Now here is something that could erode some of the widespread support for capital punishment. And it has nothing to do with the paltry turnout of anti-death penalty protesters at San Quentin Prison tonight, which ran counter to the forecasts of many of my colleagues just a few months ago.
The execution of Mario Morales, convicted for his exceptionally brutal rape/murder of a teenage girl 25 years ago, is postponed until 7:30 PM Tuesday night because two anesthesiologists under court order to be on hand to ensure the inmate suffered no pain during his execution declined to carry out their roles. The execution is now scheduled to be carried out with one chemical rather than the usual three, a barbiturate that takes much longer but reportedly does not cause any pain. This latest execution is turning into a comedy of errors. A tragicomedy, really, as the victim’s family once again waits for what it views as justice. And the murderer himself is denied the surety of closure.
Why are anesthesiologists involved and why are they balking? Well, to stave off any suggestion of “cruel and unusual punishment,” a judge ordered that anesthetics be administered. But the two anesthesiologists on hand balked at the notion that they might have to intervene mid-execution if the convicted murderer was feeling pain. Because, presumably, and the information is sketchy, they would then be participating in the execution. Actually, if such is the concern, that is very much open to interpretation. The tragicomedy of errors continues. When something is in danger of becoming a joke, support tends to erode.
Here’s the trouble with the Reiner Initiative, director Rob Reiner’s bid on the June California ballot to institute universal preschool. Actually, where to begin? Let’s start with an excellent and troubling story in today’s L.A. Times, by the paper’s shrewd Capitol and political reporter, Dan Morain. In it, he reveals something that looks more than a little like a Huey Long contraption; namely, the use of massive amounts of public money to fund campaign-related activities.
Rob Reiner is the eminent Hollywood filmmaker, the director of Sleepless In Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, The American President (starring Michael Douglas, a co-founder of the LA Weekly, and Annette Bening, a personal friend), and Primary Colors. A good guy and committed liberal, son of the legendary Carl Reiner of TV comedy and Ocean’s Eleven fame, best known as Archie Bunker’s “Meathead” son-in-law on the classic TV series, All In The Family. In 1998, he got a statewide initiative passed to raise the cigarette tax by 50 cents a pack to fund early childhood development programs. Then he got himself appointed head of the commission overseeing the fund, which amounts to $4 billion so far.
Some of what follows was previously known. What Morain and the Times added in terms of value, and it is a great deal, is the sheer breadth and magnitude of it all. It is breathtaking.
Out of that $4 billion total, according to the Times, the Reiner commission tossed nearly a quarter-billion dollars worth of advertising and PR contracts to firms that worked on Reiner’s campaign. Some of Reiner’s consultants went on the state payroll personally to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And out of that total mentioned above, $23 million went into advertising for “Preschool For All,” one of the biggest governmental ad buys in California history, from November to mid-January. In January, Reiner’s new initiative, calling for a tax on the rich to fund universal preschool, not so coincidentally called “Preschool For All,” qualified for the June ballot.
Now to the initiative itself. It is a classic good/bad idea. Good in the sense that preschool programs are a good idea. Just as after school programs, the cause celebre of another celebrity who wanted to be governor, one Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger, are a good idea. But there are many good ideas. Universal preschool is being presented as the latest in a long line of “silver bullet” ideas to solve the education crisis. New math, whole language, phonics, class size reduction, some are program-oriented, others are process-oriented. The problem is that there is no silver bullet. The solutions are more prosaic, involving recruitment and retention of teachers, training and retraining of teachers, good curriculum, good textbooks, good standards intelligently adhered to. No silver bullets.
The Reiner initiative also would bring a lot of strictures to what is, after all, a matter of helping small children learn to work and play well with others and learn the basics of literacy and numeracy along the way. Does someone need a bachelor’s degree to do that? Of course not. Under the Reiner Initiative, it would be required. For those older people who are wonderful with kids but aren’t going to be going back to college any time soon, forget it. And so on with other topdown requirements.
The other big problem with the Reiner Initiative, and this is not an exhaustive compendium by any means, is that it looks to a volatile pot of money — revenue from high-income taxpayers — that might better be assigned to more pressing needs. Such as, for example, the education of children already in school. Or to the state’s burgeoning crisis in health care. Or to any of a myriad of other needs. It is a classic example of ballot box budgeting. And, despite its great surface appeal, I am told private polling indicates it can be defeated.
Righthearted. Wrongheaded.
We all have things we think we know, but actually don’t. Not infrequently, I think I know how to get somewhere I’ve been before and set off blithely there only to miss the mark and end up driving around muttering “it’s around here somewhere.” Similarly, on this Presidents’ Day, there is the story of how Gary Hart came to end his 1988 presidential campaign. That would be, in this case, the wrong story. Which I’ve heard a few times in recent weeks on the campaign trail, repeated by otherwise very knowledgeable journalists. And repeated in this Sacramento Bee column earlier this month.
It’s one of the most persistent canards out there. I’ve written about it; more to the point, CNN’s Bill Schneider did a piece correcting it some years back. Yet it persists. Because it’s something we think we know. And because it puts just enough conflated fact together with a comforting myth to make a satisfying whole.
The story goes, and it’s perfectly encapsulated in that column linked to above, that Hart, the former U.S. senator from Colorado and then undisputed frontrunner for the presidency of the United States, who has a doctorate from Oxford, unaccountably decided to deal with rumors of womanizing by challenging the press to follow him around. The press, not in the interest of salaciousness but in the best spirit of enterprise journalism, thereupon took him up on that challenge and, through dint of investigative reporting, found him with former Miss South Carolina Donna Rice (a Phi Beta Kappa, let it be noted), and drove the arrogant politician from the race. Leaving us, as it happens, with, um, George Bush I. And then after the one-term failure of the first Bush presidency, Bill Clinton, who in retrospect, with all due respect to the former president, makes Hart look like a choirboy.
However, that is not what happened. What really happened is that the Miami Herald — which was not investigating Hart — received a persistent series of phone tips about Hart’s schedule and his purported dalliance with the lissome Ms. Rice. Finally, after being tipped about Rice’s schedule and upon being insistently told that she would be on a flight to Washington to meet the presidential candidate, a Miami Herald reporter hustled himself onto her flight. But after landing in Washington, lost the blonde beauty queen in the airport.
After this setback, he decided to regroup by staking out Hart’s townhouse. And finally struck some of the pay dirt the newspaper’s insistent tipster had promised. Hart and Rice materialized and went into the townhouse. A whole crew of reporters hustled up to join the stakeout. Unfortunately, the stakeout had large holes in it and Rice might have left without their knowing. Nevertheless, they clearly had something telling and juicy and splashy headlines ensued.
Two days after the stakeout began, as this story spread, the New York Times Sunday Magazine published a generally glowing cover story on presidential frontrunner Hart, written by the paper’s then chief political writer E.J. Dionne. (The former student of CNN’s Bill Schneider, mentioned above as a debunker of this story we think we know.) In that story, Hart, exasperated for a moment by Dionne’s returning to questions of dalliances with women not his wife in the midst of all the weighty talk they were sharing, challenged Dionne to follow him around. Which he did not.
The Donna Rice incident is not the reason Hart fatefully withdrew from the race. The real reason Hart withdrew ultimately led the Washington Post’s chief political reporter to quit journalism in disgust. But that’s a story for another time.
So will this dust-up over a tiny potential increase in the gas tax to fund alternative fuel research to fight climate change shoot down the idea? It’s too soon to tell for sure, although betting on politicians being extraordinarily cautious about anything that smacks of a tax increase for most Californians in an election year is never a bad bet. However, there is a bigger issue coming down the pike that will not be stopped by a flood of e-mails from conservative Republicans and a newspaper story coming out while Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying to tamp down the rebellion on his right heading into the very contentious California Republican Party convention next weekend in Silicon Valley. That potentially Next Big Thing comes in the form of an oil extraction tax initiative backed by Hollywood movie producer Steve Bing and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
But first, more backstory on the Schwarzenegger climate action team report and the potential gas tax hike. One of the real energy experts, who is on the leftward end of the spectrum and not part of the Arnold circle, writes in to note that “the origin of the proposal was the California Energy Commission, Integrated Energy Policy Report, put together under the chairmanship of Joe Desmond.” Desmond is a controversial Arnold appointee assumed by many to be just another of the Chamber of Commerce types around the former action superstar.
Indeed, there is the Climate Action Report, December draft version, prominently featured on the Energy Commission web site. With one of the key points: “A Public Goods Charge for Transportation that funds key strategies to reduce climate change emissions and to reduce dependence on petroleum. Overdependence on petroleum fosters undesirable geopolitical, economic, energy, and environmental consequences.”
What, you may ask, is a “public goods charge?” It is, informs the expert, a potential charge on petroleum fuels “analogous to the charge currently collected from electricity and natural gas customers.” The surcharge on electricity funds renewable energy, energy efficiency, and research programs. The surcharge on natural gas funds energy efficiency and research programs. The charge amounts to a few percent of each customer’s bill.
Let’s assume that this public goods charge, which would amount to a tiny gas tax increase in the minds of most Californians, dies aborning, at least for now. That leaves the field clear for something much more threatening to some elements of the business community, the initiative pushed by Steve Bing and Vinod Khosla. Bing, who put up $4 million last year (contrary to news reports at the time, including mine, fronting the money as a loan to be paid back from the politicians who benefit) in defeating Schwarzenegger’s reapportionment initiative, has already contributed $1 million to qualify a new initiative for the November ballot. Khosla, a partner in the Silicon Valley powerhouse venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers, has contributed $1.15 million for the same purpose. With disdain for oil companies, now socking in record profits, running high, campaign experts agree that it’s hard to see how this well-funded venture does not succeed in making the November ballot. A highly-placed Hollywood source says Bing is talking with his many high-level contacts in the entertainment industry to line up big-time support for the fall campaign.
If passed by the voters, it would enact an oil severance tax on producers in California. The Golden State is the nation’s third largest oil producer, but unlike Texas and Alaska has no oil extraction tax. This tax, 4.5 percent on oil well revenue, would be smaller than the other two states’ but would produce several hundred million dollars a year for research and development work on alternative fuels. This will undoubtedly be a major political and policy issue for California this year and a major focus here.
The San Francisco Chronicle had a dramatic front page story yesterday about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger having decided to cut greenhouse gas emissions in California with a variety of moves, including a new tax on gasoline. Shortly after the story was published, gubernatorial press secretary Margita Thompson issued a statement saying that what the story referred to is merely an advisory report that the governor has not yet received and that while he will review the report when he gets it and consider his moves he “has not proposed nor does he support an increase to the gas tax.” There is a tremendous amount of backstory, but for now let’s begin with where this comes from and the question of the gas tax.
The report in question is actually not new. There are two versions. The first is from December. It is a draft document. There is a final advisory report coming but it is not yet available.
The proposed gas tax is euphemistically referred to as a petroleum use charge. Its proceeds would be used to fund research into new technologies to avert greenhouse emissions. Politically, it has been a major bone of contention for conservative Republicans for weeks. Newsletter publisher and former California Republican Assembly head Steve Frank has been making it a particular crusade.
He and other conservative Republicans told me that the gas tax increase could well be $2.50 a gallon. In other words, roughly doubling the price of gasoline. Which, although Schwarzenegger is a European, seemed most unlikely as the governor knows far better than to bring European gasoline prices to California. Other sources closer to Arnold said what was under discussion was no more than a few cents a gallon. The Chronicle story, citing some in the vicinity of Schwarzenegger, at the California Environmental Protection Agency, had the gas tax increase at less than a penny a gallon. Frankly, with gas prices yo-yoing as they have been and likely to rise substantially in the future, I doubt that most Californians would care about a tiny increase to fight climate change, something most Californians believe is happening.
Coming a week before a California Republican Party convention, in the midst of Team Schwarzenegger’s strenuous efforts to tamp down a party rebellion against him, sources in the Arnold circle believe the story is political mischief to put him on the spot. Which it did, momentarily. The Chronicle story strongly suggests that the new plan might be released next week on the eve of the Republican convention. Well, no. As strange as some of the moves emanating from the former action superstar have seemed, it was highly unlikely he would choose the run-up to this controversial party convention as the moment to call for a gas tax increase of any size.
Which leaves the question of where the governor is on global warming. He continues to support LA Assemblywoman Fran Pavley’s landmark law to sharply curtail tailpipe emission of greenhouse gases and has vowed to oppose efforts by the Bush Administration and automakers to overturn the law. As for what he will do with his climate action team’s report, first I suppose he will have to read it when it’s presented.
In the meantime, chalk up a win for the Republican right wing. For now, at least.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger again denied clemency to a convicted murderer, who is now scheduled to die in San Quentin Prison at 12:01 AM Tuesday. In 1981, the inmate raped and murdered a 17-year old girl, the details of which crime are too appalling and infuriating for me to recount. But aside from the usual activity by defense counsel, there has been virtually no hue and cry from what many said just a few months ago would be a powerful movement against the death penalty in California. Compared to the drama around the execution of Tookie Williams, the convicted multiple murderer and self-proclaimed co-founder of the bloody Crips gang, there’s been barely a word.
Many political analysts, including prominent journalists, predicted that legislation by an LA area state assemblyman, West Hollywood’s Paul Koretz, to create a death penalty moratorium would be a major issue in the governor’s race. Death penalty opponents say that the punishment is no deterrent. Perhaps not to those who have not been convicted. But being dead is certainly a deterrent to a criminal committing more crimes.
I felt the move would be squashed by Democratic legislative leaders. Actually, the Democratic leadership in the Assembly moved so quickly to do so that the bill was sidelined just three days later. But hard political reality need not sideline a heartfelt political movement. What happened to the anti-death penalty movement? Does it not exist if Hollywood celebrities have not befriended the convicted?
California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez joined with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a former Democratic Assembly speaker, today at a Metro Rail line in Los Angeles to open a new front in the struggle over the shape and fate of California’s big prospective infrastructure bonds package. Nunez, who last week called for much more of a focus on education in planning for the Big Bang Bond, and Villaraigosa want to change the shape of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s package to include a big emphasis on mass transit. Nunez also introduced an additional wrinkle, calling for planning “from the bottom up, not the top down.” By which he means he wants to go to local agencies around the state to compile an assessment of needs, rather than rely on the California Transportation Commission to determine the strategy. “If we have to wait for the November ballot, that is all right.”
As fate would have it, Villaraigosa wants money for transit projects, including a $4.8 billion Wilshire Blvd. subway from the Miracle Mile to Santa Monica. “Los Angeles is the most congested city with the dirtiest air in the country,” noted the mayor in arguing that mass transit was key to a solution.
I mentioned to both leaders that, while public transit could help solve both problems Villaraigosa cited, California has a long-standing car culture. And that L.A., to the extent it was planned, was planned around the automobile. How could they get people to utilize these expensive projects?
Neither pretended it would be easy. Villaraigosa, widely regarded as a rising national political star, didn’t rest on his vaunted charisma but instead launched into a wonky rat-a-tat-tat of programs for high occupancy vehicles on the horribly crowded 405 freeway, investing in public transit, getting Congressman Henry Waxman to have federal hindrances to the Wilshire subway removed, synchronizing light rail, stopping construction during rush hours, and better managing the 150 busiest intersections in the city. All of them intriguing ideas, some of which by easing traffic might make it easier for people to stay in their cars.
Nunez, noting that, “Obviously, there is a long way to go changing the culture of transportation in California,” despite substantial levels of ridership, called for continued investment to “transform the culture.” He said he wanted to be clear that he wasn’t calling for public transit investment to supplant spending on the roads and highways emphasized in Schwarzenegger’s plan. In fact, he said, it might be best to “increase the bond” to do both. Which would not make it easier to get Republican support.
In an amusing moment, the speaker referred to another questioner as “Bill,” then apologized saying “I’m still thinking about a comment Bill made on his blog that I didn’t like.” Nunez was referring to a nationally distributed column last week in which I raised the question of his great loyalty to the powerful teachers union, complete with a link to the famous “His master’s voice” logo. Hey, it could be worse. He could be the politician linked to recordings of famous actors screaming “Show me the money!”
All this talk about money emanating from Schwarzworld, culminating in the private talk to the California Business Roundtable by Republican Party operative and ex-Arnold communications director Rob Stutzman about a supposed Schwarzenegger fundraising goal of $120 million, has got the Alliance for a Better California (ABC) riled up again. Since that’s the big labor coalition that gunned down the Terminator last November in his “Year of Reform” special election, that is not a good thing. For him, that is.
I heard from very good Democratic sources that the group, which not only unleashed a devastating barrage of television advertising against the former action superstar and a series of public rallies and media events but also dogged him at all his public appearances with protesters who frequently outnumbered the crowds coming to see the governor, is again plotting to confound Arnold as he attempts to effect his comeback.
Included in the mix: “A revival of the ‘Donor of the Day’ program,” says a top Democrat, speaking of the practice of identifying one Arnold contributor per day who arguably has business interests before the state government. “And a return of the stalkers, I mean, shadowers,” referring to the bands of protesters who made it impossible for the movie star used to connecting with his public to operate in public. So I just asked Gale Kaufman, chief strategist for the labor alliance and for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, about this.
“We may just have something up our sleeves,” Kaufman said, with what I’ve come to recognize as an amused but ominous tone. “He just doesn’t get it, they just don’t get it,” she said, referring to the governor and his operatives. “They were doing pretty well, okay, better than before. But I guess they just like to talk about money. Well, it’s a turn-off.”
There are two fundamental problems with having a goal of raising $120 million, more than twice under this year’s contribution limits than what he raised last year without contribution limits. The first problem is it is very unlikely to happen. The second problem is that it highlights another current problem, that of the governor having his chief of staff and other top administration officials making themselves accessible to donors and being on the campaign payroll. With such an enormous goal, connect dot A to dot B and it looks like everything is for sale.
All this talk about money emanating from Schwarzworld, culminating in the private talk to the California Business Roundtable by Republican Party operative and ex-Arnold communications director Rob Stutzman about a supposed Schwarzenegger fundraising goal of $120 million, has got the Alliance for a Better California (ABC) riled up again. Since that’s the big labor coalition that gunned down the Terminator last November in his “Year of Reform” special election, that is not a good thing. For him, that is.
I heard from very good Democratic sources that the group, which not only unleashed a devastating barrage of television advertising against the former action superstar and a series of public rallies and media events but also dogged him at all his public appearances with protesters who frequently outnumbered the crowds coming to see the governor, is again plotting to confound Arnold as he attempts to effect his comeback.
Included in the mix: “A revival of the ‘Donor of the Day’ program,” says a top Democrat, speaking of the practice of identifying one Arnold contributor per day who arguably has business interests before the state government. “And a return of the stalkers, I mean, shadowers,” referring to the bands of protesters who made it impossible for the movie star used to connecting with his public to operate in public. So I just asked Gale Kaufman, chief strategist for the labor alliance and for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, about this.
“We may just have something up our sleeves,” Kaufman said, with what I’ve come to recognize as an amused but ominous tone. “He just doesn’t get it, they just don’t get it,” she said, referring to the governor and his operatives. “They were doing pretty well, okay, better than before. But I guess they just like to talk about money. Well, it’s a turn-off.”
There are two fundamental problems with having a goal of raising $120 million, more than twice under this year’s contribution limits than what he raised last year without contribution limits. The first problem is it is very unlikely to happen. The second problem is that it highlights another current problem, that of the governor having his chief of staff and other top administration officials making themselves accessible to donors and being on the campaign payroll. With such an enormous goal, connect dot A to dot B and it looks like everything is for sale.
With all the talk about making money, having money, raising money, spending money, showing money in the Show-Me-The-Money administration of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, there is one thing that is not being talked about.
Where is the money?
These meetings with fundraisers and big donors that the governor and his controversial new chief of staff Susan Kennedy are having are getting them plenty of publicity — all of it bad — but are coming up short in one big way. Not much money.
I looked at the figures filed with the California Secretary of State’s office on fundraising since the first of the year. It shows little more than $400,000 raised in the last month and a half by the governor’s re-election campaign. Not many evidently huge mortgages are going to get paid with that. Not if any, you know, campaigning has to be done.
Now it is true that only contributions of $5,000 and up are required to be reported between now and the next major filing in a month or so. But this is an operation geared to the big checks. Despite his global megafame, Arnold’s people never bothered to set up an Internet fundraising operation so the “people’s governor” could be funded by the people. Instead he’s relied heavily on six-figure checks and up. So this is a good gauge of how things are going.
But his campaign can’t take the six-figure checks this year, because this race, unlike his recall campaign and initiative campaigns of last year and the year before, is being run under contributions limits of $22,300 per individual and entity. (There’s a fair amount of caterwauling about this in state political circles. Gee, guys, try doing a campaign for that lightweight office called the Presidency of the United States then. Which has $1,000 limits.)
The actual facts make the bold talk about raising $120 million in yesterday’s L.A. Times report of a private talk by a Schwarzenegger political operative to the Business Roundtable seem absurd. After all, the former action superstar busted his butt last year — much of it when he was more popular and all of it when he didn’t have to worry about contribution limits — to raise $50 million. And in the end, $8 million of that came from him. Which I’m sure made him very happy.
I’d heard the $120 million figure bandied about a few times, also privately, although not in a talk to loose-lipped business executives — in the last few weeks. It amused me. Of course, as I put it, Schwarzenegger could raise $120 million for his campaign. If he sold his gigantic house in Sun Valley, Idaho, that is. He could also solve much of California’s homelessness problem — a momentary future focus of the administration last summer — by making it a state facility. Neither of which is going to happen.
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