SwingStateProject beat me to the punch on yet another example of Dana Rohrabacher being awful.  Discussing his reelection bid with a Long Beach newspaper, he said of challenger Debbie Cook:

“She’s a very attractive person, physically, and has a title, so I’m taking it seriously.”

Translation: “Isn’t it cute that a woman would try to challenge me.”

Even in a district so oddly willing to being represented by an utter nutjob, it’s hard to believe that such naked sexism directed at a popular mayor will fly. Throw in his commentary about “steely-eyed radicals” pushing some hidden agenda beneath the notion of man-made climate change, and it’s the whole Crazy Dana package.

It’s tough to really guess what the tipping point of mean-spirited insanity might be for Rohrabacher, but now that he’s getting pushed, perhaps the process will at least speed up a bit.

Being called an unreliable and somewhat treacherous partisan might be cool in a general election, but it won’t do Tom McClintock much good in the primary against former Rep. Doug Ose in the 4th District.  McClintock, a former Gov and Lt. Gov. candidate, does not have a fan in former Republican Governor Pete Wilson.

Wilson is holding a press conference today to talk about McClintock. The press notice about the conference says Wilson will share at least one opinion about the man:

“I could never count on McClintock. He was always the first to criticize, but the last to help his team.”

Ouch! Either way, Charlie Brown keeps chugging along in the Democratic race.  He’ll face whichever bruised victor emerges from the GOP primary. You can find Charlie on the Calitics ActBlue page.

Wes Clark will be joining a Democrats Work community service project this summer, and Democrats Work and WesPAC are running a contest to decide who will Serve with the General.

Thousands of people have already voted, but voting is so close that as of this morning California’s 4th district has 70 votes separating it from first place ~ and only 17 votes before it drops out of the top 5!

On Friday, the top 5 vote getting districts will move on to the final round. A handful of votes will decide if California’s 4th is pushed out or wins it all.

If you would like to meet Gen. Clark, or to help bring him to California to serve on a community project, cast your vote here.

Due to Memorial Day, the Calitics Show has been moved to today at 3:30. I'll be talking to 2 Assembly Candidates, Joan Buchanan of the 15th District and Richard Holober in the 19th.

As always, you can listen live here, or you can catch the archived podcast on iTunes  or at the Calitics Show homepage.

Last Thursday Capitol Weekly wrote a story about now approved budget prosed by Gov. Schwarzenegger and passed by the state legislator. The plan has received negative reviews across the board but especially from educations, unions, and advocates of health care who do not agree with the 10% across the board cuts. Of particular concern though are the expectations for how the Medi-Cal program will have to run its business in the next fiscal year.

The total cuts on Medi-Cal reimbursement account for $602.4 million out of the entire $15.2 billion deficit; however, pharmacy bears more than a third of these cuts at $232 million, factoring in rebates…Pharmacies will be losing money on nearly every Medi-Cal prescription they fill. This certainly isn’t a viable business model.

Some pharmacies may be forced to reduce staffing and business hours, or even to close their doors altogether. Such outcomes would create further access issues for patients in need.

And when it comes down to it, this move won't even be saving the state money;

With more than 6.5 million Medi-Cal beneficiaries in California, it would seem enacting cuts to all providers would equate to a significant savings to the state. However, these cuts will have the opposite effect. If patients lose access to prescription drugs, they will become sicker, and will need more expensive forms of medical treatment. Many patients may end up in emergency rooms that are already stretched beyond capacity. These emergency room visits will cost the state and California taxpayers significant money by further inflating the budget deficit.

Unfortunately for California cutting the budget is one of the only options for stabilizing the budget when economic times get hard, leaving program like Medi-Cal susceptible to deep cuts. This is because unlike other states, California does not have a statewide rainy day fund. Cities oftentimes do, which is what helped save the jobs of 500 public school teachers in San Francisco. However even for states who do have access to money put aside for poor economic times, inaction from the federal government is making the choice of when to tap into these funds increasingly difficult.

An Associated Press article from last Monday highlights a perilous choice for states feeling the effects of the nations economic downturn. At stake are state employee jobs, healthcare and school budgets, and essential services, all of which are at risk if the federal government does not take action to help the states.

The article entitled States debate whether to dip into their rainy day funds discusses the two sides of the debate on how to deal with growing budget shortfalls; to raid the rainy day fund, or cut services and spending.

The calculation involves deciding if it is better to raid the fund for fiscal emergencies now or to wait, in case the economic slowdown worsens and the need for revenue becomes more desperate.

States from Virginia to Arizona and everywhere in between are beginning to reach a crisis point in their budget problems where they must choose between tapping their rainy day funds or cutting critical portions of their budget. The rainy day funds are obviously meant for this kind of economic climate, however dreary forecasts from the National Conference of State Legislatures are making the decision of when to use the funds much more difficult.

In April, the NCSL said the finances of many states have deteriorated so badly that they appear to be in a recession, regardless of whether that is true for the nation as a whole.

Such dire news is one reason some states are holding off on raiding their reserves.

"They're worried that, as bad as it might be, it might get worse," said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers.

The document mentioned in the article is the NCSL's State Budget Update for April 2008. The press release on the update describes the health of state budgets as very uneven and getting worse.

In November, seven states and Puerto Rico reported shortfalls. That number rose to 16 states and Puerto Rico by mid-April. Collectively, these gaps totaled at least $11.7 billion.

The situation is worse for FY 2009: Budget gaps have emerged in 23 states and Puerto Rico, and collectively they exceed $26 billion

What is most disheartening about this story is that the states are choosing between two flawed solutions. Simply raiding the rainy day fund is not the answer when no one is able to determine what "rock bottom" for this economic downturn will be. It does not take very long for rainy day funds to dry out, and the AP article shows that the funds are quickly depleting after hitting a high in 2006.

(in 2006) states reported $69 billion in their reserves, including rainy day funds, or 12 percent of total revenue. That figure will drop to about $46 billion, or 7 percent, by June 30, the end of the business year for most states, according to the NASBO.

…Arizona lawmakers dealt with a $1.2 billion shortfall for this fiscal year, which ends in most states on June 30, by spending more than two-thirds of the state's rainy day reserve.

The rainy day funds will not be full forever and must be preserved if more difficult times are on the horizon. This leaves states with the painful option of cutting services, jobs, and other essential parts of their budgets. In Ohio, where the government is facing a $700 million shortfall they were forced to cut 2,700 state government jobs and close two mental health hospitals. In Tennessee the $468 million in budget cuts are coming from cutting 2,000 state government jobs, reducing the higher education budget by $55 million, and slashing $80 million from the TennCare program that pays medical expenses for people who have fallen into poverty because of massive medical bills. These cuts are having a real effect on the people in these states. According to the Columbus Dispatch story, Cambridge Mayor Tom Orr stated;

It's going to be painful … you can't even begin to measure the ripple effect.

And in the Tennessean Story;

Gordon Bonnyman, head of the Tennessee Justice Center and a longtime TennCare critic, said the cuts will be "tragic" for the population of catastrophically ill Tennesseans who rely on it.

The states are being forced into these painful decision due to a failure by the federal government to provide the proper aid in this time of economic hardship, and the ones who lose in this case are people like you and me.

So what is the federal government doing? As I posted previously, it has taken the position that bailing out corporations in trouble is more important than helping the states and localities who face similar financial crunches, which does not bode well for California which isfacing an estimated $22 billion shortfall for FY 2009. This figure represents 21.3% of the FY2008 General Fund, the highest in the nation. The federal government has also steamrolled the states by enacting a stimulus package that, according to another CBPP study will only make matters worse by further cutting the revenue that the AP, Columbus Dispatch, and Tennessean stories all say is one of the main reasons that states are feeling such a financial crunch.

The federal economic stimulus package enacted on February 13 not only cuts federal taxes, but also threatens to reduce many states corporate and personal income tax revenue this year and next year.

The potential revenue loss comes at a particularly problematic time for states, because about half the states are already facing budget shortfalls for the current year, the upcoming year, or both; more states will be in trouble if the economic downturn worsens.

And what will the federal government do in the future? It certainly doesn’t seem like it will relieve the pressure states are feeling from soaring retiree healthcare costs and the burdens of the housing crisis. An effort to drive down the cost of medicare prescriptions drugs failed to make its way through Congress when the Medicare Fair Prescription Drug Price Act of 2007 failed to get off Capital Hill – that bill would have allowed the federal government to negotiate with drug companies for lower prescription drug prices.

And this statement made by Secretary Paulson before the National Association of Business Economists shows that help for homeowners is also not on the way.

We know that speculation increased in recent years; a resulting increase in foreclosures is to be expected and does not warrant any relief. People who speculated and bought investment properties in hot markets should take their losses just like day traders who speculated and bought soaring tech stocks in 2000.

As more and more people are effected by these state budget shortfalls I am left with one question. How disastrous does the crisis need to get before the Federal Government steps in with meaningful help?

I just returned from a Memorial Day vigil at the Lafayette crosses.  Built by members of the community over the past two years on a steep five-acre hillside that overlooks the freeway and BART station, the crosses exert a magnetic draw on Memorial Day.  Today, the total number of crosses stood at 4,084.

About 100 people came together near dusk to honor the soldiers represented by those crosses on the hill, soldiers who have given so much for their country.

 

Tony Thurmond, Democratic candidate for AD-14 (l.) and a spokeswoman from Rep. Barbara Lee’s office (CA-09)(r.)

Gradually, a theme emerged from the series of speakers there on that hillside:

We are incredibly grateful to our soldiers and service members for the sacrifices they have made. Going forward, we can best honor the dead by bringing our troops home from Iraq so that no more are killed, by ensuring that our troops are never again heedlessly sent into harm’s way, and by working tirelessly to make this the kind of country for which they gave their lives, one that provides respect, fairness and opportunity to all.

Penny

Online Organizing Director

California Democratic Party

Yes, you read me right.  There is a candidate for Superior Court judge named Bill Johnson who is literally a white supremacist and he’s on your ballot if you vote in Los Angeles County.

The thing is, he actually has a shot at winning.  He’s got a following with Ron Paul people even though officially Ron Paul has disavowed him and has a shot at sneaking through if his followers are the only ones who vote in this low turnout, non-primary election.

Per the Los Angeles Times editorial page:

Los Angeles voters, if they don’t pay attention, could hand judicial robes to a racial separatist who called for restricting U.S. citizenship to persons “of the European race” and deporting blacks, Asians, Latinos and others who don’t meet his racial criteria.  

The candidate is Bill Johnson.  Under the name James O. Pace, he wrote the racial exclusion as a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a 1985 book supporting it. Under the name Daniel Johnson, he ran a losing race for Congress in Wyoming in 1989 with a Ku Klux Klan organizer as his campaign manager. As William Johnson, he ran a losing race for Congress in Arizona in 2006. He now may have found a race he can win, unless voters here find out who he is.

The opposing candidate (James Bianco) is endorsed by the LA Times, and they say he’s ‘experienced and impressive’. Frankly, though, I’d be happy with mediocre and barely qualified considering he’s running against a freakin’ white separatist!  

Hopefully, you’re not yet done with your Vote by Mail ballot and can still venture into the Judges section of the ballot and at least fill that one in. (Finally a judicial race that’s easy to vote on!).  And if you’re going in to vote on election day, please remember to vote in this race.

AND TO ADD: This is still under the radar, despite the LA Times editorial.  Here’s some concrete evidence that word’s just not getting out.

Check this article I just came across, with the hard-hitting lede:

La Cañada resident Bill Johnson is a candidate for Superior Court seat 125 on the June 3 election.

Johnson, an international corporate attorney, is known locally for his 78-acre ranch off Angeles Crest Highway in La Cañada, where he raises horses, cows and alpacas. He was a leader in the effort to resist the city’s changes in its animal-keeping ordinance.

Johnson and his wife Lois have five children. He has been president of the San Fernando Valley Symphony, head of a 4-H club and works with the Pasadena Chapter of the Foundation for Fighting Blindness.

Um, how about the fact that he’s a white supremacist who wrote a manifesto calling for revoking citizenship and deportation of those who aren’t of European descent?  

Then they’ve got this, but it’s hardly excuplatory:

The candidate has in the past promoted more stringent immigration policies and supported the Pace Amendment to limit rights of illegal immigrants.

His opponent is county commissioner James Bianco. Johnson was rated as not qualified by the L.A. County Bar Association, one of several to receive the rating. Bianco was rated as well qualified.

So, deportation of millions translates to ‘more stringent immigration policies’.  That sounds so much nicer.  And how about the fact that he didn’t just support the Pace Amendment – he is Pace and he wrote the freaking thing himself.