Arnold's Crusade Against Legislators For Committing The Crime Of Legislating

The Sacramento Bee committed an act of journalism today, taking a look at the consequences of the legislature failing to act on various bills in favor of solving the budget.

Merced County beekeeper Gene Brandi says he had enough problems before getting ensnared in the nasty war of words between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature over California's failure to cure its staggering budget deficit.

His Gene Brandi Apiaries in Los Banos, which once produced 400 drums of honey a year, has turned out just 20 drums so far this year as a searing drought has deprived wildland plants of the nectar that bees turn into honey.

And Brandi says he is facing competition from food processing companies that market sugar-added honey products as the real thing. "We've got people who take advantage of the good name of honey to try to sell their product," he says.

Now some agricultural producers and Democratic lawmakers say Schwarzenegger and his aides are unfairly exploiting the good names of honey, blueberries, pomegranate juice – and cow tails – to bash legislators for fiddling while California burns.

The dust-up stirs debate over whether the budget mess should freeze out all other matters – or whether lawmakers still have a responsibility to continue the business of legislating, no matter how mundane it can appear.

Did this guy really ask to be turned into a punchline by the Governor? I would argue that the crap that large multinational food producers package and sell as food is a serious problem on a variety of levels, not the least of which is public health. And given 120 legislators with different committees and responsibilities, we are perfectly able, even with a budget crisis, to deal with additional legislation, particularly that which can make a difference to small businesses and the health and safety of the entire state. In the past several years, with budget woes in every single one of them, somehow we passed a prescription drug benefit for seniors, an increase to the minimum wage, a landmark smart growth bill, and the Global Warmings Solutions Act, just to name a few.

Ol' Stogie And Jacuzzi is guilty of the exact same crime of turning every program that sounds funny, that includes animals or food, into an object of derision, as John McCain when he discussed so-called "pork" in the stimulus package:

McCain's method of indentifying waste, gleefully repeated by Dowd, is a disgrace. His technique is to focus on programs that mention animals or food, or anythign that sounds silly. He's clearly not interested in learning whether any of the programs he targets have merit. Here is Dowd recording McCain's twitter postings:

$1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah. “Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?” McCain tweeted. ...

$2 million “for the promotion of astronomy” in Hawaii, as McCain twittered, “because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy.” ...

$200,000 for a tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past. “REALLY?” McCain twittered.

I don't know whether or not cricket control is a necessary program. Maybe crickets are doing many times that amount in crop damage every year. Maybe it's a boondoggle. I don't know about the astronomy program, either, though I do think there's a role for federal support of the sciences, even in silly-sounding places like Hawaii.

I do know that the tattoo-removal program is an effective anti-crime initiative -- it allows rehabilitated former to reenter society shorn of visible markings that cut them off from middle-class culture. McCain and Dowd don't know this, and they don't care. What's on display is the worst elements of political demagoguery meeting the worst elements of the instant-reaction internet culture. They think the very idea of trying to learn about something before you take a position on it is a joke.

Who could have expected that going with a chief executive this simple-minded could lead us to such a place of ruin?

The Maze Of Food Policy

Ezra Klein premiered a column about food policy in the Washington Post today, with a sort-of review of Food, Inc., the latest movie about the problems with what we eat. Klein praises the film but wonders if it could be more specific:

"Food, Inc." is certainly an important film. But, like the movement that spawned it, it's also a frustrating one. It's driven less by a thesis than by an intuition: Something is wrong with our food production system. It's just not clear what. Over the course of 94 minutes, we wander through meatpacking plants and fast-food drive-throughs and the halls of Congress. We meet a mother who lost her son to tainted meat and a farmer who can no longer stomach Tyson's treatment of her chickens. We stop in with a hyper-charismatic farmer who pets his pigs and preaches sustainability and loathes corporate cash cows, then travel with a hippie yogurt baron who touts his company as the ethical future of big-box food.

The sense that something is wrong with our food quickly blurs into the suggestion that everything is wrong with our food. It has too much bacteria but also too many pesticides. It is too expensive, but we do not spend enough money on it. We need fewer corporations, or maybe more corporations run by the yogurt guy. With so much wrong, it is hard to know where to start. And sometimes, in fact, it seems that fixing one problem would create another: Making fruits and vegetables cheaper, for instance, is hard to do if you also want them to be organic.

Klein is right to consider the complexity and enormity of our food system. It has an impact on every major domestic policy challenge in this Administration, and yet we barely mention it. Meat production accounts for more carbon emissions that car travel. Health care costs soar in part due to obesity and child diabetes, much of which comes from the food we eat. But the biggest problem that he singles out is one of accountability and transparency - small groups direct our food policy, they refuse to allow sunlight to shine on the process, and as a result consumers lose. This goes all the way from giant chemical and agribusiness corporations to the Congressional Agriculture Committees, which are feeding troughs (pardon the pun) for the parochial interests of farm-state lawmakers.

This plays out in very deliberate ways. This interesting study on food deserts - urban areas without access to affordable, nutritious food - finds that, in many respects, this gets caused by an overabundance of bad, cheap food options, rather than a lack of good ones. Who makes those decisions? Which comes first, the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood or the crappy fast-food joints at every corner? How can we use local zoning to improve this? How can Congress get involved? How can businesses be made to face the externalities they cause with food that makes us sick? There used to be a mandate for educational programming from television - could a mandate for legitimate healthy food options make sense?

It seems like we all watch films like this and Super Size Me and read books like Fast Food Nation and nothing ever really changes, because the audiences for those films all talk to themselves and never figure out the pressure points for action. I'm hopeful that Klein's column, or sites like La Vida Locavore can elucidate these points for us and come up with some tangible actions.

The White House Vegetable Garden

I hope this starts a trend. Sustainable lifestyles are healthy lifestyles.

On Friday, Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets (the president doesn’t like them) but arugula will make the cut.

While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at time when obesity has become a national concern.

In an interview in her office, Mrs. Obama said, “My hope is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”

I love the symbolism. Throughout the Presidential campaign we heard various candidates, including Obama, state that we have a disease care system, not a health care system. That's not just a function of a lack of preventive care, but the way in which Americans live and eat. In low-income communities fresh produce is often not even available. But we can plant community gardens, in a large swath of land offered by municipalities (I'm quite certain that there are a few vacant lots out there) or in individual homes. And we can move our children and ourselves to better food options. And we can, by taking that responsibility, reduce the need for the exorbitant external costs associated with obesity.

This has inspired me. I currently don't have the space for a garden, but I've been meaning to get one of those small planters on rollers to grow a few crops. Thanks, Michelle.

Budget Odds And Ends

There are these little glories tucked into the budget outline, and they all seem to have the same trajectory - marvelous, progressive, and yet not quite good enough for what's needed.

For example, the ending of direct payments to Big Agriculture farmers. This has been sorely needed for years, and yet it's not going to radically alter our food policy, which many say is broken.

The good news (and better than I speculated at ObFo): Bam wants to eliminate direct payment for farmers with SALES greater than $500,000. That will affect a lot more farmers than using income as the basis for a limit. But before you start cheering, know that the administration fully expects the lost subsidy will be replaced by "alternate sources of income from emerging markets for environmental services, such as carbon sequestration, renewable energy production, and providing clean air, clean water, and wildlife habitat." So no worries, Big Ag! The money will continue to flow.

The same distorted crop subsidies will remain as well, making it a fairer system but still not a fixed one.

Then there are the energy cap and trade proceeds - noble, but insufficient (though the Administration could be fudging).

First, the projected revenue seems strikingly low. Partly this is a function of the fact that the targets themselves, particularly in the short term, are fairly weak -- 14 percent under 2005 levels by 2020, 83 percent by 2050. (Sane climate policy would reduce emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, at least.)

Still, the proposal explicitly says that the administration expects 100 percent of the permits to be auctioned off. As Kate noted, the CBO estimated (PDF) that "the value of those allowances could total between $50 billion and $300 billion annually (in 2006 dollars) by 2020." The administration's estimate -- $83 billion a year by 2020 -- is well at the bottom end of those projections.

My guess -- apparently confirmed by "senior White House officials" who don't invite me to their conference calls -- is that this is simple conservatism. The inclusion of any carbon revenue at all is sure to spark controversy, so they're simply being cautious not to lay too ambitious a marker.

The bigger question is whether the $15 billion/year investment in clean energy will really tip the economy toward a paradigm shift.

Let me throw in one universally good element: the shuttering of Yucca Mountain.

Washington -- President Obama is taking the first step toward blocking a nuclear waste dump at Nevada's Yucca Mountain by slashing money for the program in his first budget, according to congressional sources.

Obama's budget, which is expected to be announced today, will eliminate nearly all funding for the Yucca project with the exception of money needed for license applications submitted last year to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said sources who asked not to be identified because the document has not been made public.

"The Yucca Mountain program will be scaled back to those costs necessary to answer inquiries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission while the administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear-waste disposal," the Energy Department will say as part of the budget document, the sources said.

This will save close to $80 billion dollars as well as force better solutions to energy than nuclear.

I am genuinely happy with the budget, and in 1993 this would be an incredible document. The problems are just so big right now in 2009, that it may not be enough. But I'm pleased it's even gone this far.

Forgive Me My "Change We Can Believe In" Gush

I think I've been critical of the Obama Administration where necessary, but on many fronts, they are pleasantly surprising, in particular with cabinet appointments I thought were middling at best. For example, Ken Salazar, who was pretty milquetoast as a Colorado Senator, is burning down the Interior Department, figuratively speaking, as its Secretary.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Tuesday that he was reconsidering a series of controversial energy and environmental decisions handed down in the waning days of the Bush administration, including a move to open federal land near national parks to oil and natural gas drilling.

Opening parts of the Mountain West to oil shale development -- a sensitive issue because of the huge quantities of water required to extract oil from the rock -- will also be reviewed, he said in his first formal news interview since wining Senate confirmation last week.

"I'm very concerned about a number of the midnight actions that were taken by the Bush administration," Salazar said. "We barely have moved in, but we already know enough to know there are many issues we need to revisit." [...]

He stressed the importance of science in agency decision-making, particularly in regard to endangered species. Late last year, the Bush administration said federal agencies would not be compelled to consult biologists about whether government projects such as new roads or dams would harm endangered wildlife or plants.

Salazar said he would reconsider that rule and would work to enhance Endangered Species Act protections for streams and habitat. "At the end of the day, it should be the scientific foundation that drives the decisions," he said.

Calling climate change "one of the signature issues of our time," he also said he was revisiting a Bush administration decision to exclude global warming considerations when acting to protect endangered species such as the polar bear, which is declining in part because of the shrinking polar ice.

In particular the oil shale development is intriguing, because Salazar didn't seem much opposed to that in the Senate. He also outlined stringent ethics standards, which makes sense considering that the Minerals Management Service was a hooker and blow ring, for all intents and purposes, during the Bush regime.

Over at the USDA, Tom Vilsack, who was looked at warily by food policy reformers, is getting decent marks for his work in the first week.

I liked the title of this article without even reading it: Vilsack Reverses Bush Administration Actions. First, he reinstated $3 million in funding for the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program (a program promoting fruits and vegetables) that the Bushies had cut. Second, he extended a comment period on a rule limiting crop subsidy payments by 60 days. (The specific name of the rule is 2008 Farm Bill Farm Program Payment Limitation and Payment Eligibility).

More goodies could be found in a USDA press release. That said Vilsack stated priorities as including:

* Combatting childhood obesity and promoting health and nutrition
* R&D for biofuels, wind, and other renewable energy
* The environment: Making progress on major environmental challenges, including climate change. Vilsack said it's important that farmers and ranchers play a role with USDA in efforts to promote incentives for management practices that provide clean air, clean water, and wildlife habitat, and help farmers participate in markets that reward them for sequestering carbon and limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
* Providing a safety net to farmers and ranchers - "including independent producers and local and organic agriculture."
* Enforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act!!!!!
* Quickly implementing the 2008 Farm Bill
* "Modernizing the food safety system"
* Food aid overseas
* The Forest Service: Restoring the mission of the Forest Service as a protector of clean air, clean water, and wildlife habitat; a provider of recreation opportunities; a key player in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration.

If he can win over the reformers, he's got my blessing.

Finally, I don't have anything on HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan yet, but the Federal Reserve is promising to write down bad mortgages to limit foreclosures.

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday took a step toward easing mortgage foreclosures threatening millions of Americans, announcing that it would write down troubled mortgages to keep people in their homes.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the initiative would specifically include $74 billion of assets held in connection with the bailout last year of Bear Stearns and American International Group.

"The goal of the policy is to avoid preventable foreclosures on residential mortgage assets that are held, owned or controlled by a Federal Reserve Bank," he said in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House of Representatives financial services committee.

Combine that with the assurances on foreclosure work-outs in TARP II and cram-down making its way through a House panel and there are legitimate efforts to keep people in their homes, which is quite a change.

OK, back to being crabby now that I got that out... :)

Several Unrelated Items About Food

I like the blogosphere around this time of year because you can easily figure out who the Jewish bloggers are (the ones posting). Anyway, since all Jewish holidays are devoted to food (and pretty much only food), here are a few musings about that which we eat.

• There's some kind of mini-uproar about Barack Obama ordering spam musubi on the golf course in Hawaii this week. Not only is there a very good Hawaiian restaurant on the Westside of LA that serves spam musubi, but they sell T-shirts which read "What the hell is spam musubi?" that will hopefully start flying off the shelves now that the delicacy has a Presidential imprimatur. For the unenlightened, it's basically sushi with Spam instead of fish.

• I am breaking with all known Jewish traditions this Christmas and not going to a Chinese restaurant, but instead a potluck for wayward members of the tribe. My contribution will be butternut squash soup, perfect on this unusually cold California day.

• It's not too late to give to your local food bank. Demand is up significantly over the past several months as the recession deepens. Second Harvest is a good place to connect with the food bank that needs the most help in your area. I did a little work at the Westside Food Bank in Santa Monica over the weekend, and it was a good feelings.

• Speaking of food assistance, and turning to a food-related story that has actual policy implications, the Obama transition is considering using food assistance programs to encourage better nutrition.

For decades, the government has treated hunger and obesity as unrelated phenomena. But at a news conference last week in Chicago, Tom Vilsack, President-elect Barack Obama's choice for agriculture secretary, said he would put "nutrition at the center of all food assistance programs," a signal that he will get involved next year when Congress moves to reauthorize nutrition programs that support school breakfasts and lunches as well as summer food for children.

"For a long time, we've looked at hunger and obesity separately," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the committee that will draft the legislation. "It's not a zero-sum game."

This is a great idea. The tragedy of being poor is that your food options are typically cheap, high-fat products that end up leading to obesity. By offering major discounts to the purchase of produce with food stamps, for example, we help to solve both a hunger problem and a public health problem. There is a reasonable concern that the government becomes too paternalistic over this, but the very real concern about obesity among the poor outweighs it. I would also encourage farmer's markets in low-income communities that accept food stamps; much of this is a problem of access, as only fast food restaurants and convenience stores seem to proliferate in depressed communities instead of full-service groceries.

The (Very) Quiet Revolution

I would say that not everyone is happy with Barack Obama's choice for Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack:

While Vilsack has promoted respectable policies with respect to restraining livestock monopolies, his overall record is one of aiding and abetting Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) or factory farms and promoting genetically engineered crops and animal cloning. Equally troubling is Vilsack's support for unsustainable industrial ethanol production, which has already caused global corn and grain prices to skyrocket, literally taking food off the table for a billion people in the developing world.

The Organic Consumers Association is calling on organic consumers and all concerned citizens to join our call to action and block Vilsack's confirmation as the next Secretary of Agriculture. Please help us reach our goal of 100,000 petition signatures against Vilsack' nomination. Sign today! Your email will be sent to your Senators and the President-Elect's office.

I think Tom Philpott has this right - these issues weren't really included in Obama's message of change, and hopes that there would be anything radically different in ag policy were unfounded.

People in the sustainable-ag world -- including me -- are having a tough time time accepting that Obama has picked an a ethanol-loving, GMO enthusiast as his USDA chief.

But then again, Obama himself is a strong supporter of both GMOs and ethanol, so maybe we shouldn't be too surprised.

That said, if you didn't expect ag policy to be much of a concern for this Administration, Vilsack is actually a fairly decent choice on the margins, though obviously not in the big picture. He supports labeling GMO food and a stricter approval process at the FDA for biotech. His outlook on ethanol sucks, as you might expect from a former Iowa governor, but he does support ending the tariffs on Brazilian sugar cane ethanol and even phasing out corn ethanol subsidies, as well as researching second-generation biofuels that are less resource-intensive. He has spoken of using food to support in Obama's foreign policy message of soft power, to aid those suffering from malnutrition and famine. And he wants to revamp the school nutrition program.

Vilsack has been fairly open and accessible on his beliefs, and while ultimately the status quo will probably maintain, I think there's room for him to listen to progressives and even implement some policies they like.

Vilsack.

In his eleventy-teenth press conference (probably more than the current President has done since 2006), Barack Obama will announce today that Ken Salazar will be the Secretary of the Interior, and Tom Vilsack will be the Secretary of Agriculture. I went over Salazar yesterday. Vilsack is probably a better pick than a couple of the others floated for this job, but as a former Iowa governor it's unlikely he'll do anything but the status quo on corn policy, which is easily the worst part of our food policy (If I wasn't clear enough, I'm talking about ethanol and biofuels, which expend more energy than they produce). I agree with Mick Kristof that the name ought to be changed to the Department of Food. We are not nearly the agricultural society that we were when the Department was launched, and a focus on food would be much more relevant to, er, the eaters. Our food policy, where we pay subsidies to farmers not to grow and subsidize the corn growers beyond all reason, is very out of whack. Industrial factory farms and their lobbyists set the policy. We could limit subsidies to the richest farmers and create a new food culture based on eating locally and supporting organic farming. A good manifesto for a saner food policy is here.

I don't think Vilsack is going to promote this drastic a change. I'm sure he's competent, and hopefully open to new ideas, but I don't see a revolution on the horizon. That said, his name is fun to say!

Tofu For Planetary Survival

Remember when the Bush Adminstration boasted about how they reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 1% in 2006? Remember how this showed that they were on the right path to solving the climate crisis? Yeah, well, that's no longer operative.

According to a new release from the Energy Information Administration, “U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2007 were 1.4 percent above the 2006 total.” This increase erases the 1% drop in emissions in 2006, for which Bush claimed credit (even though the decrease was due to an unusually warm winter and high fuel prices).

So, if warm winters have the effect of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, then maybe global warming is the only way to stop global warming! Ever think of that, Al Gore?

Still, this kind of puzzles me. Gas prices were high in 2006, but they hit a record high in 2007, and were consistently higher than the previous year. It doesn't make a lot of sense, outside of just general increases in demand, to see emissions rise. Unless, you know, this is all about the cows rather than the cars.

When Rajendra Pachauri, who runs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made a suggestion that could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 18 percent, he was excoriated. Why was his proposal so unpalatable? Because he suggested eating less meat would be the easiest way people could reduce their carbon footprint, with one meat-free day per week as a first step [...] Boris Johnson, London's outspoken mayor, posted a long screed on his blog, declaring, "The whole proposition is so irritating that I am almost minded to eat more meat in response."

Johnson may not appreciate the environmental value of replacing his steak and kidney pie with a tofu scramble, but the benefits would be quite real. Animal agriculture is responsible for local pollution from animal waste and chemical use and for greenhouse gas emissions from the energy-intensive process of growing feed and raising livestock, plus the, ahem, byproducts of animal digestion. It would be much easier -- and cheaper -- to give up meat than to, say, convert an entire country's electrical grid to using solar, wind, or nuclear energy. A rural Montanan might have no choice but to drive to work, but he can certainly switch out his pork chop for pinto beans. While Pachauri was correct to note that one need not go vegan to help the environment -- simply eating less meat would help -- he could have also emphasized the more politically appealing point that one can be a carnivore and still reduce one's impact by choosing different meats. Even limiting one's meat consumption to chicken yields major environmental benefits -- not to mention health and financial benefits [...]

Now should be environmental vegetarianism's big moment. Global warming is the single biggest threat to the health of the planet, and meat consumption plays a bigger role in greenhouse gas emissions than even many environmentalists realize. The production and transportation of meat and dairy, particularly if you include the grains that are fed to livestock, is much more energy-intensive than it is for plants. Animals, especially cattle, also release gases like methane and nitrous oxide that, pound for pound, are up to 30 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. Internationally there is an additional cost to animal agriculture: massive deforestation to make land available for grazing, which releases greenhouse gases as the trees are burned and removes valuable foliage that absorbs carbon dioxide. As a result, according to a 2006 United Nations report, internationally the livestock sector accounts for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions -- more than the transportation sector.

While typing this, I recognized that I had a meat-free day yesterday: grapefruit for breakfast, meatless chicken nuggets (quite tasty!) for lunch, and my world-famous bean and cheese quesadillas for dinner. Getting the whole country on board with this might be even harder than making every car a Prius, but it'd be good to see at least some emphasis on the role of food consumption in energy and carbon policy.

There are so many systems that rely on burning carbon that it's going to be extremely difficult to get them all in order without a comprehensive strategy. And that includes meat-eating.

I Think People Like This Guy

100,000 in Denver. This follows close to 100,000 in St. Louis.



Likability isn't as much of a factor in Presidential elections as people like to make it - but it's undeniably a factor. There's a comfort zone that people take into account. This is why is was slander on the part of the media to make Al Gore so unlikable compared to W.

What's rare here is that the likable guy also has an attention to detail and a head for policy.

From a purely economic perspective, finding the new driver of our economy is going to be critical. There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy.

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.

For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy, that's going to be my number one priority when I get into office, assuming, obviously, that we have done enough to just stabilize the immediate economic situation.

This is just incredibly perceptive and I'm glad Obama has picked up on it. Something as simple as energy efficiency in California has created 1.5 million new jobs in the past 30 years. Energy connotes productivity, it connotes a cleaner environment, and it gives us what we need to maintain our power as a society - something to MAKE. We have to notice the inter-connectedness of all of this.

What I hope is that he also has the ability to make his policies meet the challenges ahead. In other words, will he leverage his likability to push people toward the policies we truly need.

Taco Trucks And The Future Of California

I know that we're going to have a historic new Speaker today, and tomorrow the Governor is going to prevent a revised budget that will set the course for the next few months in the Legislature. But for the moment I want to talk about taco trucks.

Los Angeles County has enacted rules basically banning the taco truck, the rumbling restaurants on wheels serving Mexican food to lunchtime office workers, day laborers and others throughout the city, particularly in East LA. The previous order by the County Board of Supervisors was to force taco trucks to move every hour or face a $60 fine. Most trucks paid it as the cost of doing business. Now the supervisors have upped that fine to as much as $1000 and possibly jail time.

Make no mistake - the taco trucks are being harassed because restaurants don't like the competition. As one truck owner said, "We are hard workers and we pay taxes... we are poor people feeding other poor people." In a rare moment of perceptiveness, Dan Walters noted that this is a "new chapter in an old and dreary story of political interference with the economic aspirations of low-income and/or immigrant Californians." The restaurant lobby is maybe not as powerful in LA as in San Francisco, but it obviously had enough juice to eliminate their competition in this case. Walters folds this into a stupid argument about how all business should be unregulated, but in this case he's right - if you want to offer the opportunity for the new and struggling in our society to experience upward mobility, barriers like this are really restrictive and unnecessary.

Taco trucks are about more than a meal in Los Angeles - they truly are a culture, and one that has migrated onto the internet. The Great Taco Hunt, a blog dedicated to the LA taco scene, has a loyal following. People will drive many miles for a decent taco here, and given the traffic that's a real commitment. So some residents are fighting back. Save Our Taco Trucks has also 6,000 signatories to a petition to rescind the law, which goes into effect on Thursday. Tomorrow, they're holding a final event at Tacos El Galuzo to raise awareness about the ordinance and share one last legal taco.

You can see the stirrings of how politics will be waged in the save-the-taco-trucks movement. There has been a wave of local organizing this year, around the Presidential race, around the budget, around proposed education cuts and park closures, and even around hyper-local issues like the taco truck. This is a new era for California, where technology reduced barriers to communication and allows those with like interests and concerns to find one another. When the Board of Supes takes down this silly ordinance - and they will - they will have seen the power of modern organizing.

I Have A Dreamsicle...

Last month, 45 U.S. food-processing groups, representing firms whose raw material costs have gone through the roof, demanded that the U.S. agriculture secretary release farmers from their contractual obligation to maintain a portion of their land for wildlife preservation. The U.S. baking industry's trade association, representing firms such as Kellogg Co., Sara Lee Corp. and Interstate Bakeries Corp., plans a march on Washington by the firms' employees later this month to press for a reduction in U.S. wheat exports.

The Keebler Elf is being given the keynote...

More seriously, farmers are actually doing very well with this recent run-up of food prices, but it hurts producers and distributors. Obviously, because it also hurts the starving, there's going to be a reckoning. But it's not like Kellogg and Sara Lee are suddenly unable to make money.

The California Report

Here are a few things I never got around to this week:

• Democratic Senators are asking for a real plan from Gov. Schwarzenegger about how to solve the prison crisis. AB 900 passed a year ago with the promise of building thousands more beds to address prison overcrowding. To date not one construction project has begun. This is a complete shell game, and the courts are likely to act immediately in the face of such incompetence. Just another reason why trying to build our way out of this problem was such a stupid idea.

• Not only did immigrant's rights advocates rally in Los Angeles today, they were joined by businesses who want an end to workplace raids. I actually believe in workplace enforcement to an extent, but business can be a powerful ally in reaching toward a comprehensive solution. The crowd was smaller this year but I think there's a more robust coalition for a breakthrough. Voter mobilization is going to be the key.

• Others have mentioned the new poll numbers on taxes and schools, but I'll say this - decades of anti-tax rhetoric has succeeded in dislodging the relationship between taxes and services. People want education and other services to be funded but don't want to pay for it. The only way to restore that relationship is to... restore that relationship, by specifically explaining how America is worth paying for and turning the whole issue on its head. Not a huge revelation, but thought I'd throw it out.

• Home prices continue to fall in LA and Orange County, and foreclosures continue to wreak havoc on the state's homeowners, including Jose Canseco.

• I thought this was the most interesting study of the week:

It's often said, "You are what you eat," but new research suggests that where you eat may have a lot to do with it, as well.

In communities with an abundance of fast-food outlets and convenience stores, researchers have found, obesity and diabetes rates are much higher than in areas where fresh fruit and vegetable markets and full-service grocery stores are easily accessible.

"The implications are really dramatic," said Harold Goldstein, a study author and executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, based in Davis. "We are living in a junk-food jungle, and not surprisingly, we are seeing rising rates of obesity and diabetes."

Intuitive, and it's a chicken-or-the-egg argument. Convenience stores and fast-food outlets move to neighborhoods where people are more likely to only be able to afford convenience stores and fast food. However, the researchers claim this holds across socioeconomic strata. "Food environment" is something we have to think about. Education would seem to be the key,

• Forgot to link George Skelton's article on the potential for competing redistricting measures on the ballot. My position on redistricting is well-known. Skelton does segue into initiative reform, which is sorely needed.