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

(California should be the world’s leader in electric cars, a technology still worthy of investment. And we still can be, see today’s SF Chron for a story about Tesla motors, a Bay Area electric car company. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry McNerney, Charlie Brown, John Doolittle, Brent Wilkes, Republican corruption, Proposition 89, minimum wage, prisons, environment, redistricting reform.

Governor’s Race

• Phil comes out in favor of the redistricting reform embodied in SCA 3 [Warning, PDF]. Combine that with his support for Prop 89, and we’re looking at a real reform candidate.
• Phil steps up to support working Californians — backs a hike in the minimum wage and periodic increases to keep up with inflation. Schwarzenegger, on the other hand… tried to slide the question through the Industrial Welfare Commission he controls, but even that dodge didn’t really work.
• Berkeley Bubble likes Phil’s energy plan.
• Schwarzenegger’s campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, tries to pull the same thing he did as a part of Bush/Cheney ’04, and dump facts down the memory hole. Steve Maviglio steps up to refute Schmidt’s lies.
• Maybe not everyone likes Schwarzenegger as much as he thinks they do.

Jerry McNerney / Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

Randy Bayne attended the opening of Jerry McNerney’s Stockton office and reports back.

Charlie Brown / 15% Doolittle / CA-04

• firedoglake has a great post up by Howie Klein making the case for Charlie Brown (honestly, it’s not that hard, but Howie really sells it), and CB answers questions in the comments.
• 15% Doolittle apparently senses an opportunity to funnel government cash to his cronies and pick up his 15% of the campaign contribution kickbacks — concrete pays, canyons don’t.
• Here’s another view of this 15% Doolittle photo-op, with some background on the Auburn Dam. Also, video.
• If anyone is curious about what kind of world 15% Doolittle wants, it’s a world where poor women are exploited and abused, and the rich pay off politicians like Doolittle to keep it that way.
• The Left Coaster points us to a SacBee Page One article on 15% Doolittle’s corruption.

Other Republican Paragons (Brent Wilkes Edition)

• California Republican taught Brent Wilkes how to bribe. Awwww… isn’t that sweet?
• Ah, the top tier of Wilkes “transactional lobbying” recipients (purty euphemism for “bribery”, ain’t it — lots of California Republicans. Makes one proud.
• Down With Tyranny: You simply can’t walk away from the [article] without wondering why Randy “Duke” Cunningham is the only Republican in prison for the widespread corruption that virtually defines the GOP political culture of the last half dozen years in Washington, from lowlife slimeball congressmen to a lowlife slimeball president and vice president (yes, Wilkes gave BushCheney hundreds of thousands of dollars in quasi-legal bribes too).
• Apparently, corruption is what you get when you put Republicans in positions of power. Of course, since they don’t believe in government, they probably don’t think they did anything wrong.

Propositions

• The CDP Executive Board votes to remain neutral on Prop 89, defying its rank and file.
• Why this is a bad decision.

Prisons

• Politics in the Zeros: Take control of the prisons away from the Schwarzeneggers and prison guards, and force reform.
• Don Perata: what we’re doing with the prisons isn’t working. Time to try some actual rehabilitation.
• Schwarzenegger’s last-minute election year stunt, calling a special session to deal with the prison crisis he’s known about for years, is pretty much guaranteed to fail. No matter what the Bush Republicans say, you don’t just whip up a solution to problems of this size, just in time for an election.

The Rest

• Alicia of last left turn before Hooterville explains how she became politicized, and what she wants to do with that energy.
• We at Calitics are not huge fans of Diane Feinstein, but we recommend you give her a call and thank her for this:
  

  Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) called the [Republican] proposal [to legalize Bush’s domestic spying] “worse than no bill at all,” arguing that it would weaken current surveillance law and would “allow the president to exercise unchecked authority.”

  Her office #’s are here.

• Classic Republican move: pull money out of public schools, complain about their failings, respond by pulling more money out with vouchers for religious schools.
• Debra Bowen presses onward, trying to make sure Californians’ votes matter. We are huge fans.
• Howard Smith of the Ojai Post gets involved locally, and his side makes some progress.
• The feedback spiral of rising foreclosures and falling housing prices may have started in CA.
• Politics in the Zeros has links to the LAT’s five part series on our oceans. It’s not cheerful reading, so be warned.

(Go watch an Inconvenient Truth (hopefully, again) and talk to a great environmenatalist, Fran Pavley – promoted by SFBrianCL)

cookie jill wants everyone in socal to know about a special screening of al gore’s “an inconvenient truth” this saturday:

join us on saturday for an afternooon screening of “an inconvenient truth”, and hear from state assemblywoman fran pavley on current legislation authored by speaker fabian nunez and primary co- author fran pavley.

— more —

if you have seen the movie, join us again and hear what you can do here in california. bring a friend who hasn’t seen it as of yet. if you haven’t seen it yet; this is a great opportunity to do so.

tom mullens, chair, socal grassroots

come join us on saturday, july 29 for a screening of an inconvenient truth and hear from assemblywoman fran pavley about her assembly bill to curb the effects of global warming. she and the speaker of the assembly fabian nunez have co- authored ab32 – solutions for global warming (for more information, see http://www.solutionsforglobalwarming.org).

tickets are $10 through actblue. you can also rsvp to [email protected] – the tickets will be available at the theatre starting at 2:15 pm.

the afternoon starts with assemblymember pavley’s presentation and introduction of the film at 2:40 pm, followed by an inconvenient truth at 2:55 pm – please arrive no later than 2:30 pm to get your seat and catch the entire event!

if you have seen an incovenient truth, join us again and hear how the state assembly is working to curb global warming.

haven’t had a chance to see this movie? now is a great time to do so – bring a friend and experience the truth of global warming, while supporting socal grassroots.

laemmle’s monica 4-plex
1332 2nd street
santa monica, ca
90401310-394-9741
map & parking information

to find out more about assemblymember fran pavley of the forty-first assembly district, visit her office website.

In a response to my post about the DWR’s Hetch Hetchy  report, sasha from Left in S.F. challenged the power replacement aspects of the restoration.

That’s all true as far as it goes, but as I’ve written before, the price tag of restoring Hetch Hetchy is better calculated in new asthma and lung cancer cases. Hetch Hetchy provides something like 20% of San Francisco’s electricity. If the dam were torn down, that power capacity would have to be replaced.

That power will almost certainly end up being replaced by gas-fired power plants, and those plants will be located in poor communities of color, because that’s where they put power plants. As long as advocates ignore the direct effect of the Hetch hetchy teardown, which will be more children tied to their asthma inhaler, more seniors unable to breathe, and more people in neighborhood clinics with shortness of breath, they are only confirming the worst stereotypes of the environmental movement, where environmentalists care more about trees than about people. 

Yes, the power would need to be replaced, but we need more power generation regardless of whether HH is dammed up or not. 

The E.D. report, however, has provided an analysis of where our power comes from and how Hetch Hetchy affects our power generation.  To be precise, the HH system provides only “0.6 percent of California’s electricity supply and represented 5.5 percent of statewide hydropower production. Also, only the Moccasin and Kirkwood plants actually generate power using water stored behind O’Shaughnessy Dam.”

Follow me to the flip…

And we must consider also where the bulk of HH power really goes: into pumping water.  Pumping water is the state’s single largest use of power.  If the Turlock and Modesto Irrigation District’s begin to make more substantive efforts toward conservation, much of the power loss can be made up throug small holding dams to increase hydropower generation along the Tuolomne.

The E.D. report also suggests other conservation measures including dynamic pricing for large energy consumers (ie industrial users) and local micro-conservation efforts. 

But more directly to your charge that we will have to build more gas-fired plants, well, that’s not necessarily true.  First of all, there were some members of the Assembly (Tim Leslie, a right-winger Rep, amongst others) who suggested trading off new dams for the restoration of the HH Valley.  While I’m not convinced this is the greatest idea, it is a reasonable consideration.  If we so desired, there are places on the rivers from the Sierra that we could build new dams.  Of course, there is plenty of environmental damage from dams as well.  Fish are unable to spawn properly and we could end up severely damaging our salmon population.  I think we’ve seen how perilous the salmon situation is already with the tight restrictions this season, building more dams would only accentuate that.

But as I said a few days ago on Calitics when we set a record for power consumption (which has likely been broken or will be broken today), we need more power generation facilities, specifically more alternative power generation facilities, with or without Hetch Hetchy.  I suggested requiring solar panels on all new construction, but I don’t think that’s the only option.  California has at least two resources in abundance, wind and sun, both of which are largely untapped.  And news that Vermont is now looking to produce energy from methane from cow manure offers another promise of new energy sources.  And of course, we could consider nuclear power productionm but the question of where we dump our spent fuel might hold that one back a while.

So, I think the accusation of environmentalists caring more about trees than people rings pretty hollow.  It’s not environmentalists that are pushing gas-fired plants on the world.  Environmentalists are working to decrease emissions and decrease the effects of global warming.  Heck, E.D. has other campaigns, Fight Global Warming and Clean Air for Life, running concurrently with their Restore Hetch Hetchy campaign. I think pointing fingers at E.D. and its partners is the wrong place to start.  If LA can save Mono Lake, why is it now so absurd to start talking about restoring Hetch Hetchy.  Look, I agree with the fact that we need to ensure secure water and power replacements, but that is not sufficient to kill the debate.

E.D. is working harder than anybody out there to clean up the air.  It’s a little disconcerting to see people on the left attacking them when it’s inconvienent for us.  I love the fact that we have HH and its resources, but if LA can save Mono Lake, why can’t we work to restore the Hetch Hetchy Valley?

Jon Fleischman, propeitor of the FlashReport, a right-wing conservative California blog, has announced that he’s leaving the office of Sheriff Mike Carona.

Jon Fleischman, spokesman for Sheriff Mike Carona and publisher of the political daily e-zine the FlashReport, will be leaving the gig with Carona next month to set up his own public affairs operation. He will also be spending more time on his Web site, which advertisers have helped make an increasingly profitable venture. He will be subletting office space in Irvine from county GOP Chairman Scott Baugh.

Fleischman has close ties to the power center of Carona, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, and Mike Schroeder, the former chairman of the California GOP who is a political advisor to Carona and Rackauckas. Fleischman, a longtime friend of Schroeder’s, served as executive director for the state GOP from 1999 to 2001, when he took the post with Carona and launched the first version of the Flash Report as a newsletter.  (OC Register Blog 7/18/06)

Fleischman has been a “PR Officer” at the OC Sherriff’s Office for several years now, all the while moonlighting with the various incarnations of FlashReport.  Now, I’m not against a little bit of blogging at work, I mean c’mon I love the blogosphere, but there have to be some questions about Fleischman’s role at the Sheriff’s Office Past and Present.  He was being paid off taxpayer dollars, and there should be some accountability to the people of Orange County. Jon actually once said, in a post that has now been removed about Amy Thoma, his departed Central Coast Correspondent, how fortunate he was to have a boss who understood his blogging and was supportive of it.

Well, now he’ll be doing it on his own time.  Good Luck Jon, I hope your services are in high demand due to the flailing of the California GOP.Jon Fleischman goes off the public dole

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-04, CA-11, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, corruption, immigration, environment, prisons, education, privacy, voting rights, Republican propaganda.

Top Two Today

• Local media activist Spocko has been waging a one-Vulcan war against Melanie Morgan and KSFO’s other despicable Republican propagandists. Seriously, you need to go read this stuff.
• Five of the 20 California House Republicans voted not to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. To put that in perspective, there are 231 Republicans in the House, and only 33 voted against voting rights. And to put that in even more perspective, only eight other Republicans not from the South voted against voting rights. California’s Republicans are far more opposed to voting rights than the Republicans are nationally. Oh, in case anyone is wondering, the culprits are 15% Doolittle (CA-04), John Campbell (CA-48), Wally Herger (CA-02), Gary Miller (CA-42) and Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46). If you’re a constituent, you might call and ask them exactly what they’re afraid of.