Congressman (and former LG) John Garamendi sat down with a few of us at Netroots Nation. In a wide ranging discussion, we talked about a number of issues. Just a few of these topics:
Garamendi has hit the ground running since he switched from Sacramento to DC. We should be expecting to see him continuing to press leadership for a vigorous debate.
As Robert mentioned, there is still a lot to learn about this nominee. However, at the very least Arnold is making history by appointing the first Asian-American Chief Justice. The oficial announcement is, well, right now. Here’s his tweet:
Introducing my nominee for CA Supreme Court Chief Justice, Justice Cantil-Sakauye. Watch live at 11 at tweetcast
The state will vote on the nomination in Novembr. I, and others, will be doing a lot of investigation between now and then.
Let’s start by saying this: Sen. Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) is a coward. Sure, on occasion, he broke party ranks to vote for a budget or something. But for well over a decade, he served in the Legislature, consistently voting against any and all bills that protected the LGBT community. And then, as he points out in this confessional published on the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund website, he was outed in a flood of police lights. As I’ve said before, Ashburn was a slow-motion train wreck. The question was never if he was going to be outed, but when and how. Of course, he then went ahead and made sure it was a big spectacle. Good work, Roy.
But this little piece of work that he published, well, it’s a real piece of work.
My past actions harmed gay people. In fact, all people are harmed when there is unequal treatment of anyone under the constitution and laws of our country. I do not believe in discrimination, and yet my votes advanced unequal of treatment of gay people and promoted the suspicion and fear that limits people from being forthright and accepted in society.
Now, from what I have lived and learned, I want to do the best that I can to advance equality and freedom for all people. Given the shame and confusion that many feel over their sexual orientation, perhaps my situation can serve as an example of both the harm that can come from denial and fear, and the opportunity to try to make things right.
Let’s run down this timeline. Ashburn gets elected while outwardly proclaiming bigotry. Ashburn legislates consistent with that outward bigotry. Ashburn gets outed at the point of a policeman’s MAGlight. And now, finally, Ashburn decides that bigotry was ridiculous.
Well, let’s all give Roy a big ol’ group hug now, right? Well, I’ll just go ahead and skip that. Perhaps you would describe me as bitter, but for my part, I’ll pass on all of the mushy stuff. While I praise traditionally conservative parties for taking an enlightened stance on LGBT issues (such as the British Tories), that’s not what this is about.
This is about one guy, who lived his life selfishly. He was too much of a coward to come out. And let’s be clear, Ashburn was representing himself as a leader. This deception is not how a leader behaves. The lying and the sneaking, are not how a leader behaves. And the suppression of his own supposed fair-mindedness is not how a leader behaves.
Call me back after Ashburn has done some real work to repair some of the damage that he has already done. Maybe then I won’t be so cynical about his conversion via police lights.
Today, the Field Poll released their latest study on California opinions regarding marriage equality (PDF). It’s good news on the whole, with a slight majority favoring marriage equality. But there are some caveats:
The poll’s results – 51 percent in favor, 42 percent opposed, 7 percent undecided – show big differences among age groups, geography and party affiliation.
The results were close to those the Field Poll found in May 2008, six months before voters banned gay marriage by approving Proposition 8, 52 to 48 percent.
The current survey also found that support for same-sex marriage drops below a majority when voters are given another option – civil unions.(SacBee)
So, yes, there is 51% support, but that support is soft. Basically, we are back where we were two years ago. Prop 8 repeal can pass, but there is still a lot of work to be done. This time we have to run a better campaign to get our message out, be proactive and not just respond to the other side’s phony attacks. And of course, talk with our fellow Californians directly. We can, and should, win in 2012, but it will not be easy by any stretch of the imagination.
Of course, there’s still this Prop 8 trial going on, so I’ll just take a look at what one of the big California-centric pundits had to say. Dan Walters is the big California columnist at the Sacramento Bee. While I frequently disagree with his take on governance and other issues, he does offer an interesting perspective. Butin today’s column, he just misunderstands the law. From today’s Bee:
In a manner of speaking, however, Joseph Tauro, a federal judge in Boston, beat Walker to the punch when he declared that the federal “Defense of Marriage Act,” which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, is unconstitutional.
Although Tauro’s ruling was a victory for the gay rights movement, its legal basis could, ironically, undercut the lawsuit against Proposition 8. Tauro declared that Massachusetts had the authority, as a matter of states’ rights, to decide whether to recognize same-sex marriage, and the federal law “offends” those rights.
Logically, if Tauro is correct and the feds cannot overrule Massachusetts same-sex marriage laws as a states’ rights matter, neither could they overturn California’s anti-gay marriage law, Proposition 8. (SacBee)
From a simple reading of a summary of the cases, that would appear to be the case, but once you delve into the law, that sort of fades away. Judge Tauro’s decision actually strikes down Section 3 of DOMA under two constitutional provisions. First, he does it under the more expected Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, ruling that DOMA has no rational basis. This is the first of the two combined cases, the Gill v OPM case.
It is very clear that this part of the two decisions is clearly not a setback whatsoever. This decision argues that the marriage ban on same-sex couples violates the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment has generally been considered to apply most of the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection jurisprudence to the federal government. In other words, the fifth amendment equal protection clause in Gill is, for our purposes, functionally the same as the fourteenth amendment’s protections in the Prop 8 case. Rather than hurting the challenge to Prop 8, Gill affirmatively argues for Prop 8 to be struck down.
Now, to the Massachusetts case, there the court says that the federal government cannot block the states from defining marriage as they wish due to the Tenth Amendment. Now, first, let’s just say that this part of the ruling is on some shaky legal footing. While some of the TEA-baggers are fond of the tenth amendment, it simply doesn’t have much standing in the legal world. The tenth is rarely enforced in any substantive way, and this component of the case very well may well get some new reasoning on appeal if it is upheld. In some exceptional cases, the federal government has been batted down as over-reaching. But the bar is high, and essentially applies only to Congressional action, in other words, legislation.
The final point here is that the Equal Protection Clause applies to both the states (14th) and the federal government(5th). Whether or not the federal government has a right to tell the states through legislation how to define marriage, the states still have no right to violate the equal protection clause. So, long story short, far from being a back-handed gift to the proponents of Prop 8, the DOMA decision supports the plaintiffs case in Perry.
To bring it back around…Prop 8 is going to be short for the California law books, whether it goes down via judicial action or electoral.
Carly Fiorina. She was against unemployment benefits before she was for them. Not to buy-in to the right wing ridiculousness surrounding John Kerry, but Carly Fiorina, it seems, has had a change of heart. During the primary, she couldn’t find enough ways to say that she was a conservative that would stand up for all the crazy that is the California GOP electorate. Even going so far as to say that she supported Sen. McConnell’s position of prioritizing political gamesmanship over ensuring that millions of Americans had the ability to pay rent and eat next week.
or several weeks, Fiorina had said she supported extending the jobless benefits, but not without spending cuts to balance the bill’s $33.9-billion cost. Speaking Tuesday morning on KGO-AM (810), Fiorina shifted her position, supporting the extension even though Congress has not specified spending cuts to offset it.
“I probably would vote for this extension, but I’ll tell you what, I think it is absolutely appropriate for people to stand on their desks and say, ‘When is it that we’re finally going to do what needs to be done and cut government spending?’ ” Fiorina said. (LA Times)
But, you know, Carly reads polls. And she knows this issue is not a winner here in California. So, she’ll hop scoot and jump towards the middle. But the fact is, that once she lodges herself in the Senate, you can bet your last dollar that when push comes to shove, she’ll be right there with McConnell and James Inhofe.
Sometimes I have to go looking for something to write for a blog post. At other times, something just comes and smacks you in the face. And such is the case with a recent quote in the Matier and Ross column regarding Carly Fiorina’s two yachts:
Fiorina spokeswoman Julie Soderlund said it makes sense for the Fiorinas to be a two-yacht family, given that the boat-loving couple have divided their time between California and D.C., near where their grandchildren live.(SF Chronicle)
Oh, and Soderlund continued by pointing out that Boxer is also wealthy (true), kind of a nanny-nanny-boo-boo sort of thing. The reason the Boxer campaign is pointing out that Fiorina is wealthy isn’t for some sort of anti-rich class warfare, but rather to contrast her policies with her standing. In other words, the policies that she wants to pursue will increase the divide between rich and poor.
To point some of the obvious concerns, she wants to decrease tax rates for the wealthiest Americans (of which she counts herself as), and take a whack at social security in the name of “deficit reduction.” See, that’s all the rage on the Right. As Americans struggle to find employment, Fiorina is fighting to put us back into a recession. Meanwhile, a strong majority of Americans favor increasing taxes on millionaires and charging the social security tax to the rich. So, yes, the fact that these policies will strongly benefit her are worth noting.
But, if she happens to lose this round, she can always comfort herself with a nice hot chocolate on board one of her two yachts.
Mimi Walters has something of a vanity campaign for treasurer up and rolling. She’s not up for re-election to the senate this year, so why not take a free shot at the Treasurer’s spot. It’s a massive uphill climb against Bill Lockyer and the $10 million warchest that has been scaring everybody else away from ever challenging the guy. So why not?
The primary was a walk for Walters, so that didn’t cost much, if anything. She’s not really campaigning for the gig, and it seems the total of her campaign is a little bit of fundraising and a website. I recently got one of her google ads shown below:
Pretty standard stuff really. But, I’m interested to see what she has going on, so I click on over to her site. It’s all really standard stuff. A little letter saying why she’s running, Sacramento’s broken, out of ideas, and all that. Not for nothing, but she’s been in Sacramento for 8 years now.
Anyway, the part that really got me interested is this little nugget in the title bar of the website:
It seems Ms. Walters has her eyes set higher than just the Treasurer’s chair. She’s ready to take on Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman. Now, Walters has always been seen as something of a “rising-star” of the OC GOP world. She is fanatically conservative. Never met a tax cut she didn’t love, or a social program she didn’t think was either rife with “waste, fraud and abuse” or flat out wanted to see it eliminated and/or chopped to the bone.
Walters is charismatic enough, and if given the right set of circumstances could be an interesting statewide candidate. I thought she was looking at the treasurer’s spot, but now we see she’s got bigger eyes than that. Keep your eyes on MimiWalters.com, she’s got some big plans for that space.
In today’s LA Times, I called John Chiang a nerd. It’s true!
“He’s just looks like a nerd, right?” said Brian Leubitz, founder of Calitics, a liberal blog.
But beneath the wonkish exterior, Chiang has displayed sharp political instincts that have made him a favorite of the politically potent labor unions that represent the state’s workforce and have contributed significantly to his campaigns. (LA Times)
To be honest, this was kind of a throwaway line in the interview. I was saying that he doesn’t initially strike you as the guy who would stand up to The Terminator. But in his own quiet, unassuming way, he is. My other quote is about how Chiang is now one of the few progressive leaders who has really impressed the base.
But Chiang, like Debra Bowen, has impressed through sheer merit. He really understands his role, and his job. And he leverages his power, when possible, to fight for progressive change. At the same time, he is just very capable. Take a look at one of the credit agency reports, and you’ll find them praising Chiang and his office for their excellent cash management during last year’s budget crisis. He probably saved us a small fortune by helping to maintain (as much as that is possible) our credit rating. I won’t go in to how much of the credit rating is complete BS, as we’ve mentioned that in the past. But at least the agencies recognize competence.
In the end, isn’t it competence that we should be favoring for our fiscal position. Somebody who understands the complexities of sound cash flow management, and the consequences of the Governor’s reckless actions. Prudence…it’s perhaps a quality that the Governor could get a real lesson from John Chiang.
Sure, if I wanted to blow up an alien vessel, I’d call Schwarzenegger. But stave off fiscal insolvency? Sacramento calls John Chiang.
It’s a happy day in Spain today. Sure, the whole World Cup was kind of a big deal. But there’s something else: Spain has now leapfrogged the United States as the biggest producer of solar power.
Spain has opened the world’s largest solar power station, meaning that it overtakes the US as the biggest solar generator in the world. The nation’s total solar power production is now equivalent to the output of a nuclear power station.
Spain is a world leader in renewable energies and has long been a producer of hydro-electricity (only China and the US have built more dams). It also has a highly developed wind power sector which, like solar power, has received generous government subsidies. (GuardianUK)
I’ll save you all the technical details that got me (as a huge nerd) interested in the story, but instead look at the economic and societal impacts. In the end, rankings really don’t have much of a real meaning. I guess that it’s good for the Spanish national psyche, which after the 20% unemployment and the “socialist” government’s ill-advised austerity program could use a boost. But, the greater issue is what is Spain doing better than us. And here in California, we should be kicking Spain’s butt all on our own.
After all, we have all the inherent advantages (and many more) that Spain has. The California economy is bigger than that of Spain. The Spanish economy is roughly 1.46 trillion, ours is roughly 1.85 trillion. Spain has plenty of sun, we have plenty of sun. Spain has a population that is concerned with the environment, as does California. (Though we’ll get some hard numbers with the Prop 23 question of AB32 repeal.)
So why is Spain now producing a nuclear power station’s worth while we’re still diterhing around the margins? Well, there’s the obvious issue of our grid. The upgrading of the grid was supposed to be one of the big projects emerging from the Recovery Act, and that’s happening as we speak. BUt, unfortunately, that’s still going to take a while. The funding was cut down from the original bill, and we will still need plenty of time to really be able to manage the grid as well as we hope to in the future.
We’ll also need to think about combining energy storage capacity with the new green energy. You can start with flywheels and that sort of thing, but the big hope on that front is a grid that can tap into a whole network of batteries parked in the garage of every house. Like…say a fleet of electric cars that can be charged and discharged in times of high or low loads.
But the biggest failure on our part is that we just haven’t aimed high enough. We’ve been content to play around the edges, and our power companies haven’t vigorously pursued green power. This is one of the reasons that the defeat of Prop 16 was so critical. Had PG&E won that measure, they would have been able to shut down competition and controlled all of the purchasing of power. Instead, we can work through our elected representatives to bring more green power.
In the end, you don’t get to be the world’s leader by spouting platitudes. It’s nice to hear the Governor talk about green power, and for Meg Whitman to tut-tut the concept. But California needs a leader that will affirmatively drag our economy into the new green economy. Years ago, they used to call Jerry Brown Governor Moonbeam.
Well, today, we need Governor Sun Ray or Wind Gust. How’s about it Jerry?
The twittersphere is abuzz with the news that California Supreme Court Justice Ron George will step down at the end of his term on January 2 of 2011. The author of the landmark In re Marriage Cases, that struck down Prop 22’s ban of same-sex marriage and Strauss v Horton, which upheld Prop 8, was always somethiing of a riddle. Socially moderate, but always something of a friend to corporations, George wrote many of the big decisions over the last 14 years.
Now, the process for his replacement is kind of weird. It’s codified in Article 6, Section 16 of the California Constitution, but here’s the short version
Now, it is unlikely that any judge Arnold appoints would be that controversial. At this point, the last thing he wants out of a judge is controversy, what with the AB32 repeal also appearing on the ballot. Furthermore, Arnold doesn’t seem to have much love for either candidate for governor, so he wouldn’t really like to see them get the appointment gift-wrapped on the date of their inauguration.
It’s not clear who exactly would get to appoint the nominee if the election goes “No.” But, again, odds are pretty stacked against that scenario.
As for George, well, he made a mistake on Strauss v Horton, and what would have been his crowning legacy, marriage equality, will be left to either the electorate or some other jurist. In the end, he’ll go down as a pretty decent justice who fit his time, and fit the governor (Wilson) who appointed him. The appointment makes it clear just how important it is that we take back the governor’s seat.
UPDATE by Robert: Here’s Ron George’s statement on his retirement.