The racist attack video directed at LA Councilwoman Janice Hahn, the Democratic candidate in the upcoming special election in California’s 36th Congressional district, is based on a thoroughly discredited three-year-old TV report on the local FOX affiliate, KTTV, which is owned and operated by the network.

While admitting the ad was offensive, TPM reports, the National Republican Congressional Committee said the ad made a good point, linking to the KTTV report as if it hadn’t been totally discredited within a matter of weeks over three years ago, as the newspaper I work for, Random Lengths News reported at the time.

The FOX report, by Chris Blatchford, aired on KTTV on April 30, 2008, and was systematically debunked by reporter Gene Maddaus in the Daily Breeze on May 14, 2008.  The Breeze is a suburban Republican newspaper that is generally critical of Hahn, but has some excellent reporters.

Summarizing his findings, Maddaus wrote, “a review of the Fox 11 News story found major flaws that undermine its central allegations. Most notably, records and interviews show that the gang intervention workers identified in the report have not received city funding. Additionally, a convicted rapist was wrongly identified as a gang intervention worker, and Hahn was mistakenly accused of providing funds directly to gang workers.”

The sole piece of hard evidence presented by FOX connecting Hahn  to the rapist, Steven Myrick, was a routine certificate for participating in a summer jobs program in 2004, a year before the gang task force was organized, and two years before his rape arrest. This was surrounded by Myrick’s own self-serving puffery about how connected he was–standard-issue BS that no reporter worth his salt would rely on without substantial corroboration, which FOX did not have. In fact, the evidence Maddaus dug up showed that Myrick was simply lying.

In addition to gang members, the FOX report was based on interviews with two LAPD officers with an axe or two to grind.  Ryan Moreno and Chuck Garcia were suing the department for having been re-assigned from the gang task force in Watts, which they accused Hahn of being involved in.  (Hahn simply passed on community complaints about disrespectful attitudes, which were incompatible with the LAPD’s efforts to embrace a less confrontational “community-based policing” approach.) The two officers lost their case in mid-June, thus giving the FOX report the air of a failed pre-trial effort to taint the jury pool. Hahn was not a named party in the suit, and everything relating to her was excluded by the judge as irrelevant before the trial began.

As senior editor at Random Lengths News, a biweekly serving much of Hahn’s district, I co-wrote a story about this whole affair and its ramifications in local politics, which appeared on June 13.   The article referenced the Breeze article, and summarized some of its main points thus:

• “Most notably, records and interviews show that the gang intervention workers identified in the [Fox News] report have not received city funding.”
  

• The group cited, Unity One, runs almost entirely on funding from private sources. Gang intervention workers like Jones are paid from that private funding, not with taxpayer money.
  

• According to records provided by Toberman Neighborhood Center [the premier local social service agency] city funding that passed through Toberman goes to pay salaries for Bo Taylor, the president of Unity One, and Skip Townsend, a program manager. Hahn did not obtain that money for Unity One.
  

• A “convicted rapist was wrongly identified as a gang intervention worker.”

We also noted that “recent events have left some people wondering how much blood was drawn, and whether any of it will make a difference in 2009, when she [Hahn] is up for reelection–or if it was simply intended to damage her chances for further higher office.”

In the years since then, we have reported on recurrent rumblings by mostly-rightwing individuals repeatedly promising the imminent launch of a recall campaign.  These reached an apparent high-point last summer (story here), only to collapse into dust. The disproven gang allegations are part of a grab-bag of shifting complaints  they have cited, but they have repeatedly undermined their own credibility, first by their own secretive methods–always excusing themselves by promising to go public when “the time is right”, second by failing to ever actually launch their public campaign, and third by repeatedly mentioning these publicly-refuted allegations.

In trying to defend himself, the video maker, Ladd Ehlinger Jr. said, in part, “Claim victimhood all you like, but how many people were victimized by your coddling? There’s a reason Mayor Villaraigosa took the program away from you. He’s a Democrat. So are you. Think about it.”

But the reorganization of all gang task forces into a single structure was already underway when FOX aired the original hit piece–not to mention the fact that the accusing officers blamed the entire LAPD command structure, for which Villaraigosa is responsible, not Janice Hahn.

When KTTV presented Blatchford’s report, it was introduced by anchorwoman Christine DeVine saying, “The Mayor’s Office is soon taking over control of all city anti-gang programs and plans to increase spending on gang prevention and intervention. Tonight Chris Blatchford with a FOX 11 News investigation of how some of that money has gone to the gangsters themselves.”  

As already noted, the accusation was false–but the timing was accurate: The consolidation of anti-gang programs was already underway when FOX aired its anti-Hahn hit piece.

There is a great deal more of local backstory to all this. The LAPD has a long, ugly history of racism, which it has only recently made giant strides to overcome.  As recently as  2007, there was a police riot on May Day, attacking thousands of innocent demonstrators, as well media covering the event, and people simply enjoying a day at the park.  (Random Lengths story here.)  The department has now fully embraced the pro-active multifaceted strategy of community-based policing, but there are still significant elements within the ranks who remain deeply opposed to working with the community, rather than lording it over them. This was a clear example of that.  

Add to that the fact that Hahn’s father, long-time County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, was a legendary figure principally responsible for virtually the entire first generation of both Black and Latino elected officials in Los Angeles County, and you begin to get a feel for just how much even deeper racial ugliness this latest vicious act of racism is trying to hide.

As I wrote at OpenLeft:

Dana Milbank Reports: Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens By Dana Milbank Friday, May 9, 2008; A03 It was already shaping up to be a difficult year for congressional Republicans. Now, on the cusp of Mother’s Day, comes this: A majority of the House GOP has voted against motherhood. On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, “Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother’s Day,” when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest. “Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote,” he announced. Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt’s request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers. It has long been the custom to compare a popular piece of legislation to motherhood and apple pie. Evidently, that is no longer the standard. Worse, Republicans are now confronted with a John Kerry-esque predicament: They actually voted for motherhood before they voted against it. Republicans, unhappy with the Democratic majority, have been using such procedural tactics as this all week to bring the House to a standstill, but the assault on mothers may have gone too far. House Minority Leader John Boehner, asked yesterday to explain why he and 177 of his colleagues switched their votes, answered: “Oh, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was on record in support of Mother’s Day.” By voting against it? If Boehner’s explanation doesn’t make much sense, he’s been under a great deal of stress lately. OMG!  Can you imagine if Democrats did that? First vote here; second vote here.  (Click on party name to see invividual members). If you think he’s been under a lot of stress, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Voting against motherhood! Well, I’ll give them this: at least they were honest for once. And yes, since one of those voting against was Dana (“Taliban”) Rohrabacher, a small portion of whose district falls into the Random Lengths News circulation area, I do feel honor bound to see that this runs in our paper.  His district is R+6, and Debbie Cook is gunning for him.

Calitics Bonus! California Republicans voting against Mothers Day:

Brian Bilbray Mary Bono Ken Calvert John Doolittle David Dreier Elton Gallegly Wally Herger Duncan Hunter Darrell Issa Jerry Lewis Daniel Lungren Kevin McCarthy Buck McKeon Gary Miller Devin Nunes George Radanovich Dana Rohrabacher Edward Royce

How can we not defeat them all?

(Slightly edited for space. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Cross-posted from Open Left

Yesterday, January 4, 2008, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) released a landmark study of air pollution and cancer risk, four years in the making, showing significant improvements over an earlier study in the late 1990s, but an overall level of risk that is hundreds to thousands of times higher than what’s normally considered acceptable. The AQMD is the regional air quality enforcement agency for the Los Angeles/Orange County/Inland Empire area, home to the worst air pollution in the country.  The study, known as  MATES III (Multiple Air Toxics Exposure Study), tracked 33 substances, with over 18,000 samples taken at 15 sites over a two-year period.

The vast majority of cancer risk–85%–came from diesel particulate matter, which is primarily regulated by the federal government.  The role of the executive branch in promoting, preventing or delaying effective action is but one more life-or-death decision affecting millions of people in the upcoing November election.

Homicides In California
Year	# of Homicides
2002	2,395
2003	2,407
2004	2,392
2005	2,503
2006	2,485

AQMD found the average cancer risk to be 1,200 per million–two to three orders of magnitude above the the level of just 1 to 10 per million that most health experts would consider acceptable, according to AQMD Executive Officer Barry Wallerstein.  But the cancer risk at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are more than double that–up to 2,900 per million, and the next highest levels of risk are found along the goods movement corridors moving inland from the ports:

In 2006, California’s state-level agency, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) released a study (“Emission Reduction Plan for Ports and Goods Movement”) estimating that total premature deaths due to trade (aka “goods movement”) in California from all causes (not just cancer) is about 2,400 annually.  This is roughly equal to the number of murder victims in California in recent years:

Murders are reported on the news every day.  “If it bleeds, it leads.”  But those killed by trade?  Even the doctors and nurses who attend their deaths don’t know who they are.  How can you tell that this particular victim of cancer or heart atack died because of goods movement air pollution?  You can’t.  But they’re out there.  Invisible victims.  Dying, every day.  

It’s not all bad news.  MATES III shows that AQMD’s air pollution programs have reduced residents’ cancer risk from toxic air pollution by at least 15 percent in the past seven years.  But the federal government, not the AQMD, has direct authority over the major contributors to goods movement pollution–ships, planes, trains, and trucks.  And the federal government, of course, is not just doing nothing, it’s actively preventing others from doing anything.

In a press release, AQMD said:

“This reduction in cancer risk shows that we are on the right track in tackling toxic air pollution,” said William Burke, Ed.D., Governing Board Chairman of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

“However, the remaining cancer risk is completely unacceptable.  Thousands of residents are getting sick and dying from toxic air pollution.  Some of them live in low-income, minority neighborhoods that may be heavily impacted by cancer-causing air pollution.  We must continue to fight for cleaner ships, locomotives, trucks and other sources of toxic air pollution to improve the  health of all Southern California residents.”

According to AQMD, the chief findings of MATES III are that:

* On average, Southland residents are exposed to a lifetime cancer risk from toxic air pollution of 1,200 in 1 million.  That is a 15 percent reduction from the average risk estimated in AQMD’s last air toxics study conducted in 1998-1999, but still one of the highest risks in the country;

* The highest computer-modeled risk level is in the port area with a maximum lifetime cancer risk of up to 2,900 in a million;

* Diesel exhaust accounts for approximately 84 percent of region-wide cancer risk and mobile sources — including cars and trucks as well as ships, trains, aircraft and construction equipment — account for 94 percent of the total risk; and

* Sites with higher levels of cancer risk due to air toxics include Burbank, downtown Los Angeles, Fontana, Huntington Park and Wilmington.  The site with the lowest risk is Anaheim.

The following chart shows the dominant role played by diesel particulate matter (bottom red-orange portion of each bar):

The last MATES study lead to a series of regulatory measures, and we should expect more of the same in the wake of MATES III, although the most significant actions will require federal action–or, at the very least, non-interefence.  Of these, AQMD highlighted the following:

* AQMD’s clean fleet rules, which have resulted in the purchase of hundreds of clean-fueled transit buses, school buses, refuse trucks, street sweepers and other vehicles;

* Regulations that have significantly reduced emissions of perchloroethylene (“perc”) at dry cleaners and other industries; hexavalent chromium from metal plating shops and protected schools from toxic air pollutants from new sources;

* Collaboration with the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to establish the ports’ Clean Air Action Plan, a landmark program to cut diesel emissions from ships, trucks, trains and other sources;

* Use of well over $100 million in incentive funds to reduce diesel emissions from school buses, tug boats and trucks in the ports and other sources of diesel exhaust; and

* Adoption in January 2007 of AQMD’s Mobile Source Fair Share Initiative, which led to introduction of the Marine Vessel Emissions Reduction Act in Congress last year.  If approved, the measure would compel the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce toxic and smog-forming pollution from ships.

In addition to direct federal action, there are solid legal grounds to allow greater flexibility for others to act–if the Bush Administration were sympathetic to public health.  There are solid legal arguments supporting jurisdictional rights for some state and regional programs–as well as actions by the ports themselves, which have the right to set terms for those doing business with them, under what’s known as the “market participation theory”.

But industry threats of lawsuits have already delayed implementation of a clean trucks program. The federal government can further delay such efforts through its opposition, as demonstrated by the EPA’s recent refusal of a Clean Air Act waiver for California’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions for cars.  Thus, MATES III also serves to highlight another way in which the elections this November could well save thousands of innocent lives.

(great report from Paul. – promoted by David Dayen)

“Goods Movement” Is Destroying Communities, From The Lungs Of Children Outward

A Growing Movement To Roll Back The Damage Took A Big Step Forward This Weekend

Cross-posted from Open Left

“Birth of a movement” is probably overstating it.  Movements don’t really work like that. They come into being gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, and then go through succession of defining moments, not just one.  But sometimes there comes a moment when those who have been acting separately in far-flung corners of the country come together, and know that from that point onward, they will never be that separate again.  And that is not the birth a movement, it is, at least, the birth of a movement’s national identity.  And that is what is happening in Carson, California, this Friday and Saturday: the joining together of activists from across the country fighting to defend their communities against the destructive side of global trade in perhaps its most concrete form-the destruction due to the physical movement of goods.

There were also some world-class health and environmental scientists on hand.  You know.  Reality-based community types.  The usual suspects.

Modestly billed as “a conference on healthy solutions for communities impacted by trade, ports and goods movement,” the “Moving Forward” conference brought people from communities as far away as Maine-and even Barcelona-to the shadow of the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex, which claims more than a thousand lives a year due to premature deaths from the pollution generated by the flow of goods pouring through it.  Although the vast majority of participants came from different parts of California, others came not only from Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico ports, but also from “inland ports” in places as unlikely as rural Kansas, where Eric Kirkendall found himself threatened with being surrounded by a massive, multi-acre, diesel-pollution-belching warehouse complex. And they came not so much for raw information-readily available in today’s online age-but for the chance to simply gather together, share their stories, gain inspiration, make connections, and forge the framework for a movement that still does not even have a simple name.

We’ve Come A Long Way

Five years ago, when local activists opposed to the wanton destruction of unregulated port expansion held a press conference in nearby San Pedro, they were met with an angry contingent of workers from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and they did not really get any respect until they beat the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) in the California Court of Appeals.

But on Friday, the opening keynote speech was given by Joe Radisich, who not only is the ILWU’s International Vice President, but who also sits on the 5-person Board of Harbor Commissioners overseeing POLA.  And Radisich laid it on the line.  Longshore workers were amongst the most exposed to port pollution, and therefore had a strong commitment to cleaning up the industry they worked in.  They knew from seventy years of fighting the industry that there would be pushback.  There would be lawsuits, and there would be threats to move business elsewhere-which is why the battle had to become a national, even an international one.

“We have to start thinking on a national and a global scale,” Radisich said, warning of certain defeat, “if we don’t have a stragegy to help others.”

In response, audience members from both Texas and South Carolina personally asked Radisich to come visit their communities, and talk with labor leaders there.  (The Atlantic and Gulf coasts are represented by another union, the International Longshore Assocation, but both are part of a larger worldwide association of maritime-related unions.)  The dramatic shift on the part of the ILWU is indicative of a potential that is present everywhere.  No one wants to sacrifice their health-or even more dramatically, the health of their children-simply for the sake of making a decent living, which should come simply at the cost of honest hard work.

Mothers and Children

In part because children’s developing lungs put them especially at risk, there is a deep visceral element to this struggle that easily transcends differences of race, ethnicity or language.  One of the partner organizations involved in putting on the conference, the Long Beach Alliance for Children With Asthma, draws enormous strength from educating and empowering the mothers of children with asthma, first to help them learn how to care for their children, and then, if they wish, helping them to become powerful public advocates. 

In a panel session devoted to success stories, LBACA program director Elina Green explained how LBACA began as a more-or-less standard service agency, but then developed a strong public advocacy program, realizing that such advocacy was absolutely necessary to protect the health of the children in their community. LBACA itself underwent a natural evolution from service to advocacy that direcly parallels the evolution of the mothers that it works with.

Here are two such stories, taken from “PAYING WITH OUR HEALTH: The Real Cost of Freight Transport in California, A Ditching Dirty Diesel Collaborative Report by the Pacific Institute, published in November 2006, which was part of the resource package for this conference:

Two Long Beach Mothers

by Oti Nungaray and Adriana Hernandez

Oti Nungaray

RUMBLE, RUMBLE. That’s the hum of my community, so close to the nation’s largest port complex. The air tickles your throat, but my daughter and I are not laughing. We’ve been living in Long Beach for ten years. The doctor first diagnosed her with asthma when she was six. It’s been traumatizing to watch my child suffer. Through my involvement with the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma, I’ve learned about managing my child’s asthma, including controlling triggers inside the home. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to control the environment outside, when you live next to the largest fixed source of air pollution in greater Los Angeles. I believe there are solutions to these problems. I don’t believe industry’s claim that reducing pollution will hurt our economy. These companies make a lot of money while I spend money on medicine and miss work and my daughter misses school.

Adriana Hernandez

I LIVE NEAR I-710: a parking lot of nearly 50,000 cargo trucks daily. Next door is Wilmington, an area pockmarked with refineries. We get hit with pollution from all sides. My youngest son was born with a closed trachea and his left vocal cord paralyzed; he still takes speech classes. He also suffered from severe asthma attacks. I had to medicate him and connect him to a breathing machine, feeling desperate that my child couldn’t breathe.

Lots of companies are making lots of money, while we pay for medicines, insurance pays for doctor’s visits, and the government pays when children miss school. These companies are selfish to not pay the pennies needed to help reduce this pollution. In doctor visits, medication costs, and a mother’s anguish, increased freight transport in Long Beach costs us too much.

Ports Move Inland

As the ports and port communities have become increasingly overwhelmed, some of the functions that used to be carried out on what’s known as “backlands” have been moved inland, five, twenty, a hundred miles or more, as told in another story from “PAYING WITH OUR HEALTH” by a legendary activist:

My story: Once-Rural Riverside County

by Penny Newman

I’VE BEEN A RESIDENT of the rural community of Glen Avon/Mira Loma for more than 41 years. Located next to Highway 60 and Interstate 15, our unincorporated area is the target of industrial development of massive warehouses and distribution centers. The expansion of goods imported into the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has created a demand for rail hauling of goods that has led to the expansion of the Union Pacific railyard-now the largest auto distribution center in the world. In five years, our sleepy, agriculturally based community turned into a major industrial park. More than 120 warehouses have replaced cow pastures and vineyards. Our mountain views have been replaced by looming cement monoliths. The Union Pacific is now directly next to our high school. Hundreds of trucks park and idle 20 feet from the athletic fields where our children play.

The Inland Valleys of Riverside and San Bernardino have long had high levels of smog pollution, but recently the main focus has turned to particulate matter (PM). The World Health Organization (WHO) ranked us fourth in the world in PM pollution, after Jakarta, Indonesia; Calcutta, India; and Bangkok, Thailand. According to researchers at USC, the children in our communities have the slowest lung growth and weakest lung capacity of all children studied in Southern California. Asthma and other respiratory ailments are prevalent. Cancer risk from freight transport is 1,500 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s “acceptable” risk levels. With this development, our streets and rural roads have become danger zones. Residents must compete with semi trucks for space on the same roads. Horse riders navigate trails that now wind through industrial areas. Children who once enjoyed the open fields now are confined to their own backyards for recreation. We greatly fear the prediction that freight transport will increase exponentially. Our families simply can’t take any more.

Only now, some of those functions are moving more than a thousand miles inland, which brings us to Kansas, and the story Eric Kirkendall told the conference attendees, which is summarized on his own website :

My name is Eric Kirkendall. My wife and I have lived just outside of Gardner for almost 18 years. I have Master’s degrees in Urban Planning and Public Administration from the University of Kansas, but work as a manager of Information Technology.

I am a firm believer in a person’s right to do what he wants on his land – as long as he does not negatively affect other people. They can play music as loud as they want, they can pollute, they can have bright lights on 24 hours a day. That is land and their business. When those impacts cross my property line – that is another story. Then it is my business.

Until recently, that was hypothetical.

No longer. The first Intermodal-related development has been proposed on the land that surrounds our four-acre homestead on three sides. My wife and I are the first people so directly and closely affected by the Intermodal and the warehouses that will come with it – but not the last.

This might happen to you too, so I will tell you how this developer has worked. First, Paul Licausi of LS Commercial Real Estate offered to buy our property, and showed us a “site plan” (a drawing) that shows a road for diesel trucks just 10 feet from our eastern property line, and a 12 acre warehouse just ten feet beyond that. On the other side of our property was another huge 12 acre warehous.

I told him that we want to retire here in 7-8 years, and are not interested in selling now. I told him that I want him to follow good development standards so that can enjoy our property until then. In return for assurances of good standards, I offered to would work with him to assure our property could be integrated into his development at that time. I offered to guarantee him the right to buy the property.

I have told him that in person at our only meeting, and in several email messages. I invited him to my home to discuss it. I suggested we find a “win-win” solution that meets his needs and ours. He has refused. One of his employees said he will meet with me only to discuss my wife and I selling him the property. His development plans, if he is successful, will destroy the livability of our home.

So, my only option has been to approach the City of Gardner and to ask that they not annex the land that surrounds me until there are standards in place appropriate for a Mega-warehouse development. Everyone in the city agrees that such standards do not yet exist, and are looking into hiring a consultant to help them develop appropriate standards.

One thing I can’t convey so easily is how nonchalantly multi-racial and gender balanced the conference was.  Which is only natural, given who’s in the way of limitless corporate greed.  This is what America looks like.  And it’s had enough of being shunted aside in the name of “progress” that doesn’t seem to be headed anywhere at all.

Welcome to the birth of a movement.

It wasn’t born, really. Like Topsy, it jus’ growed.

( – promoted by Robert in Monterey)

They’re Baaaaack! (Cross-posted from OpenLeft, thanks to a gentle nudge from Lucas O’Connor.]

I live in Long Beach, walking distance from San Pedro Bay, the southern edge of the Los Angeles Basin, and today there are wildfires raging on the other edge of the Los Angeles Basin. Over 100 houses have been evacutated, and over 2,000 acres burned so far. I can look out my window as I type this and see the smoke.  It’s not as bad as the fires one month ago.  But it’s a stark reminder of quickly and easily those fires could return.  So I’m going to republish an article I wrote about the fires for Random Lengths News.

The image below combines a satelite photo of the fires from last month with Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother.”  She was a refuge from the most famous megadrought of the last century.  But there’s been much worse centuries ago, and there’s much worse to come, according to scientists I spoke with.

Story begins on the flip…

  The Fire This Time, Next Time, And The Time After That…
It’s not that global warming caused the latest round of wildfires, it’s that they tell us what’s coming.  And even now we’re not handling it well.
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor, Random Lengths News

---

The blast furnace of Santa Ana-driven wildfires has receded, but three things are certain: First, they’ll be back.  Second, it will  be sooner, rather than later, and with increasingly intensity.  Third, we won’t be prepared.

An Associated Press story, titled “Global Warming Could Worsen California Wildfires,”began: “Drought- and beetle-ravaged trees in this mountain community stick up like matchsticks in the San Bernardino  National Forest, bypassed by the fires still smoldering, but left  like kindling for the next big blaze. Welcome to the future.”

The story was written in 2003.

  But even then, it was old news, whether AP new it or not. We are already two decades into that future, according to a study published in Science magazine three years later, which examined every forest  fire that burned at least 1,000 acres in “federal land-management units containing 61% of western forested areas.” Out of 1,166 fires in that period, four-fifths of them-about 900 fires-occurred after 1987, a period in which the average fire season length increased by 78 days, almost equally due to starting earlier and ending later.

That explosion in the number of fires is matched by increases in size. On CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday, October 21, Tom Boatner, chief of fire operations for the federal government, said, “Ten years ago, if you had a 100,000 acre fire, you were talking about a huge fire. And if we had one or two of those a year, that was probably unusual. Now we talk about 200,000 acre fires like it’s just another day at the office. It’s been a huge change.”

Despite the growing threat, which global warming will only intensify, California has done very little to prepare itself since the 2003 wave of fires, and no place has done less than San Diego County, home to noted social critic Mike Davis.

“Since I published The Ecology of Fear, a lot of the fire scientists’ views have almost become conventional wisdom among firefighters and the public, but it doesn’t make much difference,” Davis told Random Lengths.

“There was a sense of optimism after the 2003 fire, when people thought some kind of change was possible, but everything was shot down.  It was crushed by development money at the polls,” Davis added.  “The grand jury urged the creation of a county fire department, that was never implemented.  The [San Diego] city fire chief quit in frustration.”

Ronny Coleman is one of America’s top firefighting professionals, and his views are strikingly similar to Davis’s. He formerly served as California State Fire Marshal and retired as Chief Deputy Director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.  Earlier he served as Orange County Fire Chief.

“Every tax bond issue put before San Diego County voters was voted down in the aftermath of the fires. You don’t have adequate resources if you’re not willing to pay for it,” Coleman said, flatly.

“Every asset that is not there in the first 8 hours is a deficiency of some kind. But if the people are unwilling to pay for that at the local level, why should Orange County or Los Angeles County or any other county be taxed for it?” he asked, pointedly.

Coleman served on Governor Schwarzenegger’s Blue Ribbon Fire Commission which developed an action plan in the months following the 2003 fires. But in May of this year, the LA Times published a blistering criticism of failed follow-through on crucial aspects of the plan. According to the Times:

• The state remained “far short of the 150 additional engines recommended to supplement the governor’s Office of Emergency Services fleet of 110,” with the first of 19 new engines due for delivery by July.
• The state’s aging fire helicopters-built in the 1960s-needed to be replaced. But no new choppers had been purchased.
• A national contract fleet of heavy air tankers remained at less than half of what it had been five years earlier- 16 compared with 41.
• The Times noted that the legislatures passed four bills “to increase staffing and add fire resources, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars,” but Schwarzenegger vetoed them.

There was no mention of his neglect as Schwarzenegger toured the San Diego area on Tuesday, October 23. “It’s going very smoothly,” Schwarzenegger said.

Davis saw it as a state of denial  “Since the governor arrived yesterday, you haven’t seen anyone frowning,” he said.  “You’d think the Charges had just won the Superbowl instead of 500,000 people just being evacuated.”

Again, expert firefighters agreed. The Washington Post noted “Because no aircraft were available to attack a blaze near Irvine that arsonists apparently set, flames leapt a road and overtook a dozen firefighters who survived only by wrapping themselves in fireproof tents that they carry as a last resort.

“‘Yadda yadda yadda,’ said [Orange County] Fire Chief Chip Prather, dismissing the state’s assurances. ‘All I know is, I had 12 firefighters deploy their shelters yesterday, and they shouldn’t have had to do that.'”

Prevention

But if firefighting equipment is in short supply, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.  Coleman talks in terms of four stages of firefighting: preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery, with response getting the lion’s share-and for good reason. “It costs a lot of money to prevent small fires from becoming big ones,” Coleman stresses.  Still, that leaves a large short-fall in the other areas.

Some of that could and should come from non-government sources, if government did a better job of public education.  Coleman served as a consultant on a just-released study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), “Safe at Home: Making the Federal Fire Safety Budget Work for Communities,” co-authored by Amy Mall and Franz Matzner, which analyzed the costs of protecting homes in wildfire zones, based on a study of homes in the Love Creek community in the town of Avery, in Calaveras County.

“Homes can best be protected by ‘firewise’ measures that improve the fire resistance of structures and modify the surrounding vegetation in order to limit the spread and intensity of these dangerous fires,” the report said..  “Unfortunately, federal dollars that should be spent on firewise protections are instead diverted to commercial logging and other misguided practices that do not make communities safe, and may even heighten fire risks.”

Even after major fires, Coleman noted, “Many communities are reluctant to impose new mandates, because they think it drives up the cost of the housing,. It might dive up the cost of those houses, but the difference in loss is huge. Thats why we did the Love Creek study. Amy [Mall] wanted to find out how much per house.”

“It was less expensive than we thought,” Mall said. “Not everything has to be the most expensive. For windows, double-paned is better, but they could have the windows covered.”  Combining Coleman’s estimates of structural needs, and another consultant’s estimates of surrounding landscape and vegetation, Mall said, “The average cost was $2,500.  If you amortize those for several years with home improvement loans, its within reach of most homeowners.”

Obviously, it’s better not to be building so many homes in or abutting wilderness areas. Vulnerability to fire is not the only concern.  Still, it’s a relatively modest investment that vigorous public education and special financing could greatly facilitate-with the right set of priorities.

“When we look at where the federal government funds have been going, the funds need to be shifted to meet this need,” Mall concluded.

Global Warming

Naturally, if current needs are being neglected, the problem is much worse when one considers what global warming will bring. Of course, global warming doesn’t cause wildfires-ignition causes them, whether by arson, accident or natural causes.  But weather and climate conditions play a major role in determining how intense and widespread fires become. 

The 2006 Science study found that, contrary to theories placing primary blame on land-management practices, “The greatest increases [on fires] occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt.”

Thus the wildfires serve as an emblem of the kind of world that global warming will bring.  Adapting to that world, and doing what we can to avoid it will both involve significant public policy efforts far beyond merely responding to existing conditions.

Richard Seager, a research scientist at Columbia University, is a climate modeler who has studied the history of North American climate over the past millennium and more.  He has written about a four-century era during Medieval times when “serious drought affected large areas of the West.” These megadroughts covered significantly more of the West than modern droughts, such as the 1931-1940 “Dust Bowl” drought; they also lasted longer, up to 30 or 40 years. 

Seager was also lead author of a paper published in Science last May, covering results from 19 climate models, all but one projecting a drying future for the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. According to the paper, “[T]he transition to a more arid climate should already be under way. If these models are correct, the levels of aridity of the recent multiyear drought or the Dust Bowl and the 1950s droughts will become the new climatology of the American Southwest within a time frame of years to decades.”

However, Seager explained to Random Lengths that the Dust Bowl was used only as an historical reference, and that conditions would much more likely resemble those of Medieval megadroughtgs-or worse.

“The drying is already under way,” according to the models, Seager explained, but there is not yet unambiguous proof in the data that anthropogenic [human-caused] global warming is the cause, although some signs point to it. “As time progresses and climate changes become larger it will become easier to distinguish it,” he added. 

The return of megadroughts will place severe strain on water resources, Seager warned, but there would actually plenty for people to drink-if politics allows.  Agriculture uses 90 percent of water in the West, he explained, “but it’s a tiny part of the economy.”  It’s politically well-organized however. “A conflict is going to appear between the urban users who have the numbers, and agriculture, that doesn’t.” 

This much seems inevitable, but the shape of the fire threat is less clear over the long run, since fire regimes vary from place to place. However alternating wet and dry years play a major role in Southern California’s chaparral fires, so fires could actually diminish in frequency after some time-but not for several decades according to Glen MacDonald, a UCLA geographer who has focused most specifically on our region, and related ecosystems.

“You wouldn’t be able to burn everything up, even in ten years. These chaparral plants are tremendously resistant,” MacDonald stressed. “They went through the Medieval dry period.”  On the other hand, “Some studies in the Great Plans indicate that the fuel load went down, so fire dropped down a bit,” he pointed out.  “Were actually doing research on that right now to see what occurred.”

Like Seager, however, he’s more confident predicting general water shortages, coining a new term in the process. “A  ‘perfect drought’ is defined as a prolonged drought that affects southern California, the Sacramento River basin and the upper Colorado River basin simultaneously,” he wrote on his website, biogeographer.com.  These are the three main sources of water for Southern California. 

Perfect droughts over the last hundred years or so have generally lasted no more than five years, he observed, but “prolonged perfect droughts (~30 to 60 years), which produced arid conditions in all three regions simultaneously, developed in the mid-11th century and the mid-12th century.”

Significantly, the records show that Southern California was much more noticeably drier than either of the other sources during this period. The dry periods were “more broken up,” in the Sacramento and Colorado river basins, Seager explained: “That makes sense if the Pacific Ocean [impact] is kicking in and out. If you look at the impact of la niña, it’s stronger here than in the north.” [La niña conditions, the opposite of stormy el niños, are strongly associated with drought.]

Experiencing that same pattern in the future only means that water politics will grow increasingly strained.

“It’s not the depth of that drought it’s the persistence,” MacDonald remarked, of the 12th Century event.  Megadroughts could easily last much longer with human caused global warming. 

But other interacting factors will be harder to puzzle out-such as the strength of Santa Ana winds. “We’ve never had winds like we had on Saturday night, Sunday,” said MacDonald, who lives in Westlake Village. “We had trees down all over our neighborhood. I’ve been there 10-12 years and never seen anything like that, how strong the winds were and how persistent.”

For more precise information, Marilyn Raphael, a colleague of McDonald’s who studies Santa Anas, could not be reached by press time.  She’s part of an ever-widening corps of researchers in different fields piecing together the picture of what our future climate holds in store.

But since that future still depends on what we do, we can also learn simply by scrutinizing what’s right in front of us, including the political quid-pro-quo.

“A lot of the suffering of the people is not visible,” Mike Davis warned, and yet, “The comparison to Katrina has been invidious,” he said. “I’m sure the Republican vote in North County is not going to be displaced.”

To the contrary, after each fire, home loss figures indicate that from one fire to the next both home prices and densities continue going up.

(If there isn’t a full weekend of discussion in here, I don’t know what to tell you. – promoted by Lucas O’Connor)

Cross-posted from OpenLeft

Let me say flat out that I’m thrilled with the unfolding Bush Dog campaign, even though  the precise outlines are a bit undefined. The central thrust is clear, and the timeframe is short. Fact is, I’m so thrilled that I want to suggest doing something even more ambitious to start working on in background mode, even as we move quickly on the Bush Dog front.

What I’m proposing is a project focused on the battleground districts-with the Bush Dogs in safe districts as a sort of penumbral offshoot.  (As noted in my previous diary, more than half the Bush Dogs-22 out of 38-come from safe districts.) The logic here is that whatever is true about battleground districts in a progressive sense will be even more true for the safe district Bush Dogs.  What I envision is combining national and local strategizing, letting activists at each level take on the roles they are best suited to.

What trigged this was a post by Julia Rosen at Calitics expressinig her extreme frustration with Jerry McNerney who’s quoted in a Washington Post article talking incoherent GOP-appeasement gibberish.  In the discussion, Kid Oakland points to McNerney’s voting record.  It’s clear that he’s no Bush Dog.  But it’s also clear that he’s being influenced by hanging out with a bad crowd in DC.  We need a way to organize a coherent counterforce.  My proposal abuot how to go about it is on the flip.

The Big Picture Logic: Realignment

So, what I’m proposing is that we establish a structure for dealing with all battleground districts, and that we conceive of the Bush Dog campaign as strategy within that larger framework-even though a majority of Bush Dogs (22 of 38) are not in battleground districts by  Democracy Corps criteria.  If we develop a logic that applies to battleground districts, then it will apply all the moreso to safe Dem districts.

Basically, it’s our logic that America is standing at the brink of an historic political realignment, the sort of change that only happens once every 36 years or so.  While the political establishment thinks in terms of the system that has been, and calculates accordingly, we think in terms of the system that could be, that is aching to be born.  Although historically associated with presidential elections, last year I wrote a diary arguing that two consecutive wave elections in the House is the key to realignment.  The last time that happened was 1930/1932.  It’s that time again.

If we’re right, we’re on the verge of a potential realignment, as the political center of the country moves decisively to the left.  But it can’t move there if there’s no there there. And there’s no there there if a sizeable chunk of Dems supports Bush and undermines the Dem leadership. Such a shift would turn today’s battleground districts into safe blue ones.  Thus, it’s the very political timidity of battleground Democrats (and their safe seat Bush Dog bretheren) that is keeping their seats in peril.  FDR was right, again: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

While it’s clearly important to challenge the Bush Dogs in safe seats, the most coherent national organizing can best be focused on battleground districts-both those we hold, and those we are fighting for-for a very simple reason:  The realignment of political power in House has its most salient impact in swing/battleground districts.  This is where the shift of the center of political gravity has the greatest possible political impact and implications.  It is also where the greatest opportunity for political change can be squandered.  What we are seeing with the Bush Dogs now is a dramatization in sharp relief of a much more general problem.  There is virtually no major problem or opportunity out there that we can effectively respond to if we are crippled by swing district representatives with their mindsets forged in the past, especially as those districts become safe Democratic.

While realignment can be seen in the numbers, it is manifest in a qualitative change that is about whole new sets of issues and new political narratives.  The way that DC consultants instinctively frame issues is part of what we are directly up against in trying to nurture a realignment, and it has tremendous influence on battleground district candidates and officeholders.  Our purpose is to do whatever we can to counter that pernicious influence with a fresh, powerful, inspiring, and above all successful alternative.  More Carol Shea-Porters.  Less Melissa Beans.

Project Summary

My proposal is simple: Use an initial organizing project to establish a national battlegound district* [*with a safe Bush Dog annex] network that combines national and local activists and organizations.  The initial project centers around fielding a poll–much like MyDD did [for those not familiar with it, Mystery Pollster discussed it here and  here]–that can yield us important information that we can use to lobby and pressure Dems in marginal districts, while mobilizing coalitions of local activists and organizations–and that can be used to energize Democratic challenges to Republicans in marginal districts.  If we field a national swing district poll, similar in scope to the recently-released Democracy Corps poll but with our own carefully-crafted question set–again see the MyDD example–we can generate some extremely useful ammo for making our arguments.  What’s more, simply by fielding a poll ourselves, we start to alter their perception of us.

Repeated exercises of this same organizing formula-at least once a year, but possibly more often-will provide a solid framework for continued organizing, while a variety of simpler actions can be developed as well.  Establishing lateral networks, so that activists in different battleground districts are in much closer touch with one another, is a key goal of this project, which will allow for a much more continuous flow of organizing activity than a purely centralized effort could effectively mount.  Ideally, these networks will become increasingly active and capable of spontaneous organizing as important issues are being debated in Congress.

Project Aims

The purpose of this project (subject to revision) is 7-fold:

(1) To create a national framework for pro-actively and continually influencing conservative Democrats and Democratic officeholders in swing/battleground districts, and supporting them in getting a progressive message out.  We’re about carrots as well as sticks.  Once we really get rolling, we should be increasingly about carrots.

(2)  To influence the political climate in battleground districts held by Republicans to make the environment more favorable for Democratic challengers, and weaken support for Republican opposition in Congress.

(3) To bring into focus underlying shifts and forgotten long-term trends in public opinion that support a fresh, progressive approach to problem-solving and governing.

(4) To highlight new and emerging progressive issues, narratives, and policy proposals.

(5) To bring to the fore salient facts that are otherwise routinely buried by existing political discourse.

(6) To effectively communicate 3, 4 and 5–particularly at the district level–to Democratic officeholders and candidates, local media, Democratic activists and organizations, non-party activists and organizaitons, and directly to the people via new and traditional forms of organizing and outreach.

(7) To build strong bonds between locally-grounded and nationally-focused progressives on a continuing, ongoing basis.

What It Would Look Like: The Kick-Off Project

Foreward: The most compelling way I can think of to present this concept is via an example of the sort of kick-off organizing action we could undertake.  However, it is vital to remember, the purpose of the organization is not simply to pull off such an action.  It is to create an organizing framework in which many such actions-large and small–can be taken with maximum synergy and bang for the buck.  However, this is only a draft proposal.  I am certain that others could make it even better.

Rationale: Two major challenges confronting us now, and continuing through the 2008 election are (1) to reverse direction in the Middle East-not just withdrawing from Iraq, but preventing war with Iran, refocusing on al Qaeda (the real al Qaeda), and restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process-and (2) to reframe the fundamental terms of poltical debate in America.

The two are intimately linked: (1) is the most pressing example of (2).  But a broader focus on (2) also provides a context for (1).  For example, the larger context of security for all and the sub-context of protecting our vital infrastructure encompasses both Katrina and the Minneapolis bridge collapse as well as reversing direction in the Middle East specifically, and rethinking the “war on terror” in general.

To move forward on this, we need to know much more accurately where the people are, what they will support, and what they need to know in order to grow their support.  We need to kow what resonates with them and why.

Proposal In Nutshell: Conduct a national battleground district poll similar to the one conducted by MyDD, employing the same collaborative form of question development beforehand, and data analysis afterwards, but with a more precise focus, informed by the project aims and other discussion above-and use this poll as the foundation for a coordinated lobbying, media and outreach effort locally direct at the congressional district level.  The aim should be to provide and promote a tested progressive narrative for (a) changing direction in the Middle East, (b) replacing the “war on terror” with a more sensible, viable and effective organizing framework for enhancing security for all, and (c) reordering our political priorities to deal with problems the GOP has neglected or exacerbated: global warming, erosion of the middle class, repairing old infrastructure and building new infrastructure for the 21st Century, etc.  Dissemination of the results should involve a maximum of outreach to other progressive organizations to strengthen the message, forge alliances and give the story legs.

Proposal Step-By-Step:  The following lays out the major elements of the proposed plan.  Some can move forward simultaneously, others are obviously sequential in nature. Each stage includes all the actions that can be undertaken roughly simultaneously. 

Stage I.

(1) Online poll development.  This should proceed in two stages.  First: clarification and agreement of basic principles guiding the poll development.  Second: development of the questions in a series of batteries.  This should be done here at OpenLeft, but it should be promoted across the blogosphere, and people should be encouraged to discuss it elsewhere so that a broader dialogue develops feeding into the final decision process.

(2) Battleground District Identification.  The recent Democracy Corps battleground poll provides a good starting point for identifying the districts we want to include.  A preliminary core list can be identified so that work on (3) below can start right away, while we work to come up with a final list of districts to poll.

(3) Activist/Blog Recruitment. Ideally, we would want to have at least one activist and one local blog running point for each of ~70 battleground districts.  More is obviously better.  A small activist group is better than just one person.  But one person on the ground can better establish a group than we can, hence the minimum goal.  (Ongoing as needed.)

(4) Organizational Partnership Recruitment.  As a whole, we are generalists.  To do this right, we need partnership with specialists, and those with boots on the ground.  This includes, but is not limited to groups working to end the war, given how intimately militarism impacts the entire range of domestic issues.  We should directly approach organizations to partner with us in this project, and we should create an organizing guide to assist those working at the district level in recruting local organizational partners.  Groups recruited early in the process will obviously have the opportunity for input into poll development.  Others will have input the next time around.  (Early bird. Worm.  Yadda, yadda, yadda.)  (Ongoing forever.)

(5) Fundraising Duh! (Ongoing.)

Stage II.

(1) Conduct poll.

(2)  National logistics. Organize logistics for national roll-out of poll (more on what this means below).

(3) Local Logistics Organize logistics for district-level roll-out of poll (more on what this means below).  Leadership from the district level, support from national level.

(4) Press prep work  Pre-event press work at local and national level.  This is a major effort, and to make sure it has the impact it deserves, we need to be talking to the media for at least two weeks in advance.

(4) Political prep work  Pre-event outreach to officeholders and political activists at local and national level.  Again, this is a major effort, and to maximize its impact, we should let people know it’s coming.  We especially don’t want officeholders feeling that we are ambushing them.  We want to draw them into a conversation, and ultimately, a relationship.  So call before coming over.

Stage III.

Note: The following is presented as if there would just be one release. The original MyDD poll was rolled out in parts.  We might consider doing a mutli-part release, but the structure would not change, it would merely repeat.

(1) Release poll nationally.   Issue press relesease and post poll results online.  Preceeded by embargoed release to the media 24 (?) hours in advance.

(2) Local press conferences.   Hold local press conferences in all battleground districts.  Local organizers will be running these.  They may or may not want to invite officeholders to participate.  But it is vital that local organizations and experts are represented.  If we find that 80% of the people want to shift resources from fighting in Iraq to education, clean energy development and rebuilding infrastructure, then we need to have local activists and experts who can speak to those needs on local terms.  The highest possible priority should be placed on issue and constituency diversity.  This is very much a bridge-building, coalition-building process.

(3) National teleconference.   Hold a national teleconference for local media to add juice to the story.  (Implementation could vary.  We might want to videoconference instead.) This could be integrated into the local press conferences, it could be done on an embargoed basis the day before, whatever works.  Purpose is to beef up the significance of the local event, give press the option of quoting national experts, and generally expand the range of possible ways to play the story.

(4) National Press Conference.   National press conference is aimed at national as well as local media.  This could be a mid-afternoon event after all the local press conferences are over, so that its subject was not just the poll, but the poll and its roll out as well.  Or not.

Stage IV.

(1) Meet with officeholders.   In battleground districts with Democratic congressmembers, meetings with those representatives is an integral part of this process.  The process should be scheduled so that it occurs during a recess, and there should be early outreach to set up a meeting in advance.  This is one more reason why collaborating with local organizaitons and activists is vital.  Get people on board who already have clout and a relationship with the officeholder, as well as ones they don’t want to piss off.  We aren’t out to bash them, even the worst of the Bush Dogs.  Not with this action.  But, of course, we have laid the foundation for strong criticism in the future if they ignore what we’ve come forward with.

We should also try hard to get meetings with Republican congressmembers.  If we’re rebuffed, several options could be pursued.  “Hear the People!” demonstrations outside their offices, public forums with them invited-and an empty chair with their name on it onstage-along with their challengers, perhaps.

(2) Hold Local Public Meetings.   These can take a wide range of forms.  The best guidance is “don’t reinvent the wheel.”  Hook up with whoever is the best at putting these on.  If possible, events sponsored and/or co-sponsored by one or more of the locally recruited organizations should be shceduled  early in the process, to avoid last-minute conflicts and confusion.  Let them do the logistics, and reap the rewards.  Our intention in these meetings is to extend the story, and help empower what they are already doing.

(3) Follow-up with local press. A natural follow-up is to invite them to the local public meetings.  Also natural is to follow up as other polls are released that we can piggy-back on.  Especially with the use of cross-tabs on our polling, it’s possible to repackage our poll to make it relevant to subsequent polls throughout the entire period through the 2008 election.

(4) Follow-up with national press. Duh!

Stage V.

(1) Local Post-Mortem.   As stated above, this is just an example of an activity.  The purpose is to build an ongoing organizational framework.  The post-mortem meeting is invaluable for evaluating what worked, what didn’t, and how to continue building on it for the future.  Set standard of developing 3-5 followup organizing ideas, at least one that can be done locally without any national support or coordination, and at least one that requires national support or coordination.  Each group should commit to at least one of each, following further consultation.

(2) National Post-Mortem.   This will obviously start, informally at least, during stage IV.  But a formal national post-mortem, incorporating input from the local post-mortems, is an invaluable organizaiton-building tool.  It should be built into process from the beginning, involve a thorough online discussion, and in a written set of organizing guidelines or suggestions for the next go-round.  Proposals from district-level groups should be organized, evaluated in terms of popularity, feasibility, resources required, etc. and presented in a coherent comparative format for further discussion at the local level.

Stage VI.

Rinse and repeat the evaluative processes of Stage V.  Once we have launched, we can work on developing a variety of different follow-up projects and strategies in parallel. 

Conclusion

Let me be clear.  Although I’m a strong advocate of the power of using polls as I’ve just described above, it is meant primarily as a for-instance.

If you’ve got another vision that can accomplish the same sort of thing, unifying activists like yourself across swing districts to create a more powerful and influential voice, then I’m all ears to hear it,  The more ideas we can come up with the better.

Finally, yes. I know. What I’m talking about involves a lot of work.

Know what?  We’re people who do a lot of work anyway.  The only question is how well we’re going to organize, cooridnate and focus that work.  Like I said, if you’ve got a better idea, I want to hear it.

(Some light post-partisan (hah!) reading on a Sunday morning. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Promise Like Gore, Deliver Like Bush?
Is Schwarzenegger’s Global Warming ‘Jolly Green Giant’ Act Nothing But Hot Air?
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
Random Lengths News

(A slightly shorter version of this article appears in the current print edition of Random Lengths News.)

On Thursday, June 28, the Robert Sawyer, Chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), resigned with the hearty thanks of Governor Schwarzenegger

“Dr. Sawyer took on one of the most critical jobs in all of government: keeping California’s air clean and safe,” Schwarzenegger said in a prepared statement. “He fought tirelessly for California’s bold vehicle emission standards and did an outstanding job launching the world’s first low-carbon fuel standard for transportation vehicles.”

But it was a lie.

Sawyer did not resign. He was fired. By Schwarzenegger. Apparently for wanting to do too much too quickly to fight global warming.

“I was fired, I did not resign,” Sawyer told the L.A. Times almost immediately.  “The entire issue is the independence of the board, and that’s why I got fired.”

The firing followed Sawyer’s vote against a package of three global warming “early action measures” that he regarded as inadequate.

The next Monday, CARB’s executive officer, Catherine Witherspoon, resigned, blasting the Administration for duplicity and delay.  “I’ve had it with contradictory signals from the governor’s office, and micromanagement on the side of delay and public statements chastising us for not doing more,” she said.

But the lie about Sawyer’s firing was only the tip of the iceberg.  The iceberg is Schwarzenegger’s image as a pro-environment leader in fighting global warming. derived largely from his signing of AB 32 [PDF] last year, a sweeping law to roll back greenhouse gases 25 percent between now and 2020.  As events have unfolded since Sawyer’s firing, not only has Schwarzenegger’s “Jolly Green Giant” image taken on an ogreish tinge, a contrasting image of his similarity to fellow Republican George W. Bush has been progressively reinforced.

Last year, Phil Angelides, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, tried repeatedly to make the link, identifying Schwarzenegger with Bush.  But the rest of the Democratic Party seemed bent on undermining his message, capped by the historic passage and signing of AB 32, which allowed Schwarzenegger to campaign as a champion of the environment.  Just three weeks later, however, Schwarzenegger issued an executive order, S-17-06, which, much like Bush’s numerous signing statements, effectively undermined and reversed the law it was supposed to reinforce. 

A key bone of contention in the passage of AB 32 was whether to give priority to direct regulatory measures, or to a market-based “cap-and-trade” system that would allow those who reduce greenhouse gases to sell credits for their cleanup to those who continue generating them—a system that sounds great to businessmen and economics students, but has never worked in practice. Schwarzenegger favored cap-and-trade, but he lost. Cap-and-trade would be allowed as an option in 2012, after a full spectrum of regulatory measures were put in place. S-17-06 not only reinstated cap-and-trade on an equal footing, but shifted responsibility and created an entirely new structure for developing policies.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, principle author of AB 32, responded by saying that S-17-06 “is totally inconsistent with the intent of the law and with the way that it is written.”

Sawyer’s firing has opened the floodgates to a surge of further comparisons, most notably to Bush’s attempts to manipulate the Department of Justice, as epitomized in the US Attorneys scandal.  In both cases, appointees served at the pleasure of those who appointed them, but historically had been left alone to do their jobs with minimal outside pressure. In both cases, the firings involved suspicious timing. In both cases, the firings were initially misrepresented as voluntary resignations. In both cases, highly political close personal aides who lacked policy knowledge played leading roles in politicizing the process behind closed doors.  In both cases, those aides may have broken the law. In both cases, minority rights appear to have been violated. And in both cases, legislative attempts to get to the bottom of what happened have been thwarted by executive refusal to allow some of those responsible to testify about what went on.

A Meddler By Proxy

There are obviously differences as well. Unlike the US Attorneys, Sawyer’s position as CARB Chair would rightfully be strengthened by a close working relationship with the governor. Yet, in a letter to Schwarzenegger the week after his firing, Sawyer wrote, “My single regret is that is that you and I never once met during the past 18 months to discuss any of the critical air quality or global warming issues facing California.”  In the absence of direct contact, Sawyer wrote, “[Y]our staff has interjected itself in a manner that has compromised the independence and integrity of the board.”

“He’s not just disengaged. He’s a meddler by proxy,” said Judy Dugan, research director at the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR), “He uses others to carry out jobs he would find distasteful.” 

FTCR is one of Schwarzenegger’s fiercest critics for his often covert corporate-friendly policies, but was equally critical of Gray Davis for similar, if somewhat less egregious practices.  FTCR has been calling for the firing of Cabinet Secretary Dan Dunmoyer for months. Dunmoyer is a former insurance industry lobbyist who authored a 2002 Karl Rove-styled memo calling for all-out war on the industry’s “enemies.” Dunmoyer was one of the key aids involved in Sawyer’s firing.

As far as timing goes, although Sawyer was only told by Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, five days after the fact, he was fired just after voting against a package of three global warming “early action measures” called for under AB 32, because he regarded the package as inadequate.

“We’re beginning a process that’s going to save our planet,” said San Mateo County Supervisor Jerry Hill, one of two other CARB members who voted with Sawyer. “For that reason, I don’t think it’s inappropriate for us to move rapidly.”

The week Sawyer’s firing became public, Schwarzenegger’s communications director, Adam Mendelsohn, said that Schwarzenegger wanted CARB to adopt more than the three items—a message consistent with Schwarzenegger’s carefully-crafted image, but also another lie.

The next Monday, Sawyer released a transcript of a voicemail message left by Dunmoyer, saying the governor’s office was “very comfortable” with the three items, adding, “We really prefer you to stick to the three that we believe are vetted well, that are likely to succeed. That is the direction from the governor’s office.”

This secret meddling may even have been illegal, since AB 32 expressly states that “The state board [CARB] shall adopt rules and regulations in an open public process.”

There were far more early action items generated by that process, according to Angela Johnson-Meszaros, co-chair of the Global Warming Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (EAJC).

“We submitted 31, and they received 96 overall that were outlined in their report,” she told Random Lengths. “We were trying to look for things the state could do right now that would have the most benefit, not just for climate change, but for co-pollutants” since communities of color are systematically harder hit by those co-pollutants.

EAJC also tried to protect against poorly-crafted actions that could actually harm low-income communities of color. That’s why it recommended against one of the three measures that was approved, a Schwarzenegger favorite, the Low Carbon Fuel Standard.  EAJC cited “serious unanswered questions about the possibility of increasing” co-pollutants, and the threat of increased pollution due to biofuel production, as well as increasing food insecurity. 

Instead EAJC recommendations included well-studied measures dating back to former Mayor James Hahn’s “No Net Increase” Plan, such as port electrification, a green ship incentive program, and accelerated replacement of cargo handling equipment—all ignored for now.

Restoring CARB’s Independence

Assemblymember Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) is Chair of the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources, which held a hearing to investigate the firings—a hearing that Dunmoyer and Kennedy both refused to attend, echoing similar refusals by Bush Administration officials. But Sawyer and Witherspoon both appeared.

“Their stories of the continued and unrelenting efforts to water the law down were very troubling,” Hancock told Random Lengths. “There is no more important task for our generation than to turn around global warming. We may not have a livable planet to leave our grandchildren,” she stressed.

She then patiently explained the step-by-step process within the law that Schwarzenegger has tried to disrupt. Not only has the early action provision been undermined, Schwarzenegger continues trying to push a carbon-trading program, which isn’t supposed to even be considered until 2012, after a full spectrum of regulatory measures have been approved.

“We have no model,” Hancock said flatly about carbon-trading.  “The European model is widely viewed as having failed, and they’re going back to the drawing board.”

Also this year, Schwarzenegger’s budget plan called for 24 positions at CARB devoted to working on carbon-trading.  The Democratic-controlled Legislature has cut that to two, moving the other 22 position to dealing with cutting emissions.  But after Sawyer’s firing, Hancock thinks a more direct approach is called for to ensure the law is independently carried out. Recalling the example of the Coastal Commission, she said it was time to establish fixed terms, so the governor could not just fire someone as will.

Since Senate and Assembly leaders also appoint Coastal Commission members, Random Lengths asked if Hancock and her colleagues were considering that as well.

“Yes we are,” she replied. “The mandate of AB32 is so broad and so important that we really need to enlarge the conversation, and recognize we need to bring in both the branches of the legislature.”

The legislative counsel is working on language, which Hancock expects will be passed by the legislature in August, as an amendment to an existing bill.

But it appears that Schwarzenegger may be digging in his heels for a fight.

“The ARB has been a very stable board with some members serving for many years,” Schwarzenegger spokesperson Bill Maile told Random Lengths.  “We see no problem with the current structure of the board that would requriew such change. And it would not be prudent to reappoint the board when they are in the midlde of implementing AB 32.”

Schwarzenegger was eager to add another appointment of his own, however. He quickly sought to end the controversy by appointing a highly-regarded replacement, Mary Nichols, who chaired CARB under Jerry Brown, and held a high-level post in Clinton’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). At an initial hearing before the Senate Rules Committee, Nichols was warmly received, and she expressed a strong commitment to CARB’s mission, including its work with local air boards, such as the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), which has had serious ongoing differences with CARB for several years now.

AQMD’s Executive Officer Dr. Barry Wallerstein responded favorably, telling Random Lengths he was, “Looking forward to working with Mary Nichols.  Chairman Nichols has indicated a desire to work more closely with local air districts and to further enhance CARB’s emissions control program.  Such actions would significantly resolve past policy differences between the agencies.”

But if Schwarzenegger is expecting Nichols to be a magic charm, perhaps he’d better think again.  As an article by Nicholas Miller in the weekly Sacramento News and Review pointed out, following her hearing, Nichols has at least two troubling signs.  First is her husband, attorney John Daum, who works the other side of the aisle, having represented Exxon in the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill case Baker v. Exxon. Second is her performance at the EPA, where she played a key roll in promoting an “emissions-trading” approach to pollution control that is not only conceptually identical to what Schwarzenegger is pushing, but that also undermined enforcement, and ultimately collapsed.

Miller wrote:

A June 2000 report by D.C.-based nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility documents that Nichols, then-EPA assistant administrator for air and radiation, played an instrumental role in undermining regulations and compliance.

According to the PEER report, Nichols in 1995 touted open-market trading as the “new paradigm for market-based control,” referring to a paper by attorney Richard Ayres of the O’Melveny and Myers law firm as inspiration for the new direction.

Furthermore, Miller noted, there was a conflict of interest, since Daum worked for O’Melveny and Myers.

The 1990s were a time during which “business-friendly” Democrats influenced by the Democratic Leadership Council became infatuated with “market-based solutions” that often failed to perform as advertised. Many have since learned better.  At the Senate Rules Committee hearing, Nichols appeared to be one of them.

“Mary Nichols certainly understands the issues, but she’s also a longtime creature of the political system in California,” FTCR’s Judy Dugan cautioned. “The question will be how she balances her instinct to compromise with the urgent need of greenhouse gas reduction.”