Scott Gold at the LA Times reports today on a massive solar project that may alleviate some of the pain felt in the Antelope Valley:

The buzz in the Antelope Valley these days is about a company called eSolar, which is putting the finishing touches on a thermal solar energy facility here — 24,000 mirrors that glitter like diamonds when you approach on Avenue G. There are plans for several more facilities in the area, all larger, the company says.

Local officials are atwitter at the possibilities. Visitors and investors are expected from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. A slew of jobs would be created; there were 225 people working last week on the Avenue G facility alone, most of them locals. Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said the solar plants could be the catalyst to restoring the sort of “intellectual excitement” that existed when aerospace, still a vital industry here, was the only game in town — when “if it went up, it came out of here,” he said.

“Now, we’re going to go a long way toward saving this world,” the mayor said. “Right here in Lancaster.”

I think it’s important to classify projects like this as what they are – INFRASTRUCTURE projects.  Too often we confine ourselves to thinking about infrastructure as solely referring to fixing roads or building physical structures like bridges.  A 21st-century energy creation system is the most important infrastructure improvement we can make, one that will not only create jobs but save billions in public health and environmental degradation costs.  Any stimulus from the federal government that includes infrastructure improvements should help incentivize companies like eSolar, as well as laying down high-speed broadband lines throughout the country, building a transferable energy grid, etc.

In the recent past in California, the way a depressed city could revitalize their economy was to bring a prison into town.  Now, the potential of green jobs is being realized, making the future (pardon the pun) sunnier:

It’s heady talk, and people are listening. Lancaster and the surrounding valley are suffering, even by the standards of a community that long ago acclimated to a boom-and-bust cycle. Many here are living on the edge, and some beyond, with tens of thousands more expected to arrive in coming years.

There is a sense that development cannot come fast enough, not with shops closing, one in five people living in poverty, high unemployment and the highest mortality rate in Los Angeles County. Not with so many houses falling into foreclosure that the city of Lancaster has gone into real estate — buying and renovating empty homes to slow the decline of neighborhoods.

“It’s bad,” said William Turner, 21, who got a job installing eSolar mirrors through a temp agency. He is among those vying for one of the full-time positions the company will offer soon; competition will be fierce and many of those hired will be overqualified for their jobs, officials said.

“People around here are really hurting,” Turner said. “We need a change.”

The new energy economy is California’s way out of the economic crisis.  Whether it’s building solar and wind plants or transferable energy grids or carbon capture and sequestration retrofitting or green building add-ons or the next generation of green cars, the potential for bringing hope to downtrodden communities, creating millions of jobs and protecting the planet is great.

The national unemployment news is grim – 533,000 jobs lost in November, with the September and October numbers revised downward. Over 1.2 million jobs have been lost in the last 3 months.

The California figures are even worse. The US unemployment rate is at 6.7% but we blew past that long ago – 8.2% as of October 31 and likely to be significantly higher after November’s numbers are in.

Those figures don’t paint a picture of the true distress in California. The California Budget Project reported that 2.3 million Californians are underemployed or outright unemployed – many who have jobs are working part-time when they’d rather work full-time, or have begun to give up their job search.

This is exacerbated by the erosion of the safety net:

Government programs in place [during the last major recession, 1981-82] to cushion and counter recessions have been scaled back sharply, raising questions about whether they are up to the task as the economic outlook darkens today.

Unemployment insurance is not as generous now. Yet the unemployment rate is at 6.5 percent and some forecasters say it could top 8 percent next year. It hit 10.8 percent in the early 1980s.

This is also the first severe economic slump since President Bill Clinton overhauled the welfare system and made it tougher to qualify for, and keep receiving, benefits. Many people who lose their jobs now and fall into poverty may not qualify for public assistance. Other programs designed in part to counter hard times – like job training and housing subsidies – have also been cut back.

Here in California the erosion of that safety net has been severe. Unemployment benefits have been cut. Health care subsidies are being cut. Education, which is necessary to provide workers with job retraining and to producing entrepreneurs, creators, and inventors, is being cut. Senior citizens are seeing their drug and even housing benefits cut, which places the burden on their families.

And the Republicans’ demand for massive spending cuts threatens to dramatically increase the ranks of the unemployed in California. If the budget deficit is solved by spending cuts, in whole or even in part, the result is likely to be an outright Depression in California.

Government’s job is to provide counter-cyclical economic stimulus. Spending cuts are what’s known as pro-cyclical – they exacerbate a slide into recession rather than counter it. Spending needs to be increased right now to bolster the safety net and ease the worsening recession.

As the California Budget Project explained, citing leading economists like Joseph Stiglitz, “tax increases on higher income families are the least damaging mechanism for closing state fiscal deficits.”

That kind of framing needs to be placed at the center of the state budget discussion – a discussion that itself is really about the economic future of this state.

Two days ago I made a case for current CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen to be Governor of CA.

Much interesting discussion came out of that, and a fair bit of support for Bowen.  However, I noticed that many folks assumed that Bowen planned on running for the US Senate (to replace Feinstein, perhaps) and not for Governor.

This diary makes the case for Debra Bowen to run for Governor, not for a Senate seat.  As part of that effort, please join the “Draft Debra Bowen for Governor” Facebook group.

First, a brief reminder of why we should consider Debra Bowen for Governor:

Bowen was one of the first legislators in the world to understand how technology can transform our government.  (We need no further proof than the fact that this is posted at DKos.)  Starting in 1993 – before many folks had a computer, let alone Internet access – she pushed to put state legislation online and open up campaign finance records.  She’s fought for consumer and environmental protections in the state legislature.  Her husband does climate science policy work for the U.S. Forest Service.

(I don’t want to use the word “progressive” because it has been used by some in this community as a word to divide Democrats, and I don’t like that.  But I think it probably applies to Bowen.)

In their endorsement of her for Secretary of State, the SF Chronicle praised Bowen’s ability to get things done:

Beyond that, Bowen has proved to be one of the most focused and effective representatives in the 120-member Legislature, especially on consumer and privacy protection. She takes on tough issues, stays with them and gets results.

One of her boldest demonstrations of leadership was the California “top to bottom review” of voting systems.  As we all know, many popular electronic voting systems are fundamentally flawed.  Unfortunately, many of the results came from the outside, and were both narrow and not taken seriously within government.  Bowen commissioned a study of California’s voting machines to be conducted by actual computer security experts (led by two highly respected University of California computer science professors).  When she began this study, there was plenty of braying from the usual quarters about how it was paranoia to worry about broken electronic voting machines and how counties should keep using broken machines since they had already overpaid for them.

The results were both groundbreaking and what we would expect – all three electronic voting systems in California were fatally flawed (a single voter could create a virus to compromise an entire state-wide election, among other problems).  Bowen decertified all the machines and returned us to optical-scan paper ballots, and has led other secretaries of state across the nation to re-examine their voting systems.  She was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award for her work on voting reform.

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At this point you’re probably where I was – “OK, Bowen seems good, but do I really care?  But is she the right person for the job – does she have that intangible quality we look for in our leaders?”

I was convinced that she had the ability to think complex issues through and find the right solutions after listening to her talk and Q&A session at Usenix Security – a computer security conference – discussing voting security.  I encourage you to listen to her 80 minute talk here.  (It was highly educational too – she explains all the important, and sometimes quite technical, issues in voting security with great clarity.)  Dare I say it, I haven’t been this interested and even surprised by a potential candidate since I first heard Barack Obama speak in low-profile interviews a few years ago.  (This is not to say that they are similar in style, because they clearly are not.)  Also, and this is completely an afterthought, Bowen would become California’s first female governor.

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I think that there’s a strong argument to be made that she should run for Governor rather than for a Senate seat:

She has demonstrated her management skills as Secretary of State – she seeks the input of those with expertise and then makes sound judgments based upon facts, not ideology.  Her deep understanding of public policy from her years as a legislator will allow her to better steer Sacramento out of troubled waters as Governor rather than try to steer the US Senate as 1 out of 100.

If she were to run for Feinstein’s senate seat, she would enter that body as a junior member; it would take years for her to be able to make a huge impact.  (And for those who believe that Bowen has a bright future, perhaps even as a presidential contender some day – the Senate is an unlikely launching pad, and only 3 sitting senators – Harding, Kennedy, and Obama – have been elected president.)

If you’d like to see Debra Bowen as Governor, please join the Draft Debra Bowen for Governor Facebook group

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Just a reminder about the Internet  for Everyone Townhall on Saturday at the Radisson at USC.  Should be interesting, just click that ad to the right. Now, to the links

• Chuck DeVore has his first TV ad for the 2010 Senate race against Sen. Boxer.  No word on other candidates for this race, but if DeVore is it, well, I’ll be entertained.

• CA-41: Is Jerry Lewis in more legal trouble related to a plea bargain by Duke Cunningham briber Mitchell Wade?  Lewis has dodged these bullets plenty of times before, but Wade is apparently singing like a canary.

• Check it out, our own Dante Atkins’ ad about Prop. 8 and the Mormons found its way into a Jonah Goldberg column and, apparently, Hannity and Colmes last night.  The column is Goldberg’s usual collection of deliberate omissions (that whole “separation of church and state” thing) and outright falsehoods.  Hey, Dante, the author of Liberal Fascism wrote about you!  Swell company!

• Some folks on the local level are fighting back against the raid on their money. In this case its redevelopment agencies suing the state for taking money from their fund to put into the general fund.

• This is a very favorable ruling for California consumers, protecting them from getting squeezed when they use an out-of-network provider for emergency room visits.

• Gov. Schwarzenegger isn’t asking for money to pay day-to-day expenses, but rather for money for infrastructure projects. This directly contradicts the letter that Speaker Bass sent Speaker Pelosi and our Senators. Bass asked for money more in the form of a “bailout.”

• While everybody else is focusing on the Prop 8 numbers from the PPIC poll, Joe Matthews is looking at the opportunity for initiative reform.  There are some interesting possibilities there, including greater transparency and the possibility of getting a legislative review process.

This could be just to get the freshman members of the legislature up to speed, but it sounds rather… serious.

The entire Legislature will meet in a joint session Monday in the Assembly chambers to discuss the state’s cash situation and overall budget dynamics with state fiscal leaders, according to Jim Evans, spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.

In a rare Budget 101 session, Treasurer Bill Lockyer, Controller John Chiang, Department of Finance Director Mike Genest and Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor will describe the consequences of delaying a compromise over the budget. They’re likely to discuss the possibility of issuing IOUs to state vendors and state workers, as well as layoff scenarios and other consequences.

If I had to guess, this will be one of those meetings where everyone is sat down and told that this is what they have to do or the state will fall into the ocean.  They should get some veterans from Scared Straight to run it.  Put the fear of God into these lawmakers.

Although, I can’t say whether or not it’ll be successful.  I mean, the Governor has already called a state of emergency and that didn’t shake anybody up.  Mike Villines is still sounding like a Yacht Party regular on budget issues:

Republican Assembly Leader Mike Villines (R-Clovis) took a dim view of a Democratic proposal to take reducing the threshold to pass a state budget to the voters.

Calling the proposed bill, which would ask voters to make a simple majority all that’s necessary for passing a budget, a Democratic power grab, Villines said doing so was a duck on responsibly addressing the state’s budget woes.

“Shutting Republicans out of the budget process will just make it easier for Democrats to pass more of the same reckless spending measures that have resulted in our current fiscal crisis.” Villines said in a statement released late Wednesday.”This will do nothing to improve our long-term budget picture, and will actually make things much worse.”

He still wants a spending cap, of course.

But Lockyer and Chiang have plenty of ammunition to throw around.  Failing a bailout from the Feds (which I think is a better bet at this point), state workers are about to be laid off or have their salaries frozen, and cuts to popular professions like teachers and nurses and cops and firefighters would be on the horizon in a protracted delay.  Whether or not this threat of potentially hundreds of thousands of angry Californians and their families marching in the streets (Lockyer and Chiang need to have a flair for DRAMA in this speech) is enough to overrule the Iron Law of Institutions remains to be seen.

Note: I’m proud to work for the Courage Campaign

The current budget crisis has been going on since at least mid-2007. It is a reinflammation of the 2002-04 crisis that brought down Gray Davis. Which was a recurrence of the budget crisis of the early 1990s. Which was a recurrence of the 1980s crisis, generated by Prop 13.

It has become painfully clear that the budget crisis is the result of a broken government. The 2/3rds rule has made the state nearly ungovernable. The initiative process isn’t much help. Susceptible to those with enough money to game the system, and hostile to those with good ideas, it’s worsened the governance crisis. How many times has Don Sebastiani put parental notification on the ballot?

We need not just a better budget, but a better government. Conservatives have succeeded in changing the rules to favor their ideologies. It’s time progressives pushed back. If we want to implement the progressive agenda, from universal health care to global warming solutions to affordable education and job creation, we need to fix the structural obstacles that have blocked those policy solutions.

That’s why the Courage Campaign – with help from many Caliticians – has unveiled its rescue plan for state government. We’re calling it CPR for California – the Citizens Plan to Reform California. It includes the following progressive reforms (the full document can be read here, with details on each of the proposals listed below):

• Clean money

• Term limits reform

• Universal voter registration

• Initiative financial disclosure

• Pursue campaign contribution limits

• Legislative review/consultation of initiatives

• Signature reform

• Eliminate 2/3rds rule

• Biennial budgeting

• Long-term budgets

• Restore marriage equality

• Protect the Constitution

All these reforms are good ones. But which ones should come first? We’re asking Californians to rank their top 3 priorities – and we’ve provided space for folks to propose their own government reforms.

CPR for California will be a progressive reform agenda for California, much like the 1911 progressive reforms that attempted to return power to the people. It will help pressure legislators to support the right reforms. It can serve as an agenda for a constitutional convention, should that happen.

Obviously some of these have already been proposed in the new Legislative session – public support for CPR for California can help create momentum for those progressive reforms.

At Netroots Nation in July, Van Jones explained the need for progressives to move from opposition to proposition. That’s what CPR for California is. Our chance to shift the terms of debate about democracy and government in California. Conservatives frequently frame government in hostile terms, and have set up rules that make that framing believable.

If we’re going to solve the budget crisis and build the kind of public services we deserve, Californians need a government that is democratic, accountable, and effective. CPR for California is a first step in making that happen.

Over the flip is the email we sent to over 100,000 Courage Campaign members today:

Dear Robert,

California is experiencing an unprecedented crisis, facing a $28 billion budget deficit over the next 19 months.

For thirty years, we have careened from budget crisis to budget crisis as the legislature becomes increasingly gridlocked and held hostage by a right-wing minority. Every election, millions of dollars are spent on meaningless or damaging ballot initiatives that often make matters worse. The voice of the voter is drowned by a sea of money, dispiriting the average Californian.

Before we can tackle the economic and environmental problems that bedevil our state, we must fix the broken politics that produced these problems.

Only we, the people, can revive California.

That’s why the Courage Campaign is launching the Citizens Plan to Reform California — “CPR for California” — a holistic package of reforms that can heal our sick government, including initiative reform, budget reform, clean money, and restoring equal rights.

We need your vote ASAP. In just a few minutes, you can rank the top three priorities we should place on our “CPR for California” agenda this year. Just click here to read the plan and tell us what YOU think are the most important reforms we should campaign for in 2009 to fix our broken state:

http://action.couragecampaign….

Arnold Schwarzenegger can’t rescue California. Five years after winning the recall election, his promises to “rise above politics as usual” have led to just the opposite: an impotent governor who talks big, but made our budget crisis far worse than what he inherited.

The state legislature can’t rescue California. The leadership’s hands are tied by the 2/3rds budget rule that allows a small minority of extremist Republicans to hold Californians hostage to the conservative ideology made famous by Grover Norquist’s vision of “drowning government in the bathtub.”

Only you can rescue California.

Working together, we can administer some progressive CPR to our state. Just click here to check out our “CPR for California” plan and tell us the top three priorities we should focus on in 2009. You can also suggest your own reforms to rescue our broken state:

http://action.couragecampaign….

When George W. Bush and his Republican friends broke the federal government, the American people organized to elect Barack Obama to fix the mess.

It is time for the people of California to do the same for California. Nobody else is going to step up and do it for us.

Thank you for helping us make California a more progressive, governable state.

Robert Cruickshank

Public Policy Director