9TH CIRCUIT DECIDES THAT VIDEO OF PROP 8 TRIAL ARGUMENTS WILL NOT BE RELEASED

The San Jose Mercury News has the story. Here’s a clip:

A federal appeals court on Thursday refused to allow the public release of the videotapes of the historic Proposition 8 trial that led a judge to overturn California’s voter-approved gay marriage ban.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the arguments of media organizations and same-sex marriage advocates, saying the trial judge in the Proposition 8 trial had offered assurances that the videotapes would remain under seal.

The appeals court stressed that the ruling was based on the particular facts of the Proposition 8 case, not broader questions of public access to court proceedings.

Before the 2010 trial, the U.S. Supreme Court had blocked former Chief Judge Vaughn Walker from permitting the proceedings to be broadcast. But Walker videotaped the trial for use inside the courthouse by the lawyers and him.

THE CITIZENS’ COMMISSION ON JAIL VIOLENCE MEETS FRIDAY

The Citizens Commission on Jail Violence has not yet begun hearing from witnesses and the like, but is still nailing down its plan of attack.

For instance, at today’s meeting the commission plans to firm up its timeline (Hint: its final report is preliminarily set to due in August/September—meaning September, since nobody wants to read a serious report in August.)

The commission will also discuss the five different areas of investigation that its teams of investigators intend to pursue—things like “deputy culture,” “use of force,” “investigative procedures,” “management and oversight,” and various jail personnel issues.

PLUS they’ll receive a report on jail population trends, compiled for them by Jim Austin (the national expert on the topic who is doing a larger jail population assessment and proposal for Sheriff Baca and the LA County Board of Supervisors).

Anyway, you get the idea. More on all this after the meeting.

(Just to remind you, this is the commission appointed by the LA County Board of Supervisors to investigate the problems of inmate abuse by deputies in the LA County jail system and to make recommendations).

SENTENCING PROJECT RELEASES NEW REPORT SHOWING MANY STATES ARE DIALING BACK THEIR SENTENCING AND LOCK-UP POLICIES.

The new report highlights 55 reforms in 29 states and documents “a growing trend to reform sentencing policies and scale back the use of imprisonment without compromising public safety.”

Here are the kinds of reforms the report documents:

Sentence modifications – Four states — Connecticut, Ohio, Nebraska, and North Dakota — established sentence modification mechanisms that allow correctional officials to reduce the prison sentences of eligible prisoners;

• Drug offense reforms - Four states — Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, and Ohio — revised penalties for certain drug offenses and authorized alternatives to prison as a sentencing option in specified circumstances. In addition, Idaho and Florida expanded the eligibility criteria for drug courts in order to expand their impact.

• Death penalty - Illinois abolished the death penalty, becoming the sixteenth state to eliminate the sentencing option;

• Probation revocation reforms - North Carolina restricted the use of prison as a sentencing option for certain persons who violate the conditions of probation; and..

• Juvenile offender sentencing reforms – Georgia authorized sentence modifications for certain juvenile defendants with felony offenses by allowing judges to depart from the statutory range when considering the youth’s background.

NOTE: California is not exactly high on the list of the states who’ve done well with reform.

IN COLBERT V. THE SUPREME COURT OVER CITIZENS UNITED, THE COMEDIAN MAY BE WINNING

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick has this essay on the topic, and you must read it. Immediately. Really.

Here’s a clip:

When President Obama criticized Citizens United two years ago in his State of the Union address, at least three justices came back at him with pitchforks and shovels. In the end, most court watchers scored it a draw. But when a comedian with a huge national platform started ridiculing the court last summer, the stakes changed completely. This is no pointy-headed deconstruction unspooling on the legal blogs. Colbert has spent the past few months making every part of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Citizen United look utterly ridiculous. And the court, which has no access to cameras (by its own choosing), no press arm, and no discernible comedic powers, has had to stand by and take it on the chin.

It all started when Colbert announced that, as permitted by Citizens United, he planned to form a super PAC (“Making a better tomorrow, tomorrow”). As he explained to his viewers, his hope was that “Colbert Nation could have a voice, in the form of my voice, shouted through a megaphone made of cash … the American dream. And that dream is simple. That anyone, no matter who they are, if they are determined, if they are willing to work hard enough, someday they could grow up to create a legal entity which could then receive unlimited corporate funds, which could be used to influence our elections.”

Then last June, like a winking, eyebrow-wagging Mr. Smith, Colbert went to Washington and testified before the FEC, which granted him permission to launch his super PAC (over the objections of his parent company Viacom) and accept unlimited contributions from his fans so he might sway elections. (He tweeted before his FEC appearance that PAC stands for “Plastic And/Or Cash.”) In recent weeks, Colbert has run several truly insane attack ads (including one accusing Mitt Romney of being a serial killer). Then, with perfect comedic pitch, Colbert handed off control of his super PAC to Jon Stewart (lampooning the FEC rules about coordination between “independent PACS” and candidates with a one-page legal document and a Vulcan mind meld). Colbert then managed to throw his support to non-candidate Herman Cain in the South Carolina primary, placing higher on the ballot than Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, and Michele Bachmann….

Read the rest.

The same group of five Supreme Court justices that gave us Citizens United have used the First Amendment as a means to strike down a 13-year-old Arizona campaign finance law that provided matching public $$ for candidates who agreed to use only public funds for their campaigns and who were facing extremely well-heeled opponents.

The reasoning given by Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, was that balancing the campaign expenditures of the wealthy violated free speech. Or something to that effect. To wit:

“We hold that Arizona’s matching funds scheme substantially burdens protected political speech without serving a compelling state interest and, therefore, violates the First Amendment.”

“….. ‘Leveling the playing field’ can sound like a good thing. But in a democracy, campaigning for office is not a game. It is a critically important form of speech.”

The LA Times David Savage has one of the better reports on the ruling with a good overview of the POV’s of both sides. He notes that Justice Elena Kagan took on Roberts directly in her dissent:

She said Arizona’s law, adopted by voters in 1998 after an election scandal in which state legislators were caught on video stuffing campaign cash into gym bags, would produce more speech by the candidates, not less.

“Less corruption, more speech,” Kagan wrote. “Robust campaigns leading to the election of representatives not beholden to the few, but accountable to the many. The people of Arizona might have expected a decent respect for those objectives,” she wrote. “Today, they do not get it. …Truly, democracy is not a game.”

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post also has a very good report on the decision, which—thankfully—does not outlaw public campaign financing altogether.

In truth, despite my snarky tone, it’s a complicated issue so before you form an opinion I recommend you read up a bit.

“…when you are growing up, there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is the great equalizer.”
- Keith Richards

Why vote YES on Measure L?-–even though it means the dreaded ballot box budgeting, as the LA Times editorial board pointedout in their endorsement against the ballot measure. And even though it doesn’t specify what will be cut in its stead?

Because of what Keith said. The last line, in particular.

Our K-12 school budgets have been slashed. Adult education has been lacerated. Unemployment in LA County is still in double digits. Twenty percent of Californians said that there were times in the past year when they didn’t have enough money to buy their family enough food to eat.

But here’s the one thing this city cannot afford NOT to give its residents, even in these wallet-challenged times, and that is access to knowledge—on the page, online, on CD or DVD—all of which one can get at the public library.

Since the Los Angeles City Council couldn’t manage to preserve an adequate library budget, we must step in and do so.

Instead of protecting our libraries as sacrosanct, the council cut more than a quarter of the LA public library system’s budget forcing all of the city’s branches to close two days a week, shrinking the book acquisitions budget to $1.70 per capita, versus a national average of $4.20, and forcing a layoff of 28 percent of the LAPL staff.

Utterly shameful.

But most of you know all this already. So simply vote for it. If Measure L wins, it will be a very, very good thing for all of us.

(Hey, the writers are for it, and the writers are right.)

We can talk about other issues tomorrow. But for today, vote for Measure L.

NOTE: If you’re trying to figure out what to do about the Community College Board seats, this excellent LA Times article will be of help. There are no endorsements, and I’ve not been following the race closely enough to make any endorsements myself except to say that in my district, I will not be voting for the incumbent. With the huge amount of wasted $$ recently uncovered by the Times in relation to the community college building projects, and the money spent on the election by longtime board members Mona Field and Miguel Santiago and their slate—much of that money coming from contractors—for me, anyway, it’s time for new blood. I’ll be voting for Oswaldo Lopez or Derrick Mims, likely Mims.

Since, I’ve gotten a slew of emails about this race, I thought you’d like to know.

After Steve Cooley had been lodged in the lead for most of last week, by Friday when a bunch of LA votes were counted, Kamala Harris suddenly passed Cooley, but she only pulled a little over 5,000 votes ahead.

Saturday and Sunday her lead widened to a little more than 14,000. (This morning it’s at 13, 796.)

As the provisional ballots continue to be tabulated, everyone is watching is the disposition of the 200,000 or so still to be counted in LA County, by far the largest pocket of votes still outstanding.

On the other hand, Cooley is LA’s hometown guy, so…..

And so many of us will remain glued to the slow motion spectacle as it unfolds.

Here’s the chart for the areas have yet to be counted.

The vote has to be certified by December 10, so you’ll be happy to know this cannot go on forever.

This weekend, the LA Weekly noted that the Harris and Cooley’s campaigns were each accusing the other of bad behavior in the tabulating process. The story is here.

Well, it ain’t dull. As of this morning, Steve Cooley has pulled ahead in the still-being-counted race for Attorney General.

Here’s the link to the Secretary of State’s site so you can follow along.

On Tuesday, voters rejected Prop. 21, the ballot measure that would have added $18 to most vehicle registrations and allocated that money to support California’s state parks.

And not only did the voters of California nix Prop 21, they did so by a healthy margin—with 58 percent voting NO.

So what does that mean? Nobody feels they can afford the extra 18 bucks in this economy—parks or no parks? Californians suddenly don’t care about their parks?

And whatever it meant, what can we do to preserve the health of our state’s irreplaceable wildlands?

Civil rights lawyer, Robert Garcia, head of the City Project, answers the first question with a resounding no. Garcia points out that several times over the last ten years, even in the state’s poorer communities, “voters of color and low income voters have voted to tax themselves to create parks and recreation that meet the needs of all the people..”

The “no” on 21 reflects voter rejection of “ballot box budgeting” — and the profound need for economic stimulus programs to create jobs and infrastructure for all. Parks and recreation programs must create local green jobs, and improve quality of life for all.

Okay, fine. But how do we do that?

Garcia and some of his partner groups say they have a plan that Garcia insists can help save the parks, expand park access, AND help provide green jobs—all without putting more weight on the state budget. (For more details go here.)

Garcia and company hope to meet with Gov-elect Jerry Brown sooner rather than later about the matter.

Garcia also points out that park distribution is not exactly created equal in California. [See map.]

“There are few state parks where the need is greatest. State parks are overwhelmingly located in communities that are park rich and income rich. State parks are typically not located in park poor, income poor, communities of color, where unemployment rates are highest. Lack of places for physical activity contributes to disproportionately high obesity levels.

“…the Los Angeles region has only 5.5 acres of state parks per thousand residents, compared to 34.7 acres in the San Francisco region — almost seven times more. While Los Angeles has 49% of the state’s population, San Francisco has only 19%…”

At least 700 groups supported Prop 21 says Garcia, who is a practiced champ at alliance building. With this in mind, he hopes to enlist the help of of as many of those 700 as humanly possible to “expand access to and support for state parks.”

Me and my Topanga State Park jogging trails hope that it works.

PS: SPEAKING OF JERRY BROWN....the LA Times’ Culture Monster blog has a nice little story about the still controversial “official” portrait of Brown, painted during his first gubernatorial term, by artist Don Bachardy.

PPS: I LOVE that painting, damn it, despite what the art Philistines think. It’s way better than the preposterously stuffy portraits it used to hang beside before it got stuffed away in some back room.

Now it’ll get trotted out again, and a good thing that is.

AND SPEAKING OF JERRY AGAIN….CalBuzz has a very smart rundown listing “5 Key Reasons” Jerry won—among them, they said, was the fact that he made “an asset out of his Gandalfian presence in California politics.”

Gandalfian. Well put, CalBuzzers.

It’s now evident that my enthusiasm about a Harris victory was premature.

As the provisional and absentee ballots come in, it appears that it may take weeks before the Attorney General race is decided.

Thursday morning, Ace Smith, Harris’s campaign stratagist, had a phone conference with reporters and said he thought her 2 percentage point lead would hold.

But, despite his optimism, what really happens in this race is anybody’s guess.

Frank Stoltz at KPPC has a bit more.

On KNBC’s The Filter Wednesday night, I talked with Fred Roggin about why California had run counter to what appeared to be the national trend and gone so resolutely blue in Tuesday’s election. (Okay, Fred talked, I rambled a bit, let’s be honest.)

So why did California go so blue?

Well, duh. First of all we’re a resolutely blue state. We elect Republican governors and have plenty of both Democrats and Republicans making up our diverse state.

But when it comes to things like presidential elections, and midterms, we’re blue. We went 61 to 37 for Obama in 2008, 66 to 33 against Bush (and for the not-terribly-popular Kerry) in 2004.

Yes, like the rest of the country, we’re suffering. We have over 12 percent unemployment. The state’s broke. Our schools are a mess, and we have a list of complex social problems that few regions can match. But we don’t think Barack Obama caused our problems, even if we are somewhat less than thrilled with how he’s handled everything on his preposterous full plate. We don’t think he’s a socialist. And we don’t think our ongoing economic woes are his fault. (And we truly shudder to think what might have happened had McCain/Palin been elected.)

And , now two years later, we have seen zero to suggest that the Republicans —tea partiers or otherwise—have any kind of plan to fix it.

Yes, we’re pissed off at the Democrats in Congress, but we’re way angrier at the Just Say No obstructionist Republicans, and we aren’t insane enough to believe it was better under that Bush guy and his group. (In California, Obama has a 53 percent approval rating, Democrats have 50 percent, while the GOP has 34 percent, the Tea Party movement rates slightly less than the Republicans.)

All that said, however, had Republicans chosen an appealing centrist not-terribly-partisan candidate she (or he) might very well have beaten Barbara Boxer, because she represents the kind of Beltway entrenchment that is getting on everyone’s last nerve.

Instead, however, the Republicans chose a far right leaning, rich woman who demonizes immigrants, wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, doesn’t think gays should have equal rights, and is a tad too gun happy for our taste—AND, most significantly, is a job-exporting former CEO who represents, in most people’s minds, the only group that Americans dislike more than they dislike Congress right now—namely the combo burger of rich-Wall-Street-big-business.

When Fiorina said she felt our pain and that we should throw the rascals out and put her in, we kinda suspected that she might be one those frying-pan-into-the-fire variety rascals we most wanted most to avoid.

Ditto Meg Whitman.

Another thing: we haven’t bought the myth that health care reform is an evil socialist gargoyle that will eat our children and grandchildren. In fact, the majority of us are happy about it, such as it is, and 37 percent of us want it expanded. (The majority of the rest of the country wanted it back in 2007, before they were sold the gargoyle narrative. Not that the democrats and the president have done a whole lot to advance a more fact-based narrative, but that’s another discussion.)

Interestingly, in California, Democrats came out to vote, even though the exceedingly annoying pundits said we wouldn’t. The so-called enthusiasm gap didn’t happen here. Dems showed up at the polls in large numbers—mainly to vote in the state races, correctly realizing that the elected official that could most affect our daily lives was, not our US Senator, but the governor of our fair state.

With that in mind, we figured the gubernatorial candidate with the best shot at turning things around was that 72-year-old Jerry guy, who talked sense, not the obviously lying, rich, Wall Street-friendly mean girl, eMeg and her $160 million. Thus the senior citizen dude who looks a whole lot like the state bird, but who was once a visionary for California, and just might be again—this time with his feet more firmly anchored in practicality— won with 53.6 percent to Whitman’s 41.

Here’s the bottom line. People all over the country are really hurting and they/we want the hurting to stop. What prescription we were willing to buy as a remedy, determined our vote.

The swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado, who were less sure about Obama from the get go were more willing to buy the Tea Party line that he was at fault.

Californians were not. In the end, we decided to vote for the notion that we could band together and fix our own state (and maybe lead the way toward a greener future for the rest of the nation while doing it). We went for the option of hard work, creativity and no easy fixes.

And I’m proud of us for doing so. I think in our own uniquely California-ish way, we behaved like grown-ups.

WHY DID MEG LOSE?

Republican strategist Arnold Steinberg writes in the LA Times that it was she came across as a patronizing, money flaunting, reckless spender.

THE ONCE AND FUTURE JERRY – MAKING HISTORY THEN AND NOW

Thursday’s LA Times Op Ed about who Jerry was as a governor 30 years ago, and who he might be for us now, is precisely the essay the LA Times should have written when they endorsed Brown over Whitman a month ago, instead of the preposterously tepid “Well (groan) if we HAVE to” endorsement they penned at the time..

Okay, better late than never. It’s a lovely essay—and pretty much dead on. Read it here.

UPDATE – 3:35 pm: THE CELEBRATION MAY HAVE BEEN PREMATURE

None of the papers have called this race, so a Harris victory is not official. And, until it’s over, it ain’t over, although the odds look good for Harris.

One SF paper, The San Francisco Appeal, reported that Harris’s office had declared victory. But now I’m starting to doubt this, as major news outlets have not repeated it, although it’s scooting madly around the Twitter-verse.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting (only absentees and provisionals waiting to be counted), it appears that Kamala Harris will be California’s next Attorney General.

Meanwhile, the LA Times asks if pension comments hurt Cooley.

Uh, yeah they did. (I have this on very good authority from my UPS guy with whom I discussed the issue in great detail this morning.)

Harris, [Cooley's] Democratic challenger, had blanketed the airwaves with a commercial that used a clip from a recent debate. Times reporter Jack Leonard asked Cooley if he planned to “double dip” by taking his pension from his tenure as district attorney -– and his $150,000 annual salary as attorney general. Cooley’s quick response: “Yes, I do. I earned it. I definitely earned whatever pension rights I have and I will certainly rely upon that to supplement the very low, incredibly low, salary that’s paid to the state attorney general.”

Over that answer, Harris’ campaign displayed the text: “$150,000 a year isn’t enough?”

When California has more than 12 percent unemployment, that assessment of what constitutes an “very low, incredibly low salary” did not work for voters.

Steve Cooley has always been very popular with Los Angeles voters. But not this time. As it turned out, it was LA that hurt him the most.

Original (un-messed with) photo by Luke Thomas

From the Guardian: Jerry Brown triumphs over Meg Whitman’s millions

Governor Moonbeam is back. In one of the most remarkable stories of political resurrection in recent American history, Jerry Brown has won back the governorship of California, regaining a post he first won in the 1970s.

Brown, who earned his nickname during his first turn as governor after advocating hi-tech ideas that are now commonplace, defeated the high-spending Republican candidate Meg Whitman.

From the AP: Brown has deep ties to the California he will lead.

Jerry Brown was just 5 years old when he got his first taste of California politics, watching his father sworn in as the district attorney for San Francisco.

The father would go on to become the state’s attorney general and a popular two-term governor, while the son would follow his path — even as he took multiple side trips along the way from a Jesuit seminary to a Buddhist monastery in Japan.

At 72, Brown is completing a political journey unparalleled in California politics, after voters on Tuesday swept him back into the office over Republican challenger Meg Whitman. He was California’s 34th governor from 1975-83 and its 39th today.

From TPM: The Moonbeam Shines Once More

….During Brown’s previous tenure as governor, he gained a somewhat false reputation as a left-wing Democrat, owing to his counter-cultural sensibilities. In fact, he was in many ways a fiscal conservative, and had tense relations with public employee unions….

But he was not done yet. He ran again for President in 1992, winning several Democratic primaries as an alternative candidate to Bill Clinton. In 1999 he was elected Mayor of Oakland, was re-elected in 2003, and in 2006 was elected state Attorney General. Now he becomes governor of California again, 28 years after he originally left the office.

When he first took office in January of 1975, Jerry was California’s youngest governor since the 1850s; in January, EGB Jr. will be the oldest Californian to be sworn in to that same job.

AND SNIPS FROM JERRY’S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH:

“Will this help the next generation, that’s gonna be my watchword…”

“…This time we’re going to have a first lady, that’s going to be the real difference.”

“I take as my challenge of forging a common purpose, based not just on compromise, but of what California can be….”

“While I’m really into this politics thing, I still carry with me that missionary zeal to transform the world. I’m hoping and praying that this breakdown that we’ve been witnessing…paves the way for a breakthrough..”

WHITMAN’S CONCESSION: “Tomorrow we are all Californians.”

Gracious.

AND IN ANOTHER LOW MOMENT FOR CABLE NEWS…

I noticed that Brown’s I-think-I-may-have-actually-won-this-thing speech sent the room full of on-air CNN commenters into a gleeful bout of smirking and eye-rolling, Anderson Cooper included.

So, CNN dudes, let me get this straight: After a night like this one, it’s Jerry Brown talking with rather sweet and unfiltered candidness about his hopes for California, and his affection for his wife, that sends y’all into paroxysms of cynicism? Really?

Amazing. (And not in a good way.)

HERE’S WHAT JOSH MARSHALL said of the same speech:

Jerry Brown was sort of my formative political experience or perhaps my first. He was in office when I was in elementary school in California. He just gave his acceptance speech. I didn’t see it but I heard it. It was classic Jerry Brown. Seemed like something I could have heard him say 30+ years ago. Not the kind of speech you’d ever expect to hear from almost any politician in the country. He was a bit punchy, extemporaneous. Ranging in various ways from one topic to another. Here’s the one quote I wrote down: I still have that “missionary zeal to transform the world.” Who else would say that? I don’t think I heard any of his speeches during the campaign. But I get the sense he let a bit of Gov. Moonbeam out post-victory. In his post-gubernatorial career he’s frequently driven me nuts. But I kind of love the guy.

Well, yeah.

AND ELSEWHERE…

Not much to add that you’re not seeing endlessly on the cable networks except to say:

THANK YOU, NEVADA, for recovering your sanity.

KENTUCKY, thanks for nothing.