Marin’s Diana Conti enters Assembly Race for AD 10

DIANA CONTI FOR ASSEMBLY 2014

    “Because California Deserves Better”

College of Marin Trustee Diana Conti  is running for Assembly because she believes California and the 10th District needs someone who will stand up for a good affordable education for all, including higher education that will prepare our young people for the good well-paying jobs of the 21st century, that our coastline is a resource for all Californians and not something to be exploited by oil companies and large developers and that special interests have too much influence on who makes our laws in California.  She would fight for a true single payer system in California.

“California is in a crisis,” said Conti. “With a drought, the specter of fracking and loss of funding for essential services such as education and parks, and the true crisis in trust and confidence in our legislators felt by a majority of California.

“We need someone strong enough to stand up to special interests in the legislature, and experienced and practical enough to work for consensus,” said Conti. “This means a government that is focused on the needs of the people of the state, not the needs of special interests and big contributors; all people deserve the right to live with dignity and know they can have a safe place to live, a good education for their children and jobs that are meaningful and pay a living wage,” stated Conti, currently in her second term as a trustee for the College of Marin.

As a College trustee, Diana has seen the devastation that lack of funding and the loss of courses students need to succeed can have. She has worked to build consensus with her Board colleagues and the surrounding community in the expenditure of bond funding for new classrooms and infrastructure improvements.

Conti has been called a “pragmatic peacemaker,” a description that has served her well in her career working with social service agencies in both Marin and Sonoma and the non-profits she has led, such as in her former position as Deputy Drug Program Administrator for the County of Sonoma, executive director of the Marin Institute, and Executive Director of the Novato Human Needs Center.

She currently is CEO of Parca, an organization that helps people with developmental disabilities and their families and serves on the Board of West Bay Housing Development Corporation (housing for people with special needs). She is a member of the Governing Council, and past Executive Board member, of the American Public Health Association.

Contact Diana at 415-990-8798 or email her at [email protected]

See her Facebook page at http://tinyurl.com/n3eqwhp

Printed in house on recycled  

State of the State for a New Speaker-in-Waiting?

Governor to address legislature as new leadership team emerges. I’ll be on KALW Your Call at 10AM to discuss the State of the State.

by Brian Leubitz

There was a bit of controversy surrounding what was slowly coming into focus last week surrounding the legislative leadership races. Sen. Steinberg said last week that Sen Kevin de León was going to be the next Senate President Pro Tem. That was met with some worrying tones from Northern California, especially from the Bay Area Council:

We respect the importance of Southern California and often work closely with leaders there on key issues, but for the good of California, we must continue to share leadership.

As a region, therefore, we face an enormous and historic political test. Northern California’s senators and Assembly members should stand up for their districts, their voters, their region and this historic balance of power, and ensure that the next leader of either the Senate or the Assembly is from this part of the state. Once we lose that position of power, it’s very difficult to get it back. (Jim Wunderman, CEO of Bay Area Council , op-ed)

While this is a fuzzy kind of truth, you don’t really have to go all that far back to find contra cases. Willie Brown and Bill Lockyer were leading both chambers in the mid-1990s, but it has been something of a recent practice with the fast changing faces of the Legislature since term limits.  

At any rate, the BAC and other northern allies will have another shot at this race in two years. Atkins is term limited in 2016, while de León will face his Senate limit in 2018.

Meanwhile, the Governor has a plethora of topics to discuss at today’s State of the State. Water, climate change, the budget, and HSR all may come up.  I’ll be on KALW Your Call (91.7 in SF) at 10 AM, right after the speech to discuss it.  

Neel Kashkari to Enter Governor’s Race

Former Treasury official looks to take on Brown

by Brian Leubitz

Who, you may ask. Well, indeed Neel Kashkari intends to be the next governor of the great state of California. Kashkari, the former head of the TARP program, announced today that he will take on Brown (presumably) in the June election (and November if he gets that far.)

Former U.S. Treasury official Neel Kashkari announced Tuesday that he is running for governor of California, staking his campaign on his ability to create jobs and improve public schools.

“Here today, on this stage, I am announcing that I’m running for governor of California,” Kashkari told a few hundred people at a luncheon at Cal State Sacramento. “That’s my platform, jobs and education. That’s it. That’s why I’m running for governor of California.”(LA Times)

Fortunately for Kashkari, the caption writers of the LA Times are a bit out of date when they write under a photo that he is attempting to win the GOP nomination. Because, let’s be realistic here, he would have a much tougher route if that was his path. Instead, given that we now work in a Top-2 system, Kashkari will attempt to woo enough Republicans, independents and a smattering of Democrats in the June election to be the second highest vote getter and move on to November.

It is probably a better path than the one that Meg Whitman had to trod in 2010. She had to cater to the far right to get her party’s nomination, say some stuff about immigration she probably didn’t believe and all that. Kashkari can hope that the nativist vote won’t overwhelm the “moderate” coalition that he aims to build. Of course, in Tim Donnelly, the nativists have just the candidate to rally around.  Kashkari will have to hope that he can build a big war chest from the corporate Republicans to build an operation that can deal with the right wing ground game. It is doable, but a strong showing from Brown in gathering independent support could mean that Donnelly is the man that gets through June.

And even if he can get through June, what then? Brown is still sitting at an impressive 58% approval rating in the last Field poll. That includes 58% approval among independents, a figure that could go higher if the economy continues to recover. Brown has a big chunk of cash sitting in the bank, and an impressive operation in a Democratic state. In other words, unless Brown opts out in a stunning turn of events, he is a strong favorite to retain the job. Kashkari will do well to replicate the results of Whitman in 2010. (Spoiler: Whitman lost by 13 points after spending $140 million)

UPDATE: A tip of the hat to the Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci for checking out his voting records. Turns out that he’s not doing so well on that front:

Former Treasury Department official Neel Kashkari, a moderate Republican who is expected to run for governor, has failed to vote in nearly half the elections in which he was eligible since 1998 – including the 2012 presidential primary and the 2005 special election called to decide the reform agenda of then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger – public records show.

Oh, that’s ok, no big deal. I mean, you are only trying to get millions of people to show up for you, what’s a measly voting record anyway? Voting isn’t nearly as powerful as the big checks, right?

At any rate, Kashkari has a little baggage to open up the race. Never an auspicious way to start.

Dennis Quaid Calls On Californians To Support Pack Patient Safety Act

Dennis Quaid“We were lucky to have a happy ending,” actor Dennis Quaid told a crowd at Consumer Watchdog’s Rage for Justice Awards in 2009. He was talking about the near-fatal overdose that his twins experienced at birth. They were given one thousand times the amount of blood thinner they were supposed to and nearly bled to death. “Their survival was the beginning of my activism.”

Dennis received the Phillip Burton Public Service Award for the spotlight he has put on medical errors and his campaign to introduce bar coding for prescription drugs and electronic medical records into the medical system. Cedars Sinai introduced a $100 million bar coding system in response to the Quaid family.

“People started telling us their story,” Dennis said of people who approached him with their own tales of medical negligence.

Now Dennis has taken a stand for California families victimized by medical negligence. He is asking California voters to sign the Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act, a California ballot measure to toughen the state’s patient safety laws.



“Troy, 10 years old, and Alana, 7, died because the health care industry has not done a good enough job keeping track of prescription medication,” Quaid said. “Their father, Bob, wrote this ballot measure to change things so other families won’t have to live through the tragedy his has.”

Dennis urged voters to watch a short, 2-minute video about Bob Pack’s courageous fight and add their signature for the Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act.

More than 500,000 signatures have been gathered for the Pack Act.  More than 800,000 signatures must be turned in by March 24th for the ballot measure to be before voters in November.

“This patient safety reform can save lives,” Quaid said. “My family went through a frightening few weeks when our newborn twins received a near-fatal overdose and almost lost their lives. Since then, I have learned that patient safety is a huge problem and that the medical industry needs to learn some lessons from the aviation industry, which has a zero tolerance policy for errors.”

Abel Maldonado to Drop Out of Governor’s Race

St. AbelFormer LG struggled with fundraising and staff changes

by Brian Leubitz

St. Abel Maldonado struggled during his campaign for governor. To put it mildly. He didn’t really rake in the bucks, and went through a complete staff change. Of course, there was also the issue that most of the GOP loyalists pretty much loathe the guy. Apparently now he’s had enough:

Abel Maldonado, whose campaign for governor sputtered for months and failed to gain the support of Republican donors, has told other Republicans he will drop out of the race today, sources said. …

Then, after finishing the first half of last year in debt, Maldonado and his original team of advisers split. Maldonado assembled a new group of advisers, including Ron Nehring, the former California Republican Party chairman, and he presented the team at the state party’s convention last fall.(SacBee)

But never you worry, Tim Donnelly is still in the race, and he’s totally for reals about his fundraising. Or well, at least he had enough to buy a milkshake at In ‘N Out and still be able to afford a burger too.

However, rumors continue to swirl that former TARP administrator Neel Kashkari will enter the race soon. He has hired some advisors, but he’ll need to raise a lot of cash quickly to be competitive with a governor that had $10million in the bank in mid 2013 and a 58% approval rating in the most recent Field poll.

Buck McKeon to Retire

buck mckeon photo:  Buck_McKeon_Countrywide_logo.jpgArmed Forces Chairman had considered retiring two years ago

by Brian Leubitz

Rep. Buck McKeon has been trying for a while now to retire. Tony Strickland was all set to slide into the seat in 2012, but McKeon opted to stick around for another two years. Now, it seems he’s serious about it:

McKeon, 65, is departing from the southern California seat he was elected to in 1992. Since then, he has won reelection by comfortable margins. He became chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in 2011, after Republicans regained control of the House.

His retirement comes as little surprise – Republicans on Capitol Hill and California have been buzzing about the possibility for months. It will set the stage for a potentially competitive general election: McKeon is vacating a seat that Mitt Romney only won by two percentage points in 2010.(Politico)

The word in the twitterverse is that McKeon will announce the decision formally at a 9am press conference. As for potential replacements, the word is that Strickland plans to take another shot at Congress by carpetbagging to this district. Far-right Sen. Steve Knight has a website up saying that he will run if McKeon retires.  2012 Democratic candidate Lee Rogers has been fundraising well, and looks to be the favored Democrat. And, of course, keep an eye on the Around the Capitol page.

If Rogers can escape the Top-2 minefield in the June primary, it could be a real contest in this Lean Republican seat.

Oysters and the Camel’s Nose under the tent

Oyster farm loses another round

by Brian Leubitz

When the Lunny family purchased Drake’s Bay Oyster Company, they knew they were gearing up for a fight to keep the farm in Drake’s Estero in Tomales Bay just north of San Francisco. And gear up they did. When the special use permit was denied in 2012 by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, they went to court.

The Lunnys now have built an interesting coalition, from foodies like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame to right-wing non-profits like the Pacific Legal Foundation, which submitted an amicus brief to the 9th Circuit when the case was pending there.

More interestingly, Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana filed a bill to overturn Salazar’s decision. Why would he care, you may ask? Well, I suggest you read this East Bay Express article:

These foodies, in short, seem to think that creating an exception for the oyster farm won’t have ramifications. However, they apparently don’t realize that Republicans like Vitter don’t care whether Drakes Bay Oyster Company is environmentally sustainable. Conservatives know that Lunny provides them with a perfect opportunity: His operation has generated a split on the left that could help them in court or in Congress, and thus open the door for allowing other private businesses – including ones that are not environmentally sustainable – to receive additional rights to operate on public land, leading to more corporate exploitation of the environment.

And yesterday, the Lunnys lost another round in court, as the 9th circuit refused to rehear the case en banc.

A federal appeals court took a step Tuesday toward closing a Marin County oyster farm at the center of a heated environmental and political controversy, reaffirming its ruling that the federal government legally refused to renew the company’s lease in waters designated by Congress as a wilderness area.(SF Chronicle)

They are now planning on a Supreme Court appeal, and hoping to get a stay of the closure order pending that appeal. This case may end up being a lot bigger than some tasty oysters.

Drought.

Governor mulls official designation

by Brian Leubitz

It doesn’t take too long of a look around to see we are in a drought, but this picture of Millerton Lake on the San Joaquin River speaks volumes. Our extended run of pleasant weather is lovely to enjoy some outdoor activities, but not so great to fill up our reservoirs. Temperatures are expected to be in the upper 60s in San Francisco this week, and there just isn’t much sign of substantial rainfall anytime soon.

Gov. Brown hasn’t officially made any drought declarations, but he’s getting ready:

Gov. Jerry Brown said Monday his administration would soon declare that California is officially in the midst of a drought.

“It’s coming,” Brown said of a formal proclamation when asked during a press conference at Fresno City Hall. “Just be patient.”

A recent survey of the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains found the state’s water reserves are at just 20% of normal levels. Other measures have declared 2013 to be the driest year in California history.

“It’s really serious,” Brown said. “In many ways it’s a mega-drought; it’s been going on for a number of years.”(LA Times / Anthony York

At this point, even if we get a few good systems in February and March, we will still be far behind where we need to be. There will be big fights over water this summer, so we might as well start conserving now. While the big water users are primarily agricultural, we can all do our own small part.

Patient and Consumer Initiatives Will Save Lives and Money

Originally published in the Sacramento Bee on Sunday, January 12, 2014


Jamie CourtNo political consultant sees more angles than Richie Ross, but his tangent opposing two pro-consumer ballot initiatives, which could turn 2014 into the Year of the Patient, is unsound geometry (“Voters can’t avoid health care politics,” Jan. 2). The ballot measures will save lives and money by closing fatal loopholes in Obamacare and California’s patient-safety laws.

The Affordable Care Act requires everyone to buy insurance but does not limit its cost. The “Justify Rates” ballot initiative before voters in November requires California health insurers to justify rate hikes and get approval before they take effect, as now happens in 35 other states.

The millions of individual policyholders and tens of thousands of businesses whose rates could not go up without state approval under the measure are those who have been hardest hit by premium increases over the past decade.

The ballot measure applies California’s tough property casualty insurance regulation, enacted by voters in 1988 as Proposition 103, to health insurance. A recent study by the Consumer Federation of America found the law has saved California drivers $102 billion. Drivers today pay less in real money than they did in 1988, the only state to see any decline.

The same tough rate regulation already applies to medical-malpractice insurance for physicians and hospitals, including that paid for by private clinics.

Consumer Watchdog has used the law’s protections to lower medical-malpractice insurance premiums by $77 million over the past decade. Ironically, doctors enjoy the protection that millions of Californians who pay for health insurance don’t yet have.

That’s why arguments that the Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act, now circulating, will raise malpractice rates are phony.

This ballot measure will save lives by curbing substance abuse by doctors, stemming the tide of overprescribing, and updating a 38-year-old cap on victims’ recovery that prevents injured patients from getting justice.

The California Medical Board estimates that 18 percent of doctors have a drug or alcohol problem during their careers. Mandatory drug testing, as now applies to most other public safety professions, will prevent dangerous doctors from practicing. Updating our medical-malpractice laws will allow victims of drugged, drunk and dangerous doctors to get justice.

One quarter of all medical discipline in the state involves abuse of drugs or alcohol. The Pack Patient Safety Act will protect the victims of this abuse and their families from the third leading cause of death in America: medical malpractice.


Jamie Court, proponent of the initiative requiring public justification of health insurance rates, is president of Consumer Watchdog. Carmen Balber is the nonprofit group’s executive director.

The Day the Sierra Club Opposed Funding Long-Term Carbon Emission Reductions

Originally posted at the California High Speed Rail Blog

You would think that California’s leading environmental organizations, who claim to be committed to fighting the climate crisis and reducing carbon emissions, would enthusiastically support Governor Jerry Brown’s plan to use 19% of annual cap-and-trade revenues to fund a major infrastructure project that reduces millions of tons of CO2 while also reducing other forms of air pollution. You would also think these organizations would be sure to do so when the climate denying right has targeted that project for destruction.

You would be wrong.

Sierra Club California, in an amazing and shocking move, has come out against the funding of long-term reductions in CO2 emissions. They plan to advocate against Governor Brown’s plan to fund HSR with cap-and-trade revenues, even though high speed rail is one of the best ways to reduce oil consumption and CO2 emissions – reasons why the California Air Resources Board has included HSR as part of its AB 32 scoping plans for over five years.

More in the extended…

Here’s the shocking quote:

“We still have an opportunity to make a difference on how bad climate change will be. And the way you do that will be to take all of the available resources, you spend them now on things that get you reductions now,” said Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California. “If this had been a choice between the Golden Gate Bridge and you had the opportunity to stop typhoid at that very moment, I think the people of San Francisco would’ve stopped typhoid.”

Phillips is completely wrong here, displaying a line of thinking that will be fatal to the effort to address climate change if continued. The way we make a difference is to take all of the resources (subtract the word “available,” more on that in a moment) and spend them now on everything that can give you lasting, permanent reductions – especially those things that provide a permanently lower level of CO2 emissions.

Her analogy is absurd and displays the logic of austerity, a logic that makes it impossible to fight climate change. Austerity policies force people to choose between important priorities rather than funding everything by insisting you can only use the “available” resources rather than the total resources that exist in a society. Addressing climate change requires large sums of money to be spent, in the trillions, in order to avert a far more costly and deadly catastrophe. Anyone who plays into the logic of austerity, which says you can’t spend that money and have to pick and choose a few small things to do at the expense of other priorities, is espousing a logic that ensures we will not be able to do what is necessary to reduce CO2 emissions.

In the 1930s, if SF were facing a typhoid epidemic at the same time as construction were about to begin on the Golden Gate Bridge, the reaction would not have been to stop the bridge. Politicians would have said “well obviously we need to do both.”

But even that analogy is flawed. It suggests that Phillips does not see HSR as a tool in the fight against climate change. And that is very bad news. A more accurate analogy would be that SF is facing a typhoid epidemic and one of the leading public health advocates says “we only have so much available money, let’s spend it on addressing people’s symptoms now and not on finding a lasting cure.”

Despite Sierra Club California’s incredible argument, most others engaged in the fight to reduce CO2 emissions understands that we will lose unless we make major lifestyle changes that include the way we travel around the state of California. The California Air Resources Board, charged with implementing AB 32 and the cap-and-trade system, understands this quite well. In their investment plan for the cap-and-trade revenues, they make this very important statement when introducing the section that calls for spending part of those revenues on HSR:

Full implementation of existing State strategies will achieve the 2020 reduction target. However, extensive additional strategies are needed both to ensure ongoing maintenance of the 2020 limit – as population and related growth increase after 2020 – and to meet post-2020 goals.

Reaching the 2050 goal (80 percent below 1990 levels) will require far-reaching new approaches to how we plan our communities, how we move people and freight, how we power our State, how industries produce their products, how successful we are in treating waste as a source of energy, and how well we preserve California’s lands and natural resources that sequester carbon.

Sierra Club California is saying this is wrong, that you don’t have to do anything to ensure ongoing maintenance of the 2020 limit, and that we don’t need to worry about reaching the 2050 goal. They are displaying a stunning lack of foresight and a contempt of long-term planning that will undo all of the gains California is making when it comes to climate change.

To make matters worse, Phillips is playing into the hands of people who are determined to stop the fight against climate change. Republicans and Tea Party members in California and in Congress are looking for ways to stop the high speed rail project. You can bet they will pounce on her statements and use them to attack HSR across the country. “Even the Sierra Club doesn’t want this funded!” they’ll say.

Assemblymember Jeff Gorell, a Ventura Republican, is running against Congresswoman Julia Brownley this year. Brownley is a Democrat who voted for high speed rail in the summer of 2012. Republicans attacked her for that vote, but failed to keep her out of Congress. Gorell yesterday filed an initiative to overturn Prop 1A and stop the HSR project. It won’t go anywhere since it lacks funding to get onto the ballot. But it does suggest that Gorell plans to make an issue of HSR this year. Sierra Club California, by opposing Brown’s cap-and-trade funding plan, has just undermined Brownley and handed a big win to Gorell.

Another environmental group that should know better is the Greenlining Institute:

Likewise, the Greenlining Institute does not oppose the rail project but will push lawmakers to devote cap-and-trade money to transit operations, spokesman Bruce Mirken said. The organization sponsored successful legislation two years ago requiring that a quarter of the greenhouse gas revenue be targeted to low-income and minority communities most affected by pollution.

“High-speed rail would not have been on our priority list,” Mirken said.

Then Greenlining Institute has some seriously flawed priorities. One of the worst forms of greenlining in the state is the location of freeways near low-income communities and communities of color. This problem is especially bad in the Central Valley, where emissions from vehicles is one of the leading causes of asthma and air pollution. The Valley has some of the worst air pollution in the country. HSR will help reduce those emissions. How Greenlining Institute can say that’s not a priority is shocking.

I am all for transit operating funding. But that’s why Governor Brown is planning to use only 19% of the cap-and-trade funds for HSR. That leaves over $1 billion for other priorities, including transit funding. It is austerity logic to say we have to pick and choose between these priorities. Greenlining Institute should be leading the call for a hike in the statewide gas tax to fund transit operations. Instead they are calling for a de facto alliance with the Tea Party to kill HSR.

I don’t know if these groups even care about HSR. Their statements suggests they are happy to watch it die. Because that’s what may well happen if Brown’s proposal for using cap-and-trade funds for HSR is stopped. The state needs to show a Sacramento judge in the next few months that they have revenues sufficient to make a new financing plan work. There’s no time to come up with some other source of money in order to survive the lawsuit, and notably, neither Sierra Club California nor Greenlining Institute are proposing one.

These groups must keep in mind CARB’s point about the long term. We will never achieve the kind of reductions we need to avoid catastrophe just by small measures. I am a huge transit supporter and love electric cars. But those alone will not solve the climate crisis. We need to re-engineer how California operates. We need to eliminate all burning of fossil fuels as soon as possible, and should start with those alternatives that carry a lot of people. HSR is a godsend when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions, using renewable electric power to move people quickly between cities, getting them out of airplanes and cars. We should have built HSR thirty years ago. We’re building it now, and if climate change is as pressing as Phillips says it is, we have no time to lose in getting it funded and under construction.

The main reason I care about HSR, the reason I started this blog, was because I saw it as a crucial tool in the effort to reduce CO2 emissions. I am amazed and appalled that some California environmentalists are willing to oppose the funding of long-term CO2 emission reducers like HSR because they cannot understand the politics and cannot envision anything other than austerity.

Members of Sierra Club chapters in California need to rise up against this flawed, damaging, short-term thinking. Let the Sacramento office know how you feel. Tell them that it’s not acceptable to help the right destroy HSR and that funding long-term reduction of CO2 emissions must be a priority.