California politics just isn’t getting much press right now. But just in case my handful of readers missed it, the governor vetoed the illegal immigrants drivers license bill. From the article, I actually have sympathy for the bill’s author Gil Cedillo. Schwarzenegger could have been a lot more clear that he was going to veto the bill no matter what provisions were put in it. Instead he kept listing provisions he might be willing to sign a bill with and Cedillo kept adding those provisions to get the bill through.

Nevertheless, I’m glad this bill didn’t pass.

…then read this article. There is no question that big unions like the CTA (see below) actively take money from their union members for political campaigning without concern as to whether the membership supports the idea and the only way to opt-out is to end their membership in the union. In the above example from the article, the CTA just assessed each member (and that’s every full time teacher in every California public school) $60 for each of the next 3 years to pay for political campaigning without a vote of the membership. The decision was made by the union officials. This increase will raise $50 million for political campaigning.

That suggests that there are about 270 thousand teachers in California. That seems little high to me… geez, I guess not. According to the CTA website, the “CTA represents more than 335,000 employees of California schools, colleges and universities”. Other sites suggest we credential about 30,000 new teachers every year.

OK, there are more political organizations that I don’t like than I care to count but there are a few that really go beyond the pale to truly piss me off. One of the first things one can do to get on my bad side is to blatantly lie or mislead. I’m not talking about supporting a position that I disagree with and calling that lying, I’m talking about saying things that are just not true. The second thing one can do is to constantly use distraction tactics to avoid a topic. You know, when some political issue comes up that affects a group, that group always re-directing it back to a different topic, possibly completely unrelated, that they feel they have more sympathy in regards to.

See I can take organizations like Planned Parenthood. They’ve got a simple goal, one that I happen to horribly disagree with, but a goal that they’re willing to publicize and argue on those terms. In their mind, abortion should be available to all, is not really a moral choice but a practical choice, and that children should be educated about every sexual practice available out there and free to experiment as they choose, once properly educated on the benefits and risks of each. They’re pretty honest that this is their perspective. As much as I think it is morally abhorrent, I can at least give them the credit of being honest human beings. Misguided and bent on a policy that will destroy millions of lives and harmfully affect billions of others but honest nevertheless.

The California Teachers Association (CTA) gives me no such room for honesty praise. They recently released a political add regarding proposition 74. For those not in the know, prop. 74 will increase the years of service required for tenure from 2 years to 5 years and will make it easier for schools to fire tenured teachers by allowing schools boards to fire a teacher after two consecutive unsatisfactory performance evaluations.

One can make arguments either way about whether this is a good thing. But the CTA has no interest in making an argument about the subject at hand. Here’s the text of the ad:

STEPHANIE FLOYD-SMITH, seventh-grade teacher: Governor, you’ve already broken your promises on education. Now you’re sponsoring Proposition 74, a ballot measure that allows one principal to fire a teacher without giving a reason – or even a hearing. While doing nothing to improve teacher training.

RENEE STEWART, elementary school parent: Parents like me are voting no on Prop. 74 to send the governor a message: Stop playing politics with our schools. And get to work on smaller class sizes, up-to-date textbooks, and restoring music and art classes – the things our kids really need.

You can see the video here (requires the stupid real player)

Let’s start with the blatant 100% lies, shall we?:

1. “allows one principle to fire a teacher”: No principle can fire a teacher. The school board must do that. (Of course a principles recommendation caries a lot of weight.)
2. “fire a teacher without giving a reason”: Performance evaluations, 2 unsatisfactory of which are necessary to fire a tenured teacher, by their very nature say what a teacher is doing well and doing wrong. Particularly since those evaluations would be used by the school board to determine whether to accept the recommendation of a principle to fire a teacher, if a teacher gets fired, those two evaluations will make it pretty clear what the reason is.

In fact the only thing that the first person says that has a HINT (and I emphasize HINT) of truth is the statement “or even a hearing”. But even that is very deceptive. Although it is true that teachers aren’t guaranteed an explicit “hearing” , they will have had their performance reviews with the principle, giving them a chance to make their case to the principle and most likely when the principle makes the recommendation to the board to fire the teacher, that process will occur in some forum that allows the teacher some input. So even in that one statement that is not 100% lying, it is very deceptive. Overall, they’re lying and there’s no other way to see it.

OK, on to the re-directing. The ad mentions the following “issues” that have nothing to do with prop. 74:

-“Governor, you’ve already broken your promises on education”: OK, so maybe he has. Does this measure have anything to do with those promises?
-“get to work on smaller class sizes”: Um, does this measure prevent smaller class sizes? Does it have ANYTHING to do with class size?
-“up-to-date textbooks”: Again, help me please, are we on topic?
-“and restoring music and art classes”: Still waiting…
-“the things our kids really need”: You forgot to mention food! Our kids need food! What is this ballot measure doing to help kids that starve? Don’t vote for this ballot measure because it doesn’t help one single starving kid!

I mean, all of those statements are just crap that have nothing to do with the ballot measure.

But my overall point is this: For crying out loud, make an argument against the measure! Is that too much to ask? Instead of lying about it and trying to re-direct to other issues, tell me what is wrong with this measure. Do we have great teachers who should be allowed to teach and shouldn’t be worrying about whether their principle likes them? That sounds like an argument you could make. But they don’t make that argument because they know that it doesn’t strike a chord with Californians who are sick and tired of bad public school teachers. Does the measure mostly impact new teachers who are the life-blood of the future of teaching and leaves the tenured teachers mostly untouched because of the lengthy evaluation process? That sounds like a reasonable argument. But that would piss off their existing union members that includes all the tenured teachers. Do you not like the measure because it affects the job security of your union members? OK, that is an argument that you could make (and it is the REAL reason they’re campaigning against it). But they’re not going to get sympathy for that from California voters who could only DREAM of having the job security that teachers have.

So, stuck without a good argument to make, they resort to lying and re-direction and that’s why I despise the CTA.

OK, not that I think I’m going to be influencing many people with my endorsements, but I plan on making endorsements, either for or against, all 4 of the ballot measures that Governor Schwarzenegger has gotten on the ballot. I have yet to do the necessary research to make an informed decision on any of them, so I’m not ready to make any endorsements yet, but I will give you my first impressions on each:

Prop 74: Teacher tenure. This measure delays tenure for teachers to 5 years after the are hired at a school instead of 2. Tenure is a concept that was originally created for University professors to allow them academic freedom to support research and ideologies that may not be popular with the administration. The idea was that after a professor had proven themselves as a good professor, they were then free to do whatever research they wanted and not fear being fired if the results were unpopular. There is much good in the idea of tenure. However, I’ve believed for a long time that tenure is not something that K-12 teachers should have. There is no need for it as these teachers do not do research and are not supposed to be supporting ideologies of any sort. There job is to educate children based on the curriculum provided by the State of California. All tenure for K-12 does is protect bad teachers from getting fired. Unless there are some clauses in the ballot measure that extend beyond reducing the value or likelihood that a teacher will receive tenue, I’ll be hard pressed not to vote for Prop 74.

Prop 75: Union member freedom of conscience. This measure is called “paycheck protection” by the supporters, but it is a bogus name. Prop. 75 is very threatening to the unions of California because it requires that any money that is collected form union dues not be used for political purposes unless the union member approves of it. This will take a LOT of power away from unions. Currently unions collect on the order of a couple hundred dollars a month from each employees paycheck for union dues. A significant portion of those dues pay for political campaigning. What unions fear is that since each union member could basically decide not to pay that portion of their union dues, unions would collect far less money for campaigning and would have far less political influence. It used to frustrate me to no end that the CTA, the union Wendy worked for, dumped millions of dollars into political issues that have nothing to do with teaching or schools. Particularly of interest, they’d pump money into abortion campaigns and there was nothing Wendy or I could do to prevent the money she earned from being used for that purpose. What justice is there in that? Unless there is some clause in this bill that stretches the meaning of this bill beyond what I have outlined above, I’ll be hard pressed to vote against it.

Prop 76: Spending limits: This is a ballot measure that limits the budgets for California. This one seems to be the most complicated of the bunch as it calls out limits in lots of different categories, including education. I really don’t understand all the details yet but I’m hesitant to vote for legislation like this. This is really an area where we need to give our legislatures the ability to use their judgment. Things change and I can see how specific limits could place an undo burden on the state. Although a big part of me would like to see our current legislature slapped over the head a few times regarding over spending, it’ll still take a lot of convincing for me to vote for this one.

Prop 77: Redistricting. This in my opinion is the granddaddy of them all that most likely will get an official endorsement from me. One would think that I’m a fan of ballot initiatives from my commentary to date but in principle I’m not. Ideally, the legislature should be passing laws and the people should be electing a legislature that will properly represent them. Frankly, this is not happening right now and the big reason for this is because of the current legislative districts. Right now legislative districts are drawn (i.e. what their borders are) by the legislature. Since job security is a desire every human being has, they have an incentive to create districts in which the likelihood of them getting re-elected goes up. What they do is they draw borders that lump similar minded people together. Heavily Republican biased areas are lumped together with other Republican areas to ensure that the Republican incumbent gets re-elected and the Democratic areas are handled similarly. This has the effect of making the politicians unaccountable to their voters as they’re very unlikely not to get re-elected because of the heavy bias of voters in their district. Or said another way, the politicians are choosing their voters instead of the voters choosing their politicians. Again, I haven’t done the research to ensure that the measure actually does what it says it is going to do and does it in a reasonable fashion, but unless their is some HUGE grievous problem with the actual initiative, I will be endorsing and voting for this one.

I will be doing more research on these matters in the next few weeks and will be posting my comments as I make them. I encourage everyone who reads this to comment as well. I also HEAVILY encourage everyone to actually read the initiative texts, well at least the overview portions of them. I’ve found that the initiatives are easier to read than most people think and are surprisingly neutral in the way the language is written (i.e. it’s not written to deceive). There’s no better way to make a decision than to read the initiative, then read the officially published arguments (as in the voting guide that will be mailed to every registered voter) and make an informed decision based on those arguments, the actual text and your good judgment.

I haven’t found a way to get minutes or summaries of committee actions yet so I haven’t been able to get a definitive answer to whether the timing of the legislature passing these bills is suspect. That said, if one looks at the history of the driver’s license bill, one can see it was sitting around in committee for a long time and then was sent to the assembly floor on August 29th. Lest anyone need reminding, that’s the day Katrina hit and is the same day the gay marriage bill made it out of committee.

Also of note, Mark Leno, author of the gay marriage bill , and Patty Berg, author of the donor legislation (AB 849) that was used to resurrect the original legislation (AB 19) are both on the Assembly Appropriations committee.

OK, nobody seems to be reporting this (both the Sac Bee and the SF Chronicle didn’t have it on either their front or politics pages), but the California legislature wasn’t slowed down in their desire to usurp the will of the people by Governor Schwarzenegger’s promised veto of the gay marriage bill.

Late last night the Assembly passed the Illegal Immigrants Drivers License bill. Don’t believe me? Not see it in any of the papers? Well, take a look at these links:

AP artcile on the subject
The actual vote from the assembly floor
The overview of the bill’s state (Note that some of the stuff updates more slowly than other parts, so the history doesn’t reflect last night’s vote while the votes at the bottom of the page shows the vote.)

It’s good to see that the legislature is continuing on their “under the cover of Katrina” strategy to ram their VERY unpopular (you know, so unpopular that it is partially credited with Gray Davis’s recall and undoing it was the first action of our new Governor) bills down our throats.

This is just ridiculous.

So I put my letter to our governor today around noon. By about 8 PM this evening, his press secretary appeared to be reading straight from my letter justifying why the governor was going to veto the bill. Man the US Postal Service is good!

Bravo for Governor Schwarzenegger for doing the right thing!

As promised, I compared the 35-37 vote for AB 19, the failed gay marriage bill in June against the 41-35 vote for AB 849, the successful version with the exact same language as AB 19. Here’s the list of changed votes:

-Bermudez (abstain to yes)
-Chavez (abstain to yes)
-Negrete McLeod (abstain to yes)
-Salinas (abstain to yes)
-Torrico (abstain to yes)
-Umberg (abstain to yes)
-Baca (no to abstain)
-Garcia (no to abstain)

There are two very interesting things to note. First of all, nobody switched sides. Everyone either changed to or from an abstain. Secondly, and I guess this is really just an implication of the first, all those who were new votes for the bill, were all too cowardly to vote for the bill when more intense media scrutiny was on the bill. They all abstained.

While a few of them may be given a pass (and I don’t know which ones these are) for actually not being in Sacramento when the original vote was taken, somehow I doubt that’s why all 6 new yes votes didn’t vote that way the first time around. I’d guess that would account for two at the most.

I’ve decided to dig more fully into the timing of AB 849, the gay marriage bill that was just passed by the California legislature and is awaiting either a signature or a veto on governor Schwarzenegger’s desk. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to link to the page that shows the history of the bill as it is using “post” type cgi scripting and as such it is difficult to recreate the link. I’ll just cut and paste the history for now. If you’re interested in seeing the text yourself go to the California Assembly website, click on the Legislation link on the left, enter AB 849 in the search box and click on the history link of the resulting page. Here it is:

• Sept. 6 Senate amendments concurred in. To enrollment.
• Sept. 1 In Assembly. Concurrence in Senate amendments pending. May be considered on or after September 3 pursuant to Assembly Rule 77.
• Sept. 1 Read third time, passed, and to Assembly. (Ayes 21. Noes 15. Page 2471.)
• Aug. 30 Read second time. To third reading.
• Aug. 29 From committee: Do pass. (Ayes 7. Noes 6.).
• Aug. 15 In committee: Placed on Appropriations suspense file.
• July 13 From committee: Do pass, and re-refer to Com. on APPR. Re-referred. (Ayes 5. Noes 2.).
• June 29 Re-referred to Com. on JUD.
• June 28 From committee chair, with author’s amendments: Amend, and re-refer to committee. Read second time, amended, and re-referred to Com. on RLS.
• May 19 Referred to Com. on RLS.
• May 5 In Senate. Read first time. To Com. on RLS. for assignment.
• May 5 Read third time, passed, and to Senate. (Ayes 73. Noes 0. Page 1374.)
• Apr. 28 Read second time. To third reading.
• Apr. 27 From committee: Do pass. (Ayes 13. Noes 0.) (April 26).
• Mar. 3 Referred to Com. on W.,P. & W.
• Feb. 20 From printer. May be heard in committee March 22.
• Feb. 18 Read first time. To print.

This is as of Sept. 6th and as such doesn’t contain today’s passing by the Assembly. For those (like most Americans, like myself) who don’t understand all the ins and outs of the legislature, I’ll do my best to decode the language (I had to do some research):

The bill was originally created on February 18th of this year. Although it doesn’t say it in the above text, it was created by Assembly member Berg. The bill had nothing to do with gay marriage. It was about fish and game research and regulations. The bill was in the committee process until April 27th, at which point it went to the Assembly floor. On May 5th it was passed, still in its fish and game format, 73-0 and went to the Senate. I don’t understand how this all works, but instead of being voted on by the senate shortly after May 5th, it went back to committee on May 19th, where it would wait for its transformation.

On June 28th Mark Leno, assumably with Berg’s help (again, I don’t understand all the ins and outs of how this stuff works) was able to re-write the bill to place in it the exact same contents as AB 19, the original gay marriage bill that was defeated on June 2nd in the Assembly 35-37. This had the effect of giving AB 19 new life so that Mark Leno could try again later, perhaps when the timing was better, to get the same bill passed.

At that point, the “amended” bill went back into committee. On August 29th, the day Katrina hit, after sitting around in the Appropriations committee suspense file for two weeks, the committee voted 7-6 to send it to the Senate floor. In fairness to the committee, bills often spend a fair amount of time in the suspense file while other bills are being discussed. I’m not sure if there is a specific ordering or priority. This is what I’d like to find out. Did this bill get bumped up the order to get through on August 29th? Or were they stalling on a vote that should have happened a week prior? Or was it un in the “proper” order and they just moved quickly once the timing was right? Or did nothing suspicious happen at all here and the timing was just lucky? I really don’t know how this all works but I want to dig to the bottom of it. Anyone know more to help me out?

After going to the senate floor, they voted on September 1st 21-15 to pass the bill. In theory, this bill had already been passed by the Assembly (back in its fish and game days). However, since the bill had been amended subsequently to that, it had to go back to the Assembly to be re-voted upon. It passed on September 7th with a vote of 41-35.

That’s all she wrote folks, history wise. I’m going to continue to dig to the bottom of the timing in the Appropriations committee to fully understand the timing. It seems pretty suspicious to me that it was passed by the committee THE EXACT SAME DAY that Katrina hit. Also expect analysis later this evening of who’s votes changed since the Assembly voted down AB 19 35-37. Remember that AB 849 was the EXACT SAME law (as in identical text) as AB 19. It passed 41-35. I’ll give you the rundown on who’s votes switched without the media scrutiny that would have been given this bill in normal circumstances.

Well, the shit has hit the fan! The California assembly just passed (41-35, 41 being the minimum number of votes needed to pass the bill) the gay marriage bill that the California senate sent them a few days back. Because it already passed in the senate (and very quietly I might add) it now it goes to Gov. Schwazenegger to either veto or sign.

I’m not sure what angers me more:

– That we already voted on this as a state and 61% of us said no. Talk about usurping the will of the people.
– That doing it now, when the attention of the people is focused elsewhere, is a blatent attempt to avoid the wrath of the people (who would be placing a lot more pressure on the legislature to vote against the bill).
– That the decision is morally wrong.

I guess the final item really upsets me the most, but the other two bother me the most in a political fashion.

What I love is how groups try to sugar coat this. Reading the ever unbiased SF Chronicle artcile you get quotes like: “The bill, AB849, does not require any religious organization to recognize or perform marriages for same-sex couples.” Actually, since it is illegal for any organization, church or otherwise, to discriminate against a gay person in their hiring practices and if gay marriage is allowed they will be forced to provide marital benefits to the other person in the partnership, then churches will be forced to support and recognize gay marriage. If you don’t think this is true, just ask all the Catholic organizations who are forced to provide FREE birth control pills as part of their health insurance despite the Church’s belief that any form of birth control is morally wrong.

Also, to act as if the legislature is being generous by not “requiring” churches to perform gay marriages is ridiculous. Churches aren’t required to marry anyone and can discriminate in any fashion they want, including racially and sexually, in regards to the church’s membership and what ceremonies they’ll perform for/on anyone, including members. (Notice that this is separate from hiring practicies.) Do you think that if the state had any right to regulate in this fashion that the Catholic Church could get away with an all male priesthood? Absolutely not.

Here’s what to expect from here: The governor has a tough choice on his hands. He hasn’t wanted to get tangled up in moral issues because it is not really the focus of his governorship. But, he’s got no choice now. If he thinks he can sign the bill and place the blame on the legislature, he’s sorely mistaken. He will be held accountable by the 61% of Californians who think gay marriage is a bad idea. Of course if he vetoes it, he’ll be stepping in the middle of a subject he didn’t want to get involved in. So, he’s got a tough choice to make and I hope he vetoes it. If he vetoes it, the legislation is dead. The legislature doesn’t have the votes to overturn a veto. What’s left then for the proponents of the legislation is their legal challenges to Prop. 22 (the proposition that made gay marriage illegal).

For the opponents to the legislation, they will be pushing forward with the constitutional amendment to make gay marriage contrary to the state constitution with even more vigor now that it is clear that they can’t keep the legislature from trying to make it legal. Without the constitutional amendment, it’ll only take a pro-gay governor to change the landscape. Similarly, if Schwarzenegger signs the bill, they’ll immediately challenge the legislation saying that it is contrary to Prop. 22, which, from my understanding, should take precedence. So no matter what, if the bill is signed or vetoed, the issue is still headed for more legal challenges.

So here is what I’ll be doing:

– The governor will be getting a letter from me today. I hope that everyone who reads this blog will do the same.
– I’ll be writing my assemblyman and state senator thanking them (in my case they voted against the legislation) for their votes and encouraging those who live in districts with representatives who voted for the legislation to write them letters rebuking them for their votes.
– I’ll be considering a donation or other forms of support to one or more of the prominent groups fighting for the constitutional amendment including www.voteyesmarriage.com and Campaign for Children and Families.

I encourage all to do the same.