I don’t think that’s the message Fran Pavley wanted to convey in this mailer (PDF), but that’s pretty much what I’m getting out of it.  The front page is a polar bear standing on a lonely block of ice after much of it has fallen away into the sea, looking forlorn.  Accompanying the picture is the text “Save a Polar Bear, Vote Carbon Free For Fran Pavley.”  The inside of the mailer explains why; Pavley is an environmental leader, and fighting global warming will help save the polar bears, the reasoning goes.

Now, I’ve already explained once why this carbon-free voting idea is kind of a joke, particularly when it’s being conveyed to the public by using multiple full-color mailers.  I know from my mailbox that Pavley has been far more aggressive in direct mail than her opponent Lloyd Levine.  The new information in this mailer is that Pavley’s campaign has “purchased carbon offsets to cover every vote-by-mail ballot in the 23rd Senate district,” but I’m not getting what the metric is.  Does that cover the ballots?  The constant stream of mailers?  The carbon used by the post office to deliver the ballots?  Does it cover the fact that carbon offsets are kind of an environmental shell game that assuages liberal guilt without taking the meaningful steps needed to reduce our carbon output?

Kind of unclear from this mailer.

UPDATE by Brian: I believe this is actually an Independent Expenditure by EdVoice with the mailing address of a law firm up in Marin. I’m not totally sure what EdVoice, an education group is doing sending out environmental mail, but let’s just go with it.

Post-Pennsylvania and… well, nothing much different actually.  But next time, for sure!  Meanwhile, here are some California-centric notes:

• The California School Employees Association made their endorsements for the June primary.  In addition to Migden, they strike of an aversion to go out on a limb.  They only endorsed one Congressional candidate in a Republican-held seat (Charlie Brown), and they opted out of a lot of contested primaries in the legislative seats as well.  Manuel Perez did get the endorsement in the 80th AD, however (he is a school board member, so not a big shock).

• We don’t get into a lot of rural issues on the site, probably because of the bias toward writers here in urban environments.  But this salmon fishing ban is a big deal along the Mendocino coast.  This actually goes back to the Klamath fish kill in the beginning of the decade and Darth Cheney’s efforts to ensure that.  I think there are going to be a lot of angry fishermen wanting answers this fall.

• I keep forgetting to write about the State Senate primary in my own backyard of SD-23, between Fran Pavley  and Lloyd Levine.  Here’s some background on the race to succeed Sheila Kuehl.  I actually attended an environmental forum with these two last week and found them both to be really solid, with different strengths.  While Pavley is an astonishingly effective lawmaker – she probably has her name on more far-reaching climate change legislation than anyone in the entire country – Levine really seems to understand the nature of the fight in Sacramento and how best to bring about sweeping change.  I’m not going to be disappointed on June 3, regardless of the winner.  We’re hoping to get both Pavley and Levine on a future Calitics Radio show.

• Here’s a user-created video of our debate protest at ABC last week.  We have our own video set for release as well.

• Adam Liptak in The New York Times today: “The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.”

Yet we must remain “tough on crime,” even though rises and falls in the crime rate are not correlative to imprisoning people (Canada’s rate goes up and down roughly at the same time ours does, without a corresponding increase in the prison population).

• John Yoo won’t talk to the House Judiciary Committee but it’s really not his fault, you see:

In a letter, Yoo’s lawyer told Conyers he was “not authorized” by DOJ to discuss internal deliberations.

“We have been expressly advised by the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice that Professor Yoo is not authorized to discuss before your Committee any specific deliberative communications, including the substance of comments on opinions or policy questions, or the confidential predecisional advice, recommendations or other positions taken by individuals or entities of the Executive Branch,” Yoo’s lawyer, John C. Millian, wrote in a letter to Conyers.

As we all know, the executive branch can ignore subpoenas and prevent Congressional oversight.  Why, Yoo wrote it in a memo!  But he can’t discuss it.  Because the executive branch follows the law.  That he wrote.

Round and round we go…

I got this mailer today:

Apparently, voting by mail is “carbon-free”!  And to prove that point, the carbon-free voting people have sent me a four-page glossy mailer to tell me so.  But it’s printed on soy ink!  And if you vote permanent absentee, you don’t have to get in your car to get to your polling place!  And anyway, they puchased carbon offsets to mitigate these campaign activities!

So what the hell is going on here?  Why is an environmental group sending a mailer touting “carbon-free voting,” which, um, pretty much doesn’t exist?  Well, that would be explained by the picture of Fran Pavley on the back.

Now, Fran’s great.  As Assemblywoman she authored the landmark global warming law that will hopefully become a model for the nation, AB32.  But she’s also running for State Senate to replace the termed-out Sheila Kuehl, and obviously she’s interested in raising her profile.  So everyone in the Senate district, my district, got this mailer.  The LA Times ran a story on it.

The mailer is being derided by some, while others are questioning whether it is improperly trying to influence a state Senate election in the West L.A. area by prominently featuring one of the candidates, former Assemblywoman Fran Pavley.

“It looks dubious,” said Tracy Westen, chief executive of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles-based non-partisan group that promotes political reform in Los Angeles. “It’s coordinated with her, it has her picture on it and it is going into that Senate district.”

Her main foe in the race, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, wouldn’t comment for the story.

There are about 500 good reasons for vote-by-mail, and since Republicans kind of have a head start on permanent absentee organization I’m happy to see someone on the left promoting it.  But calling it “carbon-free” is a stretch.  And using it as a cover to tout a Senate candidate is pretty suspect.