The numbers are staggering - 1,400 wildfires burning around the state. Over 70 homes destroyed and 7,800 under threat. President Bush has declared the fires a federal emergency and released $50 million in federal aid, announced by FEMA administrator David Paulison - surely a sign that the feds are fully engaged in the fire aid effort, right?

Not so fast. There is a difference between an "emergency," which frees up something like the $50 million in firefighting funds, and a "federal disaster" declaration, which frees up the full range of FEMA assistance to fire victims, including relocation shelters and financial assistance.

According to the Monterey Herald the federal government has refused to declare the California fires a disaster:   Read More »

When Democrats gained majorities in both houses of congress in 2006, their was much cause for rejoice, not just because the conservative party could no longer set the agenda in Washington, but because congressional bulldogs such as California's Henry Waxman became chairs of powerful investigative committees.

We knew Waxman would open the investigations and he is turning all of our assumptions and instincts into statement of facts. Take George W. Bush's Iraq war for example. Waxman has begun to connect the dots on the "war for oil" assumption.   Read More »

Just as presidential hopeful Barack Obama left California this past weekend, news is circulating about a new headline grabbing statement he made to a small group of people in San Francisco. This time, conservatives are going mad because Obama told a Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender group that he opposes Prop. 8, a discriminatory ballot measure that would prohibit marriage equality via constitutional amendment.   Read More »

Crossposted from my high speed rail blog where there is a lot more information on the project

The Senate Transportation Committee today approved AB 3034 by an 8-4 vote. But as Erik Nelson at the Contra Costa Times reports it included some great amendments, including Sen. Leland Yee's plan to restore the primacy of LA-SF:   Read More »

We've been talking about California's recurring budget deficit for quite sometime now, and as fate shall have it, we begin another fiscal year without a new annual budget. I don't envy our government leaders at this time. They have some very difficult negotiations and decisions ahead of them. Even in my own simulated budget balancing, courtesy of Next 10, the best Governor Petty produced was a $9 billion budget deficit.   Read More »

Cross posted at Calitics

As of yesterday, Blackwater is back to desperately trying to play pariah. They're accusing San Diego of disobeying a court order by...closely adhering to the court order. Blackwater's complaint is that the city is improperly delaying the final permit needed for the Otay Mesa training facility because of a recent letter from San Diego's chief building official that "placed 64 conditions on the final permit for a ship simulator, including wheelchair access."

The Blackwater argument- sad, desperate, and incoherent as it is- is that because a judge's decision pre-empted the City Council from reviewing Blackwater's permits and restricted the permits to ministerial review, a ministerial review from the relevant city department is improper. City Attorney Mike Aguirre clarified that these decisions "are being made by the professional staff using their own good-faith judgment." Just what Blackwater asked for and received.

Basically, how dare you give me what I want and have it turn out to be undesirable. Blackwater is apparently unfamiliar with The Monkey Paw, but will soon hopefully learn that getting what you ask for isn't always the same as getting what you want.

But for a company that's so desperate to adhere to local laws, Blackwater seems mighty resistant to adhering to relevant state and local regulations. Maybe it's because they won't be able to violate federal laws if they can't first violate state and local laws.

Either way, Blackwater's blatant disregard for local regulation was bound to cause them trouble eventually. They managed for now (there's an appeal pending) to avoid allowing the public to decide if they'd like accused murderers and arms smugglers in their community. They've managed to dance around countless laws and basic morals from Iraq to Afghanistan to New Orleans. But it doesn't get them everywhere, and now people are paying attention. Blackwater admitted up front and city officials confirmed that the misleading shell companies used to apply for city permits were used to fly under the radar of city employees and local activists, but the cat is out of the bag and now people will notice if the city fudges on any letter of the law. Too bad for Blackwater if they can't operate within the law.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger continued to campaign against the center of John McCain's offshore drilling - energy plan during a surprise visit to Florida's Climate Change Summit hosted by the sunshine state's governor, Charlie Crist.   Read More »

Where is your call to contact Senator Obama. He has now endorsed the compromise. He's in the pocket of the telecoms. Same old, Same old. Nancy Pelosi should be impeached. Senator Feinstein is just the same. Now you are just the same. No outrage. No demand to fill his mailbox. Cowards!!!!!

A Los Angeles Superior Court Judge squashed a lawsuit today intended to legally force the City of Los Angeles to end its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" LAPD-immigration policy best known as Special Order 40. This executive order prevents LAPD officers from questioning detained suspects about their immigration status. The common sense policy which encourages undocumented immigrants to report crimes without fear has been controversial since it was passed in 1979 by the Los Angeles City Council with the backing of even more controversial, former police chief Darryl Gates.   Read More »

Presumed Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain's willingness to undercut California's coastline standards which prevent offshore oil drilling is not only divisive, but undermines his support to take action to reduce global warming. The veteran politician wants it both ways.   Read More »

Si Se Pudo, translated, Yes We Did.

Earlier this week, I blogged about the controversy brewing at the Hilton LAX Hotel during the visit of Amma, the "Hugging Saint." Amma, the international phenom who has reportedly given more than 25 million hugs to people all over the world who need it, chose to bring her hug show to a hotel under a year-long boycott for poor treatment of its workers.

Check out video footage here.   Read More »

A very good friend of mine is an expert on governmental practices and an advocate of public financing. He is disappointed that Barack Obama opted to pursue private rather than public financing for the 2008 general election. I support the same public financing goal my friend supports, but do not believe it to be workable in this campaign with the existing rules. Here's why:

1. The stakes for our nation. -- We're not in a normal time. We're in a time of criminal behavior on a massive scale led by the Bush-Cheney administration and the Republicans: war crimes, torture, war profiteering, civil liberties trampled, world health and environment imminently imperiled, economy trashed, international contempt for America. Under these conditions the stakes are too high to focus on tidy process to the potential sacrifice of necessary results. I am reminded of the World War II movie, "The Bridge on the River Kwai", where the allied prisoners are asked to build a bridge that will aid the war efforts of the Japanese. The British colonel (Alec Guinness) is willing to do so as long as the proper protocol is followed, where the American officer (William Holden) sees the bigger picture of disastrous consequences.

2. What's the purpose of public financing? -- It's to counter the influence of the rich and powerful, usually corporate, interests that have co-opted legitimate public priorities in favor of their special interests. Is Obama's form of private financing set up to enable corporate lobbyists? Not at all. Obama's model is a new - and legitimate - form of public financing, overwhelmingly based on small individual contributions. See the following link for further discussion of this issue: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/obamas-opt-out-of-public_b_108240.html

3. Republican gaming the current public financing system. -- The Republicans have a strategy to have their public financing cake and eat it too. They realize the sentiment has been shifting to public financing and know they have been tainted (under Bush-Cheney, DeLay, Abramoff, et al) with dirty lobbyist money. And as a result, McCain has not had the same pull for donations to his campaign that Obama has. The Republicans have opted for a clever Plan B: starve the McCain campaign from private contributions but collect $84 million in public financing for it, then work to raise massive unregulated bucks for the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the "527" special interest groups, using those funds to launch a smear campaign against Obama, his wife, "liberals" in general, etc.

Let me share an example from personal experience that will illustrate how the above Republican plan will be manipulated to work for them:

In my former career with a local city government, we had a cultural grants program which was always subject to political interference, usually for groups with political ties but lacking artistic merit. In order to counter a potential capitulation to lower quality, I established a panel review process with qualified artistic peers from diverse sectors, the credibility of which was hard to reject by elected representatives. Many of the more ethical politicians were grateful for the deflection of inappropriate lobbying. Some of the more underhanded elected representatives, however, were not. The system worked well for many years, but when the department came under the control an intensely political director, he had the difficult dilemma of wanting to appear to be merit-based while also wanting to enjoy the role of godfather ("decider") with its enhanced power and influence. So he used another "special" fund, initially set up as a small fund for festival management, growing it over time to a comparable funding base to the cultural grants program. This slush fund supported non-peer-reviewed grants and took care of the politically connected as well as other interests. Voila: ethics in one program, perks in the other. Everybody wins, regardless of need or merit. This is the model, on a massive scale, that the Republicans have figured out with their publicly financed cake and their privately financed RNC and "527" meals.

Yes, public financing is a great goal when we can put our regulatory arms around it entirely, but as long as the loopholes exist, it is not worth a plug nickel to effectively clean up the election.

Los Angeles leaders have found a tax increase they support. In fact, this week, the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce has sent a delegation to Sacramento to lobby legislators to reinstate the Vehicle License Fee (VLF). Yes, the so-called "car tax" that gave life to the recall of Governor Gray Davis.   Read More »

The Courage Campaign has long championed the battle for affordable and accessible health care. It's why we asked you to join us in asking Terry McAuliffe to please don't do it as we approach his high-priced speaking engagement in San Francisco for insurance executives. And it's why we partnered with the California Nurses Association and Senator Sheila Kuehl today to introduce our new "Insurance Jive" ad.

Rick Jacobs emailed Courage subscribers earlier today explaining just how much is at stake and and how much a small contribution to air this ad can accomplish:   Read More »

When you drive along Highway 101 near Santa Barbara, or Highway 1 in Huntington Beach, it's hard to miss the many oil rigs on the ocean's horizon. They are relics of a bygone age - not just the 1960s, when they were constructed, but an age in which California believed that cheap oil would always be plentiful and available. We built an entire infrastructure around that and neglected trains, walkable neighborhoods, and lagged behind the rest of the world in developing solar and wind power.

Now the consequences of that misguided belief in the permanence of cheap oil have become clear. Gas prices are nearing $5, causing economic distress and sending Californians flocking to mass transit. For his part Barack Obama is proposing massive new investments in sustainable energy and rail infrastructure.   Read More »

In California, declining median sales prices of homes are not enough to stop record low home sales across the state. In a state and national economy teetering on the edge of recession, prospective homebuyers are clearly nervous about loan products that have led others to foreclosure and financial ruin. The state assembly has taken aggressive steps to reform home mortgaging but the state senate may deny change.   Read More »

Known around the world as the "hugging saint of India," Amma arrived in Los Angeles Sunday, beginning her 10-city U.S. tour with a five-day stay at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel. Workers at this same hotel called a boycott for poor pay and benefits, dozens of labor violations and refusing to recognize their efforts to form a union there.   Read More »

That's what California Republicans are planning this summer, according the LA Times:

GOP lawmakers hope to use their leverage over the state budget, which cannot pass without some of their votes, to roll back landmark policies implemented by Democrats and the governor. Among them are curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, regulations banning the dirtiest diesel engines and rules dictating when employers must provide lunch breaks for workers.

   Read More »

Today's LA Times has an interesting series of op-eds by historians and authors examining how past governors dealt with budget crises. It's an interesting look not only at how those governors all helped build the prosperous state that we're living off of today, but also how the real problem with the budget isn't a lack of pragmatism or deal-making, but ideology. And since the articles were commissioned by California Forward they are particularly important in shaping how we will respond to this crisis.   Read More »

This is a year unlike any in recent memory for the prospects of progressive progress and reform. There's an opportunity to take huge steps towards fixing the damage done by the Bush Administration and make positive change towards a country that simply takes better care of its citizens.

But as Democrats, we're going to have a much tougher time getting there if we don't all travel together. Which is why, with millions of Americans unable to get basic health care, it's so distressing that former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe is cashing a big check from the insurance companies in San Francisco June 19.

We know all too well that insurance companies don't spend a dime on actually providing health care to the sick and injured if they can help it, which is why it's such a concern that McAuliffe is willing to accept this money that should be spent on medical treatment.

But, not surprisingly, Rick Jacobs said it much better than I ever could earlier today:   Read More »