More Toughy Toughness From Chris Kelly

Chris Kelly, who thinks he's running for Attorney General next year, has responded to my criticism of his perpetuation of fearmongering "tough on crime" policies with an email to supporters:

The politics-as-usual crowd is attacking my opposition to the early release plan -- even saying that "Chris Kelly is making a fool out of himself" for standing up for safe California communities. Well, releasing 20,000 convicted felons early might be Sacramento's idea of prison reform, but it isn't one that will keep California safe -- and it won't save a single dollar in the process, which was the whole rationale for doing it in the first place!

I'm apparently part of the "politics-as-usual" crowd for arguing against the mentality that has produced 1,000 sentencing laws in the last thirty years that increased sentences. But some facts throughout this would help. First of all, the 20,000 number from the Governor came in part from releasing all imprisoned undocumented immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a provision that was long ago scaled back, since ICE showed no interest in taking the responsibility, and the Governor circumscribed that proposal with so many caveats that only 1,400 of the more than 18,000 undocumented qualified. In reality, the scale of release will be lower than initially proposed. So Kelly is engaging in the familiar tactic of arguing against something that won't happen so he can post a "win" after the fact.

But the real danger of Kelly whipping up opposition to this is how it impacts any sensible sentencing or parole reform. Here, Kelly shows that he has no idea what he's talking about with respect to criminal justice policy:

Instead of protecting California communities, the politics-as-usual crowd ignores the fact that early release of more than 10% of the state prison population won't just include "terminally ill, nonviolent drug offenders and people returned to prison for the crime of technical parole violations" -- many dangerous felons will be back on the streets too.

The critics seem to have forgotten that a man with a technical parole violation shot and killed four officers in Oakland just months ago, and they also conveniently ignore that releasing 20,000 prisoners will disproportionally impact some of California's most vulnerable communities.

The ignorance of this comment is stunning. As Berkeley law professor and parole policy expert Jonathan Simon illustrated a couple months back, the Lovelle Mixon shooting was an example of what's WRONG with our parole system, not what's right. The incident has been used to raise the fear of crime and the dangers of releasing felons. What is not mentioned is that Mixon's violation of ridiculously stringent parole policy, which meant a sure trip back to jail, arguably CAUSED the shooting, as Mixon vowed not to return to prison and chose to shoot his way out of the problem. That's aberrant behavior, and using it to make any larger point about how frightening it is to release prisoners is Willie Horton-izing to the extreme. But it's a function of the extreme pressure of three years of supervisory parole on everyone who walks out of California prisons.

But unlike many other states that also eliminated early release through parole, California continued to require parole supervision in the community for all released prisoners. And that, I think, is a big part of what's broken. People are sent to California prisons for a determinate amount of time, based upon the seriousness of their crime. After they've served this sentence, it's neither justified nor effective to add up to three years of parole supervision for each and every ex-offender - without making any distinction between those whose criminal record or psychological profile suggest they'll commit a crime that will harm the community, and those who pose no such threat.

So the parole system has little real capacity to monitor and protect us from those who pose a danger of committing serious new crimes. And it exposes ex-offenders - many of whom pose little threat of committing such crimes - to the likelihood of being sent back to prison. (This is a really big problem, when you think of our prison overcrowding and our budget crisis).

Parolees are required to consent to searches of their person and property. If officers stop a car in Oakland, and somebody in that car is on parole, police have a lot of leeway to disregard normal constitutional limits on search-and-seizure authority. They can use any evidence collected in this situation against the parolee - and also, of course, can attempt to use the coercion of plea bargaining to get evidence against other people in the car.

In recent years, as many as 70 percent of those on parole in California have been sent back to prison - only a small percentage of whom have committed a new crime (14 percent in 2007); more than half were sent back for what are called "technical" parole violations. These parolees are "returned to custody" by the Board of Prison Terms, very often for conduct that would not earn them (or other California citizens) prison time in a court. Turning in a positive drug test is an example; even missing an appointment with parole staff can result in re-imprisonment.

Kelly asked his fans of the Protect California Communities Facebook cause to comment on my post about him, which has yielded a whopping 0 negative comments. Maybe that's because his Cause has attracted an almost-as-whopping 225 members, clearly a social networking firestorm rippling through the state. Actually that number wouldn't be so bad if it didn't come from a Cause promoted by THE FORMER EXECUTIVE FROM FACEBOOK. The $175 raised on Facebook shows massive Web 2.0 acumen as well.

It's also hilarious that Kelly thinks stopping release of nonviolent offenders harms public safety, not eliminating drug treatment and vocational training in prisons, or forcibly taking local government monies so they have to slash their public safety budgets, but that's for another time.

Grassroots Progressive Action on Repairing California

It's taken the proposed destruction of practically the entire social safety net in California for progressives both inside and outside the political system to fight back. I'm actually more heartened by the work done outside it. I expect Lenny Goldberg to come up with a great alternative budget calling for tax fairness, and end to corporate welfare and a government for all the people instead of the rich. I expect Jean Ross to do the same, as well as AFSCME. They're all good proposals, but this is what they are paid to do. What I don't expect, and what I haven't seen, is a citizen's movement to rival the institutional and advocacy machinery. The Fix the California Budget Facebook page is really one of the first such grassroots pushes I've seen in recent memory.

Californians deserve real solutions to the budget deficit. Responding to our economic crisis with an all-cuts budget will only make the state's problems worse. Deep cuts to vital programs undermine our economic recovery and President Obama’s investment in economic stimulus, disproportionately harm the most vulnerable Californians, and go against our core values.

More than 70 percent of voters sat out the May 19 special election because it is the Governor and Legislature’s job to fix the budget. Polls show the defeat of the initiatives was neither an endorsement of an all-cuts approach nor a rejection of raising revenues.

Under Governor Schwarzenegger, we have suffered $23 billion in spending cuts in the current budget year alone. Additional drastic cuts will irrevocably change the state we love. Californians support and deserve a state that provides for the common good and the needs of our residents, and we need to pursue realistic revenue solutions that will protect our shared priorities. Cuts are not the only option!

Our state needs courageous leadership. We will support those who stand against an all-cuts budget, speak out for fair ways of raising revenue, and work to deliver a budget that invests in our future and protects all the people of our state. True leaders get their strength from the people they represent. We pledge to be that strength, and mobilize to support a sensible budget solution.

The specific action items are to call your lawmaker and provide that counter-weight to the internal pressure to support the all-cuts approach. They reference the majority-vote fee increase as a legitimate option that must be put before the Governor in place of the worst cuts. County Democratic Chairs and local activists are actually driving the pressure from below, rather than having solutions imposed upon them.

This represents an opportunity. It doesn't mean we win this fight - we're going to lose more than we win at first. And in a way, this is the corporate "reform" community's worst nightmare - the Bay Area Council and California Forward would rather drive the reform process themselves and keep it within their own particular boundaries. But we can build a movement of a newly-roused core group of activists committed to setting California on the right path by restoring democracy, eliminating the conservative veto and reforming the broken system. This is a first step.

25 Things About The California Budget

Done for the Facebook reference: I may not get to 25.

1. One bit of schadenfreude in this is that Doug McIntyre of KABC and the comment section of the OC Register are flipping out over the heretics who broke with dogma and voted for tax increases. McIntyre was particularly incensed about a Sacramento Bee editorial lauding Dave Cogdill as a "hero." He's not a hero, he's an extortionist, but McIntyre was calling him a guy who "took money out of your pocket to give to someone else." Typical Yacht Party jihadism.

2. It's very clear to me that this got wrapped up today before the Yacht Party's meeting in Sacramento, just blocks from the Capitol, so the spectacle of the crazies on the lawn demanding that old people eat cat food and public schools use the weeds out back for lunches be averted.

3. Joan Buchanan voted for the budget and then voluntarily cut her pay 10% in the name of shared sacrifice. It's a stunt, but it will probably go down well back home.

4. One loser in all of this is Zed Hollingsworth. He got nothing in this budget for his newly-minted Minority Leadership, including no re-negotiation, and the next major talks may not be until summer 2010, at which point a repeal of 2/3 may be a fait accompli. Meanwhile he's already embarrassed himself by scheduling a $1,000-a-person fundraiser with fat cat lobbyists just HOURS after being made leader, one that generated such bad press he had to cancel it.

5. The big winner in all of this, perhaps the only one? Twitter. In a cavernous Capitol with a dearth of political reporting, the microblogging site was practically the only way to get quality information in real time. It cannot replace in-depth analysis for a mass audience, but it was great for opinion leaders.

6. Though I've knocked him in the past, kudos to John Burton for recognizing the real problem and seeking to boldly fix it. From an e-mail:

If the last 48 hours has proven nothing else, we can no longer allow Republicans to hold the people of California hostage and therefore dictate to the Democratic majority the terms under which the budget is passed.

California should join the 47 other states who don't require a supermajority to pass the budget.

If I am elected as the next Chair of the California Democratic Party, I will make majority vote budget a top priority.

7. The federal stimulus is really helping out to reduce the pain in this budget. It does appear that as much as $10 billion dollars will flow to California in this fiscal year, which would "trigger" some jiggering to the cuts (which would be reduced by $950 million) and the tax hikes (reduced by $1.8 billion). It's an open question whether or not all of them can be spent right away because of the cash crunch, but we'll have to see how the markets react.

8. This is a baseline overview of the deal. The cuts are going to be really, really bad: 10% across the board for education, huge cuts for public transit operations, health care, etc. The new revenues basically fill in the loss of revenue from massive unemployment. Essentially, this is the same level of spending as a decade ago, adjusted for inflation and COLA, despite greater need and higher population. Not pretty.

9. Capitol Weekly reports that the cuts could hit Republican-leaning areas harder:

But data from the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) suggests that cuts under the budget plan approved Thursda morning could likely hit many Republican areas hardest—while the tax burden is already falling more heavily on Democratic leaning counties.

According to the data distributed by Assembly Budget Committee chairwoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, the majority of the counties using the most in state services are generally represented by Republicans. When this data on 2007-2008 state spending is compared to registration data from the Secretary of State’s office, it shows that seven out of the top 10 counties receiving state expenditures, measured per capita, have Republican registration majorities. Of the top 10 counties that contributed the most per capita tax dollars in 2006, eight have Democratic registration majorities.

“I hate to put this in partisan terms, but it’s the wealthier counties who are paying that are represented by Democrats,” Evans said. “Everybody needs to take a step back and look at what the data actually says.”

Food for thought.

10. Wrapping the week up into a nice little bow, on the day the deal was secured, they found Lance Armstrong's bike.

11. There's a big TV/film production credit in here. While as a member of the industry I'm mindful of runaway production, I reject the "race to the bottom" that constant credits to get crews to shoot in California presume. It's corporate welfare, essentially.

12. The "single sales factor apportionment," which is the massive business tax cut, doesn't kick in until FY2011, predictably and conveniently after Gov. Schwarzenegger is out of office and it will be someone else's problem to make up the revenue! It's almost like somebody planned it that way!

13. Of the items on the May ballot, only privatizing the lottery would really kill this whole thing and send everybody back to the bargaining table. That would be $5 billion in lost projected revenue for this fiscal year. But it's a NET LOSS OVER TIME, which is what makes the provision so completely absurd. Also, I'm not convinced anyone wants to buy our lottery, as revenue has shriveled in the past year.

14. Arnold still has $600 million in line-item vetoes to make to bring this into balance. Hands up if you think they will impact the poor, the elderly, the blind, and others with almost no voice in Sacramento!

15. Karen Bass is vowing "additional Legislative actions before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1." So get ready for more fun!

There is no 16-25.

Facebook Appears To Really Want To Be Evil

So here's the umpteenth case of Facebook trying to violate the privacy of their customers, getting called on it, and then backpedaling. Amazingly, their Chief PRIVACY Officer, surely in on all these deals, wants to run for Attorney General of California. Yeah, good luck with that.

The New York Times has a good profile of the whole sordid story, as well as a hat tip to The Consumerist, the blog that broke the story.

Looking forward to two years from now, when Facebook is as much of a ghost town as Friendster.

More News On California Delegate Counts

The best thing in the world about CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen is that the best way to reach her is through her Facebook page. So she got back to me pretty quickly when I asked about this delegate situation. I was wrong about a couple things. The vote has not been certified, although I was led to believe that the counting had to stop within 30 days of the voting, which would have been March 4. In fact, that may be true; but the county registrars have a few days left to report their results. Also, it's up to the state Democratic Party to award the delegates, but that's based on the certified vote count in the respective districts. The upshot is that the counties have to report by March 11, and Secretary of State Bowen will certify the vote by March 15. Then the CDP will award delegates based on that.

None of this should obscure the fact that, based on the current numbers, the vote count is 203-167. And the zombie lie that it's different has spread to the pages of the Washington Post:

To be sure, Team Obama's small-state strategy may have been the candidate's only option against a far-better-known opponent, and it has worked. In the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests that Obama's campaign staff had hoped to merely survive, Obama and Clinton just about broke even. He won more delegates in Kansas and Idaho than she won in New Jersey. Her big win in California -- with its net gain of 41 delegates -- was negated by his wins in Georgia and Nebraska.

Except the net gain is currently 36 delegates, but what the hell do I know, I'm not some big-city editor.

Right-Wing Facebook

Hilarious.

Burma and the Internet

How cool is it that the Secretary of State of California invited me to a worldwide protest about a country halfway around the world, and she did it on Facebook?

RED SHIRT FOR BURMA

IN SUPPORT OF OUR BRAVE FRIENDS IN BURMA: MAY ALL PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD WEAR A RED SHIRT ON FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 28.

It's also telling that one of the first things the ruling junta did to combat the protestors was cut Internet access. In years past invading armies would bomb the radio tower.

Security forces clamped down on protests in Myanmar's two biggest cities Friday, firing warning shots and using baton charges in the third day of a crackdown that has left at least 13 people dead.

The military regime also appeared to have cut the main Internet link to block images and reports of the violence from the isolated nation, which have galvanised world opinion against the ruling generals.

About 10,000 people surged onto the streets of the main city of Yangon, playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as they repeatedly confronted police and soldiers before scattering and regrouping once more.

They are brave as hell. I'm wearing my red, are you?