Lest you think there was a chance that the initiative to take away my and my fellow GLBTers right to get married here in California wouldn’t have enough valid signatures, the signatures are being approved at a higher rate than normal and looks like it will easily make it on the ballot.

The verification data on the initiaitve that would ban gay marriage is instructive. It shows that the initiative turned in more than 1.1 million signatures for random sampling. So far the verification rate is very good — over 83 percent on more than 20,000 signatures that have been checked. If that rate holds, the measure should qualify easily for the November ballot. (In the signature biz, 70 percent).

Meanwhile, Arnold Schwarzenegger had an interesting exchange with a gay man who proudly told the governor he had already made an appointment to marry his partner of 22 years at SF City Hall.  He asked Arnold about his position on the initiative.  It is along the same lines as what he has been saying and illustrates how complicated and twisted his rhetoric has been. (flip it)

Well, first of all, I respect the court’s opinion, which I think was very important, to not just look at it from a point, do I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman or not, but that it looks at the constitutionality of the whole issue. And constitutionally they said it was not right to tell people you can’t do that. Everyone should be treated equally. I think this is a very good way of approaching it, and it’s the fairest way of approaching it, and that’s why I said I respect their opinion. And, you know, I’m wishing everyone good luck with their marriages, and I hope that California’s economy is booming because everyone is going to come here and get married. (Applause) I think all of this is great.

Parsing here, we see that Arnold does not support marriage equality personally, but respects a court ruling that was about the constitutionality of barring same sex marriages.  Though he is anti-gay marriage, he is still wishing those getting married good luck.  It is strange and makes you wonder what he is really saying behind closed doors.  The line about increasing the economy has already made some waves.  Indeed this should been a boon, even if on scale it is small, but there will be more tourist dollars spend here and it will encourage more gay couples to move or stay here in California.

And I think — and I’m against changing the Constitution. I’m against the ballot initiative that some are trying to put on the ballot. (Applause) Because it’s unnecessary. I think that we have rules in place and after the decision was made to then change the rules because you’re not happy with the outcome, I don’t believe that’s the right way to go. So I think that — and may I remind you, I have said in the past — you know, I see a marriage between a man and a woman. But that’s my opinion. I don’t want to force that opinion on anyone. So I respect that opinion, and I think we should live with that and everyone should move forward in the right way.

Yeah, I know, he isn’t being that clear here.  However, the general message is don’t be a sore loser.  I doubt that will convince many people, but the language about moving forward is productive.

Marriage equality came up as an issue on the campaign trail today.  Instead of being in the Senate to vote for increased benefits for our veterans John McCain was on Ellen’s couch telling her that he doesn’t think she should get married.  Once again he is flip-flopping on the issue.  HuffPo has a good piece up with a bunch of good links giving the background on McCain twisting himself in even more knots than Schwarzenegger.  In it is this video from Brave New Films.

Ellen will be a wonderful person to really humanize this issue.  She has a huge reach through her show and makes waves any time she talks about her relationship with Portia.  Their wedding this summer will be a great opportunity to message about the need to protect their right to be married.  I think Ellen recognizes this and we will hear more from her about her private life.

• Do read Robert in Monterey’s report about Abel Maldonado, Don Perata’s best buddy, running as a write-in candidate in the Democratic primary to stall an attempt to get an opponent on the November ballot.  First of all, this is an example of why crossfiling should be banned once and for all.  Second, Abel Maldonado is a snake and I can now see why Don Perata would knock on doors for him.  Apparently, neither of them have much interest in the democratic process.

• Arnold thinks the legalization of gender-neutral marriage will be a boost to the sluggish economy, but I hope he’s not basing his entire budget on a sharp uptick in gay weddings.  I mean, there are only so many Mr. Sulus rich enough to have that surge register more than a blip.  By the way, good for Mr. Sulu.  And good for Ellen DeGeneres for telling Straight Talk Express where to shove it.

• Speaking of John W. McCain, he’s in California today.  Nobody show him the PPIC numbers!

• Lucas mentioned this, but Darrell Issa got in the middle of a heated exchange between Henry Waxman and EPA Adminstrator Stephen Johnson over the EPA’s breaking the Clean Air Act.  Emptywheel has video:

• Why Fabian Nuñez is claiming racial bias at this late date over questions about his travel practices is completely beyond me.  And he’s taken to Spanish-language television for these accusations to stoke divisiveness in the Latino community, too.  It’s so counterproductive, as well as misleading.

• Speaking of Spanish-speaking media, this is an older story, but it’s fascinating to me that the Spanish-language channels in LA are so much more substantive than the English-language ones, featuring longer, “more deeply reported” pieces.

• We could see a settlement very shortly on prison overcrowding in the state which would not require early release.  There are some decent components to this deal, but it basically gives everyone three more years to clean up their act, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it just puts us in the same siutation come 2011.  The policies needed are well-known; the political will remains elusive.

• The Bay Area AQMD passed a carbon tax for businesses that emit greenhouse gases.  It’s “not enough to change behavior,” one expert said, but it does presage what may be coming down the pike for polluters.  Whether you get there through selling carbon permits at auction or with a tax, the bottom line is that pollution is going to cost enough money to alter business’ approach to engaging in it.  This is a good step.

• Interesting that we denied the endorsement to Rep. Laura Richardson (CA-37) on the same day that she is forced to defend herself against allegations that she walked away from her foreclosed home in Sacramento.  It sounds like the Congresswoman renegotiated the loan, but the conservative fever swamps are all over this one (check the comments in that LAT blog post).  She did buy the half-million-dollar home with no money down, and then left Sacramento almost immediately after winning election to fill the open seat in Congress.

The latest PPIC poll, a pretty decent one in California, has Barack Obama leading John McCain by 17 points, 54-37.  It’s a large sample size including 2003 Californians and 1086 likely voters, so it’s a fairly robust poll amongst age groups and ethnicities.  And if this data point is correct, Barack Obama looks VERY strong for November.

According to the poll, Obama leads McCain among Hispanics 69-20.

That’s a “game over” type of number if it holds.

Cast your memory back to the February primaries, and you may remember that Obama’s problem area was not white working-class voters, as they have been so eloquently called, but Hispanics.  Much ink was spilled over how Obama couldn’t connect with them, how there was all this antipathy between the black and brown communities, and it did manifest itself in the voting, at least in California.  Hillary Clinton cleaned up in the heavily Hispanic areas in Southern California.  In fact, it made up very nearly all of her delegate and popular vote win in the state.  She had the backing of the Latino establishment and worked them extremely hard to get out the vote, which they did in big numbers.

I don’t think anybody expected Obama to rebound among these voters this strongly, this soon.  But his favorables among Hispanics are right in line with his share of the vote over McCain, at 69%.

It’s one poll and it’s one data point.  But extrapolate it out.  The legendary figure is that Hispanics voted 44% for Bush in 2004.  That’s probably not true – it was probably around 39%.  However, that’s substantially larger than 20% – and remember that Bush only won by 3 points, and Hispanic voters may be a slightly higher share of the electorate this year.

Again, it’s one point in one poll, but if California’s Hispanics voted at similar rates to the rest of the country’s, then Colorado would be done, New Mexico would be done, Nevada would be close to done, Arizona would be in play, Texas would be in play, North Carolina and Georgia (with growing Hispanic regions) would be in play… you get the picture.  Rove’s “permanent Republican majority” relied on chipping away at a chunk of Hispanic voters while maintaining the white vote and building the coalition.  The fearmongering and demagoguery over immigration reform, even though McCain nominally supported it (until the primary), has tarnished the Republican brand significantly among this subgroup.  There’s no other explanation for these numbers.

If John McCain gets 20-25% of the Hispanic vote he can’t win the election.  The highest that Kerry ever polled among Hispanics was 59-31.  This is ten points below what Obama’s polling in California.  This is a bigger lead than Democrats had in 2006 among Hispanics.

I think it’s kind of a big deal.

Tomorrow, John McCain will be jetting into Stockton, California, the foreclosure capitol of the US. But don’t worry. McCain’s not going there to meet with middle-class Americans who face the loss of their homes. Instead, he’ll be there for a big-buck fundraiser to be hosted by billionaire developer Alex Spanos. Spanos is perhaps Stockton’s best-known resident and a major donor to Republican causes ($8.1 million in 2003-04).

Hank Shaw of the Stockton Record gives us the lowdown on the Republican Central Valley aristocracy who will be in attendance at the gala:

The new news is that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will be at the party, too, as will a who’s who of local Reeps. Congressional candidate Dean Andal will be there, as will his employer Gerry Kamilos. Andal hopes to beat Rep. Jerry McNerney this year, and the man Jerry ousted — former Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy — is supposed to appear at casa de Spanos, too.

Other luminaries:

• Pat & John Quinn (supermaket moguls)
• Bah-zillionire investor John Calamos
• Shopping center tycoon and Scooter Libby fan Mel Sembler
• Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian
• State Sen. Jeff Denham
• Assemblyman Alan Nakanishi
• Local political consultant Don Parsons
• Claudia and Greg Pruett of the tomato processing plant Vaquero Farms
• Former California GOP chief Bob Naylor

…and a cast of thousands. The hootenany start at $1,000 a head, payable to “MaCain Victory California,” which is presumably the Arizona senator’s state fund. But it’ll raise lots and lots more, because — at least in theory — 13 “co-chairs” have agreed to raise at least $25,000 for McCain (that’s $325,000) plus 24 who have (again, in theory) promised to raise at least $10,000, adding another $240,000.

McCain is scheduled to arrive via private jet at the Spanos Jet Center at 4:00, attend another event, and then arrive at the Spanos residence for the 5:30 fete. As he travels around Stockton before arriving at the Spanos estate, though, McCain will be driving through a city that has for the last year been consistently ranked as the foreclosure capitol of the United States. With 8,376 homes currently in foreclosure, one in every 27 people in Stockton (pop. 290,000) has faced the loss of their home since the sub-prime mortgage meltdown began last year. The problem is so widespread that the City of Stockton has a special page on its website giving advice to its residents who face foreclosure:

Somehow, though, I’m guessing that McCain won’t be touring the parts of Stockton that look like this:

He just might, however, pass by one of the three (!) buses that are operated by the entrepreneurs at Stockton’s RepoHomeTour.com.

And you know, it’s really too bad that McCain will be seeing Stockton from the back seat of a limo and not from the inside of one of the Repo Home Tour buses. Maybe if he got out and mingled with the non-billionaires a little more regularly, he would be just a tad more sensitive to the problems that face real people. Instead, just two months ago, McCain scoffed at the idea of government relief for homeowners facing foreclosure.

Republican John McCain on Tuesday derided government intervention to save and reward banks or small borrowers who behave irresponsibly though he offered few immediate alternatives to fixing the country’s growing housing crisis.[…]

“I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers,” McCain said.

The same article went on to give the Democratic response to McCain’s laissez-faire attitude:

Democrats accused McCain of lacking the skills needed to lead a country on the brink of recession.

“Instead of offering a concrete plan to address the crisis at all levels, McCain promised to take the same hands-off approach that President Bush used to lead us into this crisis,” Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said in a statement.

It’s clear that McCain and the elite guests who will be hobnobbing at the Spanos estate don’t have any problem with that hands-off approach. And they certainly don’t have any difficulty in averting their eyes from the crisis that surrounds them. After all, what’s the matter with all those irresponsible people in Stockton? Why can’t they just eat cake?

Penny

Online Organizing Director

California Democratic Party

That’s the claim from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, which has a study showing how the gas tax cut will affect jobs in each state.

The assumption the AR&BTA is using is that the tax cut would blow a $9 billion hole in the federal transportation budget. Based on FY 07-08 expenditures CA’s share of that would be $664,406,924. The association then estimates that 23,107 jobs would be lost here in California – roughly equivalent to the proposed school layoffs – over the next three years.

No wonder then that local transportation agencies across the state are denouncing this foolish proposal. From Santa Cruz:

“It would deplete an already oversubscribed highway trust fund, making a bad situation worse,” commission Executive Director George Dondero said. “We’re trying to get the government to generate more money for transportation, not less.”

Dondero said he didn’t know how much the county could lose, just that “future projects would have to wait.”

Critics of the gas-tax break, including Clinton opponent Barack Obama, say it would have little impact on consumers, saving the average driver an estimated $30 over the course of the summer, and instead create a $10 billion gap in the federal highway trust fund, used for highway construction and maintenance.

Calling the proposal an “election pandering” tactic, commissioner and county Supervisor Ellen Pirie said it would benefit oil companies.

“There will be a lot of harm in terms of infrastructure projects and maintenance people want taken care of,” Pirie said. “It would be great if there were a way to reduce the price of gas. I know a lot of people are struggling with this, but I don’t think [the tax break] is an effective way to do this.”

Thanks to Daily Kos diarist Jimmy Crackcorn you can see just how much this pander will be worth to you with an online calculator. Plugging in my expected summer driving (75 mi per week) and car mileage (33 mpg) I get…$16!

Wow. A whopping $16. That’s maybe a dollar a week. And at the low, low cost of 23,107 jobs in our state during a recession and stalled transportation projects that if completed would help drivers save on gas for years to come. Of course, the lost jobs have a ripple effect on both state budgets (lost income tax revenue, lost sales tax revenue) and the state economy.

The real solution is, as I explained at my high speed rail blog last night, investment in things like trains. Thank god someone in this race is talking about that:

The irony is with the gas prices what they are, we should be expanding rail service. One of the things I have been talking bout for awhile is high speed rail connecting all of these Midwest cities — Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis. They are not that far away from each other. Because of how big of a hassle airlines are now. There are a lot of people if they had the choice, it takes you just about as much time if you had high speed rail to go the airport, park, take your shoes off.

This is something that we should be talking about a lot more. We are going to be having a lot of conversations this summer about gas prices. And it is a perfect time to start talk about why we don’t have better rail service. We are the only advanced country in the world that doesn’t have high speed rail. We just don’t have it. And it works on the Northeast corridor. They would rather go from New York to Washington by train than they would by plane. It is a lot more reliable and it is a good way for us to start reducing how much gas we are using. It is a good story to tell.

That was Barack Obama, giving impromptu remarks to an Indiana couple a few days ago.

John W. McCain has set up a series of “regional campaign managers” who will oversee the campaign throughout the country.  Take a look at the guy they got for California.

John McCain’s campaign has tapped John Peschong to serve as regional campaign manager for California, Republicans close to the campaign said.

Peschong has been a campaign adviser since 2007. He has a large amount of experience in California, having served as GOP executive director there in the 1990s and recently as Northwestern political director for the Republican National Committee in 2004. He was also executive director of Dan Quayle’s political action committee.

So, he helped run the Yacht Party during the Wilson and post-Wilson years just when it ran aground and became the sorry shell it is today.  He was Northwestern political director for the RNC in a year where Republicans lost the swing states in the Pacific Northwest and lost the governorships in Washington and Oregon.  And he was executive director for QUAYLE’s PAC.

Top-notch talent coming out for McCain in California.

Speaking on behalf of John McCain, our our Governor dropped a bombshell:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says that if an initiative to ban gay marriage qualifies for the November ballot, he’s prepared to fight it.

[…]

Schwarzenegger said he was confident a ban would never pass in California and called the effort “a waste of time.”

Welcome aboard, Governor.

UPDATE (by Dave): The LAT has this too.  Notice of course who he was speaking to.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says if an initiative to ban gay marriage qualifies for the November ballot, he’s prepared to fight it.

California’s governor was in San Diego today speaking at the annual convention of the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s largest gay Republican group.

Schwarzenegger said he was confident that a ban would never pass in California but called the effort “a waste of time” — joking that he wished activists would focus on allowing naturalized citizens to run for president instead.

Arnold, of course, has vetoed bills legalizing gay marriage on two occasions.