By Caitlin Vega
California Labor Federation

The foreclosure freefall is nothing new in California. We all know families who have lost their homes, and others who are struggling to hold on as their loan rates adjust and balloon payments are triggered. Our state has been devastated top to bottom by the aftermath of this totally preventable crisis.

By Steve Mehlman

“Backed by anxious supporters, some on crutches or in wheelchairs, nearly two-dozen passionate speakers on Tuesday railed against "Gestapo" tactics of Stanislaus County home care fraud investigators…” Modesto Bee, Sept. 1, 2010

A flawed and mean-spirited attack by right-wing ideologues on some of California’s most vulnerable citizens has begun to sprout poisoned fruit in California’s Central Valley.

Using some of the millions of dollars distributed by the Schwarzenegger Administration in the name of fighting fraud in the In Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program, Stanislaus County earlier this year created a Special Investigations Unit.

By Michael Herald
Western Center on Law and Poverty

In budget impasses of the past, there was often a contingent of liberal members and advocacy groups who would suggest that the way to kill a bad budget was to put it up for a vote. The reasoning was that conservatives would never actually cast votes to do the awful things being proposed. Anyone dumb enough to vote to eliminate services for the elderly or cut child care would pay for it at the ballot box.

Well last week they actually did take up the Governor’s budget in the Legislature, complete with all its’ warts, and darned if almost every Republican felt just fine about eliminating CalWORKs, eviscerating IHSS, and firing 400,000 working Californians. It was truly astonishing. If budgets are about values, the Republicans showed they value corporations over people. And it’s not really that close.

By Ann Notthoff
NRDC

Of one thing you can be certain: when the Koch Brothers ride into town, dirty money follows. This is particularly bad news for California as the Koch Brothers last week arrived to join other out of state polluters trying to buy their right to keep polluting our air here in the Golden State.

The two billionaire siblings, David and Charles Koch, own Koch Industries, a Wichita-based oil conglomerate that maintains refineries in three states and 4,000 miles of pipeline.

As energy companies go, Koch Industries is something of a stealth entity. The Center for Public Integrity recently completed a major report on the company, noting that “Koch Industries could be the biggest oil company you have never heard of.” While it is little known to the public, its estimated revenues in 2009 were about $40 billion, making it bigger than AT&T, Microsoft or Merrill Lynch.

By Anthony Wright
Health Access

The California Legislature ended their session last week after passing over a dozen patient protection measures. If signed by the Governor, these bills will implement and improve a number of provisions of federal health care reform law, enacting a number of new consumer protections.

A lists of the measures related to implementing federal health reform, and how they fared in the California Legislature, is available on the front page of the Health Access website.

These bills that passed are now on the desk of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

By Dave Johnson

"Who could have known?" That's the cry from the big-corporate and DC elite as the economy and the environment and so many imporant things crash around us. (Around us, not them, they're doing just fine and taking good care of each other.)

Who could have known that 25%-per-year house price increases was a bubble?
Who could have known that a housing bubble could burst?
Who could have known that deregulating the financial industry could lead to a financial meltdown?
Who could have known that concentration of wealth could cause consumer demand to dry up?
Who could have known that huge tax cuts for the rich combined with huge military spending increases could cause massive budget deficits?
Who could have known that the Social Security trust fund needed a "lockbox" so it wouldn't be given away as tax cuts?

By Dan Bacher

In the most absurd episode in the bad action flick that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has starred in since being elected Governor in 2003, the "Fish Terminator" on Saturday morning spouted off about the need for "transparent" government in his weekly radio address.

"Ever since I became Governor, I have pushed to make California government more transparent," Schwarzenegger claimed. "Now, I don’t have to tell you that this is a time of deep recession, all around the world."

"It is more critical than ever that government be held accountable for every dollar it spends, that it live within its means, and that it show total transparency at all levels: at the local level, the state level and the federal level," said Schwarzenegger.
 

By Steve Heilig and Michael Rokeach, M.D.
 
San Franciscans, and visitors to our fair city, love our food and drink. One good side of this is San Francisco's ever-evolving cornucopia of fine and fun eateries and bars, serving up virtually every kind of cuisine and cocktails from almost everywhere in the world. The bad side is that some overconsumption of alcohol results in health and other problems that cost all of us money, whether we are directly involved or not.
 

By Art Pulaski
California Labor Federation

This Labor Day, California is at a crossroads. We can either continue the economic race to the bottom – exacerbated by corporate policies and Gov. Schwarzenegger’s slash-and-burn budgets – or we can chart a new course to rebuild California from the bottom up.  The heart of California’s economy, our workers, are struggling with near record unemployment, stagnating wages and devastating budget cuts that are eroding the California Dream.

This November, Californians have a critical choice to make about which direction our state should take to deal with the enormous challenges we face. This election is simply a battle for the soul of California.

In the race for Governor, the choices couldn’t be starker.

By Traci Sheehan
Planning and Conservation League

At midnight September 1st the gavel came down and the 2009-2010 legislative session came to a close.  While not all bills had the outcome we would have liked, we can happily say that thanks to the hard work of community groups around the state, we have made it through the year without a single bill exempting a project from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) from passing. This is a huge victory that could not have been achieved without the effort of a coalition over 150 (and growing!) environmental and justice groups, housing advocates, businesses and community leaders.