Well, it took some effort and getting past Bob Mullholland who seemed have no clue that there was a credentialed blogger sitting with the delegation, but I am in my seat, plugged into the ethernet and to power.  This fifty state blogging program is pretty incredible.  I have all of the same access as Wolf Blitzer, who I can see sitting right in front of me, if not more.  Unfortunately, I was first told by Mullholland that I didn’t belong there and then that there wasn’t a seat for me.  He softened up a bit, when I explained the program to him and then moved on to insisting that I couldn’t listen to anything he said, nor the people around him.

So a staffer from Rep. Honda’s office wandered around the convention hall with me until we got the official word that I was to be where I was supposed to be.  Anyways, the drama is over and I would much rather be chatting with the delegates than trying to eavesdrop on Mullholland.

Art Torres is now here, though half of the California delegation and quite frankly most other delegations are not here yet.  My buddy Rob Pierson, who I met on the ’06 Charlie Brown race is helping record California’s delegates votes for the Secretary’s office.

Howard Dean just introduced Speaker Nancy Pelosi, naturally the California delegation rose and cheered for our homestate girl.  Steve Maviglio is here.  I think I shall be nice and let him borrow my ethernet cable.

BTW You can follow my twitter feed over here as I go through the week.  I’m helping out with escorting press and VIPs around there when I am not in the convention hall.

[UPDATE] My Rep. Doris Matsui just got done with a short speech. Later tonight we will get to hear a real speech from Speaker Pelosi, not to mention Sen. Teddy Kennedy and Michelle Obama.  The full schedule is here.

It’s time for some random links and a good ole fashioned open thread.

• Rather than having a blog, Capitol Weekly decided to post an email thread between the beloved around these parts Steve Maviglio and his counterpart in the SenateAssembly Morgan Crinklaw.  Steve naturally starts his first response by paraphrasing an old SNL skits and calls Morgan an “ignorant slut”. (Note: Morgan’s employer corrected)
• Another gay victory from the CA Supremes.  No longer can doctors refuse to treat us because we are gay and their religion does not approve.
• Paid sick leave for all! Ok, it has only passed the Assembly, but it is cause to celebrate.
• McClintock decided to be a whiney brat and refused to show up to the last debate with Doug Ose.  About 180 well paying guests didn’t get the smackdown show they had paid good money to attend.  McClintock’s excuse was that the also rans were not invited, that and he is sulking about Ose’s attack ads.
• The AFT just informed the Mt. Shasta Brewing Co., based in Weed, CA that they can no longer use bottle caps that read “Try Legal Weed”.  Evidently, alluding to marijuana on beer is not allowed.  The town is named after a dude named Abner Weed and has nothing to do with pot.

That’s all I got.  Any FP’ers who feel inspired, go ahead and add to this thread.

The Black Key’s new album rocks.  Here is “Strange Times”

(from my DailyKos diary this morning–it’s important for me to try to bring CA issues to the national spotlight.)

And by that, I refer to the California Democratic Party.

As you may know by now, the resolution authored by progressive activists to censure Senator Dianne Feinstein was not heard by the CDP Resolutions Committee.  If you read my previous diary on the subject, you’ll realize just how contentious this issue was, and that the end result was exactly as expected.

There will be a lot of complaints about the result, and understandably so.  Nevertheless, an official censure is a huge step, and the end result is no surprise, given the momentous nature of the struggle in question.

But I’d like to share another story with you that might even better exemplify just how much change and reform we still need in the California Democratic Party, as well as give you some insight into how the party machinery works.

It all starts with a news item you may or may not be familiar with: the Speaker of the California State Assembly, Democrat Fabian Nunez, came under fire last month for reports of using campaign funds to pay for lavish expenses at luxurious destinations in Europe and California:

The spending, listed in mandatory filings with the state, includes $47,412 on United, Lufthansa and Air France airlines this year; $8,745 at the exclusive Hotel Arts in Barcelona, Spain; $5,149 for a “meeting” at Cave L’Avant Garde, a wine seller in the Bordeaux region of France; a total of $2,562 for two “office expenses” at Vuitton, two years apart; and $1,795 for a “meeting” at Le Grand Colbert, a venerable Parisian restaurant.

You know, the type of thing that it’s really, really hard to justify using a campaign account, even if you’re Steve Maviglio from Speaker Nunez’ office (whose previous foibles I have mentioned before).

I, and many other activists, were disturbed at these reports–though admittedly, even more disturbed by Speaker Nunez’ claims to be “middle-class”:

There’s not too big a difference,” he said, “between how I live and how most middle-class people live.”

Because I can tell you, I’m racking up those $10,000 hotel bills at luxury resorts in Europe all the time!  It’s just part of the middle-class lifestyle.

Regardless, I decided submit a resolution concerning transparency for travel expenses to the Resolutions Committee for consideration at the Executive Board meeting in Anaheim this weekend.  Now, originally, I wrote my resolution specifically calling for Speaker Nunez to fully account for the legislative or fact-finding purpose behind his travel expenses.  I was assured, however, that such a targeted resolution would have no chance of passing the Resolutions Committee, so I rewrote it to be more general, especially since there have been many, many Republicans who have been guilty of the same type of thing on perhaps a much worse scale in recent years (paging Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff, anyone?), and resolutions are supposed to be statements of “philosophical intent” regardless.  So here’s the text of my resolution:

RESOLUTION CALLING FOR GREATER TRANSPARENCY FOR CAMPAIGN-RELATED TRAVEL EXPENSES

WHEREAS, in recent years, officeholders of both major political parties at both the federal and state levels have been accused of using campaign-paid travel expenses to enrich their personal lifestyles;

And WHEREAS, travel expenses to more exclusive locales paid for by lobbyists or other special interests create the appearance of and possibility for conflicts of interest in the legislative process, especially for officeholders with higher stature in legislative bodies;

And WHEREAS, California law requires that travel expenses for members of the State legislature have a legislative purpose;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party, in the interests of accountability, transparency and good governance, calls upon all federal and state legislators to fully disclose the legislative or fact-finding purpose behind all travel and accommodations expenses paid with campaign funds;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Party encourages all federal and state legislators to use campaign funds to pay only for travel and accommodations expenses regarding a transparent, easily understandable legislative or fact-finding purpose, and supports investigations into use of campaign funds that do not meet this criterion.

Now, to my mind, that’s just about as harmless as you can get for a resolution on this issue.  It’s bipartisan, mentions no names, and calls for the easily shared values of transparency, accountability, and good governance.

Apparently, however, the values of transparency, accountability and good governance aren’t shared by certain members of the Resolutions Committee.  Either that, or this resolution was still so dicey for the people at the highest echelons that they couldn’t even take this amount of heat.

Now, I originally got a call on Saturday from my friend Brian Leubitz, founded Calitics and who sits on the Resolutions Committee, that they wanted to insert language into the resolution concerning accountability for the fact that some of Schwarzenegger’s travel expenses were picked up by a nonprofit group.  I told Brian to assure the rest of the Resolutions Committee that I had no objection to inserting “accountability for Arnold” language into the resolution if the main thrust of my language remained unchanged.  But then later that afternoon, this was the text I got back from the Committee:

Whereas, in recent years candidates at the federal and state levels
have been accused of not fully disclosing how they raise and spend
funds and of misusing campaign funds; and

Whereas, in recent years some officeholders have paid for expenses
through the use of non-profit organizations, eliminating virtually all
disclosure of which individuals and interest groups are actually
paying for the expenses of the officeholders; and

Whereas, California and federal finance rules require that expenses
paid with campaign funds have a campaign, governmental, or political
purpose;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party, in the
interests of accountability, transparency, and good governance,
supports modifications in state and federal law that would require
non-profit organizations who pay for officeholder expenses to fully
disclose the sources and amount of funds the organization has obtained
and the purpose behind all activity paid for by the organizations in a
manner similar to that required for campaign committees; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party supports
state and federal legislative and regulatory changes to facilitate and
require that candidates and officeholders fully disclose in a
transparent manner the campaign, governmental or political purpose
behind all activity.

Notice a problem here?  Well, I certainly do: All references to travel expenses were excised from the resolution.  I called Brian to tell him that the Resolutions Committee had voided the entire point of my resolution and that I wanted to see the phrase “travel expenses” actually appear in my resolution about travel expenses.

But alas, it was not to be.  The Resolutions Committee took their new anti-Arnold resolution and moved it to the consent calendar.  Now, I wasn’t at the general session of the meeting on Sunday because of work obligations, but I could have still called one of the e-board members I know to have them pull it from the consent calendar for the purposes of amending it according to my specifications, but I decided not to bother, especially since everyone was so preoccupied with Feinstein and the amendments would have likely failed on a floor vote regardless.

The only thing it proves, though, is that when all is said and done, it’s the elected officials that control what the party does, rather than the party trying to keep the elected officials in line with party values.

And this doesn’t just manifest itself in a reticence to acquiesce to large-scale significant actions like censuring Dianne Feinstein.  The craven desire to kowtow to elected officials and not dare to acknowledge their wrongdoing is so pervasive that a resolution whose language focused primarily on a Republican can’t even be passed if it dares to mention an issue on which a prominent Democratic elected official has been lacking.

And that, my friends, is a sad situation that calls for action and reform.  Am I antagonized? Certainly.  But am I forlorn?  Not at all.  (Do I sound like Donald Rumsfeld when I ask rhetorical questions and provide the answers? Yes.  Is it fun? absolutely.)

You see, the worst possible thing we would do is give up and operate on the assumption that the system is impermeable–because it isn’t, and we’ve already made significant strides in California.  But there’s more work to be done.

And let me ask you something: do you know how your state party would act in a similar situation?  If you don’t, why not find out?

And most of all–keep fighting for good governance that’s accountable to the people.

I am crazy busy between all of the projects I am working on, but this is too amusing to me not to write up.  Fred Thompson has now hired both Todd Harris and Karen Hanretty for his now official, not illegal presidential run.  Those two were key consultants on Arnold’s disastrous 2005 special election.  It was his aides that convinced him that a bunch of power grab measures and attacking labor was a good idea.  Wrong.  Oh so wrong.

Arnold is doing much better since he dropped the DC Navigators crew.  Indeed his former re-elect staffers were snapped up by other campaigns, way before Frederick got Harris and Hanretty.  BTW, anything that Mike Murphy says about Thompson should be considered coming from the campaign.  Todd Harris is a principle at Murphy’s firm DC Navigators. 

I have two favorite moments of Harris during that campaign.  The first was when he brought a bunch of interns over to CTA’s offices in Sacramento to “protest”.  Needless to say, Republicans are terrible chanters.  The kind teachers were worried that the kids needed some sustenance, so they brought out some cookies and milk for them.  The chant leader told them to stay away, lest they create a nice photo-op, but Harris couldn’t help himself.  Here he is chewing away.

The second one was the time he was caught by Warren Beatty taking pictures of his wife Annette Benning at a campaign stop.  Benning and Beatty were on a bus tour for us and high-jinks ensued.  Heh even Nehring is mention in Carla Marninucci’s blog post:

The Academy Award-nominated actress won over legions of fans, even on the GOP side. Holding her husband’s hand, she posed for photos with union members, talked up the election, and remained serenely gorgeous throughout the day, even after she and Beatty became the target of some decidedly nasty personal attacks from state GOP vice chair Ron Nehring, who dismissed them as “over the hill” and “B” actors.

Beatty, in an affectionate nod to his wife, addressed the crowd in admiration, saying: “Give me liberty or give me .. Annette Bening!”

Even Schwarzenegger spokesman Todd Harris couldn’t resist, snapping some photos of her. That’s when Beatty strangled him in mock exasperation while pleading, “Todd, join us!”

Harris instead rushed back to combat duty — on the press bus.

I was amused to see Maviglio defending Schwarzenegger’s star power today in Carla’s article on the hires, oh and even Gary South shows up:

And Maviglio said Thompson doesn’t compare with the California governor when it comes to star power.

“Muttering a few lines at the end of a ‘Law & Order’ episode isn’t the same as a multimillion-dollar blockbuster,” Maviglio scoffed. “It doesn’t translate.”

Garry South, the sharp-tongued former strategist for Davis, said Thompson has other problems.

Harris and Hanretty are “both really worthy additions to the (Thompson) team,” South said. But … the candidate is “an empty vessel into which (the conservative right) are pouring all their hopes. Fred Thompson is no Ronald Reagan,” or even an Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“He’s not an upbeat individual. He comes off like a grouchy, grumpy old man … Can you see the words ‘shining city on a hill’ coming out of Fred Thompson’s mouth?”

How many CA hacks can I tie into this story? sheesh.

This is hilarious. Please vote in the poll about who gave the quote. Currently, there is a three way tie for first place between Steve Maviglio, Katie Merrill, and Garry South.