There actually are some things going on outside the primaries, here’s what’s piqued my interest the past few days:

• Matt Stoller has more on the Barbara Boxer/climate change bill debacle.  What hurts the most is that she shut down any debate on the left flank, called progressive groups like Friends of the Earth “defeatists,” and pressed forward with a muddled bill that rewards polluting industries without doing the work necessary to provide pushback from the inevitable corporate-funded conservative narratives.  I wish she’d just pull it before she causes lasting damage; we’d be in a much better position next year to get something legitimate passed.

• Here’s a very good profile in The Nation of almost-a-Congressional candidate Lawrence Lessig and his “Change Congress” movement.  I’m kind of waiting for the innovative steps to get this done, but Lessig is a sharp guy.  He’s giving the keynote address at Netroots Nation next month.

• There’s an LA Times exploration of the various health care-related bills moving through the legislature.  They’re all fairly small-bore but I think they will improve the situation out here, by eliminating rescission, mandating that insurers spend 85% of premium revenue on treatment, and including more procedures in baseline coverage, like maternity.  As long as we have the insurance system, we need to do what we can to make sure it’s not as thieving as possible.

• There’s a new Field Poll on Arnold and the legislature out today that is a cavalcade of bad news – the right track/wrong track numbers are 22/68, the Governor’s approval rating is down to 41%, and the legislature is at 30%.  Californians don’t like their government right now.  Some leadership might solve the problem.

• The salmon are dying in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta because of ammonia runoff from sewage treatment plants, and purifying the Delta could cost up to $1 billion.

• Here’s another personal story of how the foreclosure crisis is hurting individuals, this one in the Central Valley town of Merced.  It’s impacting practically the entire economy of the town.  Just another example of the mess we’re in from over-speculation and lax oversight of the financial industry.  

Here are a few tidbits on this GOTV weekend!

• Obviously everyone is going to be working hard for their causes and candidates, so it may be a little quiet around here.  I’ll be out walking all day tomorrow.  Oh, and don’t vote for the racist guy, Bill Johnson, as a Judge of the Superior Court (Office number 125) in LA County.

• Yesterday was the deadline for bills to get passed out of their chamber of origin, and the Assembly passed major subprime mortgage legislation, without help from Republicans (6 of them abstained despite being seated right in the chamber).  This bill has some good homeowner assistance elements that will allow people to restructure their financing before foreclosure.  A mortgage bill has also passed the State Senate, so some form of legislation will hopefully get to the governor post haste.

• One of the biggest problems with the housing crisis is that, as home sale prices lower, homeowners are reassessing their value and getting their property tax lowered, decreasing state revenue yet more.

• Sticking in the shiv before riding off into the sunset, Fabian Nuñez writes a puzzling op-ed in the Sacramento Bee approving of the Governor’s horrible idea to borrow against future lottery revenue.  Considering that the only sustainable solution to the permanent crisis mode that we have in our budget is to reorganize the tax structure instead of constantly borrowing, I have no idea why any Democrat would veer so far off message and undermine the new Speaker’s ability to move forward.  What’s more, lotteries are regressive taxes on the poor.

• One spot where there will be a lot of action on Tuesday is in Ventura County, where Democrats now outnumber Republicans and which could have contested elections in the Assembly, Senate and US Congress.  However, the LA Times shows its political acumen by writing:

One of the more closely watched contests on Tuesday will be the Democratic primary in the 24th Congressional District. Insurance agent Mary Pallant of Oak Park; Marta Jorgensen, a Solvang educator; and Oxnard businesswoman Jill Martinez are running.

Marta Jorgensen quit the race over a month ago and endorsed Martinez.  Way to go, LAT.

• Excellent news out of Los Angeles: there’s been a $1 million dollar settlement with Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center for their dumping homeless patients on Skid Row.  They will also be monitored by a US Attorney for five years.  This unethical practice has reached a reasonable conclusion.  Hollywood Presbyterian deserved punishment.

• Trying to get rid of marijuana grow houses in Arcata is like trying to get rid of the Pacific Ocean on the California coast.

Enjoy!

Here are a few things I never got around to this week:

• Democratic Senators are asking for a real plan from Gov. Schwarzenegger about how to solve the prison crisis.  AB 900 passed a year ago with the promise of building thousands more beds to address prison overcrowding.  To date not one construction project has begun.  This is a complete shell game, and the courts are likely to act immediately in the face of such incompetence.  Just another reason why trying to build our way out of this problem was such a stupid idea.

• Not only did immigrant’s rights advocates rally in Los Angeles today, they were joined by businesses who want an end to workplace raids.  I actually believe in workplace enforcement to an extent, but business can be a powerful ally in reaching toward a comprehensive solution.  The crowd was smaller this year but I think there’s a more robust coalition for a breakthrough.  Voter mobilization is going to be the key.

• Others have mentioned the new poll numbers on taxes and schools, but I’ll say this – decades of anti-tax rhetoric has succeeded in dislodging the relationship between taxes and services.  People want education and other services to be funded but don’t want to pay for it.  The only way to restore that relationship is to… restore that relationship, by specifically explaining how America is worth paying for and turning the whole issue on its head.  Not a huge revelation, but thought I’d throw it out.

• Home prices continue to fall in LA and Orange County, and foreclosures continue to wreak havoc on the state’s homeowners, including Jose Canseco.

• I thought this was the most interesting study of the week:

It’s often said, “You are what you eat,” but new research suggests that where you eat may have a lot to do with it, as well.

In communities with an abundance of fast-food outlets and convenience stores, researchers have found, obesity and diabetes rates are much higher than in areas where fresh fruit and vegetable markets and full-service grocery stores are easily accessible.

“The implications are really dramatic,” said Harold Goldstein, a study author and executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, based in Davis. “We are living in a junk-food jungle, and not surprisingly, we are seeing rising rates of obesity and diabetes.”

Intuitive, and it’s a chicken-or-the-egg argument.  Convenience stores and fast-food outlets move to neighborhoods where people are more likely to only be able to afford convenience stores and fast food.  However, the researchers claim this holds across socioeconomic strata.  “Food environment” is something we have to think about.  Education would seem to be the key,

• Forgot to link George Skelton’s article on the potential for competing redistricting measures on the ballot.  My position on redistricting is well-known.  Skelton does segue into initiative reform, which is sorely needed.

Yes, it’s a new record!

Sinking home values and the collapse of flimsy mortgages sent a record number of California homes into the foreclosure process in the first three months of this year, a real estate information service reported today.

Default notices — the first stage of foreclosure — were sent to owners of 110,000 California homes from January to March, about 1% of the homes in the state, according to La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems. Default notices were up 143% from the same quarter a year ago.

Most California homeowners in default are now eventually forfeiting their properties to lenders. Only about 32% of those receiving default notices prevent foreclosure by refinancing or selling their property to pay off their mortgages, DataQuick reported. A year ago, 52% of those in default were able to avoid foreclosure.

If you read between the lines here, the implication is that around 70,000 families are in the process of losing their homes.  In the first quarter 47,000 additional families had their homes repossessed, which is a 400% year-over-year increase.

This is hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s getting to be a significant percentage of the state’s population.  And the federal government is dragging their feet looking for a solution.  And the state can do little beyond stopgap measures.

This is why the budget projections are ballooning.

Statewide foreclosures in California hit the 24,000 mark in the third quarter of 2007 for the first time ever.  In fact, it beat the previous record by 39%.  Nationally, there are almost 18 million vacant homes, and the homeownership rate, often touted by the Bush Administration as proof of economic success, fell for the fourth straight quarter.  What’s really concerning are the foreclosures in upper-income areas:

In four Newport Beach-area ZIP Codes, for example, there were 11 foreclosures in the third quarter, up from just three in the same period last year. There were seven foreclosures in Bel-Air, and none a year ago.

“It’s definitely increasing,” said Joyce Essex, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent based in Beverly Hills who specializes in selling foreclosed homes.

Essex said most of her properties were in the San Fernando Valley and South Los Angeles, but about 10% of her listings are now in a more affluent part of town.

“It’s working its way to the Westside. The Westside is always last to get hit,” Essex said of the foreclosure wave, based on her experience in the 1990s downturn.

The mortgage crisis is finally catching up to those who live hand-to-mouth on a higher level.  The millions who used home equity loans to finance their lifestyle, pulling money out of their properties over and over again, now have no ability to continue the scheme.  And this is just the beginning.  Millions of variable-rate mortgages will reset to a higher rate, in some cases doubling the payment, in the next 2 years.  That will mean more foreclosures, a sapping of housing wealth, and a real impact on state finances:

More than $23.6 billion in California housing wealth will evaporate if real estate prices continue to decline and foreclosures on subprime home loans soar, according to a new congressional report that indicates the fallout from the national mortgage crisis is worsening.

In addition, over the next two years, the state will lose nearly $111 million in tax revenue from the forecast repossession of 191,000 homes and the spillover effect on neighboring property values, said the study, released Thursday by the Senate Joint Economic Committee.

“State by state, the economic costs from the subprime debacle are shockingly high,” committee Chairman Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement. “From New York to California, we are headed for billions in lost wealth, property values and tax revenues.”

And that’s actually a very optimistic scenario, plus it focuses only on tax revenues and not residual effects.  In a country where two-thirds of all economic activity is consumer spending, housing jitters will redound through the entire economy, with families cutting spending because they can no longer rely on their houses for retirement security.  And this isn’t temporary.

“It took Southern California 10 years to recover (from the last housing downturn), and it took the Bay Area six or seven years,” said Cynthia Kroll, senior regional economist at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at UC Berkeley. “That’s a very realistic expectation.”

This was all very predictable.  Everyone knew that subprime mortgages were a risky asset on which to rest the entire economy.  But it was easy money, particularly for those financial institutions making cash in mortgage-backed securities, so they allowed it.

There is pending legislation in the House Financial Services Committee that would help protect consumers against predatory lending, and other bills would allow Fannie Mae to buy a bunch of mortgages and give homeowners a chance to stay in their homes.  Hopefully, the market has gotten so bad that legislation like this will have a chance to pass.  Otherwise, California and the nation will have a very tough road ahead, impacting the ability to improve people’s lives in education, health care, and practically everything government does.