At Phil events in Fresno and Bakersfield, the California GOP decided it would be a brilliant idea to put some volunteers up on tractors to harass the Angelides campaign.  One problem, these actors didn’t have tractor permits.  Carla Marianucci was all over it on the SF Chron’s blog:

Some Republicans in the Victory ’06 effort to re-elect Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had a king-sized campaign idea: getting huge tractors to drive back and forth today in front of Democratic candidate Phil Angelides’ “front porch” sessions in Fresno and Bakersfield. The tractors were carrying “Schwarzenegger” campaign signs to highlight the charge that Angelides, the state treasurer, would raise the “tractor tax” to a Central Valley audience.

But they forgot one tiny detail: No farmers these, they didn’t have the appropriate permits or licenses — or the required “pilot” car — for the big vehicles, which roamed back and forth in the residential neighborhoods.

Result: In Fresno, the tractor drivers, with “Schwarzenegger” signs on the big rigs, ended up getting stopped by officials and ticketed — and in Bakersfield, they were told to hit the road for the big booboo. (SF Chron Politics Blog 8/22/06)

The team responsible for this little stunt apparently got the tractors from a local tractor dealer (who happens to be a big GOP donor).  They also didn’t bother to ask anybody how you drive a tractor or the regulations about tractors.  You see tractors are actually heavy machinery that can be dangerous.  No big whoop for the GOP, as they continue to flaunt California laws.  First Arnold’s motorcycle now the GOP’s tractors.  What’s next, perhaps some unlicensed pilots?

The Legislature and Arnold Schwarzenegger have agreed to a deal on a minimum wage increase from its current position at $6.75 to $8.00.  However, there will be no inflation indexing.  The Legislative Leaders were forced to abandon the indexing due to threats of veto from Schwarzenegger.  I understand the Legislature’s inclination to agree to get some sort of deal passed.  Any delay in getting an increase passed costs the poorest workers in the state.  That is not acceptable.

Schwarzenegger claims that his previous vetoes of minimum wage increases were because the business climate in the past couldn’t accommodate it.

Schwarzenegger praised the agreement as a boost for low-wage workers and the business climate. “I have always said that when the economy was ready, we should reward the efforts of California’s hardworking families by raising our minimum wage,” he said. (LA Times 8/22/06)

The problem with that is minimum wage increases do not result in job losses, but rather job increases. But the lack of an indexing provision is a travesty of justice. Card and Kruger have already disproved that one.  No, what Arnold is really trying to do is putting the interests of his big business contributors ahead of the state’s working families.

“It’s a long time coming, and frankly the reason it’s coming is because this is a political year,” said Art Pulaski, secretary-treasurer of the labor federation.

He said Schwarzenegger, running for reelection in November, had twice before vetoed similar bills but changed his mind this year as part of an electionyear move toward the political center.

Despite expected opposition from Republican lawmakers, a minimum wage bill is expected to win easy passage from the Democratic-controlled Legislature and be on the governor’s desk shortly after lawmakers adjourn Aug. 31.

The GOP still can’t bring themselves to support the working poor.  Do they respect big business that much more than California’s working families that they will push that hard against the bill? I guess so.  Isn’t that a bit scary? Yikes.

Indexing does nothing to increase the real wages of the state’s poorest.  It merely does what is done for most people in government jobs, ties their earnings to what stuff actually costs.  It takes politics out of the equation.  If we passed indexing, we could set a real minimum wage once and let the indexing take care of the rest.  But now we’ll be back where we started in five years.  Hopefully then we will have a Democratic governor who understands the valuable role of the state’s minimum wage workers.

After a giving a borderline racist speech to the CRaP Convention on Saturday, Arnold Schwarzenegger went to an African-American church on Sunday.  For whatever else his faults might be, one thing that is clear is that the Governator knows how to play both sides.

Of all the places for a Republican to campaign for governor of California, the Democratic stronghold of South Los Angeles rarely ranks high on the list.

Even more striking about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s visit Sunday to a black church there was the abrupt switch in tone from his partisan speech a day earlier to a crowd of mainly white Republicans who applauded his newly sharpened rhetoric on illegal immigration.

Yet Schwarzenegger’s weekend pivot from right to left fit neatly with his two-step reelection strategy. One day, he moves to solidify conservative support; the next, he tries to broaden his appeal among moderates who are crucial to his fate in November. (LA Times 8/21/06)

Well, he does play a good part occasionally.  I mean, I loved Kindergarten Cop.  To this day whenever I get a headache, the “It’s not a tumor” line comes out.  That’s classic stuff right there.  But when it comes to being governor of the most populous state, we need a governor who actually knows the issues, and isn’t just reciting a script that his Bush 04 handlers gave him.  Fortunately, some churchgoers saw through the little stunt:

Ralph Walker of Covina walked out of the church just after the governor arrived, telling reporters outside that Schwarzenegger had torn down the state during the 2005 special election and was trying to repair his reputation.

“Everything in there is damage control and ‘Let me fix up my image,’ ” said Walker, 57, an independent. “Did he get lost? Why is he here?”
 

Is that gross?  Well, it’s true.  In the span of 5 minutes or so, the local news says that:

• Arnold’s CRaP Convention Speech was the best of his career.
• Praised his comedic timing.
• Stated that Arnold has a “keen understanding” of the issues.
• Praised his “charm”.
• Angelides has not made things tough on Arnold. The tax plan is blowing up on Phil.
• Arnold is seen as a kindler gentler politician.

Ick! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such an obviously tilted to the right report like that in the Bay Area.  But, let’s just break a few of those down.  First of all, comedic timing isn’t a prerequisite of the job.  Second, as for Arnold’s keen understanding of the issues, let’s just look at one issue, immigration.  We’ve seen Arnold twice praise the Minutemen only to retract that praise.  He’s called for closing the borders, then quickly retracted that as well.  He has a keen understanding when he’s been scripted to have a keen understanding.  We don’t need some sort of actor who’s pumped with a script to answer some questions.  We need a real leader.

Let’s not forget about the tax issues.  Those issues only blew up in Phil’s face if you ask a room full of GOP activists.  Oh, right, that’s what the CBS5 Reporter did.  He went into the CRaPpy convention and asked the delegates how they felt about Phil’s fiscal plan.  Surprise, Surprise, they weren’t a big fan of it.  But, guess what, they aren’t a representative sample.  They really like the free lunch that Arnold’s planning.  And they don’t much care about Arnold saying that the our university tuition is too low.  And they don’t care if our infrastructure withers away.  It’s no big deal to them, because they will all be living in one big gated community together in a few years.

Phil offers a plan that works to correct the structural defecit (an issue that Arnold “has no plan for”), reverse the massive tuition increases at public universities and community colleges and repay the Prop 98 funds owed to K-12 schools.  That he asks the richest in our soceity to help with those goals is just part of living in the greatest civilization in the history of the World.  But, if the CRaP likes third world infrastructure with third world education services, perhaps they can take their little experiment elsewhere.

I wanted to point out the excellent coverage of the state GOP (CRaP) convention by Todd Beeton of the Courage Campaign.  Arnold has been having a little issue with his base not being convinced of him. (See the Friday LA Times.)  So, he knows he’s got to toss a little red meat their way:

But I guess it works for him, especially when he follows it up with the red meat:

  “My opponent wants to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses!”

Crowd: “NOOOO!”

  “Being an American means learning English!”

Ahh, can you smell that?  Yeah, that’s the subtle wiff of racism.  Check out Todd’s post for the details of the event along with his conversation with Bruce McPherson. 

This Week in Northern California, which airs weekly on KQED TV produces an audio podcast, available here.  I have video of this week’s episode on the flip.  It’s less than stellar quality, but not terrible.  THe pictures are less important than the audio, so I’d highly recommend listening to the podcast. However, the stream is on the flip.

California Connected, a joint production of several PBS stations in California, aired a segment about Alex, a 4th grader living in SoCal that does not have insurance.  You can view the segment here.

There a few issues that could truly be solved in the legislature. The list is short due to the influence of Prop 13 and its supermajority tax and budget requirements.  But one area which could be immediately fixed is health care.  And such a plan is currently pending in the legislature, it’s SB 840 sponsored by Sen. Kuehl.  SB 840 would change the insurance model of California to one where the state government would be the provider.

Now some would scare you by saying that we don’t want the state to choose which procedures we could get.  But let’s think about that honestly.  Who makes those decisions now? For-profit health care companies.  Who would make those decisions under SB 840? The State?  Is the state really scarier than the private insurance companies?  DOes the state have to report increasing profits every quarter?  The answer is clear: SB 840 is the right thing to do for the state’s children.

Look for SB840 to pass the Assembly but be vetoed by the “moderate” Arnold Schwarzenegger.  His insurance contributors will make sure of that.

Redestricting will not be on the November 2006 ballot.  At all.  No term limits or Fabian heroics could save it.  Nope, it looks to be dead until the 2008 ballot.  John Myers did an interesting post…with not one, not two, but three updates throughout the afternoon as the finger-pointing erupted.

Here’s the basics of what happened: the Senate passed Sen. Lowenthal’s SCA 3.  Speaker Nunez was anxious to get a vote on it.  He likely had the 2/3  of the Assembly that he needed, but the bill wasn’t “passed” to the Assembly before the deadline to get it on the 2006 ballot.  Speaker Nunez called a vote on a proxy bill, but it failed.  Myers claims that this failure had little to do with support for SCA 3, but rather it indicated a confusion on behalf of the Assembly.  Both parties wanted this past, but somewhere there was a stumbling block.  There were a lot of fingers outstretched yesterday afternoon:

A flurry of Capitol gamesmanship, finger-pointing and accusations ended Thursday with lawmakers failing to place onto the November ballot a proposal to change how California draws political districts.

When the dust settled, there was plenty of blame going around — with Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez chastising the Senate, Republicans pointing at Democrats, and supporters of redistricting claiming sabotage.

But the fate of Senate Constitutional Amendment 3 remained unsettled.

“I think we’re beyond the double-cross and into the triple- and quadruple-cross on this one,” Sen. Debra Bowen, a Marina del Rey Democrat, said of Thursday’s whirlwind politicking. (SacBee 8/18/06)

Nunez claims that the holdup was with the Senate (a not so-subtle jab at Sen. Perata). The bill could still be passed and placed on the Nov. 2008 ballot, a reasonable outcome given the problems that might occur with a 50% turnover  in the Assembly.  If it’s going to be done, it should be done now.  And it should be done.

But in the end, this one might get mothballed for the next session.  Who knows if both chambers will have the wherewithal to pass it again.  Who knows if the term limits tie-in will again come up.  It’s a question that will likely linger until the new Legislature is seated next year.