Jamie Court and Judy Dugan of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights pen an extremely troubling piece today about Big Oil, particularly Chevron, outright buying our government and its leaders.  This is not limited to Republicans, but certainly the Governor is the biggest recipient of this largesse.

Take Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who once claimed that he was so rich he did not need anyone else’s money – and who isn’t running for another office. Yet as gasoline prices were breaking last year’s record of $3.38 a gallon, Schwarzenegger collected a $100,000 check May 1 from Chevron, the West’s largest refiner. The company certainly had the cash on hand. Just three days earlier, it reported a $4.7-billion first-quarter profit, up 18% over the same period last year.

The contribution brought Schwarzenegger’s take from Chevron to $665,000 (making it his 15th largest donor) since 2003, and his total political tribute from the energy industry is now $4 million. According to a recent Schwarzenegger fundraising solicitation, Chevron’s $100,000 buys the company special briefings with the governor, something that beleaguered motorists aren’t getting.

In all, oil companies delivered $90 MILLION dollars to political campaigns and parties in 2006, and while a lot of that went to block the corporate tax-for-alternative energy Prop. 87, plenty was spread around to political leaders and parties.  And that seed money ensures that there is no investigation into practices like this (over):

Like power plant owners during California’s 2001 electricity crisis, refiners such as Chevron have discovered that they can make more money by producing less gasoline. So they do. They have, over more than 20 years, deliberately reduced their capacity until they can barely meet California’s needs under the best of circumstances. Industry spokesmen defend this as efficiency. But there is no slack in the production system, which shorts the market and raises prices.

Any planned or unplanned refinery outage, pipeline break or power failure causes prices to jump.

Take the case of a possum and a raccoon that, in March, bit through power substation lines feeding two refineries in the South Bay. The critters expired, but the outage caused a 7-cent jump in local wholesale gasoline prices. The cost of refining gasoline is stable over time, so these price spikes equal pure profit for Chevron and Co […]

Chevron refined 22% less oil in the U.S. during the first quarter of this year than in the same quarter of 2006 because of longer “planned maintenance” downtime and accidents. Yet its total profit on U.S. refining increased 66%. Making less gasoline, it made much more money.

Last week, the CDP took $50,000 from Chevron.  Court and Dugan also detail a junket that Schwarzenegger chief of staff Susan Kennedy took with Speaker Fabian Nuñez in Rio, a 12-day conference paid for by Chevron and other oil interests.

During the 12-day conference, Chevron’s lobbyist got an entire day on the official agenda, which the public knows about only because of our Public Records Act request. Nuñez, who last year was highly critical of oil companies, seems to have nothing to say this year.

The FTCR have a long track record detailing this kind of takeover of our government.  And we all know about the inordinate power that corporate interests have in Sacramento.  This editorial makes it plain, and it’s really shocking to see it so starkly. 

Yesterday I attended an event at the Santa Monica Democratic Club with State Senator Sheila Kuehl, who’s devoted the latter part of her legislative career to promoting and advancing SB 840, the single payer universal health care bill that the Governor vetoed last year.  Kuehl keenly understands the political dynamic of the health care debate in the state this year.  The Governor has vowed to pass a “universal” health care law this year, and he has vowed to veto Kuehl’s bill.  Nobody has brought the Governor’s initial program forward as a bill, and it’s likely that nobody ever will.  Both Senator Perata and Speaker Nunez have bills that are making their way through the relevant committees.  Sen. Kuehl’s bill has passed as well.  The Republican Assembly and Senate have forwarded piecemeal bits of legislation that don’t attempt to deal with health care in any kind of comprehensive way.

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Right now the advocates of single payer are continuing to build support.  Apparently there are ongoing talks with some hospitals to get them aboard.  It is likely that SB 840 will get to the Governor’s desk again, and it’s assured that he will veto.  Politically speaking, it’s positive (in my view) to keep advancing the same bill year after year and daring the Governor to betray his constituents and denying them the only comprehensive plan that ties health care to residency, not employment, and that will ensure that everyone in the state is covered with quality care.  If the Governor runs for higher office, that legislative history will be important.  Kuehl said that the Governor is not particularly interested in policy details; he wants to be able to sign something that he can call universal health care, whether the appellation applies or not.  Kuehl has signed on as a co-sponsor on Sen. Perata’s bill so that she can help steer it in a direction closer to universal care.  This is smart.  But the important thing is that any bill that’s passed this year (and there is likely to be something) should be seen as a stepping stone to the ultimate goal of single payer.  Because a “universal” program passes in 2007 does not mean the end of SB 840.  Kuehl, and whoever succeeds her in advancing the bill, will continue to build support, will continue to point to their funding mechanisms and study reports that prove the viability of single payer, and will continue to put forth a bill until there’s a governor who can sign it or a majority of Californians who can vote for it in an initiative form.  That initiative, according to Kuehl, should not be advanced until there is additional support among hospitals and doctors.

I am happy that Kuehl is using 840 as a means to get a better bill passed this year, while keeping focused on the ultimate goal of getting a real health care system passed that covers every single Californian.  The only way to rein in soaring costs is to ensure a baseline of care from a central pool that everybody pays into, with a system that is not based on making money but caring for people. And it’s important to note that Kuehl’s bill is not a pie-in-the-sky idea.  This is a detailed report on the financial structure of the proposal, showing how every single dollar can be accounted for, with every Californian able to access affordable care while saving total medical costs.  It’s a positive thing for the country that a plan of this nature is being offered with maximum seriousness and realism.  If it can be done in California, it can be done across the nation.

Earlier today I wrote that Ken Calvert got John Doolittle’s “token corrupt Californian” seat on the House Appropriations Committee.  What I didn’t know is that this has raised the ire… of the right?

I care a lot about the House of Representatives, I care a lot about our members and once someone is ethically challenged and gets in trouble it effects all of us. … I appreciate the high ethical standards that [Boehner] has set … but I believe the bar was lowered today when our conference chose to vote Ken Calvert onto the Appropriations Committee.

That was Ray LaHood of Illinois, going after one of his colleagues in the media.  And it doesn’t stop there.  RedState has declared war on Calvert.  Minority Leader John Boehner is getting a lot of heat from organized phone campaigns.

Wow.  Do they not know that half their delegation is just as corrupt?  (Incidentally, Calvert’s going to be moving up in my next House target list.  Do we have a candidate?)

The state of California is not generating the revenue that they expected.  This is clear and it’s been known for some time.  The original budget that the Governor proposed, based on those sunny estimates, is obsolete.  In order to balance the budget, spending will have to decrease or revenue increased.  We know what choice the Republican will make.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is likely to call for state spending cuts beyond those he proposed in January when he presents a revised budget to the Legislature next week, administration officials said Tuesday […]

In January, Schwarzenegger outlined a $103 billion general-fund budget for the 2007-08 fiscal year and proposed balancing it by withholding cost-of-living increases for welfare recipients, cutting welfare payments to children whose parents fail to comply with work requirements, and reducing aid to the homeless, among other things.

The cuts to welfare will remain in the budget the Republican governor is slated to unveil on Monday, Palmer said. That could set up a showdown with Democratic lawmakers, who have made it clear they oppose reducing the social safety net for children.

But don’t worry, there’s a Plan B; privatizing the lottery!

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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is poised to call for privatizing the state lottery, a move that would bring California a cash infusion of as much as $37 billion to help solve pressing budget problems but also could sacrifice a major revenue source for decades to come.

….It comes at a time when the state is facing only a modest budget deficit for the coming fiscal year – about $1 billion. But billions more in bond payments will be due soon after.

This is “kick-the-can-down-the-road” budgeting, and it’s no different than George Bush trying to run out the clock on Iraq so that the next executive has to clean up the mess.  It’s irresponsible to put so much of a debt burden on future generations.  We’re looking at hundreds of billions of dollars in debt for decades and decades, in bond issues and the loss of revenue for short-term gain.  Kevin Drum thunders on this, and he’s absolutely correct:

Once again, Arnold “We Have To Stop This Crazy Deficit Spending” Schwarzenegger is desperately trying to figure out a way to increase our deficit spending so that he can continue to pretend that he hasn’t raised taxes. That’s all this is about.

He’s already done this once with his deficit bonds, which will have to be repaid out of increased taxes eventually, and now, in order to make sure that “eventually” is sometime after he leaves office, he wants to raid the lottery to tide himself over. The result, of course, will be lower revenue in the future and therefore higher taxes. But not on his watch.

Schwarzenegger may have a sunnier persona than George Bush, but the cynicism on offer here is even worse than Bush’s. Arnold knows perfectly well he’s raising taxes. He’s just hoping the rest of us are greedy enough to allow ourselves to be convinced otherwise.

We’re going to have three and a half more years of this nonsense, of this focus on short-term glitz at the expense of long-term security.  We are getting played, and I would like to see some of our Democratic leaders in this state make this point forcefully.

It’s well-known that Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata wasn’t particularly happy with the sellout prison construction bill that the Governor signed last week.  It’s also well-known that none of the “reforms” in that prison bill will do anything to lower the prison overcrowding rate before the fast-approaching deadline for the state to appear before a judge and prove that the situation has changed.  So Perata is using some old-fashioned arm-twisting to get some real reforms in the corrections system.

The Senate Democratic leader is urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to use his administrative power to change parole rules to ease severe prison crowding, possibly by as many as 8,100 inmates.

Senate President Pro Tempore Don Perata, D-Oakland, said Republican opposition kept parole reform out of a $7.8 billion plan to ease overcrowding through a building program and transferring some prisoners to other states.

Perata said speculation at the Capitol that the bill signed by the Republican governor last week includes an unwritten “side deal” to have Schwarzenegger bypass the Legislature and administratively enact parole changes is inaccurate.

“I wouldn’t call it a deal,” Perata said of talks with the governor. “What we said is we couldn’t put it in the bill because the Republicans wouldn’t support it.

“We said further that if you don’t do something with parole, you can’t make any of this work,” said Perata. “So you’ve got the ability to do it. It’s up to you to do it.”

Of course, I’d rather they tried to put this in the bill, dared the Republicans to block it, and then run on the consequences.  But clearly, Perata is trying to leverage the judicial deadline (which is the only reason anything got done on a prison bill in the first place) to bring about a saner policy.  I don’t like that the Democratic leadership appeared to cave on this policy and gave the Governor most of what he wanted; I personally think that, without real reform, they’ll have to do the same damn thing five years from now.  But at least Perata is trying to use the deadline to his advantage, after it was used to his detriment previously. 

Perhaps Perata could get Mike Jimenez of the CCPOA, who’s disinclined to the Governor’s plan, to join him in calling for parole reform.  And he should go further and introduce Sen. Romero’s legislation for an independent sentencing commission.  But this is making the best of a bad situation.

We don’t do enough on this site to defend our own Speaker Pelosi from ridiculous media hit jobs.  Sure, blogswarm put this one in the Quick Hits, but it deserves wider attention because it falls into a predictable pattern.  The nutjobs in the House Republican Caucus put out some kind of non-factual press release, a still-unsuspecting-after-all-these-years news organization dutifully types it up, Drudge and the right-wing noise machine links to it, and by the time the charges are completely discredited, the media schoolchildren and Republican outrage-bots have moved on to the next thing.  The entire idea is to “get it out there,” to plant a seed of malfeasance in the mind of the voter despite the complete disregard for the facts.  This has happened at least four times that I can think of, in just the first four months-plus of the Pelosi Speakership.  And I’m sick of it.

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In this instance, the right is claiming that Pelosi inserted Port of San Francisco waterfront improvements into a water redevelopment bill passed by the House last month. (Ever wonder why they always catch these things long after they’ve voted on them?  It’s like they don’t care about the legislation, just having an issue.  Hmmm…)  They claim that the improvements would benefit Pelosi’s husband’s rental properties.

Except the properties are a mile away from where the improvements are to be built, and the Port of San Francisco requested the improvements.  This was confirmed within five minutes by Greg Sargent.  But the writers and editors at the AP let that slip by, and just uncritically printed the “controversy” that was made up out of whole cloth without any factual basis.

You can add this to the Speaker requesting a phat jet so her Entourage (including Turtle) can party on the way to DC, her lowering the minimum wage in American Samoa to benefit Starkist Tuna, her going to Syria and undercutting American foreign policy, etc etc.  None of these allegations where even close to being true, and all of them folded under scrutiny.  Of course, that wasn’t the point.  The point was to get Suzanne Malveaux to call Pelosi “the most controversial Speaker yet!”  The point was to make sure the low-information voter has this vague sense from Rush and Fox News headlines that Pelosi is some corrupt politician who’s robbing the federal treasury for perks for her friends and allies.  And this is done so that, when GOP Congressman have their houses raided and some actual tales of corruption come out, the Republicans can stamp their little feet and scream “Pelosi too!!!”

We’re way too forgiving of this tactic.  It’s because we have actual respect for the truth.  But the Republican operatives who keep feeding the AP this obvious bullshit have none.  And what’s more, they count on the fact that once-proud news organizations like the AP are too lazy to know the difference between reality and lies, and they’ll print virtually anything as long as they can put it in the familiar “he said/she said” context, keeping them one step away from reporting the story.  There’s no value placed on objectivity anymore, which isn’t just going to each side for a quote.  There are incontrovertible facts here, and that ought to go into the decision to run with a trumped-up “story,” especially when delivered by political operatives.  I’m fuming at this incident, and while certainly Speaker Pelosi can take care of herself, she needs to know that the progressive movement, at least out here in California, has her back and will not let this stand.