Deaths In The Fields: Why State Agencies Need Help Protecting America's Workers

I'm a blogger fellow with Brave New Films on their 16 Deaths Per Day campaign for worker safety. Join us on Facebook.



It's hard to find a tougher job in America than harvesting in the fields. Throughout California, known as the nation's salad bowl, farmworkers, frequently migrants with little knowledge of their rights as workers or even the English language, toil in triple-digit heat, often without shade or water breaks. Needless to say, this dangerous work has resulted in serious injury and even deaths.

Jose Rosario Valencia started feeling nauseated just after 9 a.m. on July 17. His heart rate sped up and his knees buckled.

Valencia was scared. He'd heard of other farmworkers dying of heat stroke in the fields.

"I thought about my family and how they would suffer," said Valencia, 46, who moves irrigation pipes in the onion fields.

Even though California passed a groundbreaking law in 2005 to protect farmworkers from heat illness and death, there have been as many as 10 heat-related fatalities in the years since. Among the victims in 2008 were a pregnant teenager who died when her body temperature climbed to 108 degrees after working in a Lodi vineyard and a 37-year-old man who suffered heat stroke after loading table grapes near Bakersfield. The state has confirmed heat as the cause of six of the deaths and said it may have been a factor in the others.

Farmworkers get paid by the piece, based on how much they load, and their employers set quotas that they are expected to cover. They have every incentive to avoid breaks and work as hard as possible; in some cases, the water is simply out there for display. As a result, farmworkers skip bathroom breaks. They skip water breaks. They stay out in the fields under 100-degree heat with the fear that they would be fired if they did not. And as a result, workers die.

The most celebrated case in recent years was that of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17 year-old farmworker who died of heat strike in the fields in the summer of 2008. She was pregnant at the time.

Maria collapsed while working for Merced Farm Labor in a vineyard owned by West Coast Grape Farming outside of Stockton, CA. Maria worked for nine hours in temperatures that reached 101 degrees. There was no water nearby. There was no shade.

After about 2 hours of delays, Maria was finally taken to a clinic. Her temperature upon arrival was 108.4 degrees. Maria's heart stopped six times in the next two days before she passed away. Doctors said if emergency medical help had been summoned or she had been taken to the hospital sooner, she might have survived.

In 2009, Cal-OSHA, the state occupational safety board, delivered regulations to combat heat-stress related injuries and deaths. The employers first tried to amend the regulations, trying to classify the vines in the vineyard as "shade." But they failed, as Cal-OSHA refused to rewrite the laws.

However, lobbying for changes in the law is only one way that employers evade oversight. Under the Schwarzenegger Administration and during the historic budget crisis in the state, funding for Cal-OSHA has shrunk. Only two HUNDRED inspectors monitor all the worksites in the nation's most populous state, including the 35,000 farms. There are more fish and game wardens in California than worksite inspectors.

And if an employer is cited, they can use a favorable appeals process to reduce the fines or dismiss the violations, something which has been done repeatedly in recent years. All violations can be appealed to a judge, appointed by the appeals board. Then the appeals board can vacate the judge's ruling. This offers many opportunities to game the system.

The head of the state Senate's Labor Committee accused a workplace safety board Wednesday of being biased toward employers and ignoring a law that requires fines for failing to report on-the-job injuries.

After a hearing, Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said he might introduce legislation that could lead to criminal charges against board members if they continue to disregard the law that calls for a $5,000 fine for employers' failing to report accidents in a timely manner.

The hearing came after a Times investigation last fall that found that the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health appeals board repeatedly dismissed and reduced the penalties levied by division inspectors, even in situations in which workers had died or were seriously injured.

One recent case was dismissed based on a spelling typo in one document. And this is more about ideology than budget problems: for example, Cal-OSHA received stimulus money to hire more inspectors, but has so far declined to do so.

Despite all of these obstacles, the new emphasis on worker safety by Cal-OSHA in the last growing season did pay some dividends. Last year, more vigorous training and enforcement efforts did serve to reduce heat-related illnesses and deaths. But already Cal-OSHA is talking about backing off, content that the media storm over the plight of the farmworkers has largely ended.

Rising compliance and awareness, Welsh said, may allow his agency to relax its inspection efforts in 2010.

"The 3,400 inspections we did last year was a little more than we can sustain," he said.

This is why we need HR 2067, the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA). A fully resourced OSHA could fill in the gaps where the state-level agencies often fail. They could deliver larger penalties without the byzantine appeals process at agencies like Cal-OSHA. They could provide the ability for families to seek justice from employers through the courts. Simply put they could restore the promise of a safe and health workplace for everybody in America.

Even in the fields.

California's Past, California's Future

Gordon Skene posted a fascinating echo of the past, from a Jerry Brown address to the state the day after the passage of Prop. 13 in 1978.



The Jerry Brown you hear is in full backpedal mode, telling voters that the message was received, that government spending is a scourge, that "we must look forward to lean and frugal budgets." Voters sent a message that they want their taxes cut, and the state will oblige. Brown offered a hiring freeze for state workers, proposed a round of budget cuts, and endorsed some kind of automatic limit on spending for the future. He offered a defense of state workers late in the clip, and he asked corporations to pretty-please take the huge windfall they would get by having their property taxes lowered to "invest in the state," but otherwise, it's a full-on co-opting of the Jarvis message.

Now, coming the day after passage of Prop. 13, you can argue that Brown was doing what he had to do. The people really did speak, although they didn't quite know the consequences of the words they were using, and Brown would have a re-election battle within 5 months, and he had to project a message that he "felt the pain" of those out there who voted to save their homes.

The problem is that this statement is directly analogous to the statement of Darrell Steinberg on May 20, 2009, the day after the special election went down in flames. Some would obviously ague that he was in the same position as Brown, and did what he had to do as well. As I said on May 20:

Where is the argument for DEMOCRACY in these statements? Since 1978 that democracy has crumbled and needs to be completely rebuilt. Everyone knows this but refuses to say it out loud. This is why the legislature and the Governor have historically low approval ratings. People are starved for actual leadership and see none. Only democracy will save us. This failed experiment with conservative Two Santa Claus Theories has now become deeply destructive. Because the democrats have provided no leadership and ceded the rhetorical ground, California public opinion holds the contradictory beliefs that the state should not raise taxes and also not cut spending. And if it persists without leadership and advocacy to the contrary, nothing will change.

Not once in those 31 intervening years has an argument been offered that leads proudly instead of placates meekly, that tells people about the future instead of the past, that makes stands on principle instead of trying to do the best with the system we have. That address in 1978 should have been replayed in a loop at every Democratic committee meeting and club event for 31 years, with the inevitable question asked afterward: "Is this a rallying cry? Is this the voice of a party that presumes to be on the side of the people? Is this giving people a vision, a dream, even a goal?"

People understand this in their lizard brains. They can naturally discern the strong and the weak, and gravitate toward the former even if their strength is repulsive. Since 1978, we have had exactly one other Democratic Governor in California, the kind of guy who signs on to amicus briefs with the Cal Chamber of Commerce defending illegal gubernatorial actions, and he was run out of Sacramento by a radical right movement that considered him too much of a hippie.

I have always thought that a strong defense of democracy, of the principles of majority rule, of government as a protector and a defender, would be rewarded in the public square. Instead we muddle through, and people suffer. I have not taken too much note of this "failure of the California dream" concept - for my money, as long as there were millions in poverty, gated communities and invisible barriers stratifying society, a separate California for the poor, the sick, the aged, then that dream was a good tool for marketers but a destructive proposition to tout. And while this has never been more true in our unequal society, it was ever thus. For the dream to be resurrected, it would have to be something fundamentally different. Not a "dream" of suburban sprawl and excess, but a dream of a society that takes care of one another, that seeks to maximize potential, that provides opportunity and allows individual dreams to take root. That can only happen in a flowering democracy reflective of the popular will.

I think leaders are emerging. While I won't be a part of day-to-day writing of the back and forth of California politics, as a citizen of the state I intend not to abandon it but to do whatever I can to involve myself in a movement toward fulfilling that new dream. It's deeply frustrating to analyze the politics of a state surrounded by brick walls to responsible governance at every turn, but paradoxically I think it remains an exciting time to be a progressive in California. The long march continues.

Media Weathervane Allan Hoffenblum: Time To Duck, Yacht Party

Allan Hoffenblum is the publisher of the California Target Book and the most-quoted pundit with respect to state elections. He is a weathervane for party money and which Party is up or down. He spoke yesterday in Sacramento and was incredibly blunt.

At a conference sponsored by Hoffenblum's publication, the Republican identified eight congressional seats and 13 state Assembly seats as competitive. Nearly all of those Assembly seats and more than half of the congressional seats are now held by Republicans.

"I think this is going to be when we find out if the Republican Party has any life left in it whatsoever as far as being a statewide competitive party," said Hoffenblum, whose publication tracks and handicaps races throughout the state.

A drop in Republican registration and an influx in decline-to-state voters who have not traditionally voted with the GOP have put some districts formerly considered "safe" Republican seats into play.

"I think it's going to be a very, very difficult road on the Republican front if they don't do something about registration, something to appeal to decline-to-state voters, many of whom are Latinos and Asians who have not been voting Republican for the last four election cycles," Hoffenblum said.

This actually flies in the face of predictions at the national level of a 1994 redux. But it does meet with the general trend in California, as a diverse population drops any love for the Republican Party altogether. As Hoffenblum noted, eight Congressional districts held by Republicans went for Barack Obama over John McCain last November, and 12 Assembly districts held by Republicans share the same trait. A smart party with targeted resources could easily pick up more Congressional seats and the number in the Assembly needed to secure a 2/3 majority. In the state Senate, one of the two seats needed for 2/3 looks pretty ripe for takeover - SD-12, where Asm. Anna Caballero is the Dem candidate and Sen. Jeff Denham is termed out.

I actually am not quite as sanguine as Hoffenblum. There are Democratic-held seats that could face a fight - at the Congressional level, I think Dennis Cardoza might have some trouble with Mike Berryhill, and the swing Assembly districts held by Alyson Huber, Joan Buchanan and possibly others could be threatened. The demographics of the 2010 midterms will be more favorable to Republicans than the demographics of the 2008 Presidential election. And the failures on the budget, and the ensuing suffering, could easily resonate with voters against the majority party if Democrats aren't careful.

But in general, as Hoffenblum said, the trend in California from the standpoint of the electorate is away from conservatism and toward progressivism, and that march will simply be extremely difficult to stop. Public attitudes have not only been trending against minority rule but against the entire brand of failed conservatism that brought us the tragedy of the Bush years. While practically every party in the White House loses seats in a midterm election, the peculiar dynamic in California may blunt that impact - and could lead to a better future for California as well.

Bass On Activism And The Legislature

This Los Angeles magazine interview with Karen Bass is really illuminating about her life and her early activism, which she says started in middle school during the civil rights movement. Bass, a student organizer, antiwar activist and advocate for the poor in South LA, has a deep connection to the grassroots world outside Sacramento. And yet she is boxed in by circumstance and the minority rule in California to do things that directly conflict with her personal interests. This is a fascinating passage:

Why did you start the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment in South L.A.?
In the ’80s, crack cocaine took off as an epidemic, and I became obsessed by it. It was the first time that a drug impacted across class lines in the African American community, and it was also the first time in history a drug trend impacted both genders equally. It was really beginning to reshape the landscape in the inner city. I wanted to find a way to address the drug problem that did not involve massive incarceration—that could get at the root causes—and at the same time I wanted to build an organization that would help create, recruit, and train a next generation of activists. We’ve been around for 19 years.

Does the coalition show up at your office to protest what you’re doing in the legislature?
Absolutely. They’re organizing a protest right now. They are nice enough to call me up and tell me when they’re going to be protesting.

Would you be out there with them if the job didn’t preclude it?
No question. One thing that’s a little funny, if you don’t mind me going off the record—OK, I’ll say it on the record. I would have been protesting, but even when I was making these decisions, I was still in contact with the groups that protest to tell them to continue, because I understand better than ever how important those protests are. So it is quite interesting to be in a position like this.

There's a very good reason why Bass' current position feels unnatural, beyond just the inside v. outside dynamic. It's because she thought she was going from a position of weakness, as an outside activist, to a position of strength, as a legislative leader. However, the truth was the opposite. At least as an activist she was free to advocate and maybe make substantive gains. As a leader in this legislature, she cannot. By rule. Because the minority holds sway.

Anyway, I found it to be a very interesting article.

Yacht Party Rushes To Tout Snake Oil That Works, Works, Works!

Around 11:00 this morning some senior Yacht Party members and their acolytes will stand in front of microphones in Sacramento trumpeting a report about state labor regulations and small businesses. They can be expected to say that the real problem with the California economy is all those gosh darn regulations, and if only businesses could free themselves from the iron boot of - I don't know, the 40-hour work week, child labor, the right to have an employee saw off his fingers in a lathe without responsibility, it's a different thing every week with these people - the state could be saved.

It's worth understanding what this report that makes them go ga-ga is all about. John Myers had a sketch of it the other day.

The document, wonkishly titled Cost of State Regulations on California Small Business Study, was quietly made public late yesterday. You can read it here [...]

The summary says it all, at least in the eyes of the business community:

The study finds that the total cost of [business]regulation to the State of California is $492.994 billion which is almost five times the State's general fund budget, and almost a third of the State's gross product. The cost of regulation results in an employment loss of 3.8 million jobs which is a tenth of the State's population. Since small business constitute 99.2% of all employer businesses in California, and all of non-employer business, the regulatory cost is borne almost completely by small business. The total cost of regulation was $134,122.48 per small business in California in 2007, labor income not created or lost was $4,359.55 per small business, indirect business taxes not generated or lost were $57,260.15 per small business, and finally roughly one job lost per small business.

Basically, regulations take your wives, enslave your children, throw your ice cream on the ground, and write "loser" on your chest in sun tan lotion when you fall asleep at the beach. It's amazing how in line this study is with standard conservative tropes about onerous regulations and big government. I wonder why that is? Here's Myers.

So how do (authors Sanjay Varshney and Dennis Tootelian) reach their conclusions? The 33 page report (85 pages if you include the charts) relies heavily on Forbes Magazine and its annual report of the best -- and worst -- states in which to do business. The 2008 report ranks California #40 in the nation, and that's the relative placement the authors used for their calculations.

"Forbes data is reliable," says the study, "in that it uses credible sources of secondary data that are well recognized and respected as credible independent research in the business world."

Perhaps, but Forbes' proprietary methodology isn't entirely transparent. Its website does note the sources for its rankings: data from both the federal government and nonprofits like the Tax Foundation and the conservative-leaning Pacific Research Institute.

This "academic" study cribbed their data from a MAGAZINE profile? One owned by a movement conservative, which includes materials from wingnut welfare think tanks? And we're supposed to just let that go?

Myers goes on to note that the way Varshney and Tootelian transform the Forbes data into dollar amounts is entirely inscrutable, but designed to advance the proposition that every single state's set of regulations are harmful to business. "Even Forbes' #1 state for business friendliness, Virginia, comes out with a regulatory climate that's a net loss to the state of $4.4 billion." The study also neglects to determine which regulations harm business more or less. It's a partisan mess of a report and it should not be taken seriously. Which is why the Yacht Party has taken to it so quickly, with classy headlines like "California Businesses Waterboarded by Governmental Overregulation."

Look, labor regulations serve a particular purpose. It's true that they have a cost to business, but they also provide a significant cost savings to the individual, to the public health system, to the overall quality of life for the laborer. We have made these trade-offs over hundreds of years. The Yacht Party may think that The Jungle is a fantasy utopia, but in my experience, Californians and pretty much everybody else appreciate safe food and clean air and the minimum wage.

You can get a good sense of the intellectual honesty of a politician - and the media - by seeing if they bite at this crap sandwich of a report.

12.2%

The latest unemployment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia reported jobless rates of at least 10.0 percent in August. Michigan continued to have the highest unemployment rate among the states, 15.2 percent. Nevada recorded the next highest rate, 13.2 percent, followed by Rhode Island, 12.8 percent, and California and Oregon, 12.2 percent each. The rates in California, Nevada, and Rhode Island set new series highs.

So much for that canard that businesses are flocking to Nevada, considering it has a higher unemployment rate than we do. Nonetheless, California is in deep trouble, with a loss of 741,000 jobs over the last year, an increase of 4.6% in the jobless rate since last August.

And there are no economic recovery plans in the works. I guess we're supposed to sit and wait until things get better.

The Continued Defense Of The Indefensible

Timm Herdt was on a conference call yesterday with a top official from the Department of Corrections, and that official acknowledged that the plan due to federal judges by midnight today on prison reduction will not meet the goal:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday will submit to a panel of three federal judges a plan that would reduce the inmate population at California’s overcrowded prisons by substantially less than what the court has ordered, a move that a top prison administrator acknowledged will place state officials at risk of being held in contempt.

Although the final plan will not be submitted until late Friday, administration officials have briefed other parties involved in the court proceedings on its major elements. They said exact projections of how much the prison population will be reduced have not yet been calculated, but the reduction would not lower the population to the court’s standard of 137.5 percent of the prison system’s design capacity.

“This plan will not meet the court’s requirements,” said Lee Seale, deputy chief of staff of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, in a conference call Wednesday with legislative staff members. “I certainly don’t think this panel will be thrilled by this plan. I think we recognize we may be held in contempt.”

Under the plan the state will submit, they will get to around 27,000 prisoner reduction. The judges want something close to 44,000.

The question is how the three-judge panel will react. They may mandate a release of enough prisoners to get to that number, at which point the state will challenge the ruling and throw it to the US Supreme Court. This is precisely was Tough on Crime member emeritus George Runner wants.

Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, who has intervened in the court case in the hope of preventing a judicial mandate to lower the prison population, believes the administration is taking exactly the right approach.

“I would like to see the state plan be as easily rejected as possible,” Runner said.

If the administration submitted a plan that came close to meeting the court’s order, Runner said, that could lead to a negotiated compromise. This way, he said, the court will be forced to propose its own plan — one that would set up a showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Where Runner would pitch the "I'm right because I say so" defense. And with this Supreme Court, who knows, that may work.

We don't know when the appeal would come in the process. The Governor's office seem to think that they can appeal the initial ruling as soon as they offer their alternative plan, while others believe that they'd have to wait for the three-judge panel to issue a final order with the full reductions. At some point, everyone agrees, an appeal is allowable. Kevin Yamamura has more.

I don't want to put this entirely on the Governor, though he's clearly dragging his feet. The Assembly forced the weak proposal you'll see from the Governor today by scaling back the reform plan that would have come closer to the judge's goal of reducing the population by 44,000 prisoners. But the Governor didn't actually have to follow the Assembly in submitting their plan. They could have come up with one of their own making, putting pressure on the Legislature to conform it. They chose not to stand behind their own plan and do so. So while there's plenty of blame to go around, I think the Governor needs to own this one, although he and everyone else want to take the blame off themselves.

By the end of the week, it will be apparent what all the posturing accomplished: nothing. That may suit lawmakers just fine -- they can blame the coming prison reforms on the federal courts rather than taking heat from voters for being insufficiently hard on criminals. But the episode is further evidence that if California's prison system is a national disgrace, its Legislature is a national laughingstock.

Perhaps it's not surprising that, in this environment, Schwarzenegger seems to be taking on the characteristics of a dictator. On Tuesday, he rejected the Legislature's plan to promote renewable energy and said he'd impose his own by executive fiat. He's on surer legal ground when it comes to the prisons because his actions will be backed by the federal court. But it's dismaying to watch the state's democratic procedures break down so thoroughly.

As long as he now appears to be king of California, we humbly beseech our lord and Terminator to finally do the right thing by the prisons. His proposal to the court should be modeled on the one approved by the Senate and include a commission to review the unsustainable determinate sentencing system. Meanwhile, it's time to drop the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court of the federal court order so we can get on with the business of fixing the prisons and out of the habit of defending the indefensible.

But that's not going to happen. Seeing the Department of Corrections reduce the very rehabilitation programs by $250 million, that even the Assembly plan used as a means to let inmates out for completing them, show how the mission of corrections has been completely lost in this. What the state is fighting by appealing the judge's order is their privilege to let people die in jail needlessly in violation of the Constitution. Today, they will continue to assert that privilege.

Parsky Commission To Introduce Their Shock Doctrine Document

We heard last week about outlines of the Parsky Commission report that would radically shift the tax burden in California. We even heard that offshore drilling may have been snuck into the draft at the last minute. Last week, the commission held a public meeting which featured more details, including the intimation that 3% of the population would see half of the tax break under the Parsky plan. They made the public wait for seven hours and then gave one individual a minute to make a comment. Yesterday, the final public meeting was held, and right before it, Jean Ross offered some facts and figures showing how the commission's recommendation would amount to the Latvia-ization of the state of California, with a massive transfer of wealth to the upper classes at the expense of working families.

The biggest winners would be the state’s millionaires, who would receive personal income tax breaks averaging $109,000 per year. The biggest losers would be middle-income families who would receive a tiny, if any, reduction in their personal income taxes and who would pay substantially more for goods and services due to the new “value-added” tax the Commission proposes to replace revenues lost due to the tax cuts for the wealthy and repeal of the corporate income tax.

The magnitude of the shift proposed by the Commission is nothing short of stunning. The changes to the personal income tax structure alone would reduce income taxes paid by the poorest 62 percent of California taxpayers by $4 per year, on average, while providing six-figure breaks to the millionaires. The bottom 81 percent of the income distribution – the vast majority of all Californians – would receive 10 percent of the personal income tax cut, while the top 0.2 percent would receive 27 percent of the benefits.

And that’s the “good news.” The Commission would repeal the corporate income tax and the state’s portion of the sales tax and replace it with a new tax on business net receipts – a tax that has never been tried anywhere in the US – that the Commission’s own consultant notes would raise prices of goods and services, while exerting downward pressure on wages and benefits [...]

Some might be willing to support these changes if they ended California’s persistent budget crises. But again, the Commission’s own estimates predict that revenues raised by the new tax system would grow more slowly over time than those raised by the state’s current tax system. Thus, the Commission’s recommendations would lead to larger, not smaller, budget shortfalls in the future.

At the committee hearing yesterday, commissioners requested an analysis of the impact of the recommendation for taxpayers, and it came out precisely as Ross stated - "The 10 million taxpayers making less than $50,000 would pay $100 million more in taxes while the 7 million taxpayers who make more than $50,000 would get $6.8 billion in tax cuts."

This will not be a consensus document, most of the liberals on the panel won't sign it. And even the news reports today acknowledge that the changes would "largely benefit the wealthy." Clearly the Governor will put his weight behind it, but that's meant nothing in Sacramento for several years. The question is whether the Democratic Legislature would dare to massively reward the rich so nakedly by accepting these recommendations. Because the business community is actually against it, worried about the effect of the net receipts tax, I'd still guess no, but people should be letting their Representatives know that they will not get away with a transparent shift in wealth from the middle class to the super-rich.

Palace Sentries Dispatched To Guard The Drawbridge

The establishment in Sacramento has manned the barricades, battened down the hatches and gone on the offensive to prove their own worth. They sent their best man in the media, George Skelton, out to prove that no, despite your lying eyes, the California Legislature had a real banner year. After all, they managed to bring suffering to the lives of hundreds of thousands of state residents with consensus and bipartisan elan!

The current Legislature, regardless of Duvall and despite ideological polarization, has had a better year than it's getting credit for.

Its main accomplishment was keeping the state afloat amid a flood of red ink, created primarily by the toughest economic times since the Great Depression. OK, so it did use some bailing wire and chewing gum! The bills got paid, even if briefly with IOUs.

With great difficulty and pain -- at least for Democrats -- the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger slashed programs by roughly $30 billion. They also struck a major blow against "auto-pilot" spending by permanently eliminating all automatic annual cost-of-living adjustments, except for K-12 schools. And they summoned enough courage to temporarily increase taxes by $12.5 billion.

In the end, they found a way to restore health insurance for 660,000 low-income kids.

The tax increases hit the more vulnerable elements of society disproportionately, of course. They actually found that way to restore children's health insurance by lowering industry taxes and increasing the co-pay and deductible burden on the low-income families themselves, while reducing the covered care. And anyone who adds cutting $30 billion in programs and eliminating COLA as an accomplishment is a bit of a social deviant. But there are probably no lengths to which Skelton will go to defend the palace walls from the rabble who think, based on the evidence, that the system is horribly broken.

Steve Maviglio wisely steers clear of the more horrific achievements of this year's Legislature, and offers a slightly more defensible outlook of the '09 Legislative session. Still, there's a lot unsaid:

Looking back, getting the measures on the May ballot was a significant early success that required 2/3 votes. And toward the end of the session, in addition to the renewable energy bill, Speaker Bass pushed through measures on childrens health and domestic violence that won broad bipartisan support. (The Speaker also got a standing ovation, and she appears to have strengthened her support in Caucus. Compare that to the ouster of the two Republican leaders).

Okay, so the grand water deal didn't get done. Big deal. Nothing like that has been done for a generation. Perhaps Senate President pro Tem Steinberg set the bar too high when he said he'd get it done. In any case, all parties agree that they got close and can pick up the pieces and get it finished in short order.

So for all those crying for major reforms, put it all into perspective. Sure, improvements could be made, and things could have been better, but this is not reason for drastic action. Far from it.

Of course, the renewable bill is veto bait, as are many of the other major bills pending the Governor's signature. And the domestic violence bill didn't pass the Senate, so, um, that doesn't count. The prison bill offered decent parole reforms but stopped well short of a real solution. Everyone keeps saying the water bill will happen but the two sides remain far apart, and the fact that they'll have to go into overtime to reconcile it kind of proves the point, no?

But Maviglio tips his hand with the line "this is not reason for drastic action." Of course he would say that. He's profited well from the status quo. Anything that messes with it could hurt him professionally, and what's more, could stop the endless blaming of outside factors to account for stunning failure.

There is no shame in stating that this was a failed legislative session. Just about everyone in California would agree with you, particularly the ones who are suffering the most from the destruction of social insurance caused by the most heartless cuts. Simply put, the Great Recession dominated legislative activity, and the conservative veto from various 2/3 requirements restricts the Legislature from fulfilling the expressed will of the people through their votes (NOTE: This does not only come into play with the budget; late last Friday Republicans blocked over 20 bills that required 2/3 votes for one reason or another, probably because they knew they could get away with it). That's not something to explain away, it's actually something to fight, every single day until the problem is rectified.

Skelton and Maviglio may want to tell themselves all is well, but the public knows better, and they're going to demand major structural change. Those who think that the Legislature can still be a force for good in the state can get aboard and provide the best ideas to break the supermajority gridlock and get the state moving again. Or they can defend their narrow interests. Their defense will fail, and it would be a shame not to see them on the right side of history.

Bait And Switch: The Governor's Executive Order To Destroy California's Green Economy

As Jim Evans, Communications Director for Sen. Steinberg, notes, the Governor is poised to veto a bill he championed, which would mandate the highest renewable energy standard in the nation, requiring utilities to get 33% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020. But it's far worse than just a veto. Schwarzenegger wants to then set the standard himself by executive order. You can see why this would please him - he would be able to say that he boldly moved the state forward in the renewable energy space, while vetoing the bill from the Legislature that would do the same thing. And he wold significantly weaken the standard in a variety of ways.

The order presumably would set no limit on how much of the green power could be imported from other states.

Environmentalists who have been told about the governor's still-evolving plans said Schwarzenegger also was considering directing the California Air Resources Board to look at broadening the state's definition of renewable energy sources to include large hydroelectric dams and nuclear energy plants.

Critics questioned whether Schwarzenegger's order would be binding once he leaves office at the end of 2010. The validity of the order would be subject to a variety of potential legal challenges, they predicted.

So Schwarzenegger would allow utilities to outsource all the green jobs that would be created if power needed to be created on California soil, ruining the one area of potential economic recovery in the bill. He would put the standard on shaky legal ground, open to litigation and an unclear mandate. And he would hand a gift to the nuclear power industry by twisting arms at the Air Resources Board to change their definition of renewable energy.

This isn't just short-sighted, it's downright criminal. A high renewable standard could spurn all kinds of economic activity, but without a limit on importation, that activity will just go elsewhere instead of California. This is an effort of questionable legality for Schwarzenegger to reward corporate cronies with lower purchasing prices for green energy at the expense of California jobs.

Astounding.

Legislature Passes Groundbreaking Renewable Energy Legislation; "Green" Governor Will Veto

SB14, which would set a first-in-the-nation standard that utilities must receive 33% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, passed the Legislature late last night.

“Increased development of renewable energy in California has tremendous potential as an economic development tool. These are clean, green jobs that belong in California. SB 14 sets a clear target with a real deadline, and then makes it as easy as possible to bring renewable energy on line.

In light of the state’s ambitious new carbon emission targets, SB 14 will give energy agencies the flexibility they need in order to meet those goals. Current law “caps” the amount of renewable energy that the Public Utilities Commission may order utilities to buy or build at 20 percent. This bill would remove this cap and require utilities to acquire 33 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2020.”

This would make California's renewable energy standard one of the most aggressive in the world. The Governor, feted in magazines and national media as an environmental leader, has vocally backed the 33% standard in the past. But power plant generators have pressured Schwarzenegger to veto the bill. And according to the LA Times, he will.

The Senate did manage to pass the energy bill, which would raise to 33% the amount of energy the utilities must get from renewable sources. Final approval by the Assembly of some minor amendments was expected.

However, a high-ranking administration official said late Friday that the governor may not sign the bill, SB 14 by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), because of provisions limiting the amount of energy that could come from outside California. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the bills were not yet on the governor's desk.

That would really be the icing on the cake to the worst Governorship in California history. The one issue on which he staked his legacy, and he is likely to veto the bill most likely to drive the lowering of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly because it would keep too many jobs in the state. Adding a renewable energy standard and mandating a majority of that energy be generated in state, is probably the only bill passed this year that looks to expand the local economy. And because of that, Schwarzenegger will veto it.

And the same magazines will put him on the cover with the slogan "The Greenenator" and talk up his environmental credentials.

Scaled-Back Prison Bill Done, Water Bill Not

Notes from yet another long session in the Legislature:

The Senate could wait no longer for the Assembly to get their act together, so they passed a reduced prison package along the Assembly's lines, one that falls $200 million short of projections and does not have a sentencing commission. The Governor has announced he'll sign the bill. It's marginally worthwhile for the parole reforms, but really nowhere near what's needed. And so the federal judges will in all likelihood order a mass release, and because little is being done to address root causes, the cost of prisons and the population as a whole are both still likely to increase. The cowards in the Assembly who think they have designs on higher office after this travesty should know that this vote will have importance, but not in the way they think.

The bill to waive CEQA requirements (California Environmental Quality Act) to put a football stadium in Southern California - without an NFL team, mind you - did not get by Darrell Steinberg, despite lots of energy and effort from special interests. He's giving the various parties more time to negotiate a settlement. Sports stadiums are among the biggest corporate welfare projects we have in America.

The much-ballyhooed water deal has been scuttled, as Karen Bass announced she did not have the votes to move it. The Speaker may ask for a special session on water, and the Governor would probably move that as well. The middle-of-the-night rush obviously didn't work, so some transparency would be preferable.

Still waiting on the renewable energy standard bill, which would put California in the vanguard of the nation in terms of its portfolio (33% by 2020).

Remember These Moments

True to the reality of a weak political media and an inattentive public, the chatter over the results of the July budget revision, despite major cuts to the social safety net, has completely subsided. No taxes got increased and nobody "important" got hurt, so it was just time to move on. Politicians just move on to the business of raising corporate money, special interests can move on to the business of writing laws that help their bottom line, and everybody in Sacramento can praise everybody else for "sacrificing" to get things done.

Only, for the people living under the consequences of these budgets, created through a choice not to properly pay for needed services, the budget battle is not forgotten. And it doesn't consist of a group of numbers in a column. It's entirely real and it hits them every single day. Here's just one example.

Six domestic violence shelters in California have been forced to close while dozens more are scaling back services after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger eliminated all state funding for the program that supports them.

Shelters in the Central Valley town of Madera, the Sierra foothill town of Grass Valley and in Ventura County in Southern California have closed. Others in the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles and Bakersfield are on the verge of closing.

Many centers are laying off staff and closing satellite offices that serve remote areas of the state as they cope with the budget cuts. A national domestic violence group describes California's as the deepest cuts to such programs nationwide, even as other states have reduced funding.

In Madera County, officials have turned away six domestic violence victims and eight children since the county's only shelter closed Aug. 7, said Tina Figueroa, the shelter's director. The Martha Diaz Shelter served about 100 victims a year, many of them low-income and with no place else to turn, she said.

So 100 victims of domestic violence in smallish Madera County now have truly nowhere to turn, and will either suffer under the boot of their abusive partners or, in many cases, be killed by them. The director of domestic violence policy in the LA City Attorney's office pretty clearly calls these programs "homicide prevention." It also saves money relative to what you spend prosecuting the eventual homicides. I've seen "tough on crime" conservatives over the years invoke the name of victims and stir up public support for laws in their name. They go curiously silent when hundreds of domestic violence victims are put at risk of death because they want to save rich people and corporations from having to pay for their fair share of the commons.

These closures are the direct result of line-item cuts by the Governor. So the blood is on his hands. Leland Yee has a bill that attempts to cover the domestic violence shelter budget with cash from a crime victims fund, but under 2/3 rules, it's not likely to pass this week.

Kudos to the AP for doing a story on this; but there need to be many more. There's a human face on the budget cuts that has completely been lost and forgotten. Those suffering are right to suspect that nobody in Sacramento cares about them.

Legislature Home Stretch Update

There's lots of significant news in the Legislature's last week regarding various bills, and it's extremely difficult to keep up with it all, probably by design. I should point out that, while the legislative calendar has an end date, there's no actual reason for some of the forced bottlenecks that result in hundreds of bills being passed at the last minute. It creates a shroud of secrecy in which special interests rule, and saps the public trust. A Democratic leadership actually interested in positioning government as somewhat decent would remove these forced bottlenecks from the internal legislative rules and allow bills to be approved on a rolling basis. That said, this is the system we have now, and here's a bunch of news about various bills:

• A new bill would exempt non-General Fund workers from furloughs. This would reverse one of the dumbest provisions in the budget bill, the practice of forcing furloughs on workers not paid by state government, saving almost no money and depriving people of needed services. Of course, the Governor will probably veto this one, because he hates admitting how wrong he is.

• Democrats on that vaunted water committee have decided against floating a bond to pay for any restoration or overhaul of the Delta. This means Republicans won't vote for it, and very little will come of this very important committee thrown together at the last minute. Some conference committee reports are here, but a deal looks remote, as it would need votes from some of the empty chairs in the Yacht Party.

• One bill that has cleared both chambers would set up "Education Finance Districts", "in which three or more contiguous school districts can band together to try to increase local taxes." This is a small step to make it easier for districts to pass parcel taxes to fund schools, but at this point every little bit helps. The 2/3 rule for approving such taxes would remain.

• With all the talk of health care reform, it's notable that an anti-rescission bill has once again passed the legislature. The bill would also simplify insurance forms. Last session, Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. There's something you don't hear much about from the Democratic leadership - Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have banned insurance companies from dropping patients after they get sick. He sided with the forces of insurer-assisted suicide. This is your modern Yacht Party on this issue:

"Any of those who have read the various exposés in the Los Angeles Times and others . . . is aware that health insurers have admitted and acknowledged they engaged in a form of post-claims underwriting," said Sen. Mark Wyland (R-Escondido). "It is unethical and, considering what some of these people have endured, it really borders on the immoral."

However, Wyland said he would not vote for the bill because the Department of Insurance has proposed new rules to solve the problem, and he wants to see how they work.

Hey, give 'em a chance to see if the immorality stops! If not, we can think it over.

• The Legislature may extend a homebuyer's tax credit passed in a previous budget agreement that was nothing but a bailout for developers. It only credited new construction, and was structured only to benefit high-income households who could afford new construction. By the way, sales of new units have fell since this was enacted, so it's not even meeting its intended purpose. But it's a giveaway to a special interest, so off the money may go, even though we cannot afford it at this time.

• A bill to ban bisphenol A (BPA) from children's products was delayed after the Assembly couldn't muster 41 votes. The debate in the Assembly last night was pretty fierce.

• Cities and counties reacted angrily to a proposed bill to slow local government bankruptcies until vetted by the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission. On the merits this looks to be a bill that would install more control on locals from Sacramento, although there are arguments on both sides. But mainly it's about the fate of union contracts in local bankruptcies, I don't think either side would deny that.

• A roundup of other bills passed yesterday can be found here.

Insurer-Assisted Suicide

The Washington Post today becomes yet another media outlet to detail the practice of rescission, whereby insurance companies go through your application form with a fine-toothed comb and look for any excuse to drop you from your coverage - but only after you try to use it to get treatment. They're perfectly fine with what they call "medical fraud" as long as you're just paying them your premiums. It's when you want to receive health care that fraud becomes the greatest threat facing the Republic.

The problem is that rescission just isn't a snappy enough description of the actual circumstance. I prefer "insurer-assisted suicide":

The untimely disappearance of Sally Marrari's medical coverage goes a long way toward explaining why insurance companies are cast as the villain in the health-care reform drama.

"They said I never mentioned I had a back problem," said Marrari, 52, whose coverage with Blue Cross was abruptly canceled in 2006 after a thyroid disorder, fluid in the heart and lupus were diagnosed. That left the Los Angeles woman with $25,000 in medical bills and the stigma of the company's claim that she had committed fraud by not listing on a health questionnaire "preexisting conditions" Marrari said she did not know she had.

By the time she filed a lawsuit in 2008, she also got a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and her debts had swelled beyond $200,000. She was able to see a specialist by trading office visits for work on the doctor's 1969 Porsche at the garage she owns with her husband.

"I've had about 10 visits," Marrari said of the barter arrangement that has proved more reliable than her insurance. "The car needs a lot of work."

And where would Mrs. Marrari be if she didn't have a garage that could work on Porsches?

Nobody knows how much money has been saved through insurer-assisted suicide; three insurance companies admitted in a hearing this summer that they've cancelled 20,000 over five years at a savings of $300 million dollars. Given that amount of money, the fact that California's five largest insurers have paid around $19 million to deal with rescissions seems like a drop in the ocean. Here's something that's not in the article: when Anthem Blue Cross challenged the fine placed on them for rescinding policies, state regulators never even tried to file suit because they figured they would be outgunned in court.

"This is probably the most egregious of examples of health insurers using their power and their resources to deny benefits to people who are most in need of care," said Gerald Kominski, associate director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the University of California at Los Angeles. "It's really a horrendous activity on the part of the insurers." [...]

In the only case to go to trial in California, an arbitration judge awarded $9 million to a beautician who had to stop chemotherapy for her breast cancer after Health Net dropped her policy. Company officials declined to comment.

In a pending case, Blue Shield searched in vain for an inconsistency in the health records of the wife of a dairy farmer after she filed a claim for emergency gallbladder surgery, according to attorneys for the family. Turning to her husband's questionnaire, the company discovered he had not mentioned his high cholesterol and dropped them both. Blue Shield officials said they would not comment on a pending case.

You might be wondering whether there's a mechanism to stop rescission in the current plans on the table. The President and Democratic leaders would certainly tell you that's the case, if only by banning the refusal of coverage for pre-existing conditions. However, as seen from the paragraph above, the fines they may incur as a result will either be seen as the cost of doing business or a fine that will never be enforced. In addition, there are plenty of additional ways to evade responsibility.

If federal health-care reform bars companies from screening for preexisting conditions, insurers note that cancellations will no longer be an issue. But Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin, an economist at the Rand Corp., said that unless for-profit companies are compensated for taking higher-risk patients, the firms will continue to look for ways to unload them.

"They wouldn't be able to overtly kick you out, but that doesn't mean that they might not put, for example, more onerous preauthorization requirements on services that people who are at risk might need, and that might discourage you from re-enrolling next year," Buntin said.

As long as insurers' incentive to make a profit diverges from caring for their customers, insurer-assisted suicide will always be a reality. And as we've seen, balkanizing the enforcement to the state level instead of having a federal regulator cracking down on this will put the enforcement at the mercy of fragile state budgets and haphazard state regulators. Here is the entire enforcement mechanism, as far as I see it, in the Baucus draft plan from the Senate Finance Committee:

Ombudsman. In 2010, states would be required to establish an ombudsman office to act as a consumer advocate for those with private coverage in the individual and small group markets. Policyholders whose health insurers have rejected claims and who have exhausted internal appeals would be able to access the ombudsman office for assistance.

Yay, the states get an ombudsman! And he or she can only be tapped if individuals "exhaust internal appeals"; that is, beg their insurers to stop cheating them. And since the states will be establishing the office themselves, they'll set the budgets and choose the staff - meaning that we'll potentially be leaving enforcement of insurance regulations in Texas and South Carolina, for example, to Rick Perry and Mark Sanford.

Ultimately, those fighting for a public option are fighting for some way out of this Chinese box, where insurers have control over the health care you receive, and can just as easily deny your coveage as they can allow it. All of the regulations in the world won't mean a thing without proper enforcement, and this won't cut it.

If This Picture Doesn't Sum Up California...

Over the weekend, while fire raged in the Angeles National Forest, over in the San Fernando Valley they were inundated with water. A water main built in 1914 broke and flooded Ventura Boulevard in Studio City throughout the weekend. While it reopened on Monday, today a second break on the same water main hit another section of Coldwater Canyon Avenue and produced maybe the ultimate piece of imagery - a fire truck consumed by flood. I don't think the truck was headed to La Cañada, but the inference is made anyway.

You cannot write 1,000 words on our crumbling infrastructure that capture the subject better than this. A state without the revenue to heal itself becomes a state where fire trucks sink in a flood caused by unattended 100 year-old pipes. The layers of meaning just fall into one another. This is the picture of a state that cannot fix itself.

Aggressive Renewable Energy Standard About To Hit California

As state Senator Mark DeSaulnier said to me a few weeks ago, on a majority-vote basis, California remains in the vanguard of the country. The Legislature is poised to prove that by the end of the session, if they manage to get to the Governor's desk the most aggressive renewable energy standard in America, with a target of getting 33% of all energy from renewable sources by 2020. Most stakeholders appear to be on board with this standard, including the utilities, who won't reach the current RES goal of 20% by 2010 (Southern California Edison Co. is at 15.5%, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is at 11.9% and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. only at 6.1%, as of last year). They are confident that the transmission grid, helped along by federal stimulus money, will allow them to transfer renewable energy freely enough to reach the 33% standard. The question, posed today by the LA Times, concerns where that energy will come from.

The main argument is over how much of the new green power must be generated within California's borders. Another point of contention is which is more expensive: in-state renewable energy or wind and solar power from facilities elsewhere in the West [...]

Unlike the current 20% renewable energy law for 2010, the two proposed bills with goals for 2020 have enforcement provisions, including financial penalties for failing to meet renewable energy procurement levels.

They also broaden the requirements to include publicly owned utilities, such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

A big sticking point in the debate is how much renewable power the state's utilities are allowed to buy or generate out of state. The current law has no limit.

The utilities favor that, but labor unions and their allies want a provision in pending legislation that at least 80% of the power be generated in California.

Unions and their supporters say that most of the new power plants should be built in state so that California workers could snag most of the new green jobs and other benefits involved. "If the people of Wyoming receive the jobs, the tax revenue and the infrastructure, what benefit are Californians going to get other than higher electric bills?" said Matt Freedman, an attorney with the Utility Reform Network, a ratepayers' group. "The question is, 'Who is going to benefit from the 33% standard?'"

First of all, I can't believe that the 2006 law has no enforcement provisions. At the very least, there has to be some incentive to get the utilities to meet the standard, otherwise, as we're seeing right now, they'll slow-walk it.

To answer the man from the Utility Reform Network who asked, "Who is going to benefit from the 33% standard," the answer is that we all will, both by lower emissions and by setting a marker for other states to follow. Renewable energy is extremely popular, and if California acts boldly to set a high standard, they will see a residual benefit. There's probably a sweet spot in between no limit to out-of-state production and 20%, that can benefit both the environment and job creation in California. Perhaps a small tariff for importing renewable energy could be created to level the playing field.

Regardless, we're very likely to see this precedent-setting standard this year.

The bill numbers are SB 14 (Simitian) and AB 64 (Krekorian).

Maybe The 2019 Sentencing Commission Bill Will Pass...

Brian Leubitz says what's needed to be said about the prison "reform" bill that the Assembly has gutted and will vote on Monday. You can see that bill here. Actually this is now a parole reform bill, and on that measure it's not bad. It ends blanket supervision and focuses resources on the worst offenders. It might even alter the circumstances that has made California alone among all states where the parole system has become nothing more than a revolving door back to jail.

But the bill removes the independent sentencing commission that would actually review and make sensible recommendations on our out-of-control sentencing process, which in the end is the only way to truly get a handle on the prison crisis. Here's Brian:

Without the sentencing commission this bill isn't worth the pixels on your screen. It won't fix the prisons. It won't create any substantive change. It will merely kick the can down the road. In order for this bill to be worthwhile, it MUST have a sentencing commission with teeth. A sentencing commission that allows policy makers who understand public safety to make the decisions, not political hacks trying to make their way to the next job. Again, if it can play in Kansas, it can happen here. The only thing missing here are a few legislators with courage.

In other words, this bill misses the opportunity presented by the budget challenges. Frankly, we only have so many cracks at this apple, and this is the perfect storm for a sentencing commission: A Republican Governor providing some cover, a budget mess requiring cost savings, and a federal court order hanging over our heads. The time is now. Like Arnold and his crew are using the mess to shock doctrine the state, we should use this mess to fix the state.

The Democrats in the Assembly who are seeking higher office do not have the courage of their convictions. Several of them have voted for a sentencing commission in the past, enough for such a bill to pass the Assembly in 2007, but they don't want to this time because they fear attack mailers. It's this kind of poor excuse for leadership that has forced federal judges to step in where the legislature would not and demand justice for those in the system whose Constitutional rights are being violated. And since the judges cannot create a sentencing commission or attack the root cause of the problem, and will probably just mass release the amount of prisoners they deem necessary (this bill still falls woefully short of their order), we'll be back here before long.

Maybe then the Assembly can recognize that there's a right and wrong way to go about this. But of course, nobody currently in the Assembly will have to make that decision, thanks to term limits.

The words "broken government" come to mind.

No Vote Yet On Prison Reform

Jim Sanders reports that the Assembly will not hold a vote on a prison reform package today, as legislative leaders and law enforcement groups huddle to reach a compromise. Yes, law enforcement groups, which should read lobbyists. They hold a veto over processes like this.

I'm amazed by how any lawmaker could possibly view a vote like this on prison reform as a choice. Federal judges have affirmatively ruled that California must cut its prison population by 44,000 inmates, and submit a plan to do so by next month. The judges charged with oversight on the prison system have spoken unanimously on this subject and given the state years to work out the issue. If lawmakers vote this down, the population will get reduced ANYWAY, and in all likelihood in a far more randomized and less considered fashion. You would think that the legislature would want a bit more say in the matter, especially since any bad outcome arising from early release will be blamed on them anyway, since that's just the default reaction of most people in this state.

Furthermore, the legislature has already earmarked $1.2 billion in cuts to the prison budget. That was affirmed by a majority in both chambers - I believe, a 2/3 majority - and signed into law by the Governor. This vote is not optional. It's required as a function of last month's budget vote. Bills with compromises that cut less money or lead to the reduction of less of the population are really useless, because eventually, that money will need to be cut and those prisoners released. Assembly Democrats afraid of special interests are living in a fantasy world.

And we really are talking about fear.

In the Assembly, nearly 40% of Democrats (19) are running for another office. Most are fearful of being branded by campaign opponents as "soft on crime" if they vote for, say, early release from prison of even decrepit old blind men.

That's why a plan by Democratic leaders and the governor to reduce the prison population by 27,300 inmates this year and save $525 million passed the Senate 21 to 19 last week, but stalled in the skittish Assembly. No Republican supported the bill, but none was needed because it required only a majority vote to pass.

An amended, watered-down measure may be debated on the Assembly floor today. It will retain the feature Schwarzenegger deems most important: an overhaul of the parole system by focusing on the riskiest parolees and paying little attention to the rest, resulting in fewer ex-cons being returned to prison for minor violations.

All this can be worked out and space freed up in the barracks and gyms. Better to do it now than after the predictable prison blowup.

As for what is subject to change in that amended plan, here's a good rundown. Most of it is nibbling around the edges - adding back a couple crimes as felonies, lowering the dollar threshold for grand theft, changing the months' worth of sentencing credits for rehabilitation and vocational training from 6 to 4 - but these are the big ones:

Eliminate a proposal that would allow the release of up to 6,300 "lower-risk" inmates -- under house arrest with electronic monitoring -- who are medically infirm, aged, or serving the final 12 months of their sentence.

Alter the structure of a proposed sentencing commission that would have broad powers to rewrite sentencing guidelines.

The Assembly version would raise the commission's voting members from 13 to 14. It also would grant law enforcement more clout both by adding a representative from rank-and-file and by requiring that any actions of the commission by approved by two law enforcement members. A requirement that an ex-felon receive a nonvoting seat would be eliminated.

It's truly amazing the law enforcement, under this plan, would literally hold a veto over statutory considerations like sentencing. I believe that plenty of members of the law enforcement community actually understand that they can be smarter on crime, keep people safe and save the state money. But that's just a hijack over the process.

The bottom line is this - we spend more than any state except Michigan on prisons in terms of a percentage of the overall budget, and federal judges have ordered a reduction in inmates. Regardless of special interests or anything else, something's gotta give.

Fixing Our Left Coast Mistake

For so many people, the passage of Prop. 8 last November represented a civil rights failure. But it was just as much a political failure. A campaign that could have been about neighbor-to-neighbor contact and recognizing what brings us together rather than sets us apart was instead waged at 30,000 feet. The TV ads for the No campaign never showed one gay couple, and they never spent any resources on door-to-door canvassing. The consultants who ran that campaign (into the ground) claimed that visibility mattered more than personal persuasion (they actually told volunteers to get on a street corner and hold signs instead of interacting directly with people), and the entire race was waged in a defensive crouch, as the Yes campaign would post one lie after another to which the No campaign would belatedly respond.

In November there will be a chance to right this wrong, to apply the proper political means to achieve a civil rights victory. Gay marriage has been legalized by the legislature in Maine (that activist legislature!), and the same forces that passed Prop. 8 in California have qualified a ballot measure to overturn it. Instead of a state with 17 million registered voters, the universe of likely voters in Maine is just around 500,000. The No on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign figures that they will need between $3-$5 million to wage a successful campaign. Considering the netroots provided nearly $1.5 million for the failed No on 8 campaign, putting a similar amount into a campaign that will actually identify supporters and turn them out to the polls should be an easier task.

If you have any suspicion that the Maine folks don't know what they're doing, take a look at this first commercial, one of the best I've seen on this subject:



The theocrats are targeting Maine as the place where they can turn back the momentum on marriage equality from the past few months. Civil rights campaigns are long and often painful, and sometimes they have to go directly to the people. We can win this time. Support Maine Freedom to Marry.