Tue 25 Dec 2007
And here’s to a totally BLUE 2008!
Wed 12 Dec 2007
BREAKING NEWS: Judge: State can regulate greenhouse gases from cars
Posted by ericbauman under UncategorizedNo Comments
BREAKING NEWS!
Federal Judge Rules: State can regulate greenhouse gases from cars
By Dale Kasler and Jim Downing – Sacramento Bee
Wednesday, December 12, 2007, 11 AM
California won a major legal battle Wednesday in its fight to implement a global-warming law that would lead to steep increases in motor vehicle fuel economy.
A federal judge in Fresno tossed out a lawsuit filed by the world’s major automakers that tried to overturn AB 1493, a law that requires a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2016.
The automakers had said the law was unconstitutional because it mandated a big jump in mileage standards - a matter that is under the authority of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They further argued that the California standards would raise vehicle prices by as much as $6,000 per vhicle, leading to fewer sales and tens of thousands of auto-plant layoffs.
But U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii rejected those claims, ruling that the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and arresting climate change must go forward.
The judge’s decision doesn’t mean the law automatically takes effect. California still needs a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to implement AB 1493.
http://www.sacbee.com/749/story/562573.html
Thu 6 Dec 2007
Action Alert: We Need YOU to Help Elect Warren Furutani to State Assembly on December 11!
Posted by clarklee under UncategorizedNo Comments
Democratic Action Alert!
Warren Furutani for Assembly
Assembly District 55 Special Election - Tuesday, December 11, 2007
GET OUT THE VOTE
Schedule of Events
Saturday December 8th, 9:30am
Rally, Precinct Walk, & BBQ
Laborers Hall
3919 PARAMOUNT BLVD
LAKEWOOD, CA 90712
Sign up for Weekend Activities!
Sunday December 9th, 12 pm-5 pm
Monday, December 10th, 10 am-2 pm & 2 pm-6 pm
ELECTION DAY!
Tuesday December 11th
8 am-12 pm, 2-4 pm, 4-8 pm
ELECTION NIGHT PARTY
Laborers Hall
3919 Paramount Blvd
Lakewood, CA 90712
8 pm
Please call 562.421.5517 to sign up to volunteer. Call today!
Locations will be confirmed when you sign up!
For more information on GOTV and on Warren Furutani, visit www.warrenfurutani.org
Tue 30 Oct 2007
LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PARTY
NOVEMBER 6, 2007 ENDORSED CANDIDATES
ELECTION RESULTS
* Won
CITY ELECTIONS
City of Baldwin Park
*City Council Ricardo Pacheco - Won
City Council Susan Rubio - Lost
City of Bell Gardens
*City Council Pedro Aceituno - Won
*City Council Jennifer Rodriguez - Won
City of Diamond Bar
City Council Fran Perez - Lost
City of El Monte
*Mayor Ernest G. “Ernie” Gutierrez - Won
City Council Norma Macias - Lost
*City Council Patricia Wallach - Won
City of Hawthorne
City Council Alicia Brewster - Lost
City of Hermosa Beach
*City Council Michael DiVirgilio - Won
City Council Jeff Duclos - Lost
City of La Puente
*City Council Dan Holloway - Won
*City Council Nadia Alicia Mendoza - Won
City of Lynwood
+City Council Jim Morton - Pending
*City Council Maria Quinonez - Won
City of Montebello
*City Council Kathy Salazar - Won
City Council Giuseppe “Joe” Veneziano - Lost
*City Treasurer Norma Miranda Lopez - Won
City of West Covina
*City Council Roger Hernandez - Won
City Council Fredrick “Fred” Sykes - Lost
COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT ELECTIONS
Compton Community College District Board of Trustees
*Area 3 Trustee Andres Ramos - Won
Mt. San Antonio College District Board of Trustees
*Trustee Manuel Baca - Won
Pasadena Area Community College District Board of Trustees
Area 4 Trustee Charles Kenneth Nelson - Lost
LIBRARY DISTRICT ELECTION
Altadena Library District Board of Trustees
*Trustee David Datz - Won
Trustee Mark Allen Mariscal - Lost
WATER DISTRICT ELECTIONS
Crescenta Valley Water District
*Board of Directors Judy Binch Tejeda - Won
La Puente Valley County Water District
*Board of Directors Yvonne A. Garcia - Won
Walnut Valley Water District
Division 1 Director Rex Y. Yee - Lost
SCHOOL DISTRICT ELECTIONS
Azusa Unified School District
*Governing Board Burke Hamilton - Won
Bassett Unified School District
*Governing Board Laura L. Santos - Won
Beverly Hills Unified School District
*Governing Board Steve Fenton - Won
*Governing Board Myra Lurie - Won
+Governing Board Alissa Roston - Pending
Charter Oak Unified School District
*Governing Board Joseph M. Probst - Won
Compton Unified School District
*Governing Board Micah Ali - Won
Governing Board Giovanna A. Brasfield - Lost
Culver City Unified School District
*Governing Board Steven M. Gourley - Won
Governing Board Roger Maxwell - Lost
El Monte Union High School District
Governing Board Frank Ogaz - Lost
*Governing Board Salvador Ramirez - Won
Garvey School District
Governing Board Felipe Agredano - Lost
*Governing Board Henry Lo - Won
Hacienda La Puente Unified School District
*Governing Board Jay Chen - Won
Lennox School District
*Governing Board Angela Fajardo - Won
Lynwood Unified School District
*Governing Board Oscar Espinoza - Won
*Governing Board Jose Luis Solache - Won
Montebello Unified School District
*Governing Board Marcella Calderon - Won
*Governing Board David Vela - Won
Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District
Governing Board Richard LeGaspi - Lost
*Governing Board Lorraine Neal - Won
San Gabriel Unified School District
*Governing Board Scott Svonkin - Won
South Pasadena Unified School District
Governing Board Steve Taw - Lost
Valle Lindo School District
*Governing Board Ruth Gonzales - Won
Thu 25 Oct 2007
Los Angeles County Democratic Party
Democratic Issues Forum 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
9:30 AM – 4:30 PM
LA Trade Technical College
400 W. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles
Building H – Cafeteria
Lunch Provided – Park in Building F ( 21st St. ) or Olive Street Structure
RSVP 213-382-4111
Understanding Key Democratic Issues
and the Message to Win
· All About Healthcare and How to Reform the System
- Anthony Wright, Executive Director – Health Access California
- Eric C. Bauman, RN, Chair – LACDP, former Deputy Insurance Com
· Slowing Global Climate Change and Protecting our Environment
- David Allgood, Southern California Director – CLCV
· Plain Old Working Folks: Labor, Jobs, and the Economy
- Kent Wong, Director – UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education
- John A. Pérez, Political Director – UFCW Local 324, Member – DNC
· Communication Strategies to Win with the Media and the Masses
- Linda Breakstone, former Political Editor – KCBS/KCAL-TV
- Mario Solis Marich, Radio Host – AM 1170, Nuestra Voice
- Rick Jacobs, Chair – Courage Campaign, Chair – Brave New Films
- Teri Holoman, The Holoman Group, former CDP Political Directoric Party
Fri 12 Oct 2007
The Los Angeles County Democratic Party
Proudly Congratulates Vice President Al Gore
on being honored with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize
Gore, U.N. panel win Peace Prize
The former vice president shares the Nobel prize with the climate change committee
By Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times
Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo today for their campaigns against global warming. "His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change," the citation said. "He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."
Sun 23 Sep 2007
REPUBLICANS TRY TO STEAL WHITE HOUSE… AGAIN!
The Republican Party is in serious trouble, so they are back to their old tricks again – trying to steal the White House. Realizing that most Americans have had enough of the corrupt and inept rule of George Bush and his Republican cronies in the Congress, they know the only way they can keep control of the White House is by dirty-dealing.
They’ve cooked up yet another scheme - this time they want to hijack California’s ballot boxes, cheat the electoral process and steal the White House, again.
Please CLICK HERE TO CONTRIBUTE and help us spread the word and protect California’s voice in choosing the next president.
In California and 47 other states, Electoral College votes are awarded “winner-take-all.” The candidate with the most votes gets the Electoral College votes.
California is the Electoral College mother lode, with 55 of the 270 votes required to win the White House, more than 20% of the total. Because California is a blue state, it offsets Republican dominance across the South and parts of the Midwest and gives Democrats a chance to win the White House.
Without California’s 55 Electoral votes, it would be virtually impossible for any Democrat to win the presidency, making it essential for us to carry California and making our state a high priority target for Republican shenanigans.
So what do the Republicans do? Try to change the rules in mid-game!
The California Republican Party is trying to qualify an initiative for the June ballot that would alter the way California awards its Electoral votes to a congressional district basis, ensuring themselves 20 more Electoral votes – equal to the state of Ohio – ensuring four more years of disastrous Republican rule in the White House.
This cannot be allowed to happen!! If you want healthcare for every American, livable wages for working people, clean air and water, aggressive action to combat global climate change, a judicial system that protects all of our rights, and an end to the war, we must win back the White House next year.
We must defeat this hostile threat to our votes and the future of our government. The LACDP needs your support to spread the word and counter this Republican dirty trick. Please click here to contribute to YOUR Democratic Party.
Together, we can stop the Republicans’ latest fraud against the American people and prevent them from stealing the White House – again!
The media has come out in force against this elephant-sized partisan plot. Even the conservative Orange County Register said “… it is nakedly partisan and profoundly subversive of our constitutional system.” Click here to see a list of over 14 newspaper editorials against the initiative.
The California Democratic Party has started “fraudbusters,” to beat this plot.
Click here to learn more about
fraudbusters or to sign up.
Had enough Republican corruption and incompetence?
Help us turn the White House into a “Blue House” next November…
but first we must defeat the Republican plot to Steal Our State!
Fri 7 Sep 2007
Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean delivered the following Democratic precepts at the National Baptist Convention on September 6, 2007:
Governor Dean said, “We know what moral issues are about . . . As Democrats we believe:
1. That no child should go to bed hungry.
2. As Democrats we believe that it is a moral issue that we no longer be the last industrialized country on the face of the Earth that doesn’t have health care for every single person. And we have acted on that in Congress by giving every child under 18 health insurance.
3. That war should be a last resort only after diplomacy has been exhausted.
4. That we should properly equip our troops before we send them to war.
5. That we should properly take care of our veterans when they come home.
6. That everyone deserves equal rights under the law.
7. That we should be good stewards of the Earth.
8. That hardworking people should earn a living wage and be able to take care of their families.
9. That we shouldn’t pass debt onto our children and our grandchildren.
10. That faith should not be used to divide people.
11. That you and I have more in common than we have differences.
Editors note: Nothing more need be said.
Tue 4 Sep 2007
Health Reform and the Year of Magical Thinking
Posted by ericbauman under California PoliticsNo Comments
Health Reform and the Year of Magical Thinking
by Senator Sheila James Kuehl
The Year of Magical Thinking is the title of a memoir by Joan Didion detailing her state of denial, inexplicable behaviors and, finally, coming to grips with, the death of her husband. It’s also an apt description of the Governor’s 2007 approach to reforming our broken healthcare system, with the glaring difference that he still hasn’t come to grips with the truth. (After all, if a complicated movie plot could be resolved in less than two hours, why not fix healthcare in California in nine months?)
Beginning in January, the Governor ordered his health advisors to sketch the outlines of a plan that would magically “cover†all Californians by simply requiring them to buy health insurance. To this moment, he has refused to negotiate any of his major points with the Legislature. The language for his plan was finally drafted five months later, and shown, under wraps, to a few, select people. Not one legislator agreed with it, and no one would carry the bill as legislation.
To fill the void raised by the Governor’s magical “we must do something this year†drumbeat, the Democratic leaders began crafting their own reform plan. To date, however, the Governor and the Legislative leadership have remained oceans apart on the broad policy strokes of health care while public support for the current insurance-company controlled system has plummeted and support for the reforms contained in SB 840, the Medicare-like fix for California, has grown.
Now, with less than two weeks remaining in the first half of the two-year legislative session, there is still no “something†on the table and the Governor, like a Barnum and Bailey’s ring leader, continues to announce that he will, assuredly, pull a rabbit out of a black hat. Actually, there is no way of knowing if the result would really be a rabbit; it could just as easily be an albatross.
The Governor has further limited discussion by announcing that he would veto both of the legislative proposals that have actually been introduced as real bills. SB 840, by far the most carefully crafted, transparent and fully vetted bill, will remain in the Legislature until next year, since sending it down to him for a veto would end any consideration of single payer until 2009. The individual mandate provisions in the Governor’s pronouncement are being emphatically rejected by virtually all stakeholders representing the people who would be forced to pay uncapped premiums. The percentages to be paid by employers and individuals, hospitals and doctors, people in a “pool†and those outside, those above differing percentages of the poverty scale and those below, are so far apart in the Governor’s pronouncements and the Speaker’s bill, you could drive trucks through the gaps. The Governor’s lynchpin financial mechanism of a provider tax remains submerged under the very murky water of a 2/3 vote. What convoluted compromise might be devised in a last-minute attempt is anyone’s guess.
Nonetheless, we are told that, unless we agree to pass a yet-to-be hastily drafted bill that incidentally may be the biggest reform proposal ever attempted in health care, and pass it in two weeks, thus completely bypassing the entire political process and any semblance of open public input, we’ve completely failed and health reform is doomed forever. Please.
The prospect of legislative staff, sitting behind closed doors, hastily crafting a 100-page health reform “compromiseâ€, to be pushed through the legislature with little or no public input over the course of the next 14 days, is deeply irresponsible. Frankly, given the example of the energy deregulation bill, we ought to know better.
Moreover, we lose nothing by taking advantage of the fact that the sessions of the California legislature are two year sessions. Many of our major accomplishments, most recently, AB 32, the bill related to greenhouse gas, took more than one year to achieve. Next year’s Presidential campaigns will ensure that health reform stays as the top of the agenda. More importantly, the issue of health reform will continue to dominate because the people need it and want it. What they want, and deserve, however, is responsible health reform, not a new debacle that benefits the health insurance companies the way the electricity bill benefited Enron.
Finally, we must not forget the reason that we are in this crisis to begin with. Health care premiums changed by insurance companies continue to grow 3-4 times faster than wages. A solution is needed that pays attention to adequate funding, affordability, cost controls and quality.
Even if the Legislature should pass a last minute convoluted experiment in health reform, there will still be a need to continue the work to enact a fully vetted, Medicare-like single payer system that replaces the insurance companies with a plan for all Californians, allows each person to choose their own providers, and protects affordability, comprehensive coverage and quality. Such a solution is the only sensible and tested way to achieve universal health care responsibly. Whatever happens in the next two weeks, the movement for single payer universal health care is continuing to grow, and SB 840 will continue as its focal point, the only legislation that establishes the kind of truly universal, modern and affordable health care system the people of California need and deserve.
For more information, please go to Senator Kuehl’s website at www.sen.ca.gov/kuehl
Tue 4 Sep 2007
GOVERNOR, VOTE US OUT OF IRAQ!
LACDP urges every citizen to call or write the Governor immediately to ask that he sign Senate Bill 924 – the Vote Us Out bill. The measure would make California the first state in the nation to vote on whether President Bush should immediately withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq. We need every Californian who’s sick and tired of waiting for George Bush to bring our troops home to urge the Governor to sign Vote Us Out today! In his own letter to the Governor, Senator Perata reminded him of his public statements in opposition to the war – and his longstanding commitment to put important questions to a vote of the people. “Your statements urging an end to the war garnered national attention,” Perata wrote. “Regrettably, the voices of everyday Californians – mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters of soldiers serving in Iraq – aren’t being heard.” Vote Us Out gives us a voice in bringing this war to an end. Please, call the Governor now – and urge your friends and relatives to join this effort! P.S. We know that George Bush and his allies will pressure the Governor to veto Vote Us Out – that’s why the Governor has to hear the other side – from Californians who want an end to this war! P.P.S. Here’s how to contact the Governor: By Phone: (916) 445-2841 By regular mail: Please call or write now! Vote Us Out of Iraq!
By Fax: (916) 445-4633
To email the Governor online, go to: http://gov.ca.gov/interact
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814