Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller have started the Bush Dog Project to identify those Democrats who have voted with the President on the major issues that have the rank and file screaming betrayal; specifically, the Capitulation Bill giving Bush billions more for Iraq, and the FISA bill allowing Alberto Gonzales to wiretap American citizens without a warrant. These are overwhelmingly unpopular positions at odds with most of the American people, to say nothing of Democrats. Yet 38 “Bush Dog” Democrats voted for both of these bills, including one member of Congress from California: Jim Costa.
Costa is a member of the Blue Dogs but not the New Democrat Coalition. He’s in one of the most Democratic seats out of the 38, with a Cook PVI of +4.6, so he’s wildly out of step with his constituency. CA-20, Costa’s district, runs along I-5 through Fresno, Kings and Kern Counties in the Central Valley. It includes the city of Fresno. Democrats have held this seat for a while, but Costa was only elected in 2004, replacing Cal Dooley (who was also something of a Bush Dog, having voted to authorize the war in Iraq, a vote he now regrets). While Costa had a mildly difficult battle winning the open seat against Roy Ashburn in 2004 (he won 54-46%), he faced no Republican opposition in 2006.
So we have a somewhat new legislator in a traditionally New Democrat seat, but it’s in a district that gave Al Gore his largest margin of victory outside of the urban metropolises. And it’s 63% Latino. So there’s no excuse for Costa to be so in line with President Bush on the major issues, and certainly no excuse for him voting to throw the Fourth Amendment overboard and drown it (Incidentally, AT&T has given him a lot of money over the years. Do with that information what you will.). This is also important because the Central Valley needs to return to being a more prominently Democratic area, and Jim Costa needs to be the standard bearer for that because this is the most Democratic district in the region. So he must hear from his constituents about their displeasure with his being a rubber stamp for failed Bush Administration initiatives and the taking away of our civil liberties. This will ultimately make us a stronger party.
The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.
Administration officials outlined the new standards in a letter sent to state health officials on Friday evening, in the middle of a month-long Congressional recess. In interviews, they said the changes were aimed at returning the Children’s Health Insurance Program to its original focus on low-income children and to make sure the program did not become a substitute for private health coverage.
The S-CHIP program works, states want more of their kids to be covered, and in the long run it’s far more affordable than allowing the uninsured to use the emergency room as their primary care physician.
Doesn’t matter to this President. Wouldn’t want people to get the idea that they can get decent health care. (over)
California wants to increase its income limit to 300 percent of the poverty level, from 250 percent. Pennsylvania recently raised its limit to 300 percent, from 200 percent. New Jersey has had a limit of 350 percent for more than five years.
Before making such a change, Mr. Smith said, states must demonstrate that they have “enrolled at least 95 percent of children in the state below 200 percent of the federal poverty level” who are eligible for either Medicaid or the child health program.
Deborah S. Bachrach, a deputy commissioner in the New York State Health Department, said, “No state in the nation has a participation rate of 95 percent.”
The President is mandating these participation rates, but offering no budgeting for them. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, designed for states to be unable to meet the 95% number and therefore restricting health access for children.
Basically what the President is saying here is that the system is working too well. They speak about competition but they don’t want S-CHIP to ever compete with private insurance (mainly because it would blow the doors off of it).
To minimize the risk of such substitution, Mr. Smith said in his letter, states should charge co-payments or premiums that approximate the cost of private coverage and should impose “waiting periods,” to make sure higher-income children do not go directly from a private health plan to a public program.
If a state wants to set its income limit above 250 percent of the poverty level ($51,625 for a family of four), Mr. Smith said, “the state must establish a minimum of a one-year period of uninsurance for individuals” before they can receive public coverage.
There’s another provision that says if private insurers start losing customers to S-CHIP then the higher coverage would be slashed. This despite the fact that insurers have never seen such a drop, and if they did it’d be their own fault for denying coverage to so many based on pre-existing conditions.
This is an important moment for the nation. At a time when health care is the number one domestic policy, when tens of millions have been added to the ranks of the uninsured, and when this President has done virtually nothing about it in 6 1/2 years, he’s putting up a firewall designed to make sure your kids aren’t covered.
TJ at Loaded Orygun has been doing some great work gettig to the bottom of the 2002 Klamath River fish kill, an incident that recently gained more prominence when a recent Washington Post article detailed the influence of Vice President Fourthbranch in the decisionmaking process.
TJ has been filing Freedom of Information Act requests to determine what the level of involvement was for political officials in the region. Most of his findings concern Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) and his inserting himself into the scientific debate over whether to hold water for river salmon and attempting to influence it on the behalf of self-interested farmers who wanted that water for irrigation.
But a California congressman also figured into this issue: Rep. Wally Herger of CA-02. The “pages” in the blockquoted text that proceeds refer to TJ’s FOIA page request.
(over)
The last item on page one is a two-fer with Greg Walden to a “Science Advisor” in 2002, recommending “immediate review of study known as Hardy Study re Klamath River.” The Hardy Phase II report was a set of flow measurement models that formed the basis of the federal biologists’ opinion protecting the fish. Here you have two Members of Congress attempting to impugn the best available science, because they don’t like what it says […]
On page two we see the precursor to the last item on page one–a complaint from Smith, Walden and Wally Herger (R-CA2) sharing their “concern” about the Hardy study, amazingly all the way back to February 7, 2001. The summary isn’t shy about the topic of the conversation. The authors
“question its science, credibility and the fact that our constituents (ie water users) have been excluded. Ask for an immediate suspension of the Hardy Study pending a complete review, audit by the IG, and scientific peer review.”
This is an ongoing investigation on the citizen journalism model. I’m anxious to see just how involved Herger has been in this environmental, ecological and economic disaster.
Price gouging in a time of crisis is depressingly normal, and it’s no different in California.
By the time a state budget is passed, Janet Rios will be at least $4,000 poorer. That’s the 19% in interest Rios says she must pay on loans to keep her two nursing homes afloat until lawmakers can agree on a spending plan.
Rios would seem to be a welcome client for any bank. The state pays her to take care of the elderly, and once the budget impasse is broken she’ll get a bundle of money that has been delayed. She just needed emergency funds in the meantime to pay the Stockton homes’ bills.
The state offered to guarantee the money in a letter she could take to her bank, Wells Fargo. But “they said that is not an acceptable thing to base a loan on,” she said, and classified her as a high risk, with an interest rate to match on two $100,000 lines of credit.
The state won’t reimburse her for the interest.
That sounds like ready-made legislation that would make a difference and a point, IMO. Good people who run nursing homes or childcare centers or health clinics are being taken to the cleaners by a bunch of opportunists, at a time when the credibility of the lending industry is at a low ebb. Indeed, the credit crunch that has roiled global financial markets is all the more reason not to penalize those forced into finding financing through no reasons of their own. And the Republicans in the Senate are enabling this theft.
We have 15 months to go before Election Day, and it’s time for another roundup of Congressional races. I am going to continue to focus on the top 10 challenges to Republican incumbents. There is certainly a concern in CA-11 with the Jerry McNerney/Dean Andal race, particularly after McNerney’s “I’m a moderate” comment seemed to depress supporters. On the bright side, he did vote against the ridiculous FISA bill. And as we go into September, I would hope he would continue his efforts to end the occupation of Iraq. I will certainly cover the McNerney race in future roundups.
But for now, let’s take a look at the top 10 challenges. I’m going to rank them in order of most possible pickup, including their number from the last roundup. I’m also adding the “Boxer number.” Basically, seeing how Boxer fared in her 2004 re-election against Bill Jones in a particular district is a decent indicator of how partisan it is. If I put “57,” that means Boxer received 57% of the vote. Anything over 50, obviously, is good. (over)
1) CA-04 (Doolittle). Last month: 1. Boxer number: 40. Charlie Brown got some amazing news this week. Mike Holmes, an Auburn city councilman and a Republican, announced he was running in the primary to unseat ethically challenged Rep. John Doolittle. Holmes ran a primary race last year and got around 30% of the vote. This gives Doolittle two challengers next June (Eric Egland has already announced), which is a lot better for Doolittle than one challenger to which anti-Doolittle forces can focus their energies. This makes it more likely that a wounded Doolittle will survive the primaries (if he’s not indicted by then) and face Brown, who’s flush with cash and unopposed in his primary. Brown also made a great impression at the Yearly Kos Convention, so there will be plenty of online support for him.
2) CA-26 (Dreier). Last month: 2. Boxer number: 48. Another candidate who made a big impression at Yearly Kos was Russ Warner. At the California caucus he gave a version of this speech:
Warner’s fundraising stats were already impressive for the district, and now we’re starting to see some grassroots support. If he can tap into what Hilda Solis has been doing online (Solis has endorsed him), there could be a groundswell. Meanwhile, Dreier is whining that local Democrats blocked funding for expanding the Gold Line light-rail service to “focus on projects in their districts rather than regional priorities.” Right, because the Gold Line doesn’t mainly go through Pasadena, in Adam Schiff’s district. Dreier is such a tool.
3) CA-24 (Gallegly). Last month: 3. Boxer number: 47. The August recess is retirement season for GOP Congresscritters. We’ve already seen three of them go this week alone. So naturally thoughts turn to who’s next, and Gallegly, who tried to get out in 2006, is a prime candidate. There certainly must be some talk about it in the district: he’s got four declared candidates already: Jill Martinez, Brett Wagner, James “Chip” Fraser, and Mary Pallant.
4) CA-50 (Bilbray). Last month: 4. Boxer number: 48. Michael Wray has dropped out of the primary in CA-50, leaving John Lee Evans and Nick Leibham to contest for the right to battle Brian Bilbray next November. The best way to attack Bilbray, who doesn’t get off that illegal immigration message for a second, is to highlight his pro-Bush, anti-progress voting record, including denying health care to 6 million American children with his vote against SCHIP last month. Leibham apparently raised $89,000 last quarter, and Bilbray has a paltry $213,000 CoH, which is interesting.
5) CA-42 (Miller). Last month: 7. Boxer number: 41. The big news here is that we have a candidate, and it’s blogger Ron Shepston. You’ve undoubtedly read a little about him on Calitics. LA City Beat has a nice article about Ron and the netroots movement behind him in this race. It’s not going to be easy. But Ron has raised about $7,200 on ActBlue alone, and his offline fundraising is progressing. And Miller is still taking heat from the DCCC, who sent out a notice to reporters attacking his vote against SCHIP.
6) CA-41 (Lewis). Last month: 5. Boxer number: 43. Like with Gallegly, we’re waiting to see if the rumors about Lewis’ impending retirement are true. We do know that Lewis has continued to bring home the bacon (a little questionable earmarking isn’t going to stop him) to his district, and then there’s this:
A lobby firm connected to a federal investigation has seen business boom this year for its clients, many of whose projects are in a powerful House appropriator’s district.
The House Appropriations Committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), has sponsored or co-sponsored $55 million worth of earmarks in this year’s defense spending bill – close to half of the funds won by the California Republican in the legislation – for clients represented by one firm.
A former appropriations aide to Lewis, Letitia White, and former Rep. Bill Lowery (R-Calif.), who is friendly with Lewis, work at the company, Innovative Federal Strategies (IFS).
Tim Prince is all but in this race. I met him a few weeks back and he seems like a nice guy.
7) CA-44 (Calvert). Last month: 6. Boxer number: 45. Last month’s ruling that a city government agency illegally sold Ken Calvert a bunch of land hasn’t gotten a ton of traction yet. He has been targeted by MoveOn in a Riverside-area protest where protestors presented him with a report on how much money district taxpayers have spent on the war in Iraq. Calvert is dug in on Iraq, which is of course going to be a major issue in 2008. Bill Hedrick will be Calvert’s opponent, and, um, check out the blog!
8) CA-45 (Bono). Last month: 8. Boxer number: 49. Still no opponent named, and I’m flirting with the idea of dropping any race out of the top 10 unless there’s a named candidate. This is really a missed opportunity right now.
9) CA-46 (Rohrabacher). Last month: unranked. Boxer number: 45. I’m adding nutcase Dana Rohrabacher to the list for a couple reasons. One, he has an announced opponent (Jim Brandt, who ran against him last year) UPDATE: sorry, I read something wrong, he has no announced opponent yet. Two, it gives me an opportunity to print this quote.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach/ Long Beach, was baffled when asked recently about his use of the popular online gathering site Facebook.
“Faith book?” the befuddled congressman replied.
Hilarious.
10) CA-52 (open seat). Last month: 10. Boxer number: 44. Duncan Hunter was unable to beat people who weren’t running in the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa. He’s gone from this seat, but his son is running and it’s a safe bet that the Republicans will retain it.
(They have something of a website up now too, at FairElectionReform.com. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Some major funders are preparing for battle over this cockamamie electoral vote initiative being pushed by GOP lawyers:
Leading Democrats are uniting with Hollywood producer Stephen Bing and hedge fund manager Tom Steyer to oppose a California ballot proposal they fear could hand the 2008 presidential election to the Republican nominee […]
In what is shaping up as an important subplot to the 2008 race, a political committee is being formed by Steyer that will raise money – possibly tens of millions of dollars – to defeat the GOP-backed idea.
The committee is being supported by Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Democratic leaders in the Legislature.
The proposal is a “power grab orchestrated by the Republicans,” Feinstein and Boxer said in a joint statement. It’s “another cynical move to keep the presidency in Republican control.”
Democrats were scheduled to announce formation of the committee, Californians for Fair Election Reform, on Thursday.
This is tens of millions of dollars that ought to be going to candidates or local GOTV efforts. The Republicans have already won the battle through embarking on this stubborn and cynical kamikaze maneuver that is doomed to failure. But if they want to play this way, fine. This will certainly raise progressive turnout for the June primaries, which is something we all should be thinking about.
I wasn’t able to get to a vomitorium that was open early until just now, so I’m finally able to post about this ad Jeff Denham’s putting out:
He’s fighting to protect teachers, you see. And kids! He’s touting this amendment that would do nothing but prolong the budget battle. He’s counting on the low-information voter with this one. But in the Central Valley, they’re not buying it. They would rather not see child care centers and services for the poor shut down to feed one man’s ego (and to stop any meaningful regulation on global warming issues, let’s not forget. Here’s Assemblywoman Caballero:
Senate Republicans argue that the $3.4 billion reserve in the Assembly budget is not enough. Yet Republican senators voted for last year’s budget, with a reserve of $2.1 billion – 40 percent less than this year’s reserve. They argue that they don’t like CEQA, California’s premier environmental protection law. CEQA is not a budget issue and never has been.
The Assembly did its job; we compromised and passed a budget. The hold-up is in the Senate. Only one Republican – Senator Abel Maldonado, from Santa Maria – was willing to compromise. One more vote is needed, and the remaining Republican senators are refusing to provide it, even though the governor has asked for their support and made promises to make more cuts.
It’s time for all Californians to tell the 14 Senate Republicans, including our own Sen. Jeff Denham, to put personal ambition aside. Tell them we need to get Californians back to work. Tell them it is real people that are being hurt.
I think Denham’s losing the plot on this one.
As a side note, a big thanks to Health Net of California, which provided an interest-free loan in a time where there’s a real credit crunch to keep two rural county clinics in Tulare County open. Would that the Republicans had such compassion.
I’m supposed to tread with the utmost sensitivity when discussing religious issues because of some distorted version of political correctness created by the religious right. Because they want to reserve the ability to cry “you religion-hater” when you simply report on what they’ve been doing lately. To wit:
Last week, (Pastor Wiley S. of the Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park) Drake got out his church letterhead again, and announced his endorsement of Mike Huckabee for the GOP presidential nomination — an endorsement he repeated on his radio show, just in case anyone missed it. “I announce,” wrote the pastor, “that I am going to personally endorse Mike Huckabee. I ask all of my Southern Baptist brothers and sisters to consider getting behind Mike and helping him all you can. First of all pray and then ask God, what should I do to put feet to my prayers […]
Americans United for Separation of Church and State struck back quickly. Yesterday, they filed a formal complaint with the IRS, documenting Wiley’s actions as a clear breach of tax laws that prevent churches and ministers from endorsing political candidates […]
Wiley’s retort to AU was swift, ferocious — and bizarre. Caught dead to rights, he didn’t even try to respond to particulars of AU’s IRS complaint. Instead, he immediately launched into the kind of wild-eyed, paranoid magical thinking you’d expect from any embattled cult leader. Which is to say: In a press release issued yesterday, he ordered his flock to petition God, who in turn would avenge this attack by smiting AU’s staff with poverty, starvation, scattered familes, and death.
No shit, the guy actually names specific staffers to target through prayer. Go read the whole thing.
We’re not supposed to talk about this, we’re supposed to “give the church a break,” when obviously I’m talking about a specific situation of intolerance, bigotry and hatred that doesn’t reflect on every religious man or woman in the country. If we are silent about these things that do matter, we allow these views to fester and grow. There is no difference between what this pastor in Buena Park is doing and what Islamists did in calling for the head of Salman Rushdie, for example. And this possibly falls under the legal standard of harrassment.
These fundamentalists, who believe they own the ultimate moral authority, are now showing what they plan to do with it: they would call for the summary execution of anyone who disagrees with them or points out their faults. That’s the danger we face with theocrats like this and it should be spotlighted.
Here’s the rub: Drake asked his followers to “target Joe Conn or Jeremy Learing.” Except, Jeremy’s last name is “Leaming.”
So, here’s the theological question of the day: if a bunch of people pray for God to punish some guy named “Jeremy Learing,” who had nothing to do with this incident, does it still count? What, if anything, happens to Jeremy Leaming?
Everyone else is doing such a great job on the budget that I don’t have much to say on that issue except what Mark Leno said. But I will note that this issue of budgetary intransigence by radical Republicans is about to go national, and how we’re dealing with it in California should be a lesson for the nation. I hope the Democrats are paying attention.
In his exit interview yesterday, Karl Rove tipped the hand the Republican strategy to resuscitate the President’s approval ratings.
Mr. Rove also said he expects the president’s approval rating to rise again, and that conditions in Iraq will improve as the U.S. military surge continues. He said he expects Democrats to be divided this fall in the battle over warrantless wiretapping, while the budget battle — and a series of presidential vetoes — should help Republicans gain an edge on spending restraint and taxes.
In fact, the President has been signaling this for a while, saying that he will veto any appropriations bill that doesn’t fall in line with his spending targets. Never mind that Presidents don’t set budget policy, or that Bush allowed massive spending increases when the Republicans were in charge of Congress. This is a play-to-the-base strategy to fire up conservatives by picking a massive fight with the Democrats over spending priorities. And it will essentially force the budget items to be decided by overriding the veto, with a… wait for it… 2/3 vote.
Now, there are a LOT more Republicans in Congress that would have to be pressured into accepting the budget than Republicans in the California Legislature. So I’m pessimistic about the strategy for squeezing them. I’m more interested in how we can win the rhetorical battle, and how we can learn from the California situation and empower the spine-challenged Democratic leadership from not caving on this one and doing the right thing.
While not many people are really watching the budget battle here, they most certainly will be watching the national battle and possible government shutdown. There will be reminiscenses of 1995 and Newt Gingrich’s shutdown, and caution from the Beltway media that Congress should learn from Gingrich’s mistake and pull back. That is absurd, since the President would be triggering the shutdown, and the budget priorities the Democrats are putting together are very much in line with what the public desires. Still, we are seeing in California that disgust with the budget stalemate reaches across party lines and sours the public mood on government overall. I believe this is the GOP strategy, to again make government a four-letter word and hope that their new “outsider” challengers (who will either be lobbyists or rich businessmen) can capitalize on it.
The key here, I think, it to define the tactic early, before Congress returns to session. Fabian Nunez, Don Perata, and Governor Schwarzenegger are now excoriating the Republican obstructionists for delaying vital services for Californians. This probably happened a few weeks late. The Republicans have dug in their heels and have no exit strategy; in fact, not exiting IS the strategy. To combat this on the national level, Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team need to be thinking about this now instead of reacting to the inevitable veto. They need to be warning Republicans in Congress that tying themselves to the President is committing political suicide, and that they’re part of Congress too, and approval ratings cut both ways (especially in the Senate, where 22 Republicans are up for re-election as opposed to just 12 Democrats). The best way to frame this is much like the Social Security debate. We need to start proudly defending the budget priorities and make it completely toxic to act against them.
Maybe some of my colleagues who are little more plugged into the state battle would like to chime in. How can we win this battle of ideas?
It’s an old joke in L.A. that nobody here knows about a local story until it makes the New York Times. Well, then by now, they’ve all read about this attempt by GOP lawyers to change the way California’s electoral votes are apportioned and hand the 2008 election to the Republicans.
When state Democratic leaders from around the country meet this weekend in Vermont, the California chairman, Art Torres, expects to be peppered with the sort of questions that have been clogging his in-box for weeks.
What is this about Republicans trying to change the way Electoral College votes are allocated in California? Is there a countereffort by Democrats in the works? What does it mean for presidential candidates?
Torres has a couple quotes in the piece, but what interested me is a preview of the messaging that will be used to sell this scheme to the general public. It actually mirrors what every Democrat in the Legislature was saying in the run-up to changing the Presidential primary date…
Far more potentially significant in the near term, however, is a recent move by the lawyer for the California Republican Party to ask voters in a ballot measure to apportion electoral votes by Congressional district. With numerous safe Republican districts around the state, this change could represent roughly 20 electoral votes for a Republican candidate who would otherwise presumably lose the entire state, which has been reliably Democrat (thanks for the slur, New York Times! -ed.) in recent presidential elections.
“We think it is the most effective way of having California count,” said Kevin Eckery, a spokesman for the ballot effort, the Presidential Election Reform Act. “Candidates love California in the spring when they come out to raise money. But after that, as long as California is not in play, it tends to be ignored.”
They’re going to use a message of fairness and making California count. That’s going to be attractive to a low-information voter, and millions will have to be spent to counter it.
According to the Times piece, Eckery’s group is fundraising right now, and it will probably take a few million dollars to get the initiative on the June ballot, including about half a million for polling. That’s a low bar; and that’s why it is so crucial that we get the word out immediately about this effort to steal the vote. Building a war chest is less important than using some CDP money to define what this initiative would represent – a piecemeal solution to a problem that would virtually guarantee a Republican successor to George Bush. This is not something to attack with nuance; the goal is to make it so unpopular that any effort to put it on the ballot would be a suicide mission.
