Obama In The OC

Open thread for the event.  You can watch it live here, and the stream looks pretty robust.  Twittering from friend of Calitics Todd Beeton here.  OC Progressive also has coverage.

…well, Obama missed an opportunity there.  Asked about state governors who have rejected portions of the stimulus, he made an excellent summary of the bogus argument put forth by those who want to refuse unemployment expansion because they fear employers having to pay marginally higher taxes in a couple years.  He was clearly not briefed that the California legislature rejected just such a proposal YESTERDAY, and that the Governor’s staff inclined to reject changes in eligibility, and the Governor has taken no position at all.  That could have put a lot of pressure on the legislature, but alas.

…Secretary of State Bowen, also in the building, is live-Twittering.

CA-10: It’s Official

Ellen Tauscher is leaving Congress:

“For the past 13 years, I have had the honor and privilege of serving you in Congress. Representing California’s 10th Congressional District always has been and remains – especially in these trying times – my first priority.”

“Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asked me to serve as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.”

“While her offer is both generous and flattering, I did not take the decision lightly. I accepted it after much soul searching and long discussions with my family and friends.”

Her mission will be an important one – to fulfill the Obama Administration’s goal of eventually ridding the world of nuclear weapons, and in the near term reducing stockpiles through trade agreements with Russia and ensuring the security of loose nuclear materials around the world.  Given that she has supported the Reliable Replacement Warhead system in the past, which would usher in a new generation of nuclear weapons and work directly counter to proposals like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, I am dubious that this is her best role:

Those of us who are interested in working toward a world free of nuclear weapons realize that progress will involve many steps, some large, some small. One important step will be ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Some CTBT supporters suspect that the outlines of a deal are coalescing: those who want the RRW will try to make the CTBT and the RRW a package deal, arguing that we will be able to maintain a reliable, safe nuclear deterrent without testing, as the CTBT would require, only if the weapon labs are allowed to proceed with weapon modernization. The Congressional Strategic Posture Commission interim report appears to be at least sympathetic to this view. This artificial link is based on both faulty logic and a long list of unstated and unsupportable assumptions.

The assertion that our nuclear weapons need any modernizing implies, usually implicitly, that current weapons are antiques that are not quite up to snuff. Chilton, in the article cited above, specifically links U.S. modernization to Russian and Chinese nuclear weapons. This superficially makes sense: after all, we don’t send our military out to fight with World War II vintage tanks, ships, and airplanes. Certainly the United States should be armed with the latest and best nuclear weapons; at the very least, our weapons have to be at least as modern as any possible competitors, right? The simple analogy to conventional weapons doesn’t hold because of the types of tasks assigned to nuclear weapons and some confusion about just what a “nuclear weapon” is […]

Simple uranium bombs with high reliability and yields of twenty kilotons (or the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima) or more would be easy to manufacture. We could design such a weapon, perhaps build one or two, and put the plans on the shelf in case we ever needed it. I can’t help but imagine those language-free schematic assembly instructions that come along with unassembled Ikea furniture, describing how to put a bookshelf together without special skills or complex tools. We should design the Ikea Bomb. The DOE’s arguments for a new nuclear bomb design would be a lot more convincing if DOE were eagerly trying to design themselves out of a job rather than looking at a future that has them building nuclear weapons forever.

Nuclear weapons modernization is a complete myth, and Tauscher has perpetuated it.  Regardless of the positives of her leaving Congress, she is a terrible choice for the safety of the world.  I’ll leave it to you to determine the relative benefits of the trade-off.

The Governor will not need to announce any special election for this seat until Tauscher is confirmed, which could take “weeks, if not months,” as she notes.  District sources tell me that labor’s voice matters here, and all the serious candidates come from the legislature, in particular Asm. Tom Torlakson and Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (who lives outside the district in Concord, but that’s not required under state law).  Of the two, only one will run, and Torlakson has been gearing up for a statewide run for a while, though Congress may offer a more attractive platform.  While Buchanan has seemingly been groomed for this position, it’s probably too soon for her to make the jump, and AD-15 does not have a deep Democratic bench and would be likely to flip back to the Republicans if she vacates.  Either way, we’re looking at a special election for Congress, followed by another special election for the legislature.  At this rate, the legislature will be missing bodies until early 2010.  And that’s horrible news, given the conservative veto and the need for every single vote on budget and tax issues.

Does The Next Governor Matter?

Several weeks back, during the deepest throes of the budget crisis, I wrote that the problems of the state are not a matter of personality but process, and you can reason that out to understand that a change in the personalities without a concurrent change in process will accomplish absolutely nothing on reforming the state and getting a functional government again in California.  This thought occurred to me again last night, as I sat in the press section during Gavin Newsom’s “conversation with California” as part of his tour of the southern part of the state.  Newsom’s description of the challenges the state faces – and his solutions – gear more to the idea that a different person, dedicated to solving the same problems in a new way, can overcome any obstacle, rather than the reality that no individual under the current system of rules could possibly thrive.  And while the San Francisco Mayor shows a recognition of the structural impossibility of California, his relative nonchalance about how to reform it shows he believes for more in himself to overcome the rules than the demonstrable history of the rules overcoming everyone in their path.

First, let’s be clear that Newsom is running with someone else’s platform.  The first policy mentioned last night as a reflection of his record is the Healthy San Francisco effort toward universal care for the uninsured in his city.  That is not his plan to tout, and the simultaneous description of it as a savior for the state’s residents while cutting $100 million dollars from the city’s Department of Public Health and programs aimed at the needy is nothing short of troubling.

“It’s not that Healthy San Francisco is wrong its the mayor’s obvious …” (Tom Ammiano) pauses. “Look, he’s running for governor and taking full credit for it. It’s not true. The labor community, my office, community activists, health people — some of the same people who are unhappy with him now — worked with him on this. When he goes out there and claims full credit, that pisses people off, especially people who are dealing with [health care in the city] every day. … The reaction is really based on the mayor boasting and overselling Healthy San Francisco.” […]

“Healthy San Francisco — I think people should be very proud of it. I think it’s going to meet its full potential. The rollout is going to be incremental and there’s going to be little tweaks that it needs. But, you know, that’s not the target […] Unfortunately, it’s getting tainted because of the mayor’s boasting and overselling of it.”

The neighborhood clinics at the heart of the Healthy San Francisco plan are at full capacity while funding is being slashed, and additional “woodworking” – residents coming out of the woodwork to seek services.  The revenues aren’t meeting the expenses, and the General Fund of the city, now facing a $590 million dollar shortfall (less per capita than Los Angeles’), has to make up the difference.  As the economy continues to slow and the ranks of the unemployed swell, those at the bottom of the income ladder are already seeing service cuts.  I would simply call it bad politics to put so much emphasis on a program you can barely claim ownership to and are cutting funding for at the same time as more services are desired.  And this is sadly part of a pattern of the whole story being left out.

But let’s set aside the issues for a moment.  As focused as I am on process, I awaited Newsom’s response to the inevitable questions about budget reform.  He asserted support for a 50% + 1 threshold for the budget process, using the line “You need two-thirds of the vote to pass a budget, but only a simple majority to deny civil rights,” referring to marriage equality.  It’s a good line, but he leaves out that he was shamed into changing his position after the initial proposal for a 55% threshold was slammed by just about everyone.  The first instinct was to half-ass reform.  There was also no explanation that there are two thresholds requiring two-thirds, the budget and tax increases, leaving his answer fairly vague, as it has been in the past.  

But far worse than this was his flippant approval of Prop. 1A, the draconian spending cap that would effectively eliminate what amounts to half of the state school budget within a few years, and his dishonest rendering of the initiative as “a rainy day fund,” without explaining how the rainy day fund is created.  On the other ballot measures like 1C, 1D and 1E, which would privatize the lottery and raid voter-approved funds for children’s programs and mental health, he gave a Solomonic “on the one hand, on the other hand” soliloquy and ended saying that he would be a bad spokesman for them.

This, then, is what needs to be kept in mind when Newsom urges a call for a constitutional convention.  We see by his stances on the May special election what he would reasonably be expected to get out of that convention – a constitution that includes a “rainy day fund” created by a spending cap, coming at it from a right-wing perspective and ultimately resulting in a fake reform.  This is essentially the position of Arnold Schwarzenegger, clueless media elites, bipartisan fetishists who assume without evidence the midpoint of any argument is automatically the best option, and most tellingly, the Bay Area Council, which makes perfect sense.

Meantime, the Schwarzenegger-sponsored political campaign in support of the six measures announced today an endorsement from the Bay Area Council, the business-centric public policy organization that is the impetus behind calls for a constitutional convention. Last week, Schwarzenegger made it quite clear that he supports the first convening of a state constitutional convention in some 150 years… a way to focus on multiple ideas for government reform at one time.

These two announcements certainly play to the idea of another “business vs. labor” narrative in California politics. Another possible fuel for that storyline comes in a $250,000 donation to the pro-budget measure committee on Friday by wealthy Orange County developer Henry Segerstrom. The donation from one of his companies is easily his largest campaign contribution in recent years, which saw smaller checks written to both the guv’s 2006 reelection efforts and to the California Republican Party.

I support a Constitutional convention because I know what my principles are.  I don’t support mealy-mouthed calls for “reform” that are essentially corporate-friendly back doors to advance the interests of the powerful over the people.

Ultimately, Randy Shaw has this right – the people of California could elect Noam Chomsky, Warren Buffett or Howard Jarvis, and nothing would fundamentally change until the structures that restrict anyone in Sacramento from doing their jobs are released.  And our assessment of who would be best to lead that reform should be based on deeds and not words.

If California’s future is measured by our education system, we are in deep trouble. And we are in this difficulty because the state’s Democratic Party and progressive activists have allowed right-wing Republicans to exert major control over the state’s budget.

I say “allowed” because there is no other explanation for elected officials and activists failing to put a measure on the November 2008 ballot removing the 2/3 vote requirement to pass a budget. Although state Republicans made their opposition to new taxes clear, progressives passed up a large turnout ballot whose voters would have approved such a reform. Passage of such an initiative would have avoided the billions of dollars in cuts we went on to face, with more cuts slated for future years […]

If we have learned anything from the past months, it should be that putting money into state candidates will accomplish less than passing the budgetary reforms and tax hikes needed to return California to its leadership in education and other areas […]

It’s time for the people to say “Yes We Can” to a new progressive future for California. Once the people lead, the politicians — particularly those seeking their votes — will follow.

It is senseless to discuss candidates for a race into a straitjacket, which is the current dress code for Sacramento.  Anything less than fundamental reform will not solve the enormous set of problems the state faces – and it will take more than charisma, but an actual commitment, to make it happen.

Will Arnold Say Thanks, But No Thanks In Person?

Now that Arnold’s administration has said that he wants to follow Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and turn down unemployment money, do you think the Governor will tell President Obama in person?  Arnold is apparently scheduled to appear with President Obama at one of the SoCal stops while the President is here, as well as a scheduled visit to the White House on Friday. From Politico:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will appear with Obama in California later this week, according to a source familiar with the trip. Details haven’t been finalized, but the Republican governor is expected to join Obama at one of his public stops in Southern California.

Schwarzenegger has been an outspoken ally of Obama since the president was sworn in, offering him a measure of bipartisan cover on a stimulus package that was overwhelmingly opposed by congressional Republicans. The former movie star has also backed Obama on issues related to climate change and energy.

On Friday, Schwarzenegger will rejoin Obama at the White House to discuss infrastructure issues with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. (Politico 3/18/09)

You have to just love the national media.  They have no clue who this Schwarzenegger guy is, but they know they love the guy that shows up on the talk shows. So, yeah, he must be an Obama ally.  Except, you know, turning down stimulus money, and generally governing from the far right.

A strong Obama ally is in the beholder I suppose. At any rate, perhaps the Gov can shake some money off the trees in DC and bring it back for some infrastructure.

WHEN YOU’RE IN A HOLE, AREN’T YOU SUPPOSED TO STOP DIGGING?

California, like other states around the country, awaits billions in federal stimulus dollars that could partially mitigate the devastating impact of the state’s $11.6 billion in funding cuts to schools.

When the federal stimulus funds are made available to states at the end of this month, the Education Coalition calls upon Governor Schwarzenegger, his administration and the Legislature NOT to manipulate the spirit and intent of the federal stimulus legislation in order to circumvent paying California’s 6.3 million public school students the nearly $5 billion in federal funds they are due.

It is absolutely critical that these funds are distributed fully and immediately to the school districts and students who so badly need them.   Any scenario under which these funds are not paid in full to schools would be a breach of the public trust and would thwart the Obama Administration’s intent to use these federal taxpayer dollars to support public education.

Meanwhile, the catastrophic consequences of California’s chronic underfunding of our schools only continue to multiply: As of this week, more than 26,000 teachers and administrators have received pink slips, and more than 10,000 bus drivers, custodians, food service workers and support staff have already lost their jobs.

California earned the dubious ranking of 47th in the nation in per-pupil spending long before the state enacted a crushing $11.6 billion in cuts to public schools.  With this latest round of cuts, there’s little question that California now ranks dead last in the nation in per-pupil funding.

In the wealthiest state in the nation, in the seventh largest economy in the world, don’t our students deserve better than dead last?

We simply cannot continue to improve student learning and maintain high academic standards while funding for public schools is being decimated.  

To make matters worse, in a tough economy, schools are often one of the only safe places students can turn to for help – but with libraries closed, after-school programs shuttered, athletic programs on hold, arts, music and vocational education programs eliminated, classroom sizes swelling, and teachers, administrators and support staff dwindling, there are precious few resources left for our most vulnerable students.

It’s time for our state’s leaders to put down their shovels and stop digging a hole for California’s 6.3 million students.  California needs both short- and long-term solutions to our school funding crisis, including immediate distribution of the federal stimulus funds, and permanent, stable revenues to ensure that our state doesn’t remain dead last among the states in per-pupil funding.  

Talk is cheap – the time for action is now.   We simply cannot allow this hole to get any deeper.

CA-10: Ellen Tauscher Headed to the State Dept

One of the big stories that Calitics wasn’t able to cover thanks to the server outage yesterday was the news that, as Atrios put it, Ellen Tauscher may will be “raptured” to a post at the State Department:

A California congresswoman with experience in military matters is the Obama administration’s choice to be under secretary of state for arms control and international security.

Congressional and administration sources told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher is the administration’s pick. The sources requested anonymity because the announcement is not official.

Could this joyous news be true? Could one of the bankers’ best friends and leader of the DLC-like New Democrats in the House be taken off our hands by the Obama Administration? We will see – and we will hope.

UPDATE: The Hill reports that yes, it IS true – Ellen Tauscher will go to the State Department.

This would open up yet another special election here in California to fill the seat. Who would be some of the most likely Democratic candidates to run for the seat?

  • Tom Torlakson. Former State Senator, now serving his third and final term in the Assembly (AD-11; his first two terms were from 1996-2000).  He’s currently planning a run for State Superintendent of Education in 2010, but might be interested in moving to the Congressional seat should it open up. He’s probably got the highest political profile of the field owing to his 12+ years in the Legislature.
  • Mark DeSaulnier. Replaced Tom Torlakson in SD-7 when he was termed out last year. DeSaulnier and Torlakson are close and would probably not challenge each other for the seat, so if Torlakson decides to stay in California, DeSaulnier could make the move to DC. He has spoken out on the need to fix California’s broken government and for action on global warming.
  • Joan Buchanan. Elected last November to the Assembly from AD-15. As a newly elected state official she may have a lower profile than Torlakson or DeSaulnier, but can’t be ruled out as a possible candidate.

I’m sure there are other possible candidates out there who could fill this seat but those are the folks who have been generating the most discussion in the last 24 hours. We’ll see what happens next. I for one will be glad to be rid of Ellen Tauscher and hopefully we can get someone more progressive to represent the 10th District.

Yesterday’s student march and the media blackout

Finally yesterday’s media blackout on the march on the state capitol is over with. Unfortunately, the two sources I was hoping would end that blackout–the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle–are still missing in action. Sure, the Chronicle has an article on students protesting cuts in education, but it’s about a protest that occurred across the border in Nevada to lobby Republican Governor Jim Gibbons; 35 students from a high school in Ely did this, and the absence from school apparently counted as a school activity. In any case, it’s an AP wire article.

Allow me to back up a bit. The march at the state capitol was held to protest possibly looming cuts in education at the college level. It was held to demand a return to non-fee-based, free access to education at the college level. Granted, Governor Schwarzenegger spared community colleges in his latest budget. Our fear was that we may be next. So, the Student Senate for California Community Colleges called for a march to be held yesterday (beginning at Raley Field in West Sacramento). The march culminated with a rally at the west side of the state capitol.

Instead, the paper that broke the media blackout was the Sacramento Bee. I’m not a real fan of the Bee–especially since it’s home to Broder lovechild Dan Walters–but the paper can be good on occasion.

The march went well enough, but I returned home to what seemed like a media blackout on the march. I did see one report last night–on KTVU, which did about a minute-long segment–but little else.

The downside of the Bee article in question is that it seems to merely touch base on the protest in the broader sense of Mac Taylor’s revelation that the State is still $8 billion in the red.

The article, in addition, doesn’t mention who all made speeches: among them, Democratic Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, SF Assemblywoman Fiona Ma (who for her part urged us all to “hold our nose” and vote for Arnold’s Special Favors in May), Hawthorne Assemblyman Curren Price (who was there to promote AB 462, which would levy a one-percent tax increase on the rich to help pay for education), and various members of the Student Senate of California Community Colleges (among them Vice President Troy Carter) and speakers from various other community colleges, not to mention the president of the California Students’ Association.

It doesn’t mention the presence of an local of the AFL-CIO. It doesn’t mention that SEIU set up a table to hand out free sack lunches to workers, students, and anyone else who wanted one. It doesn’t mention the presence of International ANSWER, the Peace & Freedom Party, the Socialist Worker’s Party, or the Party of Socialism and Liberation. Come to think of it, it doesn’t mention much of anything at all other than the fact that students marched, chanted slogans, and waved around placards.

The Bee article, though, does contain a video report, which I would recommend watching to get a better idea of how the march and rally went down if you couldn’t make it out.

More personally, though, there was a stark contrast to the participation by students from CCSF–which I heard had to take eighteen buses up to the march–and our contingent from Shasta College, which couldn’t even get one bus completely full. Students from as far south as Los Angeles and quite possible San Diego traveled four or five hundred miles to show their support for higher education, and more students from Shasta College couldn’t be convinced to take a lousy three-hour road trip.

Granted, I’m well aware of the limitations faced by students here; a lot of them, in addition to working full time, also attend school full time. A lot of them are older and have children. My biggest fear, though, is that more people didn’t come because of apathy or ignorance than because of irreconcilable circumstances.

The march was a rousing success, though I was slightly disappointed that the rally at the state capitol ended before 1:30 when it was supposed to continue for another half-hour.

Cross-Posted from No Special Favors.

Democratic Values

A man asked me at the region 6 meeting on Saturday what I thought Democratic values are. I didn’t give him a very good answer, but I keep thinking about the question and would like to attempt a better one–because it is something I’ve thought about, because it’s the reason I’m working with the party.

It’s pretty obvious who the Republicans represent: the rich and the religious right. The rest of us are irrelevant to them. In fact, I think they’d be pretty happy if we just all fell off the edge of the flat Earth some of them still believe in.

That leaves the rest of us two options: the Democratic Party or a third party. Since our system is structured to make it difficult for a third party, that leaves us with the current two. Since I’m clearly not part of the GOP demographic, the Democrats seemed like my best option. But I can’t say the party was exactly representing the values I wanted it to. So here’s what I think Democratic Party values should be:

Equality: Of opportunity, in education, to healthcare, to be heard, to justice.

Fairness: In the application of the law, in access to services, in the level of reward for work and creativity.

Liberty: Civil liberties, the rule of law, the sorts of legal protections the Constitution and the Bill of Rights give us.

Democracy: The rule of the people, responsiveness of elected officials to their constituents; regulation of corporations and other special-interest groups that tend to damage our health, liberty, and environment.

There are probably others. But these are some of the big ones I’d like to see the Democratic Party stand for. I apologize to the questioner in Oakland, and hope someday I can tell him this.

More than that, I hope someday the party I work for will stand for all of this and more.  

Technical Difficulties Open Thread

Once again, SoapBlox is having some problems.  I’ve just returned home from a trip to India, and I’m not sure if my jet-lagged brain is up to the task of fully dealing with the situation.  I honestly don’t know whether the long-term future of the site will be with SoapBlox or whether it will head in other directions.  I can only promise that in the coming days I will do my best to figure out a plan to provide some sort of stability.

That being said, there was some stuff going on today that is worth a mention.

• During our extended outage, D-Day wrote a post on his blog about the Yacht Party’s attempts (so far successful) to block the bills that would allow the state to obtain the full stimulus payments.

• Meg Whitman is going all out against props 1A-1C on the special election, the bills to implement the month-old budget “deal” that is already under water.  The so-called moderate’s opinion piece in the Bee is pretty much Yacht Party orthodoxy respun.  Taxes are always evil, yada, yada. Whitman is positioning to the right of Abel Maldanado, Arnold Schwarzenegger, heck, even Mike Villines.  That I might end up voting the same way as her on the spending cap, does nothing to diminish the fact that she is now attempting to win the CA GOP nomination by running for Governor of Alabama.  She’ll need to spend more than $150 million if this is her plan.

• Former Sen. Pres. Pro Tem. Don Perata testified in the case of the carjacking of his pimped-out 22 inch rimmed Dodge Charger.

Palo Alto joins San Francisco in banning plastic bags from grocery stores. Chemical companies plan on suing the city.

• Asm. Diane Harkey’s (R-Dana Point) husband is being sued for fraud involving real estate lending.  The scandal threatens Harkey, as she has a considerable financial stake in the company.