When I first heard the reports of John McCain’s flip-flop on offshore oil exploration and consequent back-up from the President, I knew there was one person to call for comment: Debbie Cook.  In addition to being the Mayor of Huntington Beach, Cook sits on the board of directors of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) and is an expert on energy issues.  She just sent me this statement (on the flip):

Democratic Congressional Candidate Debbie Cook’s statement on proposals to lift the ban on offshore oil drilling:

“There has been a lot of talk in the last couple of days about lifting the ban on drilling for oil along the coast.  Dana Rohrabacher, John McCain and today President Bush have joined in a chorus of “drill, drill, drill,” as if that will solve our energy problems.

“Time is not on our side, and continuing to divert our attention away from the real problem is a disservice to our citizens and a failure of leadership.

“World oil production has been flat for three years. America’s oil refineries are configured to refine light sweet crude and are currently operating at 88% capacity and paying a premium for this short supply. There is no point for the Middle East, the only region that may have spare capacity, to increase production of heavy sour crudes until new refineries are built or existing refineries have been modified.

“Three fourths of the world’s oil and gas wells have already been drilled in North America.  Our continent is so heavily explored that it looks like swiss cheese.  Eighty percent of the oil available on the Outer Continental Shelf is already open to leasing and drilling.  Will opening the remaining 20 percent make any difference when it takes 5-10 years to bring any new oil discoveries to market?

“Perhaps we should just call the President’s bluff, sell off the leases and then get on with the real work ahead of us, leaving fossil fuels before they leave us.

“The world economy depends upon the flow of oil, not the oil that remains in the ground. The fact is, more than 50 nations are now past their peak in oil production:  Mexico, Norway, UK, USA, Russia, perhaps even Saudi Arabia to name a few. If you use ExxonMobil’s estimate for the decline rate from these existing wells (-6%), then from now until 2017, we need to find and develop 37 million barrels per day of additional crude production just to stay even with what we consume today. That assumes no growth in demand for oil. That is the equivalent of finding FOUR Saudi Arabias. Does anyone think we have overlooked resources of that size and quality?

“George Bush and Dana Rohrabacher’s failure to understand the fundamental economics and geology of oil and gas production is matched only by their failures as leaders.

“The true solution to our energy problems starts with conservation efforts, and investment in alternative and sustainable energy sources, which will create new American industries and jobs and jumpstart the sluggish economy.”

I want to add to this that oil companies have millions of acres of land with supposed oil deposits and untapped wells already under their control, but they’re not rushing to drill or explore them.  Why?  Because tracts that show up as “untapped oil reserves” are more profitable if they remain untapped.  They inflate the stock price, the result of which goes directly into the execs’ wallets.  And the corporations use them as an asset without having to actually see whether or not there is any oil in the deposits.

Bush and McCain say they want more drilling, but the oil companies don’t.  They want more untapped reserves so they can pump up their balance sheets.

(Great work by True Majority and the local grassroots. – promoted by David Dayen)

Hey Calitics members,  

I’m sure many of you have seen the recent spate of stories about KBR on the front page of the NYTimes a couple days ago and the always fantastic coverage over at TPM At TrueMajority.org we’ve been really focused on the contractor accountability side of the War in Iraq and tomorrow are working with Sacramento for Democracy and the Sacramento Coalition to End the War to highlight CalPERS investments in KBR at their monthly board meeting.  

About a month ago, we kicked off this campaign with a simple petition calling on pension funds and retirement accounts to hold KBR accountable for fraud waste and abuse. You can still sign the petition at: http://www.TrueMajority.org/St…  

CalPERS, the public pension and retirement system in California is one of the biggest investors in KBR, owning over $25,000,000 in shares, so our California members went to work making over 200 calls in one day calling on CalPERS to divest from KBR. The calls had a great response and we received a wonderful grassroots suggestion in one of the reports.  

Armando from Kensington, CA reported on his call:  

I called just now, 10:56 a.m., and spoke with a young woman named, Jackie, she did not wish to give her last name to me, which is okay, but I did ask her to convey my concern, as a retiree member of CalPERS, that I heard learned that the company had assets with KBR. I asked to speak with the president of the Board, Ron Feckner, but was informed he and board were not present, but would be available during their board meeting week, June 16-19, in Sacramento. I suggest you get folks to call during that time. I am deeply concerned as a longtime member of CalPERS that my retirmenet funds are being used to underwrite KBR or any company that makes me complicit in the conduct of the war in Iraq, more than I already am as a taxpayer. I intend to talk to individual members of the board, especially the Investment and Investment Policy subcommittee. Thanks for alerting me.

Tomorrow, together with Sacramento for Democracy and the  Sacramento Coalition to End the War, we will hold a press conference at 9:30 a.m. and we deliver the petitions to CalPERS at that time. The CalPERS board convenes at 9 a.m. Thursday at the Robert F. Carlson Auditorium, 400 Q Street, in Sacramento.  

If you're in the Sacramento area, please be sure to drop by our event tomorrow:

http://sacramentofordemocracy….

http://www.sacendwar.org/node/234

http://www.indybay.org/newsite…  

And spread the word. Investing public retirement funds in companies that commit fraud and war profiteering is bad for the country and a bad investment decision. The time has come to divest.  

In his latest look at California’s 2010 Democratic Gubernatorial primary, Steve Maviglio writes about Dianne Feinstein:

Why she’s not being touted as a possible Veep choice I don’t know; she’d be the perfect fit.

Don’t worry SacGuy, she’s touting herself, but if her husband’s sketchy financial dealings were enough to sink her as the VP nominee in 1984, all the war profiting from a war DiFi supported means this will never happen. Plus there’s the whole problem with all of her support for Bush, specifically on the Judiciary Committee. And with news that the losers in our Party are trying to cave to the President on retroactive immunity, DiFi should be worried about another push to censure the senator. And there is the whole problem with her not just being a liability, but bringing nothing to the ticket. In short, this would be a perfect fit just like the $4 million refund from the CDP to Fabian Nunez was a perfect move (Maviglio cites, “several million dollars in his campaign account” as why the “Speaker Emeritus” may be a contender for governor).

However, the Vice Presidential pick could usher in a new era for the Democratic Party geographically. In fact, look at the states Obama wants to put in play:

Plouffe also has been touting Obama’s appeal in once Republican-leaning states where Democrats have made gains in recent gubernatorial and congressional races, such as Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Montana, Alaska and North Dakota.

The problem is, the public short lists of potential nominees don’t include anyone from a state western state with mountains other than Patty Murray.

When it comes to a true perfect fit, Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer belongs at the top of the list. Hands down. The Schweitzer takeover of Montana in 2004 is known as the “Montana Miracle” and set the stage to take down Conrad Burns in 2006 — giving control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats. Some potential choices put a state in play, Schweitzer puts the entire Mountain Time Zone (and Alaska) in play. OK, maybe not Utah but he would give McCain a run for his money in Idaho and Wyoming. The same reasons Schweitzer is best choice for the Denver Convention keynote speech are the reasons why he would be a perfect fit. Of course, along with Al Gore he is the only person in the Democratic Party for who VP would be a step down.

Another good fit from the Mountain Time Zone (not right now, but again by election day) is Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano. Sure she won as a clean money candidate, has a long and distinguished history, and “gets it” when it comes to winning in the inter-mountain west. But the best thing about choosing her is the message it would send when it comes to the 50 State Strategy. Putting Napolitano on the ticket puts John McCain on notice that we’re going to go after him in his home state. By extension, this puts every Republican on notice that we are going to go after them, also.

Or, Obama could listen to Maviglio and put California’s least popular Senator on the ticket.

The Assembly Health Committee has unanimously declined to forward SB 1096 to the floor of the Assembly. I’ve written quite a bit about this privacy invasion, and it’s heartening to see this one disappear for a while.

As a reminder, SB 1096 would allow pharmacies to sell prescription data so that patients could receive “reminder letters” from third parties. As the law currently stands, pharmacies and doctors could do so themselves, but could not sell the data to others. Other states allow this privacy invasion, but fortunately California will remain the lone holdout against PhARMA’s plans to commoditize our health records. Despite the $20,000+ that health care interests invested in Sen Calderon, they were unable to succeed in passing this poorly conceived legislation.

Thank you to Asm. Health Cmte Chair Dymally and the entirety of the Committee for rejecting this.

This diary won’t be popular, but it needs to be said.  This past weekend, UCLA finally finished up the school year.  Bill Clinton was supposed to have come spoken at Commencement for the College of Letters and Science.  However, because of a labor dispute between the UC and AFSCME, Clinton ended up not speaking.  Now, the replacement was Ariana Huffington.  But she too backed out at the last minute because of the labor dispute.

Note: There was NOT a strike going on.  It hadn’t gotten to that stage.  They’re still in negotiations for a new contract.  But the union requested that speakers cancel their commencement speeches.

Read below the fold to see how things went downhill.

So this past year, the mood on campus was one of excitement and anticipation at hearing Clinton speak at Commencement, even though most students here were supporting Obama.  The former President is still the former President.  Graduation tickets were incredibly hard to come by this year as a result.  So you can imagine the disappointment in many students and their parents when they found out that Clinton would not speak at UCLA.

There was a Facebook group placing the blame on the UC officials for messing up graduation that drew a couple hundred students.  So the support for the unions is real on campus.

Now, had that been it, it would have been simply disappointing that Clinton didn’t speak at graduation for the Class of 2008.  But… it got worse on graduation day.

Even with Clinton not coming, the union heads decided to tell their workers to picket the graduation ceremonies.  So as students are lining up to go into our basketball arena Pauley Pavilion for Commencement, taking photos with their friends and family, the workers are marching next to them chanting “No contract!  No peace!”  Here are two photos I took as I passed by.

It became quickly obvious that the protest put a damper on the mood of the students.  They already knew Clinton wasn’t coming.  They already understood the reasons why.  But this… it just felt like the union was rubbing it in their faces.  I know that wasn’t their intent, but hey, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  That’s how it came off.

Inside Pauley, when one of the speakers mentioned that Clinton and Huffington would not be speaking, a shower of boos rang out all over Pauley.  The students and their parents were obviously not booing Clinton or Huffington.  But the feeling you got at the ceremony was that they were now equally blaming the UC and the union for messing this up.  What should have been a lot of sympathy for the union was dramatically decreased as a result of their visible protest, IMO.

Note: I was not in Pauley to witness the booing.  I later confirmed this from talking to people who were in attendance, and got their moods and reactions.  And the people I talked to were hardly anti-union types.  But they tell me the mood inside Pauley had decidedly turned against the union.  And that much was already obvious to me just walking by outside and seeing the looks on the faces of the students as they looked on at the workers protesting next to them.  Looks of disgust.  Looks of “WTF?”

Now, call those students selfish, call them egotistical, whatever.  In a lot of their minds, the union helped ruin their graduation ceremony.

It was not a good day for the union or the UC.  When the anger should have been focused on the UC for not resolving the contract dispute for almost a full year, instead, both sides came off looking petty in a lot of people’s eyes.

And that’s my report from what happened at UCLA last week.

It’s an exercise that nobody likely cared very much about four years ago.  And I would imagine that people aren’t likely to care about it four years from now, because it seems that the Democratic primary process will have undergone some modification by then.  But right now, who California’s at-large DNC members–i.e., superdelegates–are, has captured the popular imagination.

An election like this doesn’t happen every day.  In fact, only about 300 people get to vote  for these voters (who do DNC business besides, but that’s not nearly as sexy) every four years.  This year, I happened to be one of them, as I was proxying for Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti.

Brian gave you the election results earlier.  But what’s the voting process like?  We all believe in election integrity, after all.

For more, go below the fold.  With photos.

I got to the voting room right at about 9:05am, before there was a huge line.  But even at that, the process reminded me of a Presidential caucus: you have to pass through a gauntlet of sign-waving campaigners to get to your voting room:

Once there, the process is exceedingly efficient: you sign in to get your ballot.  Doesn’t matter who you are, you still have to stand in line.  Here’s our own Matt Lockshin checking in voting Executive Board members, with Congresswoman Barbara Lee next in line:

Once you’ve signed for your ballot, you sit at a table and fill in a scantron sheet as if you were taking the SAT.  Complete with proctors to make sure no funny business is going on!

Once you’ve filled out your ballot, you take your ballot over to the scanton-box combination.  The machine scans your ballot.  If there’s a problem–like an overvote or a spoiled ballot–it will spit it back out at you.  If it’s valid, it will spit it into the awaiting box.

And that’s how the people who help elect the next President of the United States are themselves elected.  You always knew you were curious.

In the first day A.M. (After Marriage), amazingly enough not every couple in California spontaneously divorced as a result of city clerks handing out licenses with “Party 1” and “Party 2”.  There actually are still married people out there, and now they’ve been joined by thousands of LGBT couples.  And here are some of the highlights from today:

• It seems like every couple has an accompanying news article chronicling their wedding, but I think it’s a good thing for now (though I long for the day when this is unexceptional and not a news event).  Putting a human face on what can often be an abstract discussion about legal rights seems to me to be vital.  There’s a great series of videos featuring couples in the LA area at this link.

• There are of course detractors, although most of them are staying quiet for now.  One group who isn’t is the LA Archdiocese, which posted a statement denouncing “redefining marriage, which has a unique place in God’s creation.”  Maybe this is just me, but after the events of the last decade, I don’t think the Catholic church should be making any statements about sexuality whatsoever.

• True Majority and The Human Rights Campaign are but two of the organizations delivering petitions in support of marriage equality.  I expect many more.

• In Bakersfield, where Kern County clerk Ann Barnett has halted her office from officiating all weddings, an under-the-radar recall campaign has commenced.  By the way, there’s nothing new about such actions; historian and author of “Nixonland” (which you all need to read) Rick Perlstein reminds us that this is exactly what school districts in the South did after the Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka decision, shutting down entire school systems rather than integrating them.  They called it Massive Resistance.

Of course, the people who thought like that then-here’s an excellent article on one of them, Lester Maddox-are now looked upon as history’s losers, as monsters, as embarrassments, and have no defenders. Now, every conservative claims to have always been on the opposite side of the Lester Maddoxes of the day. The people who think like this now will look just as bad to history as Maddox did then. I try to mention this every time I speak to a conservative audience: that I pity them. They should take care to stay off the record when they oppose basic human rights, because it will eventually come back to bite them on the ass.

But ultimately, I’m not worried about them (though if I were a Christian, I’d worry for their immortal souls), because, twenty years down the road, most will successfully maintain they were for marriage equality all along. Moral relativism has its advantages.

• Finally, this is the video of the day (h/t AmericaBlog)