(I added the audio. This garbage cannot be allowed to stand. -Brian;
Thanks, Brian, for the audio! And thanks, dday, for posting about this horrifying rambling by Orange County’s most notorious psychotic politician. – promoted by atdleft)

Check out this diary for video.

Of all the wingnutty statements from Rep. Dana “you say Taliban, I say Paliban” Rohrabacher, this may be the wingnuttiest.  What makes it worse is that he said it in the presence of Col. Ann Wright, who served this country for 45 years in the military and the diplomatic service, fighting for the very values on which Rohrabacher spits. 

During a Congressional hearing this week with members of the European Parliament on the practice of extraordinary rendition, whereby detainees are flown on CIA planes to secret prisons all over the world to be tortured either at Guantanamo or their countries of origin, Rohrabacher scoffed at all notions of eliminating this deeply troublesome program, which has harmed our stature with our allies and around the world and has debased our souls, and then busted out with this:

Rohrabacher railed against anyone who questioned the right of the Bush administration to do whatever it wanted, legal or illegal, to prevent terrorist acts and said that by not supporting the Bush policies was consigning their country to the terrorists. In particular he said that any Americans who questioned the extraordinary rendition were un-American […]

Rohrabacher never once mentioned due process, the rule of law, right to a trial for anyone picked up in the extraordinary rendition program. Merely because persons were “rendered” and imprisoned by the US meant to Rohrbacker they were guilty.

Rohrabacher said if European countries did not cooperate with the United States and go along with whatever the Bush administration wanted, they were condemning their countrymen to death by not using extralegal methods to imprison terrorist suspects. When citizens attending the hearing, including members of Codepink Women for Peace and Veterans for Peace, heard Rohrabacher’s statement, they collectively groaned. Then, much to the shock and disbelief of everyone in the hearing room, Rorhbacker said to those who had expressed displeasure at his statements: “I hope it’s your family members that die when terrorists strike.”

(NOTE: in the clip provided, Rohrabacher specifically said “suffer the consequences,” not die.)

So a US Representative wished for death on his fellow Americans because they disagree with him that the best way to fight terror is to hook people’s genitals up to electrodes so they can give us false information.

This is of course nothing new for Rohrabacher.  During the election he told the father of an Iraq soldier that “you’re the one calling your son a war criminal.” (go about 5:15 into the clip)

But this is pretty low on the scale of human discourse.  Hoping that your critics are killed by terrorists.  And don’t forget, after the fact he’d exploit those dead to justify permanent and endless war.

LA Times:

A state appeals court today soundly renounced a law designed to give Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa substantial authority over the Los Angeles Unified School District. The ruling is the second — and perhaps final — blow to what was once the centerpiece of Villaraigosa’s education-reform plan.

Today’s unanimous decision, by a three-judge panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal, found the law, Assembly Bill 1381, unconstitutional — and it was not a close call, in the view of the justices. In its one-paragraph conclusion, the justices gave particular importance to the revised Los Angeles City Charter that was approved during the term of then-Mayor Richard Riordan. That charter revision reaffirmed the election of school-board members with authority to govern the school district, in the view of the court.

There’s almost no way that the State Supreme Court would choose to take a case when the appeals court voiced this strong a takedown.  The next step for Antonio is to have his candidates win the two outstanding school board runoffs next month.  After that, if he can’t hammer out a deal there, he may have to go to the ballot if he wants to get this done.  This is really a crushing defeat for the mayor, who staked a lot of political capital on this issue.

The decision on the flip…

“The citizens of Los Angeles have the constitutional right to decide whether their school board is to be appointed or elected,” the justices wrote. “If the citizens of Los Angeles choose to amend their charter to allow the mayor to appoint the members of the board, such amendment would indisputably be proper. What is not permissible is for the Legislature to ignore that constitutional right and to bypass the will of the citizens of Los Angeles and effectively transfer many of powers of the board to the mayor, based on its belief, hope, or assumption that he could do a better job.”

This is more of a national story, but considering the importance of the health care debate in California, I think this is a significant development.

WASHINGTON, April 16 – AARP, the lobby for older Americans, announced Monday that it would become a major participant in the nation’s health insurance market, offering a health maintenance organization to Medicare recipients and several other products to people 50 to 64 years old.

The products for people under 65 include a managed care plan, known as a preferred provider organization, and a high-deductible insurance policy that could be used with a health savings account.

When the new coverage becomes available next year, AARP will be the largest provider of private insurance to Medicare recipients. In addition to the new H.M.O., AARP will continue providing prescription drug coverage and policies to supplement Medicare, known as Medigap coverage.

William D. Novelli, the chief executive of AARP, said, “In launching these initiatives, we are driven by our mission to create a healthier America.”

This is the equivalent of the Sierra Club buying an oil company.

I suppose it’s to be expected that the AARP, a major power broker with a keen interest in seeing responsible health care legislation coming out of Congress, would step into the breach with the failure to pass that legislation.  But once you put this interest group into the insurance industry, it’s going to be phenomenally hard, next to impossible, for them to be a part of any health care solution that marginalizes or removes the insurance industry.

Pete Stark preferred to look on the bright side:

Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on health, welcomed AARP executives to the Medicare managed care market. “If they provide quality care at a fair price,” Mr. Stark said in an interview, “they could be a wonderful addition.”

But Judith A. Stein, director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonprofit group that counsels people on Medicare, said, “The new arrangements with insurance companies create a tremendous number of potential conflicts for AARP, which is a powerhouse, perceived as the most important voice for older people.” […]

“AARP will not be perceived as a truly independent advocate on Medicare if it’s making hefty profits by selling insurance products that provide Medicare coverage,” Ms. Stein said. “AARP’s role in this market could give a big boost to the privatization of Medicare.”

The conflicts of interest here are enormous.  The insurance industry has a definitive interest in their own survival.  Yet we know that a for-profit manager of health care is always going to be more concerned with profit than caring for patients.  In fact, the AARP tipped their hand within the article, saying that they would not be able to deny coverage to everyone between the ages of 50 and 64 (that should read “We won’t cover really sick people”).  Kevin Drum writes:

One of the great arguments among universal healthcare advocates is whether to press for a system that continues to make use of private insurance companies or to press for a purer single-payer system that gets rid of insurance companies altogether. The argument for working with the insurance industry is a political one: if we try to eliminate a role for insurance companies they’ll fight us tooth and nail, and that’s the last thing we need. Universal healthcare has enough powerful enemies as it is. The argument for pure single-payer is mostly (though not exclusively) economic: in our current system, healthcare administration uses up about 30% of all healthcare dollars, compared to 10% or less in countries with national systems […]

I think they’ll fight national healthcare just as hard no matter what the plan is, because the private health insurance industry is so big that even a reduced role means an enormous loss of revenue for them. What’s more, I think they’ll also judge (correctly) that even a reduced role is just the camel’s nose under the tent that will eventually lead to the end of private insurance entirely.

So trying to make nice with the insurance industry is a mug’s game. They just aren’t ever going to be on our side, and frankly, I don’t blame them. All that said, however, the fight against the entrenched interests of the insurance industry gets a lot harder when an organization that might have provided significant lobbying muscle for a single-payer system is depending on a private insurance business line for a big chunk of its revenue. It’s definitely not pleasant news for the good guys.

Obviously, the AARP as an entity cannot be stopped from forming a corporation and making a profit.  And generally they’ve been good on health care.  But you can’t very well act to change the system when you’re part of the system.  Also, because they’re such a political force, lawmakers are going to be a little more wary of shutting down the HMO of such a big benefactor.

Two months ago, I wrote a story about how Arnold Schwarzenegger is not that great on the environment, and the hype surrounding His Greenitude is largely a media creation.  Today, the LA Times gets around to the same thing, in what is actually a brave move to rewrite the narrative by using the actual facts.

Back home, environmentalists see the governor’s green credentials as thin.

The governor has taken more than $1 million in campaign money from the oil industry, whose products contribute to the greenhouse gas buildup that Schwarzenegger says he wants to roll back. And he is not reliable in using his bill-signing powers to protect the environment, activists say.

more on the flip…

Each year, the California League of Conservation Voters puts out an annual scorecard that rates the governor on a scale of 0 to 100, based on the environmental bills he has signed or vetoed. Last year, Schwarzenegger’s grade was 50, down from the previous two years when he logged a 58.

Gray Davis, the governor Schwarzenegger ousted in the 2003 recall, scored 75 in 2002 and 85 the year before that.

“Despite the governor’s public embrace of the environment, his record on signing good environmental bills into law remains mediocre,” the league said in its annual report card.

I don’t expect the national media to understand this.  After all, Arnold’s bringing sexy back to the environment.  But locally, there has to be some pushback against this absurd notion that the guy with the fleet of Hummers is the nation’s biggest environmentalist.  In fact, within the article, Peter Nicholas explains that this is all mainly an election strategy:

…audio recordings of the governor’s private meetings show that his aides have seen political value in making the environment a pet issue.

“Every four or five weeks, we’re going to spend an entire week on the environment,” the governor’s communications director, Adam Mendelsohn, told him in a private meeting in early 2006. ” … I do not believe it’s smart politics here in California to not talk about your environmental stuff.” […]

In the recordings, Schwarzenegger seems to wonder if people would accept a high-living, Hummer-driving ex-muscleman as an environmentalist.

“Here I was driving Hummers,” he says at one point. “I don’t know if I leave myself open here by calling myself an environmentalist. So we should just be aware of that.”

(These were the real revelations in the not-so-secret Schwarzenegger tapes, not the “hot-blooded” nonsense.)

I would argue that now, Arnold’s green lip service keeps him nationally relevant, and keeps his approval ratings up.  He’s a decent environmental governor for a Republican, but he falls well short of even Gray Davis’ record.  This makes him useful to the environmental movement, as they can say “See, even a REPUBLICAN supports our cause,” but it doesn’t do much to roll back global warming pollution, up 18% since 1990.

Nicholas also remembers something the whole country never knew – that he didn’t write AB 32, and it wasn’t a slam dunk that he would support it:

With only one day left in the legislative session, it was by no means certain that Schwarzenegger would sign the bill. Powerful interests stood in opposition. Business groups – the core of Schwarzenegger’s fund-raising base – feared that it would jack up costs.

Schwarzenegger wanted business-friendly provisions that would allow companies to trade emissions credits, meaning some could pay for the right to pollute.

The governor’s office offered “a number of amendments that would have watered down provisions of the mandatory reductions,” Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles), a coauthor of the bill, said in an interview.

A game of chicken followed. Nuñez told the governor’s staff that he would push forward with or without Schwarzenegger’s support. The governor threatened to veto the bill if his changes weren’t adopted, Nuñez said.

With Nuñez poised to tell a news conference that he was proceeding alone and Schwarzenegger needing legislative achievements to fuel his reelection campaign, the governor signed on. The trading system Schwarzenegger wanted is allowed under the law but is not mandatory.

“It was touch-and-go until the very end as to whether or not the governor would sign the bill,” said Ann Notthoff, California advocacy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who was involved in the discussions.

We all know that he vetoed other environmental bills.  We know that his appointee voted to approve the environmentally harmful BHP Billiton LNG Terminal which was thankfully stopped by Democrats on the Land Commission panel.  We know that Senate Democrats are so fed up with his lax regulation of AB 32 that they offered a raft of new legislation to fight global warming.

I believe that environmental activists don’t speak up about this much because they find Arnold to be a useful advocate.  He can be heard by groups that would normally tune out the message.  And that’s helpful.  But they should use this as a lever to get real action and change in California.  Every threatened veto, every slip on legislation, they should be tied to Arnold like an anvil.  “He talks the talk but refuses to walk the walk.”  That’s how an effective environmental movement would act.

I was unexpectedly yet unavoidably unable to attend any of today’s public hearing in Oxnard for the proposed BHP Billiton LNG Terminal, but enough people showed up to make a difference.

The State Lands Commission decided late Monday not to award a lease essential to a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal off the Southern California coast, citing environmental concerns.

In the 2-1 vote, commissioners complicated efforts by Australia’s BHP Billiton LNG International Inc. to build an $800 million terminal in the ocean northwest of Los Angeles, about 14 miles off Malibu and about 20 miles off Oxnard. BHP officials have said the facility would provide a reliable source of low-polluting energy.

The decision was met with loud cheers by the estimated 900 people who packed the auditorium for Monday’s commission hearing. Many were opponents who wore blue shirts emblazoned with the words “Terminate the Terminal.”

900 people, WOW.  That’s some real grassroots action.  I’m guessing that Garamendi and Chiang did the right thing here (although a 2-1 vote the other way elected not to certify the environmental impact report, which keeps the door open for future predations, I fear).

LNG is a lower-polluting energy, but this terminal was unecessary, would have increased foreign consumption of oil, and would have lessened air quality.  It’s good to see it go down (for now).

UPDATE: I want to share with you Marcy Winograd’s firsthand account on the flip:

Though newspaper accounts mention a crowd of hundreds, the head count was more like 2,000 at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, where Assemblywoman Julia Brownley (go 41st AD! -ed.) urged the commission not to approve a project fraught with risk.  Amidst a sea of blue Sierra Club “Terminate the Terminal” (a little Schwarzenegger dig there) t-shirts, scientists, former Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, Chumash healers, Malibu’s Pierce & Keeley Brosnan, the incredible former PUC commissioner Loretta Lynch, Mayor Maricela Morales of Pt. Hueneme, Santa Barbara’s Bob Handy, a rabbi, actors and activists spoke of asthma, smog, greenhouse gasses, and environmental racism (the pipes would run through Oxnard, a city over 70% Latino).

Maureen Cruise, Michael Jay, Mary Pallant, and I waited hours to testify on behalf of the executive boards of  Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains, and the Palisades Democratic Club, but ultimately we ceded our time in respect to a Sierra Club organizer who asked that we let the commission vote on the issue, rather than postpone because of hearings that would stretch past midnight.

“All those opposed to the project please stand up,” said the Sierra Club organizer.  Hundreds, maybe a thousand, shot to their feet.  “I cede my time,” he said.  Before the next name was called, Garamendi added, “Wait a minute.  All those in favor of the project please stand.”  Only five suits, (Were they Billiton reps or Oxnard Chamber of Commerce men?) slowly rose from their chairs. 

Yes, it’s lonely at the top of an LNG terminal.

On behalf of the Executive Board of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, I want to thank all of you who wrote letters and campaigned to protect our coast. 

Marcy Winograd

Gotta love it.

Come on, this can’t be true, can it?  Our governor is going on “Pimp My Ride” to pimp his own environmental policies, by overseeing the conversion of a classic Chevy Impala to biodiesel… but he can’t even do something like that unless he gets paid?

It might appear that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to appear on MTV’s popular reality show “Pimp My Ride” later this month is just another of his Hollywood crossover moves. But a closer look shows one of Schwarzenegger’s big campaign donors is also getting a boost in the April 22 episode — Galpin Motors.

One of Galpin’s Southern California showrooms is where the hit TV show is filmed. Owners of the company, H.F. Boeckmann and Jane Boeckmann, are also among the governor’s big supporters.

The Boeckmann’s gave $44,600 to the governor’s re-election committee last year and in 2005, they also gave another $44,600 to the governor’s primary ballot committee, the California Recovery Team.

Also, Alan Skobin, general counsel for Galpin Motors is one of Schwarzenegger’s appointees to the state’s New Motor Vehicle Board.

Seriously, you have to be kidding me.  Is there an political appointee who isn’t one of Arnold’s personal friends or cronies?  Is there a single appearance that doesn’t have campaign dollars involved?  I know this is how Hollywood works, but does it have to be how Sacramento works?

This is a somewhat interesting bill put forward by Loni Hancock, which will be brought to a vote in the Education Committee this week.  It would allow students to be excused from school to work on a precinct board during Election Day, making that work “independent study.”  Here’s how People For the American Way (which supports the proposal) describes the benefit:

Finding enough competent and reliable poll workers for California precincts (80,000 are necessary) is an enormous task for all counties. Student poll workers have proven to be vital to staffing polls throughout the state and most California counties have active student poll worker programs. However, under current law, when a student works at the polls, he or she receives an “excused absence” and the school loses state funding based on that absence. AB 466 would allow the student poll workers to be counted in their schools’ attendance figures for purposes of state funding, as long as the students complete all assignments and tests they may have missed, as well as a report on their activities as poll workers.

Anything that encourages more people to work on Election Day should be encouraged.  The average age of pollworkers can almost not be computed because the numbers are too high.  Exposing students to the inner workings of democracy (not compelling, but giving the option) is part of the civic education that all Americans ought to have.  If your Assemblymember is on the Education Committee, give them a call and ask that they support AB466.

I also would encourage your Assemblymembers to move on Election Day registration the way Iowa did this week.  EDR allows any citizen to register to vote on the day of the election.  They need to provide acceptable identification to register same-day, and then they’re in.  Every state that has implemented this has seen a massive rise in their turnout.  Right now California has a 15-day cutoff for registration.  That’s good but we should increase it.