Brown appears on Face the Nation, calls GOP "reactionary"
by Brian Leubitz
Jerry Brown is not quite on par with Arnold Schwarzenegger on the national pronouncement front. However, he does like to share a view or two with the nation. As Governor of the nation's most populous state, it seems appropriate that he say a few words about what is going on in DC. And, as anyone can see, it's a mess, and Jerry Brown is only saying what is obvious for all to see: (video here)
"I think the Republicans have to move out of that reactionary cul-de-sac that some of the more extreme members are pushing them," Brown told host Bob Schieffer.
"There's an enforcement of discipline that's ideological and, as was mentioned today in The Washington Post, takes on the quality of a cult," the California governor said.
Brown provided one example of Republican ideology, on immigration. The party largely opposes a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally.
"They're so hostile to millions and millions of people in this country, and while they can't vote, they have millions and millions of people who they're related to or who identify with them. And you just can't ignore 12 million people, particularly when they're picking our food, they're working in the hotels and restaurants, and now they're increasingly in very important jobs," Brown said.
But Brown, who is 74 years old and has been in the political realm for more than 40 years, criticized the entire political system, which he calls "more polarized" than he's ever seen it.(Face The Nation)
On that note, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann have a new book, for which they were interviewed on Morning Edition today that essentially calls out the media for trying to play "balanced" over facts. Yes both parties have issues, but one is a more clear and present danger to the long-term stability of the nation.
"One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier - ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition," they write in their new book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks.
The media rarely acknowledges this fact, but the radicals in almost every issue today, are the Republicans. On sexual freedom, it is the Republicans who want to limit access to birth control. On regulation of the banks, it is the Republicans who want to return to a reckless capitalism that has now been thoroughly discredited. And on our social safety net, the Republicans want to so decimate it that our homeless populations will continue to spike.
Good on Gov. Brown for calling them out, and as he did so, acknowledging that he isn't perfect, and that he can't simply overturn what the GOP has created with their superminority. In our system of democracy, repairing government takes time. In many ways, it is unfortunate, but you work with the government you've got, I suppose.
Over at CapAlert, find a 1979 interview with a much younger Gov. Jerry Brown. Also, Mayor Villaraigosa also appeared in the full episode video here discussing the national political environment.
It's only been in the last couple of years that Californians began hearing about fracking, and few of us thought that it was even happening in our state. Fracking - shorthand for hydraulic fracturing - is a method that is used to extract natural gas and oil deeply trapped below shale deposits. A process that has been in use for decades, fracking requires vast amounts of water laden with a concoction of chemicals to be pumped under high pressure to blast through shale and push up trapped gas.
Well, it turns out that California has been getting fracked for years in areas including Los Angeles, Ventura, Monterey, Santa Barbara, and Kern Counties. What's even more shocking is that current law allows the fracking industry to operate largely unregulated in the state. This is despite the fact that all around the country numerous public health and environmental problems are bubbling up around fracking sites. One of the biggest problems linked to fracking is the contamination of groundwater. In fact some water contains such high levels of gases or chemicals that it can be lit on fire!
Last year CLCV began advocating in support of a bill to require disclosure of fracking locations, amounts of water used in fracking operations, and a list chemicals used in the process. While the bill's author negotiates amendments with industry, the environmental community is looking to another fracking bill introduced this year by environmental champion Fran Pavley to help get at least some sort of protections in place.
Senate Bill 1054 (Pavley) would require oil and gas well operators to provide advance notice to the nearby property owners and occupants, water suppliers, and local government before they frack. This isn't revolutionary. It's being a good neighbor. And it is the practice that is already required from any significant development project - fracking just somehow had slipped through the cracks.
Since wells may extend for literally miles in a horizontal direction from the vertical well-head, it's only fair that neighboring residents and owners be given advance notice that a well is to be drilled or fracked.
So here's my question for Betsy Butler. At what point did you decide you were running against me, Marta Evry, a part-time blogger, and not the three other candidates whose names will appear on the June 5th primary ballot for the 50th Assembly District race?
Does the author link to candidate Torie Osborn's website? Or to the LA Weekly article about the 8,000 plastic baby bottles you dumped on district voters, an article which quotes candidate Richard Bloom as saying your team "is 'milking' her BPA legislation for all its worth."?
No, instead she links to an articleI wrote about the environmental concerns raised by district voters regarding those 8,000 foreign-made plastic baby bottles.
Also, imagine my surprise when I heard my name mentioned in the KCAL-TV follow up to the same baby bottle story. Why? Because the "reporter" for the story never bothered to contact me. But he was more than happy to take your word for it that a part-time blogger was somehow able to bully (there's that word again) a sitting Assembly member with a war chest of half a million dollars.
Superior Court says Controller not arbiter of "balanced budget"
by Brian Leubitz
In what was a pretty watched decision, a Sacramento Superior Court Judge struck a victory (?) for the legislature:
In a bitter feud during last year's budget battle, Controller John Chiang determined that the budget passed by legislative Democrats was not balanced. Using new powers he believed he had under voter-approved Proposition 25, Chiang then blocked lawmakers' pay and expense money for 12 days until they cut a budget deal with Gov. Jerry Brown.
In a tentative ruling today, Judge David I. Brown said that the controller does not have discretion to determine whether the Legislature's budget is balanced. Proposition 25 said that lawmakers must approve a balanced budget by June 15 or else lose their pay.
Brown's ruling essentially says that the Legislature can determine for itself whether a budget is balanced.
"A contrary result could threaten to undermine the Legislature's essential function," Brown wrote today.(SacBee)
Here's the thing with this. If legislators are forced to vote on a budget simply to pay the rent, we are raising a number of troubling questions. Will they be forced to vote for something against their true beliefs, and perhaps against the beliefs of their constituents. It is essentially saying that we think those votes can be bought for a few thousand dollars. It is troubling in many ways.
But that is all an issue with the measure that brought us this. The issue here is smaller, about who controls the meaning of "balanced budget." This ruling says that if the Legislature says they passed a balanced budget, then they did. And perhaps that is prickly on the gridlock issue, but it is better on the freedom to vote their conscience front.
As a recent graduate of San Francisco State University, I am thrilled that there is finally momentum gaining in the movement to achieve real public higher education reform in California. In particular, the Middle Class Scholarship Act is an economically feasible way to make public higher education more affordable for all Californians.
While I was a student at SFSU my tuition increased every semester. To make matters worse, I never qualified for financial assistance to help fund my education because the State determined that my parents could afford to pay not only my tuition but also those of both of my sisters.
California's public college students are continuing to struggle. The CSU Board of Trustees' recent decision to close Spring 2013 enrollment is just one of the devastating blows that our public higher education students have been forced to endure, with no end in sight.
Asm. Mike Allen, who shifted over into what is essentially a new district for him, has supported the Rohnert Park casino. In a debate yesterday, he discussed the project:
Betsy Butler's first campaign mailer of the 50th Assembly District election is the talk of the town. But not in a way the candidate hoped or intended.
That's because Betsy Butler's "mailers" weren't mailed at all. Instead, they were wrapped around thousands of Mexican-made plastic baby bottles and hand-delivered by paid canvassers.
Reports of Betsy Butler's baby bottle mailers started yesterday, when reports started flooding in of bottles mysteriously showing up on the doorsteps of voters all over Santa Monica.
Presumably, Butler chose to introduce herself to the 50th Assembly district via plastic baby bottles as a clever way to tout her involvement in a California law banning BPA from plastic baby bottles and sippy cups.
But whatever Butler's intentions, voters in the district were universally taken aback by the gimmicky mailers.
"When I came home, my first thought was it some sort of product placement," said Rick Moore, who lives in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Santa Monica. He didn't realize it was a campaign mailer until he took a closer look. "It's just an odd thing to receive as a 59 year-old man. I mean, does she think this is the next stop for me?"
Abby Arnold, a voter in Santa Monica's Ocean Park neighborhood was equally flummoxed. "I don't have a baby. What am I going to do with a baby bottle except throw it away?"
One voter in the Wilmont neighborhood voiced similar concerns, writing in an email, "Clearly, the Butler campaign addressed a bottle for every unit in my (11-unit) building. This struck me as extremely wasteful, and since I don't have kids and live in a small apartment, I'm now confronted with the task of figuring out what to do with it."
James Haygood of Sunset Park believes that Butler's mailer sends the wrong message to voters, "Little things do matter. Leaving a bunch of plastic junk around the neighborhood definitely tweaks the sensibilities of people here that know that dealing with environmental issues means a lot of people doing a lot of little things."
Another voter who lives north of Wilshire Blvd. voiced surprise that a candidate reportedly endorsed by the California League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club would dump so much plastic into the district, plastic which would more than likely end up in the trash.
"This is just bizarre. It's wrong. (CLCV and the Sierra Club) ought to look at how much landfill she's taking up."
Indeed, recycling statistics complied by Cal Recycle seem to validate this concern. The recycling rates for polypropylene plastics (the type of plastic the baby bottle mailers are made out of) is abysmally low, hovering around 5%.
"That's not a very green message," Rick Moore reiterated.
Democratic candidates normally go to great lengths to make sure any campaign materials, including mailers and lawn signs, are locally manufactured by union shops. The issue could prove particularly problematic for Butler, who's received tens of thousands of dollars in union PAC money.
"We always look for the union label on any printed materials a candidate hands out," said Arnold. "It lets me know that keeping good manufacturing jobs in California is a priority for them."
Evenflo, the company which manufactures the bottles Butler chose to use, could in an of itself also prove problematic for the candidate.
The company agreed in 2009 to stop using BPA in plastic baby bottles sold domestically (two years before Butler's BPA legislation was signed into law), yet quietly continued to ship plastic bottles made with BPA to other countries. The company has also been repeatedly (and successfully) sued for marketing defective products. In 2007, a jury awarded $10.4 million to the parents of a four month old boy who died of head injuries sustained in a car crash while riding in a defective Evenflo car seat. In 2008, the company had to recall a million child restraint seats when it turned out their seats could break off and fly around inside the car during collisions as slow as 38 mph.
The irony of Butler wrapping campaign literature touting her union and consumer protection endorsements around thousands of Mexican-made plastic bottles from a company with a track record of marketing products harmful to children was not lost on Arnold, the voter in Ocean Park.
"This is a highly informed, politically aware district. You can't fool us."
If Betsy Butler was hoping the baby bottle mailers would make an impression on voters, it can safely be said she's achieved her goal. It certainly made an impression on the Wilmont voter whose apartment building was targeted by the campaign.
"I was undecided on who to vote for in the election until I received Butler's baby bottle." she wrote, "Then I scratched her off my list."
Across the country we're seeing ongoing attacks on access to reproductive health care. Massive attacks. The Guttmacher Institute released data last week detailing that, just a few months into 2012, hundreds of provisions to restrict abortion access have been introduced in state legislatures around the country. Several have already been enacted. Now, more than ever, it's vitally important that California move in the opposite direction and continue its role as a national leader in ensuring that women have access to reproductive health care.
State Senator Christine Kehoe introduced SB 1338, which would remove barriers to care by allowing nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, and physician assistants to perform early abortions after completing thorough training. (An extensive study conducted by the University of California San Francisco showed that these trained medical professionals provide this care as safely as doctors.)
SB 1338, the Safe and Early Access bill, will be heard in Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee next week on Monday, April 23.
Roughly half of California's counties lack an accessible abortion provider. As a result, many women delay treatment because they have to travel long distances or raise money for transportation and services. Consider the story of Jane, a single mom living near Lake Tahoe. She was not able to obtain an abortion at her local provider. Instead she had to take Amtrak to San Francisco to have an abortion. Because of the train schedule, she arrived the day before her appointment and had no place to stay. She spent her first night in the hospital's bathroom, saving her money for food. No one should face these kinds of hurdles to access a safe and legal medical procedure.
By Brian Brokaw, Alliance for a Better California 2012
The Lincoln Club of Orange County - the driving force behind the so-called "Stop Special Interest Money" initiative on the November ballot - is hosting one of the nation's leading campaign finance reformers at its annual black tie fundraising gala on Saturday night: Karl Rove.
That's right. Just one day after a mystery donor who will forever remain anonymous contributed $10 million to Rove's Crossroads GPS - the King of Super PACs himself is coming to California to spread his gospel of good government reforms.
And his Lincoln Club hosts, who have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to place the phony reform initiative on the ballot (along with the previous two attempts in 1998 and 2005), have certainly paid close attention to Rove's Super PAC tactics ever since the Citizens United decision led to their explosion onto the national scene.
As the presidential election cycle heats up, Republicans are looking for ways to undermine President Barack Obama. One of their tried and true tactics is to take high profile initiatives of the Obama Administration and poke holes in them, make them look like scandalous wasteful failures rather than bold, innovative, effective projects. Congressional Republicans already hate high speed rail, and Darrell Issa's investigation into the California HSR project is clearly intended as a bash-the-president exercise.
Given that, why on earth would State Senate Democrats be willing to undermine the HSR project and give Republicans - including Mitt Romney - another opportunity to attack the president? Unfortunately that seems to be exactly what some Senate Dems have in mind:
Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) has been arguing for weeks that it is impractical for the rail authority to think the Senate could hold hearings and approve the $68-billion rail system - the biggest infrastructure project in state history - in a couple of months.
As a result, the Senate's Democratic leadership is considering whether to delay including money for construction of an initial rail segment in the 2013-14 budget this spring, and instead push the decision into August before the Legislature recesses. The budget deadline is June 15, but appropriations can be made in separate legislation until Aug. 31.
"The timing is still being discussed, but we should have a better idea in the coming days," said a spokeswoman for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg. "It is not uncommon to appropriate bond funds in a bill outside of the budget act."
There are two important things to consider here. First, a delay would be used by Republicans and Mitt Romney as a justification to argue that President Obama, by investing $3.5 billion in federal funds in the California HSR project, is wasting taxpayer dollars on a project that even some California Democrats don't like. Already Senators like Joe Simitian and Alan Lowenthal - who wants to become a Congressional Democrat himself! - have provided crucial ammunition to Republicans like Darrell Issa by repeating claims about the project that are false and flawed, including about the ridership projections. Delaying the funding decision until the eve of the Republican convention strikes me as a very bad thing to do, playing right into their hands.
The other thing is that Simitian is, as usual, wrong about what is going on here. Nothing is being rushed. This project has been under development for the last 15 years. The legislature held extensive hearings in 2008 before placing Prop 1A on the ballot. Voters have already approved the system, and four more years of project planning and development have taken place since then, all with extensive public involvement.
The legislature can and should make this decision by June 15. After all, it makes every other budget decision, many of them complicated and significant, in that time frame. It's routine. It's also their job.
For those reasons, a delay is both unnecessary and politically unjustifiable. I've worked with Darrell Steinberg in the past and I know he is a smart guy. So let me offer some free advice. Don't listen to Joe Simitian. Simitian is termed out at the end of this year. Why on earth should he be allowed to undermine the project and undermine President Obama's re-election chances? It doesn't make sense. Simitian has zero leverage here. Just ignore him, and move ahead with the HSR funding decision as part of the larger budget.
The LA Times also has an interesting item regarding the HSR budget request:
Meanwhile, Gov. Jerry Brown has sent to the Legislature a budget order that lays out his funding request for the rail project. The technical document from Brown's Department of Finance set at least one new condition that nobody expected.
Brown wants to forbid any funding for urban rail transit projects, which are part of the so-called blended approach to the bullet train project that the rail authority has proposed, unless the Legislature also approves money for the Central Valley segment.
Awesome. Governor Jerry Brown is a freaking rock star and the best thing that has happened to high speed rail in years. The Central Valley segment is key to the project and absolutely should be part of the initial construction. Kudos to him for standing up for this project.
AB 32, our landmark climate change legislation, will have some enormous impacts on the state's economy and the government. However, there's this:
The amounts are potentially enormous: from $1 billion to $3 billion a year in 2012 and 2013, jumping to as high as $14 billion a year by 2015, according to the nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst's Office. By comparison, the state's current budget deficit is $9 billion.
But like thirsty castaways on an island surrounded by ocean water they can't drink, Gov. Jerry Brown and state legislators face strict constraints on how they can spend the money. More than 30 years of court rulings and ballot measures -- dating to Proposition 13 in 1978 -- limit its use, probably only to projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.(Media News)
The state already has some spending lined up, including helping to pay for cleaner burning trucks for the ports. There is likely to be some benefit for the budget, as spending for climate change programs are shifted away from the general fund. However, unless the legislation is changed, it isn't the solution for the deficit.
Small Businesses Stuck With Unjustifiable 8% Rate Hike, 30% Increase Over Last 24 Months Says Department of Insurance
The California Department of Insurance has announced that Aetna is imposing an 8% annual health insurance rate hike on its small business customers despite state actuaries' findings that the increase is "unreasonable" and not supported by data. Consumer Watchdog Campaign says this demonstrates the urgency of voters passing its proposed ballot measure to make health insurance companies justify their rate hikes and get permission before raising rates. The initiative, which is currently being circulated for signatures to place it on the November 2012 ballot at grocery stores and online at JustifyRates.org, would allow the Insurance Commissioner to reject a rate hike such as Aetna's if state experts find it unreasonable.
"Until the Commissioner is allowed to say no to unjustified and excessive rate hikes, small businesses and families in California will continue to pay more than they should for health insurance," said Jamie Court, proponent of the proposed allot measure and a director of Consumer Watchdog Campaign. "Aetna's rate hike is the poster child for why health insurance should be required to get approval before rate hikes take effect."
According to the Department of Insurance, the Aetna subsidiary that sells health insurance in California earned huge profits in 2011 and paid a $1.7 billion dividend to its parent company last year. Additionally, while the insurance company claims that it needs the rate increase to cover increasing medical costs, Aetna's own data and documents don't support that claim, which also conflicts with national data about medical cost inflation.
The ballot initiative being circulated by Consumer Watchdog Campaign would require insurance company CEOs to justify under penalty of perjury that rate hikes are necessary and allow the Insurance Commissioner to reject any hike determined to be excessive. Similar rules have applied to auto and home insurance in California and have saved motorists in California over $62 billion since 1988 when that law took effect. The initiative also prohibits the use of unfair rating factors in health, home and auto insurance.
"Insurance companies like to say that there is already regulation of health insurance in California, because insurers are required to make their rate increase plans public. But if a company can ignore official findings that a rate hike is unreasonable and jack up rates whenever they want, then the law needs to change," said Court.
The petition to place the initiative on the ballot can be signed outside supermarkets or by going to www.JustifyRates.org and downloading the one-page petition.
During campaign season, it's expected for politicians to set up their headquarters in the district. Not only does it make the campaign and the candidate accessible to his or her own constituents but also gives back to the district's business community.
So, while Butler may not have done anything illegal by setting up shop outside the district, she certainly hasn't done herself any favors.
The open house, which takes place this Saturday, also happens to fall on the first day of Passover, this even though AD50 is the center of Los Angeles' Jewish community.
Features narration from Mayor Villaraigosa and Lance Armstrong
by Brian Leubitz
The Yes on 29 campaign released a video today taking the fight to the tobacco companies. The measure would increase the tobacco tax in order to pay for cancer research.
