a weak bill into law in the name of doing something about global warming.   With momentum for strong action and a friendlier Congress and White House building every day, it’s no coincidence that some wish to settle their accounts now.

This will tie the hands of the Presidential candidates on the Democratic side, who have far better proposals for their cap and trade system, including selling the carbon credits at a 100% auction, using the funds to promote green energy and research for renewables.  It’s the wrong bill at the wrong time.

over…

I know that Sen. Boxer wants to use her status as the head of the Environment Committee to push this compromise bill forward.  But the political calculus next year could be excellent for a real bill with real teeth, and Boxer would be leaving that on the table.  As I mentioned earlier this week on my home site, Sens. Obama and Clinton are co-sponsors of this Lieberman-Warner bill, which was initially authored by John McCain, and so this has the potential to totally take global warming as an issue off the table for the 2008 elections.  They ought to take their names off the bill, but it would be better for involved if this doesn’t pass.  As Matt Stoller writes:

…it’s the huge number of new liberal anti-carbon energy voters out there that are going to allow the public to get a sustainable deal on climate change next Congress.  There’s some evidence that Obama might make global warming his highest priority, having promised to begin negotiating a new Kyoto-style treaty even before taking office.

All of this is excellent and game-changing news that we’ve seen happen in the last week or so.  As a reminder, here’s what Boxer said just two weeks ago about Friends of the Earth, which has waged a campaign called ‘Fix it or Ditch it’ about the massive Lieberman-Warner bill to subsidize polluting industries.

“They’re sort of the defeatist group out there,” she said. “They’ve been defeatists from day one. And it’s unfortunate. They’re isolated among the environmental groups.”

This nasty slur, while not true at the time (Greenpeace was opposing the bill), is now silly.  At least one big green group has moved in response to Wynn’s loss to get a better deal, and the business right, the coal producers, the nuclear industry, and the oil guys know they will have to deal soon.  The Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth have said that we must work on global warming, but that it must be done smart and sustainably.

We’ve been down this road before.  The rising cost of gasoline and worries about peak oil led everyone to go running toward biofuels in a desire to “just do something,” and now we’re learning that the production of biofuels costs more energy than the savings from biofuels themselves.  So now we’ve created this giant windfall for agribusiness, and nobody wants to reverse the ship because it’d be politically unpopular to enact what some would see as an “anti-environmental” initiative.  

A “deal” on a bad cap and trade bill would have the same effect.  It would lock in a giveaway to polluters on the order of trillions, and make it very difficult for the next President to do anything about it.  If you care about the environment, I think you need to let Sen. Boxer know that only a real climate change bill that hits the necessary targets is sufficient.  Otherwise, she has to walk away from this.