Looks like those state agencies aren’t so interested in following Arnold’s order either:

State agencies spared thousands of temporary and part-time workers from layoffs and California’s prison medical czar on Friday sought to exempt nearly the entire corrections department from a minimum-wage pay cut, raising doubts about how much cash the state will save under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s executive order. (SacBee 8/2/08)

And, given the “czar”, J. Clark Kelso, has enormous leeway, one expects him to get his way. It’s not clear what kind of pressure the other agencies will be under to reduce their staffing levels from the administration. I suppose this should surprise absolutely nobody, but worth noting.

A few nuggets for you:

• A Superior Court judge in Alameda County has ruled that cell phone companies cannot charge early-termination fees, and has ordered that Sprint return $18.2 million dollars to consumers.  This will probably get fought on appeal, but right on.  The concept of fee for service has worked pretty well for most of consumer capitalism, as has being nice to your customers instead of bullying them into compliance.

• There’s been a lot of outrage at the LA City Council’s ruling banning new fast-food restaurants from breaking ground in South LA for a year.  Actually, far from being an issue of infringing on freedom, it’s a little thing called land use, and every city has them – even the one that the outraged Will Saletan lives in.  

I’m pretty skeptical that these proposed South LA regulations will do any good. But it’s not unique or unusual for land use regulations to exist. And working class people around the country suffer dramatically larger concrete harms from the sort of commonplace suburbanist regulations that Saletan’s been living with, without apparent complaint, in Chevy Chase. Those kind of regulations are bad for the environment, bad for public health, and serve to use the power of the state to redistribute upwards. So if you’re going to rail against land use regulations, maybe pick the ones that really hurt people.

• In environmental news, Senate leaders like Barbara Boxer are calling for the resignation of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson for his preferring ideology over science, defying the advice of his own staff, evading oversight and misleading Congress, particularly about refusing the California waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions.  They’re also asking the Attorney General to investigate whether Johnson perjured himself at one of the California waiver hearings in Congress.  In addition, Jerry Brown is suing the EPA for their refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions at the nation’s ports.

• And this is pretty interesting, turns out the Sarah of “Sarah’s Law” (parental notification) doesn’t have the squeaky-clean image her sponsors claim:

Backers of a ballot measure that would require parents to be notified before an abortion is performed on a minor acknowledged Friday that the 15-year-old on which “Sarah’s Law” is based had a child and was in a common-law marriage before she died of complications from an abortion in 1994 […]

A lawsuit co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood Affiliates and filed Friday in Sacramento County Superior Court asks the Secretary of State to remove the girl’s story and other information it deemed misleading, including any reference to “Sarah’s Law,” from the material submitted for the official voter guide.

“If you can’t believe the Sarah story, there’s a lot in the ballot argument you can’t believe,” said Ana Sandoval, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood and the campaign against Proposition 4.

Using someone’s life story for political means, and wrongly at that.  Good people.

Ok, your turn.

I work for the Courage Campaign.

Yesterday Julia gave the full, disheartening rundown on Governor Schwarzenegger’s attack on state employees. Also, Courtni Pugh shared the results of an SEIU poll demonstrating that Californians expect better from their Republican legislators on the budget to prevent these sort of wage cuts.

Today Courage Campaign releases a video in which state employees of SEIU 1000 speak out on the impact of the pay cuts. It’s right there, g’head and click play, then rate it up and add it to your favorites and other neat things. SEIU has been tremendous in this fight, not just pushing the politics of it all, but really pushing to make things happen for its members where the rubber hits the road. The Courage Campaign petition drive and call drive were great successes, but it’s the synergy with our labor allies that’s really pushing this to a new level.

These testimonials from state employees are often times difficult to hear. Not being able to pay bills, being forced to leave their homes, being driven out of the state workforce because it’s simply nowhere near a livable wage. This stunt by the governor is entirely backwards, and there’s plenty of evidence in the video. Punishing the people who are actually getting things done for the state as some sort of blustering threat to the few who aren’t getting it done is just nonsensical. You’d think he would at least be honest about it, but when signing the order yesterday, Schwarzenegger dropped this insulting gem:

QUESTION: Do you think that your action today will force the legislature, the added pressure, to come up with a budget solution faster?

GOVERNOR: This is not meant to do that.

If we’re to take him at his word then, he’s just cutting essential services and punishing honest, hard working public servants because he’s too lazy or uncreative to do anything productive. Which is why it’s so important to have the testimonials like in this video to bring public opinion to bear on Arnold’s outrageous behavior. Saving this state from its inner demons demands that these partnerships with labor continue to grow and strengthen. This is a great start that’s starting to deliver encouraging results.

(I work for Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group.)

Yesterday, the DEA raided a medical marijuana dispensary in Culver City, spending hours on site detaining employees and ultimately leaving the facility in disarray. This is unfortunately not an unusal story. Since 2005, the DEA has raided dozens of state-sanctioned dispensaries in California.

But this time was different. We're used to the DEA calling in help from various federal agencies and local law enforcement. But I guess none of their usual buddies were available yesterday because from the picture below, which appeared in the LA Times today, it looks like they had to resort to calling in Blackwater:

The DEA often likes to say that medical marijuana is not their top priority (though at the height of the raids last year, they were raiding an average of one dispensary per week). They like to argue that medical marijuana raids do not take resources away from other drug interdiction. Yet this photo makes me wonder – if they have sufficient resources to shut down meth labs and to bust medical marijuana providers, why do they need the help of Blackwater, a private agency?

Yet another reason we need Congress to hold oversight hearings on DEA medical marijuana activities. Good to know that House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers is concerned about this issue and has already begun to question the DEA on its actions.