by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Speaking at the Sacramento Press Club yesterday, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez said Democrats should add three seats to their 48-32 majority in the California Assembly in November's elections.
 
Nunez made the prediction after new figures from the Secretary of State show a surge in Democratic registrations in all but two Assembly districts, including three held by incumbent Republicans who will be forced to leave office. They include the desert/Riverside area seat held by Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, the San Diego seat of Assemblywoman Shirley Horton, and the Contra Costa/Sacramento Delta seat held by Assemblyman Guy Houston.
 
Dems now hold a 45.7 - 36.5 percent edge in the Garcia's 80th district. And in Horton's 78th district, Dems now have a significant 41.6 - 33.1 percent lead.
 
In Houston's case, Democrats have now pulled within 272 votes of a plurality. That erases a 2.2 percent edge Republicans had in the 2006 elections. Democrats had fielded weak candidates in the past (such as Donna Gerber) in this district. But with a strong re-election effort by Congressman Jerry McNerney (much of the district overlaps his) and a heavy Democrat turnout in the presidential race, the 15th District will be a battleground.
 

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Donna Gerber
Director, Government Relations
California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee

Comprehensive healthcare reform is a dream that millions of Californians are hoping to achieve. But at some point it’s time to recognize that the steamroller to pass a bill no matter what it contains can actually make matters worse.

That is exactly what happened with the rush to energy deregulation in the 1990s, a grand “consensus” that produced a last minute, hurried bill which few had read and fewer still had considered the disastrous consequences. The result was blackouts, higher prices for consumers, near bankrupting of the state, and the plundering of our resources by Enron and other big corporations.

We should learn the lessons from the energy deregulation fiasco and not repeat our mistakes. Instead, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Speaker Fabian Nunez continue to push the hurried adoption of a “compromise” health plan that will do nothing to end the routine denial of care by insurance companies or stem skyrocketing insurance premiums and other out-of-pocket costs that place Californians in jeopardy of further financial insecurity at a time of a worsening consumer debt crisis or encourage them to engage in self-rationing of care.

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

I wonder how many of the hardworking rank-and-file members of the California Nurses Association know that the organization pays Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro $207,403 plus another $10,333 in expenses -- and has made a $75,000 "gift" to the nonprofit Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights that is being used to attack Democrats in favor of health care reform?

Somehow I don't think they'd be too pleased their dues were going to their leadership's pockets instead of fighting for health care form.

DeMoro's sky-high salary is accompanied by a bloated payroll that also includes $126,811 for its Government Relations Director Donna Gerber (a former failed Assembly candidate). Gerber was the only person to testify against AB 8, the Nunez/Perata health care plan supported by nearly all legislative Democrats.

CNA's expense report also includes expenses at fancy hotels such as the Beverly Hills Hilton, Seascape Luxury Resort in Aptos ("Like Having Your Own Beach Home on Monterey Bay"), Millennium Biltmore in Los Angeles, and the cozy Villa Rosa in Santa Barbara. Thousands more were spent on several public relations and advertising consultants.

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

It was a sad moment yesterday when California Nurses Association Executive Director Donna Gerber took the stand in the Senate Health Committee, where she broke with every other major union, consumer group, and medical group in the state and opposed comprehensive health care reform.
 
That's right, the nurses are opposing health care reform.
 
Gerber, who was trounced when she ran for the Assembly against Assemblymember Guy Houston (now we know why), testified that the Democratic health care bill was actually the Governor's bill. That was news to everyone in the hearing room, particularly since the Governor doesn't have a health care bill. And on top of that, Democrats pushing the bill have dropped what is the centerpiece of the Governor's proposal -- a mandate that requires every individual to buy health insurance. The Democratic proposal also is far more aggressive than the Governor's proposal in a number of other areas.
 
I wonder how the majority of nurses in California feel about their union funding efforts to defeat health care reform and being the only progressive group in the state to outright oppose legislation to insure 3.4 million Californians.

There's more...