So we raised nearly $3,000 in about two days, and combined with our $2,500 in matching funds we contributed around $5,500 to five great candidates: Charlie Brown (CA-04), Debbie Cook (CA-46), Hannah-Beth Jackson (SD-19), Alyson Huber (AD-10), and Manuel Perez (AD-80).

Great work, everyone.  Thanks so much for participating.  You rock.

OK, we’re over $2,600, but we still need to get $500 per candidate to reach our matching goal.  Thanks so much, everyone.  If you want great Democrats like Hilda Solis in Washington and in Sacramento, please do what you can to help us out.

Thanks.

Calitics Match ActBlue page

California needs more progressives in DC – contribute to the Calitics Match to make it happen!

While the traditional media is focusing on the spat between the House Republicans and Nancy Pelosi, credit also goes to progressive Democrats who refused to go along with a huge giveaway to Wall Street that lacked accountability and repayment guarantees. Some of them have given statements explaining their votes.

Hilda Solis:

Today, I voted against H.R. 3997, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA), compromise legislation to bailout financial institutions saddled with large debts. I am very concerned about the credit crisis created by the housing market meltdown and while I appreciate efforts of the Democratic leadership to work in a bipartisan fashion to improve the Bush Administration’s proposal, this legislation lacks needed taxpayer protections and assistance for Main Street families like those in the Congressional District I represent.

“I cannot in good conscience, vote for legislation that gives $700 billion to the same firms that helped cause the current financial crisis through irresponsible lending without providing meaningful help for homeowners who are in danger of foreclosure. In the 32nd Congressional District, housing foreclosures have nearly tripled in the past few months, with over 2,300 homeowners currently going through the foreclosure process. The impact of such widespread foreclosures on our local economy and community is devastating.

“Unfortunately, this legislation will not help the families who are stretching paychecks and trying to hold onto jobs without additional steps to stabilize our housing market. It lacks needed reform of bankruptcy laws to allow consumers to renegotiate the terms of their mortgage in bankruptcy courts to help keep their homes. Homeowners on Main Streets should have the same rights to renegotiate their loans, especially those for their primary residence, as Wall Street.

Pete Stark:

President Bush tells us that we face unparalleled financial doom if this $700 billion bailout is not approved today.  He and his Treasury Secretary – a former Wall Street fat cat – tell us that we have reached the point of “crisis.” That is a familiar line from this President.  It sounds like the disastrous rush to war in Iraq and the subsequent stampede to enact the Patriot Act.   As I opposed the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, I stand in opposition to his latest rush to judgment.

“We are not in a sudden crisis.  It has been building over the past 8 years of the Bush Administration. Lax oversight of the financial industry ballooned into a house of cards….

“The bill before us today is basically the same three-page Wall Street give away first put forth by President Bush.  The fig leaf adjustments are not enough to outweigh the fact that no one knows if this bill is what’s needed.  I’m not willing to make a $700 billion gamble that President Bush is right after 8 years of seeing all that he’s done wrong.

Matt Stoller has the progressive bailout plan authored by Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey, which I blogged about a few days ago. The key points of their plan:

• A 0.25% tax on all stock trades and “exotic transactions” such as derivatives trading as a kind of “progressive PAYGO” to ensure that the taxpayers won’t be paying the costs of the bailout.
• Equity shares in any companies that benefit from the bailout
• “Major bankruptcy reform” including homeowner renegotiation of mortgages. Obama undercut progressives on this when he said bankruptcy reform didn’t need to be part of the package, perhaps a telltale sign of how unprogressive an Obama administration might be. But it’s still a necessary part of any financial solution.
• A detailed list of new regulations to protect consumers and provide more stable, responsible regulation of the financial industry to prevent a recurrence of this crisis.

If we want to ensure that we have more and better Democrats to push progressive economic policy in the Congress next year, we need to help them win this November. Join our Calitics Match and help send Charlie Brown and Debbie Cook to Congress, and Hannah Beth Jackson, Manuel Perez and Alyson Huber to Sacramento.

UPDATE by Dave: On the flip, a list of the ayes and nays among out Congressional delegation.

Democrats:

Aye

Berman, Capps, Cardoza, Costa, Davis, Eshoo, Farr, Harman, Honda, Lofgren, Matsui, McNerney, George Miller, Pelosi, Richardson, Speier, Tauscher, Waters, Waxman

No

Baca, Becerra, Filner, Lee, Napolitano, Roybal-Allard, Linda Sanchez, Loretta Sanchez, Schiff, Sherman, Solis, Stark, Thompson, Watson, Woolsey

There’s almost no rhyme or reason to this.  The CW is that No was an easier vote in close races, but the only close race on the Dem side in California, Jerry McNerney, resulted in a yes vote.  You have progressives on both sides of this.  You have Bush Dogs on both sides (Costa and Baca, for example).

Republicans

Aye

Bono Mack, Calvert, Campbell, Dreier, Herger, Lewis, Lungren, McKeon, Gary Miller, Radanovich

No

Bilbray, Doolittle, Gallegly, Hunter, Issa, McCarthy, Nunes, Rohrabacher, Royce

Paging Russ Warner… this is a gift for you.  Dan Lungren and Mary Bono Mack might have some trouble, too.  At the same time, depending on the short-term economic circumstances, this could rebound back on those intransigent Republicans.  So the political fallout is completely unclear to me.

To give to Debbie’s campaign, donate at the calitics ActBlue page and your donation will be matched (up to $500.)  

Truth to Power is something many of us have been attempting to speak out about and those Democrats who are running this year are leading this charge.  My favorite Democratic Candidate for Congress is Debbie Cook, the recipient of the “Truth To Power” award and well deserving of such an honor.

OC Weekly

Sacramento–Democratic Nominee for Congress Debbie Cook (CA-46) was honored today with the Roscoe Bartlett “Speaking Truth To Power” Award at the ASPO-USA Conference in Sacramento.

Randy Udall, an ASPO-USA (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) board member, announced the award at the conference on Tuesday afternoon, citing Cook’s willingness to talk frankly about energy issues.

“We honored her for her courage, for speaking honestly about energy realities and for promoting an energy program that makes sense,” said Udall, who is the director

of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE), a nonprofit organization in Colorado that promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Cook, the mayor of Huntington Beach, is a nationally recognized leader on energy, and also a board member of ASPO-USA. She was instrumental in bringing the conference to California for the first time. The conference ends Tuesday evening.

The award was named in honor of Republican Representative Roscoe Bartlett (MD-6), who leads the effort in Congress for an energy policy based on the challenges of peak oil.

Debbie Cook for Congress

Debbie Cook has been speaking out for decades now on behalf of our local environmental issues as an advocate and then as Mayor of Huntington Beach.  I admire the things she’s done and why she’s running for Congress.  If the local Democrats won’t support her, then the netroots needs to step up and support this amazing candidate.

Although Cook has hosted dozens of small fund-raising parties and began airing her first campaign commercial on local cable networks this week, she’s running low on cash. And while her fellow Democrats consider her to be a qualified and impressive candidate, she isn’t viewed as a serious enough challenge by Democratic fund-raisers to earn priority support in the party’s “Red to Blue” or “Emerging Races” cash-infusion programs.

But Cook isn’t worried. “We’re not really counting on getting a lot of money from anyone,” she says. “I know I’m an unlikely candidate. I’m not doing this for the retirement package, which I’m told [Rohrabacher] enjoys. I don’t have a burning desire to be in Congress. I have a burning desire to make a difference.”

Her fight to defeat Rohrabacher, she insists, is simply a measure of her frustration with his aloofness to his own constituents and his legendary antipathy to everything she stands for: preservation of local habitats, “sensible development” that protects resources and a commitment to finding “sustainable sources of energy” to replace fossil fuels. She’s infuriated by Rohrabacher’s public statement that global warming is a “hoax” and his sarcastic speculation that global warming 55 million years ago was caused by “dinosaur flatulence.”

Debbie Cook has already made a tremendous difference for the local environment by helping spearhead the effort to save the Bolsa Chica Wetlands and she’s proven that Democrats can be sensible and fiscally responsible as the two term mayor of Huntington Beach.   This is exactly who we need in Congress and even though I’m helping my husband run for State Senate, I want to help Debbie Cook as well by writing about her fight, her passion and her amazing intellect.  I’ve met her, I’ve heard her speak in person, she is the real deal here people.  Please, lets support this amazing progressive.

Debbie Cook also released a statement about this bailout plan on Monday, that’s right.  MONDAY.  Here is what she had to say about the proposed bailout.

“We must take action to keep our whole economy from collapsing. But if the plan by the Treasury which has leaked out today is genuine, then it’s unclear if the plan will work at all.

   “Add in a massive transfer of authority to the executive branch, with no congressional oversight or judicial review, and this plan should be dead on arrival.

   “Handing over taxpayer money to the government with no oversight is always a bad idea and it’s especially rotten given the current administration’s track record.”

Call your representatives today and tell them to stop this blank check.

Calitics

And here is more from the tremendously thorough article at the OC Weekly.

“New airports are not the solution,” she says. “Look at the price of gas; airlines are going out of business. We need mass transportation, light rail, not toll roads. We can only solve these things when we work together: water, runoff, transportation, air quality and the port [of Long Beach]. That huge red plume from the port sits over Huntington Beach. We’re impacted by all that bad air.”

Through SCAG, Cook opposed building a commercial airport at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, as well as a desalination plant slated to operate as an appendage of the aging AES Huntington Beach Generating Station. “One of the things I learned is what a boondoggle ocean desalination is,” she says. “The energy intensity is unbelievable. It can’t be sustainable as energy prices go up.”

Cook’s interest in sustainable energy took her to a 2004 conference in Denver held by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, which argues that global oil production peaked in the 1970s and has been on a steady and inevitable decline ever since. The conference sealed her passion for lobbying for alternative sources of energy. “There is nothing more important to our society than energy,” she argues. “America will drill 50,000 wells this year alone. We drill 150 new wells every day. We are drilling like madmen, and it’s just a thimbleful of oil out there. But politicians don’t stay in office by telling the truth.”

Truth to Power, she’s speaks it for all of us, not just our district but the entire Country.  Please help Debbie Cook turn Red Orange County a little bit more Blue this November!

Democratic Nominee for Congress Debbie Cook (CA-46) was honored today with the Roscoe Bartlett “Speaking Truth To Power” Award at the ASPO-USA Conference in Sacramento.

Randy Udall, an ASPO-USA (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) board member, announced the award at the conference on Tuesday afternoon, citing Cook’s willingness to talk frankly about energy issues.

“We honored her for her courage, for speaking honestly about energy realities and for promoting an energy program that makes sense,” said Udall, who is the director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE), a nonprofit organization in Colorado that promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Cook, the mayor of Huntington Beach, is a nationally recognized leader on energy, and also a board member of ASPO-USA. She was instrumental in bringing the conference to California for the first time. The conference ends Tuesday evening.

The award was named in honor of Republican Representative Roscoe Bartlett (MD-6), who leads the effort in Congress for an energy policy based on the challenges of peak oil.

For more about Debbie Cook and energy, watch this interview with Talking Points Memo:

Or visit her website at http://www.debbiecookforcongre…

This is unexpected but welcome:

Democratic MEMBERS Meeting on Bailout Plan, TODAY, Room 2220, 2:30-3:30pm

From: The Honorable Brad Sherman

Date: 9/22/2008

Skeptical About the

Administration’s $700 Billion Bailout Plan?

Democratic Members Meeting

Room 2220

2:30-3:30 P.M.

Dear Democratic Colleague:

Are you skeptical about the $700 billion bailout bill?  Let’s meet in Room 2220 on Monday, September 22, 2008 at 2:30 PM.  Come to the first and perhaps only meeting of the Skeptics Caucus to discuss President Bush’s $700 billion bailout bill.  Democratic Members and Senior Staff only.

Bring specific legislative proposals.  I will be bringing legislative proposals to carry out the principles set forth in the letter below.  If you have questions about this meeting, please contact me or my Legislative Director and Counsel, Gary Goldberg, at xyz.

Sincerely,

Brad Sherman

Member of Congress

I would expect this out of a Barbara Lee or Maxine Waters, but coming from Sherman, this means that rank and file Democrats are very wary of getting steamrolled by the Bush Administration and let a major chunk of the Federal treasury flow out of their control.  Sherman is pretty middle-of-the-road as Democrats go, squarely in the mainstream of the party if not to the right of the mainstream, not a guy who’s out in front a lot and not (to my knowledge) a member of the Progressive Caucus.  I’ve met him a couple times out here in California and he seemed OK, but not exactly the guy I’d expect to go to war with.  If Sherman is marching (pardon the pun), there’s a very large skeptic’s caucus, I’d gather.  And Sherman’s prescriptions for a better bill (available at the link) are really good.

In the Quick Hits, I mentioned Debbie Cook’s statement from earlier:

“We must take action to keep our whole economy from collapsing. But if the plan by the Treasury which has leaked out today is genuine, then it’s unclear if the plan will work at all.

“Add in a massive transfer of authority to the executive branch, with no congressional oversight or judicial review, and this plan should be dead on arrival.

“Handing over taxpayer money to the government with no oversight is always a bad idea and it’s especially rotten given the current administration’s track record.”

And Rep. Hilda Solis, traveling with netroots favorite Annette Taddeo in South Florida, released a great statement as well, connecting this fiscal crisis to the effort to privatize Social Security:

“Three years ago, President Bush and rubberstamps in Congress like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen fought hard to privatize Social Security. From the floor of Congress, Ros-Lehtinen said that she “applauded the President for his strong leadership and vision” and that she wanted to “reform Social Security to include private accounts. Had George W. Bush and rubberstamps in Congress had their way, today’s financial crisis would be a full-blown emergency. Tens of millions of seniors around the country, including hundreds of thousands here in South Florida, would have lost their pensions overnight.”

It’s time for an “all-hands-on-deck” approach.  Call your Representatives and tell them you don’t want to give a blank check for $700 billion dollars to the guys who messed up Iraq and the response to Hurricane Katrina.

That one liner pretty much sums up the sentiment at the 2008 ASPO-USA Conference in Sacramento.

ASPO, for those who don’t know, is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. Once on the fringes, Peak Oil has shed much of its tin-foil-hat reputation, as T. Boone Pickens and Shell Oil have jumped on the bandwagon, and as world events, rising oil prices and the panic at the pump have focused more attention on the world’s growing energy crisis.

Peak Oil simply: there is a finite amount of oil in the ground and our capacity to produce it has peaked, leaving us with a declining supply of oil, while world demand becomes greater.

Still there are many who don’t acknowledge the reality of Peak Oil and what it means for our society and the world. Politicians fear the discussion because it means being visionary and most of them cannot see beyond the next election. Neither Presidential candidates’ energy plans address growing supply shortages.

That’s part of the reason why Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook is one of the best candidates Democrats have for Congress anywhere. She is willing to say what many won’t and she’s willing to lead where others fear to tread. Cook, the Democratic nominee for Congress(CA-46) is playing a leading role at the ASPO-USA conference, which began yesterday in Sacramento.

Cook, a member of the ASPO board of directors, was instrumental in bringing the annual conference to California for the first time, which brings together scientists, educators, and policy makers from around the world to plan for future energy constraints.

“Energy affects every aspect of our lives:  food production, transportation, land use patterns, and our economy.  Governments at all levels haven’t done enough to plan for an energy constrained world,” said Cook. “This conference is a chance to hear current energy data and trends from experts in government, industry, and research.”

From the beginning of her campaign, Cook has acknowledged that we must reduce our consumption to deal with the coming energy shocks as oil becomes less available.

On the first day of the conference on Sunday, speaker after speaker drove home the point that in the coming years, our country will face a crisis of monumental proportions. And that we are doing virtually nothing to deal with it.

Fortunately, people are starting to listen. A few local and state governments are beginning to plan for future energy constraints. But tons more work must be done.

ASPO-USA co-founder Dick Lawrence, who uttered the phrase “The revolution will not be LEED certified,” was making the point that our attempts at green building initiatives are only a small part of the massive preparation and changes we’ll need to face the future without oil.

A mini-report:

• CA-04: I love this video from the Charlie Brown campaign.  They traveled 412 miles down to Thousand Oaks to talk to constituents of California’s Alan Keyes, State Senator and professional office-chaser Tom McClintock.  It’s really funny and drives the point home that McClintock is a do-nothing at best and a dangerous radical at worst:

And get this, McClintock is now running on the state budget, the Republican version of which has a 19% approval rating.  That’s like putting Nixon, Bush and Cheney in your campaign ad.

• CA-26, CA-45: Not one but two!  Both Russ Warner AND Julie Bornstein have been added to the DCCC “Races To Watch” list.  This is a prelude to being listed as Red To Blue candidates.  If the D-Trip comes through with some money, maybe threatened incumbents like Dreier will have to stop mouthing off about other GOP races and start paying attention to their own. UPDATE: Mike Lumpkin (CA-52) is on that list now too, which is a pleasant surprise.

• CA-46: When John Fund tries to target a Dem challenger, you know something’s going wrong.  Fund is sounding the alarm on Debbie Cook, as Dana Rohrabacher tries to greenwash himself with a scheme to build solar-power plants on federal land without environmental impact studies.  Fund says that Cook called this “an extreme position,” but he chopped the quote:

Democratic challenger and Mayor of Huntington Beach Debbie Cook agrees that the process of approving solar power plants is sluggish and needs to be sped up, but not at the expense of the environment.

“This is just another extreme position by Dana Rohrabacher. What we need to do is come up with a balanced approach that streamlines these projects, because they’re critically important to our energy future, but at the same time recognizes the impacts to the environment,” Cook said.

Rohrabacher’s doing the equivalent of saying he’ll grow jobs by hiring 10,000 federally funded serial killers, and then wondering why everyone’s worried about the mass death (“You wanted jobs, didn’t you?”).  There’s a sensible way to free up the bottlenecks and a rash one.  Rohrabacher chose door #2.

• CA-42: The internal poll results released by Ed Chau are intriguing (showing him up 44-38 after a mix of positive and negative information released on the candidates), but I don’t think candidates who have minimal bank accounts should do polls stating the numbers after a mix of information if they don’t have the money to get that information out.  But if Gary Miller truly has a 28% re-elect number as the poll states, he could be in trouble.

I simply have not had the time to do a full update of all the Congressional and legislative campaigns.  And sadly, it doesn’t look like that time will be forthcoming soon.  So I think I’ll do mini-updates where possible.

• CA-46: Debbie Cook has been endorsed by DFA (Democracy for America).  Jim Dean, the Chair of DFA, said in a statement, “Debbie Cook has been a grassroots champion for over 20 years and has a proven record of success in the private sector and as a public servant … Debbie Cook is running because she’s a committed advocate and activist who fights for her constituents and delivers results.”

In the past, DFA has been able to move some resources into districts, so we’ll see if they’re going that route in this race.  DFA has also recently endorsed Bill Hedrick (CA-44).

• CA-26: Russ Warner’s campaign is announcing via email that the DCCC named his race as “one to watch.”  That doesn’t mean they’ll get any money, but it puts them in the queue if the race tightens.  Unfortunately, the DCCC has kind of a deliberate style, where they hoard their money for the races they know are toss-ups, and then wait until the very last minute for these emerging races, sometimes beyond the point at which that money can be effective.  I understand the strategy but it wouldn’t be smart from Warner’s perspective to bank on any help from Washington in his race against David Dreier.  He needs his own resources as well as money from California lawmaker’s PACs.

Which reminds me, California Democrats, it’s time to use it or lose it.  We have a number of races where the challenger can win if they have enough resources, and in the seats where an incumbent has token or no opposition and a huge war chest, that money should not be sitting in an account somewhere.  Help our own candidates!  Expect more pressure on this very soon.

• CA-03: It’s kind of fun watching Dan Lungren try to humina-humina his way out of supporting Prop. 8.  He really has no idea what he’s talking about.  It would be bad enough if a citizen of the state had this atrocious an understanding of basic civics, but this guy is not only a US Representative but a former state Attorney General!

• AD-80: The GOP tried to get Manuel Perez’ occupational status as an “educator” thrown off the ballot, but they failed.  Now he has received the endorsement of the highest-ranking law enforcement official in Imperial County, D.A. Gilbert Otero.  Considering that his opponent, Gary Jeandron, is the former police chief of Palm Springs, I’d consider this endorsement to be significant… UPDATE re: CMR, seems that Gary Jeandron supports “traditional marriage.”  In Palm Springs.  Now, so did Bonnie Garcia, but she was able to win enough in Imperial County to offset it.  Jeandron needs the Palm Springs vote to be huge to win.

I think he just lost, if he hadn’t already.