IN REVERSAL, SCHWARZNEGGER PROPOSES MINIMUM WAGE HIKE

Governor Schwarzenegger has changed his mind and decided to raise the minimum wage by a dollar over a year and a half. He'll announce it on Thursday in his State of the State address. Democratic legislators were quick to decry the move as politically motivated and not enough.

They're right in both cases. Schwarzenegger's approval ratings are down and he's been trying to look more like a Democrat ever since the special election debacle. When he hired state Democratic leader Susan Kennedy as his chief of staff, I wrote that a smarter move would have been to sign the minimum wage bill. Although he's vetoed two bills that would have raised hourly pay for our poorest citizens, Schwarzenegger has now decided that a less ambitious hike is the way to go.

Fabian Nuñez, who's just doing his job, told the LA Times that Arnold's olive branch, "doesn't make up for the ground that some of the state's hardest workers lost when the governor vetoed two previous attempts to raise the minimum wage."

Even a minimum wage that keeps pace with inflation, as Washington and Oregon have enacted, doesn't mean that workers will be able to afford the increase in cost of living. It also won't keep them above the poverty level if they have a kid.

But statewide worker's rights are hard to win. To get any increase under a Republican governor is pretty damn good. Democrats should look at this as a reward for all the hard work this year and they should take it and run with it. As quickly as possible.

Calling the governor's move a political tactic, true as it may be, is a political tactic. As long as the plan doesn't limit further increases, it's better than waiting a year. Perhaps lawmakers think that this is a slick move by a governor who doesn't actually feel, in his heart, that 2 million workers deserve the raise. If that's the case, then fighting him on it is just as sleazy as his proposing it.

Nuñez, et. al. should pick up their chips now and move to the next table. It's a long way to November and there's always time to call Arnold a flip-flopper.

But wait. Is this really a flip-flop? The governor has sworn in the past that he actually wants to increase the minimum wage. Democrats have said he has yet to put a serious measure on the table. Here's what the Times said:

"This year, Schwarzenegger vetoed a proposed $1 increase because it included a provision linking hourly wages with the previous year's inflation rate. The governor said the Legislature should not sidestep its own duty to set the minimum wage based on a host of economic factors, not just the inflation rate."

This suggests that he might be open to tying the rate to other cost of living indicators like the prevailing wage or the cost of food. More likely, he's referring to business factors or the state's economy. He could be saying that the minimum wage should actually decrease under some circumstances. Back in 2004 he vetoed another bill that would have raised it without tying it to inflation.

Regardless of what he feels in his heart, the Schwarzenegger proposal will raise the rate by a dollar. It would not be tied to inflation, or anything else. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, this idea is inconsistent with his his earlier statements. Even if Arnold's not a flip-flopper on raising minimum pay by a dollar an hour, he's ignored his own principle of tying such increases to economic indices.

Is that distinction going to play in the campaigns? No. If Democrats try to get an even better deal for workers, it will only keep this in the news. That can only be to Arnold's advantage. He's already burned the bridge with organized labor, and fighting an increase that can actually pass could undermine union leadership.

Democratic lawmakers should take the win, ignore the politics, and pass the bill.


My 12/7/05 message to Arnold:
http://hollywood-liberal.blogspot.com/2005/12/2006-primary-conan-vs.html

2005 federal poverty levels:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/05poverty.shtml

The LA Times article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-state31dec31,1,3306957.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

And one from the Bee:
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/14028525p-14860715c.html

ON THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS

The LA Times published an editorial yesterday that made me smile. Lately there's been this controversy between conservatives who've been politicizing Christianity since the mid-'90s and, well I don't really know who's on the other side. On the cable news shows they're calling it the War on Christmas.

LA writer Randye Hoder has declared a winner.

At the Grove shopping mall on 3rd and Fairfax, in perhaps the most Jewish neighborhood west of New York, stands the biggest damn Christmas tree you've ever seen. That's right, I said Christmas tree. The Grove loves Christmas. They've got Santa, Christmas music, dancing girls, the whole bit.

Hoder and I share an outsider's appreciation for Christmas including the spectacle, but I don't mind pointing out, as he did, the pecuniary serendipity of it all.

"Were the right-wingers grousing about the crass commercialization of Christ's birthday, I'd be singing from the same hymnal. But their insistence that there's an unrelenting campaign to eliminate all signs and symbols of the faith rings completely false — especially at a place such as the Grove."

The commercial potential of Christmas is not lost on the American Family Association (AMA). They've organized a boycott of any store that doesn't use the word Christmas in its advertising. They've got a list of retailers with explanations like, "Best Buy offers no 'Christmas' in their advertising." Their strategy is to preserve the commercialization of the holiday (oops, I meant the commercialization of Christmas! Sorry guys).

You better watch out. Pretty soon even Rick Santorum (R-Pa) will be taking the holy out of the holiday. In the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, what is now called the Santorum amendment said that schools should "teach the controversy" over evolution.

In 2002 Mr. Santorum wrote in the Washington Times, "intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes."

This year Santorum's faith was truly tested. His Thomas More Law Center defended the Dover, Pennsylvania School Board in a lawsuit over their introduction of intelligent design into science classes. But the War on Adam and Eve proved a little too costly for him in an election year.

"I thought the Thomas More Law Center made a huge mistake in taking this case and in pushing this case to the extent they did," Santorum told the Philadelphia Inquirer just before resigning from the Center's advisory board. Instead of defending the School Board he now has to defend himself against moderate Democrat Bob Casey Jr.'s assertion that he's a flip-flopper.

But Santorum didn't just become a flip-flopper over the Dover case, he was on NPR back in August, before all this war on Christmas stuff. That's when he said, "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom."

Why should I care about all this stuff? I'm a Jew. We love Christmas! Well here's the thing. When politicians use religion to divide Americans, emotions can run hot. I like seeing Christmas trees and light shows as much as anybody, but there is an air of intolerance toward inclusion.

That intolerance reared its head a couple of days ago in my old South Philadelphia neighborhood. Someone tore down a menorah and stomped on it in the dead of night. The menorah was put up in Cianfrani Park by a community group which promptly replaced it next to the Christmas tree.

I lived a few blocks away from there, two doors from a historic Jewish cemetery. I kept a mezuzah on my door. When the hate crime is so close to home, you'll forgive me for taking the attacks on inclusion personally.

Let me make it clear: I do not blame the malls that have Christmas sales. I blame groups like the AMA who divisively confront inclusion as a value.

When someone wishes me a merry Christmas I appreciate it. When they say happy holidays I recognize their sensitivity to my feelings and beliefs. What in the world is wrong with that?

Conservatives derisively label anything that smacks of inclusion as "PC". The implication is that political correctness is some liberal conspiracy that will lead to the bombing of churches. The truth is that the old rules of politeness didn't take into account the diverse country in which we now live. What they call political correctness is just good manners.

If you want to be nice to me today, say merry Christmas or happy holidays. If you know I'm Jewish, say happy hanukah. And if you really want to make me feel good, remember it in September and say happy new year.

Hoder: If it's a war, Christmas won:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-hoder23dec23,1,7297782.story

The Inquirer's Santorum story:
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/13461220.htm

Boycott the holidays!
http://www.afa.net/christmasban.asp

Menorah destroyed in Philadelphia:
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/family_guide/13452962.htm

NYPD + RNC = BIG BROTHER?

We live in an amazing time. The cops use video cameras to catch protesters committing crime, the protesters use video to catch the cops committing crime. But what happens when the cops' own video depicts police malfeasance? And what happens when the police video shows pornography?

Say what?

My New York friends knew the lockdown during the 2004 Republican Convention would be unreasonable. Many were just looking for an excuse to be out of town that week. Stores stayed closed and Manhattan resembled the green zone in Baghdad. One frisky couple took refuge on a roof during the protests, counter-protests, and police crackdowns, according to yesterday's New York Times. The Times didn't exactly say what the couple did, but it was scandalous enough to pique the policeman's prurient interest.

On August 29th, 2004 a policeman was taping a group of bike riders that included an undercover cop. Amid the extra convention security, the riders were handcuffed one by one. Except one. "I'm on the job," the guy said.

"Louie -- he's under!" said the uniformed officer. Louie led him a block away where he got back on his bike and left. This video was turned over to a lawyer for the cycling aficionados and was brought to the New York Times by Eileen Clancy, a forensic video analyst who has put together hundreds of tapes from the convention.

The next night a group of homeless people just so happened to peaceably assemble during the convention. Among them was an undercover officer carrying a sign and a backpack. When he got arrested the crowd got antsy, shouting "let him go! Let him go!" This prompted the John Q. Laws to escalate the issue and push back the protesters with batons. Two people were thrown to the ground, cuffed and arrested while the narc was escorted away and released.

Two days earlier, an amateur Vittorio Storaro working from an NYPD chopper shot some video with night vision, thermal-imaging, and a super zoom lens that can read your license plate from 1000 feet away. Those NYPD DPs get all the toys. The helicopter flew along not-so-subtly spying on the bicyclists and stopped above Jeffrey Rosner's penthouse.

"I had no idea they were filming me -- who would ever have an idea like that?" said Rosner who was innocently getting a little nookie high above the cyclists.

The flatfoot cinematographer plied his art for almost four minutes, shooting the couple through a bush though apparently missing the money shot. The tape would not have been made public had it not been turned over as evidence in the cyclists' lawsuit.

Paul J. Browne of the the NYPD said that it is routine to tape anyone on rooftop who is in a position to throw things at officers below. "The officer was instructed afterward to terminate taping once it was determined a threat did not exist." Hmm, four minutes to figure out that the couple was batting eyelashes and not throwing stones.

Why is protecting caucusing Republicans more important than privacy or civil rights? "We live in a more dangerous, constantly changing world," said New York's Police Commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly. Because of 9/11 police are given more freedoms, and their methods aren't scrutinized as heavily.

I'm guessing I'm not the only one making the connection between this and President Bush's recent admission that he authorizes wiretaps without a court order. As Congress wrangled over the Patriot Act yesterday, I found myself wondering what a victory against terrorism would actually look like.

Is it a victory if we have to live in a police state? Is it a victory when everyone's a suspect with or without probable cause? Are we free from terror when police infiltrate peaceful protests and then incite violence? When we are videotaped without our knowledge or consent? When the rhetoric of dissent is described as aiding the enemy?

Let's not go back to the days of the sixties when the FBI watched and listened to Martin Luther King in his hotel room. Those were the days when the Nixon White House listened in on telephone conversations with impunity. John Dean, Nixon's lawyer who went to jail for those activities, has called the Bush wiretaps an "impeachable offense."

For all his surveillance of others, Nixon was undone because he recorded himself. In this case it seems the NYPD has made the same mistake.

Police at the protests:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/nyregion/22police.html

Cops over rooftops:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/nyregion/22rooftop.html

A foreign perspective on the Bush wiretaps:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Render&c=Article&cid=1135119019228&call_pageid=968332188492

2006 PRIMARY: CONAN VS. BRAVEHEART?

Message to Arnold: if you wanted to attract Democrats, you should have signed the minimum wage increase.

Instead, Governor Schwarzenegger has taken the advice to clean house and hired Democratic operative Susan Kennedy. This has got the hard core activists in such a tizzy that they're threatening to withdraw their support for the conservative superstar.

Kennedy has worked for the ignoble Governor Davis, as well as the dreaded Democratic Party, and that's got Republican officials suspicious. The LA Times reports that the state party might not even endorse him.

Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, told the Times it was a "tragic step backward," and Duf Sundheim, the chair of the state Republican Party, asked, "what does it mean to have a chief of staff from the other party during a year of reelection?"

Perhaps because the GOP takes Mr. Schwarzenegger, just a little too seriously, Republican activist and anti-immigration crusader, Mike Spence decided to bring his action figures to life and create the website, MelGibsonforGovernor.com. The website has a petition you can sign to urge Mr. Gibson to run and it sells movies like The Patriot, Conspiracy Theory, and of course, The Passion of the Christ.

The Governor has outdone himself. First he alienated the legislature, the very people he needs to work with. When they called him on it he called them girlie men. Then he alienated labor with the union-busting special election. When nurses and teachers protested at his fundraiser he told the audience, "I'm always kicking their butts." And now he's alienating the very folks he needs most, the ones who donate to his campaign, the Republicans. He's due to put his foot in his mouth soon. Watch out for it.

And in the meantime, sign the draft Mel Gibson petition. It'll be funny. On second thought, maybe that's not such a good idea.

Conan or Braveheart, you decide:
http://www.melgibsonforgovernor.com

The LA Times article by Robert Salladay:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-arnold7dec07,1,5788176.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage

WELCOME, UNCLE JED! JUST PLEASE DON'T DRIVE

A twelve story deluxe condo development is coming to that intersection of intersections, Santa Monica and Wilshire in Beverly Hills. You know the corner. The one you've avoided since that first year you lived in LA. The one with the Beverly Hilton. The busiest intersection in LA that's not next to a freeway ramp. The one that anyone with any sense stays as far away from as possible (except for by homies at CAA). Developers are proposing 1,600 new condos.

To its credit, the BH is a walking city. I appreciate that people can work, shop, golf, and live in close proximity. The significance of this almost-approved project is not lost on the mayor, Linda Briskman. "It's certainly one of the last great parcels in our city," she told the LA Times, "we need to carefully entitle it so it's compatible."

Some of the residents, too, are properly reticent. The Times reports that neighbors are worried about the shadow a 12 story midrise will cast on a nearby schoolyard and golf course. I guess their shares in sunscreen and sprinkler companies will decline. But concerns about property value and lack of sunlight miss the big picture.

We need a damn subway.

The more cars that idle there, the worse the air is going to be and that means asthma and skin cancer. Of course the environmental health risks are less immediate than the daily frustration. There is no good way to get from Hollywood to the Westside. Our businesses lose productivity and our families lose quality time. Road rage rises and our isolation intensifies.

When Century City, essentially a second downtown, was built, it was supposed to have a freeway. It didn't happen. Mayor Tom Bradley envisioned subways across town. The nimbys stopped it (with a little help from a methane scare).

Finally we have the political will to get on with the project (see my previous post). Hearts and minds are being numbed by gridlock and the public is warming up to it. We still need the money, yes, but with the region united for it, we'll get the money.

What we really need is to bring folks around to the vision. Get them to imagine a Wilshire Boulevard with mixed use developments around subway stops. Subway stops near shops. Near offices. Near homes. Near parks.

You can leave your apartment, take your bike onto the subway, and ride it at the beach in Santa Monica. Or take your golf clubs. Or your briefcase. Your car's safely tucked away under ground, and you can breathe freely. What if there was a subway stop in Century City? Rodeo Drive? Santa Monica and Wilshire? Will people use it? You bet they would. And we'll all be better off.

So have your 1,600 condos, Beverly Hills, and I hope everyone makes a lot of money, but please wait for the subway. Once we're all on board with the idea, it won't take long. You'll be glad you did, and so will your grandkids.

LA Times: Beverly Hills' Brake Light District:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-me-bevhills3dec03,1,2821827.story

The latest:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/wheel/la-me-subway15oct15,1,6483677.story?coll=la-news-local-wheel

PEOPLE AND POLS STOP LAX EXPANSION

Los Angeles International airport will not be expanded thanks to some key elected officials and a very determined group of neighbors. Congratulations are in order to the Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestion (ARSAC) for their successful legal, political, and community battle against the pollution, noise and gridlock of LAX.

ARSAC agreed to drop a lawsuit in return for several concessions that will force Los Angeles to adopt a regional approach to air travel.

But it could never have happened if we hadn't elected Bill Rosendahl to City Council and Antonio Villaraigosa to the mayor's office. Both made blocking airport expansion pillars of their platforms. It actually became a wedge issue on the Westside as their opponents supported the so called "consensus plan" for airport expansion.

With Jim Hahn and Cindy Miscikowski in office, few people believed that expansion could be stopped. I know because I spoke to a lot of voters in Westchester near the airport. To those residents, it must be unfathomable that an agreement was reached so quickly.

This is also a posthumous victory for Assemblyman Mike Gordon who passed away within months of taking office. As mayor of El Segundo, he teamed with the community to make people aware of the issue and helped us all believe that we could do something.

There are others who deserve credit, Maxine Waters being one, but the tipping point came less than 7 months ago when Rosendahl and Villaraigosa were elected. And they could never have been elected without the tremendous work of grassroots groups like ARSAC, and community members who felt they had a chance to change things.

The LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lax1dec01,0,857580.story?coll=la-home-local