Yesterday, members of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers met with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as part of their campaign to thwart our state’s pioneering greenhouse gas emissions standards.

Sierra Club California thanks Governor Schwarzenegger, Attorney General Brown and Air Resources Board Chair Nichols for bravely and staunchly upholding California’s clean car rules. Sierra Club California's "Climate Chicken" made a brief appearance at the Capitol, urging the automakers to cross the road to better.

Putting the brakes on California’s Clean Car Law AB 1493 (Pavley) rules won't lower the price that families pay at the pump, and it won't reduce global warming pollution. Only cleaner, more efficient cars will.

Here's why even Climate Chickens should support the Clean Car Law:

Climate Chickens Are Larger Than Life, and California’s plan creates even bigger reductions in greenhouse gases than the Bush Administration’s proposed fuel economy standards. If all 50 states were to take on the greenhouse gas goals, 1,323 million metric tons of greenhouse gas would be removed by 2020.

California’s Climate Plan Saves More Than A Little Chicken Scratch. The greenhouse gas standards may mean consumers must pay a little more up front for their cars, but they’ll get their money back within about 1-3.5 years, according to California Air Resources Board estimates. The upgrades actually will reduce these vehicles’ operating costs, resulting in savings to drivers.

Climate Chickens Crave The Easy Life. And the greenhouse gas standards start out easy too. In fact, the first phase can be met using technology that’s already in some of today’s cars. Not just hybrids, either – some advanced starter technology, idle-stop technology, upgrades to the electrical system and other smart moves would make cars cleaner.

Climate Chickens Like Choices. Our climate chicken just can’t be cowed. And the greenhouse gas rules don’t tell him what kind of car he can buy, how fast he can drive it or that he has to pay a tax. Automakers say the law will limit Californians’ choices, but simple modifications such as stop-start technology, continuously variable transmission systems and even better A/C equipment will go a long way toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions from every vehicle.

Climate Chickens Have Feather Brains, but even Chester here can see what’s coming. Sales of the hybrid, fuel-miser Toyota Prius have risen more than 50 percent since April, while SUV sales plummeted by 25 percent. And California drivers bought 4 percent less gas in January than they did the year before (see May 2 New York Times article, “As Gas Costs Soar, Buyers Flock to Small Cars”).

Read what Sierra Club California Director Bill Magavern has to say about the hard work ahead on climate change

It's been over a year since Governor Schwarzenegger decided to join the decades-long debate on health reform, and I'm actually quite pleased that he's indicated he will continue to focus on health reform in the years remaining in his administration. It may not have been clear to the Governor, but we always knew that the sheer magnitude of the needed reforms would take more than just one year to achieve. Any success to be gained on his "second try," however, will require a very different approach, both in terms of policy and in terms of politics.

Predictably, a number of interests in Sacramento have attempted to characterize the failure of the Governor's and the Speaker's bill as the victim of uncompromising single payer proponents on the left and powerful insurance companies on the right, as though the Governor's plan was "just right" in a three-bears, middle of two-extremes, spin. In fact, the Governor's plan appropriately fell because of the Governor's own reluctance to make the difficult policy decisions necessary for the plan to be in any way affordable to the state as well as to businesses and individuals, but which would have stirred up strong opposition from insurance companies.

Simply put, insurance companies will not support any plan that would prevent them from continuing to raise premiums 2-3 times faster than wages, limits that must be imposed in order for any long term financing to work. In the positive column, the Governor's plan included a number of reforms needed, if insurance companies were to be retained, that would have regulated (read wrestled) them into good behavior. It required insurers to accept all patients, to spend a minimum amount on actual care, and to refrain from singling out sick patients for unaffordably high premiums.

Unfortunately, it contained nothing that would have made premiums affordable for the vast majority of Californians, all of whom would have been required by the law to buy health insurance. The "subsidies" contained in the plan were only for very low income families (not a bad thing) and, except for those at the very poor end of the scale, would have partially subsidized premiums but left families to pay whatever co-pays and deductibles were set by the companies.

It's also worthwhile to refresh everyone’s memory that labor unions and health care advocates who ostensibly "supported" the Governor's compromise plan did not register a support position with the Senate Health Committee, but rather indicated they supported the bill only if it were amended. The requested amendments, which were lengthy and substantive, were rejected by the Governor and the vaunted "support" was actually no support at all.

If there is any clear lesson to be gained, it's that any large reform (single payer or other) must directly take on the insurance companies and must protect consumers against skyrocketing premiums and out of pocket expenses. Anything short of that is fatally doomed, both politically and in practice.

On the Recent Field Poll

A recent Field Poll has been characterized, by the sound-bite pundits, as concluding that a majority of Californians would have supported the "major provisions of his proposal". This is a mistaken conclusion. First, it assumes that the field poll questions presented the major provisions of the plan, both pro and con, which it did not. The poll did not ask, for example, whether respondents favored mandating individuals to purchase private health insurance without limiting how much premiums could grow each year. This means that the poll results regarding the Governor's plan are of limited use in assessing how respondents would have voted had the proposal been brought to the voters in a statewide election.

Interestingly the same Field poll showed that the California Nurses Association have the highest favorable rating for their role in the debate, a great deal higher than any other person or organization involved. The nurses are rightly seen by the public as fighting to protect the interests of patients, which, in this debate, involved opposing the Governor's plan and explaining why single payer meets the needs of consumers and the state without the problems raised by the Governor's plan.

Even as the Governor tiptoes around offending insurance companies, the Field poll reveals just how much the public is fed up with them--no surprise considering their recent legal troubles for rescinding coverage when patients get sick as well as systematically improperly denying needed care. Couple these transgressions with the steady gutting of benefits and increasing of cost sharing, all the while grossly inflating premiums, and it's easy to understand the public outrage. While insurers pretend they are taking these actions in order to contain costs, they have been painfully slow to take those steps that have been proven to improve health outcomes and save money, like chronic disease management, preventive medicine, and investing in health information technologies.

What has not been widely reported is that the Field poll actually found significantly diminished support for employer sponsored health insurance, and lower support for "individual responsibility" since the last poll in 2006. In contrast, the poll documented a surge of 9 full percentage points in support of "Government Provided Health Care", which is one of the more unfavorable descriptions of single payer, and which does not even present the fact that, under single-payer, health care would continue to be privately delivered, while being funded publicly through premiums shared by government, employers and individuals.

Most importantly for us, the Field poll shows that the investment by single payer advocates in steady community organizing and education is paying off big time. Since 2002, universal health care advocates have rallied around Senate Bill 840 (Kuehl) the California Universal Health Care Act. These advocates have formed the OneCareNow coalition, made up of hundreds of supporting organizations around the state. The coalition has prioritized community education about universal health care and sponsored hundreds of public educational events throughout the year, and they are just getting started.

The unmistakable trend toward single payer is documented by other polls, including a recent survey of U.S. physicians that found a 10 percentage point jump since 2002 in support for government legislation to establish national health insurance.

There you have it. Two years of health reform with the Governor in the spotlight has resulted in a 9 percentage point jump in favor of single payer and diminished support for other policy options. Single payer supporters have always known that the more people think about health reform, the more they support single payer. We are winning.

As usual, California faces a budget crisis. And just as predictably, Californians are mired in budget confusion.

How big is the crisis? a conscientious citizen might ask. The answer is: As big as you want it to be. Just take your pick. An "$8 billion budget shortfall," reports the San Jose Mercury News. "A $10 billion gap," says the Sacramento Bee. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger uses a more technical description: "$20 billion out of whack," he recently said.

This cacophony of numbers and nouns is a big piece of California's budget problem. Not only does California routinely fail to balance its budget, it can't even talk straight about its finances.

In normal accounting and common understanding, a budget is balanced when spending doesn't exceed revenues in a budget year. If revenues are greater than spending, the difference is a surplus; if spending exceeds revenues, the difference is a deficit. Revenues are the proceeds of taxes, fees, and interest on investments.

But not in California. Here, state leaders (and the press) variously and promiscuously refer to the state's budget problems as a "shortfall," a "hole," a "gap," and a "deficit." Sometimes they actually mean to talk about the annual deficit. More often than not, though, they are referring to an amalgam of the state's cash reserve at the beginning of the current year, a current year deficit, a projected budget year deficit, and the desired reserve for the budget year. As UCLA Prof. Daniel Mitchell, who's campaigned tirelessly (and, alas, so far unsuccessfully) for budget transparency, points out, California's bad habit of talking about this "shortfall" confuses a stock (your savings account) and a flow (your paycheck), obscuring the true size and nature of the state's deficit. Most households understand that if they earn $50,000 a year and spend $100,000, making up the difference from their savings, they don't have a balanced budget. California doesn't. Even if it spends more than it collects in taxes, California counts the budget as balanced if has sufficient cash reserves to make up the difference.

To understand how badly confused California is, just imagine what national budget discussions would be like if the same loose terminology were used in Washington. News reports would be talking about Washington's "$5.5 trillion budget shortfall": the $350 billion deficit for the current year and the projected $200 billion deficit for the 2009 budget year, all topped off by the $5 trillion of outstanding public debt rung up by Congresses and presidents since they powdered their wigs and buckled their knee britches.

Don't try this at home. The cash advance you take out on your credit card isn't revenue. It's debt. And so, of course, is California's borrowing to cover up deficits. When the top people in the state's finance department think debt is revenue, you know California's fiscal problems go all the way to the bone.

Getting the accounting right isn't just a cosmetic nicety. It's essential to making good decisions. In 2003, former Gov. Gray Davis hyped the size of the state's budget problem, talking about a $38 billion "shortfall." He apparently believed the bigger the stated challenge, the more likely California would be to tackle it. He was half right. Californians were indeed appalled by the size of the "shortfall." But they responded not by supporting Davis' proposed solutions, but by recalling the feckless leader who'd let the problem grow so big.

Now Schwarzenegger seems to be taking the same path, talking about a budget that's "$20 billion out of whack," the equivalent of one dollar out of every five in the general fund budget. He apparently hopes to bludgeon lawmakers into budget action. It's more likely, though, that exaggerated figures will only make Californians throw up their hands in hopelessness.

In fact, California's real problem is more manageable: an annual deficit of about $5 billion to $8 billion a year. That amounts to about a half penny on a dollar of state output and is about the same magnitude as the state's annual cost ($6.1 billion) for Schwarzenegger's car tax reduction in 2003. Schwarzenegger has spent much of the year trying to sell Californians on various kinds of budget reform, most of them with little relevance to the crisis at hand. But he doesn't need anyone's consent to insist on budget transparency and clarity. Budget reform could start right at his own desk.

Mark Paul, senior scholar at the New America Foundation, was formerly deputy treasurer of California and deputy editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee. This article was originally published in New America Voices, and is republished with their permission.

This week, some important policymakers went back to preschool as they joined kids for circle time in a Sacramento classroom. Before practicing their ABCs with the children,
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, Senator Darrell Steinberg and Assemblymember Dave Jones highlighted a preschool reform package that included some of their favorite letters and numbers: SB 1629 and AB 2759.

Senator Steinberg is the author of SB 1629, the Early Learning Quality Improvement Act, which would establish a Commission to create a state Early Learning Quality Improvement System. This includes a quality rating scale to help parents make informed decisions about programs for their children, and a graduated funding model to help existing and future preschool programs reach and maintain higher levels of quality.

"If we want all California children to have a chance to succeed in school, we need to make sure that the neediest children get high-quality preschool," Senator Steinberg said. "SB 1629 will create the roadmap for transforming our preschool programs into the high- quality experience our children deserve."

Assemblymember Jones is the author of AB 2759, the California State Preschool Program Act, which would consolidate and streamline the state’s existing Title 5 child development programs for preschool-aged children – State Preschool, Full-Day State Preschool, Prekindergarten and Family Literacy, Prekindergarten and Family Literacy Full-Day and General Child Care and Development Programs – to create the California State Preschool Program.

“These two bills will help increase the availability of preschool programs and reduce administrative costs and burdens so that funding gets to where it's most needed — to provide more quality preschool for our kids,” Assemblymember Jones said.

The two preschool reform bills, which are co-sponsored by Superintendent O’Connell, Children Now, the California Child Development Administrators Association and Preschool California, are the beginning of a transformation for preschool and early education in California.

The fact that the legislation requires no general fund expenditures gives us something we can do even during these challenging budget times to lay the foundation for future investments in high-quality preschool once new funds become available. Both bills have moved out of the education committees and will be acted upon by the appropriations committees in the coming days.

By this time, I hope you've heard about Prop 98. But that's not the case everywhere, so much attention has been paid to getting the word out about the really negative effects that Prop 98 would have upon California. A great group of people came together to talk about the Landlords' Scheme to eliminate rent control, tenant protections, and affordable housing regulations.

Several folks came with cardboard boxes to make the point that many people living in rent controlled units would be forced to the streets. Many units would be converted to luxury condo conversion projects and housing supply in San Francisco would dwindle further. Affordable housing is already tough enough to come by (just look at Craigslist if you don't believe me), the last thing we need is Prop 98 eliminating much of the affordable supply.

You can watch the entirety of the rally on YouTube, but some of the comments leapt out at me. Some people expect that these propositions won't really affect their lives, but Prop 98 is very different. From June 4, 2008, landlords will have carte blanche to do what they please to tenants. "Just Cause" eviction will be a thing of the past, and renters will have to prepare for an onslaught. As Ted Gullicksen of San Francisco Tenants Union said, "San Francisco would become a city not just for the wealthy, but for the very, very, very wealthy. ... San Francisco would lose its character and its diversity."

It is not all that surprising that landlords' would try this, really. After all, they are businesses trying to maximize their shareholder and/or owner's pocket books. Heck, this is a great investment for people like Sam Zell, who stands to make $15 Million from a Prop 98 win. The problem is that they are using deceptive means to overturn the will of the people. The people in several cities across California have determined that they favor rent control. And practically every locality has chosen to require a "just cause" for eviction (as well as some state regulations).

You can also get more photos at my flickr set.

Ted Gullicksen of San Francisco Tenants Union led off the remarks with a vision of the post-prop 98 San Francisco that I mentioned above. He also mentioned some of the many opponents of Prop 98, including the Governor, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom, both senators, and a whole lot more. It's hard to find more than a few right-wingers who have agreed with this crazy proposition.

Charles Mason of AARP noted that Prop 98 would hurt millions of seniors and all Californians. "AARP strongly believes we should enhance our neighborhoods. ... Prop 98 would jeopardize our abilities to create livable communities for seniors and other."

Some of the strongest remarks came from the folks at the St. Peters Housing Committee (Video 7/9) in both Spanish and English. They noted that carboard boxes are what San Franciscans would be left with. They pointed out that many children in San Francisco are dependent upon these housing regulations. Without protections for tenants, many Californians will be even more vulnerable than ever.

Brian Leubitz is the founder and publisher of Calitics, a progressive open source news organization for California politics. Prior to starting Calitics, he was an attorney and more recently he obtained a masters degree in public policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the Univeristy of California, Berkeley. This article is republished with his permission.

• Laws and regulations to control emissions of greenhouse gases from oil refineries and power plants in accordance with the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 could be prohibited since they may transfer an economic benefit from the polluter to the manufacturers of cleaner technologies.

By Ron Shepston
Democratic Candidate
California 42nd Congressional District

We can talk about "unity" -- but the meaning of that word varies depending on the reader. I want to drive home the meaning for you, to tap into the energy and synergy that comes from people striving for a common goal. In the netroots, I'm sure a lot of people will assume that I mean unity of the Presidential candidates.

That is part of it. Click here to sign our pledge for unity.

That picture above is Misha, me & Dave in front of Democratic Party Of Orange County banner. We will be adding LA and San Bernardino Counties.

But we want to go further than that. We want to take this beyond gimmicks. We want to take this beyond cliche'. As my friend Dallasdoc says "Think movement".

This campaign has never been about me. It's been about all of us coming together to change the face of American politics to make the changes we know need to be made.

When we first started to talk about using the power of the netroots the idea was to unite around an existing candidate. We looked and looked but couldn't agree. We knew the best choice would be a true netroots candidate. We wanted someone who came from the netroots first. But that desire was much more than symbolic. Someone from the netroots had a certain mindset and was driven to learn and know the truth. Despite what Markos said this was beyond partisan politics. We called it reality-based. It still is though now we recognize that reality has a distinct liberal/progressive bias.

When Dave came up to me at the caucus and said he wanted to help with a local race I was excited but hadn't as yet realized the significance of that first meeting of two people who had a common though not shared goal. That was soon to change.

I started as a frustrated citizen now I'm running for Congress. From the beginning the vision was to make this a viable campaign that had as its goal no less than changing the face of American politics. Many of us were and are tired of politics as a game. We thought that collegiality only worked when everyone played by the rules. Winning wasn't the goal but doing the right thing was. We saw that the value of honest competition between the right and left would result in a better America. We also saw that honesty and integrity was no longer part of politics today - if it ever was. It was replaced by winning at any cost.

We are not naive enough to think that we can't play the game of politics. We are not so naive to think that we can just dance in and have the political world cave under our vision and shower us with money. We wanted to include the voters as participants rather than spectators.

We started before Obama had announced or anyone else for that matter. We had a great start and as often happens to real people, things happen and real life intrudes on dreams. We lost some momentum due to the passing of my mother and the Santiago Fires but we pushed on and rode through the night. We got stronger through adversity.

Now, we are on fire and we have grassroots support from Obama delegates Dave Walsh 42ndCD, Gustavo Delgado 40thCD and Clinton delegate Misha Hower 47th. We have super volunteers Chuck Schofield, Dot DeLeon, Alisa Riso, Richard Cassiere, Nora Fugato and Courtney Rychel. We have Silverado grassroots activists Linda May and Connie Nelson. We have Joe Wilson and a great shot at Valerie Plame after the primary.

Can you feel the energy? Look closely and remember. Our future leaders will come from this group and others like them. They are amazing.

We have a professional staff with a record of winning elections and we have major online members here and elsewhere on board via email and telephone consultation.

We have Republicans, Democrats, Decline To State, business leaders, labor unions, teachers, grassroots activists, Democratic Party officials and blogs.
That list will continue to grow as people hear about us.
As some of you may know Gilda Reed lost in LA-01 but she made some noise and focussed attention on some real problems. She also showed that WE are not simply 17-year-old kids typing away in our parents' basement.
I think the online community is still somewhat in the early adopter stage and changing the face of American politics will not happen overnight. The members of this community can't help every one of us equally. Some of those getting help will be adopted and some will spring from the community.

Many members will continue to sit on the sidelines but many will also jump into the fray and support those who run. I'm happy with what's happening and happy with the support we're getting. It is what it is and we have adapted to the circumstances.

This is all a bit scary and extremely exciting. We've come a long way from David Dayen’s question "Ron, don't you live in Gary Miller's district". We expect to go a lot further.

Ask any Green Energy Warrior what it will take to win the war, and the answer is likely to be “technological transformation.” The feed-in tariffs in Europe and the renewable portfolio standards in the US focus on independent generators to prompt this change, implicitly believing the existing utility industry is too set in its ways to adapt quickly enough.

For utility-scale technologies, this judgment hinges on credible assumptions about willingness to incur technological risk and the inherent inertia of government-supported monopolies. For smaller technologies like distributed generation, the presumption is even stronger because the existing utility business model seems so widely divergent.

Which makes Southern California Edison’s proposal to install and own 1-2 MW photovoltaic systems on leased warehouse rooftops so potentially revolutionary. Little power plants. Connected directly to the distribution grid. No transmission required. Utility rate base. Within the insular precincts of transformative utility regulators, this feels like the grail.

The California Public Utilities Commission has poked and prodded its regulated utilities for several years to make just this type of investment in renewable generation, as opposed to simply purchasing the output from independent generators. The rationale is that an affirmative business motivation by the regulatee to implement the regulator’s policy preferences is more enduring — and more scalable — than begrudging compliance with fiat.

But the move has prompted apprehension among some of the pioneers in the solar industry, who fear unfair competition and discriminatory treatment from a ratepayer-subsidized behemoth. They argue that there is nothing about solar energy that suggests it is a natural monopoly and point to the well-documented history of cost overruns and technological stultification associated with rate based investments.

John Geesman recently completed his term on the California Energy Commission and has been following California politics for over 40 years. He writes “California Green Energy War: A former California Energy Commissioner digests global climate and energy politics” where this article originally appeared and it is republished with his permission. Geesman says of his site: “The Green Energy War is no stranger to passion, but is subject to periodic mind-clearing blasts of rationality as well. Won't you join me on patrol of this frontier as global society works through the greatest struggle of the 21st Century?”

California Senate President pro Tem Don Perata issued a statement and took questions from reporters shortly after 5 p.m. today on the steps to the state Capitol. The Sacramento Bee has an article on this with a few more details. Sacramento sources indicated last week that the polling for the race was not too favorable for the recall succeeding.

Perata issued the following statement regarding the campaign to recall Republican State Senator Jeff Denham:

"Like all of you, I've been worried a lot about the economy - falling home prices, rising gas prices - and how hard it's getting for people to find a job.

I've talked with both Treasurer Lockyer and Controller Chiang about the state's cash situation - and the need to do everything we can to reach an agreement on the budget.

A long stalemate is the last thing we need. Without a budget - we run out of cash - the richest state in America gone broke!

We won't be paying our bills - and we won't be giving our schools, our emergency rooms and our police the resources they need.

So I met with Republican Leader Dave Cogdill - and I asked him how we could clear the decks and start making some progress. One issue kept coming up. The Denham recall.

So today - in the spirit of putting politics aside to solve problems - I'm ending the recall campaign.

You're bound to ask, so let me tell you - there was no deal, no quid pro quo.

This is my call - and my best judgment about how to stop the long, slow slide into another long stalemate.

I hope it pays off. Because the same old rhetoric won't get the job done.

Let me also say this to the people who have devoted so much time and effort on the recall: thank you. You've already changed things for the better.

The vote we couldn't get last year to close the tax loophole for yacht owners - we got that vote.

The vote we couldn't get to help homeowners facing foreclosure - we got that vote.

You put everyone here on notice - and I don't think people are going to forget that anytime soon."

Read this new document and you will learn facts such as that 82.9 percent of statewide spending for schools goes to pay for the salaries and benefits of teachers and other staff.

There are sections on how California’s school districts differ in their spending patterns, how our state compares with others in spending on teachers, how the Governor’s proposed budget reductions would vary amongst different kinds of districts, and how much an “adequate education” for all California children would cost.

A preview of just some of what you’ll find:

• The average pay for California’s teachers is the highest in the nation. California’s relatively high salaries reflect the state’s high cost of living and the relatively high earnings of California’s workers. While California’s teachers earn more, on average, than their counterparts in other states, California’s teachers’ weekly earnings average 19.3 percent less than those of occupations with similar educational and skill requirements.

• The Governor’s Proposed Budget would result in deep funding cuts for many districts– including many large districts with sizable numbers of lower-income students.

• Studies released last year as part of the foundation-supported “Getting Down to Facts” (GDTF) series estimated that to meet the state’s high academic standards California would need to increase spending to a level that is 40 percent to 71 percent above current levels.

• The Committee on Education Excellence, appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger, recently estimated that in order to implement its recommendations California needs an additional $10.6 billion, an increase of 23.5 percent over 2007-08 levels.

A must read for all those who care about the main issue in the Governor’s vaunted “year of education.”