If off-shoring of manufacturing burns you up, so should the elimination of prevailing wages in construction
For years we've been hearing about the devastation caused by the off-shoring of manufacturing capacity. Families that were firmly in the middle class experienced dramatic declines in their standards of living as their jobs were shipped off to a far off location where the work would be done at a fraction of the cost because the CEOs could pay workers a pittance while evading the costs of keeping the air and water clean. When the left-behind workers found new jobs, the wages and benefits were nowhere near what they had lost. As families became poorer, communities suffered as their coffers emptied because residents had far less to spend back in town. Entire industries and the technical know-how of their workforce have disappeared in the United States.
All of this has rightfully made many Americans angry. But while the most noticeable impacts of off-shoring have been concentrated in a few states in the industrial Midwest, the elimination of prevailing wages in construction has the potential to bring these problems to California. At first blush the comparison between construction and manufacturing does not seem to fit. However a deeper look at the construction industry, its hiring practices, its skill base, and the stabilizing role of prevailing wages shows that the comparison is right on target.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head at a constituent outreach event in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson on Saturday. In all, the gunman shot 18 people, killing 6, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl.
Jamelle Bouie of TAPPED urges President Obama to take up the issue of mental health care in his upcoming speech on the mass shooting. Several people who knew the alleged shooter came forward with stories of bizarre behavior and run-ins with campus police at his community college. College administrators ordered him to seek treatment before he returned to school, but he does not appear to have done so.
H. Clarke Romans of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Southern Arizona explained to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that mental health services in Arizona have been devastated by budget cuts.
In 2008 the state eliminated support services for all non-Medicaid behavioral health patients and stopped covering most brand-name psychiatric drugs. At least 28,000 Arizonans were affected. Arizonans with mental illnesses can expect even more cuts in the future as the state slashes spending in an attempt to address its budget shortfall.
In AlterNet, Adele Stan, argues that, while we don't yet know the gunman's motives, the right wing's intensifying campaign of anti-government hysteria and violent rhetoric may have emboldened an already disturbed person:
Had the vitriolic rhetoric that today shapes Arizona's political landscape (and, indeed, our national landscape) never come to call, Loughner may have found a different reason to go on a killing spree. But that vitriol does exist as a powerful prompt to the paranoid, and those who publicly deem war on the federal government a patriot's duty should today be doing some soul-searching.
Jerry Brown has just been inaugurated governor of California, and it's an opportune time to take a look at California past, present and future. Last week, looking backwards, Robert Cruikshank wrote a piece at Calitics, "Worst Governor Ever"
[W]hy exactly did Arnold fail? Getting that story right matters quite a lot as Governor Jerry Brown and the Democratic legislature seek to fix not just the 7 years of misrule, but 32 years of destructive policies that were initiated by the passage in June 1978 of Prop 13....
But this lets Arnold off the hook for his own failures, which were ideological in nature. Arnold Schwarzenegger became the worst governor in California history through his unwavering commitment to a far-right economic agenda, his fealty to the large corporations who helped elect him back in 2003, and his pursuit of a shock doctrine attack on the state's institutions and prosperity in the service of his ideology and of his wealthy backers.
Early in his tenure in office, Arnold rejected advice from Warren Buffet and others that he needed to raise taxes in 2004 to close the state's budget gap. Instead of this responsible - and necessary - solution, Arnold stuck to his ideological guns. He pushed through a costly campaign promise to repeal the restoration of a higher Vehicle License Fee, costing the state $6 billion a year in expenditures to local government to make up the lost funds.
Arnold's "solution" to the structural revenue shortfall was to borrow our way out of the mess. A total of $25 billion in bonds were sold to help pay the operating costs of the state in 2004 and 2005. While deficit spending in a recession is sensible, California's economy was in recovery during those years, and could have handled a tax increase. In fact, a tax increase, especially on property taxes, might have slowed the growth of the real estate bubble that eventually crippled the state's economy. The debt service on those bonds takes away from other spending priorities, and lessens the state's ability to borrow to build infrastructure.
This was how the twig was bent. Behind a mask of "social liberalism" (or at least moderation), Schwarzenegger was economically the most rightwing governor California has had at least since WWII. Both Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson not only raised taxes as well as cut spending when faced with budget shortfalls, Wilson got downright nasty when faced with Republican opposition for raising taxes. Schwarzenegger never dreamed of raising taxes, though he did try to moderate his image after the California Nurses Association turned the tables on him and lead a coalition of public employee unions and others who kicked his ass at the polls on a range of initiatives he put on the ballot for a special election in Nov, 2005.
About this period of "moderation," Robert notes:
The only product of this period worth noting was his belated support for AB 32, a bill that any Democratic governor would have signed in a heartbeat. Meanwhile Arnold ignored other concerns, such as a growing property bubble and the need to wean the state off of its dependence on oil. While Arnold was signing AB 32 in the late summer of 2006, he was threatening to eliminate the funding for the California High Speed Rail Authority, risking the HSR project.
Weekly Audit: Curbing the Deficit, Cat Food, and You
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
The deficit commission released its much anticipated list of helpful money-saving tips for the federal government last week. These tips include tax cuts for the rich, reducing unnecessary printing costs, and cutting the jobs of federal contractors.
The exit polling is clear - California Democrats won a big victory on Tuesday night because Jerry Brown and the rest of the Democratic ticket reached beyond the white base that constitutes the Republican electorate. At right you can see the exit polling results for the gubernatorial race, indicating that while Whitman won white voters overall and voters over 65, she did poorly everywhere else.
Democratic victories on Tuesday would have been even more substantial had more of the electorate showed up. 21% of voters were 65 and over, and 45% were between age 45 and 65, with just 12% being age 18-29. 62% were white, but 22% were Latino - and while Brown dominated among Latinos, he essentially split the white vote.
Overall, this paints a picture of a state whose electorate - even older white voters - do not respond well to exclusionist appeals. Whitman made much of her anti-immigrant, anti-Latino politics, and it not only cost her big among Latinos, it also helped her lose younger white voters whose vision of California is of a state where everyone is welcome and seen as an equally deserving member of society.
This trend is mirrored nationally. Pew Hispanic Center reports that Latinos broke 64-34 for Democrats across the country. In Nevada, Harry Reid put on a clinic in mobilizing a working class coalition led by Latinos to stop Sharron Angle.
Meanwhile, on the hyper-local side of things, conservative media darling Star Parker outspent incumbent Laura Richardson by more than 2-1, but came up way short (69-23) in this heavily Democratic district. In fact, Parker blanketed cable tv with unanswered ads, some of them embarrasingly amateurish, all of them without identifying her as a Republican. But what really tickled me was her Christine O'Donnell imitation, the context being carpetbagging, rather than wichcraft:
The Republicans gained ground in last night's midterm elections, recapturing the House and gaining seats in the Senate. The future House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) wasted no time in affirming that the GOP will try to repeal health care reform.
A full-scale repeal is unlikely in the next two years because the Democrats have retained control of the White House and the Senate. However, Republicans are already making noises about shutting down the government to force the issue. The House controls the nation's purse strings, which confers significant leverage if the majority is willing to bring the government to a screeching halt to make a point.
Don't assume they'll blink. The GOP shut down government in 1995, albeit to its own political detriment. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and his allies have sworn a "blood oath" to shut down the government, regardless of the consequences. The Republicans may actually succeed in modifying minor aspects of the Affordable Care Act, such as the controversial 1099 reporting requirement for small business.
The most significant threat to the implementation of health care reform may be at the state level. Republicans picked up several governorships, and the Affordable Care Act requires the cooperation of states to set up their own insurance exchanges. Hostile governors could seriously impede things.
Mixed results for radical, anti-choice senate candidates
As a group, the eight ultra-radical, anti-choice Republican Senate candidates had mixed results last night. Three wins, two sure losses, and three likely losses that haven't been definitively called. Voters didn't seem thrilled about electing senators who oppose a woman's right to abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.
Two cruised to victory: Rand Paul easily defeated Democrat Jack Conway in Kentucky. Paul is one of the most extreme the of a radical cohort. As Amie Newman reported in RH Reality Check, Paul doesn't even believe in a woman's right to abort to save her own life. In Florida, anti-choice standard bearer Marco Rubio defeated Independent Charlie Christ.
Another radical anti-choicer, Pat Toomey, who favors jailing abortion providers, narrowly edged out Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania.
Two were soundly defeated. Evangelical code-talker Sharron Angle lost to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), and anti-masturbation crusader Christine O'Donnell lost to Chris Coons in Delaware.
The last three radical anti-choice senate candidates were down, but not, out as of this morning. Democrat Sen. Michael Bennett leads Republican Ken Buck by just 15,000 votes out of over 1.5 million ballots cast, according to TPMDC. Planned Parenthood launched an 11th hour offensive against Buck because of his retrograde stances on abortion, sexual assault, and other women's issues, as Joseph Boven reports for the Colorado Independent.
This morning, Tea Party Republican Joe Miller was trailing behind incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who challenged him as an Independent, but no winner had been declared. In Washington State, Democrat Sen. Patti Murray maintains a 1% lead over radical anti-choicer Republican Dino Rossi.
Are fertilized eggs people in Colorado?
Coloradans won a decisive victory for reproductive rights last night. Fertilized eggs are still not people in Colorado, as Jodi Jacobson reports for RH Reality Check.
Amendment 62, which would have conferred full person status from the moment of conception, thereby outlawing abortion and in vitro fertilization. It also called into question the legality of many forms of birth control, including an array of medical procedures for pregnant women that might harm their fetuses. The proposed amendment was resoundingly defeated: 72% against to 28% in favor. This is the second time Colorado voters have rejected an egg-as-person amendment.
Blue Dogs and anti-choice Dems feel the pain
Last night was brutal for corporatist Democrats who fought the more progressive options for health care reform and Democrats who put their anti-choice ideology ahead passing health care. In AlterNet, Sarah Seltzer reports only 12 of the 34 Democrats who voted against health care reform hung on to their seats. The Blue Dog caucus was halved overnight from 56 to 24. Nick Baumann of Mother Jones speculated that the midterms would mark the end of the Stupak bloc, the coalition of anti-choice Democrats whose last-minute brinksmanship could have derailed health care reform.
Did foot-dragging on health care hurt Democrats?
Jamelle Bouie suggests at TAPPED that Democrats shot themselves in the foot by passing a health care reform bill that won't provide tangible benefits to most people for years. The exchanges that are supposed to provide affordable insurance for millions of Americans won't be up and running until 2014.
In Summer 2009, Former DNC chair Howard Dean predicted that the Democrats would be penalized at the polls if they failed to deliver tangible benefits from health care reform before the midterm elections. That's why Dean suggested expanding the public health insurance programs we already have, rather than creating insurance exchanges from scratch.
Sink, sunk by Scott
Andy Kroll of Mother Jones profiles Rick Scott, the billionaire health clinic mogul, corporate fraudster, and enemy of health care reform who spent over $50 million of his own money to eke out a very narrow victory over Democrat Alex Sink in the Florida governor's race.
Apparently, many Floridians were willing to overlook the fact that Scott had to pay a $1.7 billion fine for defrauding Medicare, the largest fine of its kind in history. Scott also spent $5 million of his own money to found Conservatives for Patients' Rights, one of the leading independent groups opposing health care reform.
Pot isn't legalized in California
California defeated Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana for personal use. David Borden of DRCnet, a pro-legalization group, writes in AlterNet that the fight over Prop 19 brought legalization into the political mainstream, even if the measure didn't prevail at the polls. The initiative won the backing of the California NAACP, SEIU California, the National Black Police Association, and the National Latino Officers Association and other established groups.
So, what's next for health care reform? The question everyone is asking is whether John Boehner will cave to the extremists in his own party and attempt a full-scale government shutdown, or whether the Republicans will content themselves with extracting piecemeal modifications of the health care law.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
This is the last part of a series of posts giving recommendations on California's propositions. This post recommends a "no" vote on Proposition 27, which switches the power of state-level redistricting from a citizen's committee to the legislature.
This is the sixth part of a series of posts giving recommendations on California's propositions. This post recommends a "no" vote on Proposition 26, which requires a two-thirds majority in the legislature to pass some fees.
Proposition 27 will be the subject of the next post and last in this series.
Trying to Understand What Proposition 26 Does
Proposition 26 is a complex and tricky piece of proposed legislation, with a number of subtleties. On its surface it sounds like a standard conservative proposal against higher taxes, and in a way Proposition 26 indeed fits this definition. But to just label Proposition 26 as a classic tax-cutting proposition is to somewhat misunderstand it's purpose.
Proposition 26 has several parts, and each are quite complex. The first part deals with the difference between taxes and fees.
This is the fifth part of a series of posts giving recommendations on California's propositions. This post recommends a "yes" vote on Proposition 25, which requires a majority vote in the legislature to pass a budget.
Proposition 26 will be the subject of the next post in this series.
The Structural Problems in California's Budget Process...
Proposition 25 is the most important proposition being proposed this year. While Proposition 25 may not exactly ignite passion in the hearts of voters, it is far more important for California's future than the much-debated Propositions 19 and 23.
To understand why this is so, one needs to take a look at the structure of California's budget.
Since national energy reform is on the rocks, ethanol subsidies for the Midwest and ballot propositions to roll back progressive energy legislation in California are the most important policy fights to watch right now.
Neither will revolutionize the way Americans get power, and in both cases, moving forward could actually mean moving away from a sensible energy future. In California, voters could turn back progress the state has made towards holding down carbon emissions. And Washington's support for ethanol reveals the static thinking that's smothering our ability to address climate change.
More important than legalizing pot
In 2006, California passed a law that would take effect in 2011 and put an ambitious plan in place to decrease the state's carbon emissions by 2020. Even after the law passed, however, the debate over its merits continued. This being California, that debate made its way onto this November's ballot.
The most commonly floated line of reasoning against the law focuses on negative impacts to job growth: Increasing the price on carbon increases the cost of doing business, limiting economic growth and the resources that businesses have to dedicate to expansion. Proposition 23, a ballot initiative that will come to a vote next Tuesday, would delay the carbon bill's enactment until the state's economy takes a turn for the better.
But Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard knocks down the economic argument against the 2006 law (AB32):
While enacting AB32 could cause job loss in some sectors, most independent experts actually forecast growth in jobs in the renewable energy, transportation, and efficiency sectors. In fact, green jobs are pretty much the only sector growing in the Golden State. The number of green jobs grew 36 percent in California between 1995 and 2008. The rate of growth for regular old jobs was only 13 percent.
Double trouble
Activists have focused on shutting down Prop 23 (check out, via The Washington Independent's Andrew Restuccia, this clever campaign to flip "yes" voters), but as Amy Westervelt points out at Earth Island Journal, that initiative is not the only one that could free companies from their environmental responsibilities.
It turns out another California proposition, Prop 26, could raise the threshold legislators would have to meet in order to make companies pay for their pollution, including from oil spills. As Westervelt writes:
While some companies have steered clear of the Tea Party-backed Prop 23, which seems to be losing popularity every week, California companies interested in slowing down AB32 and maybe ridding themselves of responsibility for pollution altogether have been quietly funneling money to Prop 26.
California has long been a leader on energy issues. If either of these propositions goes the wrong way, it will be yet another troubling sign of the failure of progressive energy policy.
The other ethanol
Although environmentalists have fought hard since 2008 to pass cap-and-trade, the policy was always fundamentally conservative one. The Obama administration has always tried to map out a middle path on energy policy, and so far it has been ineffective. Ethanol is yet another case in point.
As Lynda Waddington reports at the Iowa Independent, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced last week that the administration was moving forward with a program that aids farmers producing crops (in addition to corn) that could be turned into ethanol. Switchgrass, the foundation of Brazil's much-touted ethanol system is one example. Notably, the arguments Vilsack advanced for the program had more to do with the economy than with energy.
Pros and cons
This type of cellulosic ethanol, Brooks Lindsay explains at Change.org, would go mainly towards fueling cars. Lindsay weighs the pros and cons of producing this sort of ethanol in general, and comes down against it. His reasoning: "At best, cellulosic ethanol is just a stop-gap measure while electric cars slowly replace liquid-powered cars....But, a stop-gap fuel does not deserve massive investments and government attention."
Indeed, progressives across the board have long argued that politicians' support for ethanol derives from political calculation, not from practical policy. (Ethanol states are swing states.) Ethanol is energy-intensive to produce, and it has a slew of negative environmental consequences that outweigh the cuts in carbon emissions.
Rethinking the politics
Before they rush to back the Obama administration's policies, however, policymakers should consider this news from Heather Rogers, author of Green Gone Wrong. Rogers reports for The Washington Monthly:
As I discovered on a recent reporting trip through Iowa, many farmers there would welcome a way to break free of the ethanol-industrial complex. The people I met said they'd rather cultivate crops using ecologically sound methods, if they could do so and still earn a decent living. It's not as if midwestern farmers don't know-better than the rest of us-that growing crops for biofuels damages their soil and keeps them at the mercy of predatory multinational corporations.
The article is worth reading in full, but fast-forward to the end to find Rogers' sensible policy proposal. Instead of enlisting farmers in a complicated energy-production procedure that ultimately keeps Americans in their cars, why not aide the work they're already doing to reduce carbon emissions on their farms? After all, farms are responsible for a huge portion of the country's carbon burden -- they just have lobbyists savvy enough to keep their business from being regulated. As Rogers puts it:
Paying farmers to sequester carbon is sound public policy, but it's also, and just as importantly, good politics. By helping to preserve farmers economically while also allowing them to be the stewards of land most want to be, it peels farmers away from the agribusiness coalition that is pushing the Obama administration to bet the country on a failed biofuels energy strategy.
Now there's a bit of thinking that could move energy policy forward.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
This is the fourth part of a series of posts giving recommendations on California's propositions. This post recommends a "no" vote on Proposition 24, which repeals three corporate tax breaks.
Proposition 25 will be the subject of the next post in this series.
Tax Breaks and Proposition 24
When California passed its annual budget, legislators included three tax breaks for businesses: a tax break involving single sales factor apportionment, a tax break involving financial losses, and a tax break involving tax credit transfers.
At this point, there's little doubt that a crucial impetus for serious climate change action will be the bottom-up impacts of local actions taken in response to locally-perceived threats and opportunities. "Local" here is a scalable concept. Compared to the US as a whole, California is a local jurisdiction which has passed a landmark global warming law that outside Texas oil companies are trying to take out. That's a local conflict compared to the US or the whole globe. And battles at that level will prove crucial. But of course, one can get a whole lot more local than that, since California is pretty big state. And a new report does just that.
"California's National Parks in Peril: The Threats of Climate Disruption" is joint report from the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Counsel. It includes new local climate projections for ten national parks in California: Death Valley National Park, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Joshua Tree National Park, Kings Canyon National Park, Mojave National Preserve, Muir Woods National Monument, Point Reyes National Seashore, Redwood National Park, Sequoia National Park, and Yosemite National Park.
As the report explains:
If future emissions of heat-trapping pollutants are what the California Climate Change Center calls "medium-high," the average of the projections from the six climate models is for Yosemite National Park to get 7.5°F hotter by 2070-2099 than it was in 1961-1990. To put that in perspective, that would be enough to make Yosemite 0.3° hotter than Sacramento historically has been. Similarly, Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks would become hotter than the Sonoma County coast. Point Reyes would become as hot as Santa Barbara has been.
These temperature comparisons may not be that meaningful for folks outside of California. On the flip is a brief overview of significant--even dramatic--effects that don't require any such local knowledge:
This is the third part of a series of posts giving recommendations on California's propositions. This post recommends a "no" vote on Proposition 22, which restricts state borrowing from local funds.
Proposition 24 (and not 23, which everybody has already heard about) will be the subject of the next post in this series.
California, It's Budget, ...
On October 8th, California's legislature passed its yearly budget. The state has become famous for its late budgets and the never-ending budget shortfall. This year was no different; lawmakers were handed a $19 billion dollar shortfall and forced to come up with enough spending cuts and fees to balance the budget (on paper, at least).
California's officials did a variety of things to balance the budget.
This is the second part of a series of posts giving recommendations on California's propositions. This post recommends a "no" vote on Proposition 21, which establishes a vehicle license fee in order to fund state parks.
Proposition 22 will be the subject of the next post in this series.
California's Broken Proposition System
One of the great flaws in California's proposition system is the way in which it creates ballot-box budgeting. Voters are always willing to spend more money on more goodies: ten million here to fund K-12 education, ten million there to fight crime, ten million to construct hospitals, ten million to protect the environment.
Five hundred million, in this latest example of ballot-box budgeting, for state parks.
STATE BLOGS
