As you probably know, we are in a three-year long drought.  Reservoirs are already low heading into the dry season, and snowpack levels are frighteningly low.  The Sierras are supposed to get some decent snowfall over the next few days, but nothing big enough to come close to making up the big deficit. If you’d like way more data on our current water situation than you probably want to see, check out the Dept. of Water Resources site.  I will add, that it’s a bit hard to navigate, and the data is a bit stale.

But the data is undeniable. We are in a massive drought right now. And that brings very difficult choices, choices that might bring about the extinction of several species:

But in practice the request means threatened Delta smelt could be sacrificed. The fingerling smelt, native to the estuary, is breeding now and needs freshwater flows to provide the year’s young fish with proper habitat. The smelt and its cousin, the native longfin smelt, are at a record population lows and believed to be on the verge of extinction. Without adequate water flowing through the estuary, their days could be numbered.

“We pray it won’t be the extiction of these species,” said Spreck Rosekrans, an analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund. “It’s unfortunate, with all the forecast and planning tools that the agencies have available, that we need to make a difficult choice between salmon and fish that live in the Delta. This is unprecedented.”(SacBee 2/6/09)

Note that if you read down, you see the consequences of the furloughs with reporters not being able to contact the DWR with questions about the smelt.  At any rate, this very well could mean the end for a species native to only the Sacramento Delta, the fingerling smelt.

And of course, the fish aren’t the only ones hurting.  Down the road, farmers and related business are being devastated:

Never since the Central Valley Project was authorized in 1935 have California’s farmers been so worried about the lack of water. Three years of too little rain combined with pumping restrictions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta have created a nightmare scenario: The federal government might soon cut off the state’s largest supply of agricultural water – the first time in California history.(SJ Merc 2/6/09)

Perhaps this was a long time in coming, we have totally reshaped the Central Valley and its climate.  Yet, it is difficult to understate the importance of the Central Valley to the state and the nation as a whole.  This is where a vast percentage of non-grain produce for the nation is grown. 90+% of the world’s almonds are grown here, as well as a great deal of tree fruits and lettuces.  If you are eating in California, the American West, and basically the entire nation, you are eating food from the Central Valley.

Of course, there is an economic toll to this drought, as farmers are left without resources for their crops.  They are soon left to default on other debts, and businesses dependent on agriculture are left without customers.

But this is the New California.  Climate change is really here, and we have to adapt or die. It really is that simple. Already Bolinas is enacting harsh water restrictions, but it will surely not be the last. The sooner we face up to this, the better.  The era of green lawns is over. The era of swimming pools in every backyard is over. Certainly we have the ability to make changes for the better, the only question is our own will.  It may be too late for the Delta smelt, but we can hope we don’t have to repeat this tragedy every year.

Two months ago I wrote about how Mike Villines’ threats on the budget were illegal under Section 86 of the California Penal Code:

86.  Every Member of either house of the Legislature, or any member of the legislative body of a city, county, city and county, school district, or other special district, who asks, receives, or agrees to receive, any bribe, upon any understanding that his or her official vote, opinion, judgment, or action shall be influenced thereby, or shall give, in any particular manner, or upon any particular side of any question or matter upon which he or she may be required to act in his or her official capacity, or gives, or offers or promises to give, any official vote in consideration that another Member of the Legislature, or another member of the legislative body of a city, county, city and county, school district, or other special district shall give this vote either upon the same or another question, is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years and, in cases in which no bribe has been actually received, by a restitution fine of not less than two thousand dollars ($2,000) or not more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000) or, in cases in which a bribe was actually received, by a restitution fine of at least the actual amount of the bribe received or two thousand dollars ($2,000), whichever is greater, or any larger amount of not more than double the amount of any bribe received or ten thousand dollars ($10,000), whichever is greater.

It appears that the California Labor Federation includes some readers.  Yesterday, they sent a letter to the Attorney General calling for an investigation into illegal vote-trading.

The charge by leaders of the California Labor Federation, State Building and Construction Trades Council, Sierra Club California and the Planning and Conservation League stems from reports that Republican legislative leadership are withholding their votes on a state budget as they attempt to extract votes on policy matters unrelated to the budget.

“Republicans are holding the state budget hostage in a shameful attempt to gut vital workplace and environmental standards that have absolutely nothing to do with the budget,” said California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski. “These actions aren’t just unconscionable, they may be criminal.”

According to a release from the California Labor Federation and the Sierra club there are several examples of actions that may be in violation of California Penal Code.

“Specifically, (Republican leaders) have demanded that legislators vote for proposals to weaken labor and environmental standards as a condition for any ‘aye’ vote from Republican caucus members on the overall budget,” the letter states.

According to the release, “This conduct appears to violate Penal Code Section 86, which prohibits any legislator from offering to give his or her vote in exchange for another legislator’s vote on the same or a different matter.”

Some would call this the criminalization of politics, but in this state, politics is too often a criminal enterprise, and it’s high time somebody was taught a lesson.  Like the Yacht Party.  

AG Brown should do this.  There’s already a Facebook group set up; I urge you to join it.  End the Blagojevich-ization of the California legislature.

Punishable by two-four years in prison:

Labor and environmental groups have asked California Attorney General Jerry Brown to investigate whether Republican state lawmakers are engaging in illegal vote trading during budget talks.

“It’s a serious question and we’re reviewing the matter carefully,” Brown responded Thursday.

The California Labor Federation, State Building and Construction Trades Council, Sierra Club California and the Planning and Conservation League wrote to Brown on Wednesday – and sent a copy to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, too – citing reports that the Legislature’s GOP leaders are withholding votes on a state budget while attempting to win votes on unrelated matters.

[…]

It asserts this violates California Penal Code Section 86, prohibiting lawmakers from giving or promising to give “any official vote in consideration that another Member of the Legislature shall give this vote either upon the same or another question.

Join the Facebook Group to stand with unions and environmentalists in asking that Jerry Brown investigate.

At Wednesday’s rally in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, a number of brave workers who have been hurt by our broken labor law system spoke out to explain why we badly need this vital new law to protect the freedom of workers to form a union and bargain.

These workers are just a few of the nearly 30,000 workers who are harassed, discriminated against and fired every year for trying to exercise the freedom to bargain for health care, pensions and fair wages and treatment. Their stories illustrate, on an honest and personal level, the real problem with the nation’s current labor laws: People who want to form unions are at the mercy of corporations because the laws are badly tilted toward companies, not workers.

A long-time journalist and mother of a young child, Sara Steffens met with her co-workers to try and form a union at the newspaper where they worked in Contra Costa County, Calif. Workers hoped that with a union they could have job security and more of a say in how the newspaper operates. Despite gathering the support of two-thirds of the paper’s employees, they were met with a hostile response.

Our employer reacted the way a lot of companies do. They hired an anti-union consultant and began a pretty aggressive campaign to scare us into voting against the union. Despite all of that, we did win our election…A few weeks later, they announced a major layoff, and I was one…I had been the co-chair of our organizing committee.

I think it’s important that workers feel like they can step up and tackle problems in their workplace, and not have to be afraid that if they speak out they’re going to lose their jobs for it.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Asela Espiritu, a nurse who works for Kaiser Permanente in Orange County, Calif., discussed how Kaiser Permanente stayed neutral and allowed nurses at Espiritu’s facility to pursue a union through the legal majority sign-up process. Thanks to her and her co-workers’ successful efforts, the people who have the most direct experience in patient care have a voice when it comes to how the company operates. That’s good for nurses, for patients and for the company.

With us being unionized, we’re on the same page with management on how we can deliver the best care for our patients. The Employee Free Choice Act will empower workers of all kinds of industries….They will be able to be part of the solution to the crisis we have.

The high-dollar corporate attacks on the Employee Free Choice Act rely on the fiction that unions are sinister outside forces, separate from and unwanted by workers. That myth is leveled by the stories of real people like Steffens, Gares, Lawhorn and Espiritu, who are honest, hardworking people who just wanted the freedom to have a say in their workplace and the ability to bargain for a better life for themselves and their co-workers.

It’s stories like these that illustrate why the Employee Free Choice Act is so urgent and necessary to restore the balance for workers.

(Cross-posted from the AFL-CIO Now Blog.)

Welcome to furlough day, that time of year twice a month where state workers take a (government-imposed) break, stopping to smell the roses, think about the good times, and just be.

Scores of state offices will be closed today as more than 200,000 workers take their first unpaid day off in response to California’s deepening fiscal crisis.

That means Californians won’t be able to take a driver’s license test or conduct business at some state office buildings […]

Among the closed offices will be all Department of Motor Vehicles outlets, Fish and Game, Food and Agriculture, Social Services and the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

The Department of Mental Health will be closed, but mental hospitals will remain open. Workers Compensation offices will be closed.

State parks, which generate revenue from entrance fees, will remain open, as will state courts, the secretary of state’s offices, California Highway Patrol offices and campuses of the University of California, Cal State and California Community Colleges. Public safety employees are exempt from the Friday furloughs and can schedule their days off differently.

I particularly enjoy that the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services is closed.  Good thing no emergencies happen on a Friday!  I’d ask Arnold’s press secretary about that one, but he’s probably not working today.

The other offices that are closed are the Employment Development Department and the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board.  The salaries of those employees are largely paid by the US Department of Labor, and so, while very little or no money will be saved, the jobless will find it harder to collect, which is probably the point.

Over the objections of the federal government, workers handling jobless assistance claims and appeals have been ordered by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to go on furlough — even though nearly all their salaries are paid by the U.S. Labor Department, and their days off will save the state very little or no money.

In a letter late last month, the department warned that furloughs could worsen the state’s current “below standard performance” in meeting criteria for the timely handling of unemployment claims and appeals.

Failure to comply with the department’s demands could violate Social Security laws, said the letter’s author, Richard C. Trigg, regional administrator in San Francisco of the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration.

The governor’s office said it was unmoved by the federal concerns.

Now that’s the spirit of the furlough holiday season!

Somebody should ask Arnold if he’s closing the unemployment office so people can’t get their benefits.  Maybe on Monday.  Because, you know, he’s a state employee, so he must be off today.

…I would actually be OK with a 4 day, 10 hour work week that would save on energy and transportation costs and increase employee satisfaction as well as recruitment for state jobs.  And if employees staggered their time off, government offices could stay open full-time.  But this blanket furlough and pay cut is nuts.

Crossposted from the less-dormant-than-usual Reelpolitik.org.

California Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Jerry Brown is the latest person to succumb to the 25 Random Things craze that’s sweeping across Facebook.

How did I know this?  I saw a Tweet on the JerryBrown2010 Twitter profile.

6. My official portrait as Governor was quite controversial and the legislature refused to hang it. My Father said if I didn’t get a new one, I could never run again. It is now hanging and I am still running.  (Facebook: Jerry Brown’s 25 Random Things)

Embracing the latest meme sensation and promoting it through the hot new social medium (at least among hack and flack elites) is a defiant response to those critics who wonder “does California need the same governor in 2011 that it had in 1975?” as my old boss Garry South recently put it.

Does tapping new channels to communicate with voters indicate that Brown would not be the same governor he was in the days before many of Facebook’s most fervent users were born?

Does use of young technology demonstrate a young spirit?  Does use of a fresh political medium show a mind open to fresh policy ideas?

Now, after two years as state attorney general, this Democrat who first ran for office in the era of Janis Joplin and the Beatles is remaking himself yet again. This time, Brown’s quest is to recapture the job he won 35 years ago: governor of California.

But Brown is already facing a quandary that could bedevil him in this, his 12th campaign: How does a man so closely identified with California’s past show that he is best fit to lead the troubled state into the future?  (LA Times)

If the answer to the haters isn’t in the use of such technology, maybe an answer lies within the 25 Random Things.  I’ve pulled a few out below:

I’ve seen lists of “25 Random Things About Me” that people are sending around Facebook. I thought I would share my own list with you.

3. In 1958, I took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Later, Pope John XXIII dispensed me from these obligations.

12. I worked with Mother Theresa in India at the Home for the Dying.

14. I sued Richard Nixon’s lawyer for helping the President cheat on his income tax.

18. I knocked my opponent to the canvas in a 3 round boxing match at Senior Fight Night.

Those few items show a leader of restraint and compassion; who respects the rule of law; and who will put on gloves and throw blows.  But perhaps the most salient of the 25 Things is number 24:

24. The first time I became Governor, I followed an Actor (Ronald Reagan).

The whole list is absolutely worth checking out.  Brown leads a life unlike any officeholder.  So head over to Jerry Brown’s Notes on Facebook, and see what he has to say.

Ed. Note – Jerry’s not the only one Twittering.  If you want to follow Reelpolitik’s tweets, find them at http://www.Twitter.com/Reelpolitik.  Also, I will NOT be doing 25 Random Things.

According to Darrell Steinberg there’ll be a budget vote next week.  Thanks for leaving the cone of silence to let us know, pal!  In the meantime:

• The judge who allowed furloughs for state workers to go through is saying that the order does not necessarily apply to employees of Constitutional officers.  Jon Ortiz discusses the ramifications at The State Worker.  The first furlough day, by the way, is set for tomorrow.

• The editorial board revolt in the Central Valley, hard-hit by the economic crisis, continues.  The Merced Sun-Star is unusually blunt: “Why should Democrats negotiate if Republicans refuse to budge?”  And the Stockton Record is actually calling on its readers to take action in a way I’ve rarely seen from a local newspaper.  Something is different.

• The UC Board of Regents approved an overhaul of the admissions process. President Yudof hopes that the changes will increase socioeconomic diversity, thus increasing other sorts of diversity.

• This is an incredible story about ACORN saving a couple’s home from foreclosure in Oakland.  While the Feds do little to stop foreclosures, community organizing is making things happen.  But they’re destroying the fabric of our electoral system!!! /peak wingnut

• OC Progressive asks you to  name the conservative, and it’s not who you think.

• The May Day lawsuits, stemming from police brutality and tear gassing after a pro-immigration rally, have finally been settled, to the tune of $13 million dollars.

Friends, there are some things that cannot go unchallenged. They are affronts to human dignity and to what it means to live in America.

Yesterday one of those things happened in Maricopa County, Arizona, the mega-county that contains Phoenix. In a move that smacks of the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and that harks back to the days of the chain gang in the South, the Sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, is clustering 200 undocumented inmates of the County Jail in their own special tent city. The tent city is surrounded by an electric fence, further bringing home the treatment of human being as chattel. The Phoenix New Times has a compelling story detailing yesterdays outrage.

We cannot let this stand. We are circulating a petition that asks Congressman John Conyers, the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to hold hearings into this latest outrage and the long history of abuse carried out by Sheriff Arpaio.

What makes this move especially troubling is the Sheriff’s determination to expand his tent city to accommodate up to 2500 prisoners, an indication of the scope of his determination to continue his devastating policies of racial profiling, retaliatory arrests aimed at silencing critics, and forced family separation.

These actions are an affront to anyone who cares about human rights and are the logical outcome of a police state mentality that sees the only solution to our immigration challenge coming at the end of a gun.

Therefore, we at ACORN, through our Arizona ACORN members, are taking a stand against this action and the on-going immigration enforcement policies of the Sheriff that have resulted not just in this indefensible move, but in widespread human rights abuses of American citizens and our immigrant cousins.

We are following the lead of community leaders like AZ ACORN Board Member Alicia Russell who said, “This march is an extremely callous and inhumane move, aimed directly at degrading undocumented immigrants. In claiming to justify this action as a way to improve”budget savings”, Arpaio is degrading these immigrants, violating their civil rights, and overreaching his jurisdiction”, the entire Maricopa County town of Guadalupe, and Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability (MCSA) who recently staged a “Death of Democracy” funeral procession protesting the Sheriff’s actions.

We are answering the call of local leaders like Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon who has demanded a federal probe into Arpaio’s recent crime sweeps in Hispanic neighborhoods using tactics that are tantamount to racial-profiling and reflect poorly on all Arizonans, regardless of their ethnic heritage. We are answering the call of Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, who said, “We treat people equally in America. I think it’s wrong.”

Even the conservative Goldwater Institute calls Apraio’s policies “ineffective” in a report released in December. “[He] has diverted resources away from basic law-enforcement functions to highly publicized immigration sweeps, which are ineffective in policing illegal immigration and in reducing crime generally[.]”

Help us take a stand by asking Rep. Conyers to lead an investigation into these tactics. America needs to stand for justice under the law, not the law of “just us”.