Apparently, Sen. Feinstein is asking Hillary Clinton for her primary “game plan”.

“I, as you know, have great fondness and great respect for Sen. Clinton and I’m very loyal to her,” Feinstein said. “Having said that, I’d like to talk with her and [get] her view on the rest of the race and what the strategy is.”

Clinton, who eked out a win in Indiana Tuesday night but lost big to front-runner Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) in North Carolina, has not responded to Feinstein’s phone call, the California senator said.

“I think the race is reaching the point now where there are negative dividends from it, in terms of strife within the party,” Feinstein said. “I think we need to prevent that as much as we can.”

Interesting.  What I’d like to see is Feinstein show some leadership on the Rules Committee and block Hans von Spakovsky’s resurrected nomination to the FEC.  But I’d say DiFi is as good a bellweather as there is of the emerging CW on the Democratic nomination fight.

In other news, California superdelegate Inola Henry committed to Obama today.

Cross-posted on the California Majority Report and the Daily Kos.

Under the collective denial mentality that has hijacked media-types and political observers since the February 5th contests, Senator Barack Obama’s decisive 56-42 win in North Carolina juxtaposed with Senator Hillary Clinton’s narrow 51-49 win in Indiana shows Senator Obama has successfully rebounded from the Rev. Wright controversy and whatever other manufactured non-policy outrages that he’s been forced to address. After all, Obama increased his popular vote lead by over 200,000 votes, and more importantly, his 95 new pledged delegates put him 12 delegates further ahead of Clinton. To borrow a catchphrase from former Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, Obama’s got O-mentum. However, while O-mentum plays a role at the margins, a few points here or there, the reality is this contest is already over, and these outcomes were largely predetermined.

The Democratic presidential primary is over. Senator Barack Obama is our nominee. It didn’t end last night, although many of the pundits that dragged us along for this performance will try and tell us differently. This race has been over for weeks. Obama successfully cemented an impossible to overcome coalition at some point along his 11-state sweep. By the time of the Ohio primary, it was clear that no amount of delegates in Clinton’s remaining geographical strongholds would come close to overcoming Obama’s delegate lead. Today, you will see the superdelegates continue to publicly and privately align with Obama. Any scenario for victory left in the Clinton playbook would have to, by definition, shred party unity through divisive procedural maneuvers that would alienate voters we’ll need in elections for decades to come. I’m not the least bit concerned, because the party elders see the same polls, the same election returns, and the same voter registration numbers I see, and they aren’t going to permit civil war, not this election year.  

The voters in the remaining states and Puerto Rico, even if they could somehow change the outcome of this race (and they can’t), probably have already made up their minds. Exit polls in Indiana showed that 75 percent of primary voters made up their minds sometime before the week of the primary. That number was 79 percent in North Carolina and 76 percent in Pennsylvania. Enough voters feel sufficiently informed in their voting decisions that there just aren’t many late deciders left in this fight. After 21 debates, thousands of campaign stops, and endless 24-hour coverage, apparently enough voters are confident in their decisions that they don’t need to see the gas tax holiday gimmick mocked endlessly on television, and maybe, just maybe, they don’t need to be convinced that senators Obama and Clinton really do at the bottoms of their hearts love cans of really awful beer.

I will say this: Senator Clinton’s “victory” speech last night was gracious and largely respectful to our nominee. If that is how she conducts herself for the duration of this campaign, she’s more than welcome to stay in the race through June 3rd. The state-to-territory-to-state campaigning has done wonders for Democratic registration everywhere. This will pay dividends for presidential candidate Obama and all the Democrats facing competitive down ballot races. In California, the enthusiasm generated by this presidential race will bring new loyal Democrats into an election that could enable us to achieve a two-thirds majority in the state legislature so we can sanely craft budgets, throw us up to three more Congressional seats, and decide the fate of marriage equality and the more humane treatment of millions of farm animals. These are big deals for our state, and senators Obama and Clinton deserve credit for helping plant the seeds that make these efforts possible.

A positive Democratic primary, largely free of negativity between the candidates, would be good for our party in the remaining states. If Clinton retains the tone from last night’s speech, I say stick around, Senator, and thank you. But forgive me if I use my crystal ball for a moment. It doesn’t matter how much “momentum” Obama generates from his impressive 14-point win in North Carolina; he will lose West Virginia. And it doesn’t matter how much “momentum” Clinton will generate from her impressive win in West Virginia; she will lose Oregon. While Obama basks in the glow of victory in Oregon, Clinton will stake camp in victorious Kentucky, priming Puerto Ricans into thinking they can still swing this race for her. They can’t. She’s not our nominee. But so long as Clinton plays nice and wants to keep this theatre production acceptable for all audiences, with dulled blades, she’s welcome to continue playing the part of a viable presidential candidate. When done right, this road show is good for the party.

Dave Johnson has been posting about this strike and its big picture implications, but I also wanted to share some of the individual stories from the workers on the front lines. Here’s Dale Brown from Sacramento:

I’ve been with Inter-Con at Kaiser South Sacramento for a year. I’m constantly worried about getting sick. Working in a hospital, I’m exposed to illness and danger all the time. Without paid sick leave, Inter-con officers either have financial hardship if we take off of work, or are forced to work while sick. If I were to have to miss even one week I would be in danger of losing my apartment.

I’m a single mother, and the insurance plan is too expensive for me to enroll my 2 children. It would cause me hardship even just to buy the Inter-Con/Kaiser plan for my kids.

Recently I had to tell my daughter that we couldn’t afford to pay for cheerleading or volleyball because of the low pay-and no raises–paid at Kaiser to Inter-Con officers. That’s not a situation a parent should ever have to face.

I am fighting for a union because we deserve better. We protect Kaiser and its assets, but Inter-Con isn’t even willing to sit down and hear us out. That is just wrong.

But Inter-Con is breaking the law and violating our civil rights. They’re threatening and harassing workers, pulling people aside and interrogating them. I hated to go on strike, because we all want to make sure that Kaiser patients and employees are protected. But Inter-Con’s breaking the law so we had no choice.

Dale Brown, Kaiser South Sacramento Medical Center

I am an organizer for SEIU.

(I am proud to be helping SEIU spread the word about this strike. – promoted by Bob Brigham)

Yesterday I wrote about the security guards who are striking at Kaiser Permanente because their contractor-employer is engaging in illegal tactics while trying to block them from forming a union.  The guards work for Inter-Con Security Inc., which is contracted by Kaiser to provide security services.

You can read articles with details about what happened with the strike yesterday here and here.  (There is close to zero coverage of this strike in newspapers.  But you wouldn’t expect a corporate-owned media to provide information about labor, now would you?)

Please visit the site Stand for Security for background and details about the security guards’ fight to form a union.

While this strike is about violations of workers’ rights, there are very good reasons for their three-year effort to form a union.

In Oregon, the state just north of California, Kaiser Permanente security guards are employed by Kaiser, not by a contractor.  They are unionized and here is a short chart of just some of the difference this makes.

This chart is an example of the difference that a union makes.  The column on the left — the one with better pay, health care, sick days, pension and other benefits — is the workers who are in a union.  The column on the right is these security guards.  So this is why these security guards have been fighting for three years to join a union.  The employer, Inter-Con Security won’t even give sick days!  For people working in hospitals!  What are these workers supposed to do?  And they won’t even pay when the workers have jury duty!  (Shouldn’t a company be concerned about the greater public good, like a court system that works?)

But this chart is also representative of other workplaces, showing the difference that forming a union can make for other workers.  How else are workers going to get back their rights, get health care, get pensions, and get paid?  If you see a better idea out there, please let us all know because this strike and the things happening to these security guards shows that it is very very difficult to form a union.  In today’s environment where workers are afraid of employers moving their jobs overseas – or even just laying them off and telling everyone else to work harder – and then giving their pay out as raises to the executives and multi-million-dollar bonuses to the CEO, this is a very brave action to take.  

On top of that, the Republican government has stacked the labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board to side with the big corporations.  So it is even harder to form a union than ever.  Which is, of course, why wages are stagnating and CEO pay is off the charts.

This is why these workers are striking — to demand that their civil rights be honored and to demand that their right to form a union be honored.  These security guards are placing everything on the line — and doing this for all of us.  If they win this fight, all of us are a step further toward our rights being honored, and toward our own jobs paying more and giving benefits.

I am proud to be helping SEIU spread the word about this strike.  

After months of wrangling and negotiating the city of Vallejo has voted to declare bankruptcy. And to hear the local media tell it, like the San Francisco Chronicle, it is the fault of public workers, not poor political leadership:

After about four hours of discussion and public comment from the standing-room-only crowd, the council voted 7-0 to approve Tanner’s recommendation to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection as a means to reorganize its finances, which have been shattered by spiraling public employee salaries and the plummeting housing market….

The city and its public safety unions have been at the bargaining table for about two years. The city is asking for its police and firefighters to take salary, benefit and staff cuts, while the unions say any further cuts would endanger public safety as well as the safety of the police and firefighters.

Vallejo spends 74 percent of its $80 million general fund budget on public safety salaries, significantly higher than the state average. The generous contracts are the result of deals struck in the 1970s, following a police strike that left the city in turmoil.

What is not said here, or anywhere in the article, is the reason for that public safety spending. Vallejo’s police and fire services are understaffed – as are many agencies in California, in a little-known but extremely important and widespread phenomenon. City leaders have been loath to hire new workers, but they have also needed the public safety services – so the workers that are on the payroll have been working overtime. And overtime pay is usually always higher than regular pay.

Vallejo, like many California cities, wanted to maintain a high services and low tax environment, and has found this is not possible, especially when an artificially-created bubble bursts. Instead of accepting responsibility and seeking new revenues to balance the city’s books without endangering the public, city leaders chose to blame the public workers for the problems and declare bankruptcy instead of avoiding the underlying issues.

To be fair, Vallejo is not in complete control of its own destiny. Decades of state and federal budget cuts, made to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, have had a trickle-down effect of eviscerating services and leaving cities more and more financially exposed as state and federal aid has begun to dry up. It’s not exactly as if Bush and Arnold have directly told Vallejo to drop dead but through their inaction in the face of widening government financial crisis, they have achieved the same result.

Vallejo IS the tip of the iceberg, as many cities face similar problems. Some have done the right thing and sought new revenues, like Salinas, and avoided destructive service cuts. Others are following Vallejo down the path of blaming public workers. Without state and federal solutions, this scene may well replay itself again and again across the state in the coming years.

Fabian Nunez hosted his final press conference as speaker yesterday, and began his post-speaker life by offering a series of proposals focused on process issues.

The redistricting component features an independent 17-member “hybrid” commission. No legislators will serve on the panel, with the majority picked randomly from a screened pool with no legislative influence and eight others picked by legislative leaders. Unlike the Voters First initiative that may appear on the November ballot, this proposal requires diversity in every step of the process and puts the Voting Rights Act first and foremost among the criteria in selecting districts. There’s also a host of transparency and public input provisions.

The term limits provision is similar to Prop 93, but excludes the provisions that protected many incumbents that drew criticism. It reduces the maximum amount of time a person can serve in the Legislature from 14 years to 12 years, allowing  a legislator to serve all their time in one house.

There’s also a fundraising blackout period prohibiting campaign contributions to legislators and the Governor from May 15th until the budget is enacted.

These would go up on the ballot for passage by voters in November once they get through the Legislature.  There is of course already a redistricting measure that appears to be on its way to the ballot, so it’s unclear whether or not this is a “confuse and kill” strategy.  But Nuñez said that his hope would be for one redistricting proposal on the ballot.

That’s the past; here’s the future.

Karen Bass has drawn up a short agenda for her two-year reign as Assembly speaker that begins next week.

There are only three items:

* Balance a state budget that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared is “$20 billion out of whack.”

* Create a ballot initiative that would produce $300 million to $500 million annually for foster care programs.

* Restructure California’s tax system to make it conform to the modern world. Actually, she wants to create a blue-ribbon commission of “the best and the brightest” to tackle taxes.

That’s all.

Foster care programs are Bass’ pet issue, but otherwise she’s focused on, I have to say, the ACTUAL problem facing California.

We are out of money.  Not out of money in theoretical terms, or on a balance sheet somewhere, but physically out of money by August if no budget is enacted.  The cash reserves are empty and the revenues aren’t coming in.  All that matters between now and August is that we put a budget in place that is SUSTAINABLE and, as Bass notes, in line with the modern world.  All of this process stuff about redistricting and term limits is what gets pundits and press people all a-twitter, but it’s not the problem in California.  What Bass is saying without saying it is that we need to end the 2/3 requirement so we can have a legislature that reflects the will of the people.  That’s the only way we’re going to pass a sustainable budget, that’s the only way we’ll get a 21st-century revenue system.  And I believe she knows that.

The governor wants to sell out our future, sell bonds, sell the lottery, hold a fire sale and mortgage California for generations.  We should not have to stand for that.  Selling off the state to preserve tax cuts for the wealthy is not a “creative” solution.  I have no idea how Karen Bass will fare in her 2 1/2 years as Speaker, but I’m now confident that she’s at least focused on the right issues.