Yesterday I wrote a diary proving that the national media had their delegate counts completely wrong for weeks.  I sent an email to the AP referencing this and asking them to change their counts.  

Well, here’s where we are after Day 1.  Real Clear Politics changed their count.  The New York Times changed their count.  CBS has not.  MSNBC has not.  CNN still has it at 204-161 with five delegates undecided.

To the Times and RCP: you’re welcome.  To the others: get with the damn program.

I have calls and emails in to the Secretary of State’s office to confirm this, but I’m going by their own numbers.

Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi:

“Our state and its people cannot prosper in the 21st century if we force our schools to live on a fiscal starvation diet,” Garamendi said Thursday at Sacramento City College.

Assemblymember Dave Jones:

However, in doing so my Republican colleagues in the State Assembly decided that while they were prepared to cut education funding and health care for the poor, they just couldn’t stomach closing the yacht tax loophole. Too painful, apparently, to the Thurston Howell IIIs of the world. So they refused to provide the 2/3 vote necessary to close the yacht tax loophole. In doing so they robbed the poor to help subsidize tax avoidance by rich yacht owners. Are those the values we want reflected in our state budget? Those aren’t my values, that’s for sure.

Jack O’Connell, who is nominally in charge of education for the state, should find something else to emphasize.

Being that I kind of don’t pay attention to the national media’s delegate counts, I hadn’t realized that they were all getting California so very, very wrong, and in fact are about 800,000 votes off from the official tally.  Apparently many news organizations predict that Clinton will reap 207 delegates from California, and Obama 163.  MSNBC has this.  Real Clear Politics has this.  CBS has this.  The New York Times has this.  CNN has it as 204-161 with 5 to be decided.  They’re all simply wrong, and I know math is hard and everything, but get out your calculators, people.

Here’s an example at MSNBC’s site.  They list 2,144,251 votes for Clinton and 1,746,013 for Obama, which was right… about two weeks ago.  The actual official returns, readily available at the Secretary of State’s website, are 2,553,784 for Clinton and 2,126,600 for Obama.  That’s really, really off.  The final percentage is 8.7% and MSNBC lists it as 10%.  And that translates to a 70-59 split in delegates statewide.  They’re probably getting that wrong, too, not recognizing that there are two kinds of statewide delegates which are calculated separately.  When you add in the district-level delegate allocation (and I could list them all, but trust me on this), you get 203-167.  It takes about 10 minutes to come up with this and it’s completely irresponsible for the national media to have this wrong for over two weeks, and to relentlessly show a graphic of delegate counts with bad, outdated information.  In fact, it calls into question ALL of their other counts.

MSNBC, The New York Times, CBS, CNN and RCP need to get this right, today.  They’re screwing up and hurting America (again).  What a bunch of incompetents.

UPDATE: Just to embarrass the national media further, I’m going to show my work on the flip.

I noted the popular vote totals before: 2,553,784 for Clinton and 2,126,600 for Obama.  All other candidate totals drop out because they’re under 15%, so the statewide delegates are factored by proportion of the head-to-head vote.  There are 81 at-large delegates and 48 PLEO (Party Leader/Elected Official) delegates.  If you do the math, Hillary got 54.56% of the head-to-head, and that factors to a 44-37 split on at-large and a 26-22 split on PLEOs.

So we’re at 70-59.  The delegate allocations for each of the 53 districts are here.  The district-wide returns are here.  The key numbers are:

It takes 62.5001% of the head-to-head vote for a 3-1 split in a 4-delegate district.

It takes 58.3301% of the head-to-head vote for a 4-2 split in a 6-delegate district.

In the 21 CDs with an odd number of delegates, the presidential candidate with the most votes gets the most delegates in each of those CDs.

So, and you can do this math yourself given all the parameters outlined for you:

District   Delegates  Obama   Clinton

CA-01           5               3             2

CA-02           4               2             2

CA-03           4               2             2

CA-04           5               2             3

CA-05           5               3             2

CA-06           6               3             3

CA-07           5               2             3

CA-08           6               3             3

CA-09           6               4             2

CA-10           5               2             3

CA-11           4               2             2

CA-12           6               3             3

CA-13           5               2             3

CA-14           6               3             3

CA-15           5               2             3

CA-16           4               2             2  (this one is really close, but she has 62.47% of that vote)

CA-17           5               2             3

CA-18           4               1             3

CA-19           4               2             2

CA-20           3               1             2

CA-21           4               1             3

CA-22           4               2             2

CA-23           5               3             2

CA-24           5               2             3

CA-25           4               2             2

CA-26           4               2             2

CA-27           5               2             3

CA-28           5               2             3

CA-29           5               2             3

CA-30           6               3             3

CA-31           4               1             3

CA-32           4               1             3

CA-33           5               3             2

CA-34           4               1             3

CA-35           5               3             2

CA-36           5               2             3

CA-37           5               3             2

CA-38           4               1             3

CA-39           4               1             3

CA-40           4               2             2

CA-41           4               1             3

CA-42           4               2             2

CA-43           4               1             3

CA-44           4               2             2

CA-45           4               1             3

CA-46           4               2             2

CA-47           3               1             2

CA-48           4               2             2

CA-49           4               2             2

CA-50           5               2             3

CA-51           4               2             2

CA-52           4               2             2

CA-53           5               3             2

If you add that all up, the district totals are 133 for Clinton and 108 for Obama.  Add that to the 70-59 statewide split, and it’s 203-167.

Nice job, national media.

This is a really big deal.

Hundreds of students have walked out of their classes in Alameda in a protest over the state’s proposed budget cuts.

Students from Encinal High School marched off campus and straight to the school district’s headquarters.

Tuesday night, the district school board voted to cut $200,000 out of sports programs and to increase class sizes on some campuses to save money.

This got national cable news coverage today, by the way.

I’m not saying this is akin to protesting the draft in the Vietnam War era, but the similarity is that when you threaten the livelihood of a whole mass of people, you awake a sleeping giant.  And society actually has a compelling interest in providing a full platter of school programs to create a well-rounded and engaged class of young people.  It won’t be long before these students are joined by teachers and parents on the streets.

Republicans can keep their heads in the sand or they can take note.  The governor’s already flopping like a fish, bringing it down to the “it depends on what your definition of tax increase is”.  He knows that his political legacy is on the line and that you’re going to anger the whole state if you try to balance the budget on the backs of students.  Democrats need to simply defend the principle that the state is worth paying for.  The public will be with them.  The ghost of Howard Jarvis is being slain.

(This is the story of the week here in California, and deserves front and center attention on Calitics today. Updated with a YouTube of the press conference and a transcript of some of Perata’s remarks. – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

The headline, State Democrats determined to raise taxes, is kind of ridiculous, but the meat of the story indicates that Democratic leaders are drawing a line in the sand.

Democratic legislative leaders declared this morning that they are prepared to delay the state budget this year if that’s what it takes to get tax increases, which they called the only reasonable solution to California’s multibillion-dollar shortfall.

“This is going to be the fight of a lifetime,” Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) declared at a news conference on the steps of a Sacramento high school that faces teacher layoffs and bigger classes under the governor’s proposed budget, which closes the deficit with spending cuts, borrowing and deferrals.

“We are not going to be going anywhere this summer,” he said, referring to the annual midyear process of trying to agree on a budget by the July 1 start of the new fiscal year. “I told everybody that wants to go to the Democratic [National] Convention, … TiVo it. That is close as you are going to get.”

Perata drew his line in the sand while standing with his successor as Senate chief, Democrat Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, and other Democratic senators and school leaders. Perata said the governor’s proposal to cut school spending by 10% is unacceptable, and Democrats will reject any budget that includes less for education next year than this year.

There was a big press conference with a union coalition and the LAUSD today that essentially had the same purpose.  The Democrats are going to use this proposed slash to the education budget – with which will impact almost every county in the state – to demand a sensible resolution to our broken revenue structure.  Here’s Perata’s message:

Asked how Democrats propose to make up the difference, Perata said: “Raise taxes. That clear enough? Raise taxes.”

Given the state’s dire finances, he said, “no one is going to tell me . . . the average Californian would not be willing to pay pennies on the dollar more for an education system . . . that is worth what we believe California is about.”

The second statement is exactly the way to play this.  California is worth paying for.  This state deserves a better education system than it’s getting, a better health care system than it’s getting, better infrastructure than it’s getting.  Because of the broken revenue model, we can’t even fund the landmark global warming law that got the Governor on the cover of all those magazines.  Paying for this state to have the society everyone generally wants is a patriotic act.  That’s exactly the frame the Democrats are using.

There’s a hint of a “go-for-broke” strategy here, which I believe is sped up by the transition in the leadership.  We’ve needed to have this fight for 20 years.  Despite legislative majorities, the conservatives have been leading the way on fiscal issues for far too long.  It’s time to have this conversation once and for all, out in the open so that every Californian knows what’s going on.  Let’s put on our helmets.  This is going to be a long, tough slog.

UPDATE: From an Education Coalition press release:

Today a local coalition of concerned parents and educators held a press conference to discuss the real impact on local schools of the Governor’s proposed $4.8 billion cut to education funding, including more than $1.3 billion in projected in cuts to Los Angeles County schools.  They called upon members of the Legislature to uphold Prop. 98, the minimum school funding guarantee, and reject the draconian proposed cuts to schools and students.  

“Schools in Los Angeles are striving to meet the needs of a diverse student population while working to improve student achievement,” said LAUSD Superintendent David L. Brewer III.  “Our state’s leaders cannot continue to cut back on students’ education, without expecting to undermine our state’s most valuable resource and shortchanging California’s future.”

The proposed cuts are the equivalent of cutting more than $24,000 per classroom.

They’re planning on running ads about this, too.

UPDATE 2 [Robert]: Some of Perata’s remarks are transcribed below:

Perata: Well it’s not enough. He’s cut about 5 billion and he’s only half way there.  We’re looking at everything including the tax breaks. The governor recanted a day later so I don’t think he’s there yet. Got snapped at by the Republicans and went to the right corner. We want to fund education consistent with the need. First thing got to do and Tom McClintock says when in a hole got to stop digging.  We’re in a deep hole. I will settle for being eye level with street.

Q: How are you not going to cut the school classrooms?

[Robert: this is the best part of Perata’s remarks, IMO]

P: Raise taxes, is that clear enough. Raise taxes.  No one is going to tell me what’s at stake that average Californian wouldn’t be willing to pay pennies on the dollars more for an educational system here that is worth what we believe what California about.  Let’s face it sending more people to prison and paying $60,000 a year because we don’t have enough opportunities for kids when younger . We’re backwards.  It’s not going to get any better if keep doing this. I don’t care if it is a temporary tax increase, a long term tax increase, the longer we stop talking about the need to have more revenues and say that’s a nice anticeptic phrase for raising taxes the longer we are going to be here. And I tell you we’re not going home, we’re staying here, we are committed, if the Reeps can hang out last year for 30 days to undue the state budget we will do no less to make sure we will preserve the one institution that is the cornerstone of democracy.  If we believe it have to show we believe it.

Q: What taxes, cuts?

P: Hard enough for people to come to grips with saying the words. Now we are wet and you can’t get more wet so we are going to do what we have to do.  We are going to have to make cuts but we are not going to make cuts out of the classroom. There’s a lot of services Californians want that if you put that next to classroom education pales in comparison so they will be put on the table…And say let’s eliminate these things because we can’t afford them….the Governor thought he would try that with parks, that didn’t last too long, lasted about an hour. There are other things we do around here people don’t know about we are going to have to stop doing them. Make hard choices. But Savaging 10 percent of the school budget is not a hard choice it’s no choice at all. Not going to make that choice.

Q: What can schools count on?:

P: That this is fight of a lifetime.  Not going anywhere. Democratic Convention.  Told them Tivo it, close as you are going to get.  Dems in 90’s hung out until October and election year. We won and we won seats. [Robert: this likely refers to the 1992 budget fight with Pete Wilson, which dragged into October. Interestingly 1992 was a very Democratic year at the ballot box, just as 2008 is expected to be.]

Q: What types of taxes, temporary?

P: Two things have to consider, temporary is, we love sunseting things around here. We don’t have the best record for the way we spend people’s money. So maybe temporary better.  We may want to do more allow local districts like this one to have more flexibility, more opportunities to go to their own parents, own voters have kind of schools we used to have before Proposition 13.  Before Prop 13 school districts’ board members would decide what kind of budget they wanted to reflect their students and set the tax rate.  While here ought to be thorough look at everything.

What people seem to like best is a sales tax or raising taxes on others.

Today the results of the February 5 primary become official.  The final spread in the popular vote between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is 8.9%.  Clinton garnered 51.8% to Obama’s 42.9%.  The final delegates will be 203 for Clinton to 167 for Obama.  This roughly averages out to the exact spread in the head-to-head popular vote (Hillary got 54.6% of the head-to-head vote and 54.8% of the delegates), so the convoluted delegate apportionment system worked in the case of California.

I’m also pleased to announce that 47,153 “double bubble” votes were counted in Los Angeles County.  The expectation on the day of the election was that none of these ballots from decline to state voters would be counted, but the pressure put on by the Courage Campaign and other groups led to this result.  And by the way, 51% of those votes went to Hillary Clinton and 42% to Barack Obama, so those who insisted upon viewing this through some partisan lens can respectfully shut the fuck up.  This was about voter rights and remedying disenfranchisement; it always was, even though it had no material impact on the overall election.  

The idea that California is now immune to any pushback from the fossil fuel industry because we’re so enlightened about global warming and determined to do something about it should take a hit with this story, published by McClatchy, about Occidental Petroleum trying to pull a Daniel Plainview and dig up a national monument.

A subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum has notified the Bureau of Land Management that it would like to explore for oil in a central California national monument.

John Dearing, a BLM spokesman, said the agency can do nothing to stop Vintage Production from testing for oil under the Carrizo Plain National Monument in eastern San Luis Obispo County because the company has owned the mineral rights there since before President Bill Clinton created the monument in 2001.

“Because this is a national monument, there will be environmental concerns that will have to be strongly looked at,” Dearing said. “But they have a right to access.”

This is in almost precisely the region described in P.T. Anderson’s Oscar-nominated epic.  The oil company bought up the rights and is now asserting the ability to drill despite the landmark status.

Oh by the way, this area is home to the largest concentration of endangered species anywhere in the country.

There is no cone of invincibility around California.  As sure as the coal industry has wormed its way into sponsoring every Presidential debate on CNN and blanketing states like Ohio with messaging that “coal is good for America,” the oil industry will continue to drill in the name of “keeping us off foreign oil” and “securing our energy future.”  There are battles ahead and there shouldn’t be any resting upon laurels.