Over at the Bee, Dan Morain has a great comparison piece between today’s California Democratic Party and the Republicans.  One of them understand the importance of a unified community, the other is grasping at nativism (and not very well) to rile up an angry base.  

Democratic strategist Richie Ross who marched with Chavez and for decades has been chief strategist for the farmworkers union, stood off to the side, soaking it in.

“This is about power,” Ross said later.

On Monday, Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a first-term Republican from San Bernardino County, stood on the north steps of the Capitol with seven other Republican Assembly members. Before being elected, Donnelly had been part of the Minutemen, the group that claims to combat illegal immigration by patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border.

Donnelly announced that he was pushing Arizona-style legislation to make illegal immigration a crime under California law. As an added attraction, Donnelly brought a special guest, Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, who last year authored the anti-illegal immigration law. …

Republican strategist Marty Wilson watched it all. “Very counterproductive to the expansion of the Republican base,” Wilson told me.(SacBee)

With redistricting coming up, and a strange process at that, it’s hard to forecast partisan breakdown. However, one thing is clear, with the increasing diversity of the state, attacking minorities is not really a politically sensible thing to do.  Even much of the GOP, like Wilson, and the entire Bush crew, recognize.  But they’ve long ago lost control of their party to the nativist extremists.

In California, where Latinos account for roughly 38% of the population, and will soon account for a higher percentage than non-Latino Caucasians, it just seems like a really, really bad idea.  But you know, Russell Pearce was there, so yay!

I know the Republicans aren’t looking to really get a majority, but if they don’t watch it with this stuff, they’ll soon find it hard to get even 1/3 of the Legislature.

Diane Harkey isn’t known for being the most sedate legislator around.  Or really being the most up on the issues, or even bothering an attempt at understanding.  So, while this blows past absurd on the way to crazytown, you can’t really be that surprised by this comment, captured by the always on the spot Carla Marinucci:

CA GOP Assemblywoman Diane Harkney calls high speed rail “cultural genocide” in Central Valley at today’s press conference w Rep officials(Carla Marinucci Twitter)

Of course, the problem with twitter is that you don’t really get that much of the context, so you could see this in two ways. First, that we are somehow destroying car culture.  That would make some sort of sense if peak oil already wasn’t in gear on that one.  I think a $5 gallon of gas would do more than a competitive mode of transportation.

If you’ve read much of my writing here in the past, you’ll have seen that I’m a pretty big fan of the state park system.  I’m something of an outdoor enthusiast, with a particular love for hiking in my coastal neighborhood.

But for the past several years, the parks have been in a constant state of flux due to the budget crisis.  Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed closing 80% of them, which would be a tragedy for the system, and for the state.  Jerry Brown doesn’t seem to want to go that high, but he’s clearly on the way to closing some parks.  He just won’t tell you which and how many:

Brown instructed the state parks department to draw up by mid-February a list of parks to be closed to save $11 million this year and $22 million next year.

But today, three months later, as millions of Californians prepare for summer vacations to state beaches, forests and historic sites, the names of the parks to be closed remain a tightly held secret.

The lack of disclosure has rangers anxious, legislators uninformed and parks advocates frustrated.

“We’re quite disturbed we haven’t seen the list,” said Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group. “We think if there’s any chance for the nonprofit community to step up and help the state when it looks like parks are going to be closing, the more time organizations have to plan, the more likely we’ll find some kind of interim solutions.” (MediaNews)

There are a number of problems here. First, the State Park system brings in a not insignificant amount of money to the state, through tourism and related expenses.  That tax revenue won’t just completely dry up and will likely find other mechanisms and other parks, but it simply won’t be totally replaced.

There is of course another option that continually peers its head over the parks system. Privatization.  And really, if we were to close any significant parks you would expect such privatization to start its creep pretty quickly.  Of course, it would start rather benignly, with the offer to help “support” a park, for some form of advertising, and then it would eventually grow to parks being owned and/or operated by outside systems.

In fact, I know this to be true.  Take the Willow Creek Addition to the Sonoma Coast State Park.  It was given to the state in the early part of this decade, but we couldn’t afford to take it in.  So, a really great non-profit, LandPaths, stepped up to help run it.  They don’t charge anything, but they do require that you go to an orientation to be able to enter the park.  They just don’t have the resources to provided a complete level of services that you’d find at a state park.  

Don’t get me wrong, I think LandPaths is providing a tremendous service, but I think even the folks there would prefer that the park be integrated into the state parks system.  Parks should be public, with open access to anybody who wants to visit.

So, at some point we’ll get some sort of list, likely after the budget process.  And non-profits will go about finding some way for at least some of those parks to stay open.  But, it will be one more step on the road to public/private state parks, where they cost more to enter, and what was once California’s promise steps further away from reality.

Yesterday, we saw with strong turnouts at We are One rallies across the state, that Californians don’t take kindly to the anti-worker tone emanating from some of the other statehouses.  But now we have numbers:

In the aftermath of major demonstrations by labor unions on Monday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death and to bring attention to working families, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) today released new polling results showing that 56% of California voters have a favorable view of public employees and 61% support their right to bargain together. With public sector workers under assault and major battles over union rights in Wisconsin, California voters also sided with the Wisconsin public employees (56%) over its governor (37%). (Tulchin Research/CFT)

The poll asked 800 Californians a variety of questions on public workers, and they basically all turned up the same answer: Californians understand that public workers have a tough job, and that they should be supported.

Across the state right now, Californians are coming together to fight the attacks on workers, teachers, and labor.  You can find information at the weR1 website.

I’m tweeting updates from the SF event, you can find those here.