Speaker Pelosi on the recent revelations by Scott McClellan:
”This war is a big lie. It was a lie to begin with..and it continues to be a lie..at some point, maybe the lies just got to be too heavy for him to carry.” (SF Chron Blog)
Congratulations to Fiona Ma and the Assembly for passing Ma’s AB 2716, paid sick leave. Business interests howled that it would break them after SF passed mandatory sick leave by initiative. It didn’t, and SF is better for it. California will be better for it if the Governor signs the bill.
Note: I do some web work against 98. Not a whole lot of people are coming out in support of Prop 98, while nearly every newspaper, elected official, and interest group opposes it. You have labor, business, good government, environmental, tenants, and the list goes on and on. On the other side, you have, well, apartment owners and Howard Jarvis’ corpse that they keep dragging out.
Today, environmental leaders got together in SF to decry the measure for the potential harm it could do to environmental safeguards. And today, Protection and Advocacy, Inc, a lobbying group for disabled Californians came out against Prop 98 and in favor of Prop 99. Poor Jon Coupal must be crying that even with millions of dollars of landlord money, they still can’t catch a break by fooling voters and keeping progressive voters from turning out.
A couple more from Dave:
I found someone who supports Prop.98: Jeff Denham! In fact, he’d rather put abolishing rent control on its own ballot. Another reason to vote yes on the recall.
More bills are facing their fate this week, the last to move bills out of one house. And Republicans blocked the bill put together by a federal receiver and supported by the governor, to build additional medical facilities at our overcrowded prisons. The prisons should be less crowded, and there are plenty of steps to be taken, but this is a human rights issue. Prisoners are dying from lack of adequate care, and without implemented some basic standards there is no way the state will avoid a federal takeover of the entire system. That must be just what those big-government conservatives want.
Anthony Wright has the scoop on some other health care bills, outside the prisons, that did manage to pass through one chamber of the legislature. These are some good, sensible proposals, including a mandate that 85% of premium money go toward patient care (SB1440), independent reviews before insurer rescissions (AB1945), expanding the requirement on insurers covering mental health services (AB1887) and maternity services (AB1962), and SB1522, which standardizes insurance and simplifies the process, in effect eliminating “junk” insurance.
As Oregon finished up voting in its all Vote by Mail (VBM) system last week, Brad of BradBlog used the chance to attack the VBM system. It's a worthwhile read as we head into the election next week. Note: Send your ballot in by TOMORROW to get counted first rather than last.
As you might suspect, there are a number of issues regarding VBM. Claudia Kuhns, the executive director of the Public Integrity Project, targets the following six as top priority (with my little blurbs):
Lack of Transparency: The votes are shipped off in a secret truck to a secret location to be counted with secret software.
Lack of Security: The votes are passed through the regular mail system with a poor chain of custody.
Voter Intimidation: Voting could be done in groups that would allow group leaders to pressure voters.
Election Fraud: Who signed the ballot? Who knows?!
Potential for Ballot Mishandling: How often is mail lost? That’s how often voters are disenfranchised
Lack of Secret Ballot: Most VBM software allows election judges to see how you voted and match it up with your identity.
Now, these are very serious problems. However, I’m not sure that many of these problems can’t be resolved in a satisfactory way. For example, for chain of custody issues establish drop-off locations. As we wade closer to an almost complete VBM system here, we need to do so thoughtfully to increase voter confidence.
