CA-46: LCV Endorses Debbie Cook

This is from the press release:

Los Angeles, CA—The California League of Conservation Voters (CLCV) announced today their endorsement of Debbie Cook, the Democratic nominee for Congress in the 46th Congressional District.

“We’re proud to support Debbie Cook because she has shown time and again her commitment to protecting our coastal resources,” said CLCV’s Southern California Director David Allgood. “Mayor Cook has a long record of achievement on environmental, public health and other issues important to the people of the 46th District.”

In 1989, rather than see her city’s parks and beaches destroyed by private development, Cook led a group that collected 18,000 signatures for a successful ballot measure to require voter approval in order to build in Huntington Beach public parks and beaches.

After attending law school, she joined the Bolsa Chica Land Trust legal team, winning a case that protects sensitive coastal habitat throughout California to this day. As Mayor of Huntington Beach, she led the fight to stop the Orange County Sanitation District from dumping partially-treated sewage into the ocean, resulting in cleaner water for our beach’s recreational users.

Cook’s opponent, longtime Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, ignores science to deny that climate change is man-made, favors drilling off the coast of California and has spoken against the landmark Clean Trucks Program at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles – which will slash toxic truck emissions by 50%, significantly reducing the port-related diesel pollution that leads to 2,400 premature deaths per year, according to the California Air Resources Board. He currently has a low 10 percent rating on the League of Conservation Voters’ congressional scorecard.

It's not surprising that Cook would get the endorsement; what's crucial here is whether or not she becomes a cause for the environmental movement the way that Jerry McNerney became a cause in 2006. Rohrabacher's rejection of port cleanup, which just passed the California State Senate, could be a really salient issue in this district, part of which covers Long Beach and most of which is situated on the coast. Some hard-hitting ads and mailers accusing Crazy Dana of allowing kids to suffer and die from pollution seem to be in order.

Wahhhhhh!!!!

Arnold Schwarzenegger will turn this car around right now!

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday he will refuse to sign any bills that reach his desk until the Legislature sends him a budget agreement.

"At this point, nothing in this building is more important than a responsible budget to fix our broken budget system," he said at a hastily called afternoon press conference. "So until the Legislature passes a budget that I can sign, I will not sign any bills that reach my desk."

Schwarzenegger acknowledged that his decision "means some good bills will fail." But he said with a cash crisis looming, the late budget takes on even greater urgency.

He's signaling here that his little state employee wage cut gambit didn't work. It didn't produce the kind of compromise he wanted and it sent him tumbling in the polls as he attempted to cynically hold innocent bystanders hostage in an unrelated fight. So he had to cut off all bills instead. Maybe now, he thinks, the legislators will take notice.

But let's understand what he's doing here. Yesterday, as a culmination of four years of work, Alan Lowenthal's bill to clean up the ports of Oakland, LA and Long Beach passed the State Senate. Eliminating the toxic pollution at the ports would save 3,700 lives annually according to the California Air Resources Board. The bill would enact a $30 container fee on every import, using that money ($300 million annually) for investment in reducing pollution and improving freight rail. It's a milestone bill that is sorely needed to improve the air quality of these communities.

It's not an exaggeration to say that Arnold's latest stunt will actually kill thousands of people from reversible diseases.

There's a bill pending in the Senate Appropriations Committee authored by Fiona Ma (AB 2716) which would deliver guaranteed paid sick days to all California workers. This bill has the support of 73% of the public and would make the state the first in the nation to provide this to their residents. Arnold would rather stamp his feet and issue ultimatums than improve the lives of Californians and do the bidding of the overwhelming majority of the public.

On health care, while we cannot expect a comprehensive plan to come out of this legislative session, there is a deal coming together that would improve health care for those who have insurance by mandating some strict rules for the industry:

In the final weeks of the legislative session, they are negotiating measures that would limit insurer profits on individual plans, require plans to provide a minimum set of benefits and restrict insurers' ability to cancel policies retroactively [...]

Three million Californians buy health insurance on their own rather than through employers. Insurers keep premiums low -- and profits high, their critics say -- on some individual policies by limiting the services they cover. Such plans may exclude prescription drugs and maternity services, for example; others may cover only hospital visits.

Many of the policies have big deductibles and require patients to pay large portions of their expenses, costing them much more than coverage obtained at workplaces.

The game-playing by Arnold on the budget means that, in all likelihood, these rules will not go into effect, and individual consumers of health insurance (like me) will remain incredibly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the insurance industry, which has shown already a penchant to deny coverage and jack up premiums. That too will put the lives of Californians at risk.

There's a human cost to the bullshit that Terminator Boy isn't accounting for. His head is in the clouds, and he thinks he can bully the legislature liked he bullied people in scripted movies for decades. But the recklessness will cost money, pain, suffering, and even lives.

The Green-Blue Alliance

This did not get the attention it deserved.

The Los Angeles Harbor Commission on Thursday unanimously approved a clean air plan requiring shipping companies to buy and maintain a modernized fleet of big rigs and employ thousands of independent truckers who currently operate under contract.

A spokesman for the American Trucking Assn. derided the plan as a "scheme to unionize port drivers" and vowed that his group would sue the port. Spokesman Curtis Whalen said the plan violates court rulings allowing the trucking industry unrestricted access to markets nationwide.

Nonetheless, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told about 300 truckers at Banning's Landing Community Center in Wilmington, "It's a great day. In a few months from now, your children will begin to breathe easier, and so will your grandchildren.

"Today, Los Angeles has said enough is enough," he added. "When 1,200 lives are cut short every year by a barrage of diseases, ranging from emphysema to cancer of the mouth, we have a moral obligation to act fast."

It's a big deal that the labor-enviro alliance, under the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports worked and was able to push this through. There's more at Matt Yglesias' blog.

Labor has been at the forefront of practically every progressive advance in the past century. The fact that they're jumping aboard the environmental issues, which you would have thought impossible, is extremely meaningful.