While Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Los Angeles) called today’s signing of several water bills “historic,” several San Francisco leaders and environmentalists object to the water deal and believe that it is more of a 19th Century solution to a current day problem.
“This water package [...]
By Art Pulaski Executive Secretary-Treasurer
California Labor Federation
Last night's vote in the House of Representatives to pass the Affordable Health Care for America Act was a victory for all California families and an historic milestone on the road to meaningful health care reform.
"The entire California" [...]
By Anthony Wright
Executive Director of Health Access California
Earlier tonight, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R.3962, a historic comprehensive health reform proposal, by a vote of 220-215.
We thank ALL of California's Democratic Congressional Representatives for voting for this desperately needed comprehensive health reform. Given California's health [...]
By Robert Cruickshank
Over the last few weeks a debate has raged online and in print about whether California is a failed state. By now you likely know my answer: it is, but we can and must revive the California Dream for the 21st century. [...]
By Traci Sheehan
Executive Director
Planning and Conservation League
In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, while most Californians were sound asleep, the state legislature passed a package of bills and a bond that rewards bad actors instead of solving the water needs of real people [...]
In this Democratic weekly address, Assemblymembers Anna Caballero (D-Salinas) and Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) discuss historic legislation passed by the Legislature this week to solve California’s water crisis.
You may listen in English or Spanish. The transcript is below.
Transcript:
Hello, this is [...]
By Robert Cruickshank
With Gavin Newsom dropping out of the governor's race and leaving Jerry Brown as the only Democratic candidate, speculation was sure to rise about Senator Dianne Feinstein and whether she would seek to avenge her narrow 1990 defeat and run for governor in 2010. Sure, [...]
By Anthony Wright
Executive Director of Health Access California
As the vote near on the House health reform bill, it is easy to sink into the specifics of the bill, be obsessed by the debate on key details, and mourn amendments that we really wanted but that weren't' [...]
By Dan Bacher
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the worst Governor for fish and the environment in California history, today praised the Legislature for its passage of a water package including an $11 billion bond that provides a clear path to the construction of the peripheral canal and more dams.
"Water" [...]
by David M. Greenwald
Editor
California Progress Report
While the Governor and Democratic Leadership are lauding the water deal as an historic achievement, local leaders and environmental groups are lamenting it as the prelude to a peripheral canal that will end the delta as we know [...]
by Doug Moore
Executive Director
United Domestic Workers of America
It is sad that the governor’s Republican enablers in the State Senate have chosen to ignore the pleas of countless California counties as well as thousands of homecare consumers, providers and advocates by allowing the In Home Supportive [...]
By Marty D. Omoto
Director/Organizer
California Disability Community Action Network
Citing major health and safety issues impacting over 462,000 children and adults with disabilities, the blind and seniors in the In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program, the Assembly Budget Committee, chaired by Assemblymember Noreen Evans (Democrat – Santa Rosa) [...]
By Peter Schrag
Columnist
California Progress Report
A half generation after California began the national swing to legalizing the medical use of marijuana, the Golden State is becoming the central front in the drive to legalize, regulate and tax recreational and all other adult uses of the drug. [...]
By Marty D. Omoto
Director/Organizer
California Disability Community Action Network
With the State’s water crisis dominating attention at the State Capitol, the State Senate reconvened its floor session at 11:35 PM, over 8 hours since it recessed Tuesday afternoon, but failed to pass SB 69, a bill that [...]
By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to drop out of the race for the Democratic nomination for Governor of California has forced the state’s pundits to face the uncomfortable fact that they are stuck with a field of [...]
An exploratory committee comprised of parks supporters today filed a proposed statewide ballot measure, called the “California State Parks and Wildlife Conservation Trust Fund Act of 2010,” which would create a stable, reliable and adequate source of funding to protect state parks and conserve California wildlife.
The [...]
The Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes released a report today that shows the Governor’s furlough program has caused longer wait times and an overall deterioration of services at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The average time a walk-in customer waits for service has gone from 27 [...]
By Dan Bacher
Sierra Club California is strongly urging everybody to take action NOW to stop legislation that could authorize the construction of two dams and a peripheral canal approximately the size and length of the Panama Canal around the Delta.
"We need your help today in order to" [...]
By Marty D. Omoto
Director/Organizer
California Disability Community Action Network
The State Senate adjourned its long Monday evening floor session dealing with major bills addressing the State’s water crisis and will meet again Tuesday morning at 11:30 AM. The State Senate could take final action on SB 69 [...]
By Clint Reilly
Barack Obama must succeed. After so many young people and first time voters invested their hopes in his presidency, his failure would elicit a level of despair that would plague the Democratic Party for decades to come.
The Democratic message was resurgent in 2008. Millions of [...]
By Sam Gold
A California Injured Worker
There is no amount of corruption, incompetence and ineptitude sufficient to make it acceptable to take hostages at gunpoint in an office building, as an Edmonton, Alberta injured worker is alleged to have done last month.
That much should [...]
By Beth Capell
The New York Times reports on a study that found that children without health insurance who are hospitalized are much more likely to die—how much more likely? Well, almost half the kids who died after hospitalization were uninsured, far out of proportion to their [...]
By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento
Well, he didn’t really say that. But he wrote a law review article that concluded that if you can carry it, you can bear it (Constitutionally). Which means the decades old ban on automatic weapons should [...]
By Traci Sheehan
Executive Director
Planning and Conservation League
On Monday, the Planning and Conservation League (League) joined Assemblymember Pedro Nava as he announced the introduction of new legislation designed to ensure that big oil companies that operate in California compensate the state for extracting oil. The [...]
In this Democratic weekly address, Assemblymember Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa), Chair of the Assembly Committee on Budget and Assemblymember Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate), Chair of the Assembly Committee on Accountability and Administrative Review, discuss the new threat to In-Home Supportive Services clients and providers. [...]
Laphonza Butler
Trustee
SEIU United Long Term Care Workers Union
Following a federal court order halting the implementation of severe cuts to home care for 130,000 Californians, new information presented during a Capitol hearing demonstrates that the Schwarzenegger Administration is unprepared to meet its own Nov. [...]
By Marty D. Omoto
Director/Organizer
California Disability Community Action Network
• Counties across the state – both urban and rural – have notified the State through official letters and in testimony October 28th in a legislative hearing at the State Capitol of “chaos and panic” that will grow even [...]
By Dan Bacher
In a letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on October 23, Congressman Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton) criticized plans to build a peripheral canal and the exclusion of input from Delta residents in the current Delta/water bill package now being considered by the California legislature.
The letter reiterates [...]
By Marty D. Omoto
Director/Organizer
California Disability Community Action Network
Despite testimony from counties who report “chaos and panic” from thousands of In-Home Supportive Services recipients, providers and county workers because counties aren’t ready to implement new In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) worker (provider) requirements , Schwarzenegger Administration officials [...]
By Terry Francke
General Counsel and Founder
Californians Aware
With 5 p.m. Friday set as the deadline for submitting comments on proposed new rules providing public access to administrative records of judicial branch agencies, legislative scrutiny of statewide court administration is reaching an unprecedented pitch [...]
By Robert Cruickshank
After a year of public discussion and behind-closed-doors drafting, the Bay Area Council has filed their two initiatives for the November 2010 ballot to allow Californians to call a Constitutional Convention.
The first and fairly noncontroversial initiative would change the existing constitution to allow [...]
By Peter Schrag
Columnist
California Progress Report
When it comes to diagnosing, and prescribing remedies for, the state’s fiscal and governmental problems, last week was clinic week in California.
On Thursday, the legislature’s grandly named Select Committee on Improving State Government heard a panel of incumbent and retired politicians, [...]
By Marty D. Omoto
Director/Organizer
California Disability Community Action Network
Several counties – representing both urban and rural areas of the state – have sent official letters to the Schwarzenegger Administration warning of “chaos” for county workers and dire consequences for hundreds of thousands of people who receive [...]
By Beth Capell
We are pleased to see that a Superior Court has agreed with our colleagues at Consumer Watchdog that the refusal of the Department of Managed Health Care to refer denials of care for autism to independent medical review was an underground regulation as well [...]
By Elizabeth Abbott
Project Director
Health Access California
Have you ever had to squint at the tiny print on a prescription label or have to give advice to an elderly family member to interpret their instructions for taking pills? California is in the process of helping to [...]
By Clint Reilly
My friend Joe Scott writes a popular blog on politics called “The Body Politic.” In some ways, it is a natural outgrowth of his renowned newsletter from an earlier era, “The Political Animal.”
A former political writer for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Scott cites a [...]
By Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla
Campaign Director
Restore the Delta
When Governor Schwarzenegger began his role in office, he was quite proud of being California's premiere salesman - selling the California economy, geography, and lifestyle to court corporations throughout the world. Many Californians responded positively to the [...]
By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento
Pacific Gas and Electric is installing new “smart meters” in the homes of ratepayers, beginning in the Central Valley. They have created a whirlwind of protests because of dramatically higher bills. Anecdotal evidence collected by the [...]
by Joseph Palermo
One Republican candidate who wants to be California’s next governor is Steve Poizner, whose economic prescriptions for healing the state’s fiscal maladies are like a quack doctor who “bleeds” his patient by attaching leeches. Poizner’s PR people came up with a catchy “10-10-10″ slogan. [...]
By Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
Assistant Director ASFCME
Earlier this week, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to block $82 million worth of cuts to California’s In-Home Supportive Service (IHSS) program, which provides home-based care to seniors and the disabled.
As local jurisdictions and the grassroots look [...]
In this Democratic weekly address, Assemblymembers Mary Hayashi (D-Hayward) and Joe Coto (D-San Jose) discuss efforts to help prevent the spread of the H1N1 virus, including the distribution of H1N1 vaccines that began this month and the H1N1 Flu and Seasonal Flu Healthcare Town Hall that Hayashi [...]
by David M. Greenwald
Editor
California Progress Report
A report was released earlier this week by the Death Penalty Information Center. It concludes that states are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on the death penalty, draining state budgets during times of economic crisis when money [...]
By Traci Sheehan
Executive Director
Planning and Conservation League
Today Governor Schwarzenegger signed legislation giving Majestic Realty a full exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), allowing them to push ahead with the construction of a 75,000-seat stadium in the City of Industry. AB X3 81, [...]
Contrasting sharply with a recent Field Poll which said voters are deeply frustrated with the Governor and state legislature but are unsure of proposed solutions that would get California back on track, a new statewide survey shows that voters are ready to change the way California [...]
Russell Glauber
Denial of Care
Certified nurse assistant Amelia Mendoza, 52, of West Covina, was attacked twice in the same week by the same patient while working at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena earlier this year. Amelia suffered injuries that resulted in her suffering a [...]
By Sam Gold
A California Injured Worker
Employee Workers' Comp fraud is really sexy. The drama of catching a worker on video water skiing when they claim to need a cane to walk.; Using night vision photography to catch a worker moving tools in and' [...]
By Marty D. Omoto
Director/Organizer
California Disability Community Action Network
The issue of whether California is in violation of the federal economic stimulus act and other federal laws when the Legislature and Governor permanently eliminated 9 Medi-Cal benefits for adults, including adult dental and podiatry services will be [...]
By Peter Schrag
Columnist
California Progress Report
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to release the September unemployment numbers today -- by the time you read this, they may already be out. But we already know from September data released last Friday by EDD, the state’s [...]
By Anthony Wright
Executive Director of Health Access California
Tuesday was a major day of action for health reform, with well over 100,000 calls made to Congress, and events around the country. This included several cities in California, from an overnight vigil in front of the federal building [...]
