Here are some notes from a few stories I’d been meaning to get to all week.

• Frank Russo had a good recap of the initial hearing from the three-judge panel charged with finding a solution to California’s prison crisis.  This panel may result in the early release of thousands of prisoners to reduce overcrowding.  The panel does not appear to be able to be swayed by political expediency (unlike the Legislature for the past 30 years), saying  “This is a judicial and not a political process.”  It is clear that the torturous conditions in California jails and the inability to deliver even basic medical care violates the Constitution and will be dealt with swiftly.  Even the Correctional Officers union has come around to the point of view that reductions in the prison population are needed.  Only a cowardly, leadership-challenged political class refuses to face reality.

(more on the flip):

• Here’s a fun tale of health care at the Tribune Company, parent of the LA Times and local TV station KTLA:

The Tribune Company has come up with a new tactic to cut costs and annoy the hell out of its employees – again. It seems that everyone on the staff at the L.A. Times (and so I assume KTLA) has to prove that their spouses and children really are theirs, and thus eligible for medical benefits. Though wasteful and mildly insulting it sounds easy enough, but apparently it’s not. They call it a “Mercer Audit” and its demands have some staffers in an uproar.

They’re demanding documentation (a birth certificate or marriage license, I guess) with a deadline of days from actually giving employees notice.  I’m sure in the boardroom this is considered “sound business sense.”

• At our Calitics Quarterly event, I talked with Digby about her contention that the GOP is targeting California as the big blue state where Rudy Giuliani can break through and get the paradigm-shifting win they need.  It’s true that the big hitters in the state have all come out for him – although the Pete Wilson endorsement garnered all of three reporters to the announcement.

• Continuing on this theme, a new SUSA poll shows head-to-head general election matchups for all of the top three candidates on either side, and in California, it shakes out like this: against Romney or Thompson, all the Democrats win by between 15 and 33 points.  Against Giuliani, Clinton beats him by 20, but Obama wins by only for and Edwards by only 2.  Wow.  Of course, Giuliani is still riding the name ID coattails.  However, his clear penchant for wanting to be competitive in California is evidenced by the fact that the mystery fundraiser for the dirty tricks initiative was the chairman of Giuliani’s northeast fundraising operation.

• Rik Hertzberg had an interesting footnote to the possible demise of the dirty tricks initiative:

Why would Schwarzenegger want to shoot down a proposal that has the potential of delivering the White House to his party next year?

My guess is that he isn’t losing any sleep over the probability of a G.O.P. Presidential rout, which would make him the indisputably most important Republican in America. His current port tack, on issues like health care and climate change, suggests that he knows which way the wind is blowing.  Doubtless he would rather be swept along than swept away.

Then there’s this. Anybody remember the first Republican debate, on MSNBC back in May? I’ll bet Arnold does. He was in the front row at the Reagan Library when Chris Matthews asked the ten candidates if they would support changing the Constitution ever so slightly to make naturalized citizens eligible for the presidency. The vote onstage was eight to one against. (The one was Giuliani; McCain said he’d “seriously consider it,” which I count as an abstention.) Eight to one, in other words, in favor of crushing the ultimate and perfectly legitimate dream of the distinguished Governor of California.

If I were Schwarzenegger, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help these bozos.

• Finally, tonight at midnight, the UAW Local 2865 contract runs out.  While the United Auto Workers settled their contract dispute with GM, Local 2865, which covers over 12,000 academic student employees at UC campuses (TAs, for example) has made little headway with UC.  You can read all about it here.  The whole idea of student employee unions gets lost in the shuffle, but they are being royally screwed, and are planning to file lots of unfair labor practices charges, in addition to keeping negotiations going and reserving the right to strike.  We ought to support their efforts.

(Nice to have the Senator here. Now go do as he says! – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Recently the Los Angeles Times ran an editorial, “For Citizens Only,” on the California Dream Act (SB 160) which misrepresented facts and promoted a policy position out of step with reality and mainstream opinion in California. 

Just one week after the LA Times declared their objection to increasing access to higher education for all Californians, the California Public Policy Institute (PPIC) issued a definitive analysis citing a critical gap in the number of college grads the state will produce.  PPIC warned that California will not meet the economic demand for highly skilled workers with current immigration and graduation rates; they recommended swift action on the state’s behalf to intervene. Additionally, a Field Poll in April 2007 noted that 83% of Californians support creating programs to legalize the status of undocumented immigrants indicating a far more open attitude toward immigrants than the LA Times expressed in their editorial.

The California Dream Act is an appropriate step to address our state’s workforce needs and is in alignment with voter sentiments toward immigrants. As the paper of note in California’s largest immigrant city, we expect more from the Los Angeles Times. 

Please help us express our dissatisfaction with the paper’s position and presentation of facts. It is critical that we set the record straight on SB 160 and make the paper aware of our concerns.

We are asking you to take three simple steps: 

–  Read our response to The Times editorial here:  “Let All Students Dream”  We are trying to earn a spot in the “Most Viewed” stories on the website, so be sure to use the link provided to view the response. 

–  Write a letter to the editor at The Times, expressing your concerns with their position or support for the bill 

–  Forward this to your network of friends, and ask them to do the same. 

As the focus on the topic of immigration intensifies in the coming weeks – both at the federal level and in our own state as the Legislature takes up our three immigrant related bills – we must not let misrepresentations or narrow perspectives cloud common consensus.

If you need additional information on SB 160 contact Eric Guerra (SAC) or Marvin Pineda (LA).  If you would like to help respond to the LA Times editorial or get the word out in support of SB 160 contact Christy Wolfe. 

Please take action today, and thank you for your support. 

I have a conflicted relationship with the LA Times.  On the one hand, they still do a stellar job covering international news; I would put the paper’s Iraq reporting up with any other news organization in the world.  But on the editorial side, the paper has taken up the neoliberal consensus with a vengeance, and turns a blind eye to vital issues to this community, like inequality and poverty.  Nancy Cleeland, an excellent writer, has decided to leave the paper for just this reason:

It’s awkward to criticize an old friend, which I still consider the Times to be, but I think the question of how mainstream journalists deal with the working class is important and deserves debate. There may be no better setting in which to examine the issue: The Los Angeles region is defined by gaping income disparities and an enormous pool of low-wage immigrant workers, many of whom are pulled north by lousy, unstable jobs. It’s also home to one of the most active and creative labor federations in the country. But you wouldn’t know any of that from reading a typical issue of the L.A. Times, in print or online. Increasingly anti-union in its editorial policy, and celebrity — and crime-focused in its news coverage, it ignores the economic discontent that is clearly reflected in ethnic publications such as La Opinion.

Of course, I realize that revenues are plummeting and newsroom staffs are being cut across the country. But even in these tough financial times, it’s possible to shift priorities to make Southern California’s largest newspaper more relevant to the bulk of people who live here. Here’s one idea: Instead of hiring a “celebrity justice reporter,” now being sought for the Times website, why not develop a beat on economic justice? It might interest some of the millions of workers who draw hourly wages and are being squeezed by soaring rents, health care costs and debt loads.

Go read the whole thing, this is an important article.  You would think that it would be easier and more cost-effective for the Times to cover what’s happening in its own backyard.  Of course, the Times was first part of a corporate-owned media collective, the Tribune Corporation, and now Sam Zell, a multi-millionaire.  The top editors and senior staff aren’t affected by the real issues impacting working people, and it shows in where they place their emphasis.

I remembered the workers who killed chickens, made bagged salads, packed frozen seafood, installed closet organizers, picked through recycled garbage, and manufactured foam cups and containers. They were injured from working too fast, fired for speaking up, powerless, invisible. I saw that their impact on all of us who live in the region is huge.

Now, like hundreds of other mid-career journalists who are walking away from media institutions across the country, I’m looking for other ways to tell the stories I care about. At the same time, the world of online news is maturing, looking for depth and context. I think the timing couldn’t be better.

I would suggest that Cleeland would always be welcome on the blogosphere, particularly on this site, where I’m proud to say that issues of class and inequality are often foregrounded.

UPDATE: I would add that proof of the LA Times’ relationship to the poor can be easily gleaned in this BS hit piece on John Edwards by Jonah Goldberg, someone who doesn’t live in California but is hired to write lazy smear jobs based on two-week old stories without merit.

The LA Times gets downright progressive about voting reform, in the wake of the horrible turnout for Tuesday’s school board runoff, where $9 million dollars in voting infrastructure and campaign expenditures yielded a 6% turnout.

A much better solution is to use instant runoff voting, an electoral method that elects a majority winner in a single election.

Here’s how it works: Voters rank the candidates in their order of preference instead of just picking one candidate. If a candidate wins a majority of first rankings, the election is over, just like now. But if no candidate wins a majority of first rankings, voters’ other rankings are used to determine the winner instantly. The candidate with the fewest first rankings is eliminated, and voters who ranked that candidate first can now have their second choice counted. All ballots are recounted in the “instant runoff,” and the process of dropping the last-place candidate continues until one candidate has a majority of the votes […]

Because this method of voting would save millions of tax dollars, part of that money could be used for an expansion of Los Angeles’ public financing system, which might produce more candidates and more competition – which could induce higher voter turnout.

Los Angeles also could change to an all vote-by-mail system. Oregon votes this way, as does Burbank, and it has led to higher turnout in non-November elections. It also saves tax dollars by avoiding the high costs of setting up polling stations and hiring election workers.

Color me shocked.  over…

Maybe it takes a disaster like the school board election to make people see the light.  Of course, IRV and vote by mail and public financing have been around for decades.  They were seen as flaky Birkenstock ideas at one point; only some hippie commune like San Francisco could use Instant Runoff Voting, right?  But if the staid LA Times can figure out that IRV is efficient, smart and leads to better campaigning. 

I am very hopeful that this work will get done in Los Angeles to make voting more in line with the 21st century.  Now there’s one more hurdle to clear.  We just need the Governor to sign the National Popular Vote bill that would reform the electoral college by eliminating the outdated and anti-democratic idea.  The Governor has taken no position on the bill this year.  He ought to be urged to sign it.

In the interest of regional balance, here are a few things in the part of the state that gets sun (jus’ kiddin’, guys) which caught my eye:

• Full public financing of municipal elections will be on the agenda at tonight’s Santa Monica City Council Meeting.  Solidly progressive City Councilman Kevin McKeown raised this issue earlier in the year and couldn’t get a second, but they ran a staff report, and both Common Cause and the League of Women Voters are pushing this hard.  Just like everything else, we’ll need to win the Clean Money battle from the bottom up.

more…

• This complete crackup of the Minuteman Project is so hilariously predictable that it should be a reality show.  I can’t wait for the twists and turns and the backstabbing.  You put a bunch of power-hungry authoritarians in the same group, who knew that they’d start fighting each other for control?  Fascinatin’.

• You might want to think twice before eating in LA – the biggest produce wholesaler in the city, the 7th Street Market, was cited for multiple violations, including rat infestation.  Never been, not going now.

• I wish I had the time to write the badly needed very long series of articles about the proposed LNG terminal off the coast of Malibu.  This would be an environmental disaster for the coastline, yet the Governor has given tacit support to BHP Billiton to build it.  This blog is a great resource for this story.  Look at this part:

Environmental Protection Agency political appointees used non-existent analysis and misled the public when they reversed course and rejected tough smog rules for the proposed Cabrillo Port liquefied natural gas terminal off the Malibu coast, the chairman of the House Investigations Committee said Monday.

Rep. Henry Waxman also accused top EPA officials of refusing to hand over key documents detailing the 2005 decision by a White House political appointee to overrule regional EPA officials on a key decision about whether the Cabrillo Port proposal can go forward.

The news from Washington comes as BHP Billiton and its lobbying firm have hired another two close associates of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, to press the case behind the scenes for Cabrillo Port. That facility faces key licensing decisions next month, and could be operating on Malibu’s coastal horizon in three years.

It looks like Assemblyman Lloyd Levine has withdrawn his support for the LNG Terminal, which is key.

• New op-ed columnists at the LA Times.  Surprise, there are less now than there were – cost-cutting rulez!  Also, somehow, Jonah Goldberg kept his slot (then again, I actually like his op-ed today), though Arianna Huffington, Adam Hochschild, Gustavo Arellano (Ask a Mexican!) and Sandra Tsing Loh come aboard as “contributing editors,” which I think means they’ll write op-eds but won’t be paid as staff op-ed writers.

Jennifer Warren writes in the LA Times today about two former prison officials who claim that the corrections officer’s union and the governor conspired to stymie any efforts to fix California’s condition-critical prison system.  The officials claim that Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy was tasked with handling the labor contract between the prison guards and the state, and that top Schwarzenegger aides were willing to give the union whatever they desired in order to support them in the gubernatorial election (which they did not; they endorsed Angelides, but did not run the barrage of ads that were initially expected).  The union was repotedly given veto power over the nominations to top posts in the corrections department (Union officials deny this).  These paragraphs are indicative of the general tenor:

Beyond such events, (former Corrections secretary Jeanne) Woodford said she thought her agenda for the department – one that included reform of the parole system, more education and drug treatment programs for inmates, and a fresh look at who goes to prison and for how long – clearly was not popular with Schwarzenegger aides consumed with his reelection.

In April, Woodford said, she laid out her plan for sentencing reform and other changes to the governor, recalling that he responded, “That sounds reasonable.” But, according to Woodford’s testimony, Kennedy and Aguiar told him, “Governor, it’s an election year.”

Now, it should be noted that these two officials were testifying in federal court which is functioning as a kind of oversight hearing.  Why this is happening in the judicial rather than the legislative branch is unclear.  But certainly, Woodford and Roderick Hickman have a very good reaason to shift blame for the current problem: they’re implicated in it up to their eyeballs.  They were the corrections secretaries for the last few years.  So I’m thoroughly unconvinced that the Governor was the only thing stopping that wonderful reform agenda that these two were oh-so-willing to implement.

But if you want to understand exactly what Arnold’s plan is for getting out of this mess, it is clear that it bears no resemblance to the kinds of reform needed, and it will be a financial windfall for the corrections officers.  He wants to build his way out of the mess:

“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing to roll out a plan next year that will call for about $10 billion in construction for prisons, jails and medical facilities, and include support for a sentencing commission, according to sources familiar with the proposal.

Sources said the breakdown on funding would allocate about $4.4 billion to prisons and re-entry institutions, $4.4 billion for county jail and juvenile beds and $1 billion for medical facilities to satisfy court monitors in two federal cases overseeing health care and treatment of the mentally ill.”

I’ll cite Doug Paul Davis’ take on this, as it aligns with my own.

We spend around $6 billion per year just on correctional facilities. Do we need improved prison facilities? By all means. But this is a question about budget priorities and the distribution of very scarce resources. The governor is threatening to cut money to the poor while additional money is going to correctional facilities.

The thing about correctional facilities is that they are a black hole. When you put money into education, you are making an investment–you are putting money into educating our youth now, so that they can be more productive. When you put money into health care, you are making an investment–you allow people to get medical treatment which allows them to live better and more productively. When you put money into prisons, you are throwing it into a black hole. It bandages the problem of having too many inmates, but it does nothing to prevent people from ending up in prison to begin with.

Prevention and saner sentencing (so the existing prisons aren’t clogged with nonviolent offenders) are the formulae for reform.  The Governor’s proposal is a formula for an increasingly incarcerated society, where the focus is not rehabilitation and treatment but where to stash people.  You cannot build your way out of the current problem.  It’s not possible.

As a tangent, the much-maligned (by me) LA Times editorial board deserves kudos for speaking straight on the death penalty and the Governor’s reaction to Judge Fogel’s verdict ruling the current lethal injection procedure inconstitutional.

That focus on propping up the death penalty is one problem with the governor’s response to Fogel’s decision. Another is that Schwarzenegger seems unwilling to entertain the possibility that what is really inappropriate about a civilized state’s embrace of capital punishment – by lethal injection or any other means – is not the infliction of pain but the extinguishing of human life.

Contrary to Fogel’s assertion in his opinion that the propriety of capital punishment is a matter for the Legislature, there was a time when judges took a broad view of whether the death penalty in its totality – and not just in a few botched executions – amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state death penalty laws then on the books. In a much-quoted opinion, Justice Potter Stewart said that capital punishment was imposed “wantonly and freakishly,” adding that “these death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.” The same is true, we believe, of the selective, even capricious imposition of the death penalty at the present time, whether or not the chemical cocktail administered to a prisoner is mixed in a way that minimizes pain. Tinkering with the machinery of lethal injection is only the beginning.

That’s the kind of clear-eyed reason I don’t expect from the editorial page.  This adds fuel to the Courage Campaign’s belief that California, and in the larger sense America, is coming around on the idea of what’s cruel and unusual.  I would add this into the proposal for building more prisons, which is heartless in the sense that it provides not for hope but for fear, and makes a society more terrifying rather than more purposeful and inclusive.