There was a report out yesterday about climate change that basically said we’ve reached a point where dramatic changes to the climate, to sea levels and to weather patterns were irreversible, that even if we dropped everything and eliminated every single carbon emission it would take perhaps thousands of years to return to equilibrium.  I feel the same way about California’s finances.  If every Yacht Party member suddenly turned into Paul Wellstone and we changed every revenue source and dysfunctional structural barrier, we’d STILL be in a world of hurt.  A couple stories today make that clear.

First, a coalition of emergency room doctors has had enough and is suing the state for additional funding to stave off a total collapse of the ER provider network.

Frustrated emergency room doctors filed a class-action lawsuit against the state Tuesday, saying that California’s overstretched emergency healthcare system — which ranks last in the country for emergency care access — is on the verge of collapse unless more funding is provided.

Across the state, scores of hospitals and emergency rooms have shut their doors in the last decade, leading to long waits, diverted ambulances and, in the most extreme cases, patient deaths.

Doctors say the situation is only getting worse. State officials, struggling to balance the budget, have proposed another $1.1 billion in Medi-Cal cuts.

“Are people truly suffering consequences? Absolutely,” said Irv Edwards, one of the doctors represented in the lawsuit and president of Emergent Medical Associates, which staffs 14 emergency rooms in California. “This could happen to you or me. We could be traveling through San Francisco or San Jose, get in a car accident, have a broken leg and end up in the ER, where it takes hours to be treated regardless of our screams. Then we get to diagnosis, and they say, ‘There’s no orthopedic on call. I’m sorry.’ “

ER doctors are required by law to treat whoever comes through the door, and rising ranks of the uninsured have stretched the system beyond repair.  Further, specialists are frustrated with the low reimbursement rates and are taking their names off of call sheets for referral in case emergencies require their services.  A physician on KPCC’s “Air Talk” today described the suit as a “canary in a coal mine,” warning that without increases in rates, not just restoration of funding but increases, there will be no emergency room network in California, period.

Then we have Standard and Poor’s downgrading the state’s credit rating for economic recovery bonds once again, meaning that investors will see a lower-than-expected return and will be far less likely to buy whatever else California sells in the future, which by the way is how we fund our state government.

Finally, you have two ignorant lawmakers, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, asking the US to halt federal oversight of state prisons even though precious little has been done to manage the crisis.  Brown and Schwarzenegger are more interested in saving a few pennies than the Constitutional rights of those incarcerated.  The failure to understand this problem over 30 years have put these disgraced leaders in the position to lie to their own citizens because they can’t face up to their responsibilities.  And as the accountability for this shocking behavior is remote, there is no reason for it to stop.

State Attorney General Jerry Brown feigns to be shocked, outraged and appalled that a proposal to build prison facilities for older, chronically ill, physically impaired, feeble prisoners includes exercise rooms, TV rooms, gardens and natural light.

Taking all this away, as Brown surely knows, wouldn’t save much money – but it would make life difficult for prison workers to manage the prison population. Hey, why not take away air conditioning, too? […]

Brown whines that a federal court-imposed solution would violate “state sovereignty.” Yet he knows perfectly well that the state could avoid any court-imposed solution if it would simply take responsibility for a solution on its own.

One such solution had been proposed by the governor and was supported by legislative Democrats, a bond package for facilities. Senate Republicans killed it last May.

And nothing stops the state from working with Kelso on a negotiated settlement that would reduce the population of older, feeble, chronically ill prisoners or build facilities to house them.

But none of that is happening. Despite all the complaining about the federal courts, the governor, lawmakers and Attorney General Brown seem quite content to let the courts decide – deflecting blame to the judges and away from themselves for the choices that have to be made.

Jerry Brown doesn’t believe that prisoners are human beings and that they lost their Constitutional rights upon conviction, even if they are being held for the medical condition of drug addiction (which he ensured by opposing Prop. 5 in the most dishonest manner possible).  His attitude is retrograde and horrifying and shows a complete failure to account for his own actions.

He’s also the top candidate to be the state’s next governor.

We are past the point of no return.

I don’t know what the specific ratio of placating-the-masses to completely-out-of-ideas might be, but San Diego’s city government is asking for ideas. The big one is Mayor Sanders soliciting lightning bolts on budget cuts. I’m kinda terrified to imagine what this might elicit, but maybe there’ll be a few gems. At the very least, it’s a nice shift from his consistent (if often unsuccessful) fits of dictatorial governance.

With San Diego’s budget future linked to woes at the state level, negotiations beginning with HUD over millions in mismanaged funds which may need to be repayed, and major concerns over access to food stamps, it’s probably not a bad time to see if anyone happens to be particularly inspired.

At the same time, a charrette (pdf) is kicking off soliciting bright ideas for community redevelopment, specifically the Grantville area. SD Business Journal explains that the neighborhood “is undergoing a Master Plan transformation that could prove a blueprint for the greater redevelopment of our neighborhoods throughout the city.”

There’s lots of talk about “stakeholders” and communities investing in their own futures, which is a good start. And with the San Diego Democratic Party bouncing back fast from rock bottom in the June primary to strengthen its hold on the city council, hopefully this is the beginning of legitimate dialogue with the community. The November election brought a consumer advocate reporter (Marti Emerald), a long-time community volunteer (Sherri Lightner), and a Housing Commissioner and District Director (Todd Gloria) to the board. Three people who are, at the very least, used to soliciting opinions and perspectives from the broader community as an essential function of their professional lives. It’s a valuable shift in mentality that the Mayor seems to also be picking up on, even if it’s also a reflection of how few good answers seem to be forthcoming these days.

We’ll have to wait a while for the payoff. In the meantime, a little more openness is a decent place from which to start.

Update I should add that Mayor Sanders has taken the request for ideas to twitter. It isn’t exactly Debra Bowen, but it’s a lot better than many politician accounts. At least he’s stepping outside the tubes and into the ether.

75 years ago, the last time California was in an economic crisis this dire, one of the groups that suffered the most was the elderly. Too old to work, with no jobs available even if they could, with savings wiped out in the collapse of the banking system and with no pensions whatsoever, poverty among the elderly reached epidemic proportions, burdening their children and grandchildren with the cost of care.

So a Long Beach doctor named Francis Townsend proposed to do something about it, and through a grassroots movement built a nationwide mass base for the Townsend Plan – which we now know as Social Security.

The 1930s saw us react to crisis by ensuring the elderly had enough to live in their old age, freeing the rest of society for productive work. FDR also promoted stable pensions, ensuring that honest work would be rewarded.

Now, in this economic crisis, conservatives want to destroy pensions. Instead of protecting and bolstering the elderly, they want to attack them, rob them of the pensions they worked hard to earn, and steal what remains of their economic security.

Former San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Ed Mendel started an anti-pensions blog, CalPensions, designed to promote the attack on two cornerstones of financial security for the aged – Cal-PERS and CalSTRS. And if that wasn’t enough, a former Yacht Party assemblyman, Keith Richman, plans to circulate an initiative to eliminate government pensions and replace them with 401(k)s .

Yes, 401(k) accounts, the same that lost between 20% and 40% of their value in 2008. They really believe this is a good idea? Of course they do. Conservatives are driven now by the desire to destroy what remains of the New Deal and the prosperity it created. They see pensions – the fruits of a lifetime of hard work – as illegitimate, a target for destruction.

From a fiscal perspective alone this is a bad move. The city of Pacific Grove, located next to Carmel and Pebble Beach, voted in November 2008 to investigate leaving Cal-PERS and moving city workers to a 401(k), convinced by conservatives that public workers were at the core of the city’s fiscal problems.

The preliminary report, issued earlier this month, showed that it would actually cost PG more money to leave Cal-PERS than to stay. This in a city with a large number of retired workers, which styles itself as “America’s Last Hometown” – a town where, apparently, the teacher and the fireman shouldn’t be able to enjoy a financially secure old age.

There’s no doubt that we need to deal with pensions that have lost value. But instead of doing away with them and consigning the elderly to poverty for their remaining years, it would make sense of us to pursue reforms intended to stabilize pensions and reinforce economic security for all Californians.

Conservatives are convinced that the solution to our state’s crisis is to make the most vulnerable suffer, whether they’re disabled or on a pension. It’s our job as progressives to make sure they do not succeed.

In a post earlier this week on Pam’s House Blend, I commented that I was going to post a copy of  MarriageEqualityUSA‘s slideshow at last Saturday’s Equality Summit, entitled the Collective Wisdom of Our Grassroots Community (the link is to a PDF file of the PowerPoint slide show).

The PowerPoint slideshow was based on two written reports:

• We Will Never Go Back; Grassroots Input on California’s No on 8 Proposition 8 Campaign

• Prop 8 Hurt My Family: Ask Me How

Some of the thoughts from some of the slides:

Slide 4:

Clergy leaders were underutilized by the No on 8 campaign.

• Clergy leaders, particularly those who had performed marriage ceremonies, were the best spokespeople to counter faith leaders used by the Yes on 8 campaign.

• Over reliance on focus group findings directed clergy to phone banks, instead of visibility actions and outreach to congregations.

• CA marriage case and now Prop 8 amicus briefs identified supportive clergy across California.

Slide 5:

Leaders of color were underutilized by the No on 8 campaign.

• There is a deep bench of Leaders from the Black, Asian, Latino and Native American communities. We must have a campaign where all communities are well-represented as leaders, spokespeople, and in campaign literature.

• “We need to engage with all people and not just people “like us”…to ensure we are not acting in unintentionally marginalizing or discriminatory ways.”

• “I feel that some of the language used in the ads, particularly „unfair and wrong? was very Caucasian centric. Most people of color live in a world that is unfair and wrong, so this washed right over us.”

• Funding to distribute Spanish and Asian language materials and ads were needed at the outset of the campaign.

• We must make institutional changes so that the LGBTI leadership and organizations reflect the natural diversity of our communities.

Slide 6:

No on 8 ads lacked heart and inexcusably excluded LGBTI people.

• Survey respondents and town hall participants agreed:

• “The decision to „hide? gay people was unacceptable.”

• No on 8 messaging was “swift boated”by the Yes on 8 campaign.

• No on 8 ads were too abstract and “lacked heart.”

• We can’t take the personhood out of a human rights campaign.

• In moving ahead, community input emphasized the need to present personal stories.

It goes without saying that I believe the slideshow is worth watching, and the reports are worth reading. Lots of good info in the collected thoughts.

~~~~~

Crossposted from Pam’s House Blend. Material from Mariage Equality USA used by permission.

Cross-posted at Swing State Project.

Here is my analysis of the 2008 election in my home state of California. As I mentioned in my 50-state analysis, California was a mixed bag on November 4, 2008. The presidential results were anything but disappointing, while we came up short further down the ballot, from the House races to the state legislature and the 12 ballot measures.

I was amazed as I saw polls leading up to Election Day showing Obama up by more than 20 over McCain, and was astonished at the 61-37 Obama blowout that ended up occurring on Election Night (and the calling of the whole Left Coast for Obama, putting him over 270 electoral votes and making him the winner!). I couldn’t wait to check out the county results and see which ones flipped for Obama and which ones were close.

As the final absentee ballots rolled in, I was able to check out the numbers, and see that Obama way outperformed Kerry, winning by 3 million votes and pumping up his national popular vote numbers very nicely. In fact, Obama outperformed every single Democratic presidential candidate except one, scoring the second-best Democratic presidential performance in California’s history after Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. As you can see, Obama gained 1.5 million votes over Kerry, while McCain, who claimed he could compete in California, lost half a million votes from Bush.

2008: Obama 8,274,473; McCain 5,011,781

2004: Kerry 6,745,485; Bush 5,509,826

Looking through the voting histories of the California counties that went to Obama, I found that Obama broke some longtime Republican streaks in quite a few counties. Obama won a majority of the vote in two counties that last voted Democratic presidentially with more than 50% of the vote in 1976, Merced and Trinity.

Most significant are the six counties that in 2008 voted Democratic presidentially with more than 50% for the first time since 1964: Nevada, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Ventura

And finally, San Diego County, which last voted for a Democratic presidential candidate with a majority of the vote in 1944, also delivered a majority of the vote to Obama!

Obama also came close to winning majorities, instead winning close pluralities, in Butte, Fresno, and Stanislaus Counties. The last Democrat to win a majority in Butte and Fresno was Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and the last Democrat to win a majority in Stanislaus was Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Now I will do a tour of the state, north to south. I will give a bit of an overall summary of California’s counties: Obama improved upon Kerry’s performance in all 58 of them. The amount of improvement varies from region to region, and the numbers are over the flip.

North Coast

Counties = Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Lake, Sonoma

Combined population = 800,932

2004 = Kerry 63%, Bush 34% (D+29)

2008 = Obama 69%, McCain 28% (D+41)

Obama improved considerably over Kerry’s margins in this part of the state, growing Democratic margins in Humboldt, Mendocino, Lake, and Sonoma, while cutting McCain’s margin in Del Norte County to half of Bush’s. These growing Democratic numbers in this formerly swingy region (CA-01 changed parties 4 times in the 1990s alone) suggests this region will continue to trend Democratic for the foreseeable future.

Northern Mountain

Counties = Butte, El Dorado, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Tehama, Trinity

Combined population = 1,205,952

2004 = Bush 61%, Kerry 38% (R+23)

2008 = McCain 54%, Obama 44% (R+10)

Our next stop is this sprawling, low-density region. I figured McCain would crush Obama in this small town-heavy region, even overperforming Bush’s numbers. When I examined the counties in this region, all of which went for Bush in 2004, I was shocked. Not only did McCain underperform Bush here, he actually got FEWER votes than Bush did. Obama even won 3 counties outright: Butte, Nevada, and Trinity. This region will likely continue to be considerably Republican, but Democrats can become more competitive here if they grow their margins in Butte County (home of UC Chico) and the Tahoe region. Some of this area, most notably Placer, is becoming more like suburban Sacramento and may also continue to trend Democratic. These numbers show that we can win here, and if we can find more Charlie Browns, we might be able to pull off wins in this region, namely Congressional District 4 (which will very likely be open in 2010 when McClintock runs for governor) and Senate District 4 (which will be open in 2010 due to term limits). A couple of Assembly seats here will be open in 2010 as well. Let’s jump-start that 58-county strategy!

San Francisco Bay Area

Counties = Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano

Combined population = 6,791,908

2004 = Kerry 69%, Bush 29% (D+40)

2008 = Obama 74%, McCain 24% (D+50)

A very blue region in a very blue state just keeps on getting bluer with each election. Republicans will be extremely lucky if they can get even a third of the vote here again! In addition to overwhelming Democratic numbers, every single Congressional, State Senate, and State Assembly district is in Democratic hands, almost parallel to the shutout Republicans suffered on the House level in New England. Only if the Republicans return to being the party of Earl Warren and Hiram Johnson will they have a prayer of winning here again. The funny thing is that this region used to be a very Republican region in a very Republican state back in the early 20th century, and San Mateo County was the origin of powerful Republican governor Hiram Johnson and the Progressive movement in California, which Republicans of that time embraced. The region shifted strongly to the Democrats in the 1950s, with 1956 being the last time San Francisco and Alameda Counties voted Republican presidentially, and has not looked back since.

Sacramento Valley

Counties = Amador, Calaveras, Colusa, Glenn, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Sutter, Yolo, Yuba

Combined population = 2,606,646

2004 = Bush 51%, Kerry 48% (R+3)

2008 = Obama 56%, McCain 42% (D+14)

This is a swing area, with Democratic strongholds in the city of Sacramento and Yolo County, home of UC Davis, and Republican strongholds in the Sacramento suburbs (though their majorities here are getting smaller and smaller by the year), and Amador, Calaveras, Colusa, Glenn, Sutter, and Yuba Counties. San Joaquin County, the second-biggest county in the region, has been a Republican-leaning county in recent history until the influx of people from the Bay Area and the overall Democratic trend of suburbs near the Bay Area, culminating in a double-digit win for Obama in the county and the region. This region is also trending Democratic on the congressional and state legislature level, giving victories to Democratic Congressman Jerry McNerney, and Democratic Assemblywomen Alyson Huber and Joan Buchanan.

Eastern Mountain/Yosemite

Counties = Alpine, Inyo, Mariposa, Mono, Tuolumne

Combined population = 108,338

2004 = Bush 58%, Kerry 40% (R+18)

2008 = McCain 53%, Obama 44% (R+9)

Like the northern mountain region, McCain got fewer votes here than Bush did and Democrats saw a modest improvement from 2004 here. The 2 Democratic counties, Alpine and Mono, used to be two of the strongest Republican counties, even voting for Bush in 2000, but an influx of young people from the San Francisco area to work on the ski resorts shifted these counties to Kerry and even more for Obama. If we can get a similar trend in the other counties, then this region too may become Democratic before long.

Central Coast

Counties = Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Ventura

Combined population = 2,275,917

2004 = Kerry 54%, Bush 45% (D+9)

2008 = Obama 60%, McCain 37% (D+23)

This region was normally divided in half, with the northern half of the region (Monterey, San Benito, Santa Cruz) leaning strongly Democratic and the southern half (San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura) leaning Republican aside from the Democratic stronghold of Santa Barbara. Now that barrier has been shattered, with all 6 counties (yes, including San Luis Obispo!) going for Obama. This provides us with great opportunities to expand our majority in the upcoming State Assembly elections in 2010 and the State Senate elections in 2012. You will also notice that this region is generally the bellwether region for determining how California will go in statewide/presidential elections. Not surprisingly, the bellwether county of San Benito is also in this region.

San Joaquin Valley

Counties = Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, Stanislaus, Tulare

Combined population = 3,270,343

2004 = Bush 62%, Kerry 37% (R+25)

2008 = McCain 52%, Obama 46% (R+6)

Here is another Republican stronghold, though unlike the mountain regions, this one is more populous, with population centers in Fresno and Bakersfield. Every county here was Republican in 2004, and then Obama punched holes in the Republican firewall, winning Merced and Stanislaus Counties, as well as the big prize of Fresno County. We still have work to do here on the state level though, since we lost the 30th Assembly district last year. Though maybe with that Yacht Dog Nicole Parra gone and the Democratic trend here, we may have a chance to regain that district in 2010.

Southland

Counties = Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego

Combined population = 20,951,621

2004 = Kerry 52%, Bush 46% (D+5)

2008 = Obama 59%, McCain 38% (D+21)

And finally, our tour ends in the Southland, the most populous region in the state, which alone holds more than half of the state’s population in a mere 6 counties and is home to the state’s 2 largest cities, L.A. and San Diego, and the state’s 3 most populous counties (L.A., Orange, and San Diego). As recently as 2004, L.A. and Imperial Counties were the only Democratic counties in the region. Obama changed that, blowing even more holes in Republican strongholds, turning 3 more counties blue with majorities in Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego, and falling just two points short in Orange County, nearly staging a complete sweep in this former Republican stronghold. That spells trouble for certain Republican Congressmen/women, as well as State Senators and Assemblymembers, some of which are term-limited in 2010 and/or scored weak wins in 2008. Probably the most exciting part of California to watch in the 2010 elections will be right here in the Southland. My hometown of Rancho Cucamonga in San Bernardino County went for Obama. I can only hope it and many more cities in the region continue to trend to the good guys! If the Democrats have a lockhold on the population centers in Northern and Southern California, then there will be ZERO chance of Republicans winning this big prize again!

Whew! Now that I’ve finished the marathon tour of my big, beautiful home state, I can give the region-by-region breakdown of Democratic improvements from 2004 to 2008, ranked from the smallest shift to the largest shift. Here they are:

Eastern Mountain/Yosemite: 9%

San Francisco Bay Area: 10%

North Coast: 12%

Northern Mountain: 13%

Central Coast: 14%

Southland: 16%

Sacramento Valley: 17%

San Joaquin Valley: 19%

Every region shifted considerably more Democratic, though the biggest shifts occurred in the regions that up through 2004 were swing or Republican-leaning areas. These are the areas we need to target heavily to make the biggest gains.

With some legislative seats open in 2010 due to term limits, we can take some of them and further inflate our Democratic majority in this state. If the California Democratic Party, with the new fresh faces of Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) actually invests in the legislative races, we can make major gains and have no more disappointments that we had in 2008’s U.S. House and legislative races, where Democrats, especially in swing districts in Southern California, underperformed Obama. Also, with enough investment, we will hopefully also have no more disappointments in the ballot measures such as Prop H8. And a suggestion I have for reforming our dysfunctional ballot measure system is to not have any repeat ballot measures such as Prop 73 (2005)/85 (2006)/4 (2008) and also require a supermajority (say 60%) on passing some measures. And of course we need major reforms in the legislative system, such as doing away with the ridiculous 2/3 rule for taxes and budgets.

Supporters of Prop 8 in California have begun an effort to recall Chief Justice Ronald M. George because of his decision in support of gay California citizens to enjoy the same right to marriage as straight citizens. They are gathering signatures and “doing groundwork”. They have a website up collecting names, but I don’t want to link to it.

My friend and I put together a website to collect the names of people willing to support Chief Justice George in case of an actual recall. Though the recall would be in 2010, I believe it is important to begin building a base of people willing to support him to counteract the threats of recall.

I need help getting the word out about our site. Please go and sign our petition and then pass the word. I cross posted this at DailyKos and I’m putting it out to as many places as I can think of, but any suggestions on places to post would be appreciated. I’m a brand new member here because someone at Kos suggested that I cross post it here. I’m looking forward to getting to know this community.