As usual, it would be better to quote this Digby post verbatim, but let me just give you the relevant section from the article in question:

(Loretta) Sanchez, Orange County’s only Democratic member of Congress, voted in 2002 against giving President Bush authorization to invade Iraq. More recently she voted to begin pulling troops out within 90 days.

Tuesday night Sanchez said she could not support the protesters (who want to cut funding for the war) because the $145 billion in Iraq war funding was in the same bill that would provide money to build the C-17 aircraft in California.

“I never voted for this war,” she said. But “I’m not going to vote against $2.1 billion for C-17 production, which is in California. That is just not going to happen.”

Sanchez has been consistently against the war, and she cannot be fully blamed for protecting her constituents.  But she’s constrained by the fact that a major military contractor in her district has a gun to her head.  Particularly in California, but all over the country really, the massing of the war machine has a definite impact on policy.  They put their factories in all these different districts, so that shuttering an obsolete weapons system will be met with enormous resistance.  This ensures that you can never decrease military spending or even keep it the same.  And eventually, all these systems have to be justified.  Through war.

This is approximately why the nightly news has all of these ads for Lockheed Martin and Boeing on them.  I can’t buy a 757, but Boeing can keep that news network in line by threatening to drop their ads if they stray from the party line.

Here’s Digby:

It’s just another way that big money distorts our politics. Sanchez’s statement makes it quite clear that the “power of the purse” is not about stopping anything. It’s about funding all kinds of things that have been set up over many years to keep politicians like Sanchez in line. She really does have to answer to her constituents — many of whom make their living off the military industrial complex dime. You can’t blame her.

I don’t even think public financing will stop this.  You’re talking about thousands of constituents’ jobs.  And California embodies this problem as much as any state in the union.  It’s something we really have to think about.  How do we, after 60 years of massive military buildup, put this genie back in the bottle?

(This isn’t limited to defense, by the way, John Dingell’s attempt to upend CAFE standard legislation preferred by the Speaker comes from him protecting his constituents, just as resistance to gas taxes comes from legislators protecting theirs.)

Are you poor?  Black?  Hispanic?  Congratulations!  The city of San Diego wants to look at everything you own without a warrant!  All of this is in the context of ensuring that there are no “cheaters” and that money distributed to the poor by the state is being done legitimately.  This is actually a Constitutional question that was upheld in 1971.  Oddly enough, and sit down for this one because it’s shocking, it’s only ever applied to the poor and not the literally millions of other entities, whether corporate or agricultural, who receive the same type of largesse.

If waiving one’s Fourth Amendment rights based on the receipt of government funds were applied outside of the impoverished, most people would instantly see the problem. Given the number of people who benefit from some kinds of government subsidy, the government could simply abrogate the Bill or Rights through its spending power. This can’t be right. And whether or not it’s unconstitutional, certainly these kinds of searches without cause are bad policy, for the same reasons. As soon as executives at Archer Daniels Midland agree to waive their Fourth Amendment rights, we can start talking about welfare recipients.

I know that the Fourth Amendment is no longer operative, so this may be something of a moot point.  But it’s so clear that those quick to jump on the indigent for “ripping off the taxpayer” has no similar fervor for those in corporate America.  I was astonished when I heard Bill Richardson use the phrase “corporate welfare” at the Yearly Kos Presidential Forum.  Maybe some of our more progressive cities might want to start barging in to some corporate offices just to make sure their books are the same as they claim.  Who knows, maybe we can end welfare as we know it again.

I’ve been watching the debate in the Congress over expanding S-CHIP (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) today while waiting for my plane travel to Yearly Kos, and I’m reminded of how dishonest Republicans are on this issue.  They created the block grant program to give states the ability to cover children, and now when it’s become popular and successful, and state governors want to expand it more, they suddenly want to stop it.  And they’re using the familiar “this would let illegal immigrants get free health care” canard to try and submarine the bill (incidentally, it doesn’t).

It’s important to chronicle this, because it’s the opening salvo in the battle to change the health care system in this country.  In California we’re gearing up for health care reform, and today The California Budget Project and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research released a joint report that ably shows the consequences of maintaining the broken status quo on health care as the Republicans want to do:

…many families spend a substantial amount on health care premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and could face financially devastating medical expenses if they are not adequately protected.  The report, “What Does It Take for a Family to Afford to Pay for Health Care?” (available at www.cbp.org and www.healthpolicy.ucla.edu) recommends that health care reform proposals – such as those proposed by the Governor and Democratic legislative leaders – ensure that families can realistically afford premiums and out-of-pocket costs, such as copayments and deductibles.

The report recommends that proposals fully subsidize health care coverage for those who earn up to 200 percent of the poverty line ($41,300 for a family of four) because the cost of housing, food, and other necessities leaves these families with few or no resources to contribute toward health care costs.  The report also determines that families need incomes near 300 percent of the poverty line ($61,950 for a family of four) just to afford typical health care costs.  Because some families face much higher out-of-pocket health care costs, the report recommends that policymakers consider providing subsidies for families with incomes higher than 300 percent of the poverty line.

This is EXACTLY what the expansion of S-CHIP would do, and yet Roadblock Republicans and the Bush Administration are concerned with defeating it solely on ideological grounds.  They don’t want America to see a health care system managed in a public way that works.  They fear people will see the differences between a system that gives people the choice for affordable care and a private for-profit system that values limiting care above everything, and opt for the former.  They don’t want government to work, and they will do everything in their power to make it malfunction.

(I do take issue with the idea that “the governor’s proposal,” which has no cap on affordability or any floor on coverage, would necessarily help needy families.)

Here are some of the key recommendations of the report:

Limiting families’ out-of-pocket costs.  Some insured families have very high health costs because they have very high copayments, deductibles, or other out-of-pocket costs.  Some of these costs are predictable (for example, if a family member has a chronic illness), but some can be unexpected (for example, as the result of an accident or unexpected illness).  Placing limits on out-of-pocket costs is as important as premium subsidies in ensuring affordable health care.

Taking into account expenses families face, such as housing and child care, when determining how much families can afford to pay for health care.  Because families face very different costs, such as housing and child care, income alone is an imprecise measure of what families can afford to spend on health care.

An average adult with private health coverage pays almost $800 a year on premiums; a family of four spends $1,800.  Poor families cannot cope, and forget about it if they actually want to USE their coverage.  We know that almost half of all bankruptcies are due to health care costs.

Californians need to send a strong message to Congress and the President to wholeheartedly support the continuation of S-CHIP.  And they need to send the message to our Legislature that we need real health care reform that allows working families to have the peace of mind of medical coverage while also being able to survive financially.

Many have remarked upon the new PPIC poll, which shows a trend downward for the Governor’s job approval.  Brian claimed that the budget impasse is to blame, and the fact that in the last couple days Schwarzenegger has urged in the media for Republicans to pass the plan suggests that’s his calculus as well.  But I’m not so sure.  Considering that the Governor’s environmental approval ratings are tracking his overall approval, I think it was the dustup over the California Air Resources Board that dragged him down in recent months.  Of the two stories, only the resignations of Robert Sawyer and Catherine Witherspoon got national attention, and it was a direct hit to the issue which Schwarzenegger is trying to use to define himself.

So let’s ask ourselves, a propos of Julia’s question about blogs and influence, how this seeped into the consciousness of the public, and what role we could play in continuing such, er, seepage.

The Air Resources Board is important and influential, but not exactly a household name.  I believe that it was Democratic lawmakers’ extreme focus on the situation, to the extent of holding hearings and threatening subpoenas, that got the press’ attention, or at least what little of it is left.  Schwarzenegger sought to quickly defuse the issue by hiring an environmental stalwart, Mary Nichols, to take over, and indeed her first major act, cracking down on diesel pollution, is a good sign.  However, that ruling does not address the implementation of the Global Warming Solutions Act, which of course is the major issue that Democrats in the Legislature were defending when they picked this fight which I believe had an impact on the Governor’s approval ratings.  We haven’t heard a lot about those subpoenas for Susan Kennedy or Dan Dunmoyer lately.  Obviously the budget battle is all-consuming right now, and the Assembly is in recess.

So there may come a time shortly to press that issue.  The Governor’s record on the environment is frankly spotty, and CARBgate actually points to his misuse of the office to push for implementation different from legislative intent.  Somehow, this got through the PR filter, and people understoof that Schwarzenegger was trying to slow-walk the global warming issue.  So how do we replicate this?  Obviously the ferocity of our electeds forced attention on the issue.  If and when the governor line-items the heck out of the budget, as appears likely, will they be just as loud?  Will that be another opportunity to fill in this image of the Governor as all talk about “post-partisanship” but in the end, a reliable supporter of corporate cronyism?  There clearly is potential here but state blogs aren’t big enough to drive it; the electeds have to get tough and call the governor out for attacking our environmental future, or programs for the poor.