Bill McKibben, the author of more than a dozen books on the environment and the first journalist to publish a book about climate change for a general audience, will be speaking in Laguna Woods next month.  The event is sponsored by Concerned Citizens of Laguna Woods Village, the American Association of University Women-Laguna Woods Village Chapter, the Laguna Woods Democratic Club, the Energy Club and the and the National Council of Jewish Women.

McKibben wrote The End of Nature in 1989 and founded the grassroots climate change campaign 350.org which has coordinated 15,000 rallies amnd 189 countries since 2009.  He is hailed by Time Magazine and the Boston Globe as one of the nation’s most important environmentalists.  He speaks on Wednesday, June 19 at 1:30 PM at the Laguna Woods Village Clubhouse #5.

So why are we posting this almost a month out from the event?  paging the Register’s Mark Landsbaum, he of the “Global Warming oops” columns and editorials where the paper tries to debunk Global warming and climate change.  If Landsbaum wants to stand by his columns, his contentions and his words, he ought to be there and hear what McKibben has to say and even debate him on the merits.

If you want to attend this event, you’ll need to contact the Laguna Woods Village Association to register,.  The flyer I received at the Progressive Democrats of America meeting last night didn’t have an email address or a website for the event, so I’m hoping one of our readers will post that information below.

The Liberal OC - Challenging Orange County's right-wing noise machine

The Boy Scouts of America will now permit openly gay scouts into their organization due to a new change on policy passed today by BSA, but the organization will still ban gay scout leaders.

The Washington Post has more details here. The new policy goes into effect on January 1, 2014.

From the story:

The immediate impact of the policy change,  endorsed by more than 60 percent of the organization’s 1,400  voting members,  is hard to predict.

Some of the Scouts’ largest stakeholders, including the Mormon and Catholic churches, reiterated in recent weeks their opposition to same-sex relationships, but some appeared open to staying in Scouting with a wait-and-see approach as a way to keep youth — including gay youth — involved in a popular, wholesome program.

But some individual troops  said they’d leave and earlier Scout research has predicted many exits. The bishop of the Catholic diocese of Arlington, in Northern Virginia, issued a statement Thursday evening saying the vote “would likely force us to reconsider” staying in scouting.

The vote of the century-old, faith-based group symbolizes just how quickly many Americans’ views on homosexuality are changing. Just last summer the Scouts reaffirmed its desire to keep out openly gay boys and adult volunteers, a policy the Supreme Court upheld in 2000. But the escalating pressure from families and major donors in the past year forced the Scouts to act.

The fact that the decision came on Harvey Milk Day wasn’t lost on those in the LGBT Community. It is also notable that for the first time in Orange County history, the OC Board of Supervisors has issued a a resolution proclaiming May 23, 2013 as Harvey Milk Day in Orange County. Read more in the following Voice of OC story.

The Liberal OC - Challenging Orange County's right-wing noise machine

Anthony Weiner, the former Congressman from New York, announced yesterday that he is planning on running for Mayor of New York City. Anyone who has ever heard of Twitter knows about the former Congressman’s sex scandal when he tweeted a sexually explicit picture to a 21 year old woman and after many days of denial finally admitted to sending similar pictures multiple times before and during his marriage. Weiner resigned in June, 2011, and has been awaiting his time to get back into the political sphere.

The former Congressman believes enough time has passed and said “I hope I get a second chance to work for you.”

It’s a pretty gutsy move. You would think such a public scandal like this would be political suicide but the former Congressman is going to give public office a second chance. But we ask the question: does he deserve a second chance?

Politicians are elected to serve their constituents. They should honest, compassionate and possess a great deal of integrity. Their constituents need to be able to trust in them and have faith that they are honorable representatives who have their constituent’s best interests in mind.

Anthony Weiner is attempting something that very few politicians have done; getting back into public office after being forced to resign due to some sort of scandal.

A few recent public office resignations have been Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain, who dropped out of the most recent Presidential race due to sexual harassment accusations, and CIA Director David Petraeus, who resigned in light of his extramarital affair with his biographer.

However, there have been a few politicians throughout the years who have been able to bounce back and not let a scandal ruin their political career.

The most notable and recent political bounce back has been former Governor Mark Sanford, who resigned when his extramarital affair become public. He defeated Elizabeth Colbert Busch in the South Carolina Congressional special election on May 7.

Former Congessman Weiner would definitely be making a monumental comeback in the political sphere if he were to win the race for Mayor of New York. Mark Sanford got his second chance.

Does former Congressman Anthony Weiner deserve his second chance?

The Liberal OC - Challenging Orange County's right-wing noise machine

As Republicans continue to gin up the IRS “scandal” of targeting Tea Party groups for claiming non-profit status on their taxes, some interesting omissions from our friends on the Right.  The rash of non-profit applications by Tea Party and Right Wing anti-tax groups stemmed from the passage of Citizens United; the IRS offices were simply overwhelmed with applications and most of the reporting seems to reveal that agents tried to find a way to streamline the work via keyword searches.

First and foremost, the IRS is supposed to investigate non-profit status on an organization before granting that status and the groups must be involved in social justice not political activity. The Tea Party and its related groups fails miserably on that count alone. Secondly, the IRS investigation into Tea Party groups began in 2010 at the request of seven Republicans targeted by the Tea Party in primary battles.

From Crooks and Liars:

Seven Republican members of Congress filed complaints with the IRS in 2010, claiming Tea Party groups engaged in partisan electioneering, leading to an IRS probe, according to agency documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) launched an examination of the Tea Party on Oct. 8, 2010, claiming a speech by a Tea Party leader made during the organization’s annual convention that criticized President Barack Obama’s education and foreign policies crossed the line from issue advocacy to partisan electioneering. [...]

And in a more thorough review of Tea Party applications, the detail not being covered is not a single application for non-profit status was denied even after profiling when a simple search would easily reveal the Tea Party’s political advocacy.  This report from the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights documents that not a single right wing group has their status denied:

Some of the flagged groups did have their tax-exempt status delayed or did face some additional scrutiny, but not a single group has been denied tax-exempt status.

A May 14 draft report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that none of the 296 questionable applicants had been denied, “For the 296 potential political cases we reviewed, as of December 17, 2012, 108 applications had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been denied, and 160 cases were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some crossing two election cycles).” (p. 14)

In fact, the only known 501(c)(4) applicant to recently have its status denied happens to be a progressive group: the Maine chapter of Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office. Although the group did no electoral work, and didn’t participate in independent expenditure campaign activity either, its partisan nature disqualified it from being categorized as working for the “common good.”

The Orange County Tea Party, which has its own blog here, has announced a their participation in a Nationwide Tea Party Protest at the IRS’s Santa Ana office Tuesday May 21.

The OC Tea Party identifies itself as follows:

What is the tea party movement?

It is a movement of WE THE PEOPLE who want to (i) restore our nation to our Founding Father’s wise and timeless original intent, and (ii) preserve our nation of liberty, freedom and equality (eliminate the gross power of special interests).

There are two main purposes of the tea party movement.

• #1 -It is to educate, organize and activate WE THE PEOPLE.
• #2 -It is also to call out the governments’ unconstitutional acts including naming those individuals or groups that support those acts.

What we believe:

In an attempt to identify the movement more clearly, we have attempted to list the tea party movement’s tenants below.  The list started out small, but has grown – indicative of the enormous challenges facing the American people.  This list is not inclusive or exclusive, however, if you find yourself unable to hold onto too many of the tenants, you may want to reconsider whether you are part of the tea party movement.

1.   We believe that America is good and exceptional.  We are patriotic and law abiding.  We are concerned for the poor, the hungry and the oppressed but do not believe it is the governments’ role to alleviate these problems through forced taxation.  We believe it is the voluntary responsibility of individuals, families, the communities of faith and religion, and other non-profits.  We, ourselves, routinely participate in charity.

2.    We believe in our Founding Fathers’ original intent, including reliance on, and reverence of, the Judeo-Christian God, and the necessary and rightful free exercise thereof in the civic arena on the local, state or federal level.

3.    We believe that our current federal government, namely Congress (both Republicans and Democrats), has over-stepped its Constitutional enumerated powers and is leading America into its demise.

4.    We believe that the federal government has been overtaken by the powerful elite progressives both within government and without (special interests) whose underlying agenda is to create an oligarchy with some form of democratic socialism (social justice) and communism enslaving us through increased spending, unreasonable taxation and overbearing government intrusion.

5.    We believe that the federal Department of Education  is a prime example of an unconstitutional agency wasting and corrupting America.  We believe the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Commerce are prime examples of overreach and intrusion of states rights and individual rights.

6.    We believe that the tea party has very little in common with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and that OWS originated and is being fed by the very same powerful elite progressives mentioned above in #4.

7.    We believe that family and individuals are most important, not the collective.  We believe the powerful elite progressives’ agenda is the destruction of the American family and its values.

8.    We honor and praise our military and all police/sheriff and fire forces.  We believe it is because they freely give the ultimate sacrifice, America is the land of the free, home of the brave and the most highly desired country worldwide.

9.    We believe in the right to pursue happiness and believe that capitalism or competition ensures our ability to do so which means personal responsibility and the right to work as hard as we want using our unique gifts and talents.  We believe it produces and encourages the best in everyone securing and growing the middle class, fostering great innovations that benefit all of society in the most fair and equitable manner possible.

10.    We believe that entitlements are necessary for the few and would be best served by communities of faith and other non-profits voluntarily rather than through forced taxation.  We believe Americans have always been generous and caring, especially for the downtrodden or unfortunate.

11.    We believe that ObamaCare is unconstitutional, will not solve the problems of the un-insured and will not work.  We believe it is unsustainable due to the bureaucracies it will create exploding its costs each year and therefore limiting innovations, hospitals, doctors and equipment.  We also believe it will ruin the quality of care as it continues to exploit the doctors, the hospitals and the doctor/patient relationship disallowing necessary testing and procedures.

12.    We believe that laws should be enforced to stop illegal immigration and a fence be built along our southern border.  We acknowledge that this is a security issue as well as an economic issue and American sovereignty issue of language and culture.  We believe Americans have a right to desire, protect and secure its sovereignty as well as require future citizens to assimilate.  In addition, discussion of illegal immigration reform cannot be had until the borders are secured, not just merely promised.

13.    We believe that special interests and groups divided among class or wealth, race or nationality, sexual preferences or identities, geographic or political parties are being used as tools by the powerful elite progressives to divide rather than to unite or help flourish the American Dream for all.

14.    We believe that Islam with its undeniable strong nexus to Shariah Law breeds terrorism.  We acknowledge the history of Islamic terrorism from our nation’s early days to the present.  We acknowledge the dominant leaders of Islam worldwide that call Israel, “the little Satan,” and America, “the great Satan,” and thus their hatred toward Israel and America calling for their destruction.  We acknowledge their agenda to establish a caliphate (dominance of the world under Shariah Law) even within America and, therefore, must be exposed and stopped.

15.    We believe that environmentalism has become a means to be used by the government to severely control people and businesses and raise revenue (taxes, fees, penalties, cap & trade) for the government to use, not only for good justifiable programs but also mainly for payoffs, corruption and for its insatiable desire to ever increase and sustain the bureaucracy.

16.    We believe in traditional marriage and that forcing the normalization of other sexual identities is an infringement on our 1^st amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

17.    We believe in pro-life.  We believe that society has been deceived into believing that abortion is a necessity for a civil government and that life does not begin at conception.  We believe that if the pro-life merits were presented equally and fairly, any reasonable person would have to come to the conclusion that it is in the best interests of society that we be a society that promotes life for the unborn.

Articles on the blog ask if God has abandoned America is the wake of President Obama’s re-election.  It calls for boycotting Muslims.  And my favorite, that Hamas controls Orange County.

What any of these positions has to do with social justice is beyond me.  As far as education and social justice goes, there are a considerable number of sites who fact check Tea party groups and their leaders like Congresswoman Michelle Bachman and Senator Rand Paul who constantly get facts wrong or just make up stuff out of whole cloth.  Bachman claims ObamaCare will kill people; Paul suggested the UN will seek to take away firearms from average Americans.

The fact of the matter, Tea Party groups are engaged in one activity — political activism designed to elected only the far right wing members of the GOP.  The IRS should revoke their not for profit status based on that alone.

The Liberal OC - Challenging Orange County's right-wing noise machine

In his 2013 State of the Union address President Obama’s called on Congress to raise the minimum wage. Subsequently Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative George Miller (D-CA) introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013. It would:

• Raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour by 2015, in three steps of 95 cents each.
• Adjust the minimum wage to keep pace with the rising cost of living starting in 2016 – a key policy reform known as “indexing,” which ten states are already using to prevent the minimum wage from falling in value each year.
• Raise the minimum wage for tipped workers – which has been frozen at a meager $2.13 per hour for more than twenty years – to 70% of the full minimum wage.

The website www.RaiseTheMinimumWage.com identifies several studies that debunk the job loss myths about raising the minimum wage and its effect on the economy. The site sums it up this way:

The Bottom Line on Minimum Wage and Job Growth:

Two decades of rigorous economic research have found that raising the minimum wage does not result in job loss. While the simplistic theoretical model of supply and demand suggests that raising wages reduces jobs, the way the labor market functions in the real world is more complex. Reseachers and businesses alike agree today that the weight of the evidence shows no reduction in employment resulting from minimum wage increases.

The congressional proposal to raise the federal minimum wage will move the lowest paid workers in our economy less than half the way to where they should be based on the historical income growth.

It’s time to move minimum wage further for all Americans.

The Liberal OC - Challenging Orange County's right-wing noise machine

The economy still needs work, and unemployment rates are still too high, but the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives prefer to dig up their tired desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) for the 37th time. Their effort to repeal has little chance of being acted upon by the Senate, but facts and futility rarely get in the way of their efforts to overturn the landmark health care reform legislation passed in 2009.

The Supreme Court ruled that the bulk of the legislation is constitutional in June 2012, less than a year ago. Since taking control of the House in 2011, they voted 36 times to repeal Obamacare before the 2012 Presidential election. Their action on Thursday make it 37 times. The vote was 229-195 mostly on party lines, with two Democrats joining the House Republicans.

There is so much to be done for our country for this partisan effort to be their focus.

We’ve left the patients in control of the asylum and this is what we get.

The Liberal OC - Challenging Orange County's right-wing noise machine

For all their claims of fiscal responsibility Republican elected officials, from the Board of Supervisors to the state legislative delegation, have demonstrated that ideological arrogance is a one way street to disaster. The victims of these disasters are the taxpayers of Orange County and, more directly, the taxpayers who rely on county services for support.

By now you are most likely aware that the county lost the suit filed by the state to recover about $147 million in two-years worth of property tax revenues, that the county refused to turn over after the state recognized it had been paying Vehicle License Fee (VLF) to the county that it wasn’t technically required to pay. In 2011, while trying to address a $20 billion budget shortfall, Governor Brown discovered the fact that the state was no longer required  to send Orange County approximately $43 million annually in VLF funds.

This problem occurred when the county refinanced it’s bankruptcy debt in 2005. The financing terms for the bonds issued to pay off the county bankruptcy debt required that the state agree to assign a portion of the VLF money the county received from the state be directed to pay the bond debt service. When refinancing occurred, that was no longer required.

But even after being warned that legislation would be required to ensure that those funds continued to come to the county, the Republican majority on the Board did nothing. In a Voice of OC article in 2011, then Board Chairman Bill Campbell admitted; “we did drop the ball. I just don’t know why.”

At the time, then Democratic Assemblyman Jose Solorio attempted to pass legislation to secure a fix for the problem, but after the Republicans in the state legislature, led by the OC delegation, refused to work with the Governor on his budget proposals in any way, there was little legislative leverage to get anything passed.

So the County held back property taxes which, if all things were equal with the other counties in the state, Orange County would have been entitled to. Unfortunately for Orange County, the judge in the state’s lawsuit didn’t agree. The county has decided to appeal the ruling, but in the mean time, the County has been ordered to return the diverted funds.

State Senator Lou Correa and Orange County employee labor groups, led by the Orange County Employees Association, are working day and night to find a solution, while the Republican’s on  the Board of Supervisors contemplate draconian cuts to services, including layoffs. The Orange County Republican legislators are powerless to influence the necessary corrective action, given the intransigence of Senate Minority Leader, Orange County Senator Bob Huff’s positions on most legislative issues. Huff, and the remainder of GOP legislators from Orange County are the leaders of the “Party of No” in Sacramento.

Hopes for a solution rest in the hands of democrats in Sacramento to clean up the mess that the republicans have made.

The Liberal OC - Challenging Orange County's right-wing noise machine

We’ve written about the City of Irvine’s iCHP program before.  It’s a terrific program where the city works with several organizations to identify families of limited income and kids under 19 access affordable or even free quality healthcare for their children.  The city works with the Children’s Health Initiative of Orange County and helps them enroll in MediCal, California Kids, Healthy Families, or Kaiser Child Health Plan.  By helping kids get affordable or free health insurance that’s paid for through grants, eligible families can get preventive health care services for children which is considerably cheaper than treating diseases and ailments that are preventable.

City Finance Commissioner Allan Bartlett is currently reviewing the city’s budget and posted this message on his Facebook page  Monday night:  It’s not the responsibility of the City of Irvine to provide health care for kids. I’m loving going through this city budget right now.  

He later wrote: This is one of those Suhkee Kang legacy bad ideas that needs to be done away with.

Another of Allan’s friends incorrectly stated that it cost the city four employees at $40K each.

There’s a small problem with Bartlett’s statements.  There are both wrong.

Finance Commissioner Allan Bartlett in the red tie

Perhaps it’s an inability to read a budget or grasp the value of preventative care in what it saves taxpayers.  But the program costs the City less than $10,000 a year which is spent most on printing costs and the cost of administering the program is covered by multiple grants secured by city staff.

So what is iCHP all about?  Eligible families, with children under 19, who live in Orange County meet certain monthly income standards based on family size can use one of several plans to get:

• Full Medical Care
• Vision
• Dental
• Mental Health
• Hospital Care

And a family’s immigration status doesn’t matter.

More than 750 children in Irvine alone are enrolled in this program through the end of 2012 and iCHP has been hailed as one of the most efficient programs in the city.

But the Irvine Republicans just seem to hate the idea of any public money being spent on providing health insurance to kids in families with limited incomes.

Mayor Pro Tem Jeff Lalloway and Council member Christina Shea have both spoken out against these services in the past.  As a mayoral candidate in 2008, Shea was asked by the OC Register what’s the one thing she’d cut from the city’s budget. It was the iCHP program:

From the story:

Q. WATCHDOG: Christina Shea, if you could cut one thing from the budget, what would it be and why?

A. SHEA: “I would cut the I-CHP program (Irvine Children’s Health Program Initiative) proposed by Mayor Pro Tem Sukhee Kang. It costs about $200,000 a year, and pays consultants to go door-to-door to help lower-income people get their children signed up for almost-free healthcare from the state’s Healthy Families and other programs.

To spend money on this in a year when we had to borrow $6.5 million from our reserves to balance the budget – just doesn’t seem right. And we might have to borrow again next year to balance the budget.

Healthy Families is one of the state’s great health care programs for lower income families. But people can go to a local agency in Santa Ana to fill out their own paperwork. Government, in my mind, should not be paying to have people filling out forms. I mean, when are we going to go out to our community and start fixing people’s washers and dryers? There has to be an element of personal responsibility. We shouldn’t be filling out their paperwork; this is the individual’s responsibility and would save the city $200,000. This is a waste of taxpayer money.”

That $200,000 in 2008 is now under $10,000; divide it by the city’s 220,000 residents and the cost per resident is less than a nickel a year.

It’s no surprise that Bartlett serves on the Finance Commission as a Shea appointee.  Perhaps someday should he ever become a father, he’ll appreciate the benefit of preventative health care for kids.  But more immediately, I’m concerned that he lacks the ability to recognize the city doesn’t provided free health insurance to kids.  If he can punt that simple budget line item, what else is he not getting?  And cutting healthcare for poor kids?  Just heartless.

As George Carlin once said of Republicans: “These conservatives are really something, aren’t they? They are all in favor of the unborn, they will do anything for the unborn, but once you’re born, you’re on your own! Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that they don’t want to know about you, they don’t want to hear from you . . . no neo-natal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing! If you’re pre-born, you’re fine. If you’re pre-school, you’re fucked.  Conservatives don’t give a shit about you until you reach military age. Then they think you are just fine, just what they’ve been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.”

The Liberal OC - Challenging Orange County's right-wing noise machine

The DIsneyland Resort will profit from the proposed streetcar project in Anaheim, but it’s the Anaheim taxpayer that will pay the bill.

The Liberal OC - Challenging Orange County's right-wing noise machine