(Here’s a Word doc of the Certificate. You can fax a PDF with a free trial at fax1.com.

Apparently fax1.com requires a non-free email service. If you want to send a free fax and you only have Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, use Fax Zero. – promoted by David Dayen)

This will be faxed to Sen. Ackerman’s office today:

CERTIFICATE OF MERIT

The National Coalition of Yacht Owners Who Hate The Homeless (NCYOWHTH) proudly bestows this award upon State Senate Minority Leader Dick Ackerman (R-Irvine), who has the courage and foresight to be a yachting enthusiast and not a mentally ill homeless person, and is therefore eligible for a major tax break instead of having his social services eliminated.  As an organization of yachters who will also benefit from the same tax cut to the tune of $45 million dollars, coincidentally almost the same amount that would fund the rehabilitation program for mentally ill homeless people, we applaud this setting of the real priorities for our state.  Sen. Ackerman has been a leader in the twin fields of yachting and not being homeless for many years, and we are pleased to award this certificate today.  We ask you to be the keynote speaker at The National Coalition of Yacht Owners Who Hate The Homeless clam bake in Tustin later this year.  After all, there wouldn’t be an organization this strong without you.

Sincerely,
David Dayen
Executive Director, The National Coalition of Yacht Owners Who Hate The Homeless

You can send this too:
Capitol Office fax: (916) 445-9754
District Office fax: (714) 573-1859

Here’s some trivia about State Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman which may shed some light on the late round of budget cuts for social services.  No, Ackerman’s not a mentally ill homeless person, but he is a yacht owner.

Several lawmakers at the center of the budget dispute did not return phone calls or could not be reached. They included Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine — a yacht owner who pushed to ease the tax burden on owners of yachts, planes and RVs.

An Ackerman spokesman said the senator was unavailable.

In other news, it’s 79 degrees and excellent sailing weather in Irvine!

Here’s a little more on this supposedly unnecessary mental health program, cleaved for the benefit of yachting aficianados everywhere:

It has served 13,000 people since November 1999. There are about 4,700 participants today. Among those enrolled as of January, there were 81% fewer days of incarceration, 65% fewer days of psychiatric hospitalization and 76% fewer days of homelessness compared with their pre-enrollment days.

Rusty Selix, executive director of the California Council of Community Mental Health Agencies — like Steinberg, a Proposition 63 coauthor — said the cost of incarceration can be six times higher than the cost of enrolling someone in the mental health program.

“Rehabilitation costs money. But it’s worth it,” said Adrienne Sheff, director of adult services at the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center in Van Nuys. Los Angeles County receives nearly a third of the state funds through AB 2034 and serves 1,700 people.

This program was designed to lessen the cost of those homeless who eat up emergency services – like the guy who showed up at San Diego ERs 87 times in a calendar year.  Ultimately this move, done purely to satisfy short-sighted bean-counters, will end up costing the state far more.  But that burden will be placed on municipalities and local governments, not the state coffers.  Making the bean-counters – and yacht owners like Dick Ackerman – very, very happy.

OK, time for a little role-play.  You’re the post-partisan governor of a large state.  The state budget comes into your hands with cuts almost to the bone, but you promised an additional $700 million and just don’t know what to do.  Who’s going to get the shaft?

Now ask yourself this…

Who doesn’t vote?

Give me a sec…

I know!  Mentally ill homeless people!

The Governor used his line item veto to cut the entire funding nearly $55 million for the AB 2034 housing program that serves over 4,700 adults with severe mental health needs, all of whom were homeless and frequently hospitalized or incarcerated before getting into the program. The Governor said in his veto message deleting the funding that:

“…while I support the goals of the program, this reduction is necessary to limit program expansions and to help bring ongoing expenditures in line with existing resources. To the extent counties find this program beneficial and cost-effective, it can be restructured to meet the needs of each county’s homeless population using other county funding sources, such as federal funds, realignment funds, or Proposition 63 funds. I am reducing Schedule (6) to eliminate the $12,000,000 legislative augmentation for the 5 percent rate restoration for mental health managed care. This technical veto is consistent with the legislative action taken in [Budget] Item 4440-103-0001.”

Mental health advocates say that the immediate effect of the funding cut by the Governor could result in thousands of those people in the program being forced back on the streets at risk of hospitalization and incarceration… The actual outcome of these programs depend on response of local mental health agencies and the Department of Mental Health – but advocates say the cut seeks to supplant funding from the landmark Proposition 63 Mental Health Services Act – funding that was meant they say only for new community based programs – and specifically not meant to fund existing programs.

This is a bait and switch we’ve seen before by budgetary bean counters.  Dedicated funding that’s supposed to go ON TOP of budget outlays ends up being the only funding source.  So the will of the voters is completely overturned; instead of supplementary mental health funding, Prop. 63 becomes the sole funding.

There were some other cuts, including $6.3 million that would have gone toward the California Discount Prescription Drug Program.  But the mentally ill homeless cuts were the most drastic.  And it once again shows that those with the softest voice end up getting hit the hardest.

UPDATE: State Senator Darrell Steinberg, who authored AB 2034, the bill whose funding was eliminated by the Governor’s budget cut, is shrill.

“The program provides over 4,500 homeless Californians living with mental illness with permanent housing, where they can regularly receive medical and psychiatric treatment and job counseling. The program has been wildly successful according to the Department of Mental Health, reducing the number of days spent homeless by 67 percent, increasing the number of days working full-time by 65 percent, and reducing the number of days incarcerated by 72 percent.

“This is a program that works, that saves the state money in incarceration costs and that humanely treats a population that usually gets short shrift in Sacramento,” Steinberg said. “I’m extremely disappointed that the Governor used his veto power in a way that punishes the least among us.”

“Steinberg noted that the Governor chose to keep in the budget a $45 million tax break for yacht, private plane and recreational vehicle owners. Under the tax plan requested by Republican lawmakers, luxury vehicle owners can avoid paying sales taxes on purchases if they keep the vehicles out of California for just 90 days after purchase. According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, opening the loophole costs Californians $45 million a year.

“That’s the state of California’s budget: $45 million in tax relief for yacht owners will stay while $55 million to save thousands of homeless mentally ill is being sacrificed,” Steinberg said. “It’s wrong morally. It’s wrong economically.”

The AP has a story up about Governor Schwarzenegger’s reaction to the right-wing dirty tricks proposal to steal the Presidency in 2008.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave a chilly reception Thursday to a GOP-backed plan to change the way California awards electoral votes in presidential elections – a proposal critics say could tilt the outcome in favor of Republicans.

“In principle, I don’t like to change the rules in the middle of the game,” the Republican governor told reporters.

OK, starts good, not as hard-hitting as you would want but…

Schwarzenegger added he wasn’t versed in details of the ballot proposal and stressed he wasn’t taking a definitive position.

Ah, the last bastion of a political scoundrel.  “I haven’t read it.”

But his uneasy response is likely to make it harder for supporters to build momentum and could chill fundraising.

I doubt that, considering that far-right Republicans don’t even much like the Governor anymore.

The proposed ballot initiative is being pushed by Thomas Hiltachk, a lawyer in a Sacramento firm that represents the state Republican Party.

Um, you couldn’t have mentioned that he was Schwarzengger’s personal lawyer?  Would that have killed you?

UPDATE: res ipsa loquitur nails it:

“In principle, I don’t like to change the rules in the middle of the game,” the Republican governor told reporters…

Uh, Arnold? How did you get to the governor’s mansion?

over…

The other big election story is that the governorappeared with Pete Wilson and Gray Davis to announce their intention to push for a change in redistricting laws.

Governor Schwarzenegger joined with two former governors today in Los Angeles to call for a new way to carve up political district boundaries.

Schwarzenegger appeared at a news conference with former Republican Governor Wilson and former Democratic Governor Davis.

Schwarzenegger said the current system does little to encourage competition. The governor said in the past three election cycles, only 4 of the 459 congressional and legislative seats changed party hands in California.

Schwarzenegger seeks a ballot proposal that would have an independent commission do the reapportionment, rather than the legislature. The proposal is similar to one that was unsuccessful on the 2005 ballot.

He wants the proposal on the February 2008 ballot.  If this would take effect immediately, I don’t know how anyone could support changing the way districts are drawn with 8 year-old Census data.  But “I haven’t read it”!

This is part of a new strategy of aggressiveness coming out of the Governor’s office, to show the Legislature who’s boss, I guess.  Obviously the Governor is holding out endorsement of the term limits measure as a chip to get redistrcting done.  And he’s vowing not to sign any health care proposal that doesn’t have his thumbprints all over it.

What remains to be seen is whether or not post-partisanship has any coalition-building left in it.  The Governor came out of the budget fight relatively unscathed, and has really only taken a popularity hit this year when the public noticed his lack of a true commitment to fighting global warming.  What he ends up blue-penciling out of the budget might cause a reaction as well.  And the reaction to his middling response on the dirty tricks issue may hurt him.  A lot of questions leading into crunch time for the legislative process.

Without a health care plan of his own that any legislator would back, Arnold Schwarzenegger is left to mold the Democratic leadership plan in his image.  He came out strong yesterday in the opening salvo in the negotiating process:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took a firm stand Wednesday against the Democratic healthcare proposal moving through the Legislature, saying for the first time that he would not support an expansion of medical insurance if it were financed solely by new requirements on employers.

The Democratic proposal would require employers to spend at least the equivalent of 7.5% of their payroll on their workers’ health. The governor insisted that the plan also must require all Californians to have insurance, an idea at the core of his January proposal.

Democrats omitted that concept, believing that many people would be unable to afford the premiums.

Schwarzenegger’s program would have given employers the option of providing insurance or paying into a state fund that would offer it to uninsured workers and those who couldn’t afford individual policies. It also would have spread the responsibility of paying for expanded healthcare to doctors and hospitals, an idea that was rejected by Democrats as politically infeasible.

Schwarzenegger essentially wants MassCare, with its individual mandate, along with a buy-in from doctors and hospitals along with individuals and employers.  This is what he calls a fee but is probably a tax, which means Republicans would have to get involved because it would require a 2/3 vote.  But that doesn’t matter; he’d rather have no health reform at all than one without an individual mandate:

Schwarzenegger has said repeatedly that all parts of society — including healthcare providers, individuals and businesses — must make sacrifices if all Californians are to be insured. Nearly 5 million residents lack coverage at any given time. The Democratic proposal would cover 69% of them. Schwarzenegger’s comments were even more pointed earlier in the day, when he told the Sacramento Bee editorial board that he would veto a bill that failed to spread the costs around.

“If anyone over there thinks that I will sign a bill that . . . has only employer mandate, they shouldn’t,” he said, according to an account posted on the newspaper’s website.

“I won’t sign it. It won’t happen,” he said.

My favorite part of the article is the part where Schwarzenegger just ignores reality.

The idea of scrapping private insurance altogether and enacting a state-run program — an idea championed by Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) in the Legislature and Michael Moore in his film “SiCKO” — has gained support: The poll found that 36% of Californians now prefer this approach, up from 24% nine months ago.

Schwarzenegger, however, reiterated his opposition Wednesday.

“It’s very clear people don’t like government running their healthcare system,” he said.

Yes, so clear that it’s the most popular proposal before the people.

This is bluster from an action hero, and I’m not sure it should be taken seriously by Don Perata and Fabian Nuñez.  Schwarzenegger wants a ready-made market for the insurance industry, and his plan had no floor on coverage and no ceiling on costs.  That individual mandate starts to look like a gun barrel under those circumstances.  And I’d rather see nothing enacted than something that holds up California’s indigent and forces them to pay through the nose. 

The guaranteed issue part of his proposal, whereby nobody could be denied insurance, should be retained.  As we move toward an eventual not-for-profit system, setting up some public framework, as the new AB8 is rumored to strengthen, is crucial.  And clearly, the Governor shouldn’t be saying a word about healthcare until he fights the callous Bush Administration proposal to deny coverage to children by tightening S-CHIP eligibility.

UPDATE: The California Budget Project released a report detailing what California families could actually afford for health care, and according to their assessment, a family making twice the poverty line would be unable to contribute ANYTHING toward their own health care given the cost of living in the state.  Even those making 300% above poverty would require some help.  If you like feeding your inner wonk, it’s a good report.

With the budget resolution, the clock starts for the rest of the legislative session in Sacramento.  The Assembly and the Senate have until September 14th to pass bills before them and send them to the Governor’s desk for signature.  And obviously the centerpiece of the session is health care reform.  AB8 will be the organ for Democratic legislative leaders and the Governor to come to an understanding about how they want to fix the state’s health care crisis.  And the people are weighing in and saying that their preferred solution has a different bill number; SB 840.

UPDATE by Brian: Here’s the PDF of the relevant health care poll from Field.  Over…

Frank Russo reports:

36% of California voters support a new government run system–like Medicare–up from 24% in last December’s survey. At the same time support for making “reforms with the framework of the current health insurance system, with shared responsibilities by government and individuals” has dropped from 52% to 33%. Reliance on “free market competition to improve the health insurance system” draws only 14%, down from 18% previously.

So after months of all actors in the health care debate talking to their constituents, more people want to see health care for all than a shared responsibility framework that keeps the current for-profit system in place.  And the vast majority want to see something changed over the status quo.  Frank Russo teases this out, and exemplifies why I think the aggressive strategy by groups like the California Nurses Association has moved the goalposts:

Only eight short months ago in December 51% of California voters described themselves as satisfied with the current system. That number has dropped to 28% while those responding that they are dissatisfied has risen to 69% from 44% previously. The numbers who are very satisfied with what we have now has dropped to 7% from 13% previously and those who say they are “very dissatisfied” is now the largest response with 42%, up from 20% in that category before.

Table 4 in the poll shows the direct correlation of dissatisfaction with the health care system and those who want single payor. It also shows that the largest proposition of Democrats (47%) and “non-partisan/others” (39%) support single payor, while for Republicans the largest response is to reform the current system with insurance and “shared responsibility” (37%).

While it is not surprising that 55% of “liberals” support single payor, perhaps one of the more salient points of the Field Poll is that self described “middle-of-the-road” voters are split between these two options at 34% apiece and with only 10% saying they want to rely on a free market approach. While 31% of “conservatives” support the free market approach, 35% want to reform the current insurance system and 19% even support single payor.

This focus on not-for-profit health care has made reform of the current system completely reasonable, EVEN TO CONSERVATIVES.  Change is now demanded rather than sticking with the status quo.  Of course, Republicans are not needed to pass health care reform.  But they still have to vote on it, and so this can be a significant club to beat Republicans with in the next election, on the biggest domestic policy issue facing Americans.

As for how this will effect the actual legislation, it’s clear that this ups the pressure for SOME reform.  Democratic leaders should be emboldened by this, and should hold firm on the positive amendments that have already been added to the bill:

AB8, the Democratic plan, has been undergoing some work under the hood. Several amendments will hopefully be made to increase the affordability of health care, among those include a prescription dug purchasing pool that will have about 3-4 million participants. That will make it 2-3x larger than CalPERS. There is also talk of creating a public insurance program that everyone will be able to participate in. This is similar to a few of the Democratic presidential contenders plans to ensure there is an affordable option for health insurance for all residents. These amendments will be considered in hearings over the next few weeks.

It’s obvious that the public wants as progressive a proposal as possible.  The consequences of failure to reach a compromise are bad for everyone, but especially the governor.  He’s staked his entire year on this.  So let’s see a health care reform discussed out in the open so that everyone in the state knows where the main actors stand.

And the FIRST thing the Governor can do is to call the President and tell him to stop this campaign to deny children health care.  The onerous new S-CHIP rules must be abandoned.  If the Governor is serious about providing health care for all Californians, he must stand up to the President and live up to that responsibility.  DFA has started a campaign on this; you can call the Governor and tell him:

“President Bush’s new rules which reduce the availability of the Children’s Health Insurance Program for uninsured kids must be repealed. Governor Schwarzenegger must call President Bush today and demand a complete rollback of the new rules. Can I count on the governor to stand up for our kids?”

Today the New York Times weighs in with an editorial about the right-wing Electoral College power grab, and in fairly bold language excoriates it.

The Electoral College should be abolished, but there is a right way to do it and a wrong way. A prominent Republican lawyer in California is doing it the wrong way, promoting a sneaky initiative that, in the name of Electoral College reform, would rig elections in a way that would make it difficult for a Democrat to be elected president, no matter how the popular vote comes out. If the initiative passes, it would do serious damage to American democracy.

The editorial goes on to explain the damage this initiative would cause, rightly calling it a Republican power grab and explaining how their goal is to fool the public into giving away the election in the name of “reform.”  Obviously written before the news of the competing ballot initiative came to light, there’s a perfunctory paragraph approving of the idea of the National Popular Vote.  But the concluding paragraph calls out the Governor to show his true colors on this issue:

Leading Republicans, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, have been silent about the initiative to split California’s electoral votes, but they should be speaking out against it. The fight isn’t about Republicans vs. Democrats. It is about whether to twist the nation’s system of electing presidents to give one party an unfair advantage. No principled elected official, or voter, of either party should support that.

Most Republican politicians aren’t principled, but Arnold at least fashions himself to be.  He should be asked about this at every opportunity until he gives a satisfactory answer.