Shame on California Teachers Association (CTA) for opposing Prop 46; is CTA in the pocket of the Medical Association?

The California Medical Association has been wining and dining Democrats.  California Teachers Association seems very vulnerable to such attentions.  CTA has been campaigning to protect negligent doctors, keeping shamefully low caps on damages for extreme harm to patients.  Prop 46 is a positive step in the right direction for protecting patients in California.  Why is CTA opposing it?  CTA is playing politics and ignoring basic principles of fairness.

We test kids who play basketball.  We test pilots.  Why don't we test doctors?  Think of how many lives would be saved if more doctors were thinking clearly when they see patients, and if doctors had to pay a reasonable amount when they ruin lives.  See below Consumer Watchdog press release and LA Times article.



Doctors That Harm - The Real Stories Insurance Companies Against Prop 46 Don't Want You To Know: Dr. Carl Bergstrom

 Consumer Watchdog Campaign

10/31/2014

Lisa Cohen lisa@lisacohen.org

 CARMEL, CA: Dr. Bergstrom was arrested based on a report of sexual assault after a night of drinking.

During the trial, the prosecution produced an audiotape which Dr. Bergstrom had accidentally created when he left his office dictation machine on. Dr. Bergstrom was heard buying cocaine, using cocaine, and trading cocaine for sex on the 5.5 hours-long audiotape. Dr. Bergstrom admitted at trial that he traded prescription drugs for cocaine.

The audiotape also recorded Dr. Bergstrom issuing medical orders, dictating patient chart notes, and providing telephone consultations to patients after using, and while under the influence of, cocaine.
During the trial, two other women testified that they were similarly assaulted by Dr. Bergstrom. Both testified that they believed that they may have been drugged.

Dr. Bergstrom was ultimately sentenced to prison for felony sexual battery. As a result, Dr. Bergstrom's medical license was revoked.

Proposition 46, the Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act, will enact the first law in the nation to require random drug and alcohol tests of physicians in hospitals, modeled after the Federal Aviation Administration testing program that has successfully reduced substance abuse by pilots. Doctors found to be impaired on the job will have their license suspended. If Prop 46 had been in effect, Dr. Bergstrom's drug abuse may have been detected, possibly preventing threats to patient safety in the process.

Hall of Shame: Insurance Companies Backing No on 46

NorCal Mutual Insurance Company    $11,000,000.00
The Doctors Company    $10,500,000.00
Cooperative of American Physicians    $10,161,489.04
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan    $5,000,000.00
Medical Insurance Exchange of California    $5,000,000.00
The Dentists Insurance Company    $1,620,000.00
The Mutual Risk Retention Group    $1,000,000.00

All Insurers:     $44,613,583.22

Total:     $59,169,984.79

Insurance companies have spent nearly $45 million dollars to oppose Prop 46 in order to shield dangerous doctors like Dr. Bergstrom from punishment, at the expense of patient safety, in order to protect their already substantial profits. In total, the opposition to Prop 46 has over $59 million dollars in their warchest, outspending consumer and patient safety advocates more than 8:1.

Learn more about Proposition 46 and the campaign for patient safety at: www.yeson46.org

Your Neighbors for Patient Safety, a Coalition of Consumer Attorneys and Patient Safety Advocates - Consumer Attorneys of California Issues
Initiative Defense Political Action Committees
Kabateck, Brown, Kellner, LLP

Related Focus Areas:

Medical Malpractice

A voter guide to California's boring but important ballot propositions
George Skelton Los Angeles Times
Oct. 30, 2014

...Prop. 46 would return the limit on medical malpractice pain-and-suffering payouts to the same dollar value it was in 1975. Inflation has greatly eroded it.

Doctors, hospitals and insurers have raised more than $55 million to kill the measure. They claim it would cause healthcare costs to skyrocket. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, however, calculates the increased cost as practically infinitesimal: less than 0.5%.

Back in 1975, then-Gov. Brown and the Legislature set the cap on noneconomic damage awards at $250,000. If that had been adjusted annually for inflation, it would be $1.1 million today. That's where Prop. 46 would reset it.

Opposition ads are demonizing trial lawyers, contending Prop. 46 is all about enriching them. But it's really about securing justice for malpractice victims, who now have difficulty hiring lawyers because the potential awards are so low.

The measure also does two other things. It would require drug and alcohol testing of hospital doctors. And to fight pain pill addiction, it would force doctors to use a state database that tracks patients' prescription histories.

It's long past time to bring the medical malpractice cap into the 21st century. And there's nothing wrong with requiring hospital doctors to undergo drug testing, as pilots and bus drivers do. Controlling pain pill addiction through modern technology also makes sense...

A Blistering Dissent in ‘McCutcheon’: Conservatives Substituted Opinion for Fact

Supreme Court Justices, from left, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justices of the Supreme Court Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan applaud State of the Union Address,12 Feb 2013 (Rex Features via AP Images)

A Blistering Dissent in ‘McCutcheon’: Conservatives Substituted Opinion for Fact
Moyers and Company
April 2, 2014

Central to the Supreme Court’s campaign finance decisions in the John Roberts era is that the government’s only legitimate interest in this area is preventing direct, quid pro quo corruption — a donor demanding that a specific law be passed, or killed, in exchange for cash — or the appearance of direct corruption.

In the McCutcheon decision announced on Wednesday, the court struck down a limit on how much cash an individual could give to all federal candidates during an election cycle. The five conservative justices allowed that the rich showering friendly candidates with unlimited amounts of money might drown out the voices of the majority and distort our fragile democracy, but not blatantly enough to justify the spending limit.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that “government regulation may not target the general gratitude a candidate may feel toward those who support him or his allies, or the political access such support may afford.”

The conservative majority passed on an opportunity to strike down a limit on how much a donor can give to an individual candidate — perhaps because in Citizens United, they’d accepted the proposition that unlimited donations to “independent” third party groups didn’t lend the appearance of corruption — but Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion, wrote that “limiting the amount of money a person may give to a candidate does impose a direct restraint on his political communication,” and moved to strike that provision down as well.

The court’s four-member minority issued a blistering dissent, written by Justice Stephen Breyer. He charged that the majority’s “conclusion rests upon its own, not a record-based, view of the facts.”

Its legal analysis is faulty: It misconstrues the nature of the competing constitutional interests at stake. It understates the importance of protecting the political integrity of our governmental institutions. It creates a loophole that will allow a single individual to contribute millions of dollars to a political party or to a candidate’s campaign.

Taken together with Citizens United, Breyer writes that McCutcheon “eviscerates our Nation’s campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve.”

He goes on to dissect the claims on which the court’s ruling rest. He first takes issue with the idea that the government only has an interest in preventing a direct exchange of cash for votes.

In the plurality’s view, a federal statute could not prevent an individual from writing a million dollar check to a political party (by donating to its various committees), because the rationale for any limit would “dangerously broade[n] the circumscribed definition of quid pro quo corruption articulated in our prior cases.”

This critically important definition of “corruption” is inconsistent with the Court’s prior case … and it misunderstands the constitutional importance of the interests at stake. In fact, constitutional interests—indeed, First Amendment interests—lie on both sides of the legal equation.

In reality, as the history of campaign finance reform shows and as our earlier cases on the subject have recognized, the anticorruption interest that drives Congress to regulate campaign contributions is a far broader, more important interest than the plurality acknowledges. It is an interest in maintaining the integrity of our public governmental institutions. And it is an interest rooted in the Constitution and in the First Amendment itself.

Consider at least one reason why the First Amendment protects political speech. Speech does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, political communication seeks to secure government action. A politically oriented “marketplace of ideas” seeks to form a public opinion that can and will influence elected representatives….

The First Amendment advances not only the individual’s right to engage in political speech, but also the public’s interest in preserving a democratic order in which collective speech matters.

What has this to do with corruption? It has everything to do with corruption. Corruption breaks the constitution­ally necessary “chain of communication” between the people and their representatives. It derails the essential speech-to-government-action tie. Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard. Insofar as corruption cuts the link between political thought and political action, a free marketplace of political ideas loses its point. That is one reason why the Court has stressed the constitutional importance of Congress’ concern that a few large donations not drown out the voices of the many….

The “appearance of corruption” can make matters worse. It can lead the public to believe that its efforts to communicate with its representatives or to help sway public opinion have little purpose. And a cynical public can lose interest in political participation altogether.

Breyer then wonders how the conservatives could square McCutcheon’s narrow definition of “corruption” with its conclusion, in the 2003 case McConnell v. FEC, that money — and the access it purchases — has a pernicious influence on the political process.

The Court in McConnell upheld these new contribution restrictions under the First Amendment for the very reason the plurality today discounts or ignores. Namely, the Court found they thwarted a significant risk of corruption—understood not as quid pro quo bribery, but as privileged access to and pernicious influence upon elected representatives.

In reaching its conclusion in McConnell, the Court relied upon a vast record compiled in the District Court. That record consisted of over 100,000 pages of material and included testimony from more than 200 witnesses. What it showed, in detail, was the web of relationships and understandings among parties, candidates, and large donors that underlies privileged access and influence. The District Judges in McConnell made clear that the record did “not contain any evidence of bribery or vote buying in exchange for donations of nonfederal money.”

Indeed, no one had identified a “single discrete instance of quid pro quo corruption” due to soft money. But what the record did demonstrate was that enormous soft money contributions, ranging between $1 million and $5 million among the largest donors, enabled wealthy contributors to gain disproportionate “access to federal lawmakers” and the ability to “influenc[e] legislation.”

“We specifically rejected efforts to define ‘corruption’ in ways similar to those the plurality today accepts,” writes Breyer.

He then takes on the conservatives’ second rationale: that the problem the aggregate limit was supposed to address — huge donors funneling money indirectly to a candidate in order to get around the limit on contributions to a single campaign — isn’t an issue today.

The plurality is wrong…. In the absence of limits on aggregate political contributions, donors can and likely will find ways to channel millions of dollars to parties and to individual candidates, producing precisely the kind of “corruption” or “appearance of corruption” that previously led the Court to hold aggregate limits constitutional. Those opportunities for circumvention will also produce the type of corruption that concerns the plurality today. The methods for using today’s opinion to evade the law’s individual contribution limits are complex, but they are well known, or will become well known, to party fundraisers.

He offers three concrete examples of how a wealthy donor might be able to get millions of dollars to a single candidate without running afoul of the law under McCutcheon.

But perhaps the dissent’s most withering criticism of the ruling is that, as in Citizens United, it was decided according to the majority’s beliefs, rather than the factual record.

In the past, when evaluating the constitutionality of campaign finance restrictions, we have typically relied upon an evidentiary record amassed below to determine whether the law served a compelling governmental objec­tive. And, typically, that record contained testimony from Members of Congress (or state legislators) explaining why Congress (or the legislature) acted as it did….

If we are to overturn an act of Congress here, we should do so on the basis of a similar record….

Determining whether anticorruption objectives justify a particular set of contribution limits requires answering empirically based questions, and applying significant discretion and judgment. To what ex­tent will unrestricted giving lead to corruption or its appearance? What forms will any such corruption take? To what extent will a lack of regulation undermine public confidence in the democratic system? To what extent can regulation restore it?

… For another thing, a comparison of the plurality’s opinion with this dissent reveals important differences of opinion on fact-related matters. We disagree, for example, on the possibilities for circumvention of the base limits in the absence of aggregate limits. We disagree about how effectively the plurality’s “alternatives” could prevent evasion. An evidentiary proceeding would permit the parties to explore these matters, and it would permit the courts to reach a more accurate judgment. The plurality rationalizes its haste to forgo an evidentiary record by noting that “the parties have treated the question as a purely legal one.” But without a doubt, the legal question—whether the aggregate limits are closely drawn to further a compelling governmental interest—turns on factual questions about whether corruption, in the absence of such limits, is a realistic threat to our democracy….

The justification for aggregate contribution restrictions is strongly rooted in the need to assure political integrity and ultimately in the First Amendment itself. The threat to that integrity posed by the risk of special access and influence remains real. Part III, supra. Even taking the plurality on its own terms and considering solely the threat of quid pro quo corruption (i.e., money-for-votes exchanges), the aggregate limits are a necessary tool to stop circumvention. And there is no basis for finding a lack of “fit” between the threat and the means used to combat it, namely the aggregate limits.

The plurality reaches the opposite conclusion. The result, as I said at the outset, is a decision that substitutes judges’ understandings of how the political process works for the understanding of Congress; that fails to recognize the difference between influence resting upon public opinion and influence bought by money alone; that overturns key precedent; that creates huge loopholes in the law; and that undermines, perhaps devastates, what remains of campaign finance reform.

Sweetwater approves campaign finance reform; all it took was a few indictments; now what about other school districts?

An image captured in January 2012, at one of the many heated meetings of the Sweetwater trustees.

Sweetwater School Board to Consider Campaign Finance Reform
Under the current rules, a board member can accept an unlimited amount of money from a contractor seeking or performing work with the district.
By Wendy Fry
NBCSanDiego
Jan 14, 2014

The Sweetwater Union High School District will vote on campaign finance reform Tuesday in the wake of a two-year criminal probe into relationships between contractors and South County politicians.

The community has been persistent in getting the item on the agenda, despite being blocked in the past by the board and superintendent.

The proposal would limit campaign contributions to $750 for a single election contest for candidates for the board of trustees.

It also seeks to ban candidates running for school board to take contributions from anyone other than individuals or political party committees.

...This comes after three Sweetwater Union High School District board members were accused of accepting thousands of dollars on gifts and meals, allegedly for awarding construction contracts to contributing companies.

No limits are currently in place. Under the current rules, a board member can accept an unlimited amount of money from a contractor seeking or performing work with the district. For example, during his 2010 reelection campaign, Board President Jim Cartmill accepted a $20,000 contribution from SGI Construction Management, which working at the time for the district under the voter-approved $644 million bond measure.

The proposed campaign finance rules would do nothing to curb the often big amounts of money spent on behalf of candidates through independent committees. A political party could, for example, spend as much as it wants independently to promote a candidate, as long as the campaign was not coordinated with the candidate.

Sweetwater board approves campaign reform
By Allison Sampite-Montecalvo
SDUT
Jan. 14, 2014

CHULA VISTA — The Sweetwater Union High School District school board, with three members facing criminal charges in a pay-to-play case brought by the District Attorney’s Office, voted unanimously Tuesday in favor of campaign finance reform.

The reform was supported by trustees Jim Cartmill, John McCann and Bertha Lopez. Trustee Pearl Quiñones was absent. Cartmill, Lopez and Quiñones have been indicted in the corruption investigation.

Many residents consider the reform decision a huge step forward in transparency and restoring trust. Community member Maty Adato said the vote was a move in the right direction.

“This is the fifth time this issue have been on the agenda in two years,” she said. “They’ve never wanted to adopt it.”

The decision limited campaign contributions that can be made to board candidates to a maximum of $750. Only individual donors would be allowed to make contributions. Previously there was no limit on the amount or type of campaign contributions that a school board candidate could accept.

The resolution makes it “unlawful for an individual to make, or for a candidate or a controlled committee to solicit or accept” a contribution more than $750 for a single election contest.

“The limit would apply to both campaign committees and also to legal defense funds, which are additional separate fundraising mechanisms that elected officials may use when they’re facing particular illegal matters related to their office,” said Christine Cameron, an attorney who works for the district. Cameron also said the knowing solicitation of district employees for contributions is prohibited.

“The resolution also provides that at a later time the board would develop procedures for investigating violations of the rules but in the meantime a complaint submitted to the superintendent and signed by the complainant would have to be investigated using an independent investigator,” she said.

A controversial item on how to fill a board seat vacated by a member who pleaded guilty in the corruption case didn’t make it to a vote Tuesday. Although the members present formed a quorum, a decision on the vacant seat issue requires the support of three or more board members, and that appeared unlikely, so the matter was delayed. Board members also felt it was important to include Quiñones in the decision.

The vacancy was created when Arlie Ricasa resigned after pleading guilty Dec. 19 to a misdemeanor charge of accepting gifts above state limits. The Sweetwater indictments were among others at the San Ysidro School District and Southwestern College.

The board decided it would try and get in touch with Quiñones as soon as possible and set another meeting to either decide on a process for a provisional appointment or go forward with a special election.

But the trustees are up against a ticking clock.

The school district’s attorney, Dan Shinoff, said that according to board bylaws, members must fill the vacant seat within 60 days, or Feb. 17. The more time that passes the more likely it is a special election would be held, which Shinoff said could cost up to $1.5 million for a nine-month appointment (when Ricasa’s term would have expired). Shinoff said the special election would cause “a significant fiscal impact on the district.”

Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett believes in standardized tests for accountability in schools--except if it would make a GOP donor unhappy

Accountability for you, but not for me, seems to be a common policy in schools I've worked in. Now it's been exposed in the state superintendent's office in Indiana.

"Christel’s ninth- and 10th-grade students got brutally low scores on the English and math tests, with only 70 percent passing English and just a third passing math...

"Bennett’s staff swung loyally and swiftly into action; within a day they had found what they called a “loophole” in the state law that allowed them to change Christel’s grade."

The Case of the Missing Zeroes
An astonishing act of statistical chutzpah in the Indiana schools’ grade-changing scandal.
By Jordan Ellenberg
Slate.com
Aug. 2, 2013

Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett resigned Thursday amid claims that, in his former position as superintendent of public instruction in Indiana, he manipulated the state’s system for evaluating school performance.

Bennett, a Republican who created an A-to-F grading protocol for Indiana schools as a way to promote educational accountability, is accused of raising the mark for a school operated by a major GOP donor. Bennett calls that charge, which arose from emails among Bennett’s staff obtained by the AP, “malicious and unfounded” and “frankly so off base.” He offered a different explanation for why the grades for Indianapolis charter school Christel House Academy—whose mark soared from a C to an A—and 12 other schools were changed at the last minute. According to Bennett, he was just correcting a simple math mistake.

Bennett’s explanation is perfectly mathematically reasonable, and it would get him off the hook. The only problem is that the story he’s telling appears to be totally false.

Bennett told AEI’s Rick Hess, “As we were looking at the grades we were giving our schools, we realized that state law created an unfair penalty for schools that didn't have 11th and 12th grades. Statewide, there were 13 schools in question had unusual grade configurations. The data for grades 11 and 12 came in as zero. When we caught it, we fixed it.”

Bennett’s stated rationale makes sense. Here’s an analogy. You’re teaching a course with three exams, and each student’s overall exam grade for the class is computed as an average of her three individual exams

(1/3) * (exam 1) + (1/3) * (exam 2) + (1/3) * (exam 3)

But what happens if a student misses exam 3, with a justified absence, and the test can’t be made up? Then we have what’s called a “missing data” problem—we have to infer something about the student’s performance without the full complement of data we have for everybody else. One natural approach is to compute that student’s overall exam grade as the average of the exams she did take:

(1/2) * (exam 1) + (1/2) * (exam 2).

What you shouldn’t do is give the student a zero for the exam and average it into her grade.

Christel House had started out as a middle school and was adding one high school grade each year; for the 2011-12 school year, it served students through the 10th grade. High schools, according to Indiana statute, were to be graded on four metrics, averaged like so:

30% * (English scores) + 30% * (algebra scores) + 30% * (graduation rate) + 10% * (college and career readiness score)

But, as Bennett said in an official statement, “Christel House only served students in grades K-10, thus the graduation rate and college and career readiness measures could not be calculated because the school did not serve grades 11 and 12.” So it faced a missing data problem, like the student who had to miss an exam.

Indeed, it wouldn’t be fair to count those scores as zero! The obvious fix, just as with the student, is to grade such a school on the two scores that it does have:

50% * (English scores) + 50% * (Algebra scores)

Does that mean Bennett really did get railroaded, and he was just fixing an obvious error?

No—because the “fixed” version of the grade was what Indiana was already using before Bennett started tinkering with the gears. When you dig into the numbers, the story about the unfair zeroes looks like a complete fabrication.

Christel’s ninth- and 10th-grade students got brutally low scores on the English and math tests, with only 70 percent passing English and just a third passing math. Here’s how Jon Gubera, then the Education Department’s chief accountability officer, described Christel’s performance in one of the emails released by the AP:

“OK, here is their breakdown ...

They served grades K-10 in 2011-12 so they are a combined school but do not have any graduates. So their grade is a combination of the standard E/MS model and the HS 9&10 model which only counts ECA proficiency.

E/MS results: 3.00 on E/LA (no growth bonuses) and 4.00 on math (bottom 25% bonus) = 3.50 points (B)

HS results: 2.00 on E/LA (70% pass rate) and 0.00 on math (33% pass rate) = 1.00 points (D)

Final Combined results: E/MS 3.50 x .76 (76% of school is in grades 3.8) = 2.66 + HS 1.00 x .24 (24% of school is in high school) = .24. Thus overall grade is 2.66 + .24 = 2.9 (C).

Bottom line: their terrible 10th grade Algebra I results (33% passing) was the principal factor in earning a C grade."

Christel’s grade 3–8 scores came to a 3.50, or a B, and their high school scores, thanks to the algebra fiasco, were a 1.00, or a D. The school’s score is then an average of the grade 3–8 scores and the 9–10 scores, weighted according to the proportion of students in each group.

Where are the zeroes for the graduation rates and readiness score that got averaged into Christel’s score—the “unfair penalty” that Bennett claims he fixed? They’re not there, because that’s the part that Bennett, as far as I can tell, simply made up.

Gubera’s computation wasn’t satisfactory for Bennett, because it didn’t give Christel an A, and—judging by the emails obtained by the AP—he had already told Christel administrators they were getting an A. No mere numbers were going to make a liar out of him!

What’s more, Bennett wrote in one of the emails, the low grade for Christel meant “legislative leadership as well as our critics of A-F are going to use this against us to undo our accountability metrics through legislation.” He went on: “If you can’t tell, I am more than a little miffed about this. I hope we come to the meeting today with solutions and not excuses and/or explanations for me to wiggle myself out of the repeated lies I have told over the past 6 months.”

Bennett’s staff swung loyally and swiftly into action; within a day they had found what they called a “loophole” in the state law that allowed them to change Christel’s grade. The statute clearly states that high schools without 12th-graders get a score made up half of the English score and half of the algebra score. What’s more, the law said schools that combined high school grades and lower grades should use a weighted average of the elementary/middle school measures and the four high school measures.

Here’s where Bennett’s team found the loophole big enough to drive a charter school through. A normal person would do exactly what Chief Accountability Officer Jon Gubera did—give Christel the weighted average of its elementary/middle school score, according to the rules for elementary/middle schools, and its high school score, according to the rules for high schools.

But Bennett had a better idea. Christel was, technically speaking, not a high school, so the statutory formula for the high school grades didn’t apply. But it also didn’t have all four high school measures, so, he argued, the rules for combined schools didn’t apply either. There were just 13 schools in the state that had both middle school and high school grades but no seniors. For these schools, Bennett reasoned, the Indiana education poobahs should have a free hand to set the grades however they pleased. You can guess what happened next: Bennett ruled that the ninth- and 10th-graders in these schools didn’t count at all. So it was that the offending algebra grades vanished in a puff of bureaucratic smoke. (Anne Hyslop at Ed Money Watch has an even more detailed accounting of the process, if you like watching sausage get made.)

This was an act of astonishing statistical chutzpah. Suppose the syllabus for my math class said that the final grade would be determined by averaging the homework grade and the exam grade, and that the exam grade was itself the average of the grades on the three tests I gave. Now imagine a student gets a B on the homework, gets a D-minus on the first two tests, and misses the third. She then comes to me and says, “Professor, your syllabus says the exam component of the grade is the average of my grade on the three tests—but I only took two tests, so that line of the syllabus doesn’t apply to my special case, and the only fair thing is to drop the entire exam component and give me a B for the course.”

I would laugh her out of the office. Or maybe suggest that she apply for a job as a state superintendent of instruction.

The saddest part is that I’m guessing Bennett sincerely felt he was doing the right thing. In his mind, he knew Christel was a great school, so if the scores said otherwise, the scores had to be wrong. In this respect, ironically, he ends up echoing his policy opponents, adopting the position that a mechanistic testing and scoring procedure can’t be allowed to override firsthand knowledge about teachers and schools.

Saying this out loud wasn’t an option, so any test scores that seemed to indicate learning problems at Christel had to be eliminated from the spreadsheet with extreme prejudice. (I attempted to reach both Tony Bennett and Jon Gubera and have not received a reply from either man. If I do hear back, I will add an update to this story.)

Bennett told AEI’s Hess, “I'm a track and field guy. I run, I try to keep my weight down at about 190. Christel has been a track-performing school for a number of years. If I get on the scale one day, am doing everything the same, and am still wearing my same clothes and they fit, and the scale suddenly reads 215, I am going to question what's going on.”

But Christel wasn’t doing everything the same. It didn’t have a 10th grade before, and then it did, and whatever it was doing to teach those new 10th-graders math, it didn’t lead them to pass algebra.

Bennett could, and should, have faced up to that fact, given the school the C it earned, and delivered them some honest tough love: “You’re still doing well at the stuff you’ve always done well, but you obviously haven’t succeeded at the new stuff you’re trying to do. We believe you can do it, but until you do, your grade’s going to suffer.” Isn’t that what accountability in education means, if it still means anything at all?

Mitt Romney: Teachers Unions' Contributions To Political Campaigns Should Be Limited

Mitt Romney: Teachers Unions' Contributions To Political Campaigns Should Be Limited
The Huffington Post
By Mollie Reilly
09/26/2012

Mitt Romney embraced campaign finance reform on Tuesday. But rather than targeting unlimited corporate contributions or lending his support to existing campaign finance legislation, Romney instead suggested limiting teachers unions' donations to politicians.

The Republican presidential candidate came down on teachers unions for supporting political candidates during an NBC-sponsored forum on education in New York City. During the "Education Nation" event, moderator Brian Williams asked Romney about his thoughts on the teachers' strike in Chicago.

"I don’t know that I would prevent teachers from being able to strike,” Romney said, acknowledging that "allowing to teachers to strike on matters such as comensation" is within their rights.

Instead, Romney said the focus should be on removing the teachers unions' money from the political equation.

“We simply can’t have a setup where the teachers unions can contribute tens of millions of dollars to the campaigns of politicians and then those politicians, when elected, stand across from them at the bargaining table, supposedly to represent the interests of the kids," Romney said. "I think it’s a mistake. I think we’ve got to get the money out of the teachers unions going into campaigns. It’s the wrong way for us to go. We’ve got to separate that.”

Romney also noted that the unions tend to be particularly friendly to Democratic candidates.

The former governor's comments fall in line with arguments made against the Supreme Court's controversial Citizens United decision, in which the court ruled that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts on campaigns under the First Amendment. Romney has previously declined to criticize the ruling, telling the Portsmouth Herald's editorial board that he believed "their decision was a correct decision."

Romney has advocated for overturning legislation like the 2002 McCain-Feingold Act, instead supporting unlimited individual contributions to campaigns as long as there is full disclosure...




Is it possible that Romney is upset with teachers because they didn't give him a good science education?

Mitt Romney Wonders Why Ann Romney's Airplane Windows Don't Roll Down Huffington Post
09/24/2012

...After his wife's plane was forced to make an emergency landing this weekend, Romney told the Los Angeles Times, he was worried for her safety. The candidate then continued on a bizarre tangent that showed just how little the Republican nominee understands about flight.

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney told the paper. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly."

Romney said the biggest problem in a distressed aircraft is that "the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous."...

It's Called Labor Day, Not SuperPac Day

It's Called Labor Day, Not SuperPac Day (includes video)
Sept. 3, 2012

Prop 32 was intentionally written to advantage corporate special interests and disadvantage working people. The SuperPAC Billionaires are enthusiastic about Prop 32, because it will only make their independent expenditures more powerful.

SuperPac Billionaire, who can also be found on twitter, made a video about his plans once Prop 32 passes. But voters across California are fighting to make sure that never happens.

As a teacher I've dedicated my life to bettering others, and I deserve a voice! I'm saying "no" to this greed by voting "no" on 32!
- Kimberly Laws, San Diego

Join Kimberly by pledging today to vote No on 32

Bonnie Dumanis' Public Integrity Unit goes after another Mexican-American (current target: San Ysidro School District)

Manuel Paul

UPDATE: Manuel Paul indicted, along with Bertha Lopez and Jim Cartmill.

So far, Bonnie Dumanis' Public Integrity Unit has always acted on behalf of Republican officials.

Is it because Republicans in San Diego have more integrity than Democrats? Clearly not. Republican Mayor Dick Murphy planned the deal that earned San Diego infamy as "Enron by the Sea." But the only people charged by Bonnie Dumanis in the secret pension deal were employees, not officials.

The District Attorney is very selective about her public official targets.

With one exception, they are all from Greg Cox/Cheryl Cox's district (South Bay), and they are always Mexican-American (or assistants of Mexican-Americans), and they are all Democrats (except for one Republican Mexican-American who had the temerity to run against Cheryl Cox). The one exception is Kathleen Sterling, a North County Democrat.

Former Superintendent Lowell Billings of Chula Vista Elementary School District covered up crimes, and seems to have padded his pockets.

Superintendent Says Cash Exchange was for Campaign
By Wendy Fry
Aug 4, 2012
NBCSanDiego

The superintendent of San Ysidro school district said in a June 20 deposition that he accepted $2,500 in cash from a contractor in 2010 in the parking lot of the Chula Vista Butcher Shop, a South Bay restaurant that has since been renamed the Steak House.

The superintendent of San Ysidro schools said in a June 20 deposition that he accepted $2,500 in cash from a contractor in 2010 in the parking lot of the Chula Vista Butcher Shop, a South Bay restaurant that has since been renamed the Steak House.

San Ysidro schools superintendent Manuel Paul said the money was for a campaign contribution for board member Yolanda Hernandez.

“It was cash given to me by Mr. Loreto Romero,” Paul said. “He gave me cash for campaign posters for Mrs. Yolanda Hernandez.” Paul later added the amount was about $2,500.

Hernandez did not respond to multiple requests for comment made over several weeks. Loreto Romero concurred with Paul’s description of the cash exchange, saying the money was a political donation. When pressed, Romero admitted he was hoping to compete for a construction management contract with the school district at the time the money was dropped off.

A donation from Romero does not appear on any campaign finance forms available on the San Diego County Registrar’s website for Hernandez and the county campaign services supervisor confirmed Friday that no amendments have been made or filed recently. Even if the money was a political donation, San Diego State political science professor Brian Adams said exchanging that much cash breaches state campaign finance laws.

“For cash, it’s $99 for what you can receive. Everything else has to be in a check,” said Adams, who has written a book on local and state campaign finance laws. Paul’s deposition was taken as part of a lawsuit brought by Chula Vista-based Manzana Energy, a solar panel company suing the district for breach of contract. The approximately $18 million services contract would have allowed the school district to purchase solar power from political consultant Art Castañares’ company, Manzana or EcoBusiness Alliance - another business name for Manzana.

Under the deal, San Ysidro agreed to buy power generated by the panels from Manzana Energy over 25 years for a flat fee of $18.9 million. Manzana was to pay $16 million to buy and install the panels, which would have generated about 70 percent of the schools’ power needs. School district officials estimated at the time that the deal would save San Ysidro $10.5 million in energy costs over the 25 year life span of the contract.

The equipment was supposed to be installed in early February 2008, but not one panel had been put into place when the contract was terminated in October 2011. Because no panels were installed, no district funds were ever spent on the endeavor. Castañares’ is building a case that his contract was terminated because he refused to “pay to play.”

In the deposition, Paul said he took the cash from Romero to a business in Tijuana to make posters for Hernandez’s election campaign.

“That’s completely illegal. And it’s very clearly illegal,” said SDSU professor Adams, who said that all campaign cash must be deposited into a campaign account and then expenditures made from that account to promote transparency.

“You can of course amend your form and that does frequently happen with candidates who make mistakes, but the initial mistake is still there and they can still be fined for that. Also, what’s typical in these types of cases is the money has to be returned. Now, I don’t know if they’ve returned the money, but it is very likely they will be required to return the money to the contributor.”

San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis is prosecuting six current and former officials in the neighboring Sweetwater school district for their role in what she has described as a pervasive and systemic “pay to play” atmosphere. Dumanis said the Sweetwater officials traded their votes on key contracts in exchange for Lakers tickets, Halloween costumes, expensive meals and other entertainment.

In an email statement in response to questions about the 2010 cash exchange, Paul wrote:

“We are in the middle of litigation with EcoBusiness System I am not willing to discuss anything relative to pending litigation. Apparently your interest involves information you have learned from a deposition. I am surprised that you would have a deposition that has not been filed in court in your possession. That being said, I believe that there are ulterior motives by parties to this case which relate to an effort to pressure an improper resolution. That will not occur, and I will not allow my position to be used for such a purpose. I must respectfully decline your request to go camera. I believe that the issue you have discussed with others in my office has been completely obfuscated. I believe the proper reporting regarding campaign contributions have been made."

NBC7 asked Paul why he was collecting campaign money on Hernandez’s behalf, as he is not listed as her campaign manager or treasurer in disclosure forms, but he has not yet responded to that question.

During the Fall 2010 cash exchange in the parking lot, San Ysidro schools was accepting bids for construction on a new school, Vista Del Mar. According to Paul’s testimony in the deposition, companies who competed for the contract included: Echo Pacific, Barnhart Balfour Beatty, Erickson Hall, GI Construction Management, Seville Construction Management and HAR Construction Management, a company headed by Loreto Romero’s brother, Hector.

Erickson Hall eventually won the contract.

The San Ysidro school district consists of seven schools serving about 5,200 students in kindergarten through eighth-grade, along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Source: Superintendent Says Cash Exchange was for Campaign | NBC 7 San Diego

Lawyers donate to school board members, who then channel tax dollars back to them, says lawsuit against Garcia Calderon Ruiz

“Lawsuits are generally filed by people that are upset and angry,” according to Sergio Feria. I say give that man a genius award. Here's a quote from someone else: "Disgruntled ex-employees (or ex-founding partners) are usually the only ones who will tell the truth about an organization." I notice that Mr. Ruiz didn't file his suit until after he left the law firm.

Bonny Garcia has donated to the election campaigns of trustees Jim Cartmill, Arlie Ricasa and Sandoval. Campaign finance records show donations of $1,000 to Ricasa in 2001-02, $1,000 to Sandoval in 2002 and $975 to Cartmill in 2002.

Complaints preceded raids on South County school officials
Parents, retired teachers urged prosecutors to investigate Sweetwater board members
By Jeff McDonald, Ashly McGlone
UT-SD
December 21, 2011

...Another lawsuit filed this summer raises questions about the relationship between vendors for the district and the elected officials who award public contracts.

Rogelio Ruiz, a founding partner for GCR LLP, the longtime Sweetwater legal counsel formerly known as Garcia Calderon Ruiz, is suing his former partners, claiming they used company profits to make political donations to help secure work.

In his suit, Ruiz said partners Bonifacio Garcia and Yuri Calderon used $15,000 in law-firm proceeds to fund Citizens for Good Government in the South Bay, a political action committee that supported Sweetwater board members and others.

The committee “could funnel thousands of dollars in political contributions to Calderon’s and Garcia’s friends without attracting unwanted media attention and to avoid allegations of conflict of interest and pay-to-play schemes,” the suit states.

Ruiz also accuses his former partners of donating thousands of dollars to political candidates and groups around the state “in an effort to impress and curry favor with certain elected officials,” the suit adds.

Attorney Mark Isola, who is representing Ruiz, said Garcia and Calderon “took those funds and used the monies to get business.”

Sergio Feria, the San Diego attorney representing Calderon and Garcia, denied allegations in the suit and called it an accounting dispute between former partners.

“Lawsuits are generally filed by people that are upset and angry,” he said...

South Bay bond manager's home raided; California Watch finds campaign donors get bond work in 110 out of 111 cases

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis seems to be obsessively focused on Chula Vista politics when it comes to public integrity. It's a big county, but Bonnie seems to be limiting herself to implementing the agendas of Greg and Cheryl Cox and their friends. There are serious problems in other parts of the county. In fact, California Watch discovered that "For donors [to bond campaigns], failure is rare. In only five cases out of 111 did an underwriter make a donation and fail to receive a contract to sell the bonds. In four of those, however, more than one underwriter made donations and the contract went to the firm that had contributed a larger amount to the campaign." (See second story below.)

South Bay bond manager's home raided
Wendy Fry
UTSD
May 3, 2012

District Attorney’s investigators executed search warrants Wednesday morning at the home and former office of bond manager Gary Cabello, a financier who has done work at both Sweetwater schools and Southwestern College.

Cabello’s defense attorney, Heather Boxeth, said the investigators were searching for documents and information as part of their ongoing investigation of corruption in the South Bay. Cabello has not been implicated in any crime.

“That law enforcement showed up with a search warrant was a surprise to Mr. Cabello, as he had been previously contacted by the District Attorney’s Office and has been willing to cooperate in any fashion,” Boxeth wrote in an email statement. “Furthermore, my various phone messages, as Mr. Cabello’s attorney, left with the District Attorney’s Office remain unreturned. Mr. Cabello has over 20 years of public finance experience across the state, which is a highly regulated industry. Mr. Cabello has nothing to hide, he’s been involved in no illegal activity. The execution of the search warrant ... while inconvenient and embarrassing certainly won’t turn up any evidence of any wrongdoing on his part.”

Also searched were the Carlsbad offices of Alta Vista Financial, Inc. A spokesman for the company said of that raid, “It had nothing to do with our company. They were here looking for information on a former employee who hasn’t worked here for about three years. We cooperated with them and they left.”

Cabello, 53, worked at Alta Vista serving the Sweetwater school district prior to Proposition O, a $644 million voter-approved bond measure passed in 2006. He calculated the size of the bond measure and the tax rate needed to finance the long list of school building projects. Alta Vista contributed $25,000 to the campaign to get the bond measure approved by voters. The company then won a contract underwriting the bond.

Cabello’s current company, Chicago-based Cabrera Capital Markets, LLC., has a contract with Southwestern College to manage Proposition R bond funds. Officials with Cabrera Capital did not respond to questions Thursday.

The District Attorney’s Office is building a case that Sweetwater and Southwestern officials accepted thousands of dollars of expensive meals, entertainment and other gifts in exchange for awarding multi-million dollar contracts under a systemic “pay to play” culture. Five current and former officials face felony charges, while three contractors have pleaded out on misdemeanor charges and are cooperating with prosecutors.



With campaign donations, bond underwriters also secure contracts
May 3, 2012
Will Evans
California Watch

Leading financial firms over the past five years donated $1.8 million to successful school bond measures in California, and in almost every instance, school district officials hired those same underwriters to sell the bonds for a profit, a California Watch review has found.

The practice is especially pronounced in California, where underwriters gave 155 political contributions since 2007 to successful bond campaigns for school construction and repairs. One major underwriter, Piper Jaffray, has said it gets more requests for campaign contributions in California than in any other state where they do business.

The success rate of these underwriters is extremely high. In only five cases since 2007 has a campaign donor failed to receive a bond-selling contract from the school district.

School districts say they choose bond underwriters for their expertise and competitive rates and because they’ve served them well in the past. And underwriting firms say they contribute only after they’ve been hired to sell the bonds, avoiding any undue influence.

But critics say that no matter when the agreement is made, the campaign donations influence school districts’ business decisions. They argue that pre-arranged underwriting contracts bypass a truly competitive sale, leaving in doubt whether districts got the best possible deal.

“If this isn’t clear proof of pay to play, then pay to play doesn’t exist,” said Glenn Byers, Los Angeles County’s assistant treasurer, who oversees some school bond sales but doesn’t control the hiring of underwriters. “The timing of the payment is irrelevant. You paid and you got the job. That’s pay to play.”

Some states have banned the practice. Missouri, for one, outlaws donations to bond campaigns from companies with a financial interest in the bond sale.

In the past five years in California, five major underwriters donated $1.8 million to help pass 111 ballot measures, authorizing $15.5 billion in debt. A couple dozen other measures received underwriter contributions but failed at the ballot box.

Overwhelmingly, bond underwriters who donated to these campaigns were granted contracts by school districts.

In nearly all cases, the only underwriters that donated to a successful school bond campaign ended up working on the bond sale. Bond Buyer, a trade publication, found the same pattern in an earlier review of 2010 campaign contributions.

At times, multiple underwriting firms will donate to a single bond campaign. But even there, the success rate is high. In almost all cases in which multiple bond underwriters donated to the same campaign, they all were given contracts by the school district to market those bonds...

For donors, failure is rare. In only five cases out of 111 did an underwriter make a donation and fail to receive a contract to sell the bonds. In four of those, however, more than one underwriter made donations and the contract went to the firm that had contributed a larger amount to the campaign...

(Click on link at top to see the rest of this very detailed article.)

School Board Member Among 270 Owing on ‘Delinquent’ Sewer Accounts

School Board Member Among 270 Owing on ‘Delinquent’ Sewer Accounts
School trustee Bill Baber, treasurer to several political campaigns, faces $407 lien on property taxes.
By Ken Stone
La Mesa Patch
August 17, 2011

Thanks to recent council action, La Mesa hopes to collect $126,000 from people who haven’t paid their sewer bills—about 270 residents, businesses and other property owners.

Among those targeted is Bill Baber, a three-term member of the La Mesa-Spring Valley school board who served as campaign treasurer for incumbent Ernie Ewin in the 2010 La Mesa City Council race and state Sen. Joel Anderson.

Baber, an attorney, is currently the treasurer of Steve Danon’s campaign to unseat county Supervisor Pam Slater-Price in 2012.

Baber owes the city $407.72, according to a list of delinquent sewer accounts dated Aug. 3 (attached).

When contacted Tuesday night, Baber said he didn’t know he was on the sewer lien list—approved by a 5-0 vote of the City Council on July 26.

“I will investigate [the bill],” Baber said after Tuesday’s school board meeting. “If it’s a valid claim, I’ll take care of it.”

Also on the delinquent account list is Richard Bucklew, a member of the PBID Formation Committee, which is working to create a system in The Village where property owners tax themselves for various improvements and services.

Bucklew, owner of Don Keating Used Cars on La Mesa Boulevard, owes $747.56 on two parcels, according to the delinquent account list. In 2008, he owed $233.29. (The 2008 delinquent list said 359 accounts owed the city a total $103,747.)

An email to Bucklew’s business address wasn’t returned by late Tuesday night.

By far the largest amount owed by an individual is $9,521.50 by Joyce A. Peterson, who had to pay $4,457 in 2008 as well. The No. 2 individual is Charles Rowe, said to owe $1,428.

Sotal University Inc. owes $8,328, according to the 2011 list, and Sideral Systems Associates Inc. owes $1,039. In 2008, it owed $670.

On Nov. 8, a news release from Flocke & Avoyer Commercial Real Estate noted that Peterson had leased about 2,480 square feet at 5611 Lake Murray Blvd. to Scott Winston for a fitness center.

“The lease is for five years with a consideration of $195,708.12,” said Flocke & Avoyer.

The City Clerk’s Office said Tuesday it sent the names of delinquent accounts to the county Recorder’s Office so these can be added to the property tax bills of the listed people. When property tax bills go out, residents with liens will have to pay extra—the amount owed on sewer bills. The city then get its money.

Baber was first elected to the school board in 2000; his current term ends in December 2012. He has served as treasurer for Oceanside Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, a group reportedly backed by Associated Builders and Contractors, which is critical of labor unions.

Baber is listed as government affairs director for ABC’s San Diego chapter.

In December 2010, the state Fair Political Practices Commission found that Baber had violated state law “because you should have reflected the name of your sponsor in the name of your committee” during an Oceanside campaign.

But the FPPC levied no fine—only a warning...

Two Donors Give Big to Campaign to Expand School Board

Two Donors Give Big to Campaign to Expand School Board
January 26, 2011
by Emily Alpert

A group of philanthropists, parents, business leaders and others seeking to revamp San Diego Unified school board elections raised more than $451,000 last year, according to its most recent campaign filings. Most of that money came from just two donors.

A company owned by philanthropist and businessman Rod Dammeyer, CAC Advisory Services LLC, gave $300,000 last year to San Diegans 4 Great Schools. Qualcomm cofounder Irwin Jacobs gave $150,000. The group also got smaller donations from several retirees, including retired school administrator Linda Sturak, who gave $500.

"We've had a couple other donations but at this point, they're really providing the bulk of it," said Scott Himelstein, the group's president. Himelstein said while the donor list is short, the campaign was still meeting its fundraising and spending targets so far.

Last year, the group spent or owed more than $50,000 of that money for radio advertisements, more than $130,000 to pay petitioners and more than $115,000 in consulting costs, according to documents filed with the city yesterday that cover the last few months of the calendar year.

San Diegans 4 Great Schools is campaigning to expand the school board, now composed of five elected members, to include four more appointed members. The campaign would also set term limits and elect school board members exclusively from geographical subdistricts instead of making them campaign in the school district at large.

Its backers say the changes would stabilize and depoliticize the school board, stopping the political turmoil and the revolving door of superintendents in past years. Opponents, including existing board members and the teachers union, call the plan elitist and undemocratic and say it won't help schools.

(Full disclosure: Camille Gustafson, VOSD's marketing director, also donated $100 to the campaign.)

Pete Wilson, who opposed Proposition 13, is on board of Chamber of Commerce that attacked Brown for opposing Prop 13

Deceiving voters is apparently the goal of the Chamber of Commerce, and, one suspects, the goal of Pete Wilson and Meg Whitman.


"The chamber ad fails to point out that the organization took the same position for which it is now criticizing Brown...The chamber's commercial and Web site acknowledge that the job losses to which it refers have occurred since 2007—long after Brown was governor and while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who received the chamber's endorsement, was in office."

Groups say attack ad against Brown violates law
By JULIET WILLIAMS Associated Press Writer
04/07/2010

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Two groups complained Wednesday to California's campaign watchdog agency about a television commercial funded by the California Chamber of Commerce that attacks Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown.

The ad and an accompanying Web site say Brown, the state's current attorney general, raised spending as governor from 1975 to 1983 and opposed Proposition 13, which limited property tax increases.

"California's lost 1 million jobs. We're $200 billion in debt, and Jerry Brown has a 35-year record of higher spending and increased taxes," says the ad, which the chamber said in a news release will air "throughout virtually all of California in the coming weeks."

The California Democratic Party and the Santa Monica-based group Consumer Watchdog complained Wednesday to the Fair Political Practices Commission, arguing that the ad violated California elections law.

The groups say the ad, which was not paid for by the chamber's political action committee, is intended to defeat Brown and therefore should be subject to disclosure rules about who paid for it. They also say it's costing the chamber more than $1 million.

They also note that Republican candidate Meg Whitman's campaign manager, former Gov. Pete Wilson, is on the chamber's board...

The chamber's commercial and Web site acknowledge that the job losses to which it refers have occurred since 2007—long after Brown was governor and while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who received the chamber's endorsement, was in office.

While Brown did oppose Proposition 13, which was approved by about two-thirds of voters in 1978, so did Wilson and the chamber, along with the California Taxpayers Association. They supported an alternative measure for a split-roll tax with lower taxes for owner-occupied homes.

The chamber ad fails to point out that the organization took the same position for which it is now criticizing Brown...

Comcast wins against FCC in effort to control what we see on the Internet

It seems to me that we have too many federal judges who are more loyal to business interests than to the constitution of the United States. Recently the Supreme Court said businesses can spend as much as they want on political ads; now a federal court says owners of cable networks can actually give privileges in exchange for money (or political favors?) as to what information is provided to the public via the Internet.


FCC loses key ruling on Internet `neutrality'
By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer
April 6, 2010

People use computers at an internet cafe in Wuhan Reuters – People use computers at an internet cafe in Wuhan, Hubei province, January 23, 2010. REUTERS/Stringer
Related Quotes Symbol Price Change
CMCSA 18.76 -0.06
GOOG 568.22 -2.79
T 26.31 0.00
VZ 31.20 -0.26
By JOELLE TESSLER, AP Technology Writer Joelle Tessler, Ap Technology Writer – 3 hrs 1 min ago

WASHINGTON – A federal court threw the future of Internet regulations into doubt Tuesday with a far-reaching decision that went against the Federal Communications Commission and could even hamper the government's plans to expand broadband access in the United States.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC's authority to impose such "network neutrality" obligations on broadband providers.

Supporters of network neutrality, including the FCC chairman, have argued that the policy is necessary to prevent broadband providers from favoring or discriminating against certain Web sites and online services, such as Internet phone programs or software that runs in a Web browser. Advocates contend there is precedent: Nondiscrimination rules have traditionally applied to so-called "common carrier" networks that serve the public, from roads and highways to electrical grids and telephone lines...

The Lincoln Club gets federal Judge Irma Gonzalez to suspend San Diego's campaign finance laws

The Lincoln Club Gets a New Stick
by Scott Lewis
March 22, 2010

I'm not sure many people realized just how influential the Lincoln Club of San Diego just became. Well, wait. I should rephrase. How potentially influential the club became.

Last month, federal Judge Irma Gonzalez suspended many of the city's complicated campaign finance laws and I don't think the magnitude of what has changed has set in....Check out what's happened to the Lincoln Club.

Up until last month, if you wanted to support a candidate you could simply put up a billboard for them yourself. Spend as much as you want. It's free speech, have a blast. If you wanted to get together with some friends and each, say, give $20,000 to the effort, no problem. Again, go nuts. But you had to disclose, on the billboard, who paid for it.

If you didn't want it to say your name and wanted to communicate that your cause was more of a general popular one, you might want to put a committee's name on it. For instance, you might want it to say something like "Paid for by the Committee that Loves San Diego" instead of your actual names. If so, the city limited you and your friends to donations of $500 each.

At $500 each, you need a lot -- a lot -- of friends to make something significant happen. Let's say you would want to, like the firefighters in 2004, dump $100,000 into an ad campaign. You'd need 200 people to give $500 each. That might be possible but raising that much money would require a campaign of its own. On the other hand, the Lincoln Club has access to many who could give well more than $1,000 to an advertising blitz if they were motivated enough and the rules allowed.

This is what the Lincoln Club faced. It has an active membership of Republican supporters, many of whom have the means to spend a lot more than $500 each on a billboard. But they were limited to that and with a low limit like that, they couldn't get together behind the Lincoln Club banner and do as much as their money might normally seem to allow.

That's why they sued. A federal judge decided their suit had merit in light of this decision -- enough merit to at least suspend the city's rules for a bit.

And now, the members of the Lincoln Club of San Diego -- and any other group of people -- have the power to raise and spend as much as they'd like. And they can do it behind their organization's banner.

Though it has been active for years in school board and City Council races the club now can deploy far more resources. Instead of just mailers, the group's small membership can now raise more money and put out billboard and television campaigns. It can produce videos and mount websites...

Supreme Court OKs unlimited corporate spending on elections

Supreme Court OKs unlimited corporate spending on elections
By David G. Savage
January 22, 2010
LA Times

Overturning a century-old restriction, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations could spend as much as they wanted to sway voters in federal elections.

In a landmark 5-4 decision, the court's conservative bloc said that corporations had the same right to free speech as individuals, and for that reason the government could not stop corporations from spending to help their favored candidates.

The ruling, which will presumably apply as well to labor unions and other organizations, is likely to have an effect on this year's congressional elections. Many political analysts and election-law experts predict that millions of extra dollars will flood into this fall's contests, much of it benefiting Republican candidates.

Republicans praised the decision as a victory for wide-open political speech, but Democrats slammed it as a win for big money...



Obama calls Supreme Court decision a victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies, who can now spend all they want on TV ads

Biz, Unions Freed to Spend Big on Elections
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 21, 2010


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Coming soon to your TV, thanks to the Supreme Court -- an even bigger flood of political ads.

A bitterly divided court vastly increased the power of big business and unions to influence government decisions Thursday by freeing them to spend their millions directly to sway elections for president and Congress.

As a side consequence, the election-season blizzard of ads on Americans TV screens is bound to increase.

The ruling reversed a century-long trend to limit the political muscle of corporations, organized labor and their massive war chests. It also recast the political landscape just as crucial midterm election campaigns are getting under way.

In its sweeping 5-4 ruling, the court set the stage for a wave of likely repercussions -- from new pressures on lawmakers to heed special interest demands to increasingly boisterous campaigns featuring highly charged ads that drown out candidate voices.

While the full consequences of the decision were hard to measure, politicians made clear whom they believed benefited. Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, condemned the decision while Republicans cheered it.

Still, more labor and corporate money in the political system could dilute the role of both political parties.

And the decision seeded the ground for further challenges to an already weakened system of campaign finance regulations.

The justices weighed two fundamental political forces -- the power of the central government and the concentration of corporate wealth -- and tilted decidedly in favor of the latter. The opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy made a vigorous argument based on the Constitution for the right of the public to be exposed to a multitude of ideas and against the ability of government to limit political speech, even in the interest of fighting corruption.

''The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach,'' Kennedy wrote.

Strongly dissenting, Justice John Paul Stevens said, ''The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.''

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas joined Kennedy to form the majority in the main part of the case. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens' dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.

The court overturned two earlier decisions and threw out parts of a 63-year-old law that said companies and unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads urging the election or defeat of particular candidates by name. The decision, which applies to independent spending that is not coordinated with candidates, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions and didn't touch the McCain-Feingold ban on unlimited corporate and union donations to political parties. Nor did it disturb companies' right to solicit voluntary contributions to political action committees that can donate directly to candidates.

Corporations and unions would still have to identify the sources of money for their political activity -- a provision of current law that the court upheld in an 8-1 vote...

San Diego needs an elected auditor

An elected auditor is needed in order for San Diego to shed its image as a fraudulent borrower. Few people are going to believe the financial reports that are produced by an appointed auditor. San Diego can't get good interest rates from lenders until it lives down its reputation as Enron by the Sea.

This country also need to fix our campaign finance system. No more private money should be allowed in campaigns. Too many big private donors make elected officials feel like they were appointed!