Click here to read the “Troopergate” report in all its 263-page glory; Alaska’s bipartisan Legislative Council today unanimously voted 12-0 (that’s four Democrats and eight Republicans, if anyone’s counting) to release it to the public.

The report finds Gov. Sarah Palin violated Alaska’s executive branch ethics act, which says that “each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”

Topping this week’s roundup of big ($25,000 or more) spenders on California campaigns and committees is Arizona education and communications magnate Peter Sperling’s $1.75 million Thursday for Proposition 7, which would require California utilities to procure half of their power from renewable resources by 2025. This brings Sperling’s stake in the measure to $9 million so far.

Bob Wilson of Brooklyn, N.Y., gave $1.4 million Tuesday to the campaign for Proposition 5, which would expand state funding and oversight for treatment and rehab programs for nonviolent drug offenders and parolees while reducing criminal penalties and limiting courts’ authority to lock up offenders who violate probation or parole. (This donation double’s Wilson’s prior investment in the measure to a total of $2.8 million so far; I’m pretty sure this Bob Wilson is the same retired hedge fund manager and philanthropist Robert W. Wilson who has given substantially to the campaign against Proposition 8.) Meanwhile, the Police Officers Research Association of Califorina (PORAC) political action committee put up $50,000 Wednesday to oppose Proposition 5.

Natural gas giant Chesapeake Energy of Oklahoma City, Okla., put up $1 million Tuesday to support Proposition 10, a $5 billion bond measure called the California Alternative Fuels Initiative that would provide cash incentives to buyers of certain high-fuel-economy and alternative-fuel vehicles as well as to companies researching and developing renewable energy and cleaner cars.

Ponying up this week for the campaign against Proposition 2 — which would prohibit confinement of certain farm animals in ways that don’t let them turn freely, lie down, stand up and fully extend their limbs — were Demler Enterprises of Wasco, with $182,827.10 Monday; the Demler-owned Pine Hill Egg Ranch of Ramona, with $105,000 Monday; the Washington, D.C.-based American Farm Bureau Federation, with $50,000 Wednesday; Norco Ranch Inc. of Norco, with $35,967.95 Tuesday; and McAnally Enterprises of Norco, with $25,631.74 Tuesday. Meanwhile, the San Francisco-based Caufield Family Foundation gave $50,000 Wednesday and the New York City-based Humane Society of the United States gave another $33,000 Monday to support Proposition 2.

Healthcare supply heir and billionaire philanthropist Jon Stryker of Kalamazoo, Mich., gave $200,000 Wednesday (bringing his total so far to $550,000); UNITE HERE’s New York City-based issues fund put up $100,000 Saturday; the Oakland-based Service Employees International Union United Health Workers West PAC coughed up $100,000 Wednesday; Jonathan Lewis of Coral Gables, Fla., gave $100,000 Wednesday; “Grey’s Anatomy” star T.R. Knight of New York City sent $50,000 Tuesday; the PAC of SEIU Local 1000, representing state workers, gave $50,000 Wednesday; and firedoglake.com editor Susan McIntosh of Menlo Park gave $30,000 Wednesday for the campaign against Proposition 8, the proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Equality California shifted $500,000 it had collected into the main “No on 8″ fund Thursday. Meanwhile, Dr. Josephine Templeton of Bryn Mawr, Pa., gave $100,000 Tuesday and Laguna Niguel businessman Richard Jordan gave $25,000 Tuesday to support Proposition 8.

The Democratic State Central Committee of California gave $185,000 Monday to Manuel Perez’s 80th Assembly District campaign; $184,000 Tuesday to Fran Florez’s 30th Assembly District campaign; and $35,960.42 Wednesday to former Assemblywoman Hannah Beth Jackson’s 19th State Senate District campaign. The Merced County Democratic Central Committee kicked in $60,000 Tuesday to Jackson’s campaign, too, and the San Diego County Democratic Party gave her $50,000 Wednesday. The Yolo County Democratic Central Committee gave $50,000 Wednesday to Assemblywoman Lois Wolk’s 5th State Senate District campaign.

Across the aisle, the California Republican Party gave $100,000 Thursday — after the Republican Central Committee of Orange County had given $30,200 and the Republican Party of Riverside County had given $27,600, both Tuesday — to former Assemblyman Tony Strickland’s 19th State Senate District campaign. The state GOP also handed over $90,000 today for Gary Jeandron’s 80th Assembly District campaign; the Fresno County Republican Central Committee had given Jeandron $30,000 Tuesday. And Livermore businessman and rancher Robert Rao must’ve had some debt left over from his unsuccessful bid in the 15th Assembly District’s GOP primary, because he put $93,818.19 of his own money into his campaign fund Tuesday.

The construction industry’s California Alliance for Jobs Rebuild California Committee gave $300,000 Thursday to support Proposition 1A, the $10 billion bond measure for high-speed rail.

Crime Victims United of California gave $100,000 Saturday to the campaign for Proposition 6, a tough-on-crime package including adult prosecution for gang-related criminals 14 and up; annual criminal background checks for public housing residents; harsher bail conditions and penalties for certain crimes; and so on. Meanwhile, the California School Employees Association’s political action committee put up $50,000 Tuesday to the joint campaign against Proposition 6 and Proposition 9, the latter of which would expand crime victims’ rights including restitution.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles gave $107,900 Tuesday and the UCSF Foundation in San Francisco gave $35,000 Saturday to support Proposition 3, the Children’s Hospital Bond Act, which would authorize almost $1 billion in bonds to be repaid from state’s General Fund to pay for construction, expansion, remodeling, renovation, furnishing and equipping of children’s hospitals. Also, the California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems dumped $83,333 into its own issues fund Wednesday, presumably on its way somewhere else… wanna bet where?

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla of Portola Valley gave $50,000 Wednesday and Judith Koch of Mountain View gave $25,000 Tuesday to oppose Proposition 4, the proposed state constitutional amendment which would require doctors to inform the parent or guardian of a minor 48 hours before providing an abortion to that minor.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s health-care plan could be rough on Californians, a pair of liberal policy think tanks say in reports released today.

Anthony Wright, executive director of the nonpartisan statewide consumer advocacy coalition Health Access California, heralded the reports on a conference call with reporters this morning, highlighting the “stark difference†between McCain’s plan and that of his Democratic rival, Barack Obama.

In brief, McCain’s plan relies on market forces and promotion of individually purchased insurance. He proposes eliminating the current tax exclusion for health insurance premiums and instead offering refundable tax credits for Americans buying private insurance — $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for families, sent directly to the insurance provider. Uninsured people could use their credits to help buy insurance coverage on the individual market, and workers with employer-sponsored insurance could use theirs to offset the cost of paying taxes on their employers’ premium contributions or to purchase coverage on their own.

Obama’s plan relies on new pubic and private insurance programs, employer mandates and insurance market regulation. He proposes a new national health plan letting all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses, buy affordable, comprehensive health coverage similar to that available to members of Congress. Nobody could be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions, and those who don’t still don’t qualify for expanded Medicaid or SCHIP yet still need financial aid would get an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or to buy a private health care plan.

Wright said Obama’s plan bears some resemblance to one put forth by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and then-Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, involving expansion of government programs while requiring and incentivizing employer contributions; his office today sent out a chart comparing the Obama, Schwarzenegger/Nunez and McCain plans.

But Peter Harbage, a co-author of the new Center for American Progress report, said McCain is taking a “conservative, laissez-faire approach to health care,†essentially raising taxes on health care to achieve “this radical vision.â€

See why, after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

Has it really been three months since last I did this? Shame on me.

McCain discusses
ACORN, Ayers as Dow drops;
Rome burns, he fiddles.

Pay for inmate health,
Judge now tells California.
Years late, still we balk.

A fine governor
Jerry Brown could make again,
Schwarzenegger says.

No stance before vote,
Andal blasts McNerney’s call.
A bailout “gotcha?â€

From the New York Times:

More “turning a page†from the “Straight Talk Express,†I guess. Too bad this maverick won’t turn such an inquiring eye toward her own house.

After all, Sarah Palin’s husband, Todd, for the better part of seven years was a registered member of the Alaskan Independence Party, of which the primary goal is to call a vote on whether Alaska should secede from the United States. Its founder, Joe Vogler, reportedly once said “My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand,†and encouraged federal bureaucrats to wear red so they’d make better targets for the Magnum he carried. From Salon:

(The Iran connection has been reported before, btw.)

But instead Vogler disappeared in May 1993; his remains were found more than a year later in a gravel pit:

Fighting the U.S. government? Iranian sponsorship? A plastic-explosives deal gone bad? That’s quite a resume for an American political-party founder. And none of it kept Sarah Palin from exhorting the AIP to “keep up the good work†earlier this year:

Hmm. Who’s been “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country?â€

And what does this all mean? Not. A. Damned. Thing.

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Just as it doesn’t matter that decades after Bill Ayers was part of a radical group that embraced bombing as political discourse, he – by then a renowned education professor – moved in the same liberal Chicago circles as Barack Obama. Ooooooh, hey, Obama was in Ayer’s house once! Oh my gosh, they sat on a nonprofit’s board together! Hold the phone, they tried to improve Chicago’s schools together!

Not. A. Damned. Thing.

But hey, y’know what does matter?

It matters that your 401k may well have lost about a third of its value in recent weeks, as mine has.

It matters that millions of jobs – certainly mine, maybe yours too – are hanging by a thread today, even as uncounted families struggle to hold onto their homes or have lost them already.

It matters that more than 8.1 million American children lack health insurance.

It matters that one candidate’s proposal to toughen fuel-efficiency standards could impact oil consumption 21 times as much as the other candidate’s proposal to “drill, baby, drill†off our shores.

And it matters that we’re still at war, where things aren’t going well and our national reputation has suffered to the point that it’s hard to find help.

Doesn’t all the meaningless mudslinging — at a time when the nation is desperate for smart, strong leadership — just frustrate you, disappoint you, infuriate you?

So, “my friends,†how’s about we put a lid on this rampant campaign-trail hypocrisy, this wild casting of stones from within a very fragile glass house, and get on with the job of setting this struggling country right.

You don’t have to be “in the tank” for Obama to be in the tank for the truth.

Well, not exactly.

The ad shows you California Education Code section 51933(b)(7), which says, “Instruction and materials shall teach respect for marriage.†But perhaps it also should’ve cited this one:

“(I)nstruction in health” includes sexual health education, and that’s what the section cited in the ad governs. So California parents always have had the right to opt their children out of this curriculum, and they still will whether or not Proposition 8 passes.

That’s why Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley this August shot down the “Yes on 8″ campaign’s challenges to opponents’ ballot-pamphlet assertions that Proposition 8 “doesn’t have anything to do with schools;” that Proposition 8 “won’t affect our schools;” and that “no child can be forced, against the will of their [sic] parents, to be taught anything about health and family issues.” The State Court of Appeal denied proponents’ request for a fast review, and they dropped the matter. Case closed… until this ad.

One also could argue that public schools should be teaching the law of the land, and if a majority of voters decide same-sex marriage should remain the law of the land, so be it. But that’s a whole other discussion.

Steve Frank, publisher of Stephen Frank’s California Political News and Views and a past president of the arch-conservative California Republican Assembly, let his rhetoric get in the way of facts with this tirade he posted today:

Well, I covered this hearing Monday, and Frank’s description parts with reality in several ways. Let’s break it down.

(1.) “A judge has ruled that criminals are not comfortable in California prisons.” No, a judge has ruled that criminals’ constitutional rights are being violated because they’re needlessly dying due to healthcare so poor it qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment. We’re not talking about sofas and televisions, we’re talking about basic medical care.

(2.) “State does not have the money, even if it were a good expenditure — which it is not.” It’s not a matter of “good” expenditure or “bad” expenditure; the state long ago lost a class-action lawsuit, then failed to meet the court’s requirements for fixing the problem, and so only then lost control of its own prison healthcare system. It has known for years the fix would be costly, and even has known the exact amount since early this year, and still has failed to act.

(3.) “The judge would literally be taking money from children, education, the elderly and public safety.” Actually, no — the $250 million the judge’s receiver is demanding in the coming weeks is already appropriated specifically for prison healthcare construction under AB 900, a $7.8 billion prison-expansion bill Schwarzenegger signed into law in May 2007. As for the rest of the $3.5 billion the receiver wants in this fiscal year, the state has clearly said it believes such money should come from lease-revenue bonds, not the general fund. It’s just that Legislative Republicans have blocked all efforts to raise this money so far.

(4.) “He would need, according to Dan Walters, sent Federal agents to steal the money.” That’s not what Dan said; he clearly posed that as a rhetorical hypothetical.

(5.) “The bigger question here is if the judge can take the money, what stops another judge from saying we are abusing our children by not spending $20,000 per year on their education — and taking that money. Then you have welfare programs a judge can rule are under funded — and the Feds can steal that money.” Well, only if the state loses class-action lawsuits proving it has denied schoolkids or welfare recipients their constitutional rights, and then utterly fails to remediate the problem. Again, the state has had many years in which to address this on its own, and chose not to do so; now it’s out of the state’s hands.

This sounds like yet another case of conservatives complaining whenever a judge finds government has failed to do its job, and requires it to step up and do so. It’s not judicial activism; the judiciary’s very purpose is to guarantee everyone — even unpopular felons — their constitutional rights, and that’s exactly what it’s doing here. This is how government is supposed to work, the judiciary checking and balancing the executive and Legislative branches’ abject failure. California dodged these costs for years, and now some just can’t stand that the tab has finally come due.

True, it’s unfortunate that this happens during a budget crunch and economic downturn — though if Sacramento would buck up and fix our structural deficit by creating reasonable revenue streams, we wouldn’t be in this mess — but that’s precisely the kind of political concern judges aren’t supposed to harbor. Again, California saw this coming yet continues to bury its head in the sand and blame it on the judge rather than taking responsibility for its own shortcomings.

It’s been only a few days since Congress approved and the president signed into law the $700 billion financial-markets bailout bill, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, already is voicing concern that the Treasury Department might not be living up to the bill’s standards.

“The new law provides the Treasury Secretary discretion to decide how to address conflicts of interest through guidelines, regulations, or by prohibiting them altogether,” Pelosi wrote to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson yesterday. “As I have reviewed the interim guidelines issued by Treasury yesterday, and those in Treasury’s solicitation for asset management and other portfolio management services, I am very concerned that they fail to meet the tough conflict of interest standard directed by Congress in the legislation.”

Read her whole letter, after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

Having ruminated while cleaning up the dinner dishes and folding the laundry (yes, ladies and germs, this is one multitasking journalist you’re dealing with), I’ve gotta say it didn’t look so hot for John McCain tonight.

No, there were no major gaffes, but as he lags in the polls he needed something more than that. I was watching the debate on CNN, which had this nifty little graph scrolling across the bottom of the screen measuring reactions from undecided voters in Ohio. It seemed as if every time McCain went on the offensive about Barack Obama’s record (or the lack thereof, McCain might say), that line took a dive, coming back up somewhat when McCain would turn back to his own platform.

So apparently the Ohio undecideds don’t like Angry McCain — and that’s a warning shot across the bow of a campaign which has decided to “turn the page” from discussion of the struggling economy (on which McCain has been taking a beating) toward stepping up attacks on Obama’s character and history.

I also noticed that the lines went higher for Obama than for McCain when they were discussing Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, even though foreign policy and homeland security are supposed to be McCain’s comfort zone. And all this in a town-hall debate format that McCain supposedly relishes.

I thought Obama was right to pounce on McCain’s “talk softly but carry a big stick” rhetoric, as that clearly hasn’t been McCain’s own philosophy. And if you want “straight talk” on the candidates’ tax policy, listen to what the nonprofit, nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has to say about it.

Finally, as a personal aside, I believe when someone calls a crowd “my friends” once or twice, it seems folksy; when you do it six or seven times, it starts sounding smarmy. But, hey, that’s just me.

On the whole, both candidates seemed composed and competent, and at least neither of them flatly refused to respond to some of the moderator’s questions, even though both kept pushing past the moderator’s exhortations to honor the time limits, perhaps Obama moreso.

But still, I think: advantage Obama.

Assembly Labor and Employment Committee Chairman Sandré Swanson, D-Alameda, says lawmakers are going to have to work across the aisle to fix California’s unemployment insurance fund, which will be broke by January.

He apparently means lawmakers should be talking about raising the payroll tax that employers pay on each worker to bankroll the state unemployment fund. And for Legislative Republicans presumably still smug about preventing any tax increases in this year’s budget fiasco, that’s going to be a tall order.

The Assembly Insurance Committee and the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on State Administration held a joint hearing today to examine why we’re in this fix and what should be done about it; Swanson issued a statement soon afterward.

“This fund is critical to ensure that workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own are able to pay their bills and put food on the table while they look for work,” he said. “The current funding crisis threatens the solvency of that fund and we must address it as quickly as possible.”

Swanson cited a report showing the state unemployment fund will be $1.6 billion in the red by 2009’s end of 2009 and $3.5 billion short a year after that. But the situation might be even more dire: That report assumed a 6.4 percent unemployment rate and a 6.6 percent rate for 2009, but unemployment already had risen to 7.7 percent as of August.

California has the lowest taxable wage base allowed by federal law — $7,000, a figure that hasn’t changed since 1983 — but 42 states now tax more than the first $7,000 of employee earnings. In fact, federal law requires a base maximum tax rate of at least 5.4 percent for state unemployment insurance taxes; California is right at that federal minimum.

“The testimony by the Employment Development Department presented today candidly admitted that the current funding system is ‘broken,’” Swanson said in his statement. “While the current economic downturn has certainly exacerbated the problem, it is clear that the root of the problem is structural — the current system is not funded properly to get through tough economic times when there is more demand on the fund.”

If the fund runs dry, the state must borrow from the federal government and later pay it back, perhaps with interest — and federal law says that interest can’t come from the unemployment fund, so our already deficit-plagued general fund could be put at risk. That could amount to an $85 million general-fund liability by 2010, Swanson said.

So lawmakers had better find some kum-ba-yah territory on this issue quickly, he said, and the Bush Administration and Congress had better find a way to work assistance for unemployed workers into the next economic stimulus package.