A group in
Colorado wants to qualify a ballot initiative to provide more money for
education, but it doesn’t have institutional support – and money – from labor
or business. What to do?

The group,
Great Education Colorado, has come up with an intriguing answer that
Californians might want to watch closely: use social networking to build one’s
own network of signature gatherers.

Great
Education Colorado is circulating, via the Internet and social networks, a kit
that offers detailed instructions on how to download, distribute, and gather
signatures on petitions. While petitions must be signed on paper in Colorado
(as in California), the network provides a way to reach people.

ConsumerWatchdog.org, formerly known as the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, is on the warpath. It is fighting legislation sponsored by Los Angeles area Democratic Assemblymembers Mike Feuer and Mike Gatto that would require proponents of ballot measures to include a provision to raise the revenue to pay for them. And it’s pushing hard for the inclusion of “intervenor fees” in AB 52, a bill also authored by Assemblyman Feuer, that would regulate health plan rate increases.

Last week, an article in POLITiCO, the Beltway-based national political publication, revealed why.

According to POLITICO, ConsumerWatchdog.org “stands to gain millions” from passage of the rate regulation bill. The newspaper’s investigation revealed that the organization has raked in more than $7 million in “intervenor compensation” from 2002-2010.

It was television that grabbed the viewer by the throat and wouldn’t let go.

Here is how the Los Angeles Times described it:

The dramatic, 30-second ad depicts a woman cowering in her bedroom as she desperately dials 911 and tells an emergency operator that someone has broken into her home. Holding her terrified little daughter, she pleads: “We’re alone here. Please, send someone.”

As a gloved intruder makes his way up the stairs to her bedroom, she becomes increasingly frantic. “You don’t understand,” she tells the operator. “He’s here right now.”

The commercial ends with the woman screaming, “No! No! No!” The sound of a heart beating is heard and then a dial tone.

Last week the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the chronic overcrowding of California’s prisons was tantamount to “cruel and unusual punishment”. As such, the state is mandated by the court to release between 36,000 and 46,000 offenders from its custody. The 20 year narration of protest, admonishment, and now judicial ruling by the Federal courts should come as little surprise to those Californians who were paying attention. It should be a wakeup call to those that were not.

Choosing which prisoner to release from their sentence is a job for Solomon but Governor Brown and the prison board will have to do. And unless there is a new prison growing in the desert, inmates will soon be coming to a neighborhood near you.

Re-entry is a term used to describe the return of the formerly incarcerated back into society as a whole. The journey for the criminal is demanding, uncertain and dangerous. There is small hope for success when the recidivism rate in the state is above 70%. Families, to whom close to 90% return to, are ill equipped to adjust to the return of their loved one, if they are even loved at all. Communities that are already tense will amplify to near panic unless some guidance arrives before the court appointed time limit for prisoner release arrives.

I read with interest John
Seiler’s column last week in CalWatchDog.org in which he described the
plans of the California Federation of Teachers to raise taxes – many taxes:
higher income taxes on the rich; oil severance taxes; business property taxes;
taxes on services. Seiler was quoting from an article written by Marty
Hittelman, president of the CFT.

What particularly caught my attention was Hittelman’s
comment from the magazine article that passing Proposition 25 for a majority
vote budget last year was only a first step. The goal is to lower the two-thirds
vote for taxes.

I debated Hittelman a number of times on Prop 25 when it was
on the ballot. I pointed out Prop 25’s flaws, that it opened up the possibility
to new taxes and that the ultimate goal was to get at the two-thirds vote on
taxes. Hittelman denied this.

This post was co-authored by Maria Elena Durazo, Executive Secretary Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

Nothing is more important right now than creating good jobs and putting people back to work. But doing so is difficult in a time when leaders get caught up in heated rhetoric and sidetracked by intense partisanship. We lose sight of what Americans need most: JOBS. If you sharpen your focus on job creation, you can see—despite the red versus blue debates—a shining example of hope and collaboration that promises to generate over a million jobs and build our country’s infrastructure. It’s a plan called America Fast Forward (AFF).

AFF calls for increasing and leveraging the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) to support the private sector in creating jobs now by building projects on a faster timeline.

Just this week, the Democratic and Republican Senate leaders in public works and transportation outlined legislation to reauthorize our federal transportation programs that allow local municipalities to strategically leverage funds with federal dollars to immediately generate jobs.

On June 7th, 2010 I
blogged about the California Commission on Disability Access (CCDA) and SB 1608,
noting how CALA felt that little or nothing was happening since the Commission
was created back in the fall of 2008 by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Well, I wish I could
report to you that the Commission is meeting regularly and that ADA lawsuits
against small businesses have vanished and there is peace in the valley. Sadly,
that is not the case. Nearly three years have passed since SB 1608 was signed
on September 28th, 2008 and little or nothing has been done.

As I write, the CCDA
has yet to even hire an Executive Officer. They had offered the position to an
individual, but it did not work out. So they had to go back to the drawing
board, but should be announcing something shortly. So at least after nearly
three years the Commission will have its own staff.  Since 2008, it has
had to use the Building Standards Commission staff.

I found myself observing Memorial Day at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania yesterday, the site of the decisive battle of the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln months later in his Gettysburg Address outlined the “New Birth of Freedom” secured by the soldiers of that battle — a freedom that has been continuously defended by America’s soldiers and sailors that we honored and remembered yesterday.

Gettysburg has one of the oldest, continuous Memorial Day parades.

Below are a few quick phone/camera shots from yesterday.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision ordering California to reduce its prison population by 30,000 over the next two years has sent shockwaves through the Capitol as legislators and the Brown Administration struggle with how the state will comply.

Some are hoping that the ruling, and the attention it is getting, will give new momentum to Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to extend about $11 billion in temporary tax increases that are expiring this year. Brown wants to use some of that money to reimburse counties for taking control of inmates who have short sentences or have been returned to prison for violating the conditions of their parole.

Voters, the thinking goes, will be more likely to approve the tax hikes if they think one of the consequences of not doing so will be the release of dangerous felons to the streets.

Setting aside the question of whether such releases really need to happen, is this really an issue that can drive voter sentiment?

Maybe. But it depends on how it is framed.