We have all come a long ways in the past three years since Calitics was founded and I moved out to California.  Nowhere is that more evident than Netroots Nation, where we as a community, a movement and a power source get together to  learn, inspire and build relationships.

I was just talking to Gina Cooper, who while exhausted was beaming, talking about being up on the stage with Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Gore.  One of my brother’s business partners and all around good guy Josh Koenig came up to say hi.  He has a good friend looking to volunteer for the No on Prop. 8, Equality for All campaign and asked if I could help point him in the right direction.  I’m my role as Online Director for the Courage Campaign I have been working with the campaign the past few months on their online outreach and know just who to tell him to talk to.

As soon as Josh, left Gina turned at me and simultaneously mocked and marveled that I said of course I knew just who Josh’s friend should talk to.  For when we first met a few years ago there was no way I would know the major players in a fight like that and was just another young politico looking for my opportunity to break.  I was an aspiring online organizer in a field that just barely was starting to exist.  And Gina, well, a few years ago she was a teacher in Tennesse and now was a leader up on the stage with Speaker Pelosi and VP Gore.

Years ago I would have been excited just to shake a politician’s hand.  This year Gavin Newsom is here trying to suck up to me.  And Debra Bowen greets me with a hug.  It is surreal, but wonderful.  And it is indicative of how our movement has grown.

These conventions are never about what is said on a panel.  It is all about the relationships we start and build with fellow bloggers, staffers and candidates in the halls, at the parties and in the lobby.  After three years I have friends I only see once or twice a year, but work with on a regular basis.  So that whenever some right-wingnut says something offensive on the radio, I know just who to talk to at Media Matters.  Or when we have a hot juicy story I know which Daily Kos front pager to email.  Or when I need to know when the Senate is in session I know which Hill staffer to call.

As strange as it is, Netroots Nation is one of the few times a year when the Calitics crew gets together in person, whether it is in Las Vegas, Chicago or Austin.  We may talk on a daily basis, but is it is Netroots Nation where we get to be better friends and better colleagues.  So to my boys (in no particular order): Dave, Brian, Todd, Robert, Bob and Lucas, not to mention Beth and Shayera, I am honored to be your friend and colleague.  We have done so much together, but have so far to go.  

See ya in my hometown Pittsburgh next year.  But first we have to marry two of our own in September.  Oh yeah and that little thing called the DNC in August.

To three years of Calitics and three years of Netroots Nation.  May the next three find you more powerful, more employed and better friends.  I couldn’t ask for a better community.

A quick reminder about the Hightower Party tonight at 5pm-8pm. It’s at Black & Tan (405 E. 7th St @ Trinity), just a few blocks from the Hilton here in Austin at Netroots Nation. If you’re in town, come down to this party. Calitics is an official co-host.

We’ll bringing a few special guests, including SF Mayor Gavin Newsom. Come by and say hi!

(bump – promoted by Lucas O’Connor)

An hour after the start time, Nancy Pelosi is on the verge of actually taking a question. Updates to come.

[Update] First question asks about inherent contempt. The Bush administration is “tearing up the constitution and saying we rule. This is a monarchy.” Crowd goes wild over the notion of Karl Rove held in contempt. “Justice Department has advised the US Attorney not to prosecute the case.” Interesting needle she’s threading here- the power of Congress should be more respected but Congress is powerless to do more than it already has.

Gina Cooper asks if Karl Rove will be arrested and thrown in the Congressional jail. Crowd goes nuts, Pelosi punts.

[Update] Second question wonders what the gain was that balances out telecom immunity. Again, short version is ‘it’s not my fault, the Senate did it.’ She’s not wrong but I’m not sure how it helps. Pitching the exclusivity argument which is garbage as decided by the court which covers her district. Americans are protected by domestic spying, the Inspector General will be super, etc.

[Update] Gina asks “who exactly is supporting this?” Damn good question. Still pushing a Constitution or Bush dichotomy, but I’m not sure that she’s actually coming down on either side. The Senate bils are bad the Senate votes are bad etc etc.

[Update] Jeffrey Feldman asks from the floor “Can you tell us what you think government should be?” Build majorities in House and Senate, win the White House. Jokes that wider margins will increase bipartisanship. Talking about elements of health care reform which is nice but not an answer to the question. “Science is the answer” to something. “Science, science, science, and science…We have an innovation agenda.” 3rd point is infrastructure, tracking from the Erie Canal to the Bush Administration and the focus on destroying Iraqi infrastructure over building American infrastructure. 4th (and final?) Energy security. There’s a moral responsibility to be secure in our energy? International competitiveness. “Awfully proud of Barack Obama going overseas today.” McCain would love that one.

[Update] Silent protesters are moving through the room. New question: Should the government bail out GM like it did Chrysler several decades ago? “Help them be competitive” and help them innovate. How are we going to help the workers losing their security? Distinction between helping GM and helping workers. Answer is health care as a competitiveness issue.

Jeffrey gets a question from Natasha Chart regarding abstinence-only education. Funds to effective sexual education programs? “Abstinence-only…is dangerous to the health of our young women.” Feldman asks about Abstinence-only earmarks, Pelosi wants us to give her a better Congress. Mentions the Contraception/abortion debacle at HHS. “If you don’t like abortion, you should love contraception…It’s catering to a radical right wing view and it should be stopped.”

“Just say stop if you’ve heard enough on any subject.”

[Update] “Universal broadband is part of our innovation agenda…we must have it be universal.” “The whole country has to be wired.” It’s about health care and family values and education and every other one of her preferred talking points. Two solid ones in a row. Pelosi brings up net neutrality on her own, strongly supports. Objections during FISA but her “bigger disappointment [with the telecoms] was their objection to net neutrality.” The people standing in the way are the ones who didn’t innovate in the first place.

[Update] Audience question: Why are our soldiers being forced to beg for care packages? They shouldn’t, but emblematic of broader failures. “We owe them better than the policy we have.” GI Bill and veterans health care, “when you come home we’ll send you to college.” Nearly 1/3 of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans are seeking mental health treatment. “Build a future worthy of their sacrifice.” Win in November. Feldman pushes back: there seems to be an absence of the broader discussion of how we’re going to take care of them. Pelosi: The administration doesn’t care about the troops, what more do you need to know? (How about…what are you going to do about it?)

[Update] Final stage question from Gina is on Al Gore’s energy plan and…Al Gore is here as our surprise guest.

[Update] “…hold elected officials accountable.” Thank you. absolutely essential that we have…a well informed citizenry that is involved and engaged.” We represent the edge of government reform. On to climate change in the way only Gore can.

[Update] Gore’s speech is over and he’s taking questions with Pelosi from the floor. First question, would you consider a role in an Obama administration. Gore responds that his preferred role is as one who expands the political space for elected officials and bring about a public opinion sea change to make the atmosphere more amenable to change. Second question is on the carbon footprint from meat production which he addresses without saying much. Mountaintop removal is third up. Really going to bat for coal miners and bashes the irresponsibility of mountaintop removal and coal companies- calls liquid coal insane. “We’ve got to walk and chew gum at the same time” by getting off foreign oil AND off fossil fuels.

Pelosi’s back and thanking Gore for being great. Says we have a choice between yesterday and tomorrow.

[Update] Pelosi’s pushing the Use It Or Lose It program, “looking for an excuse, not a reason” to drill in ANWR and Outer Continental Shelf. She’s been absolutely great on this issue as I mentioned in Robert’s liveblog yesterday.

Finally responding to question about improving accountability. She didn’t really have a response and folks are starting to get rowdy. More questions from the audience:

[Update] Wind turbines on high voltage towers? Gore says that expense is a concern, and power lines aren’t necessarily where the wind is blowing. Mentions T-Boone Pickens who is not exactly the best friend in this group. “When we make an all out commitment then some of the problems…subside.” Quick bash of No Child Left Behind. E-waste disposal is next- there needs to be a lot more progress.

Pelosi responds to a question about how Congress will respond to Al Gore’s ten year challenge. Last year’s Energy Bill is her example of forward Congressional progress- a tough vote- and notes that renewable electricity standards passed over the fossil fuel PACs. Will bring it up again, but again punts responsibility to the Senate and tells us to build bigger majorities. NCLB: Not enough funding, revisit with a new president, will not be renewed this year.

[Update] Fresh round of four questions from the floor. Gore: we will still have a problem with a Dem in the White House and bigger majorities.

I’m super excited about Netroots Nation tomorrow.  And I am very much looking forward to the panel I am on Friday morning (10:30 am Ballroom F) titled: “Middle class isn’t middle of the road: Take politicians’ populist shpeil and make it real”.  

David Sirota, Andrea Batista Schlesinger, the Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute and David Goldstein, of Horse’s Ass will also be on it.  The panel will be moderated by Elana Levin, the Assistant Director of Communications for UNITE HERE.

Here is the description.

We know that populism wins elections, but once a politician wins how do we make sure that pro-middle class policies are actually implemented? Blue Dogs and the media conflate being pro-middle class with being “centrist”.

The debt stricken, under-insured public’s realization that their personal economic struggles are really political struggles presents an opportunity for lasting progressive change. Barack Obama’s agenda includes healthcare and transportation among other investments in our country that the middle class needs– but these aren’t free. How can the netroots mobilize to make it politically possible to pass Obama’s domestic agenda in a Grover Norquist-shaped world?

For my part, I plan on focusing on the California budget fight and using the Yacht Party campaign as an example of how we can attack the right to help advance progressive policies that help the middle class.  California is very much a lab for progressive politics and we have a unique opportunity here to actually advocate for higher taxes to pay for programs.  The public is amenable to increasing revenue and there is no better time to promote our agenda than now when we are at a crisis stage and the other side is advancing proposals that the public does not support.  Flip it.

A lot of this may be old hat to regular Calitcs readers, but for those who are not I want to talk about the structural reasons that have lead us to this opportunity and how we can be productive as members of the netroots in this fight.

California has a structural budget deficit.  By that I mean we have set spending that is greater than what we take in.  That is true even during a good year.

When we have a bad year like this one it grows into a huge gaping hole.  We are somewhere around $15 billion at this point, though that changes depending on how bad the revenues really are into the state’s coffers.  

California has done so much ballot box budgeting and formulaic allocating of funding that there is actually a really limited amount of programs that we can actually cut.  Those are mostly social welfare programs, things that aid the poor, provide assistance and health care.  Why is it that those programs are vulnerable?

A) There is not much of a support structure to advocate for them.  Quite frankly the poor/middle class just don’t have that big of a voice in Sacramento.  B) This is related to A, but they have not passed an initiative to protect their funding.

The result is that the most vulnerable are most vulnerable during a budget deficit to cuts.  So they have been cut and cut some more and cut some more over the past few years.  Before we used to say that we were cutting muscle after having gotten rid of the fat, but now we are into the bone.

Our Democratic legislators want to increase revenues to help pay for spending and eliminate the structural budget deficit.  81% of the public (Field pdf) says that we will have to increase taxes to resolve the current deficit.  They don’t like paying taxes and wish that others would pay for the increases, not them, but they don’t really want to see cuts to programs.  In fact the program they would like to see cut the most, Prisons & Corrections doesn’t even get majority support, with only 47% saying to reduce spending.

So why is it that it is so hard to pass tax increases given the general public support for the Democratic world-view?

Chalk that up to the two 2/3rds rules.  Our legislature is dysfunctional for many reasons, but the two biggest are the 2/3rds support requirement to pass a budget and 2/3rds to increase taxes.

The Republicans refuse on principle to increasing revenue and we need their votes to do it.  The Democrats finally seem to have dug their heels in and are refusing to pass a budget that is all cuts as we have done before.  That is why we are several weeks into the new fiscal year and do not have a budget.

In a few weeks the state will run out of money and things will go from bad to worse, particularly this year since the borrowing that many groups have done in the past will not be an option due to the credit crunch.  It is in short a big freaking disaster.

But is is a disaster that Californians are aware of but are not particularly engaged on.  So the question for folks like myself who want to ensure that the budget that is passed does not hurt the middle class and the poor is how do we engage the public when they generally agree with us, but aren’t that into it.

The answer that Calitics and the Courage Campaign came up with was mockery and using one obscure tax increase to make a larger point about the budget.

The Democratic leadership started pushing for increased revenue with the so-called yacht tax loophole.  If you stash your boat or airplane out of the state for 90 days, you don’t have to pay sales tax.  Closing the loophole would bring in a fairly minimal amount of money, $25 million or so a year.

But that wasn’t the point.  The point was to make the Republican’s position ridiculous, to find a way to engage Californians in the budget debate.

Someone on Calitics dubbed the Republican Party as the Yacht Party.  Dave Dayen produced a spoof video and the Courage Campaign turned it into two different television ads with the support of several unions, legislators and our members to air on television.

These videos and the whole Yacht Party frame were never going to be the end-all-be-all in the budget negotiations.  However, for the first time the netroots, labor, and legislators were working together to attack the Republicans and advance a progressive economic argument.  The campaign reached outside of the relatively small world of the blogosphere and progressive activists to the general public.  The videos were easily accessible and compelling enough to engage them in what is a very boring topic, the state budget deficit.

It was a relatively small scale campaign for California standards, but it showed a lot of promise for future collaborations.  While the blogosphere has cut its teeth working on legislative campaigns, it is important that we continue to learn how to help pass progressive legislation and take it from shpeil to reality.