All posts by jsw

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Blog Roundup, Budget, Environment

California Blog Roundup, 7/3/06

July 4, 2006 jsw

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-50, CA-04, CA-11, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Brian Bilbray, corruption, environment, budget, initiatives, salmon, other environment, clean money.

More Initatives. Oy.

Julia from ABC has more on the November Initiatives.

Governor’s Race

The Citizens are not happy with the attempt by Schwarzenegger’s OHS to turn California into their own Mars colony.

Schwarzenegger seems to think that fixing health care, like slowing global warming, simply requires more study after he’s re-elected. He’s really committed to getting right on the problem once he gets the results from that study after he’s re-elected. Seriously, there’s nothing he can do or commit to until after he’s re-elected.

Mmmm… tasty posturing. Seriously, is there a Republican out there who actually wants to govern from office, not campaign?

ABC has a roundup of the papers on the Schwarzenegger campaign finance violation and fine, including links and context.

Sierra Club endorses Angelides. Schwarzenegger ignored them, but he’s diggin’ big oil — some green Gov, huh?

Nice catch, Frank. Schwarzenegger: no plan to eliminate state’s structural deficit. But he’ll put together a study group, after he’s re-elected.

Ms. Geek knows what to say about Schwarzenegger’ failure to plan.

Sometimes, your nasty attack ad is just a little too catchy. Oops.

Bilbray / CA-50

Brian Bilbray might be a sincere anti-Latino nativist, not just a carpetbagging opportunist. Which is better again? I can never keep track of that argument.

Over the long run, nativism may not be the best policy.

Republicans manipulate committee assignments to boost Bilbray’s reputation with military in district. Weak.

Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

Land of Enchantment has a detailed explanation of Paid-For Pombo’s most recent big oil badness. See also Down With Tyranny. Seriously, I think Paid-For must have had really bad allergies when he was a child, and now he’s getting even.

Remember, Latinos: Richard Pombo hates you, even if you’re a citizen. Also, I found this DailyKos diary with background on that Republican attempt to kill multilingual ballot financing to be really interesting.

15% Doolittle / CA-04

Abramoff pays Julie Doolittle. 15% Doolittle, devout anti-gambling religious Mormon helps out Abramoff’s Indian gaming clients. Move along. No corruption here. 15% Doolittle can’t be bought. He’s an upright man, a family man, a religious man.

Dump Doolittle points us to an Auburn Journal piece on the bases of support for the two CA-04 candidates.

So here’s how our federal government “works” after 12 years of Republican majority rule: citizens pay our taxes, federal representatives ignore us and our local governments until our local governments use our taxes pay lobbyists, lobbyists give the federal reps campaign donations, fancy dinners, junkets, and jobs, and then our taxes sometimes come back to some of us (less a percentage off the top) on that basis. The Republicans: standing for the right to get rich in government since at least 1994.

Other Republican Paragons

Melanie “Gas Bill Keller” Morgan is a homegrown wingnut. Excellent. When you click through the links, you’ll notice some advertisers on her show to whom you can sent a note. Consider doing so.

Mary at DailyKos and the Center for Responsive Politics rummage around in the filings of Jerry Lewis’s pet lobbyists. It ain’t pretty. WHP notes (in that context) that corruption is endemic in the Republican party. I beg to differ. It’s not corruption. It’s merely forward thinking on the role of privatization in the legislative part of government.

Frank Russo notes that the Republicans are the party of “no progress, ever” when it comes to actually doing the people’s business.

Is Duncan Hunter involved with the Swift-Boating of Jack Murtha?

Environment

California’s Congressional Delegation: the votes on Richard Pombo’s offshore drilling plan.

Decisions have consequences. Screwing the California salmon fishery to pander to the farming lobby was a bad decision. Unwind it.

Good news for LA Harbor.

Time to build a dike around Alameda, instead of just the moat they have now.

Reform

For the lawyers, mostly: Ned Wigglesworth explains campaign finance law and Prop 89.

Marc Cooper refers us to his own LA Weekly piece on campaign finance reform. Go Read It.

Legislature

Frank Russo attended the State Senate Energy, Utilities & Communication Committee hearing on AB 2987.

Hannah-Beth Jackson was back in Sacramento last week, and it was surprisingly emotional.

Miscellany

Getting the yoot vote: P2P.

Tom Hilton responds to Brian’s prison post: either get serious about rehabilitation, or institute a one-strike rule. Your call, Californians.

From Speak Out CA, Margaret Dooley on the attempt to gut Prop 36 by jailing some of the people in treatment. Seems one of the core rationales behind it is the belief that there are no drugs in prison.

Bob Brigham asks: where is the Victory Fund in supporting out lesbian Cynthia Matthews in her run against David Dreier in CA-26?

Bubble bye-bye bad. ‘Nuff said.

Bob Harris on big oil. He’s … ah … disapproving.

WTF, DiFi? No, seriously, WTF?

Happy Birthday to Words Have Power. Buck up, little camper!

Eric, I am so with you, man. D-Day, I feel your pain too.

Brian Bilbray CA-04 CA-11 CA-50 campaign financing Clean Money Corruption Election 2006 John Doolittle Phil Angelides Proposition 89 Richard Pombo Salmon

Uncategorized

Contribute Now: Last Day of the Quarter

June 30, 2006 jsw

Today is the last day of the quarter, which is a campaign finance reporting deadline. And, since we don’t yet have public financing, the media (and in some cases, party committees) will be using how much money candidates raise as a benchmark for how strong they are.

So, if you’re going to contribute, contribute today.

For federal candidates (e.g., House races), we recommend giving through ActBlue.

Calitics’ recommended House candidates are on our ActBlue page.

If you want to see all of the California House candidates, they’re in this ActBlue listing.

And if you want to send money out-of-state, we recommend the ActBlue Netroots page.

Don’t forget to tip when you give. ActBlue provides a great service and is dependent on contributions itself.*

For state candidates, you will need to give directly for now. Here are the contribution pages for the statewide candidates:

Phil Angelides

John Garamendi

Debra Bowen

Jerry Brown

John Chiang

Bill Lockyer

Cruz Bustamante (If anyone can find an actual campaign website for Bustamante, let us know)

*I work on a volunteer basis with ActBlue. I receive no compensation of any kind — I just think what they’re doing is great.

Election 2006

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Blog Roundup, Budget, Environment

California Blog Roundup, 6/28/06

June 29, 2006 jsw 1 Comment

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, budget, CA-04, CA-11, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, corruption, clean money, energy, environment.

Read This One
Julia Rosen explains the core problem of bad Republican governance isn’t incompetence — it’s Republicans.

Governor’s Race

The Party Line takes on Schwarzenegger’s credibility.

SoHum Parlance argues that Angelides ought to go right at Schwarzenegger in every debate opportunity he can find.

Phil Angelides gets the nod as Russ Feingold’s Progressive Patriot gubernatorial candidate. It’s only worth $5K, but it shows strong grassroots support, which is far more valuable.

Schwarzenegger shows that he believes it more important to appear to try to solve a problem than to actually work to solve the problem.

I’m with Joe Scott: one could do worse than make the gubernatorial election a green-off.

Arnold: Screw the press. He’s right. It would be so much easier if he didn’t have to actually deal with people interested in reporting on what he does.

Budget

Frank Russo was on the floor for the passage of the budget. His writeup is amusing and informative (and in places a little sad, when you contemplate some of the Republican Assembly Members’ antics).

Julia Rosen notes that this year’s budget isn’t bad, but structural deficits remain — we dodged a bullet with a temporary revenue increase. And of course, there is the issue of health care for the children that the Republicans shot down, rather than help some undocumented immigrant children.

Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

Paid-For Pombo speaks to his customers.

Big Oil Paid For Pombo.

15% Doolittle / CA-04
You have to give Daniel Weintraub at least some credit: he knows a crook when he sees one.

Other Republican Paragons

Paris Hilton Tax Cage Match: Wally Herger v. Warren Buffett

I am no fan of Daniel Weintraub. But I’m tickled that he agrees with me that Republican politicians just don’t do much to help anybody (except themselves).

Environment

SFist, for a change, is actually sincerely in favor of something that doesn’t involve booze or dirty pictures: tide turbines powering the city.

Ariel wants to save San Onofre State Beach from an Orange County toll road.

Ken Taylor, USN Ret., thinks that Republican immmigration fear mongering should be countered with Global Warming Paul Reverism.

Reform

Great post on clean money at Blue Santa Clarita.

One wonders who was responsible for stripping this person’s voter registration.

Tom Hilton seems like a reasonable fellow. Too reasonable, in fact. His proposals will clearly never fly.

Electronic voting machines have security flaws! Ya think?

Miscellany

Republican technology advantage helped them in CA-50. Sigh.

California’s Death with Dignity bill failed in the Sendate Judiciary Committee, which is a shame. Frank Russo has the rundown. And he’s got a troll on the post who has to be read to be believed.

Jay Mckinnon of Long Beach Politics on why AB 2987 is a good idea. And then to be fair, reposting a bulletin on why it’s a bad idea. Here’s one reason against: you don’t unconditionally reward bad citizens.

Metroblogging SF does live reporting from Mayor Ron Gonzales’ first day in court. SFist reports on what the SJO city council could actually do to Ron.

Dunner pens an ode to California.

CA-04 CA-11 Clean Money Corruption Election 2006 Energy John Doolittle Phil Angelides Richard Pombo

Uncategorized

Jerry McNerney, Netroots Candidate & Grassroots All-Star

June 27, 2006 jsw 1 Comment

(I wanted to make sure this got the visibility it deserved. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Those of us who have been following the race to unseat Paid-For Pombo in CA-11 just got a big morale boost.

Jerry McNerney has been added to the National ActBlue Netroots page.

Chris Bowers explains why.

And, bonus, Jerry is a DFA Grassroots All-Star.

Our congratulations to Jerry and his team. They’ve earned this every step of the way.

Blogs CA-11 Jerry McNerney

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Blog Roundup, Health Care

California Blog Roundup, 6/26.06

June 27, 2006 jsw

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-04, CA-11, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Brian Bilbray, Ken Calvert, health care, corruption, immigration.

Governor’s Race

In which Schwarzenegger pretends to care about firefighters, at least until November.

Shari from An Old Soul does some muck-raking on Arnold’s “Education Coalition”. Turns out it’s got a heavy tilt toward people who want to destroy public education. The “Coalition” bit is probably true, though, so Schwarzenegger is batting 50% for truthiness. Schuyler Hall is not impressed either.

Jonathan Singer at MyDD notes that Schwarzenegger was Latino-friendly in 2003 (running for office), for the Minutemen militarizing the border in 2005 (“governing”), and is now trying to tapdance around the Republican militarization of the border in 2006 (running for office again). What was the phrase for that? F..? Fl? Flick-flack? Oh, yeah, flip-flop.

Shorter Joe Scott on one potential winning Angelides tactic: “Why did Arnold Schwarzenegger cross the road? Because he was following George Bush.”

PowerPAC on Phil Angelides and the common good.

Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

The politics of water in San Joaquin County: Paid-For Pombo is on the side of the big land-holders, of course.

Say No To Pombo has an interesting post about the politics of local corruption.

And Paid-For Pombo is also proud to be part of corruption at the national level.

15% Doolittle / CA-04
Related to the local corruption post noted by Say No To Pombo, Dump Doolittle has a look at the way that 15% Doolittle contributes to local corruption in his neck of the woods.

Other Republican Paragons

Brian Bilbray shows that he is in the Republican mainstream beyond just the wedge issues: he’s for hidden earmarks and for helping himself to a raise.

Brian Dennert Here pleads with Elton Gallegly (R-CA-24) to stand up for ethics in the face of the corruption of his California peers. Well, Gallegly could do that, but the Republican House Leadership will marginalize him, just like they did with the Republicans on the House Ethics Committee who dared challenge Tom Delay. My bet is that Gallegly will determine that discretion is the better part of ethics.

Down With Tyranny: Ken Calvert, YACRC (Yet Another Corrupt Republican Congressman). Brian, are you sure that Elton Gallegly is honest? Because we’re starting to see a correllation approaching 1:1 for California Republican Congressman:Corrupt.

Health Care

Randy Bayne tells us that SB 840, single-payer health care for all Californians, is moving forward.

Bob Brigham on the San Francisco universal health care initiative.

SFist on the same topic.

Health Access California runs down the status of various and sundry health care bills.

Immigration

Tom Hilton deconstructs an email exchange with a nativist.

Bill Cavala: They Keep Coming

Reform
Courage Campaign: Americans like the idea of Clean Money. See also D-Day.

Miscellany

Uneasy Rhetoric is targeted by a couple anti-growth fliers using nostalgia to push for pulling the ladder up.

Marsha Sutton indulges in some wishful thinking on partisanship in “non-partisan” elections for school boards. Look, it would be great if “non-partisan” school board elections were, but they haven’t been for a number of decades (if they ever were), since the Republican-allied fundamentalists started putting stealth candidates into those elections.

The Drug Policy Alliance is concerned about the budget process including a backdoor defunding of Proposition 36 drug treatment diversion programs.

Oil company windfall tax iniative on the November ballot.

Southern Humboldt County apparently has another green resource: tradable carbon credits.

Brian Bilbray CA-04 CA-11 Corruption Election 2006 Immigration John Doolittle Ken Calvert Phil Angelides Richard Pombo

Bay Area

KGO’s Bernie Ward Shows Us How It’s Done

June 26, 2006 jsw 7 Comments

[Welcome, visitors from Crooks & Liars. If you’re interested in California politics, please have a look around Calitics. You might even want to register and join Calitics, a Scoop-based community.]

This isn’t exactly California politics, but there is a California hook, and it’s too good to pass up.

Crooks & Liars has video of KGO’s late-night talk show host Bernie Ward destroying Texas Republican radio host Chris Baker on MSNBC. The two were there to discuss the New York Times’ reporting of the Bush Administrations’ recent financial dragnetting.

Ward gets Baker to completely lose his cool and storm off the set. This is instructive not because Baker lost his cool, but because of the way that Bernie Ward refused to play his game:

Baker: Time of War! New York Times Treasonous! Bush Haters!
Ward: Should the government control what a newspaper prints?
Baker: Time of War! New York Times Treasonous! Bush Haters!
Ward: Answer the question. Should the government control what a newspaper prints?

[Repeat until Baker loses his mind, calls Ward names, and storms off because his Rove-approved talking points aren’t working.]

Ward changed the basic assumptions of the conversation, and then refused to be baited by Baker’s Republican-party talking points or the host’s attempts to drag him into a diversion about “the courts” (where you’ve already conceded that government censorship of the press is a legitimate question). See how effective that was?

If only our politicians could be that relentless.

Bernie Ward Traditional Media

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Blog Roundup, Environment

California Blog Roundup, 6/24/06

June 24, 2006 jsw

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-04, CA-11, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Jerry Lewis, David Dreier, corruption, environment, immigration, minimum wage, reform. And now back to Mexico v. Argentina.

Governor’s Race

Angelides steps up to actually, y’know, help and reward the Californians who serve in the National Guard. There’s a difference between honoring the military and honoring militarism. The first is the right thing to do, period. The second is dangerous.

Randy Bayne on Schwarzenegger’s bogus campaign lifting of the name “Education Coalition” from a group that directly opposes Schwarzenegger’s any-time-but-election-year assaults on California’s schools.

Julia at ABC notes that Schwarzenegger (election-year moderate) and the California Republican Party (full time extremists) are using pretty much identical TV advertising. No coordination there — just a happy coincidence. And Schwarzenegger would also like you you to know that he is not representative of the extremist California Republicans — when he’s running for office. 2005 was just a happy coincidence as well.

Jerry McNerney / CA-11

The DNC interviews Jerry McNerney. Funny, where’s the DCCC on this? Isn’t this supposed to be their beat? Rahm?

Check out Congressional Quarterly for some evolving conventional wisdom on Jerry McNerney and CA-11.

Pombowatch reflects on the Republican Primary in CA-11. Worth reading for anyone who actually cares about the country.

Paid-For Pombo is finally doing something for college students: he’s offering jobs in his campaign. This is how patronage works, folks: you collect money from powerful interests by virtue of your position, then you do them favors, and eventually some small amount of the money you collect (which is a small amount of the money you made for the the powerful interests) trickles down to people willing to work for you. Oh, and when you’re done doing legislative favors for powerful interests, you work for them directly as a lobbyist.

15% Doolittle / CA-04
Isn’t it interesting that 15% Doolittle (through his wife) has received almost $200,000 in direct payments from campaign contributors since 2001? And of course $67K for event planning for Jack Abramoff. One might also note that 15% Doolittle already earns well over $150K / year of taxpayer money + lobbyist freebies and federal benefits. What a Greedy Gus.

Other Republican Paragons

Down With Tyranny follows up on the nasty push-poll that Dreier’s campaign was using in the Democratic Primary in CA-26. Seems like it’s a standard Republican tactic — Lee Atwater and Karl Rove between them pretty much destroyed any integrity that Republican campaigns might have had.

Jerry Lewis still a crook.

Bill Cavala gets to the core of the Republican corruption problem: when you don’t believe in government at all, why not strip-mine it for your personal benefit? Republican leaders aren’t corrupt by their own lights — they don’t think what they’re doing is wrong.

The World Around Us

SoHum Parlance has a great post up on Western water politics as they played out in the Klamath River fiasco. Remember, whiskey’s for drinkin’ and water’s for fightin’.

Metroblogging SF goes a bit further south and provides a gateway into the planned Coyote Valley development south of San Jose.

Nasty anti-wilderness semi-anonymous push-poll robocalls in Humboldt County.

Uneasy Rhetoric on stop signs vs. traffic calming for residential neigborhoods.

Immigration

GOP: Some nativism good, too much nativism bad. Apparently you cross the line when you advocate forced labor camps. Good to know that’s the current limit for at least some Republicans.

Chris Clarke, who loves the desert, writes beautifully about the dangers that we’ve created in our efforts to fence off our southern neighbors while simultaneously offering to employ them.

What Is Villaraigosa’s Deal?

Joe Scott thinks that the LAUSD eal, even given what little we know, may be a pyrrhic victory for Villaraigosa.

Ezra Klein, in a rare comment on California politics, is confused and unimpressed both by Villaraigosa’s deal with the state on LA schools and his refusal to endorse Angelides.

Fabian Núñez, however, speaks out for the deal.

And Hebisner of the MojoWire is optimistic (and likes Villaraigosa for seeking the deal).

Reform

Voting reform and privacy concerns: why have the Republicans turned these into partisan footballs? Don’t they want reliable vote counting and a zone of privacy for all citizens? No? Why not?

Randy Bayne, who has really ramped up the posting recently, writes on the legislature’s proposed linkage of term limit relaxation with redistricting reform. I’m not all that convinced that the two are or should be related (except as it might be necessary to get incumbents on side), but it’s an interesting read.

Hannah-Beth Jackson writes on a bipartisan effort in the legislature to better fund non-profits that help developmentally disabled adults work. Of interest is that all four legislators (including the single Republican) involved have personal experience with developmentally disabled children. While I’m encouraged by this effort, I’m saddened by the failure of imagination and empathy implied, and which is most evident in California’s Republican party.

Kvatch is tearing his hair out. Schwarzenegger administration officials get an 18% pay raise to keep up with inflation. And yet, Schwarzenegger and his team are resisting inflation indexing of the minimum wage. Huh. And let us not forget that the Republicans in Congress voted themselves a pay raise while rejecting any increase in the national minimum wage.

Journeys with Jood notes that the pay scale for the AG is below many first-year associates at large law firms (my personal benchmark for overpaid uselessness). Repeat after me until your brain stops hurting: “There is no class war. There is no class war. There is no class war.”

For those who might wonder how our representatives should behave, they should look to Russ Feingold. “Everybody does it” is not a defense — it’s just as much utter crap as it was when you tried it on your mom, and Russ proves it’s also false.

Miscellany

Another initiative hits the November Ballot, making 12 in total so far. We’re going to try to do a rundown on these soon.

Northstate Science follows up on the debunking of their local fundie loonieness with a letter to the editor of the paper that published it. I’m curious to see if the paper has the guts to publish some actual science.

D-Day threatens to do more California stories. Bring it on, punk.

SoHum Parlance [Ed. Excellent, another non-urban progressive blog!] has a post up concerning a Humboldt County race, which includes an interesting reference to a progressive local issues PAC. Go have a look.

CA-04 CA-11 Corruption David Dreier Election 2006 Immigration Jerry Lewis John Doolittle minimum wage Phil Angelides Reform Richard Pombo

Uncategorized

Help Cali Candidates

June 22, 2006 jsw

There are two ways for you to help California candidates right from the comfortable seat you’re sitting in right now.

First, vote for Jerry McNerney for DFA Grassroots All-Star. If he wins, Democracy For America will make him the subject of a nation-wide fundraising drive.

If you want to be extra-definitive for McNerney, finish after the first choice. The DFA poll closes this Friday, 2 PM California time, so don’t dilly-dally

Second, Mark Warner’s Forward Together PAC is running a Map Changers poll. The winner in this round gets $5K, and the top ten will compete to get Warner to fundraise for them. The three California candidates here are Bill Durston (CA-03), Charlie Brown (CA-04), and Jerry McNerney (CA-11).

Vote here for the Map Changers endorsement. The deadline for this endorsement poll is June 29, but don’t procrastinate — go vote.

Bill Durston CA-03 CA-04 CA-11 Charlie Brown Election 2006 Jerry McNerney

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Blog Roundup

California Blog Roundup, 6/21/06

June 22, 2006 jsw

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-04, CA-11, CA-50, Paid-For Pombo, 15% Doolittle, Jerry Lewis, David Dreier, Brian Bilbray, corruption, immigration, minimum wage, reform.

Governor’s Race

The California Democratic Party blog actually has some California content — it’s largely themes that regular readers here and and Alliance for a Better California will have seen already, but I’m stoked to see it nonetheless.

In that vein: Arnold Still Doesn’t Get It.

Swing State Project bemoans Villaraigosa’s blackmail effort / power play / whatever. MyDD has more here.

Frank Russo is not impressed with Schwarzenegger’s new official Governor’s web page, the redesign of which has absolutely nothing to do with the start of the general election campaign.

An Old Soul has got the AP’s fisking of Schwarzenegger’s most recent ads and Steve Schmidt’s “defense”. Republican talking points never die, no matter how false they are — they just get recycled with the prefixes “some say”, or “everyone thinks”.

Julia wasn’t too impressed with the Governor’s recent “Ask Arnold” appearance.

Voting for the best drinking buddy… Does anyone actually hire based on this model? No? Why would we hire a governor using those criteria?

Money has no provenance, at least not if you’re Arnold Schwarzenegger.

CA-50

CannonFire points us to a Flash movie questioning the integrity of the vote in CA-50.

Look, I know that parents are not entirely responsible for their children (though most Republicans differ), but when Republicans persist in using “family values” and other culture war code words to wedgify the American people,one has to ask: what about their kids? And BTW, if Brian Bilbray supports the invasion and occupation of Iraq, I wonder if he’s encouraged his kids serving? I hear the military is short a few folks.

Words Have Power adds a fun fact: Bilbray sued the state of California to get in-state tuition for his kids, even though they are residents of Virginia (like Bilbray). Bilbray, however, opposes in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants. It’s a Republican hypocrisy perfect storm: Bilbray engages in lawsuit abuse to change the rules in order to get a government handout of public education for his kids, even while denying the same thing to other children.

I’m not sure we want to get into a war of money attrition with the Republicans, but this post by Markos is interesting nonetheless.

15% Doolittle / CA-04

15% Doolittle: first among equals.

Dump Doolittle provides a map of the Abramoff money: zoom in and try to spot 15% Doolittle’s cut. Dump Doolittle also links to an NPR story on Jack Abramoff and the Marianas.

Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

Paid-For Pombo: drill it and spill it — screw our childrens’ future.

As I’ve said before, Republicans just don’t really do anything helpful for most people. Paid-For Pombo is no exception.

Other Republican Paragons

Words Have Power asks if there are any honest SoCal Republicans. I’d expand the geographic scope of the question, given what we know about 15% Doolittle and Paid-For Pombo.

Down With Tyranny on the Jerry Lewis (R-CA-41) protection racket. This is the cleanest explanation I’ve seen of exactly the Lewis shakedown. Privatizing government starts at the top when you’re a California Republican. DWT follows up with some less-than-exciting news about the likelihood of Lewis leaving office electorally (rather than criminally).

David Dreier (R-CA-26) on student aid: “Screw you if your parents aren’t rich enough to pay your way.”

Immigration

Much like gay-bashing and flag-burning, Republicans only give a damn about immigration policy in even-numbered years. Why ever could that be?

Tom Hilton on the Chron on a bogus Heritage Institute immigration study. Look folks, Heritage, AEI, and all of the local California Right-Wing “think tanks” are really just fact-factories — you can’t believe anything they write. Ditto the California Chamber of Commerce.

Marc Cooper on the Republicans’ preservation of immigration as a wedge issue for this election, and the associated Republican preservation of the right to pay poverty wages. Better to have an economically insecure underclass and a political hammer than actual solutions, right?

Helping People

Debra Bowen is trying to get something done for ordinary people who have their identies stolen. The credit industry is resisting — big shock.

John Laird runs down some of the salient points of the budget that the Assembly proposed and the Republicans rejected (cuz some undocumented children might somehow be getting some health care). Randy Bayne riffs off of this report and repeats his thesis: California Republicans are just mean-spirited.

Randy Bayne has written consistently and passionately on the need to raise and index the minimum wage. This piece is no exception.

Gavin Newsom and the SF Board of Supervisors are looking to make sure every San Franciscan has health care. If only national politicians were so concerned with actually doing some good.

Henry Waxman: one of the good ones.

Reform / Miscellany

Speak Out California points out that a large part of the budget problem is the 2/3 requirement, which is shared by only 2 other states — it allows Republicans to continually thwart the will of the Californian electorate. That’s odd for a crowd that shouts “let the people choose” and “elections have consequences” when they are on the winning team, or when they want to bash a judge.

Daraka Kenric of Hoverbike on the importance of organized labor to any progressive movement.

Blogger boy makes good, or at least makes news.

I thought this was interesting: Jay McKinnon of Long Beach Politics and Barbara Boxer on local control.

The LA Times censors its newsroom internet. I’m having a hard time imagining anything dumber.

Northstate Science debunks some local fundamentalist claptrap.

And this is just cool.

Blogs Brian Bilbray CA-04 CA-11 CA-50 Corruption David Dreier Election 2006 Immigration Jerry Lewis John Doolittle minimum wage Phil Angelides Reform Richard Pombo

Uncategorized

New Drum Major Congressional Scorecard: Helping the Middle Class

June 20, 2006 jsw

The Drum Major Institute just released a scorecard for Congress: “Congress at the Midterm: Their 2005 Middle-Class Record”.

DMI is a think tank doing really interesting work in progessive policy, with a focus on the types of policies and issues that actually affect the middle class (as opposed to the wedge issues that the Republicans say affect the middle class). They’ve rated every Senator and House Member by their votes on a number of bills. Explanations of those bills and their impact on the middle class are located here.

California’s Senators both did fairly well with respect to the middle class. Senator Boxer has a 100% rating, while Senator Feinstein has a 75% rating, having voted for CAFTA (favoring outsourcing and corporate power) and for the 2005 Energy Policy Act (tax subsidies for energy companies; allowing energy companies to dump poison into the water table). [List of all Senators’ ratings]

California’s House Members are a mixed bag (there’s a table on the flip). The majority of the Democratic Representatives get at least a passing grade, with the majority at 100% and only three below 75% (Jane Harman, Dennis Cardoza, and Jim Costa). The California House Republicans, show they care about the middle class far less than they love lining their own pockets, with the majority at 0%, and none above 13%. [List of all Representatives’ ratings]

It’s a great report, developed by an organization doing really interesting work. Click through, and see how your representatives are doing helping you on issues that actually matter. And take a look at the rest of the DMI website — there’s a lot of good stuff.

P.S. In a really clever wired move, DMI is running a Google Adwords campaign for the next month, so that when you type your Rep’s name into Google, their rating comes up in the right-hand column. Here, for example, is my Representative.

Representative

Party

Rating

Grade

Becerra

D

100%

A

Berman

D

100%

A

Capps

D

100%

A

Davis

D

100%

A

Eshoo

D

100%

A

Honda

D

100%

A

Lantos

D

100%

A

Lee

D

100%

A

Lofgren

D

100%

A

Matsui

D

100%

A

Millender-McDonald

D

100%

A

Miller, George

D

100%

A

Pelosi

D

100%

A

Roybal-Allard

D

100%

A

Sanchez, Linda

D

100%

A

Schiff

D

100%

A

Sherman

D

100%

A

Solis

D

100%

A

Stark

D

100%

A

Waters

D

100%

A

Watson

D

100%

A

Waxman

D

100%

A

Woolsey

D

100%

A

Filner

D

88%

B

Thompson

D

88%

B

Farr

D

86%

B

Napolitano

D

86%

B

Baca

D

75%

C

Sanchez, Loretta

D

75%

C

Tauscher

D

75%

C

Cardoza

D

63%

C

Harman

D

63%

C

Costa

D

50%

C

Doolittle

R

13%

F

Hunter

R

13%

F

Nunes

R

13%

F

Radanovich

R

13%

F

Rohrabacher

R

13%

F

Royce

R

13%

F

Thomas

R

13%

F

Bono

R

0%

F

Calvert

R

0%

F

Campbell

R

0%

IN

Cunningham

R

0%

F

Dreier

R

0%

F

Gallegly

R

0%

F

Herger

R

0%

F

Issa

R

0%

F

Lewis

R

0%

F

Lungren

R

0%

F

McKeon

R

0%

F

Miller, Gary

R

0%

F

Pombo

R

0%

F

CA-10 Democrats DMI Drum Major Institute Ellen Tauscher Middle Class Republicans

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