Even as more Los Angeles politicians are pledging to refuse contributions from Walmart, one candidate with Walton family support placed third in the closely-watched June 6th primary for Assembly District 46 in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley.
Charter school champion Brian Johnson lost the race despite massive independent expenditures on his behalf by political action committees, including two that are closely tied to Carrie Walton Penner and her husband Greg Penner. Ms. Penner is the daughter of Walmart Chairman Rob Walton and Mr. Penner is a member of the Walmart Board of Directors.
PAC spending was widely expected to carry Johnson into the general election. But in the end it may have hurt more than it helped.
Johnson was put on the defensive by winning candidate Adrin Nazarian’s charge that “right-wing anti-teacher organizations funded by the owners of the Walmart Corporation are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect Brian Johnson to the Assembly.”
Johnson’s campaign issued a response which implied that Nazarian’s claim was unfounded,
» Read more about: Los Angeles Election: Walton Family Values? »
Right now former President George W. Bush, who appointed John Roberts as Chief Justice, must be having a Dwight Eisenhower moment.
When Eisenhower nominated California’s Republican governor Earl Warren to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953, he thought he was appointing a conservative jurist. Later, Eisenhower reportedly said that appointing Warren, who took the Court in an unprecedented liberal direction, was the “biggest damn fool mistake” he had ever made. (Warren is one of the people I profile in my new book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame).
Chief Justice Roberts is a far cry from Earl Warren. Indeed, the Roberts court has been one of the most conservative in history.
But we can be grateful for Roberts’ decision to side with the 5-4 majority to uphold the Obama health care reform law.
My hometown just declared bankruptcy. No, not the town I was born in, and not the place I have lived most of my adult life, but where I grew up. Stockton, with a population of about 300,000 is the largest city in America to file for Chapter 9 protection. Conventional wisdom says it was the unfunded pension liability or mismanagement or too much debt, and under state guidelines for bankrupt cities, somebody has to take the blame. But the choices that led to this debacle go back decades.
When I left Stockton in the mid-1960s for college, it was a divided city. The affluent and mostly white people lived on the north side. The “others” lived to the east and south. Others were people who worked with their hands, people who picked the fields, people who worked the seasonal canneries. These were mostly low-wage workers, sometimes no-wage workers who turned fresh produce into food for supermarket shelves across the country.
» Read more about: Stockton Bankruptcy: Fat City’s Missed Opportunities »
The 1936 Republican presidential candidate, Alf Landon, based his bid to defeat FDR on repealing Social Security. In a campaign speech Landon promised: “We must repeal. The Republican Party is pledged to do this.” That year’s election night tally revealed who was in touch with Americans and who wasn’t. FDR: 523 electoral votes; Landon: 8 electoral votes.
And another crazy coincidence. In 1937, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Owen ROBERTS switched his vote and found the Washington state minimum wage constitutional (from an earlier N.Y. case in which the high court had found the minimum wage unconstitutional).
Two weeks later, the Supreme Court found the National Labor Relations Act constitutional. Two days after that a U.S. Appeals Court ruled that Social Security was unconstitutional. Six weeks later, the Supreme Court found it constitutional.
» Read more about: Court Ghosts: And You Thought Obama Had It Tough »
As Duke Law School professor Jed Purdy explained yesterday in his sensible, humane and far-sighted take on the Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act:
“Justice Roberts’ opinion makes him a hero for a day to many liberals. It also moves the Court, at a stately pace, toward an aggressively right-wing view of the federal government’s power. Moreover, it keeps the Court at the very heart of issues where it does not belong. For all its obvious appeal, it is self-aggrandizing and far more radical in its reasoning than in its outcome. That reasoning may have serious consequences down the road.”
Purdy refers in part to Justice Roberts’ endorsement of a narrow view of the Commerce Clause shared by the dissenting justices (Kennedy, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas), who would have struck down the Act in its entirety. (Roberts allowed the individual mandate to stand on the strength of Congress’ constitutional power to tax.
» Read more about: Roberts Rules: Why the Obamacare Victory Is No Win »
Update: KPPC FM’s Hayley Fox reports that L.A. City Councilwoman and mayoral candidate Jan Perry is also declining Walmart campaign funds.
Los Angeles’ two top mayoral candidates announced Thursday they will not accept campaign contributions from Walmart, which is locked in a battle with community and labor groups over the retail giant’s plans to open a 3300-square-foot grocery store in Chinatown.
The pledges by L.A. City Councilman Eric Garcetti and his chief opponent, City Controller Wendy Greuel, bring new focus to Saturday’s protest march and rally against Walmart. Both candidates have endorsed the June 30 action.
“Los Angeles loses if we run a race to the bottom in terms of wages and working conditions,” Garcetti said. “Our economy needs good middle class jobs to get back on track, and that’s what we should be working toward.”
The two candidates urged other elected politicians to also refuse money from Walmart.
» Read more about: Garcetti and Greuel Take the Pledge: No Walmart Money »
By a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld most provisions of the Affordable Care Act. In the court’s most closely watched decision in decades, the majority ruled ACA’s provision mandating that individual citizens enroll in health-care programs was a constitutional imposition of a tax. On the other hand, the justices ruled against the expansion of Medicare.
A statement issued by California’s United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals hailed the court’s decision. The statement quoted union Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Blake, RN:
“This is not just an abstract legal decision. Real lives and the heartbreak of real families will be saved because of it. We’ve got more people in California dying each year because they don’t have health insurance than any other state in the country. But thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the vast majority of us will be covered.”
See these stories:
New York Times (“HEALTH LAW STANDS”
Los Angeles Times (“Healthcare law upheld as a tax measure”)
Washington Post (“What the Supreme Court’s decision on the health-care law may mean for you”)
Talking Points Memo (“SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS ‘OBAMACARE’”
» Read more about: Split Court Vote Upholds Most of Affordable Care Act »
Last week the activist right-wing majority of the United States Supreme Court –in a radical departure from well-settled jurisprudence — further weakened the ability of labor unions to engage in meaningful political activity. The decision has been largely overshadowed by the Court’s ruling on Arizona’s S.B. 1070, and by its anticipated ruling on the Affordable Care Act. Yet, as far as the viability of the labor movement is concerned, the significance of this decision can scarcely be overstated.
In Knox v. SEIU, Local 1000, the majority opinion displayed an unprecedented level of concern for the First Amendment rights of a minority of public-sector employees – but only insofar as those rights limit the ability of labor unions to speak politically. The case arose from SEIU’s state-wide response to several anti-union voter propositions in California. The initiatives were announced after the union had already determined and sent out notices for dues for the coming year.
» Read more about: Crass Warfare: Supreme Court Attacks Unions »
Reading [Robert] Caro’s biographies of LBJ has become a multi-generational experience in our family. At 15, my son, who had never read anything more than Harry Potter, became enthralled with them, devouring the first three. This year, he bought the newest volume as my birthday present, I got my dad the book for Father’s Day, and my dad gave the book to my son for his birthday.
Much of our great fascination with Lyndon Johnson is the duality of his character: willing to lie and cheat, devoid of any principles on his path to power, and then as president, using that power to achieve lofty, principled goals that transformed our nation forever.
As Caro describes in the latest volume, The Passage of Power, as LBJ was preparing to address Congress just after assuming the presidency, “a fierce debate” between his advisors “erupted – over the emphasis to be given in the speech to civil rights.” As the discussion went on until 2:30 in the morning,
It was Grover Norquist who famously said he wanted to shrink government to a size where he could drown it in a bathtub. Norquist’s Paulist allies in Congress (Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan) show no interest in stopping there, however, and probably would go after the bathtub next – or at least indoor plumbing. Of course, things like indoor plumbing and electricity are some of the creature comforts that were brought to millions of Americans by their federal government decades ago, because private enterprise saw no immediate profit in spreading such “luxury” to everyone. Without New Deal programs such as the Rural Electrification Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority and Farm Security Administration, many of us might still be sitting in the dark, as well as sitting – well, elsewhere, if you get my drift.
It’s become bad manners today, however, for government to remind us of the things it does for Americans – or rather,
» Read more about: "Drowning" Government: Be Careful What You Wish For »
Earlier this week, we reported on changes that are needed in the medical cannabis industry. Well, this Friday (June 22), the L.A. City Council takes up two competing proposals for how to deal with an industry that’s gotten out of control.
On the one hand, L.A. City Councilman Paul Koretz and Council President Herb Wesson have made a motion to direct the City Attorney to draft an ordinance that will allow patients limited safe access to responsible operators. The City Attorney would develop an ordinance that establishes strict guidelines for dispensary operations and subject them to city oversight.
This should curb the sorts of abuses we’ve read about, reduce the number of dispensaries, maintain high-road jobs and allow continued access of patients to their medicine.
On the other hand, Councilmen Jose Huizar and Mitchell Englander have proposed a so-called “gentle ban.” But far from being gentle,
» Read more about: Council Dispensary Vote: Compassion or Weed Wacking? »
In its continuing effort to be as sensationalistic as possible, the Los Angeles Times this Sunday ran what purported to be a big expose on the medical cannabis industry under the heading, “The Green Rush.” Set aside that this sounds like maybe the worst Marvel superhero, or perhaps what happens at an environmentalist frat house. What exactly have they exposed here? That the industry is weakly regulated? That there are too many sketchy players in this industry? That there’s a lot of uncertainty moving forward?
I’m not really sure that the L.A. Times is the first to point this stuff out, but it’s all true and it does deserve to be said again. The article takes an in-depth look at court records and police records to show that a sizeable chunk of the industry appears to be primarily concerned with profiting off of patients – in apparent violation of 1996’s Compassionate Use Act.
» Read more about: Pot Pharms: Responsible Dispensaries or Roach Motels? »
While most media attention this week concerning Walmart’s L.A. expansion plans has understandably focused on the cloak-and-dagger shenanigans of self-confessed corporate spy Stephanie Harnett, the mounting local opposition to Walmart has taken on serious political overtones. At the same news conference at which Secret Agent Harnett revealed her identity, Congresswoman Judy Chu vowed to refuse Walmart campaign contributions and encouraged her colleagues to do the same.
“I have never accepted a dollar of Walmart money and I will never take Walmart money,” Chu told a gathering of reporters on Wednesday. “I call on all Los Angeles elected officials not to take Walmart’s money — and to give it back if they’ve accepted those contributions in the past.”
The June 13 event was held across the street from the Chinatown location where Walmart hopes to open a 33,000-square-foot grocery store. Walmart’s dream is the nightmare of local businesses and Chinatown community leaders,
» Read more about: Judy Chu Tells Politicians: Don't Take Walmart's Money »
The fallout from the failed bid to unseat Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, along with election victories to curtail public-employee pensions in San Diego and San Jose, continues for organized labor. While a number of media stories have questioned the strategic wisdom of trying to unseat a sitting governor who had not been accused of criminal wrongdoing, many moderate and progressive writers have been thinking aloud about something more fundamental – the very existence of unions.
“These votes,” the Atlantic.com’s Derek Thompson writes, “didn’t announce a new trend. They reminded us of a very old one.” His post’s title asks the disturbing question, “Are Unions Necessary?” It turns out he doesn’t have an answer. After we follow a recap of the long, slow decline of labor over the past half century, and some scary line graphs comparing plummeting union membership numbers with the fall of middle-class incomes, Thompson invites us to offer our opinions.
(Editor’s Note: This American Prospect post appeared on the eve of last Tuesday’s Wisconsin recall vote and, as such, only anticipates events that have since occurred. Still, Harold Meyerson offers some astute insights into why that recall effort ultimately failed.)
We don’t know the outcome of Tuesday’s gubernatorial election in Wisconsin, of course, but we do know this: Even if labor somehow manages to oust Republican Governor Scott Walker, the result will be nothing like the resounding repudiation that Ohio voters delivered last year in repealing that state’s anti-collective bargaining law pushed by an equally controversial GOP governor, John Kasich.
Why the difference? Kasich’s bill went beyond Walker’s in banning collective bargaining for cops and fire fighters, which proved a decidedly unpopular position, but that can hardly account for more than a fraction of the difference. Moreover, Wisconsin is generally regarded as a more liberal state than Ohio.
Now that Mitt Romney has clinched his position as the GOP presidential candidate, it’s time more than ever for Romney to avoid talking about the health care reform measure he created as Governor of Massachusetts.
You remember President Obama’s health-care legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the one that passed through Congress as smoothly as a kidney stone, thanks to shrill conservative opposition? Key parts of that act were lifted straight from Gov. Romney’s measure, but Mitt can’t afford that association, given the Right’s steady vilification of the plan as “socialism.” Which is why Romney has been running around attacking “Obamacare” instead.
Some Republicans are reading the polls and surfacing the idea of legislation to replace the Obama Administration’s ACA.
It seems their idea is to retain the most popular aspects–covering young people until they are 26, close the Medicare “doughnut hole” that requires patients to pay more for their medications and guarantee coverage despite pre-existing conditions.
» Read more about: Bad Medicine: Walmart's Rx for Employee Health Care »
While hardly surprising to anyone who read the polls, yesterday’s victory by Republican Governor Scott Walker was a body blow to Wisconsin unions and to American workers. Within Wisconsin, Walker’s victory ensures that his law repealing collective-bargaining rights for public employees will stay on the books, and if Republicans maintain their hold on the state senate—four of their senators faced recall elections, and as I write this at least three have survived—they will, at least in theory, be able to go forward on other parts of their Social Darwinist agenda. Whether they will—and whether they opt to go after private-sector unions, too, with right-to-work legislation—remains unclear. Such a move on Walker’s part, coming on the heels of the most divisive 18 months in the state’s history, would only escalate what is already a political civil war. Even Walker may think it the better part of valor to pass on that for now.
But the damage already done by Walker’s anti-union legislation,
Here’s a headline you won’t see, but should: “Scott Walker Spent 88 percent of the Money to Get 53 Percent of the Vote.”
Political pundits will spend the next few days and weeks analyzing the Wisconsin recall election, examining exit polls, spilling lots of ink over how different demographic groups — income, race, religious, union membership, gender, party affiliation, independents, liberals/conservatives/moderates, etc — voted on Tuesday.
But the real winner in Wisconsin on Tuesday was not Gov. Scott Walker, but Big Money. And the real loser was not Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, but democracy.
Walker’s Republican campaign outspent Barrett’s Democratic campaign by $30.5 million to $4 million — that’s a 7.5 to 1 advantage. Another way of saying this is that of the $34.5 million spent on their campaigns, Walker spend 88 percent of the money.
Walker beat Barrett by 1,316,989 votes to 1,145,190 votes — 53 percent to 46 percent (with 1 percent going to an independent candidate).
» Read more about: Wisconsin: Buying Democracy, One Vote at a Time »
Since his sudden death in April, I’ve been trying to imagine the health care movement without Rick Brown’s wise counsel, coherent advocacy, and perfect research. E. Richard Brown was a professor of Public Health at UCLA whose research and advocacy touched millions of lives. As a health activist and advocate, I worked with Rick to save California’s county hospitals and health centers, and I use his research, especially the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) to illustrate the health care needs of various populations in California when I write grant proposals for nonprofit organizations. He was always happy to give me advice about how to frame an argument, and he was always willing to meet with policy makers when activists needed an authority to support them.
The memorial service held on May 29 filled UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall. The crowd included the health activists, labor leaders, UCLA faculty colleagues, and politicians who worked with Rick to gain recognition of health care as a basic human right,
» Read more about: E. Richard Brown: Health Advocate Leaves a Legacy of Justice »
(This post originally appeared in Labor’s Edge, the blog of the California Labor Federation)
Zombies are everywhere these days. They’re on popular TV shows. They’re in the movies. They’re in our nightmares. But what many Californians don’t know is that zombies are a primary reason of our ongoing budget crisis.
Yes, that’s right. We call them Zombie Loopholes, and they’re devouring our state’s budget.
Today, the California Labor Federation launched a new website to highlight the devastating impact that budget-killing corporate tax breaks are having on our state.ZombieLoopholes.com brings a number of wasteful corporate tax breaks that are bleeding our state of billions each year out of the shadows so the public is aware that they’re contributing to deep budget cuts to school funding, services for seniors and public safety.
With the state facing another budget crisis and more cuts to services we value,
» Read more about: Zombie Loopholes Are Eating California’s Budget Alive »
