All posts by David Dayen

Uncategorized

California Initiative Update

I just saw the first ad for Yes on 93 on cable; you can view it here.  The No on 93 folks also have a couple ads cut; they’re available here.

Unfortunately, it’s going to be very hard for both sides to get their message out.  Not only are we going to start seeing at least some resources from the Presidential candidates at some point, but the tribal gaming initiatives are due to swamp every other ballot measure and take all of the oxygen out of the room.  I’m already sick of their ads.

On Friday, the Pechanga Band of Temecula, one of the big four tribes who stand to gain from passage of Propositions 94 to 97 and 17,000 new slot machines, contributed $30.8 million in support of these propositions. This brings the total to the yes on 94-97 campaign to $68 million dollars, dwarfing not only the amount raised by opponents who seek to overturn the legislature’s approval of the slot machine compacts. But all contributions made on the other ballot measures being considered February 5, 2008-including term limits.  

This may be only the beginning of money spent, almost exclusively by the tribes on the yes side.

The second largest amount of money on ballot propositions in this cycle is on the “no” side of the Prop 94-97 gambling propositions, and most of it also comes from tribes-those who are not part of the arrangement with the four tribes. At least $11.5 million of the opposition funding comes from “Tribes for Fair Play” out of what appears to be $28 million raised in opposition. There is substantial money- millions each from race tracks and labor that make up the balance. A significant portion of the money raised by opponents was spent on qualifying the four referenda for the ballot.

Russo moved the number down to $54.5 million after further study.  But that’s still at least five times of what any other proposition has.

So it’s unclear who this helps, but to the extent that people are thinking about the ballot initiatives at the polls, it won’t be Props. 92 or 93, it seems.

Uncategorized

SD-19: Dantona Drops Out

10 Comments

In what I can only describe as a shocking development, Jim Dantona, the moderate Democrat looking to notch a pickup in the Thousand Oaks/Simi Valley/Santa Barbara Senate seat held currently by Tom McClintock, has dropped out of the race, clearing the field for Hannah Beth-Jackson.  This will allow Jackson to go up against Tony Strickland, in all likelihood, in this Senate seat which is rapidly becoming a bluer district.  Here’s his statement:

“Our polling shows I could defeat Strickland by as much as 10% and I would certainly do well against Jackson here in east Ventura County where polling indicates she is a relative unknown.  But my intention was never to run against a fellow Democrat for this seat.  I was running to bring leadership to this district that represented the will of the people, instead of the continual fringes of partisanship.”

 

“Even with solid polling numbers, Jackson and I would have to spend a fortune against each other and that was never my intention. Tony has already put together a healthy war chest with no primary battle. The reality is that if we fight each other, we may as well hand him the Senate.  I am a team player and I wish Hannah Beth only best in her race.”  

“As for me, business is very good and I am sure to be back and forth between Sacramento, Washington D.C. and Simi Valley.  I am in negotiations with several companies in Italy and I’ve been asked to get involved in the Presidential elections, which I am very much looking forward to.” (Dantona previously consulted for Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter)

 

“I will continue to work for the causes I believe in and I will always reach across the political aisle to garner support for our community.”

I did not see this one coming, but I wish Hannah-Beth Jackson great luck in turning this seat blue and getting us closer to a 2/3 majority in the Senate.  Hopefully Dantona will assist in that effort.  And I’m excited that we’ll get a real test to see just how this district is trending.

Budget, education, Health Care

Arnold’s State of the Wankery Address

1 Comment

Tomorrow, Arnold Schwarzenegger, reminded that he’s the governor of California and not the governor of Time and Newsweek, will walk up to a dais in Sacramento and claim that now, four years after he was elected to enact reform, the time has come to reform the budget process.  But it’s a curious use of the term “reform,” since it will be an attempt to resurrect a policy that was soundly defeated by voters in 2005.

Heading into a week in which he’s expected to deliver grim news about the state’s fiscal health, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is also preparing to propose changes to the budgeting process.

The Republican governor will offer a “budget reform” plan when he outlines his goals in his State of the State address Tuesday. Such a proposal, if successful, would likely give the executive office more authority in making cuts even after the Legislature has passed an annual spending plan.

First of all, California already gives the governor the ability, through the line-item veto, to make plenty of spending cuts.  Schwarzenegger oughta know, he used it to terminate mentally ill homeless people from getting treatment.  What Arnold really wants to do is something that Pete Wilson was denied as far back as 1992.  He wants to be able to subvert the will of the voters through Prop. 98 (so much for “let the people decide”) and eliminate spending baselines for education, health care, and other government services.  This is nothing but a wank, an effort to eliminate the revenue side of the budget equation and solely solve a $14 billion dollar problem with deep spending cuts.  He’s also trying to essentially defund education right at the beginning of the already-D.O.A. “Year of Education”.

What this will also do is shield Schwarzenegger’s corporate buddies, who finance all of his travel, from the possibility of actually having to pay their fair share for access to the California market.

Considering that this is the third time Schwarzenegger has sought the ability to defund education and health care, I don’t know how you can see his legacy as anything but that.  This has been the very public agenda from day one.  Everything else is window dressing.  Let’s hope the Legislature understands that, even if the media doesn’t.

Uncategorized

California Matters, Etc.

14 Comments

First of all, Satan is an off-rhyme, at best, and really not a rhyme at all.

Second, why are Biden and Dodd dropping out when California is SO important and a whole month away?

Third, watch those tracking polls in California over the next week.  Will they differ by even a point from the national numbers?  Signs point to no.  That would kind of be the key.  A bunch of candidates spending money in a primary state when it grows closer is the lamest justification you could ever make for moving up the primary.  It’s Mr. Magoo-like in its myopia.  “Californians actually showed up for the primary, proving it was a good idea to have the primary!”

Fourth, you’d think someone looking dead in the face at lame-duck status in 33 days would have better things to do than care what some dude on the Internets has to say.

…I should also mention that we had fantastic turnout for our Calitics/Drinking Liberally caucus watch party in Santa Monica last night.  Well over 100 people, perhaps as much as 150, including Congressional candidate Hoyt Hilsman, LA County Democratic Party chief Eric Bauman, your favorite bloggers and more.  California Democrats are extremely excited and energized by this campaign season.  That’s completely besides the point of whether or not it was a good idea to create a Trojan-horse June primary, etc.  And telling me about all the wonderful events happening doesn’t change that.

Antonio Villaraigosa, by the way, traveled from Iowa to New Hampshire today.  Apparently Los Angeles can run itself.

Environment

CA v. EPA

Today the state of California joined with 15 others to sue the federal government over the EPA’s decision to deny the granting of a waiver to the state to regulate their own greenhouse gas emissions under Fran Pavley’s 2004 tailpipe law.  The odds are absolutely in favor of California winning this lawsuit.  Never since the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 has the EPA ever denied such a waiver, and the legal justifications are extremely cloudy.  However, the government has succeeded in delaying implementation, which is really all they’ve set out to do.  So expect this to be a long and drawn-out fight that will probably not be resolved until after the choosing of a new President in November.

Environment

Happy New Year, But Take A Long Look And Savor Your Soon-To-Be-Altered Landscape

1 Comment

Not to be completely depressing on New Year’s Eve, but this article about the impact of climate change on the California landscape is a must-read.

Where celebrities, surfers and wannabes mingle on Malibu’s world-famous beaches, there may be only sea walls defending fading mansions from the encroaching Pacific. In Northern California, tourists could have to drive farther north or to the cool edge of the Pacific to find what is left of the region’s signature wine country.

Abandoned ski lifts might dangle above snowless trails more suitable for mountain biking even during much of the winter. In the deserts, Joshua trees that once extended their tangled, shaggy arms into the sky by the thousands may have all but disappeared.

“We need to be attentive to the fact that changes are going to occur, whether it’s sea level rising or increased temperatures, droughts and potentially increased fires,” said Lisa Sloan, a scientist who directs the Climate Change and Impacts Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “These things are going to be happening.”

We could be talking about the end of ski season as we know it (at least with real snow), less rainfall in the south and the attendant issues with water supplies and wildfires, the potential for 10-year drought cycles, a wiping out of the Joshua trees that line the high desert, the death of both giant sequoias and untold amounts of marine life, and resource skirmishes, particularly between farmers in the Central Valley and the more populous cities.

Oh yeah, and rising sea levels of up to 20 feet.

Will the rising sea swamp the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the nation’s busiest harbor complex, turning them into a series of saltwater lakes? Will funky Ocean Beach, an island of liberalism in conservative San Diego County, become, literally, its own island […]

The changing sea will present trouble for much of the state’s land-dwelling population, too. A sea level rise of 3 to 6 feet would inundate the airports in San Francisco and Oakland. Many of the state’s beaches would shrink.

“If you raise sea level by a foot, you push a cliff back 100 feet,” said Jeff Severinghaus, professor of geosciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. “There will be a lot of houses that will fall into the ocean.”

We can pass laws and write regulations and pat ourselves on the back, and we can encourage new technologies that may reduce carbon output, but we’d better also prepare for the inevitability of the changes the world’s population has already put into motion.  They’re particularly acute in this state.

Now that you’re completely depressed, happy new year!

Health Care, Prisons

There’s a Fungus Among Us

2 Comments

Incredibly, this story has only been in the New York Times and not one state paper (UPDATE: The SacBee apparently had something on this back in September; there are some choice quotes in it from the Governor and other lawmakers, Democrats too, who basically have the attitude “screw the prisoners, we’re building!”  Um, isn’t there a little bit of the Constitution which might not be totally trashed yet about “cruel and unusual punishment”?).  Apparently hundreds of inmates and employees at Pleasant Valley Prison in Coalinga have taken ill, and many are dying, from a fungal infection called “valley fever”:

At least a dozen inmates here in Central California have died from the disease, which is on the rise in other Western states, including Arizona, where the health department declared an epidemic after more than 5,500 cases were reported in 2006, including 33 deaths […]

In most cases, the infection starts in the lungs and is usually handled by the body without permanent damage. But serious complications can arise, including meningitis; and, at Pleasant Valley, the scope of the outbreak has left some inmates permanently disabled, confined to wheelchairs and interned in expensive long-term hospital stays.

About 80 prison employees have also contracted the fever, Pleasant Valley officials say, including a corrections officer who died of the disease in 2005.

The infection is caused by spores that are located in the soil, and any disturbance kicks them up into the air where they are inhaled.  It does not appear that the valley fever outbreak is a result of prison overcrowding, though overdevelopment of the surrounding area, particularly the building of a new hospital, appears to have played a role.  But it does indicate the little pitfalls of building our way out of this crisis.

Last fall, heeding advice from local health officials and a federal receiver charged with improving the state’s prison medical care, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation delayed plans to add 600 new beds out of concern that the construction might stir up more spores […]

The delayed expansion here was part of a $7.9 billion plan signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last summer to relieve overcrowding in the state’s prisons. Pleasant Valley was built in 1994 to house 2,000 inmates.

Pleasant Valley was built at the height of the “prison boom,” and though valley fever has been known to the area for eons, nobody stopped to wonder whether a prison with lots of dirt floors outside in an area where windy conditions blow fungal infections hither and thither would present a health risk.  That’s because communities like this need prisons to survive economically.

(In the case of Coalinga, the biggest penned-in population are cows, actually.  You see thousands of herds of cattle as you go up the I-5.  I can’t help but think that their waste product contributes to this)

Uncategorized

Iowa Caucus Night With Calitics and Drinking Liberally in Santa Monica

5 Comments

(bumped – come join us tomorrow night! – promoted by David Dayen)

OK, so next week is going to be of minor importance if you care about things like who the next leader of the free world is going to be.  So Calitics is going to be joining with Drinking Liberally and our treasure trove of national bloggers here in Southern California to watch the Iowa caucus returns in the only place they should be watched; a bar with a big-screen TV.  Here are the details:

Thursday, Jan. 3

Nocturnal Bar

2101 Lincoln Boulevard (@ Grant)

Santa Monica, CA 90404

6pm-?

We’re also going to be joined by Bernie Horn, policy director at the Center for Policy Alternatives and author of Framing the Future: How Progressive Values Can Win Elections and Influence People.

This should be a lot of fun.  It’s going to be the place to be for caucus night.  Come by and say hello!

Uncategorized

Let’s See ‘Em

2 Comments

We’ll have to hold the EPA to their word:

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday signaled it is prepared to comply with a congressional request for all documents – including communications with the White House – concerning its decision to block California from imposing limits on greenhouse gases.

The EPA’s general counsel directed agency employees in a memo to preserve and produce all documents related to the decision including any opposing views and communications between senior EPA officials and the White House, including Vice President Dick Cheney’s office.

The documents should include “any records presenting options, recommendations, pros and cons, legal issues or risks, (or) political implications,” said the all-hands memo from EPA General Counsel Roger Martella Jr.

They’re saying that now, of course, but David Addington hasn’t gotten his hands on the memo to use his red pen.

The presiding committee in the Congress on this one is Henry Waxman’s House Oversight Committee.

Happy New Year, Fourthbranch.  We got you Henry Waxman.

Uncategorized

What Good Democratic Consultants Do

2 Comments

Bill Carrick and Kam Kuwata are the anti-Chris Lehane.

The Writers Guild of America has retained veteran Democratic political consultants Bill Carrick and Kam Kuwata to provide assistance on the strategic and PR fronts of the 8-week-old strike.

“We both have friends in the WGA,” Kuwata told Daily Variety. “And we have landed a lot of times on the sides that are pro-labor.”

The duo came aboard earlier this month at the guild’s behest in the wake of the Dec. 7 collapse of negotiations between the WGA and the AMPTP, which insisted that the guild remove half a dozen proposals from the table as a condition of continuing to bargain. The WGA refused, and no new talks have been scheduled, while the Directors Guild of America is widely expected to set a start date for negotiations on its contract within the next week.

Kuwata said he and Carrick will work for the WGA for as long as needed.

Carrick ran the Angelides campaign and Kuwata has worked a lot with DiFi in the past.  But at least that they understand that Democrats stand with workers, unlike Chris Lehane.  I’d rather reject that corporate money and be on the side of those who just want their fair share.