Crossposted from my high speed rail blog

AB 3034, a bill which would have made improvements to Proposition 1 (the high speed rail bond), is being held up by Senate Republicans who are using last-minute objections to cover their opposition to the entire project. Just as Republicans are using the 2/3 rule to hold the state budget hostage they are doing the same with AB 3034, which requires a 2/3 vote to pass.

But whereas we have to have a budget sometime, there is no commitment from Republicans to build high speed rail. They still believe, against all available evidence, that an oil-based transportation system is workable. Their real solution to gas prices and the airline crisis is more drilling, not more rail. They continue to believe global warming is a hoax and are willfully blind to the positive economic impact of high speed rail.

Crossposted from Calitics

As my recent diaries have shown there is a shortage of firefighters to meet the unprecedented amount of fires burning across California. As I began digging into this yesterday I came across the same report highlighted in today's Monterey Herald - that US Forest Service firefighting efforts have been cut to the bone and left the nation vulnerable to massive fires. Deliberate staffing shortages have left the USFS unable to do vital off-season brush clearance, and left them without the staffing to get a quick jump on fires in their crucial initial stages.

Crossposted from Calitics

Fires continue to burn across California, with the massive blazes in Goleta and Big Sur getting the focus of the state's attention. California's firefighting capacities have been strained beyond their limits. Arnold Schwarzenegger had to call the California National Guard in to help fight fires for the first time since 1977.

And while the fact that most of the Guard is in Iraq and not available to undertake projects like firefighting is a problem, the deeper issue is that decades of conservative policy has left the state without the resources it needs to fight these fires. Already residents are trying to take matters into their own hands, distrustful of government's ability to help them.

Crossposted from Calitics

The numbers are staggering - 1,400 wildfires burning around the state. Over 70 homes destroyed and 7,800 under threat. The entire Big Sur coast has been evacuated and nearly 1,500 homes there face ruin. President Bush has declared the fires a federal emergency and released $50 million in federal aid, announced by FEMA administrator David Paulison - surely a sign that the feds are fully engaged in the fire aid effort, right?

Not so fast. There is a difference between an "emergency," which frees up something like the $50 million in firefighting funds, and a "federal disaster" declaration, which frees up the full range of FEMA assistance to fire victims, including relocation shelters and financial assistance.

From the credit where credit's due department, Brian at Calitics reports Obama has come out in opposition to Proposition 8, which would amend the California constitution to ban the same sex marriages that are happening across the state. The announcement comes in a letter to the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club in San Francisco, and Brian reproduced the letter in full at Calitics. The key part:

We keep being told by the anti-constitution Democrats and those who defend their actions that shredding the Fourth Amendment is a necessary move in order to protect the Democratic Congressional majorities.

But there's a funny thing about that argument. Those Democrats actually on the front lines - those who are taking on incumbent Republicans or Republican-held seats - are among the most vocal opponents of the FISA surrender.

If these Democrats, those you'd logically expect to support the FISA compromise, are actually opposing it, and believe they can score points against their Republican opponents by doing so - then it blows out of the water any justification Pelosi had for agreeing to this, and should suggest that the contributions House Dems received from telecoms should be more prominently discussed.

Note: I wrote the bulk of this diary before I read bonddad's rather senseless call, currently on the rec list, for drilling in ANWR and off the nation's coasts. Some of the data in this diary should suggest reasons why his plan is deeply flawed. America will not produce any lasting economic growth without turning to green jobs and sustainable energy. Turning to more oil drilling will produce ZERO growth.

Crossposted at Calitics

When you drive along Highway 101 near Santa Barbara, or Highway 1 in Huntington Beach, it's hard to miss the many oil rigs on the ocean's horizon. They are relics of a bygone age - not just the 1960s, when they were constructed, but an age in which California believed that cheap oil would always be plentiful and available. We built an entire infrastructure around that and neglected trains, walkable neighborhoods, and lagged behind the rest of the world in developing solar and wind power.

It always annoys me when Americans - including Democrats - treat Iran like some scary, evil, insane threat to all mankind. It's a nation of 70 million mostly decent people, ruled by a government that has far more in common with George W. Bush and Pat Robertson than anything else. The thought of turning them into targets for bombs and missiles should cause all of us to become physically ill.

The only way to combat those who would make useless and criminal war on these people is to humanize those people. To show Americans that Iran is a nation not so different from any other - with its problems and its promises, its wonderful people and its thugs.

And so that is what Rick Steves has done with his trip to Iran. His reports, soon to become a PBS special, should be required reading for all of us.

Especially here in Monterey County. The primaries were hard-fought and certainly contentious. But Democrats understand not only the importance of unity, but of the importance of winning in November. This story from the Central Coast of California demonstrates how Democratic unity is built, and how it will lead us to victory in the fall.

The following was written by Shawn Bagley, Central Coast for Hillary 2008, California Democratic Party Region 9 Director and Vinz Koller, Monterey County Democrats for Obama, Monterey County Democratic Party Chair. They asked me to post it here and I was happy to agree - it's a wonderful model of how Democrats are united for the fall.

As an occasional contributor to the Ku35 series, I have tried to focus on the economic issues that face us young people. If you want to understand why we are so politicized, why we are so Democratic, I believe we must begin with the truly dire economic conditions our generations faces - the worst in 70 years.

I wrote about this in February - but that was based on a California-specific study. In May Demos published the Economic State of Young America, illustrating on a national level and in stark terms the crisis we face. Tonight I want to give a quick tour of their points, and then explain what it means for generational politics.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it has come to this, but it's still a rather stunning development.

By introducing her idiotic gas tax cut idea as a Senate bill she is forcing her fellow Congressional Democrats to have to on record about whether they support this stupid concept or not. This is not helpful to the efforts to expand our Congressional majorities this November, and by introducing this as a bill, Hillary may have given a huge opening for Republicans.

The handwringing around the progressive blogosphere regarding Obama's Fox News appearance, including Open Left and our own bonddad, seems a bit like Captain Renault being shocked, shocked to discover that there is gambling going on at his establishment. (h/t to Paul Rosenberg for that.) Stoller is calling Obama's campaign right-wing enabling liars and bonddad is vowing to never vote for Obama again.

To which I have to ask: which Barack Obama have you been seeing these last four years?

Elizabeth Edwards is one of the most amazing Democrats - amazing Americans - that I know of. If she ever ran for office I'd become a monthly $100 contributor. I wish her a long and healthy life not just because all human beings deserve it, but because she has more to offer this country than we've seen yet, and I want her to have the chance to do something really special.

But that doesn't mean everything she says is right.

There is a diary on the rec list tonight that gives a devastating personal account of why mandated health insurance has been proved a failure. I want to complement that diary by offering analytical points that lead me to - with great reluctance - say that Elizabeth Edwards is, on this issue, completely wrong.

Disclosure: I work for the Courage Campaign

I don't know about you all, but the back and forth between the candidates, the fights over pastors and passports, is feeling less and less relevant and important. Especially for those of us here in California, where nearly 20,000 teachers got a layoff notice. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative Republicans want to balance the budget on these teachers' backs, and refuse to even consider any tax increase to help close our structural revenue shortfall.

As despicable as that is, perhaps the worst and most telling moment came last month when Republicans voted against closing a loophole favoring wealthy yacht owners. But with your help, we can turn this into the political breakthrough we need to finally turn this state around and beat back far-right ideology.

Crossposted from Calitics

The best way to sum up the conservative Republican reaction to both California's budget deficit and our economic crisis is "avoiding reality." From elected Republicans to their media outlets to their fanatic base, California's right-wing is finding itself having to become more and more extreme and divisive in avoiding the inevitable - higher taxes and more government spending as a solution to both California's structural revenue shortfall and our worsening economic crisis.

And in the process, they're also having to rewrite history to avoid blame for those problems. Faced with widespread public outrage over the 10,000 layoff notices sent to teachers this week, among other concerns, Republicans have now decided to accuse Democrats of causing the crisis - even though it was Republican policies that created both the budget deficit AND the economic downturn.

While Kossacks are deciding whether to hang Eliot Spitzer or merely slow roast him, perhaps we should actually ask wtf is going on. I found it rather unusual that this news broke the same day as the WSJ article on TIA and while it's probably just a bizarre coincidence...it, and the Don Siegelman case, should have us asking some more questions before busting out the pitchforks and torches.

And it looks like I'm not the only one thinking this. Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake:

All kinds of questions arise here:

1. Why would the bank tell the IRS and not Spitzer himself if there was a suspicious transfer? Spitzer is a longtime client, a rich guy and the governor. We're talking thousands of dollars here, not millions. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that they spotted a "suspicious transfer" made by the governor, and that this is how things began. It's possible it was just ordinary paperwork the bank had to file with the government whenever some particular flag was raised, but if that's the case, why did the DoJ go to DefCon 3?

I'm guessing mine won't be the first diary hashing out Krugman's latest attack on Obama and it certainly won't be the last. Other diaries will hopefully offer the kind of point by point deconstruction that I provided back in December.

My goal here is different. It's to point out the importance of what Krugman leaves out - because as any good academic knows, what you leave out is just as important as what you put in.

I like to say that our generation - we who are under 35 - are the Johnny Rotten generation. Not in the sense that we all like punk, but instead in the sense that we all can sympathize with his famous statement. We all have the feeling we've been cheated.

Cheated out of our futures, really. For most of this decade I felt that something wasn't quite right. My friends and I worked hard, studied hard, kept out of trouble. We played by the rules. We did what we were supposed to do. And yet we find ourselves struggling to stay afloat.

Whenever I've mentioned this before, I've had some older Kossacks dismiss my claims, saying that every young generations feels they have it hard, that things are unfair. Perhaps. But last summer the California Budget Project came out with a comprehensive study that suggests, in fact, things really are different today. A Generation of Inequality: The State of Working California, 1979-2006 is the title of their study. And I would like to discuss it with you tonight.