In a shining example of the heights to which fair and balanced journalism aspires, Chris Reed yesterday reacted to the Libby Verdict by reminding us Libby may be a convicted felon, but that doesn’t make Joe Wilson a hero.  He does at least have the decency not to “blame administration critics for crowing over Libby’s trial at all.”  He just feels as though lost in the midst of lying to federal investigators, perjury, obstructing justice, the premeditated release of secret government information, the falsification of intelligence reports to justify an optional war, torture scandals, thousands of dead American soldiers and marines, tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, increased terrorist activity and Middle Eastern instability, and the complete collapse of American credibility around the world, is the fact that Joe Wilson is, in fact, not a candidate for sainthood.  Once again, Chris Reed has missed the point.

Perhaps it’s just that he has nothing original to add to the (woefully and horrifyingly) incomplete list above.  It’s been well documented over the years(!), and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s sick of talking about it or thinking about it.  In that regard, he’s like most of us.  But glossing over it isn’t going to accomplish much of anything.

Reed says that “[t]he bipartisan conclusion of the U.S. Senate is that when it comes to telling the truth, he and Lewis Libby have a lot in common.”  The implication, of course, being that Wilson’s exaggerations are somehow morally equivalent to the actions of Libby and the Bush administration as a whole.  Well Mr. Reed, there’s this whole thing called degrees.

The Bush Administration and Lewis Libby set about to knowingly misled the American people, break federal law, and engage in actions that would result in tens of thousands of people dying violent deaths.  It amounted to a fundamental fraud perpetrated against this country by the executive branch of the federal government.

On the other hand, Joseph Wilson publicly and vehemently spoke out against this behavior.  Did he get some things wrong? I have no reason to doubt the Senate report.  But in a media populated by people like Chris Reed who need to be beaten over the head with overly dramatized truth before they’ll pay it any attention, how else was he going to get noticed?

I’m not interested in making excuses or apologies for Joseph Wilson.  He is, in fact, no saint.  But when you stack him up against the villains involved in this case on the other side, he comes out smelling like a rose.  If Chris Reed really thinks that the relevant story of this verdict is anything other than the deceptive, vindictive, and criminal behavior on the part of the people leading this country, he needs to get his head of the sand and stop missing the point.

Faculty for Cal State schools throughout California will begin voting today to determine whether to walk off the job over grievances regarding pay, class size, and health care.  If approved by a simple majority, faculty would begin a series of rolling two-day walkouts statewide.  The voting process will last into next week with the results announced soon afterwards.

The California Faculty Association website offers all sorts of resources to further understand the history of this issue.  Included is a full rundown of the 20 months of bargaining between the CFA and the State, including lots of neat graphs, tables and statistics (which I know we all love).  Of particular interest to me was the graph showing that it’s actually more lucrative to teach at community college than in the CSU system.

This comes at a time of exciting union activity throughout the California college and university system.  John Edwards appeared in Berkeley on Sunday and waxed poetic about the UC Berkeley janitors, saying, “This march for economic and social justice for the men and women who work at this university is a part of a bigger march in America for fairness and equality.”

Covered at Surf Putah and cross posted here at Calitics last week, the Associated Students of UC Davis have voted to support the unionizing efforts of Sodexho employees on campus.

With the Employee Free Choice Act passing the House last week, big things are happening.  Via the link we learn that “one in five union activists can expect to be fired during an organizing campaign … [and] 60 million U.S. workers say they would join a union if they could.”  The link also comes complete with YouTube action from California’s own George Miller.

Change is coming in a big way to the California education system.  Underpaid workers at the highest levels is just one aspect that’s coming to a head right now.  At the local and state level, the fight over how the educational system is going to operate is being waged.  The battle today is how we’ll treat the people who deliver knowledge.

Fabian Nunez yesterday took Governor Schwarzenegger to task for his behavior during the Governator’s recent swing through DC.  “I certainly wouldn’t come to Washington to tell people here how to do their job,” Nunez said, on the heels of Schwarzenegger lauding the virtues of “post-partisan” politics.

“What he’s talking about sounds good theoretically. I think in practical terms the way I read it is it’s just semantics. Post-partisanship – what does that mean? I don’t know. It’s some word he made up,” Nunez said.

“But I think he has a claim, in some ways, to that new term because last year we got a lot of things done. But you know we did it because we reached across the party aisle … Remember, everything we got done were Democratic issues.”

On the same day that post-partisanism was stung as little more than a combination of self-agrandizing deals with Democrats, Nunez is, in his own way, regaining some momentum here.  We need more of this, preferably more bluntly: Post-partisan is just Democratic issues broken by a Republican.  But it goes deeper than that.

If you want post-partisanship in action, this is it.  Schwarzenegger doing his best to look better than everyone else at every opportunity.  If you think Hillary is triangulating, she’s a rank amateur by comparison.  Nunez’s point, and it seems like a good one here, is that California really isn’t so great that it’s time to start lording it over people.  There’s a lot of work still to be done, and a lot of help that either could or must come from Washington.  To take just one example, a new government study has determined that 90% of the National Guard is unprepared to to respond to crises, and that the current course is unsustainable.  So the governor goes to DC and what happens? 800 California Guardsmen and women get mobilized for the Iraq escalation.  Glad that Arnie “lobbied the president, members of Congress and cabinet secretaries on matters of importance to California.”  Preventing death and suffering wasn’t on the list I guess.

To extrapolate further, Nunez is setting an example that several presidential candidates could learn from.  Consistently and clearly drawing a distinction between what Republican leaders (say, George Bush) are doing and what a competent Democrat in the same position could, should and would be doing instead.  Yes, when it comes time for campaigning in earnest, you talk about moving forward.  When you’re establishing the framework for a narrative of better governance coming from the Democratic Party in general, you point out the difference between Republican governance and effective governance.

While Schwarzenegger is bragging about how visionary he is and dropping names like Mahatma Gandhi, Edmund Burke and John F. Kennedy,” it’s Democrats who are actually doing the heavy lifting to improve California.  Post-partisanship is some word he made up.

Not quite as hot as last weekend, but still plenty of opportunity to stir things up offline this weekend.  And as a wise man once assured, it’s all good, from Diego to the Bay, and we’re puttin it down for Californ-I-A.

Bay Area:

Friday, March 2: Mark Leno Campaign Kickoff, 12:00pm

Sunday, March 4: John Edwards in Berkeley, 2:30pm

Orange County:

Saturday, March 3: Military Families Speak Out, 10:00am

Saturday, March 3: HRC in Laguna OC, 11:30am

Saturday, March 3: Peak Oil: What Are We to Do?, 6:30pm

Sunday, March 4: Progressive Christians Uniting Orange County, 3:00pm

Sunday, March 4: Tustin Screening of “The Great Warming”, 6:00pm

San Diego:

Friday, March 2: Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund Luncheon, 11:30am

Saturday, March 3: Meeting of Region 20 CDP Convention Delegates, 10:00am

And as always, Calitics will be here to provide all the news that’s fit to print. Go forth and rectify.

It started five months ago when Mayor Jerry Sanders attempted to eliminate a youth swimming program and slash funding for the homeless.  Today apparently, a deal was brokered between Sanders and the two ranking members of the San Diego City Council to, effectively, give Sanders everything he could possibly want.  Come flip out on the flip.

Council President Scott Peters and Council President Pro Tem Tony Young hammered out the deal with Sanders which, in effect, ensures that Sanders can’t cut the ENTIRE government without approval.

The temporary agreement, which runs through the end of the fiscal year in June, requires Sanders to notify (not get approval from) the City Council if he decides to eliminate “any program or service affecting the community.”  Further, it caps budget cuts at 10% or $4 million per department before the mayor needs to get Council approval.  And even then…would this City Council have the interest in standing up to his budget cuts in a real way?

So essentially, the City Council has decided to grant the mayor power to, if he wants to, cut 10% of the city budget between now and June with absolutely no oversight.  This doesn’t sound like an agreement that protects anything from an “Only Mayor” form of government.  And it sure as hell wouldn’t do much to protect youth swimming programs or funding for outreach to the homeless.  But at least councilmembers will get a memo about it as they watch their authority float away.  It’s like they haven’t been paying any attention to the ENTIRE Bush Administration.

Sanders said of the deal “If we had been locked up in an endless battle then the citizens would have been the ones who suffered from that.” I’m not sure from where he gets the impression that caution when cutting governmental services or responsible legislative oversight is detrimental to the people, but he’s apparently well stocked with enablers in the City Council.

Chris Reed has a post up this afternoon on his UT blog discussing the continuing “media error-a-thon” in regards to classifying those without health care in the United States.  His complaint is that there are not 47 million Americans without health insurance.  Rather, there are 47 million people in America without health insurance.  His gripe so much as I understand it is that immigrants, legal or otherwise, shouldn’t be part of the health care discussion in the first place and that including them improperly legitimizes these people as Americans and artificially inflates the health care problems faced in this country.

The problem of course, is that this completely misses both the moral and practical point.  I’ll dig into both of those on the flip, but let’s make sure not to miss Reed’s implicit point: Calm down, there are only 35 million people each year without health insurance.  No sweat.  I’d like to presume that Chris Reed knows better than all that, although the posts of his that I’ve read wouldn’t suggest so.

The moral side of this discussion is simply that people who are sick or injured should be helped.  It’s a price of the hose argument.  While opponents sensibly wag their fingers, admonishing that we can’t save everyone, I’m reminded of The Constant Gardener.  We can’t save everyone, but here are real people, right here, that we can help.  Nevertheless, I don’t expect this to be the argument that holds much sway with Chris Reed or anyone else who dismisses the health care crisis as overblown or sensationalized.

The virtue of getting everyone onto health insurance is that it keeps people healthy.  Undocumented immigrants may get plenty of principled panties in a twist for any number of reasons, but in the meantime, germs don’t segregate based on ethnicity or citizenship.  More sick people in a society is bad for overall health, it’s bad for economic and educational productivity, it slows down our childrens’ academic development.

We can talk about better enforcement of the border and we can talk about improving living conditions in the developing world in order to make staying put more palatable.  We can talk about just about everything in between.  But if Chris Reed is concerned that expanding health care coverage would make the United States too attractive a place to live, then I’m not so sure why he’s hell-bent on defending the term “American.”  If his point is simply a semantic one- that illegal immigrants shouldn’t be counted in the number- then he is failing to grasp how health systems work and belittling the crisis of 35 million American citizens without healthcare.

He’s not a fool when it comes to this stuff- he’s written smartly about the problems with the Massachusetts plan, its implications in relation to Arnold’s plan, and promoted the idea of insuring all children.  But splitting hairs of this nature amounts to quibbling over a match on a fire.  It fails to address the issue at hand or reflect the complexity of the issue from outside an anti-immigrant mindset, and deflects attention from the actual discussion that should be taking place.  It’s divisive and unproductive, and if Chris Reed is serious about having a discussion about how to make health care work, this stuff needs to go away.

On March 5, The UFCW Grocery Workers’ contract expires, and there isn’t much sign that the UFCW and the store owners are nearing an agreement.  In 2003/04, grocery workers went on strike for four and a half months in response to contract negotiations reaching an impasse, a strike that had major repercussions for the market share of supermarket chains and cost an estimated $2 billion.  Ownership doesn’t seem to have forgotten about that, despite the fact that most of that market share has been regained and, in certain places, surpassed.

The union’s website, packed full of goodies, can be found here, outlining what they’re up against, what they’re doing, and why.  You can also sign the petition of support if you’re so inclined, and find many other ways to get involved at the website or at the end of this diary.

The UT hit the high points of the situation recently, giving a solid rundown of the basics.  Albertsons (SuperValu), Ralphs (Kroger), and Vons (Safeway) account for about half of the grocery business in Southern California, and are stacked up against the 65,000 regional workers of the UFCW.  They’re contending over wage and health care, but the crux of the negotiations is the two-tiered employment system put in place as part of the last contract.

Under the two-tiered system, workers with longer tenure get better pay and benefits, while newer workers are paid less and must work longer to become eligible for benefits.  The union argues this amounts to different pay for equal work and contributes to high turnover, and they’re right on both counts.  While the stores are defending themselves by claiming that the market is increasingly competitive and they need to keep costs down, I wonder if they’ll feel the same way when the current batch of tenured employees retire (they’re getting up there from what I see at my local stores).

With all due respect to these stores, they have turned in billions in profits lately, and San Diego recently took steps to restrict the growth of big-box retailers.  And with the growth of CEO salaries, they aren’t really presenting a very sympathetic picture.

The benefits of strong and healthy unions have been covered all over the blogs, I won’t dive into it here.  But this is an opportunity for some solidarity.  Sign the petition, email corporate management, spread the news, share your experiences if you’ve worked in the industry, participate in their Text Respect drive, or any combination thereof.

Ben Franklin stuck that in Poor Richard’s Almanac 250 years ago.  These days, with both the literal water well and metaphorical financial well drying up in San Diego, Mayor Jerry Sanders is letting us know the worth of water.  And guess what? It’s apparently worth much more in your house than it is at your office.

The Center on Policy Initiatives has released a (pdf) study analyzing the mayor’s new proposal to raise the cost of water in the city.  This proposal is currently flying through its council appointment and shows little signs of being held up, much less stopped.  This is, primarily, because nobody disputes the goal of the measure- raise water prices to fix an antiquated and dangerous sewer system.  As is so often the case though, the devil is in the details.

Mayor Sanders has proposed raising water rates across the board to all types of property.  However, when all is said and done in these adjustments, CPI’s analysis reveals that residential customers will be paying 30% more for their water than business customers.  In the process, it would target its rate hikes specifically on residential customers:  11.75% hike for single-family homes, 18.5% hike for multi-family buildings (apartments, etc.), and just 2.42% for businesses and industry.

So on the one hand, it’s just working families getting the shaft in a city that’s been giving them the shaft forever.  The upper class won’t miss a beat, industry is fine, but low and middle class families get hit hard.  Aside from the urge to just write it off as Sanders being a jerk (he is, but that’s several other stories), why does this make sense for him and/or the city?

San Diego has spent the past decade throwing itself headlong into luxury development.  Expensive high rise condos downtown, McMansion developments stretching for miles, luxury hotels on the coast to match the snazzy new convention center…they all conspire to push low income residents further out and suck in businesses who smell green blood in the water.  Jerry Sanders was ushered into office largely on his promises to speed up this sort of development, and he’s done a pretty good job of delivering on that promise.

But now the real estate bubble is deflating, new condos have gone from the upper 200s to the upper 100s in a matter of six months, and the tax boost from new money is tapering off.  You’ve got people locked into the houses and condos they’ve bought recently, and they’re much less apt to pack up and leave town during a downswing than are businesses who have profited from the economic boom.  The more stable (or trapped if you’re a pessimist) side of the water biz is the residential side.  San Diego in general, and Mayor Sanders in particular, are no slouches when it comes to doing backflips for business interests.  There are grand designs for the interior extension of 125 that imagine it becoming a major industrial and manufacturing center for the region, with corporate jets flying into the refurbished airport and buckets of new revenue to bail out the fiscal disaster that is the San Diego budget.

San Diego is more than happy to take advantage of its working class because of the presumption that it’ll always be there one way or another.  The cynical reality that nobody in the government wants to admit to is that as long as there’s a never-ending supply of Mexicans coming across the border legally, illegally, or as commuters, the working class of this city and county is always going to be taken for granted.  The new water rates are just one more reflection of the skewed priorities in San Diego’s government.

ED: Corrected 18.75% increase for multifamily residential to 18.5%

Guest-blogging at the Cafe San Diego blog today is Murtaza Baxamusa, senior planner, Center on Policy Initiatives.  It’s a relatively brief, bullet-point rundown of ways in which San Diego has been fiscally irresponsible with its development deals over the past 10 years or so.  It’s by no means an exhaustive list and it by no means covers everything that’s wrong with the given examples (Qualcomm Stadium, College Grove Wal-Mart, Navy Broadway Complex).  The real kicker- the part that has implications to everything we do here and everywhere else online- comes right at the end:

The last example illustrates how our officials are sold on the idea that any development benefits the community. Seldom does anyone sit down with a calculator and fill in the costs and benefits columns. The CEO of the downtown redevelopment agency, Nancy Graham, recently told reporters: “We don’t get into the financial analysis, and neither does the city.”

Yesterday, Francine Busby sent out an email wondering aloud whether San Diego could become “A Democratic Powerhouse”.  It recounted a recent meeting in which

Party Chairman, Jess Durfee laid out strategic plans to increase and mobilize Democratic voters and elect Democrats who will work for high quality education, energy independence, affordable housing, access to healthcare and other progressive priorities.

All of those, without a doubt, are important tent issues with national, state and local implications.  And while I might be unfairly critical, it sounds a lot like what sank Busby in her congressional race.  Big, national, non-specific ideas without providing me any inkling of what it would look like day-to-day in my life.  San Diego as a Democratic area isn’t as crazy as it sounds.  There are four congressional districts, 2 Democratic, 2 Republican.  The 50th is competitive, which tips the scorecard 2-1-1 if we’re talking about demographic makeup.  But that also means that the county Democratic party isn’t fighting too many tough Congressional races.  The County party is going to be involved exclusively in GOTV for state elections because, at least in the near future, that’s all the SD Democratic Party will be asked to do from state-level campaigns.  So what will it do locally?  Assembly, State Senate, City Council, Mayor and offices on down the line need to be strongly contested and/or defended, but when will the party actually take up the cause of accountability?

This is a tricky line for a party to tread.  Turning on the people you got elected to be representatives of YOUR party is tough to say the least.  But if the Democratic Party isn’t the party of accountability, then what else can it be that will ultimately matter?  If it isn’t the party providing the mechanism to actually get good things done, then as all these young people awake to politics and want to get involved, why would they use the party?

There are lots of reasons why public and party officials would overlook important aspects of this stuff, ranging from the well-meaning to the nefarious.  Maybe they have bad advice, or just a flawed perspective on the situation.  Maybe they just don’t have time to read through everything, and have to delegate to a staffer who misses the boat.  Maybe they’re looking forward to another nice campaign check from the beneficiaries of their actions.  Maybe it’s a healthy dose of condescending contempt for the general population.  Either way, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the more pressure is placed on government officials, the more responsive they end up being.  That applies whether it’s blog posts, MoveOn petitions, letters to your Congressperson, organizing primary challenges, or anything in between.  The end result is that our government is held mroe responsible and forced to be more responsive.

Now, the stuff in Baxamusa’s blog post isn’t sexy.  It’s not exciting, and it isn’t the stuff that mass movements are made of.  But it’s the day-to-day stuff that adds up to quality of life.  And it’s not that difficult to change.  It can be difficult to find an audience for local and state issues at times, but you don’t need Obama’s million Facebook friends to make a big impact.  For the hundreds or thousands of calls that might be required to get noticed on a national issue, I’d imagine getting five or ten people in one day to express an opinion on a San Diego development project would knock the city council right out of their collective socks.  It’s all a matter of degrees.

Not all places are like San Diego, where the general levels of political awareness and involvement are pretty low.  It’s not a tough bar to clear if you want to get involved and make an impact.  But even in places where civic participation is already a big part of the game, infrastructure gets built by local issues.  We chide our candidates to campaign on local issues, because that’s what resonates.  But too often we forget the implications of such an outlook.

If we want a 50-State Strategy, a 58-County Strategy, generally a party that reflects the people it aspires to represent, local issues ARE the infrastructure.  A party that’s involved all day, every day is the party who’s there to push these issues, because the party that can mobilize people and support their efforts to demand accountability and responsibility from their local government is the party that has the system in place when the national elections come around.

We talk often about changing the party.  Not wholesale, not violently or radically (crashingly?), but making it stronger by making it more able to use the power available to it.  Right now, too often, our local governments just aren’t getting the job done.  It’s not a partisan problem (members of both parties have shown the ability to be bad at their jobs), but a Democratic Party that is not just progressive, not just people-powered, but people-oriented, can provide the support for people to demand better.  And when it comes down to it, that’s what I want from my party and it’s what I’ve found more of in blogging: I want my demands to be loud enough to be heard.

Crossposted at Dailykos, MyDD, and my completely neglected blog