I remember this refrain over and over again from everyone who demanded that California move up its Presidential primary to February 5.  The most populous state should have a say in the nomination, everyone said.  The candidates will have to start talking about “California issues,” they said.

Chris Bowers has a post showing the number of public appearances made by all of the Presidential candidates thus far this year.

Iowa: 1,240
New Hampshire: 571
South Carolina: 268
California: 238
D.C.: 174
Florida: 146
Nevada: 111
New York: 103
Texas: 93
Illinois: 73
Michigan: 55
Virginia: 38
Georgia: 37
Pennsylvania: 37
Massachusetts: 36

There have been more trips to Iowa and New Hampshire than to every other state and territory combined.  And I wish Courage Campaign was still doing their ATM Watch, because they would clearly see, as Bowers mentions…

…looking at upcoming events in California, one can see that over 60% of all scheduled appearances in the state are fundraisers, and virtually every non-fundraiser campaign appearance in the state is accompanied with a fundraiser.

over…

When California moved up their primary, I was adamant in saying that this move would do nothing but enhance the power of Iowa and New Hampshire.  And that’s exactly what’s happening.  By putting this giant electoral prize on February 5, close to the early states, you make it imperative for candidates to be in front early to have any chance to win the nomination.  Any strategy to tread water until Super Tuesday will fail, and by the looks of the appearance schedule all of the candidates know it.

Furthermore, this June primary with no Presidential race and no statewide candidates on the ballot will almost surely have a very low turnout, and Republican dirty tricksters are falling all over each other to take advantage of that, with the electoral college split and other nefarious initiatives.  Was it worth it?  Did everyone get what they wanted?

The only way to change the primary system is to actually change the system, with a complete overhaul.  Change the way California practiced it was pointless, debilitating to democracy (a nine-month general election campaign will not be beneficial to anyone), and dangerous for the future of the state if some of those pernicious ballot measures squeak by.

On Monday, the three-judge panel with the power to cap California’s prison population will meet for an organizational meeting.  While the prison healthcare system is already in receivership, the panel might want to take into account these grim statistics about the state of health, and how the overcrowding issue impacts everything else in prison life.

As many as one in six deaths of California prison inmates last year might have been preventable, according to a study of medical care in 32 state lockups that will be used to help rebuild the troubled system.

One inmate, who reported extreme chest pains in the middle of the night, died of a heart ailment after waiting eight hours to see a doctor.

Another who complained for days of severe abdominal pain died of acute pancreatitis after medical staff did not believe his pleas were credible.

A third died after a two-year delay in diagnosis of his testicular cancer.

And an asthma patient died after failing to receive steroid medication for two days following transfer from a county jail.

In fact, ASTHMA was the ailment most likely to cause a preventable death.  Not a shiv in the shower, not a rumble in the exercise yard.  Asthma.  This is straight out of the 19th century.

Between delays in diagnosis, failure to treat symptoms properly, and lack of access to doctors, the common thread here is that there aren’t enough doctors, aren’t enough facilities, and aren’t enough overseers to adequately care for inmates.  It comes directly out of the overcrowding that is plaguing everything in the corrections process. 

Dr. Stuart Bussey, president of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, which represents prison doctors, said: “We feel that the doctors in [the prisons] have been working in a battlefield situation. They do not have the tools to practice good medicine. The system needs work.”

The cost of reorganizing the healthcare system will be enormous and take over a decade.  It’d be a lot easier if sentencing reform allowed the jails to have a manageable population, but leadership was not forthcoming in this session.  This is the result.

Washington (Pony Express Press): As the War between North and South rages on, President Arnold Schwarzenegger has again announced his intention to veto a bill that would emancipate the slaves throughout the American territories, based on the fact that the practice of slavery has been ratified in the states of the Confederacy in the past.

“It would be wrong for the people, and by people I mean wealthy landowners, to vote for something and for me to then overturn it,” Schwarzenegger said. “So they can send this bill down as many times as they want, I won’t do it.”

This is the second year in a row that President Schwarzenegger has vetoed the emancipation bill from the Congress, refusing to offer a proclamation of his own.  The bill would set free millions of colored Americans from the bonds of slavery.  Some have suggested that the people actually voted for the legislators who drafted the bill, but the President, in the midst of shuttling back and forth to Gettysburg for updates on the fighting, dismissed this.

The situation was made all the more intriguing by the fact that the President’s chief of staff is currently a slave.  Abolitionist activists have called on the chief of staff to resign.

on the flip…

OK, the metaphor is getting tired, but you get the idea.  But really, gay activists have called on Susan Kennedy to resign.

GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER said today, that he will veto the bill legalizing same-gender civil marriage because 61% percent of California voters favored Proposition 22 in March 2000. Ms. Kennedy agreed with the Governor’s decision using Prop 22 (which only bars California from recognizing same-sex marriages performed outside California), when he used the same excuse to veto the bill in 2005. He says he will never sign this bill. In 1948, if California voters had been allowed to vote on inter-racial marriage when the California Supreme Court struck down the anti-miscegenation law and found in favor of inter-racial marriage, over 72% of the voters would have voted against it.

Even though I, a plaintiff, am going to the California Supreme Court next year, (and the Governor has said he will “abide” by the CA Supreme Court’s decision), I am not only extremely disappointed in the Governor’s lack of courage, but am especially disappointed in Susan Kennedy, his chief of staff, whose “same gender wedding” I attended in Hawaii several years ago.

Since I attended Susan’s wedding, why is she so against attending mine? Both Arnold and Susan know that it is unconstitutional for the majority to deny a minority equal protection under the law. To hide behind that [Prop 22] as an excuse, is cowardly and unforgivable, for both the Governor and especially for Ms. Kennedy, a lesbian. Rather then backing the Governor’s decision with unacceptable excuses, I ask that Ms. Kennedy resign as Chief of Staff. If not, shame on you Susan, to side against your community, and deny civil marriage to your friends.

I wonder if she’ll respond.

Jerry Brown’s effort to sue automakers for the production greenhouse gas emissions through their vehicles, a holdover from Bill Lockyer’s tenure, has been thrown out of court.

In its lawsuit filed last year, California blamed the auto industry for millions of dollars it expects to spend on repairing damage from global-warming induced floods and other natural disasters.

But District Judge Martin Jenkins in San Francisco handed California Attorney General Jerry Brown’s environmental crusade a stinging rebuke when he ruled that it impossible to determine to what extent automakers are responsible for global-warming damages in California. Many culprits, including other industries and even natural sources, are responsible for emitting carbon dioxide.

“The court is left without guidance in determining what is an unreasonable contribution to the sum of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, or in determining who should bear the costs associated with global climate change that admittedly result from multiple sources around the globe,” Jenkins write.

The judge also ruled that keeping the lawsuit alive would threaten the country’s foreign policy position.

I didn’t know that judges were responsible for managing foreign policy decisions, but Jenkins also did say that it’s the responsibility of lawmakers and not the courts to “determine how responsible automakers are for global warming problems.”  To that end, another lawsuit that would allow lawmakers to do just that, to hold automakers responsible by mandating a curtailing of the greenhouse gas emissions their vehicles spew, has won a major victory (over):

A federal judge in Vermont gave the first legal endorsement yesterday to rules in California, being copied in 13 other states, that intend to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by automobiles and light trucks.

Ruling in a lawsuit against Vermont’s standards on those heat-trapping gases, the judge, William K. Sessions III, rejected a variety of challenges from auto manufacturers, including their contention that the states were usurping federal authority.

The ruling follows a decision by the United States Supreme Court in April that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide as air pollutants. The ruling in Vermont explicitly endorses the idea that California has the right to set its own regulations on the gases, and that other states, like Vermont, have the right to follow its lead.

The Vermont ruling merely follows the Supreme Court precedent, albeit to devastating effect.  The California case is pending, but it would be hard to see how the ruling could be any different.  Now it’s time for the EPA to allow the waiver that would enable the tailpipe emissions law to go into effect.  With even the White House Science Adviser acknowledging the man-made causes of global warming, it’s beyond time for the Cheney-Bush Administration to give states back the ability to manage their own air quality standards and contribution to climate change.  This lawsuit adds to the pressure on the EPA.

As a side note, last week Jerry Brown reached a settlement with Conoco-Phillips that would require the company to spend $10 million to offset the emissions created by their East Bay refinery expansion.

Brown told a news conference that the accord is believed to be the first time an oil refinery in the country has agreed to mitigate increased carbon emissions from an expansion project.

Brown is definitely using every option at his disposal in this fight.

There will be no sentencing and parole reform coming out of Sacramento this year.  Do you know what that means?  It means that this man will be in our state’s corrections system for the next 12-20 years because military doctors addicted him to opiates.

Sargent Binkley is a high school classmate of ours and West Point graduate who is currently facing twenty-odd years in prison for robbing a Walgreens under California’s minimum sentencing laws. He used a gun (unloaded) and robbed the drugstores of only Percocet – no money, harming nobody.

Here’s the kicker — he was addicted to the opiates after smashing his hip while serving abroad in the Army — the military medical system kept misdiagnosing him, and feeding him more of the painkillers. Add in some serious PTSD (he guarded mass graves in Bosnia from desecration at one point) and he spiraled down.

Sargent turned himself in, has been in a rehab program in county jail for over a year and a half while he awaits sentencing, and by all accounts is doing well. The Santa Clara DA wants to chuck the book at him, and he’ll be gone.

Because the leadership in Sacramento – Republicans and Democrats – have no sense of how to legitimately deal with the crisis in our jails, and would rather look like tough guys and gals while putting sick people in prison.  Sargent Binkley is a sick man.  He needs treatment and aid from a nation which has abandoned him.  Because of our mandatory minimum sentencing law, an angry DA is going to make him spend the next 20 years in a crowded cell.

over..

Sargent was sent to Bosnia after his graduation, where he served as a peacekeeper by guarding the mass graves of genocide victims. From there he was sent to Central America, where he participated in drug interdiction operations. At one point he was ordered to open fire on a truck that contained a civilian teenage boy, an act that haunts him to this day. While on duty in Honduras, he fractured his pelvis and dislocated a hip. This injury was consistently misdiagnosed by Army physicians over the next several years, resulting in chronic pain and an addiction to prescription painkillers.

This is a textbook example of where we are today in Sacramento.  There’s a complete failure of seeing beyond narrow political gamesmanship rather than stepping up to solve problems.  Sentencing commissions have worked all over the country.  They have succeeded in returning corrections systems to its mission, of rehabilitation and treatment.  The current system threatens public safety and needlessly puts sick people behind bars.  If you want to know why nothing gets done in Sacramento, look no further.

It’s beyond obvious that we’re going to have a federal takeover of our prison system.  Schwarzenegger tried to prevent any cap on the population but that was blocked on Tuesday.  The three-judge panel is going to have to take it away from these mewling children who can’t look past their next election to actually do their jobs.

P.S. THE PHARMACIST SARGENT BINKLEY ROBBED is on the record supporting him.  You can support him too.  And one way is to demand that the politicians we elect actually move the state forward instead of this ugly slow motion.  If not, we’ll get new politicians.