The election for governor is nine months off – the primary isn’t until June 8. But Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman went after one another yesterday with the vigor often reserved for a campaign’s home stretch.
At issue were attack ads, independent expenditure campaigns and Whitman’s tax returns. Abject cynicism and former President Nixon also came up.
In a Sacramento event with delegates from the laborers’ international union, Brown, the attorney general, former governor and presumed Democratic nominee, urged organizes labor to donate funds to “attack” Whitman, the wealthy Republican front-runner.
“We’re going to attack whenever we can, but I’d rather have you attack,” the LA Times quoted Brown as saying. “I’d rather be the nice guy in this race. We’ll leave (the attacks) to…the Democratic Party and others.”
To Whitman spokesman Tucker Bounds, the “and others” line seemed a reference to the independent expenditures campaigns Democrats have set up to raise money for anti-Whitman electioneering.
The Democratic Governor’s Association has put money into political consultant Nick Velasquez’s California Accountability Project, which hot-combs the public remarks of Whitman and Republican rival Steve Poizner, looking for misstatements. (Vasquez recently charged that Whitman has given five different head-counts – from 19 to 35 -- for the number of...
Clarifying the line between free speech and political advertising on the Internet is proving to be a thorny issue for the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which held the first of two planned hearings on the subject yesterday morning.
The commission's subcommittee overseeing Internet political activity didn't take a stance on how, or even if, the commission would regulate political advocacy via e-mail, social networking sites and blogs – essentially online analogs of conventional political tools like direct mail and newspaper opinion pieces.
"I think the devil is in the details on how you draw that line," said Derek Cressman, regional director for Common Cause, which often advocates on behalf of campaign reform issues. Cressman was among nine experts and stakeholders invited to speak at the hearing.
California is one of the first states to begin looking at online political communication. The Federal Election Commission's first stab at such rules in 2006 led to a largely hands-off approach, requiring disclosure from campaigns and disclaimers on Internet political advertising.
The Anti-Defamation League and several other organizations penned a letter to the U.S. secretary of education this week, urging him to use the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect Jewish students who are harassed on campus because of their religion or ethnic identity.
The March 16 letter references incidents at UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz as evidence that the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights needs to focus on protecting Jewish students from anti-Semitism on campus.
The letter comes as UC Davis police are investigating anti-Semitic incidents at that campus. Just this week, a swastika was found carved into a bulletin board in a residence hall. Five other swastikas have been found at UC Davis in recent weeks.
The letter's authors take aim at the Office of Civil Rights' approach to enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law prohibits racial or ethnic discrimination at institutions that receive federal financial aid.
Specifically, the organizations want the education department's civil rights office to enforce the law to ensure that Jewish students are protected against anti-Semitic harassment "that holds Jewish students responsible for the acts of other Jews, or of Israel."
Facing a political firing squad, Anthem Blue Cross executives have not been shy to place blame on hospitals for driving their infamous 39 percent rate hike.
And as I wrote earlier this week, a famed economist and recent report in Health Affairs echo that point.
But there’s more to the story, California Hospital Association Vice President Jan Emerson told me in an interview yesterday.
“The health plans are under attack so they’re shifting the blame,” Emerson said. “Our position is, let’s look at the underlying reasons.”
Hospitals are treating a flood of uninsured patients who, under federal law, they cannot turn away from their emergency rooms. Emerson noted that last year’s bill for treating uninsured patients was up to $12.2 billion – that’s nearly a 50 percent increase over the 2005 total, about $8.3 billion.
Nationwide, public hospitals saw a 23 percent increase in uninsured patients, at an added cost of about $2.3 million per hospital. Those costs – as well as costs hospitals carry when Medicaid routinely shortchanges them – get passed on to health insurers and...
California is home to 11 of the 100 largest metro areas in the United States and all, save for one, ranked at the bottom of the Brookings Overall Performance Index. Only the San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos metro area showed mediocre performance.
The Brookings Overall Performance Index uses four key indicators to assess the level of recession and recovery in a metro area:
- Percent employment change from peak quarter to fourth quarter 2009.
- Percent point change in unemployment rate from December 2008 to December 2009.
- Percent gross metropolitan product change from peak quarter to fourth quarter 2009.
- Percent change in house price index from fourth quarter 2008 to fouth quarter 2009.
"The MetroMonitor, an interactive barometer of the health of America’s metropolitan economies, looks "beneath the hood" of national economic statistics to portray the diverse metropolitan landscape of recession and recovery across the country," according to the post.
After analyzing the rankings, Brookings concludes that, "Overall, the economic indicators for the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas reinforce the national story of a weak, tentative, and jobless recovery."
Following a civil debate with fellow GOP gubernatorial Steve Poizner on Monday, Republican front-runner Meg Whitman yesterday dropped an expanded manifesto outlining the key policy goals she will no doubt be pressing as her campaign moves forward.
A black-and-white, academic policy paper it is not. The 48-page document is splashed front-to-back with colorful pictures and infographics. At least one of our press corps colleagues described it as a "coffee table book."
The book is clearly geared more toward Main Street voters than Sactosphere policy wonks. But in this age of short attention spans, we've done you one better. Here's a Wordle outlining Whitman's key themes:
Once you get past the self-referential stuff like "Meg" and "California", you start seeing a lot of focus on economic issues: "tax", "economic", "jobs", "business", etc.
Jack Chang at the Sacramento Bee has a good summary of the other new points, including merit raises for state workers.
The General Faculty Association at Humboldt State University has been calling for change for a while now. They lashed out at university President Rollin Richmond with a no-confidence vote last May, citing "a pattern of failed leadership" and asking him to step down.
So association members were none too happy when they saw one of the recommendations in the final report of a university reform committee: Get rid of the General Faculty Association.
"To eliminate [the GFA] goes beyond what’s appropriate," mathematics professor Martin Flashman told the Lumberjack, Humboldt State's student newspaper.
Flashman said the recommendation is an attempt by the administration to decrease faculty power and exact revenge for the association's vote of no-confidence in Richmond.
Richmond created the reform committee – called the Cabinet for Institutional Change – in March 2009 after accreditors raised concerns about the university's operations and an outside consultant recommended forming a panel focused on change, the Times-Standard reported.
In 2008, the United States passed a dubious milestone when researchers at the Pew Center on the States determined that one in every 100 adults in America was in jail or prison.
The report, “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008,” calculated that 2,319,258 adults were behind bars in state and federal lockups. It also estimated the price tag for this mass incarceration: States spent more than $49 billion on corrections in 2007, up a whopping $38 billion from 20 years before.
Now, a new Pew study released today provides a sliver of good news, at least for state prisons.
“For the first time in nearly 40 years, the number of state prisoners in the United States has declined. Survey data … indicate that as of January 1, 2010, there were 1,403,091 persons under the jurisdiction of state prison authorities, 5,739 (0.4 percent) fewer than there were on December 31, 2008. This marks the first year-to-year drop in the state prison population since 1972.”
California’s prison population dropped by 4,257 inmates, the third consecutive yearly decline. The report credits the drop to ongoing reforms to the state parole system.
Presidential candidates do it. So do U.S. House candidates. And officials from practically all California state offices, from the governor on down.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.
But despite no fewer than four efforts to compel them in recent years, U.S. Senate candidates and sitting members still have not required themselves to file their campaign finance reports electronically – the most high-profile holdouts in a years-long fight to modernize campaign disclosure nationwide.
As part of Sunshine Week, organizations like the Center for Responsive Politics are again encouraging voters to call their Senators in support of a bill proposed last year by Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, which would require the Senate to adopt an e-filing requirement.
California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both Democrats, have signed on as co-sponsors.
Whether the bill passes or not, candidates are still required to file their campaign donations publicly. The filings are then entered into a database by the Federal Elections Commission, costing taxpayers thousands of dollars each year.
Facebook's chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, is in the running to be California's next attorney general, and a Justice Department presentation obtained by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation indicates that Facebook is, "often cooperative with emergency requests" from law enforcement agencies.
The troves of data users post on Facebook, as well as the information Facebook collects about those users, such as the IP address they log in from, potentially provide evidence, according to the presentation.
It can, "reveal personal communications, establish motives and personal relationships, provide location information, prove and disprove alibis and establish crime or criminal enterprise."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation obtained the documents "through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case that EFF filed with the help of the UC Berkeley Samuelson Clinic," according to the organization's post.
California politicians lined up to take their shots at Anthem Blue Cross over its plan to boost rate increases by 39 percent in recent weeks.
But a prominent voice (and one who is not running for office) emerged this week questioning whether the pitchfork-pumping is directed at the only culprit of health care cost increases.
Quickly, a recap on politician's positions on Anthemgate: Governor candidate Steve Poizner announced possible fines of millions over the company’s failure to pay medical claims. Governor candidate Jerry Brown made wide-ranging disclosures about an investigation his office is pursuing.
And Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, a candidate for insurance commissioner, held a hearing in which he asked company executives: “Have you no shame?”
But Uwe Reinhardt, something of a rock star among health economists, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the blame for sky-rocketing health care costs does not lie entirely at the...
Amnesty International released its report on maternal mortality in the U.S. last week, calling the situation "scandalous" and "disgraceful." It’s an excellent report, well worth reading. Here are a few highlights:
- Hospitalization related to pregnancy and childbirth costs the U.S. some $86 billion a year; the highest hospitalization costs of any area of medicine.
- Despite this, during 2004 and 2005, 68,433 women nearly died in childbirth in the U.S.
- More than a third of all women who give birth in the U.S. – 1.7 million women each year – experience some type of complication that has an adverse effect on their health.
Amnesty International said: "The USA spends more than any other country on health care, and more on maternal health than any other type of hospital care. Despite this, women in the USA have a higher risk of dying of pregnancy-related complications than those in 40 other countries. For example, the likelihood of a woman dying in childbirth in the USA is five times greater than in Greece, four times greater than in Germany, and three times greater than in Spain."
What happens when university trustees also do business with the university?
Led by reporter Paul Fain, the Chronicle of Higher Education revealed in an investigation this week that one of four private colleges has "financial ties with trustee-affiliated companies."
Trustees bear responsibility for making decisions in the best interest of the university. Because of that spending power and influence, some, like Richard P. Chait, a professor at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, say universities should avoid doing business with trustees.
"It doesn't set the right ethical tones," he told the Chronicle.
The magnitude of the transactions appears to vary widely. In some cases, such as at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, trustees' companies signed multimillion-dollar construction contracts to build new structures on campus. In other cases, such as at Hope College in Michigan, a trustee provided legal services totaling a few thousand dollars.
The Chronicle surveyed 618 private colleges and universities and pored through tax filings to figure out how common it is for trustees to be affiliated with companies with which the college does business.
The story took a close look at one California school, National University:
State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg on Friday urged legislators to ensure the state fulfills its spending commitment to education, in light of a federal decision to delay stimulus funds over accounting questions.
State Sen. Darrell Steinberg
The U.S. Department of Education informed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office earlier this month that no decision will be made on the state's application for an upcoming round of stimulus funding until the concerns raised by school districts and education advocates are addressed.
A coalition of community groups, including Public Advocates and Californians for Justice, complained to federal authorities that the state's financial commitment to public schools didn't comply with the minimum levels required to qualify for the stimulus.They also accused the governor's office of deferring school funding to future years but manipulating numbers to make it appear as if payments to districts were occurring in the present.
The state must respond to the charges by March 26 or risk losing up to $200 million in stimulus...
Budget cuts and furloughs have made it more difficult for the public to quickly access critical government documents, despite laws entitling them to the information, according to a story yesterday in the Sacramento Bee.
The report was written to coincide with Sunshine Week – an annual nationwide effort spearheaded by the American Society of News Editors to promote open government – which began Sunday.
The story outlines several examples of times when California reporters were denied timely access to records, or charged thousands of dollars, which they opted not to pay:
As the new year dawned, the Republican race for governor was a contest between two wealthy former business executives who were paying for their campaigns out of their own deep pockets.
The big campaign contributors were on the sidelines, cheering them on.
In the weeks since then, the candidates, who squared off last night in a debate, have continued to pay their own way: More than 80 percent of the reported donations in the race through the weekend have come from either former eBay CEO Meg Whitman ($39 million) or from Snaptrack Inc. founder-turned state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner ($18.67 million.)
But recently, some GOP donations have begun flowing into the race, and almost all of the money has gone to Whitman, records show.
Since Jan. 1, Whitman has raised $672,000 in donations of $1,000 or more, according to the California Secretary of State. Meanwhile, Poizner managed to raise only $34,400 in big contributions.
The amount Whitman got from donors this year is dwarfed by what Whitman has given herself – she wrote herself a $20 million check on Jan. 19.
But the combination of her enormous wealth and her increasing allure for big donors has to be of concern for Poizner, who had seemed relatively well positioned for a campaign against a billionaire.
Google started lobbying the federal government in 2003 and reported spending $80,000 on its efforts. In 2009, the company reported spending more than $4 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The company reported lobbying on issues such as online advertising, intellectual property and patent reforms, as well as consumer privacy in 2009, according to lobbying disclosure reports filed with the Senate Office of Public Records. It also reported employing former federal employees to advance its interests.
"We established a Washington presence because we felt like it was important to give our users a voice in Washington," Google spokeswoman Mistique Cano told Capital Eye. "Technology can be complicated. We absolutely believe taking the time to help people understand our business is a worthy investment. Technology is only going to become a bigger part of our lives and the economy."
Search through the company's filings online using the Senate Office of Public Records Lobbying Disclosure Database. Select the option to search by "client" and enter Google into the search box so that you get reports filed by Google as well as any lobbying firms they contracted with.
The report by the Center for Responsive Politics also indicated that Palo Alto-based Facebook reported lobbying the federal government for the first time in 2009, and spent $207,000.
Despite predictions that January's Supreme Court ruling would lead to unprecedented corporate spending on elections, lawyers at some of the country's largest businesses told Corporate Counsel magazine that companies are in no hurry to spend more on elections, according to a story that ran Friday.
The magazine talked to lawyers at several large companies, including Microsoft and Kraft Foods, who said the response by companies so far to the ruling has been muted at best.
"Money and politics become something like an arms race," Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith told the magazine. "At the end of the day, all it really does is cost more money."
The article, which we learned about from Rick Hasen's excellent Election Law Blog, came on the same day as a report by the California Fair Political Practices Commission that outlined the state's top 15 highest spending special interest groups.
Six of those groups were corporations – PG&E, Chevron, AT&T, Philip Morris, Southern California Edison and Area Energy LLC – but none spent nearly as much as the state's service worker and teachers' unions, which have often been cited as...
UPDATE: Cal/OSHA also cited UCLA last week for not reporting a 2008 lab accident that seriously injured a researcher – about a year before the lab fire that killed Sangji, the LA Times reports.
The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health will fine UCLA an additional $67,720 and issue more citations in relation to lab safety in the aftermath of a tragic lab fire that killed a young researcher last year.
In a Cal/OSHA newsletter, the agency said the university continually failed to train laboratory employees on the hazards of working with particularly hazardous substances:
As of the Division’s inspection on August 25, 2009, the employer had not provided training to laboratory employees regarding the hazards and required additional protection when working with particularly hazardous substances, including select carcinogens, reproductive toxins, and chemicals with a high degree of acute toxicity, including, but not limited to, methyl chloride, benzene, formaldehyde, ethidium bromide and osmium tetroxide.
In a news release last week, UCLA officials said they would fight the fines and citations. Kevin Reed, UCLA vice chancellor for legal affairs, said in the statement that Cal/OSHA's findings "do not reflect current operations and procedures, especially as they pertain to training."
Last January, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation unveiled an overhaul of parole and rehabilitation programs to satisfy a court order to drastically reduce the inmate population.
Prison officials said the changes would prevent thousands of convicts from returning to prison, in part by “streamlining” rehabilitation programs “that are proven to reduce recidivism."
“We know what works,” CDCR Secretary Matt Cate told reporters following the announcement of the reforms.
The plan has stoked controversy for granting early release to a small number of “low risk” inmates and freeing them from traditional parole supervision. While more inmates are likely to be released in the short-term, there’s now growing concern about whether they’ll have the tools to stay out of prison.
A report released today (PDF) by the California Rehabilitation Oversight Board casts doubt on whether the department can reduce inmate recidivism “after laying off approximately 800 teachers, severely restricting the time spent in class, eliminating many vocational programs and cutting in-prison substance abuse programming to 90 days.”
The report also sheds light on another perennial problem in the state prison system: The CDCR has no department-wide system to assess the effectiveness of educational and other rehabilitation programs and thus no data on whether specific...
