Daily Archives: August 17, 2008

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Pete McCloskey endorses Jeff Morris for CA-02

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(Cross-posted from Daily Kos)

Last week, Democrat Jeff Morris officially kicked off his campaign to unseat long-time incumbent Wally Herger in California’s 2nd Congressional District. In my last post about my brother Jeff, I mentioned that he would have to get past the backwards-looking conventional wisdom, which says that this district is a shoo-in for the Republicans. I argued, as do many others, that this is the year when a well-qualified candidate like Jeff Morris can win, regardless of the political makeup of the district.

Jeff, who has already garnered support from both Democrats and Republicans among his fellow county supervisors, proved me right by landing a huge endorsement from someone who spent years on the Republican side of the aisle — former Congressman and real GOP maverick Pete McCloskey. Speaking last week, McCloskey lauded Jeff Morris as “a tough and honest leader who will be a welcome change to the 2nd District.”

McCloskey, a recovering lifelong Republican, Marine vet, co-founder of Earth Day, and former presidential candidate, has received a lot of press on progressive blogs, particularly when he jumped ship in 2007 to join the Democratic Party. McCloskey’s 2006 primary run against Richard Pombo helped shine a light on Pombo’s connections to Abramoff, weakening the incumbent’s hold on CA-11, and opening the door for Jerry McNerney (with McCloskey’s endorsement) to take Pombo’s place.

By all accounts McCloskey was “disgusted” with the shenanigans of the Bush Administration and the Abramoff crew. His disgust reached the point that, in an email to his supporters after the 2006 primaries, he urged them to “support Democrats like Charlie Brown and Jerry McNerney … who are good men, and … help them in every way we can.”

“Clearly it is a time to fight back,” he wrote. “Party loyalty be damned.”

Those words are as true now as they were then. We need to make sure that worthy Democratic candidates like Jeff Morris are getting our support, and if influential Republicans (or former Republicans) cross the aisle to support them, we should thank them and take it as a sign that the candidate is worthy of our strongest support — conventional wisdom be damned.

Economy

The Great California Job Suck Continues

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Over-reliance on multiple economic bubbles has led this state to a worse job profile than Ohio and a state government utterly incapacitated to do anything about it.

SACRAMENTO — California’s unemployment rate climbed to a 12-year high last month as the state continued to bleed jobs in the real estate and construction industries.

The rate jumped to 7.3% in July from 7% in June. It was even worse in the Inland Empire, where the unemployment rate is approaching 9%, the state reported Friday.

“The depth and magnitude of the job losses are accelerating, clearly,” said Esmael Adibi, director of economic research at Chapman University in Orange.

Adibi and other economists believe unemployment will continue rising next year even if the economy stabilizes. “Unfortunately, the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator,” he said.

Once the economy improves, people who have fallen out of the job market will jump back in, which will keep the unemployment rate well into the 7% range through much of next year, he said.

California has lost jobs in 10 of the past 12 months, and the rate is 2 points higher than it was just a year ago.  

I think it’s very clear how we got here.  Nationally, multinational corporations have moved manufacturing jobs overseas and narrowed the job market to few options beyond the service sector.  The knowledge economy and the housing boom provided an artificial cushion, but when they went bust there were no alternatives for the middle class.  And when the legislature is so sclerotic and logjammed that they can’t respond to any crisis, the cruelties of the free market take over.

What’s also clear is that they way out of this is with a sustainable new economy based on green-collar manufacturing jobs that stay right here.  The need to innovate our way out of the climate crisis provides a stellar opportunity that is starting to be realized.

Companies will build two solar power plants in California that together will put out more than 12 times as much electricity as the largest such plant today, the latest indication that solar energy is starting to achieve significant scale.

The plants will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar panels, and in the middle of a sunny day will generate about 800 megawatts of power, roughly equal to the size of a large coal-burning power plant or a small nuclear plant. A megawatt is enough power to run a large Wal-Mart store.

The power will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric, which is under a state mandate to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. The utility said that it expected the new plants, which will use photovoltaic technology to turn sunlight directly into electricity, to be competitive with other renewable energy sources, including wind turbines and solar thermal plants, which use the sun’s heat to boil water.

“These market-leading projects we have in California are something that can be extrapolated around the world,” Jennifer Zerwer, a spokeswoman for the utility, said. “It’s a milestone.”

This is about 57 times the largest photovoltaic plant currently in the United States.  Without the state mandate it simply would not be built.  So there’s a role to play for the state in encouraging job growth in the green sector.  This is a time with a lot of suffering, but with proper effort that could turn around.  That, and letting the government actually do their job.