Why is this so?  Why are California’s schools and institutions of higher learning are always robbed of funding from Sacramento while prisons and prison guards are lavishly funded and well paid for?  Why does this state focuses on building for more prisons (in anticipation of all the high school dropouts that will likely find themselves in prison) and not education, which many studies have shown that a person who has received an education is far less likely to get into trouble with the law and end up incarcerated?  How could such twisted, dysfunctional, and broken policies be enacted by Sacramento?

The answer first of all is that corrections industry is well represent and well funded by powerful interest groups who often get their way with Sacramento?  The most influential in California is the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA).  They have always gotten their way in Sacramento, and it should not be surprising that they will lobby hard against any meaningful prison reform or any legislation that cuts funding for the construction of new prisons or the release of non-violent offenders,  as they would lose their jobs (here’s an article about prison reform that is found at this Stanford School of Law website).

On the other hand, there is no real influential interest group, other than the California Teachers Association, that is as powerful  and influential as the CCPOA in Sacramento.  Furthermore, there is no interest group that I’m aware that represents college students and their rights in California.  And of course, students in the K-12 system cannot be represented since they are not of voting age.  This means, then, that, other than a protest from the CTA, lawmakers can get away with slashing funding for schools and hike tuition fees at colleges because they can get away with it.  There won’t be a student interest group lobbying hard and expensively against any proposed slashing of education funding.  These lawmakers know that there won’t be a student uprising that can unseat them come election time because no such organized student movement exists as of right now.   But the same cannot be said of the CCPOA.

So how can Sacramento can screw its head in correctly and get its priorites and policies right?  The only way I see this happening is first of all, get party ideologues at both ends of the political spectrum out of Sacramento, which is caused by the way our state redistricts.  Explaining how this works is an essay in itself, so I won’t bore you with the details for now, but it is safe to say that this redistricting is done in a way where each district is comprised of hard line constituents that do not want their legislators to compromise or moderate their positions.  How this is relevant to prison reform policy is that those legislators that want to slash funding for prisons and instead, give them to education or something that is otherwise useful will soon be accused by their politically extremist constituents as being “soft” on crime, and vote them out of office.

Secondly, college students need to organize, period. They need someone to show some leadership and start forming a central, united organization that can credibly stand up to powerful, inimical interest groups like the CCPOA.  Up until recently, college students and of those of similar age have been apathetic to politics or how their representatives governed (another reason why lawmakers do not care about college students; they don’t bother voting), but with the younger generation playing a role in voting in President Obama last November, and the unfortunate passage of Prop 8, I think there definitely is a change in the views of this voting group and willingness to be more politically active.  Now someone has got take advantage of this and strike while the iron is hot, as the old adage says.

But if college students return to their old politically apathetic ways and views by not organizing, then lawmakers will continue to ignore them, not take them seriously, and continue to screw them by jacking up their fees.

Well, here’s the video, so judge for yourself if these new Hoovervilles portend to more ominous economic times ahead of us:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/29603738#29603738

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moreno asks that, since that are no cases where the court has heard a revision argument regarding personal rights. shannon minter says no but that prop 8 does anyway because it takes away the court’s judicial right

george asked if an initiative extending the right to marriage that passed would just be an amendment but that an intitiative that took away the right be called a revision.

kennard seems to be disagreeing, saying that the court ruled that death penalty was cruel and unusual and punishment but the voters reversed them with an intiative and the court agreed and said that this was not a revision, and since the right not to deprive of life is a fundamental right, that how’s that different from this.   Marshall responds that that case is different since the death penalty is applied equally towards all criminals regardless of race or gender.  (people v. friarson).

justice chin asked if the state should get out of the marriage business altogether, and michael maroko said that if the state dips its fingers into the marriage business, then it should do so equally and not selectively

werdergar asks of Starr if the people of california can pass a similar law in question of Romer v. Evans since the will of the people is paramount, and starr appears to be saying yes because, even if the laws that the people of california pass are bad or unwise, the people are sovereign, and that the intiative process should not be hindered.

starr argues that prop 8 doesn’t take away rights but only reaffirms the definition of marriage.  he also says that rights do not affect the governmental structure, which is the definition of a constitutional revision and goes to the claim that Prop 8 does that.

chin now asks of starr if getting out of the marriage business is a good idea and whether it is the province of this court, and starr says yes and no.  starr argues that prop 8 is reaffirming the traditional definition that other countries have adopted, and that Court can disagree with this but that this is not the province and that it would exceed the judicial function for it to recommend to the legislature what type of policy it should adopt with regard to marriage, that the legislature controls marriage.

Starr also argues that those same sex couples currently married should have their marriages invalidated.

george now asks if an intiative was passed that raised the legal age for marriage from 18 to 21, would those now underage who are married have their marriages invalidated, and starr says that under his legal theory, yes.  kennard now asks if it is reasonable to assume that california voters who voted in favor of prop 8 understood at that time that they were voting to also invalidate those marriages already legal, and george also asks of starr if that was the prop’s intent, then why wasn’t clear and unambiguous language included in the prop explicitly stating that current same-sex marriages would be invalidated, or was it because the proponents knew that would lose support for their prop?  starr says and keeps making the argument that prop 8 only reaffirms prop 22 and the traditional definition of marriage as has been understood by society.

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So those are the oral arguments that went down at the California Supreme Court.  It has been noted by several legal analyses and news outlets that that Court seems unlikely to overturn Prop 8 based on some of the questions that were asked by the justices.  For example, Chief Justice George noted that California’s constitution is seems too easy to amend and that perhaps that is the system we have to live with.  He also asked one of the lawyers arguing for the nullification of Prop 8 that if gays were to win an initiative that granted them the right to marry, but then an initiative that to strip them of the right were also passed, then would the first initiative be a simple constitutional amendment but the second a revision?  In other words, would this be a “one-way street?” he asked.

Also, Justice Kennard noted that the lawyers against Prop 8 want the Court should disregard “wily-nily” the will of the voters and that they were overlooking the broad powers of the people to amend the California Constitution.

But most of the justices seem likely to at least uphold the same sex marriages that were performed before the passage of Prop 8, although Kenneth Starr seemed disagree vehemently.  Chief Justice George was not persuaded by Starr’s argument that those who voted for Prop 8′s understood it to mean that it would apply retroactively and thus, nullify those same sex marriages already performed.  He noted that Prop 8 seemed deliberately vague so as to win voters, knowing that if it was applied retroactively, then the proposition would lose support.  And even Justice Baxter, the most conservative justice on the Court, asked Starr if the Court really could nullify those existing marriages, which was a right that it gave them last year.

So I do agree with the various news outlets that say that Court is likely to uphold Prop 8 and acknowledge the “broad powers” of the people to amend the constitutiona and overrule the Court.  The Court already made an unpopular (but correct) decision last year.  They are highly unlikely to make an even more unpopular court and thus, stoke the a recall campaign fire to have them removed fromthe bench.

I guess the only thing I can say is that I hoped that those gays and lesbians that chose to sit out the last election (as evidenced by the poor voter turnout in San Francisco) have now learned their lesson: that they should not take their rights for granted and be ready to fight like hell the minute some religious nutcase  group believes that their rights should be put up for a vote.

The Court has only ten times heard cases that claimed that an initiative passed by voters were in fact illegal constitutional revisions, and only three times did it rule that indeed, those initiatives were illegal constitutional revisions.

I would not want to be the Supreme Court justices right now, because they are caught between a rock and a hard place.  If they do not overturn Prop 8, then the Supreme Court will only undermine their ruling and credibility, since they stated that sexual orientation was a suspect class that is protected by due process under the California Constitution but would now be agreeing that other citizens of this state can deprive them of their rights.  If they do overturn Prop 8, then they will anger the fundie Christians and other nutcases that will believe that “activist judges”, no matter that all but one of these “activist judges” were nominated by Republican governors, should be recalled, thus, threatening judicial impartiality free from intimidation and threats.

It is ultimately hard to say how the Court will rule.  Some legal experts say that they do not think that the Court will overturn Prop 8 as there are not enough votes to support such a drastic change in law, but they do believe that they will at the very least, uphold the existing same-sex marriages since Prop 8 makes no mention of those gay couples currently married.  Let us just pray that Court will recognize that the “will of the people” that Prop 8 supporters have touted has its limits and do not include infringing on the rights of others.  Let us hope that the Court remains consistent in its rulings and not reverse itself by upholding Prop 8.  Either way, this promises to be one of the most important and landmark decisions that the Court will hand down a few months from now, with the eyes of the nation watching it.

FYI, the oral arguments will be broadcast live from 9 am to noon tomorrow, on the California Channel.  You can also watch the live stream at their website.

Uh, no, most Americans support embryonic stem cell research you moron, as this Gallup poll back in 2006 demonstrates.  So please shut up and do not attempt to speak for me or millions of other Americans Mr. Boehner, as they are with the times and favor science and potential medical breakthroughs over mere backward religious ideology unlike you.

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President Obama has done much to reverse the damage done by the last 8 years of Dubya.  His recent act was to reverse a Bush rule that weakened the Endangered Species Act by allowing government agencies to decided for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm animals and plants listed under the Act, instead of the mandatory,  independent review of government scientists.

He has done much to de-Bushize the federal government, especially the Interior Department.  Here’s a list of acts of de-Bushization carried out by the president:

• Ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay
• End the use of torture during interrogation, including waterboarding
• New economic policy that levels playing field between the lower and middle class and the rich (actually, this is de-Reaganization, but same idea as Bush)
• A multilateral, rational, diplomatic approach with regard to our adversaries and removing theology and ideology from diplomacy (like foolishly saying things like the “the axis of evil,” or believing that god told you to invade a country)
• Killed plans to drill oil off the west and east coasts of America
• Cancellation of oil drilling leases in 130,000 acres of land in Utah
• Ordered the EPA to allow individual states to set their own environmental laws and standards, which means California will be allowed to enact the toughest auto emissions law in the country, as Dubya preferred a national, federal policy that would have weakened more stringent state laws
• Lifted funding for family planning clinics that include education about abortion and contraceptives
• Will lift federal funding restrictions for embryonic stem cell research

Okay, that is off the top of my head.  However, the only thing I notice that seems very similar to Bush is Obama’s foreign policy to Israel.  So far, it does not seem a whole lot different that Dubya’s, which is stating the US’s “unshakeable” support for Israel and visiting Fatah-controlled West Bank Palestine but not Gaza.  There is no indication that Obama will reconisder isolation of Gaza, as it is controlled by Hamas.  After all, a more realistic and pragmatic approach would be to accept that Hamas is in Gaza and there to stay (oh, and not to mention, were democratically elected into office by the people of Gaza; hey, if the US advocates democracy around the world, then it has got to accept democratically elected governments that are not so cozy to the US or its interests; it cannot advocate a hypocritical double-standard).

…wow, I just don’t what to say.  Talk about fearmongering, as well as typical Republican stupidity and ignorance, to the utter extreme.  Apparently, Huckabee is fearful that Obama is going to create a mass system of gulags and make morons like him disappear for good.  Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing…

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As you all are aware now, President Obama has proposed a very large and ambitious budget that suggest that he is attempting a paradigmatic shift in economic philosophy that has defined US economic policy since the times of Reagan. His plan will reform healthcare by ending tax cuts for the rich and hike their taxes instead.  It will also end corporate tax breaks, especially for fat oil companies.  His plan is supposed to redistribute this country’s income and wealth, which right now, 22% of it is owned by just 1% of the population.  Even the president’s proposed budget bluntly states:

“The past eight years have discredited once and for all the philosophy of trickle-down economics — that tax breaks, income gains and wealth creation among the wealthy eventually will work their way down to the middle class.”

Not surprisingly, many GOP members of Congress are not exactly thrilled about this budget, especially John Boner, er, Boehner, House GOP minority leader, who said that the “era of big government is back.”  Also, Brian Reidl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, believes that Obama’s plan will unfairly target the top 20% of taxpayers.  He said that they now pay 80% of all taxes collected by the government, and 40% of households pay no income tax, while Obama’s plan will further shift the tax burden on the top 20% and make them pay 90% of taxes while the number of households who will no longer owe taxes will jump to 50%.  Reidl then adds:

“President Obama is offering a free lunch to a lot of Americans on the backs of 5% of the taxpayers. That can be called class warfare,…”I think a lot of Americans believe that even the rich should not face tax rates that add up to about 50%.”

Okay, now it’s time for me to fire away.  To Reidl, I don’t think those Americans who will get a “free lunch” are bunch of lazy asses who do not work just as hard, or even harder than those 5% of taxpayers.  Do Reidl mean to tell us that a fat cat like John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch (and who paid bonuses between $3 and $4 billion to his executive pals one month ahead of schedule and before being bought by B of A) workers far harder and thus, deserve a bigger tax cut than an average schmoe who has to work two jobs just to feed his family and keep a roof over his head (but still cannot afford health insurance)?  And Reidl claims this is unfair and can be called a “class warfare”?  Is he serious???  Do those top 5% really need a such a huge tax cut?  And even if their tax burden was shifted to 90%, does Reidl really believe that these super-rich men and women will no longer be able to live in luxury?  Will Donald Trump suddenly find himself unable to afford health insurance or a 6-month vacation to Europe if he has to pay a 50% or even 70% tax rate?

I hate to break it Reidl, but class warfare was started by President Ronald Reagan and his fellow GOP back in the 80′s, when he famously said that “government is the problem” and started his “Reaganomics” policy of cutting spending for federal social programs and tax cuts for the rich.  This flawed economic policy believed that the market, specifically John Thain and other fat cat CEO’s know best for all classes of society, that the market can do no wrong, and that prospering wealthy and upper-class will pass on their wealth to the middle and lower class of society, the famous trickle-down economic idea.  In other words, class warfare- against the lower and middle class.  Yet, Reidl conveniently ignores this glaring fact and hypocritically claim that Obama’s plan is class warfare against the wealthy, when in fact Obama is attempting to level the playing field that has been so heavily tilted and skewed in favor of the rich and wealthy for the last 30 years.  And looked how well these economic policies have served us, look at where they have gotten us now.

It is this type of thinking and philosophy held as sacrosanct by the Republicans in general and people like Reidl that have alienated and disillusioned much of America.  It is precisely this alienation and disillusionment that got President Obama elected and is now enjoying high levels of popularity.  He is taking advantage of this to make some substantial and paradigmatic reforms of US domestic and economic policy.  People like Reidl and the GOP risk looking even more irrelevant and out of touch with reality if they continue parroting Reaganomic principles, which have never worked, and if they do not try to work with President Obama.

The War We Gave Mexico by Tim Rutten

A No Win on the War on Drugs by LA Times Editorial Board

Taking on the Drug Cartels by LA Times Editorial Board

I’ll scour the internet for other newspaper editorials that are critical of our drug policy and demanding change.

UPDATE:  Here are some more op-ed pieces from respected newspapers:

The War on Drugs Is a Failure by former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico

Senator Boxer of California was pleased, saying, “It’s good news for people in California who are so ill that they have gotten a doctor’s note in compliance with the law.”  But the other senator from California, Senator Feinstein, is not so sure she approves, saying that she has to “think about that a little bit.”

Now, if President Obama could completely overhaul our drug policy that truly addresses our drug addiction, which is just fueling the conflict and political instability in Mexico, now we would be in business!

Oh, and of course, let us legalize marijuana in California.  Support AB 390!

• $634 billion for healthcare and insuring every American, $318 billion of which would come from tax hikes on the rich, and the rest from cuts to Medicare, specifically, money in Medicare that goes to private insurance companies and wealthy recipients of Medicare.
• Fat cat bail outs for Wall Street totaling $750 billion, not including the other bail out money already sent to them late last year
• $663.7 billion for the Pentagon to cover the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, pay raises for our troops (which they definitely deserve), and the research and development of counter-insurgency weapons that really are useful and needed in 21st century warfare.
• A cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by companies and those companies who exceed these mandated limits allowed to buy permits to continue polluting, so to speak.  These permits would be auctioned off to the highest bidder and are expected to generate $15 billion that would be spent in 2012 into research and development of renewable energy.

So these are some of the numbers of President Obama’s proposed budget.  The one part of his budget that irks me is the fat cat bail out plan of $750 billion for Wall Street.  This I am not too thrilled about.  We are essentially rewarding them these big banks for the bad and reckless behavior (Btw, why do they continue their practice of charging default rates to credit card owners the minute they are late by just one day on their bills, even when up until now, they had been on time paying their bills?  This is a completely fucked up, and is frankly hypocritical of banks to clamor to Washington for money while charging default, ie, rip-off rates to otherwise responsible customers.  This is blatantly unfair, and if banks want a bail out, then Congress should demand that they cut a break to their responsible customers).

I also want to say a word on proposed defense spending, which would be $633.7 billion for next year.  Let us hope that the Pentagon terminates the construction and research of weapons that are more appropriate for the Cold War than the 21st century.  One of these weapons is the F-22 raptor, a stealth fighter aircraft that costs about $140 million each.  Currently, the Pentagon has bought 183 of these aircraft.  Do the math: 183x$140 million=  $25.62 billion.

Let’s face it: we are not in the Cold War, and future adversaries, China and Russia, are decades away from fielding a military force that is potent and formidable enough to challenge the US military.  Russia, though it still does have some potent weapons, does not have enough of them, and lacks the trained and motivated personnel to man them right now, which is why Russia is more interested in selling its technology to China or Iran that actually arming itself.  And China has plenty of manpower, but not the military hardware and technology modern enough to equip its troops.  And China is many years away from getting a blue-water navy, let alone a single aircraft carrier.  Russia’s blue-water naval capabilities is a mere shadow of its former Soviet self.  And neither is close to developing, let alone building, stealth aircraft and ships.

So it really makes no sense to continue building an aircraft that so far, has not seen action in Afghanistan or Iraq (because they are overkill for the job) and are not expected to truly be useful for another generation.  $25 billion is a lot of money and should be spent on other things, like more pay for the troops and veterans’ benefits, or public infrastructure projects like subways or high speed trains instead.

As for healthcare, well, I’ve already talked about that in my previous post.  And energy, well, it’s a start.

Well, does anyone remember me saying that no one in the country envy’s the president’s job right now?  Well, this is another one of those reasons, because this is a tall and very ambitious order that the president is making.  He already warned those Americans whose gross income is $250,000 or more a year that their taxes are going up under his watch to help finance the rebuilding of America and reforming of health care in this country, and you can bet he will raise the eyebrows of those even in the Democrat party.

I do support President Obama and his plan to rebuild our economy.  However, I am left wondering just how much more money does the US Treasury have left, given all the sweetheart bail outs it made for Wall Street and Detroit and the recently passed $787 billion economic stimulus plan.  We have a current budget deficit of $10 trillion right now, as this national debt clock shows, and I do wonder just how much more money can the our government afford to spend and be legally on the hook for.

All I can say to President Obama, you better pray you are right and that you know what you are doing, because 300 million Americans, and the rest of the world, are counting on you.  Because if you are wrong…

California Assembly Member Tom Ammiano introduced a bill today that allow persons 21 and over to buy and use pot while applying an excise tax of $50 per ounce, or a dollar a joint. It has the support of an Orange County judge and former sheriff of SF. You can read more about this story here:

My take? Yes, let’s legalize pot use. The arguments against the legalization of marijuana do not hold water and are just plain absurd, given that more dangerous substances, like alcohol and nicotine, are legal. Plus, think of the revenue that can be made by taxing the legal use of pot. I believe that Californians, if given the choice, will choose to purchase pot legally and knowing the money is going to the state instead of drug cartels.

Furthermore, our prisons are already overcrowded, some of those incarcerated for possession of pot or other drugs.  Unless they are truly violent and a danger to society, then let’s release them and stop wasting the state’s law enforcement’s resources and money sending these these people to prison.  This way, the state saves money and there’s now more room in prison for those truly violent people that need to be locked up.

And let’s face it, people are going to continue to buy pot, regardless if it’s legal or not. If you cannot beat them, then you might as well join them, as the old saying goes.

And if you are in California and agree with me, then call up or write to your state representatives and tell them you support AB 390! And don’t forget to send a message to our moronic governor, since last I heard, he would veto this bill.

And if you want to read any research related to this issue, a good study was done by Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University.

Tonight’s speech by President Obama was eloquent and addressed many issues that Americans have been fretting about: the state of our economy.  In a speech that seemed like a state of the union speech, President Obama reemphasized that the recently passed economic stimulus bill will create or save millions of jobs and many industries in the US.

But he also spread the burden of responsibility equally on all of us for credit crisis that ultimately caused our severe economic recession.  He faulted those Americans that irresponsibly bought homes on credit that they knew they could not afford.  He also blamed the predatory lenders that preyed on these people’s recklessness and gullibility.  He blamed the financial banks that bended or outright broke SEC rules in the name of greed.  He also seemed to single-out the Bush Administration and the GOP for squandering the last decade’s budget surplus by giving it to the rich in the form of tax cuts.

All these factors plunged us into a recession, and President Obama declared that the “day of reckoning” as arrived and the days of financial irresponsibility were over.  He also made it explicitly clear that banks who get bail-out money will not get a free pass but will be held accountable for their behavior.

However, what interested me most about the speech are the three issues he talked were most important for our economy: energy, healthcare, and education.  President Obama emphasized the need for clean and renewable energy, and stated his intention to double our supply of renewable energy in the next three years.  He wants $15 billion a year for the development of technologies like wind power, solar power, and clean coal.

For healthcare, he said that the rising costs of healthcare were creating a “bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds,” and that health care reform “cannot wait, it must not wait and it will not wait another year.”

Lastly, President Obama criticized our broken education system, by noting our high rate of high school dropouts vis-a-vis to other developed countries around the world, and that our economy risked tanking further if the people in it don’t even a high school diploma, let alone a college degree.  He said that he will be asking for more money and resources for teachers and students to succeed.

I believe President Obama did a fine job of addressing the concerns many Americans have right now.  We definitely need to find a way to provide universal health care for all Americans while shutting up those right-wing idiots that immediately parrot “Socialism!  Socialism!” the minute this is uttered.  He also attacked the fat cats on Wall Street by promising that they will be held accountable for their actions and behavior if they get money courtesy of us, the taxpayers, since we are fed up that they get bailed out while we get screwed.  He addressed the need for education reform, that teachers and students ought to get a bail out too.  And that new and innovative renewable energy technologies should be America’s priority, not “Drill baby drill!” that Republicans always and mindless parrot.

And Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s rebuttal was…um…how do I say this nicely…bad?  Jindal, a rising star in the GOP himself in the same fashion that President Obama was to his party, just parroted GOP party ideology, which was big government is bad, tax cuts that would make President Bush proud, and “Drill baby drill!” with regard to America’s energy policy.  Therefore, President Obama’s economic stimulus plan, and future plans to rebuild America’s economy, is bad and just fraught with pork-barrel spending.

Well, I don’t think anyone envy Jindal’s job of attempting to first, rebut a very popular president, and second, tout GOP principles that most Americans have become disillusioned with.  It’s still a clever move by the GOP to have a Indian-American deliver the rebuttal instead of a white guy that would reinforce the stereotype of the GOP being the party of white, rich, elitist fat guys that favor big businesses over the average American.  Unfortunately, their rebuttal lacks credibility and appears out of touch with reality and with most Americans’ predicaments.

Come to think of it, I’m not so sure anyone in America envy’s President Obama’s job right now, given the huge burdens and problems that he inherited from President Dubya.  He did not attempt to hide the ambitious nature of his plans, noting that this will be very difficult and a tall order for him to fulfill.  But at least he gives us the impression that he will confidently and competently take charge and spare no effort to navigate our economic ship out of troubled waters.

He at least gives us hope.

However, let’s be clear here.  This budget is still bad.  For example, tax hikes of $12.5 billion (income, sales, gas, and vehicle) on all Californians while we experience spending cuts of $14.5 billion to state programs like education and healthcare, are definitely not needed during this severe economic recession (maybe even depression).  It may just make California’s economy, the seventh largest in the world, go further down the toilet.  At the very least, these tax hikes are temporary.

The bill also grants $32 million for the horse racing industry to help cover maintenance costs at fairgrounds all over the state. Hmmm…I’m not sure how this could possibly help stimulate our economy, maybe if the year was 1909 instead of 2009.

But the construction industry ought to have a smile on their faces.  This budget grants $10,000 tax credit to new home buyers, which means that, if yuppies take up the state on this offer, the construction industry and those that it employs will get filthy rich. I guess I could see how this could help stimulate the economy.  But wouldn’t some of this money be better spent by just giving every homeowner in California a tax break of, say, $1,000?

Last I should point out are the people who I believe now have eggs on their faces: Governor Schwarzenegger and Dennis Hollingsworth, state senate minority leader.  Governor Schwarzenegger, who has done a complete 180* and agreed to raises tazes, has shown to have little relevance and clout.  He could not persuade the instransigent GOP in the state senate to agree to the budget, and it was Maldanado that convinced him to agree to some of his demands.  So much for being a governor.

And then there’s the new senate minority leader, Dennis Hollingsworth, who has now made his predecessor, Dave Cogdill, a martyr for California and the cause.  Cogdill was ousted because he chose to break from his party’s hard-line stance of no new taxes and vote alongside Democrats for the budget.  Hollingsworth, and 10 other GOP senators, insisted on starting from scracth again and coming up with a completely new budget that Cogdill had already reached with Democrats, which would have been a time-consuming process that may well plunged California into the financial abyss.  Yet, they were marginalized in the end, and the rest of the GOP voted in California’s interest instead of the party’s ideology.  Now Hollingsworth, and those that agree with him, will look like a selfish, extremist ideologue who is willing to hijack the state in the name of a myopic ideology.

Ultimately though, our political process is dire need of reform.  It’s a good thing the California Secretary of State has allowed for two initiatives that would reduce the 2/3 majority vote requirement of the legislature to enact the budget to go ahead and start collecting signatures.  I won’t even wait to encounter one of these petitioners on the street; I’m going to out and find them myself because I’m tired of our broken system screwing me and the rest of California!

Ah, now all of the legislators can go home and take a long awaited shower…

There is word though, that State Senator Abel Maldanado has reached a deal with Governor Schwarzenegger that would allow Maldanado to include stipulations into the budget forfeiture of pay if the budget is late and for voters to vote for any candidate in primaries regardless of their political party affiliation.  However, now there is the problem that Democrats who did back the budget now may not vote for it, and the budget cannot afford to lose any more votes now.

And also, last night, while everyone was asleep, State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth of the GOP overthrew Dave Cogdill as minority leader, and he seems to have an even hard line position that Cogdill.  Hollingsworth now wants to scrap the deal that Cogdill made with Governor Schwarzenegger and Democrats and renegotiate a completely a new budget that raises no taxes whatsoever.  He said, “The vast majority of my caucus does not want to see a budget passed with a tax increase. We don’t think it’s necessary.”

Is Hollingsworth and the morons that think like him really serious?  Do they realize just how long that would take to come up with another budget?  And state workers and those who rely on the state to take care of them are going to be dragged down the mess these state senators are causing?

This is outrageous, and just shows just how broken and dysfunctional California politics has become.

…I’m curious, anybody want to send our state lawmakers bars of soap and toothpaste so they can do a better job?

I should point out to you that there’s a pending initiative to reduce the 2/3 supermajority requirement to 55% majority, which would avoid the partisan gridlock and budget mess we are currently in.  This initiative is called the California Budget Efficiency Act.

In addition to this initiative, there is another pending initiative called the Pass Our Budget Act, which would reduce the governor’s pay by 25% and all legislators’ pay by 100% if they fail to pass the budget on time.  The proposed law would also terminate the governor’s and lawmakers current term in office and forbid them from seeking office for two years.  Now we are talking!  Whether this law is constitutional or not is a different story.

UPDATE:  Still no budget as of late evening, February 16, 2009.  Go figure.

Alright, I’ve had enough of my moronic California legislators!  Even after a marathon 30-hour session this past weekend, they still failed to pass the budget by ONE vote, as the LA Times reports.  The reason is that many GOP legislators are sticking deadfast to their “no new taxes” pledges, even if sends the state to fiscal hell and harms every Californian in the process.   No state worker will get paid and get IOU’s instead.  Important infrastructure projects, like repairing roads, or the planning and construction of our high-speed rail line, will come to a dead halt since the workers will not get paid.  And let’s not forget the teachers who teach at our schools as well.  Of course, the one group of people who will get paid in this mess are our legislators themselves.  This is the one policy where both Democrat and GOP legislators agree on: to get paid to bicker, do nothing, and squander the state’s bank account since they all opposed State Senator Abel Maldanado’s proposed bill that would cause our lawmakers to forfeit pay for every day our budget is overdue.

Speaking of this bastard, State Senator Maldanado may be the reason why the budget vote failed, according to this article at Calitics.  At the last minute, he decided not to vote in favor of the budget because he wanted to attach a stipulation to this budget bill that that voters be allowed to cross party lines in primary elections and vote for any candidate regardless of their political party affiliation, but which Democratic leaders refused to allow.  So perhaps because of his selfishness and pettiness, the budget failed to muster the 2/3 majority vote.

Seriously, someone needs to introduce a proposition for this November’s ballot that does three things:

• Repeal Prop. 13, so California schools can retap into an important source of funding again
• Reduces the 2/3 majority requirement that is needed to pass a budget to 55% majority, which would make passage of budget a lot easier and avoid this fiasco in the first place (Someone’s beat me to it already, see “2nd UPDATE”)
• For every day the budget is overdue, all lawmakers will forfeit all pay, both their salaries and per diem pay (again, see “2nd UPDATE”)
  

I think that, given the public outrage and anger at our legislators for failing to pass a budget on time, there are enough voters that would sign a petition to get this proposition on this Novemeber’s ballot.  I believe 12% of registered voters must sign this petition, which I do not think will be a huge obstacle.

Enough is enough.  It is time to punish our lawmakers for playing politics and putting their political ideological agenda first before everyone’s interest.  They should have no right to bring down all of California because of their intransigence and hard-line ideologies.

Just a few minutes ago, watching on CSPAN, the House of Representatives has just passed the stimulus bill.  The final vote was 246-183, with no GOP support and 7 Democrats opposed to the bill.

You know, even in our economic crisis, the GOP still insists on sticking to party ideology and vote against “big spending” and “socialism”.  They still believe that old solutions to new and extraordinary problems are the answer.  They just want tax cuts and no new spending.  Remember, these arguments parallel those arguments against the New Deal legislation back during the Great Depression, and all those arguments turn were wrong at best, fearmongering and even irresponsible at worst.  This bill will save and create more jobs, by investing in our infrastructure like public transit projects and repairing roads and bridges, money to schools, money to states like California that are on the brink of bankruptcy, and of course tax cuts for ordinary Americans instead of just the rich and wealthy like most Republicans would advocate for.  And I have no idea why those 7 Democrats voted against this bill, though it is interesting to note that many of those representatives are from the South (Republicans disguised as Democrats?).

The GOP seriously needs to get with the times and moderate their ideology, instead of just parroting the old big-spending-leads-to-socialism argument (Btw, why is socialism so bad? That would mean everyone has a safety net, and thus, more likely to be a productive participant in society and its local economy).  We live in different and extraordinary times that require new and novel solutions, not old ones.  And they wonder why they have lost seats and political clout in Congress and in the White House?

Now we await the Senate to vote on this bill.  Anybody want to guess want the final vote will look like?

Israel’s electoral system is set up in that voters vote for the party as opposed to the candidate of the party and they do not vote in different districts like we do here in the US.  Also, they do not vote in directly the legislators of the Knesset.  Exactly how the Knesset legislators are chosen is long and complicated to explain.  Suffice to say, this system favors a coalition form of government where many competing political parties work together to things done and draft legislation and policy.

What this means for the current election results is that, since it was the nationalist parties, Likud and Yisrael Beitenu, that did really well, they will be able to secure the most seats in the Knesset, about 65 of 120, according to the BBC.  These two parties would then be in the position to form a coalition government even though the Kadima party is ahead of everyone in the polls.

Should this be the case, then we can expect a more-of-same, get-tough-on-the-Palestinians approach to foreign policy, unlike Tzipi Livni, who favors a more diplomatic, conciliatory tone towards Palestinians.  These two parties are a lot more hawkish and believe in just bombing their way out of the Middle East conflict.  And the recent Gaza offensive put on by current Prime Minister Netanyahu could be said to have been a shrewd political maneuver that whipped up hardline elements in Israel right before the election.  Peace in this region anytime soon looks now to be an idealistc fantasy now.

It is truly sad then.  As long as both Palestinians and Israelis continue to point the finger at each other and claim the other is the aggressor, as long as both sides respond with retributive and violent justice instead of restorative justice, as long both sides believe in religious myths that portray their god as exclusivist and hating those that don’t worship Him, then there will never be peace in the region.  One can only hope that younger generation on both sides will stop and question the wisdom of their fathers and ask, “Why?  Why do we keep bombing one another?  What has this gotten us in the last 50 years?  What do you mean ‘that’s just the way things are and should never be questioned’?  This has not work and will not work!  We need change!  We are going to things differently, one that does not involve violence!”

If more and more Palestinians and Israelis would just wake up and ask “Why?” to their leaders, then they will have taken one very important leap (not step) toward real and ever-lasting peace in the region.

To me, it is outrageous that investment for highway projects are getting a disproportionately greater share of funds than public transportation and high-speed rail projects.  Public transportation will get more cars off the roads, which mean less congestion, less pollution, less gas consumed that is produced in countries not friendly to the US, and greater worker productivity, which ultimately means a boost for our economy.  And let us not forget the jobs that these projects would create.  Just building more highways is not the solution and will have the opposite of the aforementioned effects that I’ve listed.  I can see repairing existing highways and bridges, but not the construction of new ones, and the Senator Bond’s amendment to strip public transit projects of money in favor of just more roads and business as usual is sad, albeit unsurprising.

If President Obama truly wants to not just give our economy, as well as the world economy, a major boost, and make it greener and less dependent on foreign oil, then he should be more forcefully, more vigorously, and more publicly advocating a greater share of money for public transportation and high-speed rail projects.  Currently, he is not doing any of these, which is disappointing.

I suggest writing to your senators in Congress and letting them know that you want them to fight for more money for public transportation projects and not just more highways and roads.  Click here to visit the US Senate website and find your senator and express your views.  I certainly have already done so.

And while you’re at it, send a message to President Obama himself asking him to better advocate for more money to public transportation instead of being silent.

If you’d like to stay tuned about legislation that affects public transportation policy, then visit The Transportation for America website, which keeps an eye on these things.

Although a case can be made that extraordinary circumstances warrant the use of extraordinary renditions if it means stopping a major terrorist attack, I am still uneasy about the use of this tactic.  There is still the potential for abuse and mistaken identity of one who got kidnapped off the streets in some European country and sent to Egypt for torture, which routinely happened under Bush’s watch.  And this article says that even CIA veterans admit that extraordinary renditions is of limited intelligence value and only used on terrorism suspects not valuable enough to keep, which only undermines the necessity of this tactic in the first place.

I can only say that I do believe President Obama will do all that he can to ensure that extraordinary renditions are only carried if extraordinary circumstances warrant it, and that those suspects that are kidnapped will be treated humanely, not detained for a long period of time, and not be sent to a country where they will be tortured.  I trust Obama to better handle renditioning, as well as executing the war on terror, than Dubya and the morons that served under him.

• The closure of Guantanamo Bay prison and reinstatement of due process rights for the 200+ detainees, which also means:
• The halting of the military tribunals, which were, in effect, kangaroo courts where the defendant was not allowed to cross-examine witnesses that the federal government said were “top secret intelligence assets” or question how evidence against them was obtained.
• Repudiation and banning of the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” better known as torture
• Repudiation of “extraordinary renditions,” a euphemism for kidnapping
• Ordering of federal government agencies to be more transparent and responsive to Freedom of Information Act requests, thus, making them more accountable, which was something agencies under the Bush Administration were not doing.
• Lifting of the ban on US federal funds for international groups that provide or even offers information about abortion, which was known as the global gag rule.

These are just some of the things that President Obama has reversed that I can think off the top of my head right now.   All I can say is that I’m happy that my president is taking a far more moderate, pragmatic, and rational approach to foreign policy, dismissing ideology in favor of reason and empiricism.

In addition, President Obama has indicated the conflict in the Middle East will be a priority by appointing former senator George Mitchell as special envoy.  Obama is making it clear that the conflict between Israel and Palestine will not take a backseat for seven years like what happened under Bush.  Although no one expects Obama to suddenly side with Palestinians, he is expected to take a more moderate and balanced position between these two adversaries.   He’s not expected to have the “Israel is always right because they are 100% victims” mentality like Bush did.

With regard to domestic policy, Obama will be a friend to the environment, and perhaps reinstate the US as a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol.  I also hope he will keep his promise to fund research into greener and cleaner energy that cuts our dependence on foreign oil.  And I also hope that he will rescind Bush’s ban on the use of federal money on embryonic stem cell research, which neither a rational nor scientific explanation can justify for the denial of this potentially life-saving medical research.

Of course, all  of these may have to wait a little as Obama focuses first on the economy.  He’s going to push for a $800 billion stimulus package to prevent the US economy, as well as the global economy, from sliding into a depression.  I’m no economist, so I really can’t comment on the soundness of this proposal.  All I can say is that I hope it does what it’s supposed to do, like bring back more jobs.  I also hope that this money will go to state infrastructure projects that could use the federal money.  In my home state of California, we sure could use to partially pay for the building our high-speed rail line from San Francisco to LA, or the building of LA’s “subway to the sea,” which would be the subway from Downtown LA all the way to the Pacific Ocean, at Santa Monica.  Come to think of it, California could use the money as bailout for its $15 billion budget deficit.

Anyway, in case you cannot tell, I’m elated that President Obama is now charge and hasn’t wasted a moment in taking charge and reversing the damage that Bush has done to the US.

Hallelujah!