"Abandoning their facade of cooperation,
a coalition of California labor unions and consumer groups says it is gearing up a campaign to discredit Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's healthcare proposal as too expensive for many workers," reports Jordan Rau in the Times.
"Organizers say they will trail Schwarzenegger throughout California to challenge and rebut him, hold prayer vigils and news conferences, press elected officials to oppose his proposal and run critical ads on television. They plan to deride the governor's program as the '
Arnold Middle-Class Gouge.'
"The coalition, which includes most major unions and two prominent consumer groups -- Health Access California and Consumers Union -- has hired one of the nation's most aggressive Democratic strategists to run the campaign.
"'
The year for healthcare reform has been a failure, and it has largely been a failure because of the governor,' said
Art Pulaski, head of the California Labor Federation.
"The campaign is being led by
Chris Lehane, a San Francisco political consultant who has handled public relations for President Clinton on the Whitewater allegations, former Gov. Gray Davis on the energy crisis and Michael Moore for his films."
The big three...
Dan Weintraub
writes that the Democrats' plan of taxing employers is really just a tax on employees. "Nunez can posture all he likes about sticking it to business. But, ultimately, it is the workers he claims to represent who will be paying the price."
Meanwhile, the speaker
is now being criticized for his wife's job. "Shortly after Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez became a point man in the fight to expand health care for the uninsured, his wife accepted a lucrative job with close ties to hospitals that have a massive financial stake in such reform," reports Jim Sanders in the Bee.
"
Maria Robles was hired as president of the nonprofit Californians for Patient Care in January, one month after Nunez introduced a bill declaring his intent to provide "affordable, quality health care coverage" to all Californians.
"State law does not bar Robles from such employment, but it means that much of her salary -- which apparently exceeds $100,000 -- stems from contributions to the nonprofit agency by a powerful special interest that stands to gain billions if N��ez's health care efforts succeed.
"Robles said she has never discussed health care reform with her husband.
"'Fabian and I have this agreement,' she said. '
First of all, we don't see each other very much. When we do, we don't talk business. We just can't. The marriage would never survive.'"
The Merc News's Paul Rogers reports "[E]nvironmental groups
said Monday they are surprisingly pleased with the number of environmental bills Schwarzenegger signed during the past week as the 2007 legislative session came to an end.
"
Of the Sierra Club's list of 25 priority bills, Schwarzenegger signed 18 - or 72 percent - the highest in the four years since he took office.
"'It is important that he is signing more environmental bills and across a variety of subjects,' said
Bill Allayaud, the Sierra Club's state legislative director. "The environment did well this year."
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has
vetoed a bill calling for California's 70,000 emergency medical technicians to undergo background checks, saying the legislation would have limited public disclosures about rogue rescuers and thwarted independent probes into their misconduct," writes the Bee's Andrew McIntosh.
"In his veto message, Schwarzenegger said the mandatory background checks in Assembly Bill 941 were a great idea, but the final version of the legislation sent to him for signing was flawed and fell short of protecting public safety and providing stronger oversight of EMTs.
"'I am concerned this bill lacks requirements and penalties to assure timely notice when an investigation is initiated, does not provide sufficient authority for local medical directors to independently initiate investigations, and fails to establish clear standards for background checks,' the governor wrote. 'In addition, I am concerned that the bill would significantly limit public disclosure.'"
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has
vetoed three proposals that would have tightened procedures governing investigation and prosecution of criminal cases.
"In his veto message, Schwarzenegger called the proposals unneeded restrictions on police.
"The governor vetoed a bill to write rules for witness identifications made through police lineups, a bill to require that police interrogations in jail be recorded and a bill mandating corroboration of court testimony by jailhouse informants.
"All three measures had been endorsed by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a state body set up to study the problem of wrongful convictions.
John Van de Kamp, chairman of the commission, said eight states now provide rules regulating eyewitness identifications, and legislatures in five states voted to require the recording of interrogations.
"Schwarzenegger, in his veto messages, said current procedures provide adequate protection against abuse by informants, and said the measure requiring recording would tie the hands of police 'when the need to do so is not clear.'"
From our
Rubber Ducky, You're the One Files, "One day after California became the first state in the nation to ban toys containing toxic plastic softeners,
supporters of the measure announced plans Monday to help at least nine other states - and perhaps even Congress - enact similar laws,"
"The movement to ban phthalates began in San Francisco last year when the city's Board of Supervisors imposed the nation's first restrictions on consumer products that contain the chemical compounds, which have been linked to hormone problems in laboratory animals.
"On Sunday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the state law, which will take effect Jan. 1, 2009.
"Lawmakers in Texas, Illinois, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington, Maine, Connecticut and New York are expected to introduce similar legislation in the coming months, according to environmental and breast cancer groups that sponsored the California measure.
"Sen.
Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., wants to replicate the California prohibition nationally, although no time frame has been established, a spokesman for her office said Monday."
Among the bills vetoed by the governor was one that "would have followed North Dakota in establishing guidelines for the
farming of industrial hemp which is used in a wide variety of consumer products, including food, body care, clothing, paper and auto parts."
Dan Walters comments on the
lack of productivity in the 2007 legislative session.
"The production decline parallels legislative term limits, which were enacted by voters in 1990, so perhaps that has slowed the legislative process -- a good or bad thing, depending on one's point of view. Another explanation might be that as the state has become more complex, so have its political issues and so has the political climate in which those issues are addressed, thus making agreement on policy less likely.
"Whatever the underlying causes, we're not getting much bang for the 350-plus million bucks we spend on the Legislature each year. That explains why more issues are decided directly by voters, why the Legislature's approval ratings are abysmally low, and why, it appears, voter support for softening term limits, as legislative leaders want, appears to be declining."
But when those voteres go to the polls to decide those issues, they may be doing so on
uncertified voting machines, reports the Chron's John Wildermuth.
"A voting machine company already under fire for potential ballot counting problems in San Francisco is fighting a possible $9.7 million fine from the state for allegedly selling uncertified voting equipment to San Francisco, Solano, Marin, Merced and Colusa counties.
"At a hearing Tuesday, officials from the secretary of state's office accused Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software of selling 972 of its AutoMARK A200 voting machines in California, even though only an earlier version, the A100, had been approved for use by the state.
"While the company has admitted selling the machines to the five counties, it argues that the machines did not need to be certified because they were modified versions of the older certified model, and that the changes in the newer model had no effect on how votes were recorded."
And congrats to the San Jose Mercury News, who
worked the word 'kerfuffle' into a headline this morning!. The winning word appears atop a story about the editor of Wired Magazine
crashing his airplane in a tree near Lawrence Livermore Labs.
"Chris Anderson, a 45-year-old Berkeley resident and aerial-reconnaissance enthusiast, sparked a minor security scare Sunday when his
remote-controlled plane - equipped with a camera - crashed into a tree at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
"Security personnel apparently didn't notice the plane until Anderson asked for help retrieving it, but they've taken notice since.
Anderson, who worked at Los Alamos lab in New Mexico, acknowledged he should have known better than to take the close-up aerial photos.
"
I promise not to fly over secure national labs anymore," he said.