With much apologies to global warming “agnostic” Dan Walters, the debate on global warming is over.  The overwhelming scientific consensus concludes, to varying degrees of seriousness, that global warming is an issue that must be dealt with in the very near future.  On Friday, California’s environmental protection agency published a report summarizing their research:

Increasing temperatures will transform California, threatening some of its most valuable resources in coming decades.  That’s the primary message of a new state publication that summarizes 17 scientific studies examining how global warming is expected to play out in California.

“The potential impacts of global warming are unmistakable, adding more days of deadly heat, more intense and frequent wildfires, shorter supplies of drinking water and serious public-health risks,” Linda Adams, the state’s secretary for environmental protection, said yesterday during a news conference at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.
***
“Climate change is an issue we all need to be educated about,” said Mike Chrisman, California’s secretary for resources. “We’ve got to do a better job of educating. It’s a long-term effort, (and) we’ve got to get people talking about it.”

Dan Cayan, a climate scientist at Scripps, said the general public is beginning to recognize the specter of rising temperatures. … “I think people have, in a sense, a mental scoreboard, and they’re seeing these factors accumulate,” Cayan said. “I really believe that this is becoming an issue that is starting to get taken more seriously.” (San Diego Union-Trib 8/12/06)

But don’t worry Dan, perhaps your home in Sacramento will have a better view of the water. After all much of Sacramento will be flooded by higher sea levels, so you’ll get the view of water  just by looking down at your floor.

More on the flip…

Seriously though, the danger of global warming appears to be getting a greater level of attention.  However that has yet to translate into any action on the Bush administration’s part.  However, in the state of California, we have a piece of proposed legislation to do something about all of those greenhouse emissions.  AB 32 would limit the amount of emissions, and eventually begin to turn back the clock on our emissions levels.  It’s far from sufficient, but it’s a legitimate first action.

However, Schwarzenegger wants to gut the bill.  He wants to have the legislation governed by his own appointed committe,rather than the Air Resources Board.  Further, he wants to create a bypass for the legislation if his political appointees determine that the “economics” don’t permit the emissions reductions.

It’s a short-sighted move by Arnold, just as the Bush administration has been short-sighted in their commitment to fight global warming.

It looks we have more confirmation of what we already knew: You have to pay to play with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  This from today’s SacBee:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called off a fundraiser scheduled for Monday after his campaign found out about an e-mail in which a participant told potential contributors they would have a chance to talk to the governor about a bill that may come across his desk.
***
Allison Neves, executive director of the California Society of Facial Plastic Surgery, sent an e-mail to the society’s members inviting them to attend the event, saying it would give them a chance to talk to Schwarzenegger about a bill they oppose.

“This event will provide us with a very important opportunity to discuss our opinions about Senate Bill 438 with the governor,” Neves wrote in the e-mail obtained by The Bee. (SacBee 8/12/06)

Poor Arnold had to cancel the event, costing him $500K from this particular special interest.  It’s getting harder and harder to find special interests in Sacramento now that Arnold has renamed the ones that he likes as “hard-working Californians”, but I guess you get put on the back of the bus if you get busted trying to buy influence.  But don’t worry, Arnold will still take your money…he’ll always take your money.  You plastic surgeons are still ahead of the teachers and nurses, those are the special interests who Arnold really had in mind when he said he would go to Sacramento and “terminate the special interests.”

Yup, to Arnold, teachers and nurses are the special interests, multi-millionare plastic surgeons…they are hard working Californians.  For more information on a better alternative, see GovernorPhil.

Julia points out that Arnold Schwarzenegger is flip=flopping again, this time attempting to gut AB 32, the greenhouse emissions plan.  You see, AB 32 is the bill that resulted from Schwarzenegger’s Climate Action Team Report.  He initially supported the bill, but it seems that his Big Business special interest backers didn’t really appreciate that so much.  So, Arnold does the flip, and then the flop when the special interests come running:

  But now he finds himself in a bind over how to achieve those reductions. The governor is at odds with a Democratic plan in the Legislature that would give the state Air Resources Board broad authority to enforce the legislation, and with the business lobby, which believes the bill is misguided on its face and will send companies — along with jobs and state revenue — packing to other states.
***
  Schwarzenegger recently proposed creating a board made up of his own political appointees to enforce the legislation. That panel could also ease the emissions deadlines if it determines that compliance would be “detrimental to the California economy.” (SJ Merc 8/10/06)

I could add a whole bunch more, but Julia has pretty well summed it up:

He does not want to have to choose between the green [paint] of his bus and the green cash the industry fuels it with.

Angelides, on the other hand, realizes the importance of reducing global warming emissions. He is encouraging the passage of AB 32.  We don’t have any more time for some race to the bottom on emissions.  California has the ability to challenge the rest of the nation, and the world, to clean up their own emissions.  Schwarzenegger wants to abidcate that role, Phil will lead on environmental issues

[UPDATE]: There’s an interesting story on SFGate.com about the “Rise of the Netroots” in relation to the Lamont victory.

Ned Lamont squeaked by Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate Primary. The ramifications are still being sorted out all around the blogosphere. It was a great night for the netroots, and a powerful statement about the War in Iraq. Hearty congratulations go out from the California blogosphere to both Mr. Lamont and the people of Connecticut. I’m also happy to point out our own Barbara Boxer has offered to campaign for Lamont after strenuously supporting Lieberman in the primary.

But, I’ll leave the grandiose statements about the Lamont victory in a national context to others, but I think there are real lessons that can be focused upon the state of California and our politics. I’ll be focusing on the role of Lamont’s web-related strategies and their applications for California. These strategies could be used in this campaign cycle, for Phil Angelides, but should also be considered in future cycles.

Let’s go to the extended for a more detailed look…

People-powered democracy

Ned Lamont is frequently cast as a puppet for other interests, for Lowell Weicker, the Senator that Jomentum beat 18 years ago, or the blogosphere or Kos specifically. But Lamont is really powered by the people of Connecticut. Jomentum even did a cute little "bear cub" ad portraying Lamont as Weicker’s baby bear. Very cute Joe. Oh why, not, I’ll throw the YouTube video of it up:

Now, wasn’t that cute? You’d really think that there was this effort by Weicker to alter the race. I guess that’s not totally untrue either. However, Lamont ‘s candidacy was, and is, based upon the people of Connecticut. His ads all featured the "I approved this message" notice, but Lamont used it to his advantage by including the line "So do we" by a large cast of characters. Every ad Lamont ran included this "So do we" line. It was quite effective, but you can see for yourself. Here’s his "teacher" ad:

Pretty effective, huh? But Lamont did more than just token gestures to engage the grassroots of the Connecticut Democratic Party. Of course, that won’t translate as easily to the much larger state of California. Heck, LA County is nearly as big as the entire state geographically and has a population approximately three times larger than Connecticut. So, some of the power of Lamont’s strategies would be muffled by the sheer distances and population of the state. Obviously it’s impossible for a statewide candidate to do more than token door-walking, but in CT it played a big part.

The Lamont Web strategy

But that is not to say that nothing can be learned from Lamont’s campaign. His Internet strategy was, to say the least, phenomenal. He utterly overwhelmed Lieberman’s web presence. He was able to do this partly because he had netroots allies, including Kos, that encouraged his campaign to go digital. But more importantly, Mr. Lamont made a commitment to the medium. He hired Tim Tagaris, of Jeff Seeman and Paul Hackett fame, to run his netroots operations. I’ll walk through several of the strong points of Lamont’s site:

1. The blog: Tim Tagaris (as above mentioned) was a known commodity in the blogosphere. He had done some great work with Swing State Project and for the campaign of Paul Hackett, among others. He set up a strong blog operation and netroots community engaged in that operation. Tim’s posts on the Ned Lamont blog and on Daily Kos and other blogs consistently get comments flowing in. It’s been effective in getting both money and contributions into the campaign. Lamont raised over $300K on ActBlue, and that excludes money that came in snail mail style due to stuff people had seen on the blogs. It’s also important to note that much of that money came from out of state. Tim and his use of the blog were instrumental to the nationalizing of this race. Other ways the blog was used effectively:
   • GOTV efforts: In the last few days, Tim posted diaries on the Ned Lamont Blog, Daily Kos, MyDD, and other blogs requesting assistance in the GOTV efforts. He got it. Check out Tim’s list of dKos diaries and this diary specifically. This is trememdously important in California where voters are distributed over vast stretches of space. GOTV work and organizing is challenging, additional volunteers are tremendously valuable.
   • Distributed Research: I loved this use of the blogosphere. If the campaign did this by themselves it would have expended valuable resources. By using netroots resources, it was accomplished quickly, cheaply and effectively. See this dKos diary. Again, California candidates would be wise to consider this tack to harness some of the incredible talent of the state and the blogosphere.
2. The videos: Lamont was all over YouTube. Search for him and you get almost 250 videos. Impressive. Some of these are just Lamont commercials, and some are actually Lieberman commercials tagged with Lamont’s name. But the overwhelming majority are videos that grassroots supporters of Mr. Lamont uploaded to YouTube. The campaign themselves uploaded tons of videos. The videos served as focus points for people who may not have had the chance to meet Mr. Lamont. This is a particularly valuable lesson in California, where candidates won’t be able to meet everybody. But videos of informal meetings with small groups of people allow people to get an idea of what the candidate is like up close and personal.For example, how about this one from January 2006 uploaded by Ct-blogger of Connecticutblog.

 

3. Friends, Family, and Neighbors: This was a wonderful tool (now down for campaign restrictions, I believe) which allowed friends from within and outside of the state to contact their contacts in the state. Calls and letters from personal contacts are far more valuable than phone calls from some random activist. It leveraged Lamont’s initial fervent support very well. In California…yeah that would be very, very valuable.
   • How many robo-calls do you get? How many robo-calls do you hang up on? I’m guessing those two numbers are a) high and b) darn near equal. Robo-calls have very limited effectiveness. The same goes for volunteer phonebanks to some extent. Yes, they are very valuable and can be a good resource. But do you really want to be getting calls from strangers telling you to vote for some politician. You know that they are calling you because of your party affiliation or you fit some other demographic. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just not the most effective thing.
   • Political commercials are omnipresent in California. It’s almost like commercials for Frosted Flakes, ipods, and the Gap can’t make it air. It’s ridiculous. And how effective are they if people eventually just tune them out.
   • How much more effective is it if you can actually get all of your supporters to, in an organized fashion, claim their circle of contacts and talk to them. They get them to vote for the candidate, but an even more successful call would yield additional financial and time contributions. A large group of people would be overlapping, but that can be dealt with in the software that organizes the program. And if these activists can get their friends to make calls too…whoa. You’re talking about an extremely effective tool for both campaigning and GOTV.

Lamont’s campaign should be considered a lesson and a warning for future campaigns. Get with the program and harness the strengths of the internet…or end up like Lieberman the Luddite…

It’s that time of year again.  Yes, the legislature session is soon coming to a close.  And what better opportunity to rake in the bucks for the upcoming elections?  The legislature has 75 fundraisers scheduled for the final 19 days of the session.  Wow! That’s more than 3 a day.  Those lobbyists will have some busy social calendars.

But don’t you fret about Arnold Schwarzenegger.  He’ll be raking in the dough during the end of the session. Oh, and incidentally, it’s also the time when he’ll be deciding the fate of these lobbyists’ bills.  Isn’t that convenient:

The solicitations to lobbyists — members of the third house, as they’re often called — don’t come only from legislators.

Despite previous calls for fundraising blackouts during the legislative session and when he is considering which bills to sign or veto, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will hold two Sacramento events in August — breakfast Thursday at $22,300 a plate and a$10,000-a-head cocktail reception featuring former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

In 2004, the GOP governor raised $2.7 million during August and September when he was weighing whether to sign or veto legislation. (SF Chron 8/9/06)

This governor, the governor who was going to bring the hammer to special interests, has been a virtual hoover of special interest cash.  it’s getting out of hand; the people can no longer reach their legislators.  It’s now a game for the super rich and big business.  Hiram Johnson would understand that it’s long past time that we dealt with the problem.  The Clean Money Initiative gives us an opportunity to make this reform a reality.

Hiram would be proud of this initiative.