As Californians wait to learn today whether same-sex couples will again be able to have their weddings recognized by the state, as Judge Vaughn Walker will rule whether to stay his historic decision last week ruling Prop 8 unconstitutional, we at the Courage Campaign (where I work as Public Policy Director) are moving ahead with our ongoing effort to show Americans why the wedding matters.

We’re proud to present “The Wedding Matters” — a people-powered project launched by the Courage Campaign Institute’s Entertainment Industry Equality Team earlier this year. In just one day, 38 videos about the meaning of marriage equality were produced by 119 volunteers on a budget of $1,600.

We’ve been waiting for the right moment to release these videos produced by Valerie Alexander and her phenomenal team of professional filmmakers, editors and volunteers, along with the same-sex couples, friends and family who shared their moving stories of being married in 2008. And now is that time.

That’s why we want you to watch four of the most compelling videos in “The Wedding Matters” collection, each telling a unique story about weddings that happened in 2008, before Prop 8 passed. Then cast your vote for the video you think we should edit into a 60-second Public Service Announcement to be aired across California and the country.

The videos tell real stories, of real people, in their own real words. These are the stories that the right-wing opposition would prefer Americans not hear. And that’s exactly why we’re going to make sure those stories get told.

I don’t want to bias you by showing just one of the videos here, so I encourage you to go view the four videos yourself and cast your vote now!

Joe Garofoli caught Carly Fiorina having it both ways on the stimulus at a public appearance yesterday in San Jose:

Carly, as we noted in the Chronicle’s dead tree edition, was closing a two-day spin around the state with her new best friend, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s political director Bill Miller. He told us the chamber will be dropping some TV ads for Carly this fall. Team Carleton even busted out some new signs for the occasion: “Job Creation: Priority #1.”

Hate to cough in the punch bowl, but we hastened to ask if The Chamber or Carly’s other new BFF — Jack Stewart, prez of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association — had any problems with Hewlett-Packard dumping 25,000 jobs while Fiorina was at the CEO helm. Isn’t it kind of hard to reconcile that record with the new sign and all?

The video Garofoli got of the Chamber’s response was excellent. They acknowledged that the Chamber did indeed support the stimulus, but then tried to add that their beef was with the so-called “expansion of government” that came after it.

Yet Fiorina – standing next to a sign reading “Job Creation: Priority #1” – still opposes the stimulus. This is probably because she simply opposes jobs in California, period. Garofoli also asked about Fiorina’s record in firing 25,000 American workers and offshoring jobs to India and other places, and got a “well that’s just what you have to do when the economy is bad” response.

Overall this is a very good piece of media work by Garofoli and the Chronicle. Let’s hope more in the media will hold Fiorina and her backers accountable, especially when Fiorina goes around the state talking about job creation when all she knows how to do is job destruction.

After a couple of rounds of voting in the legislature, enough votes in both houses were eventually found to reach the 2/3 mark needed to pull Prop 18 from the November ballot and delay it until 2012:

The California Legislature voted Monday night to pull the $11 billion water bond from November’s ballot and delay it for two years, a move that came as backers of the proposal became increasingly concerned about its prospects at the polls.

The full Senate approved the delay of Prop. 18 by a 27-7 vote, barely reaching the necessary two-thirds majority of the 40-member Senate, and the issue moved to the Assembly, where late Monday night it also passed by the slimmest of margins in that 80-person house, with a 54-22 vote.

Some water bond opponents, like Senator Lois Wolk (SD-05) called for the bond to be kept on the November ballot, in hopes that it would go down in flames this year, instead of living to fight another day two years from now. Instead Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s position prevailed, and supporters will try again in 2012.

This year turned out to not be so good for the water bond. The relatively cool and wet weather the state has experienced in 2010 eased the drought, to a degree, removing some sense of urgency for passing the bond. Nationwide Republican criticisms of deficit spending hurt its chances with GOP voters here in California, and Democratic voters were increasingly split as some environmental groups opposed the details of the proposal, including new dams and replumbing of the Delta to fuel sprawl elsewhere in the state.

It’s hard to see how the $11 billion proposal will fare much better in 2012. Unless the drought returns with a vengeance, unless Republican voters suddenly become comfortable with deficit spending for something other than wars and tax cuts for the rich, and unless Democratic voters become less wary of the possible environmental impacts of the bond – all in the space of two years – I’m not so sure the bond will fare all that better.

And with a new governor, the bond itself could change significantly in scope and content before going to the 2012 ballot.

Other bond proposals have passed even after repeated delays, such as the $10 billion high speed rail bond, which voters approved in November 2008 as Prop 1A. It was originally to have gone to voters in November 2004, then in November 2006, but was delayed so as to not conflict with other bond votes. Ultimately it worked out pretty well for us high speed rail supporters, as the 2008 gas price spike helped convince Californians of the need for an alternative means of getting around the state that doesn’t rely on oil.

Barring some similar shift – like a drought relapse – it doesn’t seem like the $11 billion water bond will have any better chance in 2012 than it does this year. But we will apparently get the chance to find out. Guess I’d better set up the “Election 2012” category here at Calitics…

California’s schools are getting ready for the new school year, and are having to make do with vastly reduced resources. Class sizes have soared, even though it’s widely accepted as fact among educators that smaller class sizes are one of the most effective ways to improve student learning. This article from the San Diego Union-Tribune shows the struggles that teachers are facing as they try to deliver quality education to students in an era where governments have decided education is no longer important.

Thankfully, the US Senate has decided that mass teacher layoffs aren’t a good way to run a school system or help our children prepare for the future, and passed a bill last week delivering $26 billion in aid to schools, potentially helping save the jobs of 16,500 teachers in California. Unfortunately the Senate chose to cut the food stamps program for it, but that cut doesn’t take effect until 2014, so hopefully that particularly cruel cut can be reversed.

Barbara Boxer voted for the bill to save these teachers’ jobs. And so Carly Fiorina has come out against saving these jobs – by misstating the way the bill works:

Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina said Friday that a federal bill designed to provide emergency aid to states will not give schools the immediate financial boost they hope will prevent thousands of teachers from being laid off.

The former Hewlett-Packard CEO said the legislation working its way through Congress is full of accounting tricks that will delay payments for teachers until 2012. She said it also will continue the government’s deficit spending.

In fact, as the California Department of Education explained, the funds will actually be sped to schools:

Maria Lopez, a spokesman for the department, said the law requires U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to make grants within 45 days of the law’s enactment, so the state expects the money for the coming school year.

That’s Carly Fiorina in a nutshell: refusing to support a federal bill to save jobs because, in her misleading claims, it’s “deficit spending.” Fiorina wants California’s teachers to be laid off and wants our children to suffer because, god forbid, the federal government might spend money.

In this case, the funding is fully paid for, although in a rather indefensible way. But even if it wasn’t paid for – even if it was funded through deficit spending, it’d be worth doing (and not only because the US government can borrow at record-low rates right now).

Carly Fiorina should explain to Californians why she believes 16,500 teachers should lose their jobs and why kids should be taught in overcrowded classrooms. I’m sure parents across the state will be quite interested to hear her rationalize that crazy stance.

Carla Marinucci takes a look at how the four major statewide candidates would create jobs and, although she provides a good discussion of the details, her article seems to miss the bigger picture.

Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina’s approach to job creation is quite different from that of Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer. These differences have a number of aspects, but can be boiled down to this:

Jerry Brown/Barbara Boxer believe that the government has a clear role to play in creating jobs by providing by investing in both working people and in creating the 21st century infrastructure they need to prosper – whereas Whitman/Fiorina believe mass unemployment and further concentration of wealth in the hands of the small elite that already dominate the economy will provide “growth,” even at the expense of our basic social and physical infrastructure.

Here’s how Marinucci describes the Whitman/Fiorina approach:

Republicans Whitman and Fiorina, two former CEOs, decry what they say has been California’s unfriendly business climate and call AB32 a job killer. They emphasize tax cuts and regulatory reforms to help small and large businesses and argue that they have direct experience creating jobs.

Both Whitman and Fiorina are calling for voodoo economics tax cuts – slashing capital gains and other taxes for the wealthy in the belief, in spite of the evidence, that this will create jobs. In fact, all it will do is fuel the collapse that is starting to occur, especially since Whitman and Fiorina both oppose new government spending and have pledged to make deeper cuts to core government services.

They both also pledge mass layoffs, a tool they employed at their own companies to try and produce more profit. In Fiorina’s case it failed; in Whitman’s case the success is more uneven. Either way, in a state with over 12% unemployment, mass layoffs – whether of public or private workers – is an extremely bad and reckless idea.

Further, both Whitman and Fiorina believe we should actively undermine efforts to position California for the 21st century economy. Whitman doesn’t want to fund the high speed rail project and like Fiorina believes that action on climate change, which creates and sustains a green jobs economy, is bad – both preferring to instead prop up the failed 20th century economy and the oil companies that are vehemently opposed to new innovation.

In contrast, Brown and Boxer both prefer to invest in working Californians and in the infrastructure and policies needed to spur a 21st century economy. As Marinucci describes it:

Democrats Brown and Boxer argue for green-tech and clean-energy jobs that they say represent California’s best hope for employment for decades to come.

They say their government experience is a plus. Brown said he put Californians to work in his two terms as governor as the state led the way in alternative energy. Boxer touts her efforts to secure funding and jobs for major projects such as BART extensions, and her co-authorship of legislation to give small businesses more access to credit, capital and tax advantages.

There’s more to it than just that, of course. Boxer voted for the stimulus and to extend unemployment benefits, both of which have helped many Californians avoid the worst during this long recession – whereas Fiorina has said she opposes both and would have done nothing at all to help the unemployed and the suffering, instead focusing her efforts on making the rich richer.

Jerry Brown’s jobs plan is fundamentally oriented around positioning California for the 21st century, pledging to accelerate development of clean technologies from solar panels to high speed rail, while ensuring our schools have the support and resources they need.

The choice this November could not possibly be clearer. Whitman and Fiorina are determined to channel even more wealth and power to their CEO friends, at the expense of the jobs and prosperity the rest of us desperately need. Brown and Boxer are proposing to continue investing in us and in our infrastructure so that California is well-positioned for the 21st century.

Yesterday’s New York Times article on local government cutbacks produced a good response from Glenn Greenwald, who called it an example of imperial collapse:

Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights — or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State — that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?

Greenwald cites examples of Utah considering the elimination of 12th grade and the Wall Street Journal article about Midwestern states ripping up paved roads to save money as further evidence of the broad collapse now engulfing the United States.

We see this here in California as well. Our schools are facing collapse, with mass layoffs, shortened school years, and even closed schools. Cities like Salinas are laying off half their gang task force amidst a worsening gang war, and San Carlos voted to disband its police force due to budget cuts.

This is depressingly familiar to us historians, repeating the same cycle of collapse as experienced by the Roman and Byzantine Empires, numerous Chinese dynasties, and even the Soviet Union. The causes are always the same: money that used to go to fund physical and social infrastructure to spur innovation and prosperity are instead rechanneled to benefit a small elite and grow their wealth and power, at the expense of the viability of the society itself.

Here in California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republican legislators have promoted this agenda of collapse. Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman are pledging to accelerate the decline – Fiorina vows to make the population sicker and poorer by repealing the new health care law and Whitman plans capital gains tax cuts to channel more wealth to her CEO friends at the expense of schools and libraries across the state.

It’s a bizarre pathology when those who benefited from the investments of the mid-20th century then turn around and seek to destroy that very same system. But it flows from the dominant economic policy principle of the day, which is that wealth should be extracted from value created in the past, instead of producing new wealth by creating value for the future.

Our state and national economic policy is one of piracy, where neoliberal government basically uses the wealthy elite as privateers to plunder the wealth of households and public institutions for their own self-interested gain.

And as authors such as Jared Diamond have argued, our society faces the threat of ecological collapse as well. This is linked to the wealth capture problem in many ways – oil companies trying to undermine action on climate change by funding the repeal of our global warming law, or by wealthy developers seeking to destroy our water system by proposing huge water bonds so that they can keep writing checks Mother Nature can’t cash.

Ultimately the combination of the aggressive destruction of environment and climate, along with the policies of channeling wealth to the elite at the expense of maintaining our society, will produce a severe crisis in the coming years. Maybe even an outright collapse.

We can stop it by supporting progressive solutions to take our money back and invest in our public institutions, in our future, and in ourselves. But it’s going to require us to reject the right-wing policies that have brought us to this point, and the right-wing politicians that are bent on destroying what was once a Golden State.

Meg Whitman has famously spent $100 million so far on her vanity campaign for governor – and some of that has gone to Spanish-language ads she hopes can win over some of the all-important Latino electorate.

In doing so, Whitman has encountered two fundamental problems that question this strategy:

1. Latinos don’t believe her when she says she’s not out to take away their rights and their jobs

2. Her own right-wing base only accepts Latino-bashing as an electoral strategy, and will not support any kind of positive outreach to a Latino community they hate.

And these problems came to hit her with full force yesterday in LA.

First, Whitman was rattled by protestors when she opened a campaign office in East Los Angeles:

Chanting “Meg, you’re fake!” “Get out!” “Education, not deportation,” about 100 people, mobilized by labor unions, protested Republican Meg Whitman’s opening of an East Los Angeles campaign office. They said her tough stance on illegal immigration makes her anti-Latino.

As the LA Times reported, the protests threw Whitman off her game:

The interruption was unusual for a Whitman campaign event; her appearances are usually highly scripted and tightly controlled. The candidate seemed rattled, occasionally stumbled over her words and kept her remarks short.

She hit two of her usual talking points, job creation and fixing California’s schools, but did not mention the third plank of her platform: cutting government spending.

Whitman’s bad day (her 54th birthday) was only just getting started. She then went into the studios of KFI right-wing immigrant bashers John & Ken, who have been calling Whitman “NutMeg” over her Latino outreach. The interview saw Whitman directly contradict her Latino outreach statements, as Think Progress explains:

To begin with, the hosts pointed out that Whitman has over 30 billboards in Latino-heavy areas of the state proclaiming “No to Proposition 187 and no to SB-1070” in Spanish. However, as Wonk Room reported last week, Whitman recently told a California English-language radio station that the “Arizona [immigration] law should stand for Arizona” and that she opposes implementing SB-1070 in California simply because the state is bigger. Whitman reiterated yesterday that the federal government shouldn’t be telling Arizona what to do.

So which is it? Does Whitman support SB 1070 or not? Should the federal government uphold the US Constitution or hold it in abeyance so that a bunch of bigots in Arizona can terrorize Latinos?

Wilting under the pressure, Whitman then explained that she really does support immigrant-bashing, in the form of mass deportations:

HOST: You are not for a path to citizenship?

WHITMAN: Correct.

HOST: Well, that’s not what you say here. That’s not what it says in your Spanish editorial. [Silence] […] No illegal alien is going to get any kind of citizenship unless they leave the country and apply through the process, is that true?

WHITMAN: Yes.

So Whitman believes that the undocumented should either remain undocumented, or leave the country entirely. Sure, she says there would be some “application through the process,” but that’s not going to enable all those that are currently undocumented to come back to California. Which is of course the entire point – it’s the softer version of what the right-wing really wants, which is to repeat what was done in the 1930s when millions of Latinos were put on trains and sent to Mexico, including many who were US citizens born in California.

Later in the interview, John & Ken denounced Whitman for using Spanish-language billboards, as part of their absurd “English-only” campaign.

Whitman is stuck in an untenable position. She realizes she can’t win the governor’s race without reaching out to Latinos, but her right-wing base hates those same Latinos and will not allow her to do that outreach.

And of course, Whitman herself has right-wing views on what should be done not only on immigration, but on the other issues that impact Latino voters, such as jobs and schools.

Whitman wants to have it both ways, but she can’t use Spanish-language ads and an office in East LA to hide the fact that she and her right-wing base remain implacably hostile to the aspirations, hopes, and dreams of California’s Latino residents.

Yesterday Democratic leaders Speaker John A. Pérez and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg unveiled a new budget proposal that relies on a tax swap to help close the budget deficit:

The most controversial new mechanism would impose an income tax increase of one percentage point for 2010 on all but the highest bracket as well as a tax hike of half a percentage point on vehicles. Those increases would be coupled with a decrease in the state sales tax rate of 1.75 cents on the dollar through next June. Another sales tax decrease would take place next July.

Democrats say the plan would raise roughly $1.8 billion through next June. Though that’s only one-tenth the size of the deficit, Democrats consider any revenue idea that could gain GOP support a significant piece of the puzzle.

The San Francisco Chronicle article on the proposal seems to bear out Pérez’s and Steinberg’s claim that this would result in lower taxes for many Californians:

For an average person making $60,000 a year, income taxes would increase $473 annually, the vehicle license fee would increase $118 a year, and there would be a $677 savings in sales taxes.

That pencils out to an annual savings of $86, for Californians making $60K (and perhaps others) this would indeed be a tax cut. Of course, to Republicans, tax cuts are only good when they benefit the rich.

Not everyone is behind this plan. Jean Ross of the California Budget Project has been criticizing this proposal since at least last week. Last Tuesday she criticized the argument that the income tax increase could be nullified for households by taking advantage of a federal deduction:

First, according to the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in 2008 only 38 percent of California’s personal income tax taxpayers itemized deductions on their federal return.

Second, relatively few low- to middle-income taxpayers itemize, while virtually all high-income taxpayers itemize their deductions. Yet, the proposal under consideration appears to be structured to disproportionately raise taxes at the bottom of the income distribution, while imposing a relatively small increase at the top of the income distribution. Last year’s temporary increase in tax rates had a similar impact, as discussed below.

Then on Friday, Ross added that the Democrats’ plan is “upside down” because it did not emphasize raising taxes on the wealthy:

A better alternative would raise the top rates of the personal income tax and protect families who are struggling the hardest to make ends met. “Right siding” an income for sales tax swap would turn a proposal that runs counter to the arguments of prominent economists that we’ve previously cited into a well-targeted proposal. The current proposal would raise the tax rates at the bottom of the income distribution, but not at the top. The proposed increase would fall hardest on taxpayers who spend all that they earn in their local communities and who don’t benefit from the ability to deduct state income taxes on their federal returns. A “right side up” proposal would raise taxes at the top end – taxes paid by taxpayers who spend a smaller share of their earnings locally, while consuming globally and saving more, and who are far more likely to see savings on their federal return.

A “right side up” proposal would be consistent with the recommendations of prominent economists who argue that “tax increases on higher-income families are the least damaging mechanism for closing state fiscal deficits” during an economic downturn.

Certainly this would seem like a good year to make such a proposal, with Meg Whitman spending $100 million on a campaign for office, highlighting the fact that the rich have plenty of money to spare. A tax increase on the upper income brackets would help keep teachers in the classroom and cops on the beat, even if Carly Fiorina might have to sell one of her yachts as a result, even if Meg Whitman might have to scale back her TV ad buy from “shock and awe” to merely “saturation bombing.”

The full Democratic proposal can be found here.

I mentioned in my post earlier today that one effect of global warming in California has been an intensification in the destructiveness and frequency of wildfires. Today the US Geological Survey provided further evidence in support of that fact:

USGS researchers found that southern California is the only part of the state that has experienced significant increases in wildfires over the last five decades. Analysis shows that this increase is linked to the rise in atmospheric temperature. Past studies suggest that wildfire activity has increased throughout the western United States. USGS researchers wanted to know whether this pattern has region-specific variations and causes. For the analysis, they divided California into five climate zones and looked at how number of wildfires and area burned have changed over the past 49 years. But this study did not find statewide increases in wildfires. Only southern California experienced increases in fires and area burned. Curiously, the increases are not linked to that region’s enormous change in population growth. However, for northern California, analysis shows that wildfire trends have links to population trends. This research gives new perspectives on wildfire trends in California. The results will inform urban and natural resource planners on their long-term outlook on wildfire management.

In short, while population growth is a known factor in wildfires around the state, Southern California’s experience suggests global warming is the primary factor there, where millions of people live with the threat of a wildfire burning down their home.

In the fall of 2007 a San Diego Reader article explained how global warming leads to more fires:

Duncan McFetridge’s oaks and others suffering in the Cleveland National Forest get none of the Sacramento water. And trees are thirsty creatures. They say that a mature oak tree needs 300 to 500 gallons of water a day. But you have to wonder: these trees must have endured droughts like this before, and now they must have more capable roots than ever before. How is it they’re succumbing?

Orrin Davis, whose company Butler Drilling has been drilling water wells in the mountains east of San Diego since the 1960s, says oaks are vulnerable to changes in the water table. “Back in the ’70s, ’80s, you’d have to drill down an average of 400 feet to reach water. Today, it’s 800 to 900 feet. I’ve had to go to 1400 feet. In my 40 years, this is one of the longest droughts. As far as I’m concerned, this drought has been going since the early, mid-’90s.”

He says the die-off has been going on for years. “If it’s true that this is the worst drought for 500 years, these are drought conditions these oak trees have never experienced. And I would estimate Duncan’s oaks were 300 to 400 years old, the bigger ones.”

A hotter climate leads to less rainfall. As Steven Chu explained it to the New York Times in October 2007, before he became Obama’s Secretary of Energy, global warming will strain water supplies in California:

even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”

California’s own climate change study confirm this. And it cascades throughout Southern California – the lack of rainfall causes a cascade effect on water supplies and, consequently, on vegetation. Without rainfall, cities and developers have to draw down already-stressed aquifers, depleting the soil moisture that helps keep plants somewhat watered even in the dry months. As this is drawn down, the ongoing lack of rainfall means the aquifers aren’t getting replenished. Stresses on the Colorado River mean California must reduce its share of water drawn down from the river. And the ongoing problems with the Sierra snowpack and the Delta mean that Southern California gets less water delivered – reinforcing the stress on groundwater.

In turn, this leaves less water available for vegetation, which is therefore more vulnerable when wildfires inevitably start up in October. Instead of a wildfire being small and more easily contained, water-stressed vegetation fuels the fire’s growth into a major catastrophe.

It’s a situation that cries out for action. That is, unless you’re a Texas oil company or a right-wing global warming denier, who backs Prop 23 despite this destructive impact of global warming on our state.

To hear Prop 23 backers tell it, action to address global warming by reducing our carbon emissions and developing a green jobs economy that spurs clean energy innovation is somehow optional, something we can just put aside when it’s inconvenient.

We know this isn’t true. From rising sea levels to more frequent and intense fires to droughts that cause widespread damage to the agricultural industry, global warming represents an immediate and ongoing threat to our economy. Whether in 2010, 2020, 2030, or later, inaction on global warming will doom the California economy and cause higher unemployment for some time to come.

The only way anyone can look at that future and not really care about it is if they deny it – and that means denying global warming.

A new study from Germany’s Max Planck Institute makes clear the urgent need to act, arguing that carbon emissions must peak by 2015 if the worst effects of global warming are to be avoided:

The model, developed by researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, suggests the world’s annual carbon emissions can reach no more than 10 billion tonnes in five years’ time before they must be put on a steady downward path. After that, the researchers say, emissions must drop by 56 per cent by mid-century and need to approach zero by 2100.

Those targets are necessary to prevent average global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees C by 2100. Under that scenario, though, further warming can still be expected for years to come afterward.

California’s AB 32 helps address this concern by mandating our carbon emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020. But as I explained yesterday, if Prop 23 passed we probably wouldn’t resume action on global warming until April 2021 at the earliest. By that point, it might be too late to avoid the worst.

Anyone who supports Prop 23 has to explain why it is good for us to let global warming run amok without taking any steps to address it – and the only way they can do that is to deny global warming itself.

Maybe they agree with Carly Fiorina that worrying about global warming is just worrying about “the weather”. Or maybe they just don’t care about the lost jobs and destroyed communities that will result from unchecked global warming. Either way, it’s impossible to back Prop 23 without denying global warming – unless you think the effects of that warming are a good thing for our state.