The meetings between new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown
and President George W. Bush find the “special relationship”
between America and its chief ally still quite special.
It comes in a poll by American Research Group, which in my experience generally shows Hillary running better than other polls. Here are the numbers: Obama 31%, Clinton 31%, John Edwards 14%, Bill Richardson 7%. Rudy Giuliani has a very slight lead on the Republican side over Mitt Romney.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET UPDATE: STATE HAS STIFFED PROGRAMS AND VENDORS OVER A BILLION BUCKS SO FAR. THAT WILL TRIPLE IN AUGUST. California state Controller John Chiang said today that the absence of the budget made it impossible for him to legally pay some $1.1 billion in July to nursing homes, special education programs, community colleges, cancer detection programs and the businesses that provide various services to state government. He projects that he will have to withhold another $2.1 billion in August should the budget stall continue.
** MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI. Italian director Michelangelo Antonio has passed away in Rome at age 94. Antonioni was a pioneer of modernist film, specializing in long takes and cinematic meditations on existential themes of perception and alienation in films such as Blowup, The Passenger, and Red Desert. In my favorite, Blowup, a photographer in swinging ’60s London thinks he may have inadvertently found evidence of a murder. So he keeps blowing up his images to see how clearly he can discern the reality of it. Not well at all. In The Passenger, Jack Nicholson is a TV journalist in Africa, trying to run down a story he doesn’t understand about a war he doesn’t understand, an observer in his own life. Frustrated, he switches identities with a dead man. These are not films for the jumpcut generation.
Why is oil so high? That’s a good question. I’ve heard a variety of explanations, not at all consistent, and they don’t quite add up. This is not something that lends itself to instant analysis.
** PARTY LEADER REBUKES ARNOLD-CARPING RIGHT-WING BLOG. A fellow member of the California Republican Party’s executive board has sent a letter rebuking Flash Report proprietor and Southern California party vice chairman Jon Fleischman for several of his statements about Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Jon-
You are quoted in the July 30, 2007 Contra Costa Times:” With the party base, I think there’s a bit of chagrin that we elected a fiscal conservative who got into office and completely changed”. But former Senate Republican leader Jim Bruilte, in a July 26, 2007 article in the Riverside Press-Enterprise entitled “Arnold a big spender? Hardly?” came to the opposite conclusion. He reported that the annual rate of state spending increases under Governor Schwarzenegger is “almost identical to former Gov, Pete Wilson’s frugal track record and much better than Govs. Davis, Deukmejian and Brown-or even Reagan-were able to achieve!”
And as far as “chagrin” in the party base, the article that quoted you stated quite the contrary. “He… (The Governor)…remains hugely popular among registered Republicans-a recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California pegged his approval rating within the party at 75 percent…” In crafting the headline, the editor must have read only your quote rather the rest of the article when he made its head the totally inaccurate and misleading: “Governor’s GOP popularity in free fall.”
The “chagrin” may be yours, but the overwhelming majority of California Republicans must agree with conservative columnist Robert Novak that the Governor is the California Republican Party’s “greatest asset.”
We need to hear more cheering than sniping from our own benches.
Contrary to some expectations, British troops will not be withdrawn from Iraq until Iraqi authorities are deemed capable of handling their own security. But a British pull-back from combat patrols, started by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, will continue. This may become the position of a critical mass of Republicans, as well, this fall.
It was probably a stretch for some to assume that a politician who vacations at Cape Cod and is a friend of Alan Greenspan — that would be Brown — would share the anti-Americanism of so many of Blair’s critics.
Meanwhile, Gordon Brown is pushing hard for action on Darfur from the US and the UN, and he may get it.
** ARNOLD’S EVEN BIGGER HIT!The Simpsons Movie, featuring a character named “President Arnold Schwarzenegger,” is an even bigger hit than I thought. It didn’t gross the estimated $71.9 million in its opening weekend at the domestic box office. It grossed $74 million. Fantastic.
In its sixth weekend of release, the vaunted Michael Moore film on US health care woes, Sicko, grossed $1.2 million. Its total domestic box office to date is $21.5 million.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET UPDATE: MOVING GOALPOSTS. I’m told that state Senate Republicans — who have held up California’s budget following its bipartisan passage in the Assembly — have provided yet another new wrinkle after a day of negotiations with Democrats and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. They now want tax cuts. Again. The objections have been vague — secret cuts was the line for quite awhile — and changeable for weeks.
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 79th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
Arnold Schwarzenegger turns 60 today. Here in this NWN video he declares
victory in his second landslide election as governor of California.
** GAVIN NEWSOM WALTZ TO RE-ELECTION IN SAN FRANCISCO. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom now looks to have no serious opposition in his run for a second term this year. Former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez, who ran a close race against Newsom in 2005, has decided not to challenge the youthful incumbent, according to sources close to Newsom.
Newsom, who went through a somewhat operatic divorce earlier in his term with prosecutor-turned-broadcaster Kimberly Guilfoyle, was rocked earlier this year by the revelation of an illicit affair, with a City Hall staffer married to his campaign manager, no less. He then revealed he had a drinking issue for which he would receive counselling. His enemies, who are mostly to his left — this won’t make much sense to people outside San Francisco, since Newsom is quite liberal — jumped all over him and the sensationalist media and blogosphere had a field day. It was embarrassing, and Newsom publicly copped to his weaknesses, but his job approval rating remained over 70% and candidate after potential candidate opted not to challenge the charismatic businessman-turned-pol.
“I don’t want to get in the middle of that whole spat Hillary and Senator Obama had,” said the former president, “but there’s more than one way to practice diplomacy.”
Some polling I’ve seen today indicates that Obama got the best of the exchange with Hillary, which grew out of a small moment in last week’s CNN YouTube debate. I’ll write more about this later.
Walsh, who made Stanford (!) a top team, was a brilliant man, a witty man, a classy man, a tough man, and a gentleman. Fascinated by all forms of conflict, not the least of them politics, he invented strategies that revolutionized the game of football. A moderate Republican when I met him, he also backed Democrats such as Gary Hart and Dianne Feinstein. Walsh was a master in identifying talent and a leader in promoting African American coaches, and long employed one of my UC Berkeley professors, fiery sociologist Harry Edwards, as a team consultant. For quite awhile, his acolytes coached a quarter of the teams in the National Football League. Today nearly half the teams in the NFL are headed by coaches that were part of the Walsh coaching network.
The 49er teams built and coached by Bill Walsh won three Super Bowls. Two others built by Walsh also won Super Bowls. The foundation that Walsh created made the 49ers a regular play-off team for two decades.
I remember Walsh saying that, in terms of spotting talent and developing that talent, if he saw that a player could do something once, he knew that the player, if properly coached, could perform in a similar way on a regular basis. Among many such things, Walsh developed two quarterbacks that no one else viewed as special, Joe Montana and Steve Young, into Hall of Famers. He drafted the greatest defensive back in the history of the NFL — All-Pro at every position in the secondary — a fellow from USC by the name of Ronnie Lott. And he found a little-known college receiver with less than Olympic speed at an even lesser known school in Mississippi and was patient with him through a rookie season of dropsies. His name is Jerry Rice.
While Walsh was also a great general manager, the teams that he personally coached played with force and finesse, and were virtually never out of any game, no matter the score. He will be missed.
** FRED THOMPSON’S INITIAL FUNDRAISING UNDERWHELMING. I’m hearing that Fred Thompson will report raising about $3 million during his June testing-the-waters phase. Which is apparently still continuing. This is much less than what most had expected, given the seeming great enthusiasm for the former Tennessee senator and Law & Order star in conservative circles around the country, and less than the $5 million reported internal goal.
Thompson has a fundraiser tonight in Washington. Intriguingly, John McCain has counter-programmed a Washington fundraiser.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET UPDATE: NOT MUCH TO REPORT. The hyperpartisans of the right continue to issue declarations on blogs devoid of action in the form of any comments. Democrats counter in more conventional ways, but rather desultorily.
Meanwhile, I’m told that 2006 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Phil Angelides has this morning sent another e-mail to his list, urging calls to the offices of Democratic state senators to oppose the budget passed on a bipartisan vote in the Assembly. This continues to seem an odd move on his part, since the current leverage is hardly on the left.
I suppose last month’s attacks on London and Glasgow just as Brown took over the premiership from Blair weren’t such a good idea after all.
** NO TERMINATOR 4 ANY TIME SOON. For those of you who’ve been waiting for the next installment in the Terminator movie franchise — and you know who you are — don’t hold your breaths. Remember that announcement a few months ago of new producers buying the rights from the old producers and announcing plans to move forward quickly on a fourth movie? It even occasioned some breathless reportage — based in part, as it turned out, from spurious reports issued by a fake entertainment website — that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be involved with the project, with both an acting role and an executive producer credit. Well, that wasn’t right, but a lot of journalist-type people were taken in.
In any event, the whole thing is hung up because one studio long ago during the bankruptcy proceedings of the original Terminator studio, Orion Pictures, bought the rights to distribute a fourth Terminator picture. And that’s throwing plans by the current producer/studio combo into a serious loop.
While the suits work all that out, Fox TV will have a spin-off TV series this coming season called The Sarah Connor Chronicles. It’s about the doings of the mother of the future leader of the war against the machines and that young son himself in between the second and third movies in the series. And, no, Schwarzenegger doesn’t seem to be involved with that project, either.
** NOW HERE’S A BIRTHDAY PRESENT. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger turns 60 years old today. (Actually, since he was born in Austria, he was already 60 hours before this was published.)
What’s he going to do? Go to Disneyland? No, he’ll be holding private meetings around the stalled California state budget. A fairly tough budget passed the state Assembly on a bipartisan vote, but is held up in the state Senate for reasons discussed at length below. California is one of only three states in the country that requires a two-thirds vote to pass its budget, and with 25 Democrats in the Senate voting for it, the plan needs two Republican votes. Right now it needs two. Actually, it needs one, unofficially.
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 78th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
This week holds a big win for the activist left of the Democratic Party over the professional centrists. A California-based “netroots” outfit founded early in this decade is drawing the presidential candidates that one of the best-known groups in American politics, credited by many for launching the first Clinton administration, can’t get.
The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) is meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. Once the center of the national party, or so it seemed, at least, it’s being shunned by the Democratic presidential candidates. None are attending its convention.
Instead, they will all be in Chicago later this week for the Year Kos convention of lefty bloggers and activists. The ever combative Daily Kos super-blog, founded by thirtysomething Berkeley-based Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, is joined by other online and activist groups in a confab that will boast all the Democratic presidential candidates showing up to make pitches. The Daily Kos was founded in the aftermath of the Florida recount of 2000 and in the run-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003, providing a refuge, sounding board, and organizing base for activists outraged by the Age of Bush.
Some interesting things are happening with the Republicans this week, and we’ll get to them, but nothing as significant as the displacement of the once fabled DLC by a seemingly rag-tag group of angry bloggers.
Now, Kos himself, which is what he likes to be called, is somewhat more pragmatic than his fiery and not infrequently intemperate screeds would have one believe. Although his actual political experience dates back no further than the 2004 Howard Dean for President campaign, a fiery and notably self-righteous venture in itself, Kos has a pragmatic streak. He was a consultant earlier in this cycle to former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, one of the more moderate national Democrats around. And he has noted the virtues of centrist Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both to the not infrequently angry dismay of some of the most fervent hyperpartisans who inhabit his political echo chambers.
It’s an angry crowd. In fact, the hyperpartisan blogosphere of the left is the new media answer to the hyperpartisan talk radio milieu of the right.
And this is primary season, so candidates go where the most fervent are to be found. That’s not in Nashville with the DLC. Not this year, anyway. Actually, not ever, if you understand the history of things. None other than Bill Clinton chaired the DLC in the run-up to his own first presidential campaign in 1992. But there was much more to his campaign.
The DLC was founded in 1985 by Washington-based lobbyists, consultants, and politicians in the wake of Walter Mondale’s landslide defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan. To turn the party away from the ossified liberalism represented by the former vice president. In fact, quite a few of the founding members were Mondale supporters. They knew that change was afoot and wanted to get in front of it.
Notably, Gary Hart, a future-oriented Democrat who didn’t think labor had all the answers and championed high tech entrepreneurship and the environment, won 26 states against Mondale in the primaries. The DLC was as much an insider effort to counter Hart, who did not join it, as it was a rebuke to Mondale. In the event, Hart’s front-running presidential candidacy for 1988 was brought down by a sex scandal that looks quaint today, and non-DLCer Michael Dukakis won the nomination.
Next time around, Clinton used his DLC cred as part, but only part, of his political mix. As journalist Sidney Blumenthal, later a key Clinton advisor, noted at the time, Clinton was part of “The Conversation” about a new Democratic politics of which the DLC – through its ties to older businesses and Washington insiders – was an important but not overwhelming part. The DLC had only limited state affiliates, and never a popular movement …
On the eve of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 60th birthday, NWN is
pleased to present what all can agree is the definitive video.
I’m noticing a fair amount of dust in the air, perhaps from China, as Steve Westly pointed out a few weeks ago, and decided to rinse off the car this morning. This occasioned the need to dry it, and air drying, of course, is my preference. But while out on the freeway, I was only able to get the car up to 115 before running into traffic.
This congestion is really an intolerable situation. Undoubtedly due to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s failure to get moving on California’s infrastructure investment deficit in 2005. Or to state Senate Republicans holding up the current budget. Or, yes, to Jerry Brown’s failure as governor to build 20-lane freeways. If we had those freeways, I could have done a proper job of drying off the car at the more appropriate 130 or 140. And it would actually save fuel and be better for the environment. Since the drying goes so much faster than when one is driving 65 or 70 …
Well, enough seriousness for today. Governor Schwarzenegger, whose 60th birthday is tomorrow — and aren’t we sure that he’s thrilled about that? — has another hit on his hands.
No, I’m not referring to his accolades on fighting climate change. Or to the Senate Republican budget stall or the federal judges threatening to release prison inmates or pending referenda against his casino compacts or the threat to California’s voting systems or … No, wait, those aren’t pluses.
Schwarzenegger, incidentally, will work this week on resolving the state budget impasse. Talk about a birthday present. But it will undoubtedly make him feel quite young.
Oh, yes, the big hit. Here it is:
** ANOTHER HIT FOR ARNOLD: THE SIMPSONS MOVIE. Though he appears not as a performer but as a character — more specifically, as “President Arnold Schwarzenegger” — the former action superstar is a current comedy superstar. The Simpsons Movie had a much bigger opening than most Hollywood experts expected, grossing a whopping $71.9 million at the domestic box office from Friday through today. That’s an exhibitors’ estimate, of course. The final numbers will be out tomorrow.
As you can see in the video clip in yesterday’s NWN, Schwarzenegger is played for humor in the movie, not as an action hero. But it’s all in good fun.
Tomorrow, incidentally, I’ll tell you the backstory behind the portrayal of Schwarzenegger. After all, it’s his birthday tomorrow.
Meanwhile, British forces in southern Iraq, centered in and around the key city of Basra, are redeploying. The remaining troops in the middle of Basra will now be quartered not in the city center, but at an air base on the outskirts of Basra. As the move is made, the total number of British troops in Iraq will again diminish, from 5,500 to 5,000. British military sources say the army is getting worn down, and want to focus on securing Afghanistan.
Arkalo Abelsen, Greeland’s environmental minister, told the senators that when he was a child, the sea ice closed Disco Bay for six months. Now it lasts only a few weeks.
Schwarzenegger will have a lot to talk about at the United Nations in New York on September 24th.
President Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a tough call in The Simpsons Movie.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET STALL. The California budget stall continues. But it’s a remarkably uneventful event as these events go. The budget, which passed the Assembly on a bipartisan vote, is stalled in the Senate. Though Democrats have big majorities in both houses of the Legislature, California is one of only three states in the country requiring a two-thirds vote to pass a budget.
Earlier in the week, Senate Democratic leader Don Perata called the Republican budget blockaders, who want another $840 million in cuts, “terrorists.” Republican Senator Dave Cox responded by brandishing a picture of Osama bin Laden. Ho-hum.
Even the so-called movement supporting the conservative senators seems quite anemic. Daily newspapers have called the right-wing web site Flash Report the locus of opposition to the Asssembly-passed budget, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger supports. But while issuing various declarations throughout the day yesterday, the site garnered only one comment all day long. And that was from a Democrat taking issue with its line.
After weeks, if not months, of prodding, the conservatives revealed what they want. Not that they all actually agree, mind you. They want to cut $300 million in welfare payments to people who aren’t living up to federal workfare standards. An interesting point, since most states insist on those requirements in exchange for the payments. But they also want to cut $120 million in voter-sanctioned drug treatment programs. They want to eliminate 6000 currently vacant state jobs. Are those jobs all waste? Or are they merely currently unfilled? They also want to change state environmental law to prevent climate change from being considered in local planning, a stance which is wildly at odds with the views of their own voters. They want to chop another $100 million out of the just whacked public transit budget. And so forth.
Meanwhile, $800 million worth of transportation projects have been postponed because a state budget hasn’t been passed. There’s something not very professional about all this. The conservatives, while they have some points, have not provided a strong governmental efficiency critique, as witnessed by the slapdash manner in which their cuts finally emerged. Nor are they stimulating a movement on their behalf. In fact, Californians are paying little attention.
** CALIFORNIA’S NON-SECURE VOTING SYSTEM?How hackable is the California vote? That’s the question raised by a new report from California Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s office. The report came out late yesterday, just a week before decisions need to be made abou the February 5th California presidential primary, so I obviously haven’t read it. It seems alarming enough. I’m not a big conspiracy theorist about elections — though Max Cleland’s loss in a Georgia Senate race a few years back seemed odd to me — but computer systems are only as secure as we make them. I must say this is a pretty major thing to dump on a Friday afternoon one week before decision time.
As you might guess, Schwarzenegger is not happy about this, so he — actually, Attorney General Jerry Brown — is going to court to block the move. Said Brown in his writ: “The state is addressing the issue as evidenced by the landmark prison reform package, AB900, which was signed into law a mere two months ago, in May 2007.”
Schwarzenegger cobbled together a bipartisan $8 billion package to expand the system’s capacity, relieving overcrowding, adopting short-term measures to deal with the crisis by transferring prisoners into other facilities, pushing rehabilitation programs and parole policies to cut the sky-high recidivism rate. Here’s his radio address today on the matter.
The rival interests should be able to qualify the referenda for the February California primary ballot. They have 60 days to gather less than 450,000 signatures each, and all the money needed to do so.
In many respects, “Things Can Only Get Better.” But is that true of
the California budget stall?
** BLAIR REPORT. After his initial five-day trip to the Middle East as the new envoy of the Mideast Quartet (US, Russia, European Union, UN), during which he met with top leaders in Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, Tony Blair reports that he will have offices secured in Jerusalem and return to the region for two weeks in September before meeting again with the Quartet’s foreign ministers. After that, he should be in the region for a week each month.
Here are the numbers: Clinton 44%, Giuliani 50%. Clinton 47%, Thompson 45%. Obama 52%, Giuliani 43%. Obama 56%, Thompson 36%.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET UPDATE: Nothing to report. Other than delayed transportation projects.
The California Transportation Commission has delayed $800 million in projects around the state until the Legislature passes a budget.
** SCHWARZENEGGER TO ADDRESS THE UNITED NATIONS ON CLIMATE CHANGE. Earlier this morning on his webcast from Echelon Corp. in San Jose, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger accepted the personal invitation of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to address a special session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The session, which will focus on climate change, which the UN chief describes as his top priority, will take place on September 24th. The gathering is in preparation for a beginning round of negotiations in December in Bali, Indonesia for a post-Kyoto set of accords on reining in the greenhouse effect.
Ban and Schwarzenegger made brief speeches and entertained some questions from the press — getting entangled at the beginning by the eternal question of Taiwan’s lack of membership in the UN — after touring Echelon. The company makes sensors that monitor energy usage, enabling automatic switch-offs when the power is not needed and allowing users to shift power usage to off-peak times when possible.
Schwarzenegger spoke enthusiastically of the world entering a new era, one that is no longer “carbon-based” but “carbon-free,” of moving “from the Industrial Age to the GreenTech Age.” For his part, Ban, a one-time California exchange student who was foreign minister of South Korea before the US, Britain, and others helped engineer his election as secretary-general, praised Schwarzenegger for his “visionary leadership.” He called the emerging moves of California in combating the greenhouse effect a model for the world. At which point it became fairly obvious he would be inviting Schwarzenegger to play a starring role at the UN meeting in September.
Schwarzenegger was asked by one reporter if he doesn’t emphasize technology too much as a fix for the greenhouse effect, which he has a tendency to do, with people “still driving around in their SUVs,” which didn’t seem to please the former action superstar all that much. The governor allowed as how it is certainly not simply a question of technology, but of conservation as well. And that the two go hand in hand, as is the case of the company they had just toured.
“I don’t think you dislike the SUV,” said Schwarzenegger. “You dislike the engine that is in that SUV.” He went on to say that the key is to change engines and fuels, noting that a California-based company, Tesla Motors, is producing a very desirable all-electric sports car and that “Detroit is still on its butt.”
After questions from the press, Ban asked Schwarzenegger to appear at the UN meeting in September. Not surprisingly, the former Mr. Universe agreed, saying he is “honored.”
** BROWN MOVING ON GREENHOUSE GASES.Very interesting article in today’s Sacramento Bee on how it’s turning out to be Attorney General and former Governor Jerry Brown who is having the first actual impact on greenhouse gas emissions in California. That’s because the state’s two big new laws on climate change haven’t gone into effect yet.
The former Oakland mayor and two-time runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination is using a lawsuit against sprawling San Bernardino County and possible suits against other localities to start getting climate change included in the planning process. Key Brown quote: “We are looking for cooperative agreements with local government to get moving now on reducing greenhouse gas emissions where practical.”
The attorney generalship is an extraordinarily powerful office, the second most powerful in California. Brown got a good look at it as a boy when his father, the late Governor Pat Brown, was attorney general for eight years in the 1950s.
** NEW NATIONAL POLL. CLINTONS LEADS AMONG DEMOCRATS, GIULIANI AND THOMPSON TIED AMONG REPUBLICANS. A new Diageo/The Hotline poll has Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama, 39% to 30% nationally among Democrats, with John Edwards a distant third at 11%. On the Republican side, it’s Rudy Giuliani 20%, Fred Thompson 19%, John McCain 17%, and Mitt Romney 8%.
** SCHWARZENEGGER WEBCAST THIS MORNING WITH U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger meets with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this morning in Silicon Valley. The two will tour Echelon Corporation, a San Jose company making sensor equipment that may help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the Third World and elsewhere. A live webcast of their press conference takes place at 10:30 AM. Perhaps the secretary-general can mediate the California budget impasse.
Hey, I found it fairly inane, too. But let’s not pass up the chance for another exciting debate. Hmm. On second thought …
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 75th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
** ACTIVITY ON THE LEADING CALIFORNIA OPPOSITION BLOGS. California’s daily newspapers have identified two prominent right-wing blogs as the centers of opposition to the bipartisan Assembly budget backed by Governor Arnold Schwarznegger. They are the Flash Report, owned by Southern California GOP vice chairman Jon Fleischman. And California Republic, owned by state Senator and former candidate for governor, lieutenant governor, and state controller, Tom McClintock.
As of 9:15 PM Pacific time, as the budget battle “rages,” here is the total number of comments on each of these sites for today. Flash Report: 4. California Republic: 1.
Meanwhile, new British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, meeting with Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff yesterday in Islamabad, signaled that the special relationship does not entail doing whatever the US might want. Miliband indicated that British forces would fight to prevent Al Qaeda’s resurgence along the Afghan-Pakistan border, but would not be part of any potential US strike/reconnaissance in force into the Waziristan sector of Pakistan to hunt down and eradicate Al Qaeda leadership.
Miliband, incidentally, was the environment minister under Blair who approved the naming by the UK of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of the great environmental heroes of the planet. Schwarzenegger will meet tomorrow in Silicon Valley with new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The two leaders will tour a high tech firm making sensors that enable more efficient use of energy.
For his part, Tony Blair — the man at the center of all those relationships — has had a busy week touring the Middle East as the new peace envoy. He appears to be having some success getting the militant Hamas faction of the Palestinians brought into the negotiating mix with regard to the perpetual Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET UPDATE: NO PUFF OF WHITE SMOKE. Not much happened today. No vote on the state Senate Republicans’ cobbled together cuts. No emergence of two Republican votes in the Senate for the bipartisan Assembly version of the budget. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had a number of private meetings, then came forth to call for the passage of the budget and for all to move on, with deeper structural fiscal matters to be dealt with in a more contemplative manner. And that was that.
Russia is very unhappy with various Bush Administration policies, such as the missile shield based in Eastern Europe and the NATO envelopment of the Russian Federation.
** WHAT’S CALIFORNIA’S REPUBLICAN PARTY CHAIRMAN UP TO? Ron Nehring, whose party is reeling with a roughly million dollar operating deficit since he took over at the state convention in Sacramento this past February, is in Israel now, in the midst of a 10-day tour, as reported in yesterday morning’s column.
“I look forward to using the experiences from this trip,” says Greer, “to enhance our understanding of the issues that are important to the Jewish community in Florida and across the nation and to further the Republican Party of Florida’s outreach to this community.”
“This is a classic junket,” explains a top Republican strategist. “Ron Nehring is a professional junketeer.”
** FRED THOMPSON CAMPAIGN IN DISARRAY ALREADY? The slow-starting Fred Thompson for President campaign, having lost its campaign manager early in the week, was just the subject of a Fox News report by correspondent Carl Cameron. He reported what was alluded to here earlier. That Thompson’s wife, Jeri Kuhn Thompson, is running the show. And that that, according to Fox, is proving to be an impediment to the campaign getting going down the runway towards take-off.
The average temperature in Reno from June through August last year was 75.6 degrees, almost 7 degrees above the 30-year average. The gap was the biggest measured nationally. Las Vegas’ average temperature last summer was 3.6 degrees above the 30-year average from 1971-2000.
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 74th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
Former Governor Jerry Brown campaigning last year during his landslide election as California attorney general in this NWN video. Some Republican conservatives are trying to leverage passage of the state budget to block his move to have greenhouse gas emissions addressed in local planning processes.
As the struggle over the state budget continues, one stumbling block is a move by some state Senate Republicans to block the ability of Jerry Brown to file lawsuits on greenhouse gas emissions at the local level.
Such lawsuits, brought by environmental groups and Attorney General Brown, the former governor of California, would under the California Environmental Quality Act get counties to consider greenhouse gas emissions in their planning processes in furtherance of the state’s landmark climate change law. Although Brown has sent warning letters to several localities, he has filed only one such lawsuit, against San Bernardino County.
Meanwhile, state Senate Republicans — all of whom opposed the very popular climate change law authored by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and signed by Schwarzenegger last year — are on a very different track from voters, including Republican voters.
Led in part by termed-out state Senator Tom McClintock, the California right-wing’s hero who has nonetheless lost all four of his races for statewide office, some Republicans are saying that Brown wants to use the law to stop development in California. That he would block highway construction under last year’s big infrastructure bonds package. That he would stop dams from being built, because they require cement and the production of cement leads to the emission of greenhouse gases. That Brown is responsible for all the state’s woes for shutting down highway construction during his governorship.
Familiar arguments from the campaign last year, as it happens. And rejected in that campaign, as Brown won the attorney generalship by the biggest landslide in any contested race, including Arnold Schwarzenegger’s devastation of the hapless Democrat, Phil Angelides.
I spoke with the attorney general the other day. He insists that he is not against highway construction. Nor is Brown against building water storage facilities. “Of course we need more highway construction with all these people here now,” he said. “We need more water storage to capture the early run-off with global warming. The question is where.”
“I was the governor who got a Peripheral Canal bill through the Legislature, so don’t tell me I’m against water. This stuff McClintock is saying is ridiculous. And there were more miles of highway built in my administration than during the 16 years of George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson. There are a lot of rhetorical builders out there. But we are going to have to address growth in this state.”
His goal, he notes, is to make sure that counties account for greenhouse gas emissions in their planning processes. Within reason, it’s up to them to come up with a plan to do so. In fact, he held a settlement meeting over the weekend with San Bernardino county supervisors.
As the debate got more heated yesterday, Brown hit back hard, saying: “It is an outrage that a small group of Republican senators would gut California’s Environmental Quality Act as the price of their voting—a month late—on this year’s budget. Their proposal would profoundly undercut the positive efforts of cities and counties to reduce greenhouse gases and fight global warming.
“It is the constitutional responsibility of the Attorney General to enforce all the laws of California, including our ground breaking environmental laws. California has a proud history as being the unquestioned leader in the fight to control global warming. We should not let a few Republican state senators—all of whom opposed the Global Warming Solutions Act—turn back the clock with this misguided and retrograde maneuver. It represents global warming denial at its worst.”
Brown, of course, won the biggest landslide victory of any contested statewide race last year, defeating Republican Chuck Poochigian, a former state senator and avowed opponent of efforts to combat the greenhouse effect, 57% to 38%.
Brown sued the state’s largest county in terms of size, San Bernardino County, to force it to address greenhouse gas emissions in planning decisions, and has sent letters urging such consideration to Sacramento, Santa Clara, San Diego, Kern, Fresno, and Yuba counties. He’s also urged Contra Costa County, home of the large Chevron oil refinery, to deal with emissions linked to a future expansion.
Some Senate Republicans, backed by oil industry and development allies who’ve also contacted Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office, want a delay of any such efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions until after the California Air Resources Board has finished developing and promulgating the specifics of the state’s plan, which is as much as five years away.
But Brown argues that local governments can and should begin now to address the impact of development decisions that they are making now. “These projects can add tremendously to the build-up of greenhouse gases. All I’m saying is that they need to address it and begin coming up with creative solutions. All that carbon is going to be in the atmosphere for a long time.”
Marin and Orange counties, for example, have begun to address greenhouse gas emissions in their planning processes.
But it may all be moot. Just as Senate Republicans have struggled to agree on their list of budget cuts, long in the making, so, too, have they yet to come up with the language dealing with this.
Remember the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate last week, “revealing”
that Al Qaeda has revived in Pakistan? ABC News had already reported
on the deal that allowed it to happen. Last October.
** SCHWARZENEGGER CLOSETED FOR MEETINGS TOMORROW IN THE CAPITOL. With California’s state budget three-and-a-half weeks overdue, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will hold private meetings in and around the state Capitol tomorrow.
Most state Senate Republicans are far to the right of the centrist Schwarzenegger, whose much greater popularity will be confirmed once again in a new public poll for publication tomorrow. But while they have the power of no, he has the power of yes, as well as the power of popularity. Given the extraordinary state of disarray that the California Republican Party finds itself in just five months after its leadership shifted further to the right — and there is more to report on that score beyond this morning’s column — that is not an inconsequential matter.
** BROWN HITS BACK. California Attorney General and former Governor Jerry Brown, in this statement, hit back today against the attempt by state Senate Republicans to tie passage of the state budget to a change in the state’s environmental law: “It is an outrage that a small group of Republican senators would gut California’s Environmental Quality Act as the price of their voting—a month late—on this year’s budget. Their proposal would profoundly undercut the positive efforts of cities and counties to reduce greenhouse gases and fight global warming.
“It is the constitutional responsibility of the Attorney General to enforce all the laws of California, including our ground breaking environmental laws. California has a proud history as being the unquestioned leader in the fight to control global warming. We should not let a few Republican state senators—all of whom opposed the Global Warming Solutions Act–turn back the clock with this misguided and retrograde maneuver. It represents global warming denial at its worst.”
Brown won the biggest landslide victory of any contested statewide race last year, defeating Republican Chuck Poochigian, a former state senator and avowed opponent of efforts to combat the greenhouse effect, 57% to 38%. As attorney general, he is pushing local governments to address greenhouse gas emissions in their planning processes.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET UPDATE: DEMOCRATS RESPOND TO MINORITY SENATE REPUBLICANS. Complaining about the lateness of their budget proposals, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has informed the Senate Republican leader, Orange County’s Dick Ackerman, that unless he can produce a unanimous 15 votes from his party caucus for the Republican counter-proposal, he won’t take up the bill tomorrow when the state Senate reconvenes.
Since the Republicans have been haggling amongst themselves over what they want — coming up with over $140 million more in cuts today than Ackerman said they would have yesterday — and since some of the senators vote no on all budgets, that will be quite a trick. State Senator Tom McClintock, the icon of the far right who has lost all four of his statewide races, for example, has not voted for a state budget since George Deukmejian was governor in the 1980s. There were times in the 1990s when then Republican Governor Pete Wilson appeared ready to throttle him.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET UPDATE: THE LONG-PROMISED REPUBLICAN CUTS.Here is the long-awaited list of further budget cuts from state Senate Republicans. As you can see, they’ve adjusted the overall amount once again, this time to some $840 million. Approximately $450 million is accounted for by cuts to various welfare programs. Another $120 million would come out of the voter-approved Proposition 36 drug treatment program, thus certain to be subject to a lawsuit. Another $100 million would be cut from public transit funds, which already have taken a huge hit in the bipartisan Assembly budget. $50 million would come from eliminating 6000 currently vacant jobs throughout the government.
The rest is a miscellaneous assemblage, some of which is quite political in nature. For example, the UC Labor Institute, arguably a partisan entity, would be defunded. The Agricultural Labor Relations Board would take a big cut for the express purpose of hurting union organizing efforts. $1.2 million would be cut from preparing future environmentally efficient state buildings. And Attorney General Jerry Brown’s budget would be cut by $1 million to prevent climate change litigation.
The proposal will be taken up tomorrow when the Senate reconvenes. It has a short life expectancy.
Well, my experience, and NWN readers know this very well, is that when people are reading what you’re writing and are at all fired up — or even mildly interested — you’re getting comments on your blog. Far more than seven in a week. More like seven in an hour. And more at times.
** MICHELLE OBAMA IN CALIFORNIA. Michelle Obama is in California today raising money for husband Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
** FEINSTEIN ENDORSES HILLARY. As expected, popular U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein this morning endorsed Hillary Clinton for President in a conference call. The conference with the two senators was brief and pretty uneventful. The senior senator from California and the junior senator from New York took only a few questions, after DiFi read a rather lengthy statement — which is a bit odd on a telephone conference call, rather than a press conference — endorsing Hillary because she will be a great president.
The most noteworthy question came when an LA radio reporter asked Clinton to comment on the woes of LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, now suffering in the midst of the break-up of his marriage and revelation of his affair with Telemundo broadcaster who had been covering him as mayor. Feinstein, as is her wont, interjected, telling the reporter he really didn’t want to be asking about that. Clinton, for her part, gave a boilerplate answer that went in one ear and out the other. Another reporter asked Clinton about two border patrol officers who’d gotten in a scrape. Oddly, she will be studying the issue. Feinstein was asked how much her endorsement meant, given that she’s endorsed a number of losing candidates. And so it went.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET REPORT: ANTI-CLIMAX WEDNESDAY. After weeks, if not months, of requests, state Senate Republicans, currently blocking a budget passed on a bipartisan vote in the Assembly and endorsed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, seem to have put together a list of cuts and other demands along the lines I mentioned earlier this morning. Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has recessed the Senate until tomorrow to study precisely what it is that his Republican colleagues want.
** BLAIR SEES “MOMENT OF OPPORTUNITY” IN MIDEAST.After spending the first part of this week in Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territory, new Mideast envoy Tony Blair has moved on today to the Persian Gulf nations for more meetings. The former British prime minister was enthusiastically welcomed in Palestine by leaders of the Fatah faction and current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He also had a good working dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Blair is under strictures from the Quartet powers of the US, Russia, UN, and EU — prompted by the US — not to speak with the Hamas faction, which actually won the recent Palestinian election. But sources indicate that Hamas is aware of the complications of Blair’s mission and is not hostile to it.
Blair’s charge is to present a plan for full-fledged Palestinian state in the fall. While working to develop Palestine in the interim, he will continue discussing Palestinian/Israeli security arrangements with the Israelis.
** CALIFORNIA BUDGET UPDATE. Today is the day for state Senate Republicans, currently blockading a budget already adopted on a bipartisan basis in the Assembly, to at last reveal the budget cuts they want. I’m told that consensus has been elusive, and that the list was changing at the 11th hour. But look for more proposed cuts in welfare, public transit, and the elimination of thousands of vacant state jobs, as well as a host of miscellaneous cuts. Then there is the attempt backed by oil companies and developers to change the California Environmental Quality Act to prevent Attorney General and former Governor Jerry Brown from having local governments account for greenhouse gas emissions in their planning processes.
** ANOTHER HILLARY ENDORSEMENT: DIFI. At 9:30 AM, Hillary Clinton will hold a conference call to reveal her latest endorsement from a California politician. Word is that it is U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein.
** AL QAEDA’S AMERICAN PRISONERS STILL NOT LOCATED. American troops are now in the midst of a 74th day of searching for the remaining two US soldiers captured by Al Qaeda in an ambush south of Baghdad. They have had no luck so far. A video put out by Al Qaeda forces in Iraq claims that all three men were executed after being captured. But, with the exception of the Californian found floating in the Euphrates River, that claim can’t be confirmed. The US high command in Baghdad has revealed that ID cards for the other two American prisoners were found in an Al Qaeda safehouse on June 9th.
With Republicans in the California Senate at last about to unveil a series of elusive budget cuts to deal with what they describe as out-of-control deficit spending, their state party apparatus is having a fiscal crisis of its own. High-ranking Republicans within and without the state party confirm that the California Republican Party has run up an operating deficit of nearly a million dollars since new state chairman Ron Nehring took over in February.
This is on top of and separate from the ongoing debt of several million dollars from last November’s election, most of which is a note from an individual donor, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says he will take care of.
Nehring is in the midst of a 10-day trip to Israel. California Republican Party press secretary Hector Barrajas did not comment on the party’s financial difficulties, and did not dispute the situation.
Former state Assemblywoman Barbara Alby, the Republican national committeewoman for California and a member of the state party’s governing board of directors, said: “I can’t talk. I just can’t comment. I just don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss it in public.”
Other party leaders, such as the normally voluble Flash Report publisher and Southern California vice chairman Jon Fleischman, avoided phone calls and e-mails on the crisis.
Nehring’s 10-day trip to Israel is part of a national Republican tour. It is unclear what the trip has to do with his duties as chairman of the California Republican Party.
High-ranking Republican critics say that Nehring is a junketeer who has neglected his fundraising responsibilities. Nehring was out of the country when Schwarzenegger made his only appearance thusfar this year at a state Republican fundraiser. Since becoming state Republican chairman, Nehring has had a more extensive foreign travel schedule than Schwarzenegger, who has been lampooned in the Flash Report and other right-wing outlets for his globe-trotting ways.
Nehring has, according to sources, traveled to Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Dubai, Israel, and several countries in Eastern Europe since his election as state party chairman at the convention in Sacramento this past February.
Last week, one source revealed, he was in Washington, D.C., addressing the weekly Wednesday group gathering of conservative leaders hosted by his former boss and now client, Beltway conservative power broker Grover Norquist. The longtime friend and close associate of convicted influence peddler Jack Abramoff famously said: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
Long the head of the Americans for Tax Reform group, which formerly employed Nehring, Norquist found some California controversy of his own earlier this year after he, according to several informed sources, helped push through the appointment of another of his former employees, Michael Kamburowski, as the state party’s top staffer.
Kamburowski is an Australian citizen who ran afoul of immigration authorities and was jailed for a month before gaining and maintaining green card status after the second of his marriages to American women. He filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the U.S. government over his treatment. Nehring, who worked with Kamburowski in the ’90s under Norquist, pushed through his appointment to the California party’s top staff post despite the fact that Kamburowski had no experience in California and precious little relevant political experience in this decade. Nehring said he was completely unaware of Kamburowski’s immigration problems, and Kamburowski was forced to resign.
Leading Republicans speaking on background express dismay at the financial state of the California Republican Party. Schwarzenegger promises to take care of the campaign debt, and it appears that that will be largely accomplished in relatively short order.
But with the party moving farther to the right — the state board of directors voted narrowly earlier this month to prevent independents from voting in its presidential primary next February, and its newly ascendant hard right faction delights in taking potshots at the former action superstar’s popular centrist agenda — it shouldn’t be counting on Arnold Schwarzenegger for a bail-out.
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