This week, three members of the Coachella Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) endorsed the candidacy of Rick Gonzales for the 80th Assembly District to replace the termed-out, thank God, Bonnie Garcia (R).  Gonzales works for Wells Fargo as a comunity housing investor.

The news behind the endorsements is that this is a repudiation of the leadership of Victor Manuel Perez on the board and of his Candidacy for the 80th AD.  Seems that Perez’ major claim to the nomination is his ‘credentials’ on education.  Backers claim that Perez has the unified backing of the education community in the Coachella Valley.  Not.

More below the flip…

Perez serves on the CVUSD and the executive committee as its Vice-President.  As such, Perez was intimately responsible for the ill-advised decision on the part of the board to seek Federal funds that, according to The Desert Sun, lead to the CVUSD being the only board in the state threatened with state sanctions to actually be placed under state-sponsored trusteeship this year (see my previous posts).  The state made it clear that acceptance of the funds by CVUSD board was the primary determining factor in its decision to place the board and the Superintendant under state trusteeship.

Now, three of the members of the CVUSD board, Gloria Maldonado, Anna Rodriguez, and Maria Elvia Rios, according to the Rick Gonzales for State Assembly website, have rejected the candidacy of Perez and have endorsed Gonzales.  Whether they repudiate Perez for his part in the ill-conceived decisions of the board or for other reasons remains to be seen.

As they have done to others during the campaign in the Coachella Valley and here on Calitics, including with this blogger, the Perez campaign is attempting to smear the actions of these three boardmembers and to label them as the problem with the CVUSD board.  (This approach seems so familiar.  Remember the Bush tactics used against its detractors?)  Rather than innuendo, mudslinging, and slander, it is up to the Perez campaign and its blogger to address the voting patterns of Perez and the CVUSD boardmembers for the benefit of the reader to see if in fact these were recalicitrant board members or if they were in fact the ones who were shall we say ‘transformational.’

Oh, and just to be fact-based, here is the evidence for the fact that the education community in the Coachella and Imperial Valleys are not supportive of Perez for the 80th AD:

Rick Gonzales for Assembly Endorsements in Education:

Gloria Maldonado, Coachella Valley Unified School Boardmember

Anna Rodriguez, Coachella Valley Unified School Boardmember

Maria Elvia Rios, Coachella Valley Unified School Boardmember

Irene Padilla Salazar, Vice-President Brawley Elementary School District

Marion Long-Former Imperial Valley Community College Board Member

Norma Sierra Galindo– Imperial Valley Community College Board

Louie Wong– Imperial Valley Community College Board

Carlos Acuña– Imperial Valley Community College Board

Tim Asamen – Former Westmorland Elementary School Board Member

John Moreno — School Administrator, Calexico Unified School District

Enrique “Pinky” Alvarado–Calexico Unified School Board

Eduardo Rivera –Calexico Unified School Board President

Enrique “Pinky” Alvarado–Calexico Unified School Board

Eduardo Rivera –Calexico Unified School Board President

Gloria Santillan — Former Brawley Union High School Board Member

Helen Noriega — Brawley Union High School Board Member

Rusty Garcia — Brawley Union High School Board Member

Joe Padilla — Brawley Elementary School Board Member

Cesar Guzman — Brawley Elementary School Board Member

Michael Romero — Brawley Educator

Kathy Prior — Brawley Elementary School Board Member

More on the various candidate stances on education later this week.

My No on 98 Disclosure.

Governor Schwarzenegger has once again abandoned his radical friends on the right, and boy are they pissed. But, here’s his remarks on Proposition 98, the constitutional amendment to end rent control, land use restrictions, and governmental regulation of the environment. Arnold opposes it mostly because it blocks him from building dams.

Schwarzenegger said he was opposing Proposition 98 in part because it might block the building of water projects crucial to farmers and residential users.

“Eminent domain is an issue worth addressing,” Schwarzenegger said in a prepared statement. “However Proposition 98 would undermine California’s ability to improve our infrastructure, including our water delivery and storage.” (SacBee 4/25/08)

Apparently the potential harm to tenants was a little lower down on his list. But with this Governor, you take what you can get.  He’s opposed to Prop 98, and that’s a good thing.

By Dave Johnson, Speak Out California

It is a popular misconception that taxes add to the squeeze on the middle class.  But it isn’t tax increases that have squeezed the middle class, it’s tax cuts.  It may be hard to believe (after so many years of constant anti-tax rhetoric) but here is why.

The middle class IS squeezed these days.  There are pressures and long hours at work, long commutes, health insurance costs, housing costs, food and gas prices rising, and wages are not keeping up — they haven’t been for a long time.  But it is not a coincidence that the middle-class squeeze began at the same time as the corporate-funded anti-government, tax-cutting fervor.  In fact a good case can be made that many of the reasons the middle class feels squeezed are the result of pressures brought about almost entirely FROM the effects of tax CUTS and cutbacks in government services, regulations and enforcement that went along with the tax cuts.

There are direct and indirect relationships.  One example of a direct relationship is the dramatic rise in the cost of a college education.  Sending kids to college has become extremely expensive.  And this places a very hard squeeze on parents who want their children to get a degree.  But here in California tuition was very, very low before Proposition 13.  Tax cuts directly led to this squeeze on the middle class.  (And remember, most of the property taxes that were cut were on business property.)

Indirect results include rising energy prices from cutbacks in government R&D and subsidies for oil alternatives as well as longer commutes as the government cuts back on transit solutions like buses, trains and roadbuilding or improvements.  Health care costs continue to rise because of government inaction and deregulation — the result of the anti-government sentiment encouraged as part of the the anti-tax campaign.  And insurance costs rise while coverage is reduced or even denied as the government cuts back on regulation and enforcement. (My wife is the one who brings in the health insurance for our family.  Every year she gets a raise, but every year the amount taken out of her check to cover her portion of the health insurance payment goes up by more than her raise, and her take-home pay is lower.  So more squeeze.)

Other areas where the anti-government, anti-tax campaign has increased pressure on the average person is at work.  Anyone that works for a corporation is feeling the extra pressures there.  As government of, by and for the people declines corporate power fills the vacuum.  

And there are so many more areas where we are squeezed by this increasing dominance of corporations in our lives.  As government — the power of We, the People — diminishes, the corporations swoop in to pick us clean.  How many examples of corporate power coming to dominate over people power can you think of?

Click through to Speak Out California

Not only California Teachers Association, but the CSEA supports the CA 80th AD’s People Powered candidate:

The California School Employees Association has endorsed Democratic candidate Manuel Perez for 80th Assembly District, the campaign said today.

Perez, who is a Coachella School Board trustee, is vying to replace Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City. Garcia cannot run again because of term limits.



“Manuel Perez is clearly an education leader,” Ellen Soto, CSEA chapter president at Coachella Valley Unified School District, said in a press release.



“Manuel is rolling up his sleeves and working hard every day to improve schools and create educational opportunities for our kids. Manuel’s leadership has brought $250 million to the Coachella Valley to build new schools and modernize classrooms.”

Here is his ActBlue page, mijos.

This race is getting more interesting every day, with PolitickerCA.com starting to pay attention.  What Finnigan missed in his preliminary article is that Perez’s support isn’t dependent on his facility in Spanish, but his stellar grassroots work in the district.  

The Bush Administration’s Department of Transportation proposal to raise fuel economy rates faster than Congress mandated last fall comes with a catch – obliterating California’s proposal to regulate tailpipe emissions.  Think Progress has the relevant passage in the report.

(b) As a state regulation related to fuel economy standards, any state regulation regulating tailpipe

carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles is expressly preempted under 49 U.S.C. 32919.

(c) A state regulation regulating tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles, particularly a regulation that is not attribute-based and does not separately regulate passenger cars and light trucks, conflicts with:

1. The fuel economy standards in this Part

2. The judgments made by the agency in establishing those standards, and

3. The achievement of the objectives of the statute (49 U.S.C. Chapter 329)

This actually changes little in the near term.  The EPA has already denied California a waiver to regulate their own emissions, a ruling that is under court appeal.  And the Supreme Court has already ruled on the belief that gas mileage standards and greenhouse gas emissions are separate, and that the states may act to regulate the latter.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and a coalition of governors have acted swiftly:

NHTSA has no authority to preempt states from regulating greenhouse gases.  Congress and two federal district courts have rejected NHTSA’s claim to such authority.  Furthermore, this attack completely undermines the cooperative federalism principles embodied in the Clean Air Act, and is an end run around 40 years of precedent under that law.

Our states intend to comment on the proposed rulemaking and, if necessary, will sue NHTSA, just as California and other states have sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to ensure that states retain the right to reduce global climate change emissions…

It just adds to the extreme hackitude that has characterized this Administration’s actions on global warming.  We learned this week that over half of all EPA scientists have “experienced incidents of political interference in their work.”  Now the Department of Transportation gets added to the list.