RJ Eskow has a excellent post up examining “Meg Whtiman’s shady Goldman Sachs past” and what it might portend for California’s future if she were to get elected.

Whitman was a Goldman Sachs board member from 2001 to 2002, when she resigned under a cloud of suspicion for her role in an IPO scandal:

Whitman has said she did nothing wrong by accepting the IPO shares and that the offerings did not help Goldman Sachs win additional business from eBay, which has paid the Wall Street firm $8 million for investment banking services since 1996, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In October, Congressional investigators disclosed that Goldman allocated shares of more than 100 IPOs to Whitman since 1996 and she then quickly sold those shares for a profit, in a practice known as “spinning.”

Whitman’s connections to Goldman Sachs are quite relevant, as Eskow explains, showing that Goldman Sachs has a long record of screwing California taxpayers:

What kind of business relationship can Californians expect their state to have with Goldman Sachs and firms like it if Meg Whitman becomes governor? Here’s a clue: In a report called “Corporate cash boosts Whitman,” the Associated Press reported that “The biggest donations came from New York investment bankers, hedge fund managers, attorneys and others.” If there’s one thing these guys know it’s how to prime the pump.

Not that Whitman’s old pals at Goldman haven’t already been profiting off California’s misery. They were hired to manage some multibillion dollar state bond offerings but, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, millions in fees didn’t stop Goldman from secretly undermining California’s credit rating. That hurt the very sales they were hired to manage. As the Times states, the firm “urged some of its big clients to place investment bets against California bonds” by “proposing a way for … clients to profit from California’s deepening financial misery.”

Goldman Sachs’s role in serious government debt crises is getting greater scrutiny over in Europe, where they appear to have played the leading role in hiding Greek debt levels in order to massively profit off of Greece’s heavy borrowing in preparation for the Athens Olympics. This unsustainable lending has spawned a European Union investigation while the EU works to deal with the crisis Goldman Sachs helped create with the Greek debt. Eskow cites reporting that indicates Goldman Sachs has screwed around with California debt, in this case undermining state bond sales for their own profit.

As it turns out, it’s not just Goldman Sachs that is screwing with Californians and their debt sales. JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers (before their collapse) and UBS have all been implicated in an alleged conspiracy to cheat municipal governments by paying below-market interest rates to those governments. Remember that, as Eskow noted, many of Meg’s donors are investment  bankers.

The picture this all paints is extremely clear. California has been cheated out of millions – at least – by Goldman Sachs and its fellow investment banking houses. Meg Whitman represents them and their interests, and will almost certainly enable this misbehavior to continue.

It’s also further evidence of the need for California to develop its own state bank, as was done by North Dakota nearly 100 years ago, in order to remove as much state borrowing as possible from the greedy clutches of Goldman Sachs and its fellow henchmen.

UPDATE: An op-ed by Faith Bautista and Preeti Vissa at Capitol Weekly draws more attention to the issue and calls for a legislative investigation.

Fresh on the heels of a batch of Field Polls, the Public Policy Institute of California is out with its latest big all-in-one statewide poll. And it confirms some of the trends we’ve already identified in the recent batch of Field Polls, including:

Meg Whitman now leads Jerry Brown. PPIC has Whitman up 44-39 over Brown; Field had Whitman up 46-43. Steve Poizner is about 50 points behind Whitman in both polls, and as KQED’s John Myers notes, Poizner’s immigrant-bashing attempt to dig himself out of that hole is backfiring badly with Latino voters, driving them more strongly into Brown’s arms. At this point it’s hard to see any way Poizner can win this primary. Jerry Brown must prefer being the underdog to Whitman, since he isn’t likely to begin hard campaigning until the summer.

Boxer is facing a very close re-election battle. PPIC has Boxer up 44-43 over Fiorina (Field had Boxer leading 45-44 over Fiorina) and Campbell up 44-43 over Boxer (the same numbers as Field). Considering that the PPIC poll was done before the passage of the health care bill, however, this has to be seen as Boxer’s baseline. Now that she’s got a bill she can bring home to Californians, more Democrats and Boxer-friendly independents may return to the likely voter universe. And since Boxer hasn’t yet begun her campaign, there’s further reason to expect her numbers to improve. But this one will be close. PPIC also shows a closer race between Campbell and Fiorina than Field did.

Everybody still hates Arnold. PPIC is a bit more favorable to Arnold – they have 64% of all adults and likely voters disapproving of his performance, whereas Field found 71% disapproved. Still, it’s further sign that Californians are done with the Governator, and will be glad to see him back in Hollywood for good in 2011.

Spending cuts still aren’t popular. Unfortunately, PPIC chose not to ask the kind of specific and therefore extremely valuable questions about specific spending cuts that they asked in January. But they did find that only 39% of all adults wanted “mostly spending cuts,” with 38% supporting a mix of cuts and new taxes. When they asked about whether “higher taxes and more services” or “lower taxes and fewer services” were preferred, all adults were evenly split (46-45 for higher taxes) but likely voters favored lower taxes, 55-39, again indicating that November 2010 is a turnout election.

PPIC added a few new things to the mix:

Majority support for marriage equality. By a 50-45 margin, Californians support same-sex marriage. And a whopping 75% support repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Prop 14 is probably going to pass. In what should be a surprise to nobody, voters are indicating they’ll pass the top-two primary in June, 56% favoring and 27% opposing. 59% of Democrats are supportive, which is unfortunate since Prop 14 is designed to screw Democrats in particular by pushing primary fights out into the general election and attempting to push the party to the right.

The Field Poll couldn’t be any clearer about it if they tried: Californians simply do not support budget cuts:

Public schools: 79% oppose cuts, 20% favor cuts

Public assistance for elderly and disabled: 77-21

Health care for low-income and poor: 71-26

Higher education: 70-28

Law enforcement: 67-31

Mental health: 65-31

Child care: 59-38

Welfare: 57-40

The only two cuts a majority supported making were to prisons and parks.

Now, the Field Poll has limited utility, because it didn’t ask if voters would support new revenues to prevent these cuts. But we know from the January PPIC poll that the answer is a resounding yes – with nearly 70% of voters saying they supported new revenues to fund public schools in particular. That seems to confirm the basic view that Californians are not enthused by these specific spending cuts and would support avoiding them by raising new revenues, though the method of generating new revenue certainly matters.

These kind of specific polls are more effective at gauging public opinion than asking a broad “do you support cuts or taxes?” questions, since state budgeting involves making these kinds of decisions about cutting specific programs.

Not everyone thinks this poll reveals sound decision-making. John Myers of KQED points out that voters would still be $6 billion short if their preferences in the Field Poll were actually used to close the gap:

And here’s the problem: today’s survey doesn’t cut it. In fact, even if your staff takes these suggestions to their most extreme, you’re still only agreeing to solutions that – at very most – would erase $14 billion of the state $20 billion budget gap.

It’s an entertaining read, but what it actually reveals are the limitations of the Field Poll. To get a true sense of voter attitudes on the budget, Field needs to ask the PPIC questions about whether taxes or cuts are preferred for specific programs. And someone needs to ask about Oregon-style taxation, which apparently has been written out of the story by the state’s pollsters, press and politicians like Thomas Jefferson in a Texas textbook.

Yesterday we brought you the report that four of the five Republican candidates for governor/US Senate are calling the federal health care bill “unconstitutional” and/or want it repealed. So far, Meg Whitman is maintaining a deafening silence, although that might be because nobody in the media has yet asked her about it.

Today we learned that the California State Senate Republican caucus is transforming itself into the Teabag Caucus with a their own claims the bill is unconstitutional:

Republican Senators are calling upon California Attorney General Jerry Brown to join other states in challenging the constitutionality of the federal government’s health-care overhaul. Citing the unprecedented over-reaching of the federal government’s policy into areas traditionally overseen by states and individuals, the Republican Senators believe the measure is an unfunded federal mandate and unconstitutional.

Senator Tom Harman (R-Huntington Beach) submitted a letter to the Attorney General requesting that California join other states challenging the measure. Harman pointed to the following concerns:

   * Expansion of federal authority under the Commerce Clause,

   * Imposes an unfunded mandate upon economically struggling states, and

   * Illegally expanding federal authority over state’s sovereign rights.

There’s just one problem with their press release, aside from it being the product of a group of people deeply out of touch with reality: they did not cite any case law at all to back up their absurd claim the bill is somehow “unconstitutional.”

Their release also mentioned Senator Tony Strickland’s constitutional amendment, SCA 29, that would block the implementation of the federal bill in California (and would block a single-payer system as well). I’ll bet voters in SD-19 are wishing they could take the 2008 election back and send Hannah-Beth Jackson to the Senate in Strickland’s place.

From their US Senate candidates to their gubernatorial candidates to their Senate caucus, California Republicans are apparently determined to make as their 2010 slogan “We want to deny you health care.” Good luck with that.

While Steve Poizner is trying to use the 1994 Pete Wilson playbook and bashing immigrants in order to overcome a 50-point deficit in the polls, most Californians are interested in other issues, as the most recent Field Poll shows:

Percent who rated issue as “among the most important” in the 2010 gubernatorial election

Jobs/economy: 69%

Budget deficit: 68%

Education: 60%

Health care: 51%

Taxes: 47%

Illegal Immigration: 37%

Water: 36%

These numbers hold true for Decline to State voters, only 30% of whom rank illegal immigration as an important issue, and whose top 3 are the same as the rest of the electorate. Unsurprisingly, 58% in the nativist Republican Party rank immigration is an important issue.

What this suggests is that Steve Poizner might be able to close some of the gap with Meg Whitman through immigrant bashing, it will backfire in the general election if he were to somehow pull off the most miraculous comeback of all time and win the GOP nomination.

Unfortunately, this poll also suggests Whitman is on to something with her campaign messaging that emphasizes three issues: jobs, state budget, and education, in exactly the same order as they appeared in this poll. It’s possible that Whitman’s saturation bombing of the airwaves helped produce these poll results, but in any case she is well positioned to take advantage.

Jerry Brown is still rolling out his own campaign, but will need to also deliver clear and consistent messaging on jobs, the budget, and education. Ultimately those three are all related, since the budget should properly fund education in order to ensure that we have enough jobs for Californians. And Whitman can’t credibly claim to do that, not with her demands for massive and unaffordable tax cuts.

What the Field Poll shows is that Californians are very concerned about their future. The candidate who best addresses those concerns and shows a vision for the next 30 years will be the victor in November.

Photo by Reggie Mundakis, Pacific Progressive

By now you’ve probably heard that Loretta Sanchez (CA-47) was a “yes” vote on the health care bill last night. She put out a statement last night explaining:

But it was hearing the personal stories from people in my district that ultimately convinced me to support this bill. In my fourteen years in Congress, I have never seen my constituents reach out so intently and so persistently in support of a particular piece of legislation.

Much of that “intent and persistent” outreach was mobilized late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, after reports circulated that Sanchez wasn’t on Capitol Hill and was being listed by House leadership as a “no” vote. The Courage Campaign, where I work as Public Policy Director, asked her constituents to call her offices Sunday morning, an ask we later took statewide. OFA joined in, and even organized a protest at her Santa Ana campaign office pushing her to vote for the bill.

Reports indicated that about 250 people showed up to the office, including a number of folks who pulled over to join the protest after driving by it on Harbor Boulevard.

Clearly the statewide mobilization targeting Sanchez played a role in getting her to vote for the bill. What we don’t know is just what her intentions were in all of this. Was Sanchez genuinely planning to vote no, or even undecided? Or was this an attention-seeking ploy on her part, as some have charged?

Whatever the answer, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Sanchez has damaged herself with this whole affair. Her constituents will be happy she voted yes, but annoyed that there was any question about that outcome, and frustrated that Sanchez was playing coy with the media and the public up until the eve of the vote.

Maryland Democrat and DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen has argued Dems should go on the offensive, touting the bill and its benefits between now and the election. That’s particularly good advice for Sanchez, whose district has a 31% uninsured rate, 17th highest in the country.

Whether a stunt or a genuine uncertainty about the vote, Loretta Sanchez damaged her standing in Orange County and among California Democrats. She’ll need to work to restore that support between now and November.

You can see Loretta Sanchez’s full statement over the flip.

March 21, 2010: Rep. Loretta Sanchez Issues Statement on Passage of Historic Health Care Bill

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (CA-47) today issued the following statement regarding her historic vote in support of H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and H.R. 4872, the Reconciliation Act of 2010:

“This was probably the most difficult vote I’ve cast during my time in Congress. After decades of failed attempts at reform, this Congress was given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to finally fix our broken health care system. And just like any once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, there was a lot of pressure to deliver a perfect bill, one that would be cost-effective and deficit-neutral while increasing health care quality and decreasing the number of uninsured.

“Over the last few weeks, it has become clear that this bill is far from perfect. It does not provide a public option, which I believe is critical to achieving genuine reform. And it doesn’t adequately reimburse California hospitals for the cost of providing care to Medicare patients. So I had a choice: stand up for my ideal vision of health care and vote against this legislation, or accept a less-than-perfect bill because it is an important step toward improving our health care system from the unsustainable status quo. It is for this reason that I deliberated long and hard before casting my vote.

“Everyone knows the purely rational reasons why we need reform. Rising costs are hurting our families, burdening small businesses, and making us less competitive in a global economy. But it was hearing the personal stories from people in my district that ultimately convinced me to support this bill. In my fourteen years in Congress, I have never seen my constituents reach out so intently and so persistently in support of a particular piece of legislation.

“They called me with stories of children who died waiting for transplants and grandparents who couldn’t afford to pay for their medication. They wrote letters about pregnant mothers who couldn’t provide their babies with basic prenatal care and fathers who lost health insurance for their families when they lost their job. Just as touching were the calls from constituents who do have health coverage but were concerned for their neighbors who were not as fortunate. These were the people I had in mind when I cast my vote for this bill. Tonight, I stand by their stories and my decision.”

Worst governor ever:

More Californians disapprove of the job performance of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger than any governor in modern state history including Gray Davis, who was ousted by Schwarzenegger in a popular uprising, according to a Field Poll released today.

Seventy-one percent of California voters surveyed said they disapprove of Schwarzenegger’s handling of the job, while 23 percent approve. The low ratings are shared across all demographics including party affiliation, region of the state, age and race or ethnicity.

The Field Poll shows Arnold has seen an 11 point swing against him since January, with his unfavorables rising from 64% to 71%.

As Calitics alum David Dayen noted, Californians figured this out all on their own, with no help from the media, who have continued to treat Arnold as a formidable power in state politics instead of explaining how his policies over the last seven years are largely responsible for the state’s current budget crisis.

Schwarzenegger ignored advice from folks like Warren Buffett that a tax increase was needed in 2003-04, and instead did nothing to address the state’s ongoing inability to raise enough money to fund its core services. When the bubble economy burst in 2007, the state immediately was thrown into recession. Arnold’s massively unpopular response was to embrace destructive cuts to services Californians need, and the only taxes he’s embraced have been the most regressive kind – sales taxes and fee increases for higher education students.

This appears to have been part of a very deliberate plan to turn the state over to the wealthy and the large corporations and implementing a shock doctrine attack on the poor and the middle class by seeking to privatize or eliminate the services they need.

Here’s an example. In February 2009, Arnold demanded and won a massive $9 billion cut to K-12 education. Federal stimulus funds helped blunt some of the impact of that cut, as 16,000 of the 30,000 laid off teachers were rehired. But as the stimulus funds are stupidly expiring this year, 20,000 more teachers are going to be fired. More and more schools are closing across the state.

What’s one result of these cuts? A much greater movement across the state for charter schools. That gives private companies the “in” they’ve long desired to our public education system. Through his budget cuts, Arnold has set the state for the mass privatization of public education in this state.

Finally, it is absolutely worth noting that Meg Whitman plans to continue almost all of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s policies, but will be even further to the right than he was. That might be something Jerry Brown would want to repeat early and often.

UPDATE: The Courage Campaign, where I work as Public Policy Director, is asking our members this morning to call Loretta Sanchez and ask her to vote “yes” on the bill. OFA is also organizing an 11AM rally at Loretta Sanchez’s Santa Ana campaign office – click here for details.

Original post:

Back in 1996, when I was still shedding my youthful Orange County conservatism, I walked a few precincts in Garden Grove and Anaheim for Loretta Sanchez. That fall, she won by about 900 votes, a big upset produced through her hard work and clear desire to represent her constituents and their needs.

Since then she’s seen off several challengers, and won re-election by increasing margins. This year, however, she faces a strong Republican challenger in Assemblymember Van Tran. Tran has built an impressive electoral machine in west-central Orange County, and while most observers don’t think he will win, Sanchez is certainly worried.

When facing such a challenger, you would think that one of the ways you’d defend yourself is to ensure your base is happy, and that you are doing all you can do to motivate your base and your constituents to vote for you. Particularly by addressing one of your constituents’ primary needs, which is health care.

That’s why it is simply baffling, even bizarre, to read this report from Roll Call (via David Dayen’s FDL whip count):

As their whip efforts narrow to just a handful of Members, House Democratic leaders are facing an unlikely problem vote: Rep. Loretta Sanchez.

Sanchez was nowhere to be found on Saturday – she was in Florida on a fundraising jaunt, two Democratic sources said – and while leaders expected her to return for the Sunday vote on final passage, they weren’t assured. What’s more, leaders now list the Orange County Democrat as a “no” vote….

Sanchez this week told the Orange County Register that she needs to be satisfied that the health care overhaul is affordable. “The Senate bill is a bad bill,” she told the paper.

Loretta Sanchez is apparently making the same mistake several other Democrats are poised to make, which is assuming that voting “no” on the health care bill is anything other than guaranteeing their own defeat in November.

Here’s why. If Sanchez votes yes, then she gives her constituents and her base a good reason to care about her re-election. They’ll be motivated to ensure that she sees off Van Tran, a right-winger in the classic Orange County tradition, to defend someone who made the right choice on health care. Tran would still present a challenge, but Sanchez would be able to mobilize an army of volunteers and donors to help defend against it.

But if Sanchez votes no, then she has nothing to fall back on. Her base would desert her. Volunteers would stay home, and small donors would find a more useful purpose for their money. Her pleas for support against Van Tran would fall on deaf ears. Her constituents would be forced to choose between two candidates who have shown no willingness to do anything for them on health care – one of whom had just betrayed them in Congress.

A “yes” vote gives Sanchez a fighting chance at victory. A “no” vote seals her doom.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Loretta Sanchez, stemming from that 1996 campaign. It pains me to see her throw 14 years of service down the drain like this. But if she votes “no,” she’s on her own, and nobody will save her from Van Tran and an Orange County Republican Party determined to avenge one of their most stinging and significant defeats they’ve ever suffered.

As reported by Capitol Alert yesterday, Valero has donated $500,000 to the effort to suspend AB 32 and force California to stop doing anything about global warming:

Valero Services Inc. donated $500,000 to fuel a signature-gathering drive aimed at qualifying an initiative for the November ballot to suspend Assembly Bill 32, signed into law several years ago.

Much of the remaining $466,000 also has been donated by oil companies, documents show….

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association contributed $100,000 to the effort, as well as three other oil companies – Tesoro Cos., Tower Energy Group and World Oil Corp., according to the documents filed with the secretary of state.

Donating lesser amounts were Southern Counties Oil Co. — doing business as Total Energy Products – $50,000; JACO Oil Co., $10,000; Lumber Association of California and Nevada political action committee, $5,000; and Roger Cohen, a retired physicist, $1,000.

This news comes on the heels of the Legislative Analyst’s Office slamming the so-called Varshney Study, which Meg Whitman and other right-wingers have been using to claim AB 32 would somehow hurt jobs. The LAO called the study “unreliable” and “essentially useless”, citing repeated instances of unsupportable biases in the estimates of AB 32’s costs and understating of its benefits.

This has the makings of a major scandal, since the study was authored by the dean of the Sac State business school, Sanjay Varshney, as mandated by a bill passed in 2006 seeking a public study of the impact of AB 32. Using taxpayer dollars to totally misrepresent the truth is deeply unethical, and Assemblymember Nancy Skinner is already calling for hearings into the matter.

In short, what these two stories show us is that wealthy oil companies and junk science are once again teaming up to try and pretend that either global warming isn’t real, or that even if it is, we shouldn’t do anything about it. What Valero and Varshney are both saying is that it’s more important to keep oil companies happy today than to prepare for a future where rising sea levels threaten the San Francisco Bay Area, the ports of LA-Long Beach, the state’s water supply, our agricultural and fishing industries, so on and so forth.