Daily Archives: July 29, 2008

San Diego

CA-52 DCCC To list as an emerging race

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Crossposted on DailyKos

That’s right, in this reddest of red California districts, Mike Lumpkin has managed to turn this into a competitive race. Having raised over $300,000 to date, a record for any Democratic candidate in the history of this district, the retired Navy SEAL is turning this into a serious contest.

Mike recently received an endorsement from Hillary Clinton, adding to the already impressive list of endorsements (I think they need to update that page) along with an upcoming joint fundraiser she’ll hold for Mike with Bob Kerrey. The DCCC will soon be listing this as an emerging race, and if the campaign can raise enough money, will be added to their Red To Blue list.

But that’s the hard part, as the campaign needs to raise an additional $300,000 in the next 30 days. No telling if that can happen, it’s certainly an uphill climb. But without a doubt, this is a great opportunity. Do we really want the spawn of Duncan Hunter to inherit his father’s seat? A guy who only won his primary because people thought they were voting for his dad. Is that really what Congress needs more of? Fortunately, there’s a great alternative to that, there’s Mike Lumpkin. If you’d like to learn more about him, he answered some questions for me awhile back, which you can read here.

And if you feel so inclined, here’s Mike’s ActBlue page.

California, Orange County

A Tour Through the Fields of CA Republican Depravity

As the news comes in on the indictment of Series of Tubes Ted Stevens, it’s instructive to take a look back at who the Yacht Party in California allows to speak for them as “leaders”.  First we have Sheriff Michael Carona, “America’s Sheriff,” who is apparently more than just a run-of-the-mill corrupt public official, but actually deeply vulgar, venal and unethical, even by the standards of the GOP – but also weirdly representative of a certain level of corruption in the OC.

His attorneys are asking a federal judge to prevent a future jury from hearing secretly recorded tapes of Carona snarling racial epithets, referring vulgarly to women and boasting of both sexual and political prowess.

“I mean, I’ve met millionaires, billionaires, and I’ve traveled on personal airplanes . . . drank great wine and, you know, had great booze and had some, you know, phenomenal [sex] along the way,” Carona told his longtime patron, an auto auction magnate who was wearing a wire. “I’m the most lethal [expletive] in politics in Orange County.”

The revelations have disappointed but not quite shocked Orange County, where the sensibility enshrined at Anaheim’s Disneyland long has informed local politics, as well. Each invests heavily in an idealized, lavishly financed and fervently polished vision of Americana that few appear to accept as entirely real in the first place […]

Before Carona’s public disgrace, a superior court judge last year was sentenced to 27 months for possession of child pornography. The founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, located behind white wrought-iron curlicues in Costa Mesa, paid $425,000 to suppress an account of an alleged homosexual encounter. The Orange County Register reported that the Justice Department is investigating the county treasurer for allegedly diverting funds from a bankrupt trucking company to pay for Botox.

(the party affiliations of these officials have been strangely expunged.  Thanks Washington Post!)

And this behavior is not limited to Orange County (flip it)…

In San Bernardino, Bill Postmus was a young chair of the GOP who delivered a string of victories in the early part of the decade.  Now he’s taking a conveniently timed leave of absence:

Last week, Postmus announced that he’s taking a leave of absence from his elected post as county assessor because of unspecified medical problems.

He’s been under scrutiny lately. A former top aide faces six felony charges, and a district attorney’s investigation is ongoing. The assessor’s office also was the subject of a critical grand jury report released last month.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party, which as recently as two years ago held a five-figure registration advantage over Democrats in San Bernardino County, is clinging to a one-half percentage point lead.

Leaders are working to distance themselves from the party as it was under Postmus — one critic said he ran it like a personal fiefdom focused on his own political goals. Fundraising, which slowed at the end of Postmus’ three-year stint, has flatlined.

From what I hear, the indictment is imminent.

Then there’s the bizarre case of Delecia Holt, a would-be challenger to Rep. Susan Davis.

(We could have a sidebar question about how Davis managed to be one of the only state Democrats to not get the Labor Fed endorsement, but snag the support of the progressive Jewish group J Street. But another time.)

Holt, who ended up not appearing on the ballot in June, may have been a phantom.  She claimed support from the powerful Lincoln Club and $200,000 in contributions.  But nothing materialized.

Holt, 46, ended up not filing to appear on the ballot. The Lincoln Club says she’s not a member in either Orange County or San Diego. The District Attorney’s Office is looking into her real estate dealings. She owes $32,000 in toll road penalties. Three nonprofits have complained about her use of their names for fundraisers in which they were not involved.

And the $216,000 she reported raising?

The Register wrote each of the 217 donors at the addresses listed on Holt’s federal financial filings, inquiring about their donations. Not a single one responded that they had supported the would-be candidate.

The Register heard back from eight of the listed donors – all said they had not given Holt money, and six said they’d never heard of her.

“We aren’t in a position to be giving money to anybody,” said Vista’s Jill Granquist, who is listed as having contributed $2,000, but whose financial straits led to losing her home to foreclosure in March. “I’ve never heard of her, but this makes me kind of curious.”

I’ll be fair and say that there are loony tune fringe candidates like this in every party.  But given the sorry state of the GOP, what’s sad is that a con artist like Holt feels right at home.  It’s almost sad to see how low these people have sunk.  Except I then consider their agenda, and it’s not sad at all.

Uncategorized

Hidden Casualties of War

Last week, I shared a tragic story of a veteran who committed suicide less than three hours after being assessed as a “low risk” patient, and was released from VA care. The carelessness of his assessment was largely due to a standardized questionnaire that was used to identify high risk patients. This is a serious oversight, especially when you consider the statistic that by the end of the day, 18 veterans will have taken their own lives.

Since these troops make it home from Iraq, Afghanistan or other battlefields alive, they are not counted as casualties of war. In 2007, 6,256 veterans committed suicide. That’s about two thousand more than the number of troops who died in Iraq since the beginning of the war. And yet, these deaths are not counted among the war casualties.  

But what else can you blame for these suicides? Concerns over the rising rate of PTSD among veterans have been escalating. An even more telling statistic of this problem is the fact that the suicide rate among veterans is twice that of the civilian population, evidence that the war is a decisive factor in these suicides.

While Bush and Republicans have kept the troops at war in Iraq — and have gone to great lengths to keep them there, through extended tours of duty, stop/loss, refusing to talk about a timeline for withdrawal — they’ve been less willing to go the extra mile to help the troops when they come home. Witness Bush’s, McCain’s and other prominent Republicans’ refusal to support the Webb G.I. Bill extending further educational benefits to veterans, as well as McCain’s record of voting against increasing health benefits to veterans in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007.

We need to bring our troops home on a reasonable timeline, but we also need to start taking better care of our returning soldiers — a challenge that would be greatly eased if we weren’t wasting $10 billion a month on the war in Iraq  Imagine the kind of care we could provide our veterans if we weren’t wasting all our tax money on the war.

How much of your tax dollars are going to the war in Iraq? And what could that money buy for a veteran in need? Find out by using Progressive Future’s Invest in US Calculator. The calculator takes a person’s 2007 income before taxes and tells you how much of that person’s tax money went to fund the war (average: $235), and how many seconds of war that bought (average: .04 seconds). Then it tells you, with that money, how many days of veterans’ higher education benefits (average: 5) that money could have paid for, as well as other much needed initiatives at home. Then we are asking users to sign our Invest In US petition, which we plan on taking to Congress, the Platform Committees, and the media to push for new priorities for tax spending.

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5.8 Earthquake in LA

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Centered in Chino Hills according to the USGS.  My office shook pretty hard for about 20 seconds.  The cell service appears to be down.

More in a bit.

…I guess it was felt from San Diego to Vegas.  You can get live streaming video of ABC7’s coverage here.

Environment

Bilbray Sighting in San Diego

Brian Bilbray was spotted in San Diego yesterday holding a joint press conference with Rep. Duncan Hunter. Of course, it wasn’t actually in Bilbray’s district- he avoid his home district like the plague, refusing to even enter the district to campaign. So while Nick Leibham gears up to strike a symbolic blow tomorrow against Big Oil price gouging, Rep. Bilbray took a break from voting against insisting that oil companies drill in the land they’ve been given before they get more and against drilling responsibly. A bit ironic perhaps since his Congressional website touts right at the top that Bilbray is “working to reduce gas prices.” Right. Work paid for by Big Oil.

So he came all the way back to San Diego and didn’t go to his district. Why? So that he could burnish his fake-environmentalist credentials by…celebrating the destruction of local wetlands. Now this might be a bit confusing if you’ve been receiving any of Bilbray’s official franking mail recently, because they claim he’s “keeping our beaches and water clean.” Except of course that he’s not. It’s convenient though- he can send these barely-legal and completely dishonest mail pieces from DC so he never has to go to the district and face the voters, then he can come to San Diego and claim he’s been to town even though his event isn’t in the district and directly contradicts his mailers, and then he can go back to DC hoping that everyone noticed a little bit but not too much. Because it probably wouldn’t be too good for him if people looked very closely at him or his voting record.  

Uncategorized

Sisters of St. Joseph and Hospital Workers

Dave Johnson, Speak Out California.

So many of us have a hard time living up to our own values.  Here is a story of one example.

The Sisters of St. Joseph have a proud history of fighting for human rights and human dignity and improvement of conditions for working people.  But like so many progressives — and people in general — the Sisters of St. Joseph appear to be having trouble living up to these values when they apply to themselves.

A few days ago Julia Rosen wrote a Calitics post titled, Sisters of St. Josephs it’s time to make peace with your workers.  I urge readers here to go read that post.  Julia writes,

It is a dirty little secret, but often times the more virulently anti-union employers are religious orders that run health systems.  Such is the situation with the Sisters of St. Joseph who run the St. Joseph Health System.  They have been resisting the efforts of their service employees to join SEIU-UHW for the past three years.

And at Huffington Post Delores Huertes has a post titled, Together We Marched in Solidarity.  I also urge readers to click through and read it.  She begins,

This week I’m joining St. Joseph Health System workers, Attorney General Jerry Brown, Father Eugene Boyle, actor Ed Begley Jr, and community and religious leaders to call upon the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange to make peace with their workers.

next she makes the important point,

For decades, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange have fought for justice for California’s workers. In the summer of 1973, they marched in solidarity with Cesar Chavez and farm workers during the brutal Grape Strike. I witnessed the Sisters putting their personal safety at risk. They walked picket lines and even went to jail with more than 3500 striking farm workers. I was inspired by the Sisters’ commitment to stand with the farm workers, even in the face of violent provocation.

Yes, it appears that the Sisters of St. Joseph are ready to stand by workers, walk pickets lines, and fight for the rights of workers.  But this time they are holding back when it involves their own workers.  Huertes continues,

Over the last three years, workers in the St. Joseph Health System (SJHS) who care for the sick and vulnerable in our community, have been working to form a union with S.E.I.U. — United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) so they can have a real say in the decisions that affect their patients, their families and themselves.

But the Sisters, who founded and hold majority control of the Board of SJHS, a $3.5 billion system of hospitals and clinics, sadly are using heavy-handed tactics similar to those used by other major corporations to deny workers a free choice about whether to form a union. SJHS workers have told me directly, that the SJHS management is fighting their efforts and violating federal labor law by threatening union supporters with arrest and job loss – and denying them free speech. Public records show that SJHS has hired some of the most notorious union-busting firms to fight their employees. Meanwhile, government officials have cited SJHS for violating its employees’ basic labor rights, including illegally firing, spying on, and intimidating workers who want to form a union. These heavy-handed tactics leave workers feeling threatened, intimidated and disregarded.

While looking into this I came across a December, 2007 article at the Catholic News Agency, Catholic health workers’ effort to unionize could crowd out Catholics. Please read to article to learn about the subtexts of this unionization battle.  From the story,

A political activist in Sacramento [. . .] said the UHW takeover would be a “done deal” if the employees’ demand for a fair election agreement were met.

If you read the story it is clear that the activist mentioned is very much against unionization and supports the Sisters’ efforts to keep the workers from having a unionization vote.  But if allowing a vote for a union means that a union is “a done deal” then it means the workers want a union.  

Any way you look at it, it is a shame that the Sisters are trying to keep their workers from voting on whether to have a union.  The Sisters need to understand that they are role models for their community.  They were positive role models standing up for their values when they supported the farmworkers.  They can again be positive role models by showing that even when it affects their own interests they are willing to stand by their values and support worker rights and human rights.  

It is time that the Sisters of Saint Joseph allow their workers to vote on whether they want a union.

Click through to Speak Out California.

Uncategorized

Steve Ybarra gets his $20 million

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A couple of months ago, in the heat of the superdelegate struggle, Steve Ybarra made a bold and public request. Basically, he requested a $20 million commitment to voter registration efforts targeted at Latinos. The media ridiculed him as some sort of vote seller. As I wrote back then, the request was  in actuality a request for party building. And that’s a perfectly good request from a member of the DNC to the presidential candidates.  Nonetheless, even Comedy Central got in on the make fun of the superdelegate who wants to accomplish something act.

Fine.  But, in the end, Ybarra got the last laugh when the DNC and the Obama campaign announced a, you guessed it, $20 million effort for Hispanic voter mobilization.  From the Washington Post:

Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee are expected to unveil a $20 million investment in Hispanic voter mobilization Tuesday that targets most major battleground states.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean said the sum is unprecedented for a presidential campaign and represents a show of Democratic confidence that Latino voters could prove pivotal in states including New Mexico and Michigan.

***

Targets will include Florida; Western states such as Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico; and Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, industrial battlegrounds with sizable Hispanic populations. The money will be spent on niche advertising and other outreach, along with mobilization efforts aimed at identifying, registering and turning out new Democratic voters.

It’s not everything that Ybarra had requested, because I’m guessing that big chunk of that money will end up as ads on Univision. You have to start somewhere, though. Latino registration, if done properly in California, could be a boon for Democrats in our state as well.  The voting patterns in California were about ten years ahead of the rest of the country, due to the reactionary Prop 187 and other anti-immigrant stances of the GOP wingnut base and the politicians that pander to them.

If Democrats solidify the votes of Millenials alongside other growing voting blocs like Hispanic voters, we have the opportunity to build a progressive governing coalition for a generation or more.  Projects like these are just the beginning of an investment project for the development of this coalition.

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AD-80: Rapprochement Between Perez, Pettis

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If you read the reader diaries column in April and May in this space, you would have noticed a somewhat antagonistic relationship between Greg Pettis supporters and Manuel Perez supporters during the Democratic primary for AD-80 in the Palm Springs area.  It was probably more pronounced on the Interwebs, but I’m told from those in the district that there wasn’t a whole lot of love there on the ground, either.  Now, with the primary over, it appears that Democrats are coming together to take back the seat in the fall.

If Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can make peace, we anticipate Greg Pettis and Manuel Perez can, too.

An olive branch was extended between the former Democrat rivals last week when Richard Oberhaus – campaign manager of Pettis’ failed bid in the 80th Assembly race – announced he was joining Perez’s camp.

“He endorses the ideals that we all hope and dream will be implemented in Sacramento,” Oberhaus said in an e-mail announcing his plans.

“I shall implement all the strategies that are necessary to make this seat turn from red to blue.”

While Pettis hasn’t publicly endorsed, this move by his campaign manager and, as the article notes, several of his volunteers suggest that Democrats district-wide are committed to working for victory.

By the way, with less than 100 days until the election I am going to start a “drive for 2/3” legislative roundup.  I was talking with some leading Dems in LA County over the weekend and they told me about some off-the-radar Assembly possibilities, particularly in the Inland Empire region.  Did you know that Democrats are now within 1,500 votes of making San Bernardino a Democratic county?  Last year that was a 35,000-vote majority.  We need to turn them out, of course, but with a favorable top of the ticket we’re going to see some surprises in the Assembly (the Senate is a tougher nut to crack).

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Budget

Stop the Paycuts: Delivering over 28,000 Petitions to Arnold Schwarzenegger

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(full disclosure: I work for the Courage Campaign)

Today was supposed to be the day that Schwarzenegger signed the executive order to cut over 200,000 state employees pay to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour.  He has delayed that action until at least Thursday, which SEIU Local 1000, the Courage Campaign, True Majority and CREDO Mobile can take some credit for.

I just got back from a great day of actions at and around the capitol on this proposed wage cut.  After picking up over 28,000 signed petitions, a big backdrop and an easel I headed to the airport to pick up Rick Jacobs, my boss and Chair/Founder of the Courage Campaign and Jethro Rothe-Kushel, our videographer.

We headed straight for the noon rally held by SEIU Local 1000, which represents nearly half of the workers at risk of living in poverty due to the proposed callous action by the governor.  It was a great rally of about 200 Local 1000 members wearing their purple shirts, marching, chanting, blowing whistles and waving signs.  Jethro snagged a few interviews with some Local 1000 members and it should be part of the video he produces in a day or two.  The folks at Local 1000 were really happy to see all of these non-union activists being so supportive of their members and pushing back against the governor.

After the rally we grabbed a sandwich and then headed over with the sign, stand and the two boxes of petitions across the street from the Hyatt, where the governor stays when he is in town.  Assemblyman Dave Jones joined us there. Sen. Florez and Controller Chiang had conflicts, but wanted to be there.  We started off across the street from the capitol with Rick and Jones doing some one on one interviews.  KCRA (local NBC affiliate), KXJZ (local NPR) and a few other print folks were there.  The governor actually left in his motorcade as Jones was doing an interview.

Rick carried the big box (that sucker must have weighed at least 60 lbs) and Jones the smaller one across to the Hyatt, plastered with the Courage logo.  We decided to drop them off at the Hyatt to point out how out of touch Arnold is with what he has proposed.  The governor pays $293/night to stay in the suite.  It would take someone working 44.7 hours at the federal minimum wage, without any taxes being taken out to afford just one night’s stay at the governor’s special rate.  That is more than a week’s worth of work!  (flip it…)

The concierge at the Hyatt was very nice, but explained that they had a policy of not accepting things for the governor and politiely suggested we take it to his office.  Then a dude came up and asked if we had permission to be filming in the hotel.  He was rather rude about it and insisted that the cameras be shut off, which everyone ignored and Jones took some umbrage with his statements.

So, we walked across the capitol, with Rick and Assemblyman Dave Jones carrying the box together and cameras and reporters in tow.  This of course attracted other reporters once we got inside.  Univision and the Bee among others.  CHP stopped us at the door and asked what we were up to an explained we could not go inside.  There seemed to be a crowd of folks, staff and lobbyists I presume inside.  CHP had a staffer come out and talk to us.  At first she suggested we take the boxes to the mail room, when Rick piped up and said something to the effect of “do you really want Assemblyman Jones to deliver this to the mail room”.  She quickly rethought her plan and said she would be right back.  A minute or two later she popped out and told us someone would be with us shortly.

It took about 10 minutes, while Rick and Jones did interviews, for the governor’s press secretary to show up.  He said he would make sure they were handled properly and gave his speil to the Rick/Dave Jones.   Well….really for the press’s benefit, about how the governor is hoping the legislative leaders work everything out in their negotiations.

He took them inside the office, but then emerged later and was headed in the direction of said mail room.

Hopefully, there will be some media coverage and it will place more pressure on the governor to rethink his proposal.  As soon as the video is done and  I get the pictures, I will be sure to put them up.  Thank you to everyone who signed the petition, Credo and True Majority for helping push this out to their members and all of you who forwarded it to your friends and family.  This is what activism is all about.