Sarah Palin, WaPo op-ed, December 9, 2009:

Meeting [carbon reduction] targets would require Congress to pass its cap-and-tax plans, which will result in job losses and higher energy costs… The last thing America needs is misguided legislation that will raise taxes and cost jobs.

Meg Whitman, San Jose Mercury News op-ed, September 16, 2009:

In January, the first AB 32 mandates take effect and will lead to higher energy costs at a time when we can least afford them. They will discourage job creation and could kill any recovery.

Notice the similar phrasing here: “higher energy costs,” “cost jobs/discourage job creation.”

It’s not just similar phrasing that Whitman and Palin share: it’s similar policies. Palin’s op-ed was written to attack the Copenhagen climate summit and to oppose the Congressional cap-and-trade bill. Whitman’s op-ed was written to attack AB 32, which she said she would order suspended indefinitely as her very first act as governor.

Earlier today in Copenhagen, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger slammed Sarah Palin’s climate stance:

“You have to ask: what was she trying to accomplish?” he told the Financial Times. “Is she really interested in this subject or is she interested in her career and in winning the [Republican] nomination [for president]? You have to take all these things with a grain of salt.”…

“I think there are people that just don’t believe in fixing and working on the environment. They don’t believe there is such a thing as global warming, they’re still living in the Stone Age, which is OK, we need people like that, too,” he said.

But will Arnold say similar things about Meg Whitman, who shares Sarah Palin’s attitude about global warming legislation?

The Courage Campaign isn’t going to wait to find out. That’s why we are going to produce and air a radio ad that will broadcast on stations across California later this week. The ad will explain to the listener that Palin and Whitman share the same views on the climate crisis – views that are NOT shared by President Obama, Governor Schwarzenegger, and most Californians.

We’re a small organization and can’t simply cut and air the ad ourselves. We need your help to get this on the air. Please click here to kick in $25 to get this ad produced and aired.

Why a radio ad? Well, as you probably know, Whitman has launched a big radio ad buy in recent weeks. Whitman’s ads are designed to raise her name identification with voters and boost her poll numbers by presenting herself as a friendly moderate who wants to help fix our broken state.

The Courage Campaign thinks that the public needs to hear the truth about Whitman’s stand on global warming, which is why we’re going to the radio airwaves. Will you join us? Donate now!

Once the ad is ready to be aired, I’ll be sure to post it here so you can listen. Over the flip is the email we sent to our members today launching this campaign.

note: I’m the Public Policy Director for the Courage Campaign

Dear friend —

Have you heard Sarah Palin’s, er, I mean Meg Whitman’s radio ads?

Almost every time I turn on my radio, I hear one of Meg Whitman’s “A Better California” campaign ads. Whitman — who wants to be Governor and strongly supported the McCain/Palin campaign — has just launched a huge radio ad buy across California.

I have to admit, they’re good ads. Whitman’s ads are designed to raise her name identification with voters and boost her poll numbers by presenting herself as a friendly moderate who wants to help fix our broken state.

What Whitman doesn’t say is that, when it comes to global warming, she’s another Sarah Palin.

It’s time to hold Meg Whitman accountable. That’s why, with your help, the Courage Campaign is going to produce and air a radio ad of our own, pointing out that Whitman and Palin have the same “wait and see” approach to our planet’s climate crisis (read on below to see what we mean).

We’re calling our radio ad “California’s Sarah Palin” and we want to get it up on the air against Whitman’s ads before the Copenhagen summit ends on Friday. Will you help us produce and air it across California — and even in Copenhagen? Click here now to contribute $25 or more and kick off this campaign. DEADLINE: Thursday 9 AM:

http://www.couragecampaign.org…

Our current governor, Arnold Schwarzengger, is speaking at the Copenhagen summit on global warming this week. And President Obama is speaking on Friday.

While Gov. Schwarzenegger is there, he’ll show how California has taken the lead in reducing carbon emissions through a law passed in 2006 — Assembly Bill 32. As many Democrats and Republicans agree, AB 32 is a model for Congress and the Copenhagen summit.

But Meg Whitman agrees with Sarah Palin, who claims that bills like AB 32 are harmful. In fact, Whitman has pledged that the first thing she would do as governor is suspend AB 32 indefinitely, and order California to stop taking action to deal with global warming.

Californians need to hear the truth about Meg Whitman — California’s Sarah Palin. Please contribute now to help us produce this ad and put it on the air across California. If we raise enough, we’ll even air it in Copenhagen before the summit ends on Friday. DEADLINE: Thursday 9 AM:

http://www.couragecampaign.org…

“California’s Sarah Palin” is just the beginning. Please help the Courage Campaign hold Meg Whitman and others accountable when they threaten the progressive principles Californians share.

Thanks for helping us kick off this accountability campaign today.

Rick Jacobs

Chair, Courage Campaign

Putting concern over a relatively insignificant office over the extremely significant 2/3rds majority in the State Senate, CDP Chair John Burton opposes Maldonado’s confirmation as Lt. Gov.:

“Why should they give the job to a Republican — when there hasn’t been a Lt. Gov. who’s been a Republican since Mike Curb in 1978,” said Burton, whose own history as a powerful State Senate Pro Tem — and his current control of party money as the Dem leader in CA — could give him clout with state lawmakers on the matter. “Why give his seat to another party?”

“They’ll vote him down,” Burton predicted confidently….

“There’s a reason why some people are Democrats, and some are Republicans,” he said. “And Democrats don’t vote for Republicans.”

Of course, in this case, Democrats don’t actually have to vote for Republicans. They can do nothing. Maldonado would become Lt. Gov. and serve for a few insignificant months while either Dean Florez or Janice Hahn mobilize around the state to defeat him.

Meanwhile, Democrats here on the Central Coast organize to send either John Laird or Bill Monning to the State Senate to replace Maldonado, combining with a Democratic victory later in the year in SD-12 to reclaim two Democratic districts and attain 2/3rds in the Senate.

As a member of my county’s Democratic Central Committee, as well as a member of the California Democratic Party Executive Board, this strikes me as a favorable deal for the Democratic Party. Dems don’t actually have to vote for Maldonado, and can continue to rail against him and his right-wing views. Meanwhile, we do the on-the-ground work that Dems can and should do to win the Lt. Gov. office as well as 2/3rds in the Senate.

Ultimately, if we have to weigh the considerations against each other, it is far more important for Democrats to have 2/3rds than to have the Lt. Gov. office. The state legislature is at the center of Democratic fortunes in this state. Because it has been in Democratic hands for nearly 40 years, it is seen as the most obvious model of what the Democratic Party stands for and can accomplish in California.

If the Democratic majority is unable to implement its vision because they lack a 2/3rds majority, then that makes Democrats look weak and ineffective. This is particularly the case with a Democratic governor. One of the things that led to Gray Davis’s recall in 2003 was the inability of the Legislature to agree on a budget, making Davis look like a weak leader.

Democrats need to think like a party and a movement – and not like an organization dedicated to advancing the career of any single individual. The California Democratic Party is stronger by stepping out of the way of Maldonado’s confirmation and instead focusing on making the case to California’s voters, whether here on the Central Coast or statewide, as to why Democrats deserve votes instead of acting like those votes, or any particular office, belong to us by divine right.

It’s not every day that the exodus from the legislature gets reversed. Jeff Denham, who went straight into the State Senate from SD-12 in 2002 without serving in the Assembly (Denham lost to Símon Salinas in a 2000 Assembly race), has announced that he will drop out of the Lieutenant Governor’s race and run to replace Tom Berryhill in AD-25:

Denham met in the past two days with Gov. Schwarzenegger, other GOP leaders and his family before reaching his decision to run for Berryhill’s Assembly District 25. It will require him to move out of Merced County and into Stanislaus County.

He said running for the Assembly seat will give him a chance to become a key leader in the Legislature after serving two terms in the Senate.

Obviously Arnold and the Republican power elite are trying to grease the skids for Maldonado to become the next Lt. Gov., and have succeeded in pushing Denham – who has no love lost for Maldonado – to run for the Assembly. And Denham’s even going to move to Modesto (he currently lives near Merced) to make this happen.

To top it off, Denham isn’t going to have AD-25 handed to him on a platter:

He faces Modesto City Councilwoman Janice Keating, who announced this week that she intends to run for Berryhill’s seat. Keating is a solid fund-raiser in her own right, having assembled six-figure war chests for a 2006 race for a Stanislaus County supervisor’s seat and to help pass a local government reform measure in 2008.

Of course, Keating may well decide to drop out instead of facing Denham. But it does show that the California GOP is making a priority out of the Lt. Gov. race.

That shouldn’t be cause for Democrats to circle the wagons on the Maldonado appointment. Either Dean Florez or Janice Hahn should be able to beat him, and we should not be afraid to make that case – especially when 2/3rds in the Senate is on the line.

UPDATE by Brian: I just want to also toss in here that Abel still has another challenger in the LG race: Sam Aanestad. At this point, it seems unlikely that Aanestad will drop out. So, Denham dropping out might help Maldonado, but it also helps Aanestad, should he choose to remain in the race. He can now suck up all the right-wing base love in the race. If he can get his name ID up a little bit, this could be a dogfight.

If it wasn’t clear to you before that California is facing a severe political crisis, two items should remove any lingering doubt. On Tuesday Brian wrote about the exodus from the legislature – once ranked as the best legislature in the country, it has been destroyed by term limits and the 2/3rds rule.

But the crisis in state government runs much deeper than just the legislature alone. Partly because of the right-wing’s success at breaking the legislature, there’s a growing movement to shrink the size of state government. As more observers recognize that Californians generally have more faith in local government than in state government, they’re starting to argue that we should therefore shift more responsibility for programs to local governments, and weaken the role of the state.

That was one of the prominent topics of discussion at a KQED forum last Friday. As described by John Myers:

But the most intriguing part of the discussion was the almost universal consensus that California needs a much stronger structure of local government and, perhaps correspondingly, a weaker state government.

Dr. Sandra Hernandez, a leader of the nonprofit San Francisco Foundation, said more power needs to be given to locals “where there is more trust” of the public. Hernandez went on to say that too few Californians understand the nexus between the services they want, and what it takes to provide those services in the way of money and resources… a disconnect that can only be solved through local, grassroots education.

“We have a lot of work to do to build that kind of civic knowledge,” she said.

That sentiment was echoed by Hertzberg, whose reform group has a proposal to shift some things away from the state capital. “As long as we ensure there’s equitable protections,” he said, “you [should] devolve authority to folks where’s there’s a greater nexus.” Translation: keep more of the needs and actions of government where they can be seen and measured by average folks.

And the ever quotable Hertzberg offered this assessment of the top-down style of government: “Sacramento has become the Politburo.

And of course, this is fueling the “part-time legislature” nonsense, which would further limit the ability of state government to do the things it needs to do.

Leaving more tasks and responsibilities up to local government means people will be left to the mercy of local governments, many of which are controlled by Republicans, without a strong state government to look after them and their interests. There are good reasons to have strong statewide standards for things like education and health care funding – but an ineffective legislature or a smaller state government can’t effectively implement these tasks.

This would be a good time for Democrats to step up and fight against the budget cuts this time – cuts that merely fuel this kind of desire to localize public services, even if it were to produce inequality.

One of the great success stories of the internet boom over the last 15 years in California is Craigslist. I was an early user back in the late 1990s when it was still primarily a San Francisco-based classified ad network run by its founder, Craig Newmark. Since that time Craigslist has become one of THE leading marketplaces for the exchange of goods and services, whether it’s finding or selling an apartment, a job, a used car, or a sex partner.

Earlier this decade, that success attracted the attention of the other successful Bay Area online marketplace, eBay, and its then-CEO, Meg Whitman. eBay and Craigslist explored a partnership. One never materialized, but the information and stock that was exchanged is at the root of a Delaware trial this week where eBay and Craigslist are suing each other – and where Meg Whitman is testifying:

Whitman, a Republican candidate for California governor, was the first witness in a trial that began Monday in Delaware, pitting eBay Inc. and Craigslist.

EBay claims that Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and CEO Jim Buckmaster improperly acted to dilute eBay’s minority interest after a falling out in 2007. Craigslist claims in a countersuit that eBay used its stake to gain information to help it form a competing classified service, Kijiji….

Although eBay examined Craigslist’s financial data and Web site metrics before it acquired a 28 percent stake in the company in 2004, Whitman denied that eBay officials later misused confidential Craigslist data to benefit Kijiji.

Asked by eBay attorney Michael Rhodes whether she was aware of any effort by eBay to surreptitiously acquire the “secret sauce” of ingredients that spelled business success for Craigslist, Whitman simply responded, “No.”

The rest of the article makes clear that eBay wanted to buy out Craigslist and, if that failed, run a competing service that could seize market share from the wildly successful service.

That’s the mentality eMeg wants to bring to California’s government: stifling innovation, using the power of money and the courts to smack down a successful, populist competitor. It should also cause Californians to ask for whose benefit she would run this state: for the small entrepreneuers like Craigslist, or for the large corporate behemoths like eBay.

California Democrats currently have 50 votes in the Assembly. That’s 10 more than they need for a majority, though 4 short of what they need for a 2/3rds majority. Still, given the size of their majority, there is absolutely no reason for any Democrat seeking the Speakership to find Republican votes.

Unfortunately that seems to be what’s taking place. And former Speaker Willie Brown, who relied on Republican votes on three different occasions (1980, 1988, 1994) to maintain his hold on the Speaker’s office, is using his weekly San Francisco Chronicle column to fuel the divide within the Assembly Democratic Caucus:

Nuñez thought he had brokered a deal where his guy [Kevin de Léon] would become speaker, and in return Pérez would run unopposed for the state Senate seat now held by Gil Cedillo. Cedillo, in turn, would go back to the Assembly.

They even opened a great bottle of wine at the mayor’s house and toasted the settlement.

But when de Leon couldn’t swing the votes by the end of the Thanksgiving holiday, Pérez said, “Time’s up,” and announced he had 28 members on his side. Then he called me and asked, “What do you think?”

I said that the last time I looked it took 41 votes to be speaker, so you’re still 13 short.

Actually, I said, you’re 15 votes short.

Why’s that? he asked.

Answer: You need to add one for the cross and one for the double cross that are bound to happen once the voting starts.

Why would Willie Brown go public with this? The intent seems to be to undermine John Pérez and to give fuel to Kevin de Léon’s effort to prolong a race he’s already lost.

If the deal did go down as described, then Pérez has done nothing wrong. de Léon had to find the votes and he couldn’t do it. A deal at Antonio Villaraigosa’s house doesn’t matter if the Assembly Democratic caucus won’t ratify it and don’t want de Léon as their speaker. de Léon and Cedillo can whine all they want to, but the caucus seems to have spoken: they want Pérez.

And if that’s the case, then de Léon, Cedillo, Núñez and others need to accept that reality. de Léon’s backers need to close ranks behind Pérez as their choice for Speaker. Deals with Republicans don’t do anything at all to further the Democratic cause in this state, as we can be sure that the Republicans will demand a price that is simply too high for Californians to afford.

While President Obama seems to think an escalation in Afghanistan is the right move, some California Democrats running for Congress don’t agree. In CA-44, Bill Hedrick (who came surprisingly close to beating Ken Calvert in 2008) has been speaking out against the escalation, and sent this statement out via email:

While President Obama is setting clear benchmarks and urging other nations to participate in Afghanistan, I continue to oppose the decision to send troops.  It places more American lives at risk for the corrupt Karzai government.  Any escalation will cost tens of billions of dollars that would be better spent on creating and keeping jobs in America.

Meanwhile Marcy Winograd, who is again challenging Jane Harman from the left in CA-36, explains her opposition over at Daily Kos:

I voted for Barack Obama. In fact, I volunteered for his campaign.  

But I am not afraid to speak out when the President makes a mistake.

It is wrong to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan….

Like my good friend, Afghanistan veteran Rick Reyes, says, “There is no military solution in Afghanistan.”

When we escalate an indefinite occupation of Afghanistan… when we send unmanned bombers into nuclear-armed Pakistan… when we construct cement fortresses in Iraq… we only engender hatred, create new enemies, and propel a dangerous narrative that we are at war with the entire Muslim world.

We are better than that.

Winograd led the successful effort to get the California Democratic Party to approve a resolution calling for an end to the military occupation in Afghanistan and for more civilian charitable work to address the problems in that country.

It’s just two candidates, but they reflect the growing consensus among California Democrats that the current strategy in Afghanistan, which Obama has now doubled down on, is neither good policy nor good politics.

UPDATE by Robert: Newly elected member of Congress John Garamendi also disagrees with the escalation:

I thank President Obama for his careful and thoughtful deliberation on this matter. He faces a difficult decision on a war he inherited, and I know his heart is in the right place. However, I remain convinced that increased diplomatic, economic, social, and educational assistance in the region will result in a lasting solution in Afghanistan. American national security, our dedicated soldiers already serving, and the people of Afghanistan will be better served if we focus our efforts on improving the socioeconomic conditions of the region instead of sending more of our brave soldiers to fight in this war.

I won’t post all the statements that come out on this, but it is interesting to see this opposition coming together in California. On MSNBC just now Maxine Waters said she wasn’t convinced by the speech and will vote against funding more troops, a position she said Barbara Lee shares.