Power Begets Power

Marcy Wheeler has the gory details of today's markup for the renewal of the Patriot Act. Basically, the Obama Administration and friendly Democrats in Congress - mainly DiFi and Pat Leahy - have used the Mohammed Zazi investigation to reauthorize provisions of the Patriot Act, some of which have never been used, some of which represent deep intrusions into our civil liberties.

So the Obama administration has its first allegedly big Terrorism case, and they can hardly contain themselves as they exploit it to justify a continuation of the very Patriot Act and FISA powers which Democrats (and, in the case of FISA, Obama himself) long claimed to oppose. Indeed, key Obama ally Dianne Feinstein has worked diligently in the Senate not just to block Patriot Act reforms, but to make the law even worse, and has repeatedly cited the Zazi case to justify that.

Absolutely none of the methods used in the Zazi investigation would have commenced without Zazi being tied directly to Al Qaeda. But Feinstein and the White House doesn't want to have this burden of proof. They want the ability to engage in fishing expeditions, to use roving wiretaps or "sneak and peek" searches or the use of business records without having to prove that the subject is suspected of terrorist activity. It's pretty clear that this is leading toward tracking the records of anyone who bought large quantities of hydrogen peroxide. So look out, women who dye their hair and like to stock up!

This has come in conjunction with major pronouncements by Administration officials about how very dangerous the Zazi case was and how it proves that law enforcement needs these tools. I rebutted that earlier - they need tools, but not OPEN-ENDED ones. It also makes a mockery of Administration boasts that they're not politicizing terror - the juxtaposition of these press events and the Patriot Act markup is pretty obvious.

But that's apparently what they're getting. Russ Feingold is upset. Only him, Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter (!) managed to vote against the final bill from the perspective of civil liberties.

Before I get into the specific provisions that concern me, I want to say how disappointed I was in the debate in the committee. Today particularly, I started to feel as if too many members of the committee from both parties are willing to accept uncritically whatever the executive branch says about even the most reasonable proposed changes in the law. Of course we should consider the perspective of the FBI and the Justice Department. Keeping Americans safe is everyone’s priority. But we also need to consider a full range of perspectives and come to our own conclusions about how best to protect the American people and preserve their freedoms. Protecting the rights of innocent people should be a part of that equation. It's not the Prosecutors’ Committee; it's the Judiciary Committee. And whether the executive branch powers are overbroad is something we have to decide. The only people we should be deferring to are the American people, as we try to protect them from terrorism without infringing on their freedoms [...]

Specifically, the bill reported out of the Committee today on an 11-8 vote (five Republicans and only three Democrats voted No) fell short in a few key areas. Perhaps the most important was the failure to include the reasonable 3-part standard for issuing a FISA business records order under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. This standard was in a bill unanimously reported by the Committee, under Republican control, in 2005, and it was in Sen. Leahy’s original bill this year. Last week, Senator Durbin offered an amendment to put the standard back in the bill. It would have ensured that these secret authorities can only be directed at individuals who have some connection to terrorism or espionage. The standard is broad and flexible, but it places some limits on this otherwise very sweeping authority. Unfortunately, Senator Durbin’s amendment failed. When it did, I hoped the Committee would instead consider at least adopting that same standard for issuing National Security Letters, which are not approved by any court, and which were seriously abused by the FBI. Today, that, too, was rejected.

The bill that passed out of committee did include some positive changes. I was pleased my amendment to reform invasive "sneak and peek" searches was included, as well as my amendment to require the executive branch to issue minimization procedures for NSLs. But these improvements did not make up for the bill’s shortcomings, and I was unable to support it on the final vote.

I only wish that Julian Sanchez could make another rebuttal video and we'd be done with this, but Fox News is hardly the problem. We've morphed pretty solidly into a surveillance state, a factor of being a state at permanent war.

I tend to side with Anonymous Liberal that at least Obama isn't asserting the divine right to break the law just by dint of being the unitary executive. That theory is on the dustbin of history, I hope. But if he's gathering the same powers, that's a distinction without a difference.

The Beauty Product Hunt

Marcy Wheeler notes some disturbing language in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act put in by DiFi:

I'm going to make a wildarsed guess and suggest that the Federal Government is doing a nationwide search to find out everyone who is buying large amounts of certain kinds of beauty products. And those people are likely now under investigation as potential terrorism suspects [...]

First, at the start of the hearing, DiFi claimed that the investigation of Najibullah Zazi is the largest terrorism investigation since 9/11. Whether that's hyperbole or not, she's claiming that the FBI is doing more in the wake of the Zazi arrest than it did after all those false scares stemming from Bush's illegal wiretap program, all those false scares arising out of torturing Abu Zubaydah, and all the scares hyped up around election time. She's claiming this thing is huge.

Second, DiFi and Pat Leahy went through Leahy's proposed renewal to the PATRIOT Act and made some changes--to make sure that current investigations are not hampered by any changes proposed. Significantly, she appears to have taken out this language (I haven't been able to get a hold of the substitute amendment yet) which would have required investigators to have some connection between a person and a suspected terrorist before they could collect "tangible information" on them [...] So if this investigation is as big as DiFi says it is, and if it does rely on Section 215 as currently written...

Then all they would have to do is assert that anyone buying this particular cocktail of chemicals (or products containing those chemicals) could be presumptively related to activities of a foreign power. That is, if you buy these chemicals it may be safe to assume (or the FBI might be claiming it is safe to assume) you're doing so to build an al Qaeda-related bomb.

These are the kind of fishing expeditions put together by panicked lawmakers that make people feel their civil liberties are under attack by their government. The system appeared to work in the Zazi case, but to expand that out and make anyone who buys hair care products a potential terror suspect seems completely excessive. And these kind of broad nets to capture individuals have proven ineffective, because the mass of information being searched inevitably makes it harder to find the good stuff.

It's pure paranoia, reflected in legislation. Not good.

Bullet Dodged

Lisa Murkowski's effort to stop the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions at power plants failed yesterday, which is a boon for the public. The EPA is complying with a Supreme Court ruling to regulate carbon, and if Republicans don't like it, they can write their own legislative guidance for how to do so. Even my Senator got this one right:

Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) smacks down Murkowski at great length, saying “we can’t afford to bury our heads in the sand on climate change” and if you don’t want the EPA to take action, then the only alternative is cap-and-trade. “Global warming is real…. it’s happening all over the world.” Attacks the “Flat Earth Society” who opposes action.

Murkowski has vowed to bring this back up, but she could also work to pass a real climate bill. The EPA's jurisdiction on setting their own rules is the proverbial gun to the head to force something to get done, and Murkowski may not like it, but her only recourse is to take action.

I don't know what that action will be. Jeff Bingaman is talking about splitting cap and trade from the renewable energy standard. But hopefully we can get something, and failing that, the EPA will be able to carry out its mission.

Feinstein: Afghanistan Cannot Sustain A Democracy

It's one thing for the Bernie Sanderses and Russ Feingolds to openly question the mission in Afghanistan. It's quite another for Dianne Feinstein to do so.

KING: Well Senator Feinstein, you're the chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence. To the question of where this ends, it is eight years after 9/11. We've paused and reflected on that just the other day. You see the things that we can't see, the intelligence. Are we winning in Afghanistan? Are we any closer to finding Osama bin Laden, and does the president have a clear strategy, in your view?

FEINSTEIN: Well, I can tell you this. A lot of the leadership has been taken out of al Qaeda. I can say and I think you would agree that Afghanistan and the Pakistani border are still the major safe haven, the major safe haven for terrorists in the world. And these are people who will, if they can, come after us, not necessarily the Taliban, but certainly al Qaeda and other affiliated groups.

So we have to consider that. We have about 60,000 troops there, another 8,000 are moving in with our allies, it about equals the force that is in Iraq. To the best of my knowledge, the president has had no request for additional troops up to this time. My view is that the mission has to be very clear. I don't believe --

KING: Has to be means it is not now?

FEINSTEIN: I believe it is not now. I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan. I believe it will remain a tribal entity.

I do believe that clearing out Al Qaida, clearing out the Taliban is a bona fide part one of the mission. I do agree that training Afghan troops, Afghan -- Afghan police is an important piece of the mission.

I believe the mission should be time limited, that there should be no, well, we'll let you know in a year and a half, depending on how we do. I think the Congress is entitled to know, after Iraq, exactly how long are we going to be in Afghanistan.

Feinstein is actually more charitable about the presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan than the commanding general on the ground, Stanley McChrystal, who said this week that there are no signs of major Al Qaeda anywhere in the country.

But as far as the wariness of the viability of Constitutional democracy in Afghanistan, you need only look to their recent election, into which the opposition leader is now seeking a criminal investigation. He has accused Hamid Karzai of treason and "state-engineered fraud". Despite this, Karzai will probably win election on the first ballot, and a vote that has been horribly compromised will be made official. We saw in Iran how this can lead to violence and chaos, and Afghanistan is not nearly as stable. Without a viable partner in the government, as Feinstein says we cannot expect an endless commitment. Yet because Karzai is Pashtun the US will likely back him in this fight, alienating the other ethnic groups in the region. Kalashnikovs are flying off the shelves in the Tajik areas. Civil war is not an unlikely scenario at this point.

This further limits the mission, away from state-building and toward dealing with the elements in the country willing to deal. Otherwise we set ourselves up for a decade-long slog that will only end with more dead and more treasure squandered, to little effect. And yes, as Sen. Feinstein says, that process should have an end date.

Going Into Overtime

The successful Cash for Clunkers program is coming down to the wire in the Senate. They have until the end of the week to pass the bill before they head into an August recess. But if they try to change the bill from what the House passed already - which was just a straight extension - the bills would have to be reconciled, and that would require the House coming back from its recess. Otherwise, it'll get signed into law too late for the program to stay in business. What will Sen. Reid do?

The $2 billion cash infusion granted Friday by the House to the overwhelmed cash-for-clunkers program must be accepted by the Senate this week without amendments — or it won’t be signed into law until September.

The House has adjourned for its summer recess, and some Senate lawmakers want to change the bill, which will likely force Reid into a days-long cloture process.

And that's in addition to trying to move the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation, which will probably take multiple days of floor debate, even though the outcome is assured. There's simply no way the Senate can plow through all that by the deadline of Thursday night. It's not possible.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said his party will push a go-slow approach on cash-for-clunkers so that the program’s solvency and effectiveness can be examined. Without knowing how many claims are still in the pipeline, Kyl suggested a similar mistake could be made again.

“We need to have a time-out to see how much money was spent,” Kyl said. “Before you authorize more money, wouldn’t you like to know how much you’ve spent and how it took to spend it, and what kind of things you might want to do to modify it?” [...]

The GOP staffers pointed to Democrats like Dianne Feinstein of California, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Mark Warner of Virginia, who in recent days have all expressed skepticism about the program. However, Feinstein and GOP Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) indicated on Monday evening they will support the measure. Warner wants the program to have higher mileage requirements while McCaskill has sounded skeptical about how it will be funded.

But other Democrats strike a common refrain: The sudden demand on the cash-for-clunkers program proves it is working.

With Feinstein and Collins singing off after seeing the unexpected increases in fuel efficiency coming from this program, it's safe to say that this has a good chance of passage. But Republicans will obstruct, and slow down, and gum up the works, and try to add amendments and poison pills, all the while saying that they just have to get home for the August recess. And so a program with demonstrable success that has led to the highest light vehicle sales in a year might get scrapped because of the old stopwatch.

What a wonderful political system we have.

Wild Success Of Government Program Shows How Government Can't Run Anything

Amazingly enough, they're getting away with this message.

The government’s “cash for clunkers” program become the latest political flashpoint on Sunday, with Obama administration officials urging the Senate to approve more money for the initiative and Republicans raising concerns about it [...]

Republicans say the problems with the program are another strike against the Obama administration as it pushes for a speedy overhaul of the health care system that would involve a government-run insurance program. They argue that government involvement in any industry is a recipe for disaster.

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, said the “cash for clunkers” program was an example of the “stupidity coming out of Washington right now.”

“The federal government went bankrupt in one week in the used-car business, and now they want to run our health care system,” Mr. DeMint said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is crazy to try to rush this thing through again while they’re trying to rush through health care, and they want to get on to cap-and-trade electricity tax. We’ve got to slow this thing down.”

Let's number the "problems" with the program:

1) it's too successful and too many people want the rebate
2) the government Web site where the rebates get processed is getting killed because too many people are trying to access it
3) the rebates are going to "middle-class people" who may have eventually bought a car anyway
4) car dealers haven't gotten their rebate checks yet after a week

Are these even rational complaints? They boil down to "the program is too good a deal." I would agree, leveraging $5 billion dollars through the economy in a week is a pretty good deal for those on Main Street looking for some economic activity. There is a residual economic effect to selling a quarter of a million cars that increases hiring throughout the country as well.

While the program could stand with a few tweaks, and I stand with Sens. Feinstein and Collins on improving the fuel efficiency standards, the bottom line is that the program has a great economic multiplier effect, has been unexpectedly strong in increasing mileage rates among new buyers, and has been a boon to the middle class, which gets approximately nothing from their government 99% of the time. Republicans are going to carp at anything Democrats do, but what they are objecting to in this case is revealing. They don't like to see successful government programs that work.

Cash For Clunkers Looks To Be Success

So the government inaugurated that cash for clunkers program this week. How's it going? Well...

The U.S. government will suspend the popular cash-for-clunkers program after less than four days in business, telling Congress that the plan would burn through its $950-million budget by midnight, several sources told the Free Press [...]

The decision to suspend the plan came after auto dealers warned the government today that it was in danger of losing track of how many trades had actually been made.

The plan offering owners of old cars and trucks $3,500 or $4,500 toward a new, more efficient vehicle has proven wildly popular, with 22,782 trades certified by federal officials since Monday. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told dealers Wednesday that a vast majority of transactions submitted were being rejected for incomplete or illegible paperwork.

A survey of 2,000 dealers by the National Automobile Dealers Association, the results of which were obtained by the Free Press, found about 25,000 deals not yet approved by NHTSA, or about 13 trades per store. With 23,005 dealers asking to be part of the program, auto dealers may have already arranged the sale of more than the 250,000 vehicles that federal officials expected the plan to generate.

OK, so some problems with implementation. But in general, you're talking about a wildly popular program. I think that the speed of the deals shocked those carrying out the rebates, but I expect that to get ironed out soon enough. And you're basically talking about $1 billion dollars leveraging about $4-$5 billion dollars through the economy within four days and saving an unspecified amount of oil through the sale of almost a quarter of a million more fuel-efficient cars. The fuel efficiency standards could have been higher, no doubt, but taking out a quarter of a million crappy gas guzzlers is great, and $5 billion in economic activity where none would otherwise exist is an excellent mini-stimulus.

I also like DiFi's stand, after Michigan lawmakers vowed to seek additional funds for the program, that she would block anything unless the fuel economy gains were boosted. The taste has been offered to Detroit, and now they'd be hard pressed to say no.

Now, let's offer money to people to paint their roofs white.

Dianne Feinstein Would Like You To Respect Her Authoritah

California's senior Senator has heard the talk, has heard the voices of her constituents, and basically doesn't care.

"We are getting to the point if people aren't going to respond to the patience and openness of Senator Baucus, we should begin to make a different plan," said Andrew Stern, president of the 2 million-member SEIU.

Stern said his organization issued a release chastising Feinstein last week, because she should "put her foot on the gas, not the brake" on health reform.

"The gas pedal to go where?" Feinstein replied, explaining she has questions about how a broad expansion of health coverage will be paid for.

"I do not think this is helpful. It doesn't move me one whit," she said. "They are spending a lot of money on something that is not productive."

What we have here is a difference of opinion over the nature of representative democracy. Are politicians elected to reflect the will of their constituents, or are they elected to provide their own enlightened opinion on public affairs and public policy? Sen. Feinstein has already given her perspective before. She acknowledged that public opinion in California was sharply against authorizing the war in Iraq, but she voted for it anyway, arguing that she knew things her constituents didn't know (namely, hundreds of lies told by the Bush Administration). On health care, she has the same perspective; we, the citizens of California, had an "accountability moment" in 2006, Feinstein was elected, and now we can all STFU as she applies her own reasoning and belief on health care and other topics.

Needless to say, I don't agree with her perspective. It sounds to me like something that a member of the House of Lords would say rather than a politician in this country. Not to mention the fact that it cuts completely against the trend of participatory democracy that has energized the Democratic side of the aisle since Howard Dean's campaign in 2003-04. Dianne Feinstein thinks your role as a citizen is to vote for her and then keep quiet for six years and she bequeaths her wisdom.

If you don't agree with her, contact her office. I'm sure her staff will file that away somewhere.

The Urgency Of Health Care Reform For California

The Department of Health and Human Services released a report on the current state of health care in California, and the numbers are striking. It also can help us understand a bit about our budget woes.

19% of all Californians are uninsured, and of those, 71% are in families with at least one full-time worker. Employer-based coverage has dipped to just 54%, meaning the rest have to either go to the individual insurance market, qualify for a public coverage plan like Medicare or Medicaid, or go without. The top two insurance providers in California account for 44% of the health insurance market, and such a duopoly make it easy to just jack up rates year over year. The average family premium has increased 114 percent since 2000. And this causes families to drop coverage due to a lack of affordability. This nugget appears in the report:

"California businesses and families shoulder a hidden health tax of roughly $1,400 per year on premiums as a direct result of subsidizing the costs of the uninsured."

But one other entity suffers from that hidden tax: the state budget. Health care spending by the state has increased well above the CPI, and Medicare and Medi-Cal spending have ballooned because the cost of health care has ballooned. Growing ranks of the uninsured and unemployed increase the numbers eligible for coverage under state programs, and one political party, at least, would rather offer those services instead of watching people die in the street. We hear at the federal level that health reform is entitlement reform; that's just as true at the state level, as bending the cost curve will put state budgets in a better position for the future.

All of this adds up to create a sense of urgency in doing something about overhauling the broken health care system this year. This could have been the narrative that Dianne Feinstein brought forward in public statements, not hand-wringing about the difficulty of getting something done in Washington.

Multiple Progressive Assaults On DiFi's Health Care Wavering

The past couple days on Calitics, we've had Jason Rosenbaum detail grassroots efforts over Dianne Feinstein's confusing comments about and reticence to sign on to comprehensive health care reform. First he highlighted Health Care for America Now's petition urging Feinstein to get on board with health care reform. Then he deconstructed Feinstein's official statement on health care, which was unsatisfactory.

Feinstein is an important part of this debate. She doesn't sit on any of the relevant committees, but she has cachet in Washington, and with real health care reform coming down to just a handful of votes, her views will be crucial to the debate going forward. At a time when 85 percent of respondents to a Field Poll support a public health insurance option to compete with private industry, Feinstein must not be allowed to ignore the will of her constituents, as she did in her vote to authorize the war in Iraq.

Fortunately, practically every progressive organization in the state and even the country is hammering Feinstein for her naysaying, and demanding that she stay true to the principles she laid out, including controlling costs, expanding coverage and stopping the bad practices of the insurance industry, by endorsing a public health insurance option as part of any reform package. In addition to Health Care For America Now, MoveOn created an ad and drove phone calls to Feinstein's office. Today CREDO Mobile joined the fray with a petition asking her to support the public plan, and the return receipt after you sign offers a one-click retweet of a Twitter message to spread the word, which is innovative. The Courage Campaign also has a letter calling on DiFi to stand with the President and support a public option. Courage Campaign also offers one-click forwarding of the message to Twitter, Facebook and MySpace (MySpace still exists?).

Health care reform is the make-or-break issue of this year, and Dianne Feinstein needs to hear from every one of her constituents about it.

(In addition, Firedoglake is whipping the public option in the House, with the goal of finding 40 Democrats who will commit to opposing any bill that DOESN'T have a strong public option contained in it. Presuming that all Republicans will vote against any health care reform, this would have the effect of changing the incentives in Congress, currently tilted toward what the most conservative elements of the Democratic coalition would accept, and move them instead toward what the liberal base of the coalition will demand in exchange for their vote. There are lots of California Democratic House members on their list, so head over and get to the phones!)

Here Comes The Cavalry On Health Care

The best part of today's press conference came when President Obama strongly defended the public plan on the policy merits, and questioned the intellectual honesty of his opponents.

OBAMA: Now, the public plan, I think, is an important tool to discipline insurance companies. What we've said is, under our proposal, let's have a system, the same way that federal employees do, same way that members of Congress do, where we call it an exchange, but you can call it a marketplace, where, essentially, you've got a whole bunch of different plans....As one of those options, for us to be able to say, here's a public option that's not profit-driven, that can keep down administrative costs, and that provides you good, quality care for a reasonable price as one of the options for you to choose, I think that makes sense.

QUESTION: Wouldn't that drive private insurance out of business?

OBAMA: Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical.

Now, the -- I think that there's going to be some healthy debates in Congress about the shape that this takes. I think there can be some legitimate concerns on the part of private insurers that if any public plan is simply being subsidized by taxpayers endlessly that over time they can't compete with the government just printing money, so there are going to be some I think legitimate debates to be had about how this private plan takes shape.

But just conceptually, the notion that all these insurance companies who say they're giving consumers the best possible deal, if they can't compete against a public plan as one option, with consumers making the decision what's the best deal, that defies logic, which is why I think you've seen in the polling data overwhelming support for a public plan.

You cannot make the argument that government-run health care would cause long lines and bureaucrats in charge of health decisions and also make the argument that such an undesirable outcome would BANKRUPT the private insurance market. Either a public plan sucks and nobody will use it, or it does not suck and everybody will use it. Make up your mind.

And with that, Democrats became more energized for this fight. While Obama did not draw a line in the sand on the public plan, he offered enough support to give space to Democrats to argue forcefully for it. Sen. Reid's office released this set of talking points today that sound similar to the President:

RHETORIC: Health Care Reform Will Decrease Competition, Limit Patient Choice. Republicans want Americans to believe that reforming health care will decrease competition in the health care marketplace and limit choice. Senator Alexander: "Well, putting a government-run and subsidized plan in competition with our private health insurance plans would be like putting an elephant in a room with some mice and saying: OK, guys and gals, compete. I think we know what would happen. The elephant would win the competition and the elephant would be your only remaining choice." In fact, the opposite is true - a public option and health care exchanges will lead to more competition in the marketplace. [Congressional Record, 6/16/09]

REALITY: Reforms Will Increase Competition by Increasing Choice. Right now, competition in the health care insurance industry is lacking. "A recent American Medical Association survey found that a single private health insurance company controlled more than half the market for insurance in 16 states and a third of the market in 38 states." By creating a national health insurance exchange, private and public health plans will directly compete for business and open up the marketplace. ["Competitive Health Care," Center for American Progress, 3/25/09]

To briefly explain the concept of a health insurance exchange, and the Urban Institute does it better than I do, the government would essentially bust the trusts that monopolize local markets by creating an exchange that would provide a wider menu of options. Obviously, fostering more competition will tend to lower costs. The same with a public option, one that can potentially deliver health care more efficiently and at better cost. A good private company will figure out how to compete with that, by lowering their own administrative costs. And because strong consumer protections would be inserted into the bill, insurers would not be able to get there through rescission and other immoral means.

(Incidentally, for those who think Jake Tapper caught Obama in a "gotcha" moment by asking a hypothetical about employers who go on the public plan and then change the health care of their employees, Obama's answer to that, as Jon Cohn notes, was fine. If we do nothing, employers will be doing a whole lot of "changing employee's health care" by dropping coverage entirely out of an inability to afford it.)

I'm starting to see a lot of activism around health care reform. Democrats and advocacy groups are tearing into Dianne Feinstein for intimating on CNN over the weekend that Democrats "don't have the votes" on reform. SEIU put together an amusing video rebutting conservative scaremongering. And Firedoglake is taking a whip count for the public option in the House, with the goal of finding enough House progressives to commit to "not vote for any health care bill that does not have a strong public plan," to upset the dynamic where the Ben Nelsons of the world have their say on the legislation.

We're still going to have a lot of hurdles, like terrible media reporting on the subject, conservative scaremongering and the disinclination of Democrats to deliver for their constituents. But people are moving in the right direction now.

ACTION: Get It In Writing From Boxer and Feinstein On Health Care

You may know that health care reform is in a fair bit of trouble. The defenders of the status quo in Washington, often a bipartisan lot, want to deny consumers choice, force them into a market monopolized by private insurance companies who have shown through their actions over the past several decades that they are concerned about profit and not people, and scream that we cannot afford giving all our citizens high-quality and affordable health care, while spending trillions on banks and military weapons. It's the tragedy of the bipartisan elite consensus that currently rules the roost, and not even the greatest economic crisis since the Depression has so far been able to dislodge it.

The bipartisan elite consensus that governs this country is quite simple. First, deficits and high taxes are always the basic cause of economic stress or the biggest threat facing a recovery, no matter the circumstances. (The corollary is that cutting taxes and spending are the ultimate answer to every economic challenge.) Taxes on the wealthy (excuse me "the most productive") must be kept as low as possible, the military cannot be subject to any budgetary constraint and the national security state cannot be held accountable, business and industry must always be given top priority and all other government expenditures are legislative bargaining chips regardless of their impact on the lives of average Americans. Nobody questions that consensus or even suggests that some other set of priorities might be useful from time to time.

This consensus flies in the face of known public preferences, both in this state and around the country, for a full overhaul of the broken health care system that turns lives into data points on a balance sheet.

The health policy survey of 1,207 registered voters showed that 88 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of nonpartisans and 55 percent of Republicans agree that the health care system either needs significant restructuring or should be completely rebuilt.

"There is bipartisan agreement that the health system needs some fundamental changes, and there is greater impatience that this should be done now," said Mark DiCamillo, director of the California Field Poll.
The poll, funded through a grant by the California Wellness Council, comes as President Barack Obama is calling for overhauling the health care system.

His insistence on a government program to compete with private insurers is infuriating some conservatives, who fear such a plan would drive insurance companies out of business. It is also drawing scorn from some liberals who want a single-payer, government-run program.

But 85 percent of respondents to the Field Poll said they support the general concept of allowing people a choice between privately run and government-run health plans.

"They're not necessarily endorsing the public plan or saying that they would choose it," DiCamillo said. "They just like having alternatives. The introduction of a public plan is supported because it would provide greater choices."

You cannot get Americans to agree with 85% consensus on whether the sky is blue. But this they understand: the system is broken, the pharmaceuticals and the insurers and the HMOs cannot be trusted, and choice to force them - through could old market economics - to compete on price and quality is deeply desirable. Later in the poll, Field finds differences on how to pay for reform, an outgrowth of the Two Santa Claus Theory. But giving people a policy they can support will certainly allow them to swallow the mechanisms for paying for it.

So at this point we need to ask our legislators if they support what 85% of Californians support - a robust public option to compete with private insurance in the health care system. Frankly this is the very least we should have, but without it, we cannot call anything coming from Washington real reform. Open Left and DFA have created a whip tool. Simply put, we need to email our Senators - and the Senate is where health care will be won or lost - to answer four specific questions about whether or not they support the public option:

Write a short note in your own words on why you support a public healthcare option:

A public healthcare option is crucial to controlling costs, the heart of the healthcare crisis.
A public healthcare option will keep private insurance honest.

Then ask your Senators these four questions:

Do you support a public healthcare option as part of reform?
Do you support a public healthcare option that is ready on day one?
Do you support a public healthcare option that is national, available everywhere, and accountable to our government?
Do you support a public healthcare option that has the clout to establish rates with providers and big drug companies?

Conclude by reminding your Senators that you are a constituent, and you expect answers to these questions in writing, via email.

Right now health care reform is reeling. We need this whip count to know where everyone stands and put pressure on our lawmakers to adopt the position of 85% of the public. Please take action today. You can see where Sens. Boxer and Feinstein stand here. This is the most important domestic policy of this generation, and we cannot wait another year.

Broken News: DiFi Doesn't Support The Same Thing Today She Didn't Support Yesterday

If Dianne Feinstein really was backing away from supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, I'd be the first to blast her. But she never supported it in the 111th Congress to begin with. She remains the only Democratic member of the California delegation, in the House or Senate, not to co-sponsor the bill. And she signaled her support for a compromise bill, which has a kind of "early voting" card check where workers mail in their cards to the NLRB, and if 50% return they get a union, three weeks ago. So some reporter got fooled today by a Chamber of Commerce press release suggesting that DiFi "pulled her support" of the Employee Free Choice Act in a meeting with CoC folks from the Santa Clarita Valley.

Yeah, we get it. You want to break news. But at bare minimum, one Jon Dell should have:

Looked up the meaning of the word "cloture," which apparently he does not know, since Feinstein's vote for the bill isn't needed for its passage

Asked Feinstein for comment instead of taking the word of an organization spending millions of dollars to defeat the bill, and

Done a simple Google search to determine Feinstein's history with the bill, and discovered that she offered up her own compromise three weeks ago:

[Diane Feinstein's] proposal would replace the card-check provision, which would allow workers to unionize if a majority signed authorization cards and strip a company's ability to demand a secret ballot election. "It's a secret ballot that would be mailed in ... just like an absentee ballot. The individual could take it home and mail it in," Feinstein said. If a majority mailed the ballots to the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB would recognize the union.

What about that? Did she say anything about her own "compromise" bill? Well, we don't know, because a bunch of "breathless" delegates from the Santa Clarita Chamber of Commerce who know nothing about the history of the bill or Feinstein's position apparently didn't ask her about it, they just told their story to an equally incurious reporter who quickly decided that they "broke national news" in a "major turn of events."

This doesn't take Feinstein off the hook or anything - she ought to support the perfectly reasonable provisions of the bill as they stand right now. The California Labor Federation is engaging in a two-day hunger strike in front of her San Francisco office (1 Post Street) to bring attention to DiFi's position on Employee Free Choice. But this "breaking news" is, um, broken.

Sacramento Syndrome

(I've gone over a lot of this, but here's a post that kind of puts everything happening in California in some context.)

If shuttering state parks was the only thing we in California had to worry about, it would be bad enough. But that really only scratches the surface. Among the measures Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed, with little resistance from Democrats, include:

• Eliminating the entire welfare-to-work program, CalWorks
• Eliminating the entire Healthy Families program, which is California's version of SCHIP. So the whole program that the Congress expanded early this year would be dismantled. California would be the only state in the nation without an SCHIP program.
• Eliminating the entire higher education aid grants program, Cal Grants.
• A 5% reduction in salary on top of previous 10% reductions for every single state employee.
• Eliminating funding for prescription drug help for AIDS patients.
• Education cuts that will lead to canceling all summer school programs in Los Angeles County, for example.

And that's just a portion. As the California Budget Project explains, 1.9 million Californians could lose their health care coverage as a result of these cuts. Kudos to the LA Times, by the way, for allowing the great unmentionable to get printed on their pages - the decisions made in Sacramento will truly be the difference between life and death.

Schwarzenegger argues that the state's declining economy and plummeting tax revenues have boxed California into a corner, forcing deep and historic cuts in the health and welfare programs that form the state's social safety net. Without those tough measures, he says, California will cartwheel toward insolvency.

But a 10-person legislative budget panel, which is reviewing the governor's proposals, listened during a long day in a crowded hearing room to scores of people who said their survival depends on programs set to be hit by the budget ax.

They heard from mothers of children with autism, representatives of people on dialysis, poor parents whose children see dentists on the government's dime, former drug abusers set straight by a state rehab program.

And they heard from a woman named Lynnea Garbutt who has lived with AIDS all of her 24 years.

She has survived with the help of a state program that provides the expensive antiviral drugs she takes. Now, with that program facing elimination, she pleaded with lawmakers to save it -- and her life.

"If these cuts take place, you're not just cutting money from the program -- you're cutting my life," she told the panel, her voice shaking and tears falling. "I choose to live. Please don't make me die. My choice is life."

It goes without saying that the weakest, most vulnerable, most voiceless members of society will bear the brunt of the pain from a problem created over thirty years by everyone but them. We have come to expect statements like this from Republicans:

Nearly all of the billions of dollars in cuts the administration has proposed would affect programs for poor Californians, although prisons and schools would take hits, as well.

“Government doesn’t provide services to rich people,” Mike Genest, the state’s finance director, said on a conference call with reporters on Friday. “It doesn’t even really provide services to the middle class.” He added: “You have to cut where the money is.”

In a technical sense, this is of course true. Government doesn't provide services to the rich, only handouts. In the February budget deal in California, at a time when the deficit was increasing on a daily basis, the only permanent tax solution included was a massive, $1.5 billion/year tax cut to the largest corporations in America, who now get to CHOOSE how they are taxed in California, unlike in any other state in the nation.

At issue is the new "elective sales factor," a system for determining how much tax a company should pay in the state. Up to now, California's tax system taxed corporations using a formula based on employment, property and sales in the state, sometimes know as a "triple factor" system.

Many companies have long argued that this traditional way of calculating taxes punishes companies that invest in the state and create jobs, but critics disagree. Under the new elective system, set to go into place for the 2011 tax year, companies can choose to pay under either the triple factor formula or via the "single sales factor" system, based entirely on their sales in California [...]

The most vocal critic of these changes is Lenny Goldberg, executive director of the California Tax Reform Association. He said he is opposed to single sales in the first place-but that allowing companies to choose which system they use is even worse. He said companies will now be able to report more revenue to the state in good years and move losses into the state in bad ones.

"Tax policy should be consistently applied," Goldberg said. "But we've given this elective that provides for infinite manipulation."

By the way, such a tax evasion was pushed as much as anyone by Democrats in areas with high-tech sectors. They have been clamoring for this shift in corporate tax policy for a generation, and they slid this into the budget at the last minute. And... wait for it... reversing it will require a 2/3 vote.

In the same way, Democrats who are supposedly the only hope for the voiceless, the infirm, the sick, the elderly, the poor, and the downtrodden, have been either entirely silent or entirely unhelpful in the face of these cuts. Susan Kennedy, the Democratic Chief of Staff to both Schwarzenegger and former Governor Gray Davis, has decided that "our revenue stream is way too progressive." (Incidentally, lower-income Californians pay a far higher percentage of their income in taxes than those with a higher income, so when Kennedy claims the revenue stream is too progressive, she must mean not regressive enough.) That would be expected of someone in the executive branch, but enablers like Dianne Feinstein make assumptions that the results of the special election, when voters rejected a series of program cuts, borrowing and spending caps, with only one regressive revenue-raising proposal among the lot, prove that voters wanted these kinds of cuts. This has been echoed by the legislative leadership directly after the election. As I said then:

Where is the argument for DEMOCRACY in these statements? Since 1978 that democracy has crumbled and needs to be completely rebuilt. Everyone knows this but refuses to say it out loud. This is why the legislature and the Governor have historically low approval ratings. People are starved for actual leadership and see none. Only democracy will save us. This failed experiment with conservative Two Santa Claus Theories has now become deeply destructive. Because the democrats have provided no leadership and ceded the rhetorical ground, California public opinion holds the contradictory beliefs that the state should not raise taxes and also not cut spending. And if it persists without leadership and advocacy to the contrary, nothing will change.

Here's the problem, in a nutshell. In 1978 California passed Prop. 13, and Democrats have run for cover ever since. They should have put up a fight immediately. They should have outlined the consequences of mandating a 2/3 majority for tax increases but not for program cuts, the consequences of aligning commercial property tax caps along with residential, the consequences of the supermajorities making the state ungovernable and the Constitutional mandates pushed by special interests and written in by the voters making the state unfixable. But instead, Democrats cowered in fear of losing power, despite the demographic shifts in the state since the mid-1990s, so they lay low and never advocate for the necessary reforms, and buy completely into the myth that the 70's-era tax revolt remains alive and well, and they take public opinion polls on this as static and unchangeable through anything resembling leadership. Obviously Republicans are insane in this state, but they can barely manage 1/3 of the legislature (and if we had a half-decent campaign apparatus among California Democrats they'd lose that too) and shouldn't be feared in any respect. Yet our Democratic leadership exists in a post-1978 fog, a kind of "Sacramento Syndrome," where they've come to love their captors on the right, and have bought into their claims.

These severe program cuts are nothing more than a shock doctrine being placed on the citizens of California, with the burden anything but equally shared. Sadly, there is absolutely no one with any authority willing to stand up and say no. There are organizations outside the Capitol trying to lead and engage in systemic reform. But the Democrats in Sacramento are scared to death of it - that unknowable circumstance they cannot control. So the short term will deliver nothing but pain.

Fear's Triumphant Return

Glenn Greenwald captures perfectly the horrifying and absurd spectacle of tough guy conservatives riling up the public with bedwetting fear over prisoners possibly being held in American prisons, and weak-kneed Democrats going along with them. These arrested development conservatives, afraid of their own shadow, are seen as the Serious people by the national media, who then back Democrats into a corner to force them to be as afraid as everyone else, and Democrats inexplicably take the bait. It tells you something that it takes Dianne frickin' Feinstein to cut through the B.S. here.

FEINSTEIN: Yes, we have maximum security prisons in California eminently capable of holding these people as well, and from which people — trust me — do not escape. So I believe that this has really been an exercise in fear-baiting. I hope it’s not going to be successful.

(See also Dick Durbin)

But of course, it will be, as long as Give 'em Hell Harry Reid refuses to offer any rebuttal to the fearmongering nonsense coming from the right. And so we get the Senate voting 90-6 in favor of right-wing cartoon fantasies. The President caused this by asking for the money without an actual plan in place, but the Pavlovian response to Republican fear card-playing from Senate Dems really makes you sick.

Division Of Labor

The rumors of a deal on the Employee Free Choice Act are really heating up. Card check is likely to drop, but other notable elements may remain. And in place of the new bargaining rules, none other than Dianne Feinstein has proposed a kind of vote-by-mail version of card check that would eliminate the hype from the right about the end of the "secret ballot" in union elections.

To win more support and prevent any intimidation, Senate Democrats are considering a proposal pushed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat. In a procedure similar to the early voting that precedes elections in many states, workers could sign cards and mail them to the National Labor Relations Board. If a majority mailed cards, the board would order the employer to recognize the union, as it now does when a majority of workers vote for a union through secret ballots.

It's kind of a novel idea, though I'm sure the right will find fault with it (maybe now we'll get "union voter fraud" cases). But it's important to understand that the union election process as it stands now looks nothing like a political election. Unless in a political election, your boss can bring you into a room and tell you how important it is to vote for John McCain, threaten to give you crappy shifts if you don't, fire the Obama organizers and run nothing but McCain ads 24 hours a day:



That union election dyusfunction must change. The same with the ability for employers to endlessly delay the election and then object to a contract even if the workers vote for a union. The National Labor Relations Board has a mission to ENCOURAGE unions, by the way, but their laws do the opposite. So this vote-by-mail card check at least would end this nightmare of a process. Another possibility is a quick election process, perhaps even in a matter of days, which wouldn't give the employer time to hire the union busters and intimidate their employees.

The other sticking point would be mandatory arbitration 120 days after union recognition, if both sides cannot reach a contract. Arlen Specter, fighting for his political life, has come up with a plan:

Mr. Harkin said, “If the Chamber of Commerce says they’re opposed to everything, then they’re not going to be a player.” He cited a proposal by Mr. Specter that might help preserve the arbitration provisions. Under it, the arbitrator would choose between offers by an employer and by a union. “The last, best offer idea might have legs,” Mr. Harkin said.

Several labor leaders said they would accept legislation with fast elections only if it included arbitration and tougher penalties for companies that break labor laws. One view is to wait until 2011 to push for sweeping labor law changes, on the assumption that Democrats will enlarge their Senate majority in the 2010 elections.

A separate idea would have mediators involved in negotiations instead of giving it all to an arbitrator. Jane Hamsher has more.

My view is that we need to start reforming the broken system, so more mild reforms are a good launching-off point. Eventually, perhaps after the midterms, I would return to this and resubmit the Employee Free Choice Act language as written today.

Bobbing And Weaving

The White House has given so many conflicting statements on prosecutions for those who directed and authorized torture that it's clear they just don't want to be responsible for it. Between the past 48 hours, when Rahm Emanuel and Robert Gibbs parroted the "looking forward, not backward" viewpoint, and today, something has changed. While Obama went to Langley and defended the release of the torture memos, at the same time his senior aides were telling the New York Times that legal sanctions may go forward, due to mounting public pressure both inside and outside the Beltway.

And while Mr. Obama vowed not to prosecute C.I.A. officers for acting on legal advice, on Monday aides did not rule out legal sanctions for the Bush lawyers who developed the legal basis for the use of the techniques.

...human rights activists, Congressional Democrats and international officials pressed for a fuller accounting of what happened. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote Mr. Obama asking him not to rule out prosecutions until her panel completed an investigation over the next six to eight months.

Three Bush administration lawyers who signed memos, John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury, are the subjects of a coming report by the Justice Department’s ethics office that officials say is sharply critical of their work. The ethics office has the power to recommend disbarment or other professional penalties or, less likely, to refer cases for criminal prosecution.

The administration has also not ruled out prosecuting anyone who exceeded the legal guidelines, and officials have discussed appointing a special prosecutor. One option might be giving the job to John H. Durham, a federal prosecutor who has spent 15 months investigating the C.I.A.’s destruction of videotapes of harsh interrogations.

You have Dianne Feinstein calling for leaving prosecutions open. There are both the DoJ Inspector General's report and a fuller report from the Senate Armed Services Committee set for release, to say nothing of additional secret torture memos that may come out at some point. You have MoveOn calling for investigations by a special prosecutor. All this pressure has forced the Administration into a corner. And this morning, you have Obama made a more definitive statement.

President Barack Obama is leaving the door to open to possible prosecution of Bush administration officials who devised harsh terrorism-era interrogation tactics.

He also said Tuesday that he worries about the impact of high-intensity hearings on how detainees were treated under former President George W. Bush. But Obama did say, nevertheless, he could support a Hill investigation if it were conducted in a bipartisan way.

Obama has said he doesn't support charging CIA agents and interrogators who took part in waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, acting on advice from superiors that such practices were legal. But he also said that it is up to the attorney general whether to prosecute Bush administration lawyers who wrote the memos approving these tactics.

Read closely here. Obama said he could support an investigation emanating from Congress, and that the decision for prosecution is up to the Attorney General. In other words, shorter Obama: "Leave me out of this." Nobody need rely on his support.

And the President is correct. He doesn't get to decide who is and is not prosecuted in America. That's the responsibility of the Attorney General. And if he wants to take it out of politics, the Attorney General ought to appoint a special prosecutor, as MoveOn and others have called for.

As for the impeachment of Jay Bybee, I have noticed that not only Democratic stalwarts like Sheldon Whitehouse, but even those Villagers disinclined to prosecute, like Joke Line, are comfortable with supporting this measure. This could be the entryway into getting a taste of accountability in Washington. My petition to get the California Democratic Party to support a resolution of impeachment now has 3,903 signatures. Sign it if you can, and let's move forward on this front, getting the largest state Democratic Party in the country on the record to remove the torture judge from the federal bench.

UPDATE: Patrick Leahy:

"The fact is, the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee did not tell the truth. If the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee had told the truth, he never would have been confirmed," said Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"The decent and honorable thing for him to do would be to resign. And if he is a decent and honorable person, he will resign," he said deliberately.

Simple answers to simple statements: he's not decent and honorable.

Feinstein's Dishonest Spin on Employee Free Choice

At The Plum Line, Greg Sargent takes a look at Dianne Feinstein's lack of support for the Employee Free Choice Act. She remains the only Congressional Democrat from California not to co-sponsor the bill, and according to her spokesman, she's looking for the mythical bipartisanship pony.

“I have thought for some time that the way to approach this issue is by trying to see if there can’t be a compromise between the business community, the agriculture community and labor. This is an extraordinarily difficult economy and feelings are very strong on both sides of the issue. I would hope there is some way to find common ground that would be agreeable to both business and labor.”

This is complete nonsense. Employers are firing workers who try to organize. They intimidate workers into voting against their better interests. One out of every four unions elections were marred by illegal firings in 2007. I don't know how you can possibly reconcile the two sides given that scenario.

Furthermore, the invocation of the "difficult economy" is another red herring. Sen. Tom Harkin has already done away with this nonsense by pulling out his history book.

The bill's supporters are pointing to the downturn as the ultimate proof of their arguments that labor's decline has helped put the economy out of balance and that only by restoring workers' purchasing power can the nation return to broadly shared prosperity.

"In 1935, we passed the Wagner Act that promoted unionization and allowed unions to flourish, and at the time we were at around 20 percent unemployment. So tell me again why we can't do this in a recession?" said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), invoking the pro-labor changes of the New Deal. "This is the time to do it. This is exactly the time we should be insisting on a fairer playing field for people to organize themselves."

Because of Sen. Specter's announced opposition, the Employee Free Choice Act faces an uphill battle. But at the very least, Californians should expect that all of their representatives in Washington would understand the need to strengthen unions as a means to strengthening the overall middle class, increasing wages and BOOSTING, not hurting the economy. Feinstein has a choice to make, and you can sign this letter from the Courage Campaign to let her know you're watching her.

Dear Senator Dianne Feinstein,

In this time of economic crisis, we are distressed to hear that you have not yet endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act, especially as conservatives launch a massive campaign to discredit and oppose the bill.

The Employee Free Choice Act, which you co-sponsored and voted for in 2007, is a centerpiece of progressive efforts to help working Americans recover from this economic crisis. As in the Great Depression, the best way to rebuild the middle class is to allow workers to form unions. Workers covered by a union contract have better wages and benefits. Non-union workers benefit from these higher standards when unions are strong in their areas.

We, the undersigned, call upon you to endorse and to co-sponsor the Employee Free Choice Act. We ask that you join President Barack Obama, Senator Barbara Boxer, the entire California Democratic delegation in the House of Representatives, members of labor unions and progressives across America in ensuring that this act becomes law in 2009.

Time To Play A Game

Here's a list of all the co-sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to join a union and harder for union-busting companies to intimidate and harass their own employees. Since it was introduced on Tuesday, it has gained 223 co-sponsors in the House and 40 in the Senate. If you click on California, you'll get a rundown of every lawmaker in the state who has endorsed.

Do you notice who's missing?

Her name rhymes with Schmeinstein.

And yes, she's the ONLY ONE of the entire Democratic delegation who hasn't endorsed.

Senator Feinstein's Los Angeles office may not be aware of this fun fact. Give them a call at (310) 914-7300, and ask why she's the only California Democrat to withhold her support of the Employee Free Choice Act.

(what's more, if you're a union member, call your local supervisor and make sure they let their superiors know. I'm sure the California Labor Federation would be interested in the news.)

CA-Gov: Way-Too-Early-Field-Isn't-Even-Set Poll Coverage!

Two polls were actually released today on the 2010 California Governor's race. The Field Poll did an extensive poll of the race, including favorability ratings, and Lake Research, a Democratic firm, did their own poll which included some head-to-head matchups.

Field's poll included Dianne Feinstein and I don't think the results were all that great for her. In the primary she polls well under 50%, compared to earlier polls which had her closer to that number.

Dianne Feinstein: 38%
Jerry Brown: 16%
Antonio Villaraigosa: 16%
Gavin Newsom: 10%
John Garamendi: 4%
Steve Westly: 2%
Bill Lockyer: 1%
Jack O’Connell: 1%
Undecided: 12%

Considering she's the most well-known figure in California politics, and that there won't be that many competitors in the final field, that's not a runaway at all. Plus, her net favorables with the electorate (+23) are less than Jerry Brown's (+25), despite her being more well-known (Among just Democrats, her unfavs are slightly higher than Brown's but so are her faves). If anything, this shows that she would have a tough race, maybe too tough for her to want to try it rather than luxuriate in her position whitewashing Bush's war crimes on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Without DiFi in the race, it's a packed field. Here's Field's poll:

Jerry Brown: 26%
Antonio Villaraigosa: 22%
Gavin Newsom: 16%
John Garamendi: 8%
Steve Westly: 2%
Bill Lockyer: 2%
Jack O’Connell: 2%
Undecided: 22%

DiFi's votes are, then, basically evenly distributed. Lake's primary poll (they didn't poll with DiFi) was similar:

Jerry Brown: 27%
Antonio Villaraigosa: 20%
Gavin Newsom: 14%
John Garamendi: 8%
Steve Westly: 3%
Jack O’Connell: 1%
Undecided: 27%

Big undecideds there, and obviously Villaraigosa is benefiting from being the only SoCal candidate in the field, although given his re-election performance he may have some work to do with his southern base. As for everyone else, there's time, but they're all pretty far back.

The Republican primary? Nobody's heard of any of the candidates, and the undecideds are off the charts, but it's early.

Meg Whitman: 21%
Tom Campbell: 18%
Steve Poizner: 7%
Undecided: 54%

Surprised to see Campbell that close, but it's probably just name ID; he's run statewide before. At least 63% of all voters, and at least 67% of Republicans, have no impression whatsoever of any of these candidates. Their favorables are miniscule. Given that, Poizner and Whitman will have to spend a lot of their millions just to introduce themselves to the public.

Finally, Lake Research did some (selected) head-to-heads.

Brown: 41%
Poizner: 30%
Undecided: 29%

Brown: 43%
Whitman: 27%
Undecided: 30%

Newsom: 38%
Poizner: 29%
Undecided: 33%

Newsom: 40%
Whitman: 25%
Undecided: 35%

Long story short, DiFi wouldn't have a cakewalk, Villaraigosa appears to have strength based on geographic isolation, Brown looks well-positioned, nobody knows the Republicans, and any Democrat can win.