Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Education

Here’s a good reason to start engaging students at a young age in how the electoral process works: more than 40 percent of young Americans don’t know key information about the voting process, according to a poll of young people’s view of the election conducted by the Youth Education Fund. The survey polled 1,695 youth (ages 18-29) in June/July and 1,109 of the same youth between October 12 and 23.

The more they know and the more opportunities they have for civic engagement, the more likely they’ll participate!

So, what issues do young people care about? What are their ideas about government and the role it should play in our lives?

Well, rather than blindly hypothesizing, KQED decided to (gasp) actually ask them. Directly.

In partnership with three other public media organizations on the West Coast, we launched a series called “Voices of Young Voters”. This fall, we spent a bunch of time on college campuses around the Bay Area, asking young voters to weigh in on the issues they care most about in this election. Listen to to some of the responses below, and find many more here.

It’s election time, and for educators looking for creative ways to help students engage in political issues, here are some excellent ideas from the folks at the Infinite Thinking Machine.  Projects include creating two-minute news videos about local issues, setting up a Fantasy Election site through MTV (like Fantasy Football), and having students debate issues online.

The ITM is produced by CUE.

Belva Davis, host of KQED's This Week in Northern California, sat down with Feinstein during last week's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Feinstein sounded off about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the Republican agenda and banning assault rifles. Feinstein said she will reintroduce a ban on assault rifles to the legislature.

"I do not believe that weapons of war belong on the streets... certainly not in the classrooms, not in the movie theaters," Feinstein said. "They are too powerful and can kill too many people."

Feinstein told Davis the Romney/Ryan ticket promotes a "radical agenda."

"I heard Romney say himself, 'I will end Planned Parenthood.' The Republican platform: No abortion under any circumstances... It's a whole different philosophy."

Participants in the focus group were vocal about their support for education. (Photo: Stephen Pottage)

With the national conventions behind them now, Republicans and Democrats say they’re all fired up and ready to go — sprinting toward the November election.

Four years ago Barack Obama marched into the White House beside an army of young volunteers. How are voters under 30 feeling about politics now?

As President Obama was giving his acceptance speech Thursday night, a group of younger citizens in Silicon Valley discussed their feelings about the election. Those focus groups are part of KQED’s campaign season series “What’s Government For?” — a joint project with the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California.

While the PPIC does public opinion polling, they also are conducting these smaller conversations to take the pulse of Californians this election year. KQED has already participated in Contra Costa, Fresno and Los Angeles. On Thursday night, 20 young adults — ages 18 to 29 — gathered to talk about their views on government and politics. The group was a mix of Republicans, Democrats, Independents and people who aren’t sure what their political beliefs are or even whether they will vote. KQED’s Political Editor Tyche Hendricks was there for the evening, watching through the two-way mirror. Participants were told only their first names would be used, to ensure candor.

Hendricks said there was a common thread, linking the group. While the 20 people spanned the socio-economic spectrum in terms of jobs and their backgrounds, all of them expressed worry about the state of the country and the economy. “Some blame President Obama, and others just say he was dealt a tough hand and he needs more time to get things right,” Hendricks said.

Some were students, some are working, others are looking for work. Some of them have children of their own. “But just about everybody wanted government to do more to improve schools and to make college more affordable,” Hendricks said, adding a specific point from a focus group participant named Ryan, who said he was the first in his family to go to college and that he’s already spent five years at San Jose State University, just trying to get the courses he needs to graduate. Ryan told the group that tuition has doubled since he’s been there and there are significantly fewer classes.

Proposition 30 on the ballot in November would raise taxes to avoid further cuts in classes and tuition hikes. The focus group was overwhelmingly in favor of Prop. 30 and Prop. 38, which would also raise taxes for education, Hendricks reported.

“Some people said they didn’t favor raising taxes in general,” Hendricks said, “but schools and colleges need the help. A young woman named Divia, who is an immigrant from India, (has) her Masters Degree, and she’s working in the field of food technology. She described herself as politically neutral, but she’s worried about finding a good school for her young daughter. And she thinks that quality education shouldn’t just depend on living in a fancy zip code. In the focus group, Divia said that education ‘should be accessible and available for everyone. … They should not have a choice that only it I have money then I can get an education.’”

This attention to education mirrors what President Obama discussed in his acceptance speech Thursday night. Still, Hendricks says this young group was markedly less excited about President Obama than young people were four years ago.

“Even the Democrats in the group didn’t seem very excited about the election,” Hendricks said. “They were willing to give Obama another chance, but there was a sense of unease that I heard from many of them, and a sense of disconnection from the political process. (One) young woman — a recent college graduate who’s now paying to put her sister through college — said she felt government leaders were ‘cut off’ from the people they represent. She said ‘government, I don’t trust you, but I need you. So, I hope you’re doing good for me.’”

The campaigns have about seven weeks to build trust with voters.

More:

Listen to Scott Shafer’s interview with KQED Political Editor Tyche Hendricks

More stories from the Public Policy Institute of California focus groups:

From Silicon Valley: Eroding Trust in Government Among Young Voters

From the Central Valley: Central Valley Voters Speak Their Minds at Focus Groups

Proposition 37 would require food labels to indicate genetically modified ingredients. (Judy Baxter: Flickr)

New campaign finance data shows millions of dollars pouring in to fund November ballot battles. In two closely watched issues this election season, the California Teachers Association dumped another $7 million against Proposition 32. It would block unions from using payroll deducted funds for political purposes, among other things.

Food giants ponied up another $3 million to take down Proposition 37, the ballot measure that asks voters to decide if foods with genetically modified ingredients should be labelled. If Prop 37 passes, California would be the first state to require such labels.

In the “no” camp on Prop 37 are people and companies who do not want to label genetically modified foods. They’re spending big — outspending the “yes” camp 10 to one.

Over the last few days companies such as Ocean Spray, Sara Lee, Kraft and Godiva Chocolates have spent big to stop GMO labels from appearing on packages. The “No on 37″ campaign is spreaheaded by biotech giant Monsanto and has raised $28 million so far. “Yes on 37″ which backs labeling is supported by organic food makers among others, it’s raised less than $3 million to date.

For a visual on all campaign spending, visit MapLight. While its numbers are a bit behind the Secretary of State, MapLight has easy-to-read charts.

Finally, KQED’s Amy Standen has a great explainer about Proposition 37 – who’s for it, who’s against it and why.

Edited transcript:

RACHAEL MYROW: You recently blogged that the governor’s campaign reminds you of the infamous January 1973 cover of National Lampoon: “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.”

JOHN MYERS: Yeah, and I also wrote that it may be a little over the top to make the comparison. But the point is that when you look at the way the governor has rolled out this campaign in the early stages — and he’s now had an event in Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco — it’s very much a campaign geared towards what happens if Proposition 30 fails. He hasn’t talked a lot about all the great things that will happen if it passes. And that’s typically what you have in a ballot measure campaign. People say “Vote for us, because great things will happen.” This has been a campaign of saying, “If you don’t vote for us, doomsday comes.” And doomsday in this case, is the $5 billion to $6 billion in automatic spending cuts to schools that were written into the state budget if Prop 30 fails. That’s a very different kind of political campaign.

MYROW: This week USC released a poll that offers a couple of interesting insights. First, and this is probably the part Gov. Brown likes, a majority of those polled would vote for Proposition 30.

MYERS: They would. If you look at this poll, and if you look at all of the polls that we’ve seen in the last few weeks, the governor’s measure, which, again, would temporarily raise income taxes on the wealthiest and sales taxes on everyone, it has always polled in the low 50s, which of course is a majority of those being polled. But historically in California, if you’ve got a measure that polls below the 60 percent threshold in the early going, they don’t fare too well on election day, and so this is actually a low number.

MYROW: I was quite taken by another interesting tidbit from this poll: people ranked school funding fifth as a spending priority. This is after the economy, after jobs, after the state budget deficit and wasteful government spending.

MYERS: Yeah, it’s interesting, one of the folks from USC who were talking to reporters about this poll made the comment that they really feel as though voters are in a triage mode. The economy has been tough, unemployment has remained high, and voters’ historic priorities about spending and government may be shifting somewhat, or at least temporarily shifting. And clearly there’s an issue of wasteful government spending — they asked these folks in this poll about things like high-speed rail, the ongoing controversy about the hidden money in the state parks bank accounts, and the governor has tried to insist that these things have nothing to do with Proposition 30. But this poll does raise some questions about whether voters feel as though government is mismanaging the money it has, and maybe they don’t want to give any more money to government.

MYROW: This week the governor argued a state as big as California should be able to pursue more than one funding priority at the same time. “We have to be able to jump rope, chew gum and do five other things. Otherwise, we’re not going to make it,” Brown said.

Now it appears that he sees himself in a fight to the political death with Pasadena attorney Molly Munger, who has spent millions pushing Proposition 38, which would raise taxes to fund K-12 and makes a point of saying, “This money doesn’t go to Sacramento. It goes to your local schools.” But I wonder, is this really an either-or situation, the way the governor seems to be presenting it. Why not presume voters could approve both propositions?

MYERS: People who I’ve talked to, election law experts, say, “Yes, the voters can approve both of these measures.” But, whichever one would get the most “yes” votes would probably be the only one that would go into effect. And, if in fact, Ms. Munger — the wealthy civil rights attorney — her measure went into effect, with tax revenues only for schools, then those schools could still suffer a $5 billion to $6 billion automatic trigger cut, because that’s what was drawn out in the budget if Prop. 30 fails. So, there’s a legal problem there.

But but there’s a political argument, too, that’s difficult. Which [is] if you’re the governor, are you telling people to vote for both? They don’t like taxes, but hey, here’s double taxes, in a way. And we should point out the polling is that Prop. 38, this Munger K-12 tax measure, does not have majority support in any poll I’ve seen. It is below the 50 percent threshold, and at this point it could just be a political argument. The voters really may not say ‘yes’ to that.

Mitt Romney at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan 3, 2012. (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

Hmm. Looks like Mitt Romney might have given up on these here parts. A RealClearPolitics average of recent polls puts Obama up by 17.2 points in California, and while campaigning in Iowa today, the candidate jokingly compared the state to Greece. And he wasn't talking about the sunny beaches, either. (Watch CSPAN's video of Romney's Iowa speech here. The California remark occurs around 13:50 of the video.)

AP reports on the jest...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney took a potshot at California's bedraggled economy, comparing it to the crisis in Greece, as he warned voters on Wednesday that Barack Obama is leading the nation down a similar path of huge debt.

"Entrepreneurs and business people around the world and here at home think that at some point America is going to become like Greece or like Spain or Italy, or like California - just kidding about that one, in some ways," he added, to laughter from his audience in Iowa.

The remark seemed likely to bruise egos in a state wrestling with the prospect of tax increases and painful budget cuts. But Romney may have little to lose there - polls show Obama with a comfortable lead in California, where Democrats control the governorship and the Statehouse.

A spokesman for California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, disputed Romney's assessment. Gil Duran said the state's credit outlook has improved under Brown and that borrowing costs, a major issue facing Italy and other financially struggling European nations, have dropped by hundreds of millions of dollars.

"This is just a paper-thin Republican talking point that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny" Duran said. "He should get some better speechwriters who actually know what they're talking about."

Lenny Gonzales

By Lillian Mongeau

Nearly seven million young people will be newly eligible to vote this November. And contrary to what most might think, a recent study of how these voters engage in politics using new media shows they’re paying close attention.

“A lot of what we’re trying to understand is the way in which [using new media] might be related to the ways in which young people are being active politically,” said the study’s co-author, Joseph Kahne.

Of the 3,000 young people age 15-25 surveyed in the study, Participatory Politics: New Media and Youth Political Action, 41 percent reported using these online activities to engage in political discussions or actions. That could be anything from sharing a video of Mitt Romney giving a speech to the NAACP, to signing a petition on Change.org asking Seventeen Magazine to quit photo-shopping pictures of its models, to tweeting about the violence in Syria.

“Lots of the sort of fundamental things that people have to do to be politically active happen online” now, said Kahne, a professor at Mills College in Oakland, California, who’s part of the MacArthur Research Network on Youth & Participatory Politics (YPP). “If they think that sending an email to their friends is the same as showing up and voting, that could be a problem. But in fact, what we found in our study is that young people who were engaged in participatory politics were twice as likely to report voting as people who weren’t engaged.”

Last winter, “online activism” became the subject of searing critique after a video about African warlord Joseph Kony made the rounds. The error-ridden video racked up close to 20 million views on YouTube and Vimeo in just a few days and raised millions in real dollars for the non-profit that produced it. Critics were quick to site ill-informed youth as the primary culprits.

Kahne’s study, which was co-authored by Cathy J. Cohen of the University of Chicago, focused more on the fact that the conversation was taking place, and its real-world impact, than the content of the conversation young people were having.

“Even when [using new media] is becoming a part of all our practices, we still often imagine it the way they used to be,” Kahne said. This, he said, is a mistake. So much of the flow of information and discussion of new ideas and mobilization of movements from Occupy to the Tea Party are happening online now, and it would be folly to ignore the shift.

WHAT DIGITAL DIVIDE?

The other primary finding of the study showed that the digital divide between young people of different ethnicities appears to be shrinking.

“Overwhelmingly, white (96%), black (94%), Latino (96%) and Asian American (98%) youth report having access to a computer that connects to the Internet,” the study reported.

And when all types of political engagement—participatory politics and institutional politics like voting or helping with a campaign—are taken into account, it’s black youth who are the most engaged.

“So overall, we think that we really have to rethink the digital divide,” Kahne said. “It doesn’t follow this kind of conventional wisdom that says whites or upper-income people are the ones doing all of this stuff.”

Several youth organizations in Oakland, where Kahne is based, have taken the task of getting kids engaged in politics to heart. In partnership with the school district’s educational access television station, KDOL, these organizations have hosted several conversations between students and local leaders.

Seventeen-year-old Damari Lawrence participated in one of these panels with Oakland Mayor Jean Quan last year. After the interview, he said, “I saw that I really wasn’t caring about politics and what goes on in the world. I understood then that these politics have effects—immediate and sometimes long-term—on me and the community.”

Lawrence interns for the KDOL-based Media Enterprise Alliance, which teaches students video and multimedia production skills. The program also helps students create news reports on issues of interest to them and their peers.

Lawrence said a lot of kids may think they aren’t interested in politics. “But there’s a good, significant portion of teenagers out there who have an interest that could be built upon,” he said.

The message to politicians hoping to pull in the youth vote this fall? Get online. The kids are waiting for you.

Flickr/Old Man Lee

Two weeks after the June 5 primary, county elections officers are still hard at work counting ballots. There are still more than 300,000 absentee and provisional ballots yet to be processed around California. And lots of races hinge on those votes.

For starters: the fate of Proposition 29, the state tobacco tax hike. Support for the measure still lags, but the gap is narrowing. As of late Tuesday afternoon, the “Yes” votes were 17,571 behind the “No” votes. That’s a tiny fraction of the five million votes cast. And the margin against Prop. 29 has been shrinking steadily.  On June 12, it was 28,000, down from 63,000 votes the day after the election. And 337,977 ballots are still to be counted.

In addition, five congressional races and ten state assembly races are too close to call… with margins of less than two percent between the second and third vote-getters (only the top two will advance to the Nov. 6 general election).

In Congressional District 2, which stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border, Democrat Norman Solomon trails Republican Daniel Roberts by 1,241 votes. The winner will face off against Democrat Jared Huffman in November.

In Congressional District 8, in the sparsely populated region east of the Sierras, three Republicans and one Democrat are all within about 900 votes of each other. The candidate currently in third place is just 215 votes shy of second place.

In Congressional District 21 which runs from south of Fresno down to Bakersfield, Democrat Blong Xiong trails Democrat John Hernandez by 492 votes. The winner will face Republican David Valadao.

In Congressional District 38, in Los Angeles County, Republican Jorge Robles is 632 votes behind Republican Benjamin Campos in a fight to take on Democratic incumbent Linda Sanchez.

And in Congressional District 52, in San Diego County, Democrat Lori Saldana is just 713 votes behind Democrat Scott Peters in a race to take on incumbent Republican Brian Bilbray.

In all those races, there are still thousands, if not tens of thousands, of ballots still being tallied.

The moral of the story? Your vote COUNTS!

Two thirds of California’s registered voters didn’t make it to the polls on June 5. But just a few hundred more votes in any of these close races could have swung the outcome. By voting — or staying home — you’ve had an impact on the election.

Original post
KQED's Joshua Johnson reports this afternoon that Alameda County is now the proud owner of a set of completely counted ballots from last week's primary. Meaning as of today, Alameda is the only Bay Area county finished counting votes.

Here are Joshua's numbers on Bay Area ballots still in process...

• Alameda County: done
• Contra Costa County: 3,811 provisional ballots as of June 11th, 290 late conditional ballots (these will be counted last).
• Marin County: 2,000 provisional ballots which have yet to be counted at all. Officials are still working though 15,000 mail-in ballots. Registrar Eliane Ginnold says she has more than enough volunteers to get the job done in a timely fashion.
• Napa County: more than 9,500 mail-in ballots yet to be processed, 177 provisional ballots.
• San Francisco: just over 6,000 ballots left.
• San Mateo County: about 4,000 ballots left, mostly provisional ballots.
• Santa Clara County: about 2,000 mail-in ballots to be counted, about 6,600 provisional ballots to be processed.
• Solano County: about 2,600 provisional ballots to be processed.
• Sonoma County: does not release running tallies of vote counts. Voters turned in 18,000 mail-in ballots at precincts which are being processed for scanning. Sonoma County had a total of 92,500 mail-in ballots.

By the way as of this morning, the margin against Proposition 29, the proposed $1.00 per pack cigarette tax add-on, is now just 33,208 votes. That's down from 63,000 the morning after election day.

Results by county:

• Alameda County
• Contra Costa County
• Marin County
• San Francisco
• San Mateo County
• Santa Clara County

Tobacco tax race is too close to call (Flickr/Abdullah Najeeb)

Despite some initial news reports that an additional dollar a pack tax on cigarettes had been defeated in the state, it could be days or weeks before the final outcome is known.

On KQED’s News Fix blog Jon Brooks reports there are potentially hundreds of thousands of uncounted ballots from early and absentee voters.

The money that poured into this campaign was significant, though lopsided as we reported yesterday. Today on the California Report, Kenny Goldberg looked at how that seemed to affect the campaign:

Supporters of Prop 29 had a popular spokesman: seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong. They also had the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Association, and doctors groups pushing the measure.

With early polls showing a vast majority of Californians in favor, advocates were sitting pretty. But then tobacco companies weighed in with a massive ad campaign on TV and by mail. The ads said Prop 29 would create a new government bureaucracy, with little accountability. By late May, the ads had done their job: polls showed support for Prop 29 had plummeted.

Tobacco companies spent nearly 49 million dollars to fight Prop 29. In contrast, supporters raised about 12.3 million dollars.

California used to have one of the highest tobacco taxes in the nation. But since the state last raised them in 1998, California’s rate had fallen to 33^rd.

New York State has the highest tax in the U.S. at $4.35 per pack.

I asked Tyche Hendricks, KQED's 2012 election editor, to clue us in on some of the main storylines going into the election. Of primary importance (ha ha, get it?): Californians are being asked to vote on two ballot measures, Proposition 28 and Proposition 29.

"Prop 28 would tweak our term limits law," Hendricks says. "Currently somebody can serve in the State Legislature for 14 years, six in the Assembly and eight in the Senate. Under this new law, you would only be able to stay in the legislature for a maximum of 12 years, but with no limit to serving in either house."

From a San Francisco Chronicle look at the measure...

Supporters - a large coalition of labor, business and good-government groups and the state Democratic Party - say the short limits in each house have created a system in which politicians are constantly running for the next office and do not have the time or encouragement to build relationships or to learn how to create good policy.

The measure mirrors recommendations made by two nonprofit, nonpartisan think tanks: the Public Policy Institute of California and the Center for Governmental Studies. Each determined that the 1990 law did not realize its goal of creating an independent, citizen legislature. Instead, the reports concluded, the law produced a weaker body of individuals even more dependent on lobbyists and obsessed with their next election.

"This is something that shortens the amount of time someone can spend in office but does help make legislators more accountable and prevents the merry-go-round effect we're seeing under the current term-limit law," said Gabriel Sanchez, the Yes on 28 spokesman...

Opponents, including the California Republican Party, call the measure a "scam." They charge that it would actually increase the amount of time most lawmakers spend in Sacramento, because it is far easier to get re-elected to a seat than to run in an entirely new district.

Listen to a debate on Prop 28 on KQED Public Radio's Forum show last week:

As for Prop 29, the proposed $1.00 per pack extra tax tacked on to a pack of cigarettes, Hendricks says, "twenty percent of the money would go to prevention and smoking cessation programs. The bulk would go to cancer research and research into other tobacco-related illnesses. Proponents argue that California's tobacco tax is now below the national average. They also say the higher the tax on cigarettes, the less likely people they are to take up smoking, especially teens. Tobacco industry funding against the measure has been quite heavy, but there are anti-tax Republican groups against it as well. California Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro has been outspoken in opposing the measure on anti-tax grounds. Others say it's a regressive tax that hits poorer people hardest."

"For the first time, you'll be voting in one primary that has all the candidates lumped together from every party," says Tyche Hendricks. "The two candidates with the most votes will end up on the November ballot, regardless of whether they're in the same party or not."

The other thing affecting the dynamics of many races: The recent redistricting process, in which the new districts were drawn by a citizen's commission and not one of the political parties. "Ostensibly, they drew the lines without any political considerations," says Hendricks. "It's making a number of races more competitive than they otherwise would be. In some cases, incumbent districts were eliminated. In West Los Angeles, for instance, Howard Berman and Brad Sherman are both incumbent Democrats who have been forced to run in the same district."

"If we didn't have the top-two primary," says Hendricks, "they would go head to head in June and one would emerge to face a token Republican in November, since it's a Democratic district. But now Stark will probably have to face another Democrat in the general election."

The 80-year-old Stark has also suffered a string of self-inflicted embarrassments, though he did recently land an endorsement from President Obama.

Here's video of Stark's less-than-stellar appearance before the Chronicle's editorial board:

The other local congressional race drawing attention is the battle for retiring congresswoman Lynn Woolsey's seat in a newly drawn district that runs from Marin all the way up to the Oregon border. Of the large field running to replace Woolsey, political analysts are predicting the top two vote-getters will both be Democrats. The four candidates considered to be at the front of the pack: State Assemblyman Jared Huffman, author and progressive activist Norman Solomon, Marin County supervisor Susan Adams, and co-founder of UC Berkeley's Center for Entrepeneurship & Technology Stacey Lawson. The leading Republican is Marine Corps veteran Dan Roberts.

More on that race from the Chronicle: Support for pot in 2nd District House race.

Many State Senate and Assembly races, plus local ballot measures and taxes are on the ballot. Find out what's on your local ballot below. Click on the main county link if you don't find what you're looking for in the bulleted lists...

San Francisco

• Voter information pamphlet
• District lookup -- find sample ballot by address
• Apply online to vote by mail - complete and submit this form online no later than 5 p.m. on Tuesday, May 29, 2012
• Find your polling place
• FAQ

Santa Clara

• List of local measures
• Official candidates list
• Check your registration status

Alameda

• Official candidate list
• List of Measures
• Vote by mail info
• List of polling places

Contra Costa

• List of local measures
• Candidate statements

San Mateo

• Sample ballot
• Candidate roster
• School measures, countywide measures, special district measures - scroll down to bottom half of page

Marin

• Candidates on ballot
• Judicial candidates
• Local measures A through E
• List of polling sites with precincts

Sonoma

• Polling place and sample ballot lookup
• District and elected official lookup
• Vote by mail status lookup

Napa

• Candidates on the ballot
• Request election materials in Spanish

Solano

• List of candidates
• Measure L question

Craig Miller/KQED

The majority of Americans want the government to take action on climate change, but the majority is shrinking.

Two polls in as many weeks find that the majority of Americans support government policies to shift to cleaner energy. According to the first, conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, nearly three-out-of-four Americans (72%) think climate change should be a priority for Congress, and 70% want corporations and industry to do more to address climate change.

The second, conducted by Stanford, finds that though they’re still a majority, the proportion of Americans who support climate change policies, versus those who don’t, has dropped by ten percentage points since 2010.

Despite the diminishing support, social psychologist Jon Krosnick, who directed the Stanford poll, says politicians stand to benefit by addressing climate change head-on.

“Our analysis suggests Obama did win votes from McCain on the issue in 2008,” Krosnick told me. “Climate change opinions are partly driving people in the direction of the president, but not as much as they would if he came out more strongly on the issue, talking more frequently not just about green jobs, but also saying, ‘Climate change is happening, we should do something about it, and we can.’”

Krosnick says political rhetoric is partially to blame for the change. Even though the majority of people in both parties want government to take action, the opinions candidates expressed in the Republican primaries didn’t reflect that.

“That hypothesis that public opinion would drive what candidates say doesn’t seem to be happening,” Krosnick said. Instead, the Republican candidates, who were unanimous in their opposition to taking action on climate change, seem to have swayed some people’s opinions. “After hearing such unanimity, it pushes people in a skeptical direction.”

One usual suspect that’s not a factor: the economy. Support for climate change policies fell more in states with good economies, than in states that are still struggling. Plus Krosnick adds, the timing wouldn’t make sense if the economy was to blame. “The notion that the economy has trumped climate change, there’s really no evidence of it at all. It would be hard to make the case that economy has gotten worse in the past two years, and yet support has declined.”

A couple things the Stanford survey finds probably won’t do politicians any good: supporting nuclear power (53% of people polled oppose tax breaks to build nuclear power plants, up from 49%) and increasing taxes (73% oppose increasing gasoline taxes; 80% oppose increasing electricity taxes).

Santorum, appearing with his wife and family in his home state of Pennsylvania, told supporters the race for him was over, but the fight to defeat President Barack Obama would go on.

Santorum made no mention of Romney, and stressed that he'd gone farther than anyone expected, competing ``against all odds.''

The delegate totals told the tale of Santorum's demise. Romney has more than twice as many delegates as Santorum and is on pace to reach the number needed to clinch the nomination - 1,144 - by early June. Still in the race, but not considered a factor: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul.

Listen below...

Paul discussed his trademark blend of policy positions that includes something for both sides of the political spectrum to love...and hate. He decried the wars America has recently been involved in (check, go the liberals) as well as the increase in federal spending meant to solve the effects of the financial crisis and recession (check go the conservatives).

Paul also addressed federal drug policy, a topic near and dear to some Bay Area hearts. The crowd cheered Paul's statement that the federal war on drugs is wasteful and disproportionately punishes people of color, reports Andrew Stelzer for KQED. He also defended California's medical marijuana law. "If you had states rights in California, you wouldn't have the feds bugging you and telling you what you could do with your own body."

Paul criticized what he described as infringements on individual liberty like the Patriot Act and called for the Federal Reserve to be abolished.

Read more about the event at the Contra Costa Times and The Daily Californian.

Andrew Stelzer also captured some video of the eager crowd before Paul spoke:

Libertarian Paul Ruffino, 55, has been looking for an insurance plan since leaving his previous job. Several insurance companies refuse to cover him because he has pre-existing conditions. (Photo: Sarah Varney)

Today marks the second anniversary of the federal health care law, and, unless you’ve been depriving yourself of news for the last several weeks, that same law will be front and center before the Supreme Court starting Monday. Here in California, uninsured Californians have a particular stake in the Court’s actions.

Madera County is a largely conservative and agricultural area where one in every three people lacks coverage. While many people say they want the Supreme Court to throw out the federal health law, I found that many there are struggling to reconcile their political views with the basic need for health insurance.

I started off in Oakhurst. Here, just a few miles from the entrance to Yosemite National Park, is the Sweetwater Steakhouse, a local watering hole where no one is shy about their opinions of President Obama’s signature initiative, including people like Joe Stern. ”ObamaCare is absolutely horrible, horrible, horrible. It should struck down immediately.”

Stern sips on a glass of pinot noir. He’s 66 years old, a registered Republican and owns a small water conditioning company. He is covered by Medicare, and he says he’s thankful for the program. Before he turned 65, Stern paid mightily for his health insurance.

“I, a single person, was paying $670 a month,” he told me. “I thought it was pretty brutal but I was still against ObamaCare by far, ‘cause I saw how they did it in the middle of the night. It was just totally, it’s not how you do a radical change like that. You do it slowly.”

If at all. Like many conservative voters I interviewed in Madera County, Stern despises the individual mandate included in the law, the requirement that all Americans have health coverage.

There is a lot of suspicion here about whether the health insurance system is really all that broken. Stern thinks many people choose to be uninsured, and in a sentiment I heard from nearly everyone I interviewed, Stern says no one is denied medical care.

“I don’t know of anyone that was left on the street to bleed to death,” he says. “I don’t know anyone that is really left out.”

I asked Stern if he knew anyone at the bar who is uninsured. He turned cheerfully to his friend Mary Westover sitting next to him. Westover was coy about her age. She’s maybe 50-ish. She’s a registered Republican and self-employed artist and businesswoman. She’s been uninsured for 17 years.

“When I was married I had insurance through my husband. Since we got divorced, I was self employed. I just couldn’t afford it. I couldn’t afford the premiums. I was flying by the seat of my pants every inch of the way,” Westover said.

It’s been nearly two decades since Westover has had a pap smear or a mammogram. She says she just tries to take care of herself. She’s opposed to the individual mandate but says she wasn’t aware the federal government would give subsidies to people like her to buy a policy.

“If it were subsidized, if it were made, you know, manageable, I would want that,” Westover told me. “And I don’t know how people who can afford it, can sit there and say that we shouldn’t have that. Because there are a lot more of us, than them.”

The ranks of the uninsured in Oakhurst, like everywhere else in California, are indeed growing. Employers continue to shed health insurance benefits or pass on rising health care costs to their employees.

Doug Macaulay, a Republican, has sold insurance to the residents of Oakhurst for nearly three decades, and, in that role, has heard just about everyone’s opinion of the federal health law.

“I think there’s just a certain lack of knowledge of how health care works,” he said.

Macaulay says people get mad at the insurance companies, but they don’t see ‘ObamaCare’, as they derisively call it, as the answer.

“I get this all the time,” Macaulay says, “where there’s not really a connection between, ‘Ok, here’s what the government is trying to do for you. You’re complaining over here that you don’t have health insurance and you can’t buy it. And over here they’re trying to provide you with it but that’s the worst thing… ever.’ So there seems to be a disconnect in the thinking there because it gets in the way of what I want to think about my government.

Down the road from Doug Macaulay’s office, meanwhile, Paul Ruffino is preparing to welcome guests to Chateau du Sureau, a five-star, luxury inn that looks over the mountains of Yosemite.

Inside, there’s a fire burning in the grand salon and painted frescoes on the ceiling. Ruffino, the inn’s manager, is 55 years old. He’s a Libertarian. He finds the Republican party too liberal.

“I’m uninsured! It’s the first time in my life and it’s probably when I need it the most,” he said.

Ruffino says the plans he’s looked at are expensive and won’t cover his pre-existing conditions. Still, he says it was his decision to leave a previous job in Southern California that came with insurance and move to Oakhurst.

“Do I make the government responsible for my choices,” he asked rhetorically. “I made the choice. I knew beforehand. I knew beforehand what was going on.”

Ruffino seems torn between his unsparing self-reliance and a sense that the insurance industry is unfair. ”Would I like it to be better? There’s a greedy part of me that says that it would.”

He thinks the insurance companies should NOT be allowed to pick out only the healthy and leave guys like him behind.

“And that’s where I have to then ask: Does there come a time when government has to get involved and at what levels? But when you are distrustful of the system in whole it makes it difficult. I go back and forth. I ping pong on this issue all the time.

These conflicts – both personal and political – will be amplified next week when the Supreme Court considers just what role the government should play in re-making the country’s health insurance system.

Listen to the story:

Budget bills passed Thursday await the actual budget. (Photo: John Myers/KQED)

Such a bill is referred to as a "spot bill," in that it's an empty bill holding a spot on the legislative calendar... so that once a budget deal is struck, the actual details can quickly be inserted into existing bills and enacted.

Today, Republicans in both houses rose from their seats to decry this now familiar part of the state budget sausage making.

"Do not give conscience and sanction to this charade, this disgrace, this corruption," railed Assemblyman Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber) during floor debate.

As with so many fiery political tiffs, there's some truth on both sides. The process of approving not-yet-written budget bills has become commonplace in recent years, a reflection of the tough political lift it takes to pass a state budget. While the vast majority of Governor Jerry Brown's proposed budget is examined at the subcommittee level in both houses, a number of those ideas will ultimately get rejected by the Legislature. Some ideas already have been nixed, most notably Brown's proposed cuts in welfare-to-work assistance, which required approval by March 1.

And so legislators then must craft alternative ideas. Some will get discussed in these same subcommittees, but others will only materialize in the final hours of leadership negotiations. The modern history of those high-level talks involved a final handshake behind closed doors in a "Big Five" meeting of the governor and the four legislative leaders from both parties. That process had to include Republicans, given the long-standing supermajority budget vote.

But Proposition 25, the constitutional amendment lowering that threshold to a simple majority, has changed that process. This will only be the second budget crafted in the post-Prop 25 world, and certainly last year's agreement also relied on a last-minute private set of negotiations.

But the majority vote budget has cut GOP legislative leaders out of those talks -- a change that undoubtedly helped spark today's floor debate lamenting the "spot bill" process. GOP legislators spoke out not against the weakening of their own power, but rather the power of each house -- as legislative rules say that once a bill is approved by either house, it can only accept ("concurrence") or reject the language written by politicians in the other chamber.

"When the Senate loads them up with whatever they're gonna load them up with," said Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries (R-Lake Elsinore) about budget bills that come back on concurrence, "you will not get to change what's in it."

While few Democrats rose to defend the process, those that did also took shots at whether Republicans were truly engaged in the budget vetting process that's been going on this winter.

"One of the problems we have when you talk about the process," said Assembly Budget chair Bob Blumenfield (D-San Fernando Valley), "is that a lot of folks in the minority party don't even take the time to show up for the subcommittee hearings."

But in fairness, those subcommittee actions are not reflected in any of the 40 generic bills each house that were sent to the other this morning (and the bills did, ultimately, get sent on a majority vote). In fact, the particular process that happened today -- the spot budget bills -- is reflective of an even larger quandary: controversial budget actions don't seem to be able to survive public scrutiny.

The reason so many spot bills are needed is because the eventual budget deal will quickly be queued up in identical legislation in both the Assembly and Senate. And the reason is purely political.

Once the bare minimum number of legislators in either chamber agrees to the deal, the vote needs to be taken immediately -- before constituents or interest groups convince a lawmaker he or she is wrong or on politically thin ice. Then, the bill is quickly tossed to the other chamber. That's why the eventual budget package is often a mashup of ABs (Assembly bills) and SBs (Senate bills), as the final deal waddles its way from one house to the other in search of the magic number of votes.

"You have to strike while the iron is hot," said Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg. "There's often a moment... where you achieve a breakthrough."

But that also means that those "breakthrough" elements can be patched into a bill with no real public input (remember, there are two versions of every single part of the budget thanks to the "spot" bill approval today).

"It's a bit of a Catch-22," Steinberg said this morning as I pointed out the criticism of quick votes on controversial budget language. "The art of compromise, of course, is imperfect. And some of the interest groups can pick on those imperfections, in a way that can take a very fragile [legislator] coalition, a very fragile vote. And all of a sudden you don't achieve the public policy that everybody agrees you ought to achieve."

Whether the current process -- skeleton bills moved along to meet legislative deadlines and then stuffed with all sorts of budget fun and uglies at the eleventh hour -- is evil or just necessary, it should be noted that there's a chance all of this could change. A pending initiative written by the bipartisan governance group California Forward would, among many other things, require that all bills at the state Capitol be in print for at least 72 hours.

Molly Munger, author of a proposed tax increase earmarked for K-12 schools. (Photo: Nicole Nguyen/KQED)

Attorney and education activist Molly Munger says she will spend as much of her personal fortune as needed to run a statewide campaign for her tax initiative to help K-12 schools.

“We are totally committed to spending whatever it takes to let the people of California know they have this opportunity this year,” said Munger in an extended interview in Sacramento on Friday.

Munger later said when pressed that this could, in fact, mean her fully bankrolling a fall political campaign.

The interview was for a coming radio profile of the 63-year-old wealthy Pasadena attorney, a chat in which she talked about the roots of her passion for improving schools and why she thinks that her proposal — a 12-year proportional income tax increase on the vast majority of the state’s taxpayers — can win.

But for the political insider world, there’s likely to be some notice of Munger’s newly firm promise to keep the dollars flowing beyond just the qualification stage of an initiative campaign.

The “we” in her answers, Munger said, refer to the resolve of both her and her husband, Stephen English. “We have the resources and we’re going to spend them.”

Just what resources she’ll need to hand over is pretty hard to guess, given the increasing likelihood of multiple tax initiatives on the ballot and a very long list of other initiatives that will likely also have a spot in front of the voters. The last tax hike proposal was the failed 2009 effort by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders for a temporary tax extension to help balance the state budget. That was admittedly a very different campaign, and state records show the effort cost just shy of $16 million. Private musings by political experts seem to suggest that a 2012 tax initiative, one coming in the midst of a crowded general election campaign (2009 was a special election) could cost close to double that amount. And even then, it may not win.

In public comments last month, Munger said that the effort would not be relying only “on our own resources,” but that others would be relied on, too. But on Friday, she admitted that she may end up being asked to go it virtually alone when it comes to the millions needed to run the campaign ahead.

Asked why so many political insiders — from Governor Jerry Brown’s inner circle to others — thought she’d step aside and not qualify her initiative for the November ballot, Munger said she didn’t know.

“I do know,” she then added, “they don’t know me very well.”

Listen to the radio version of this story below:

But that vetting doesn't settle on an estimate of how much tax revenue the new initiative will bring in, thus repeating an ongoing disagreement between forecasters that could create some tough politics over how this year's state budget should be crafted.

A fiscal analysis is required of all initiatives, one jointly prepared by the independent Legislative Analyst's Office and the state Department of Finance. Number crunchers have, by law, 25 days to do their work.

The one released Friday afternoon was likely done so quickly because Brown Tax Initiative 2.0 hews so closely to the structure of Brown Tax Initiative 1.0 -- the sales/income tax increase that the governor amended as part of a political truce with the campaign led by the California Federation of Teachers.

Like we saw in Brown Tax 1.0, there's still a healthy disagreement between LAO and DOF experts about how much revenue can be expected. The Legislature's analysts believe the revised initiative will bring in $6.8 billion in its first year, while the governor's advisers pegged the number Wednesday at $9 billion.

The $2 billion disagreement continues in the 2013-14 year and in the remaining years of the temporary tax hikes:

In the following five fiscal years, the LAO currently forecasts an average annual increase in state revenues of $5.4 billion, and DOF currently forecasts an average annual increase in state revenues of $7.6 billion.

The new analysis continues a months long disagreement between the state's top fiscal forecasters, one seemingly rooted in different perspectives on the investment incomes of California's most wealthy taxpayers. Everyone agrees that they hope for some clarity, and narrowing, of their numbers once tax receipts are tallied in April.

As for what the new analysis does to the messaging for Brown Tax Initiative 2.0, the likely answer is not much. For now, at least. Backers will continue to insist it would bring in needed dollars for K-12 schools, higher education, and the overall unbalanced state budget. But the early flourish of stories calling it a $9 billion budget fix will be hard to maintain now that there's a more conservative estimate as part of the official analysis.

And that leads, perhaps, to the still relatively quiet budget debate under the Capitol dome. Legislators continue to hear budget proposals and ideas in various committees (though not as explicitly as GOP legislators would like), but Democrats no doubt realize they may ultimately have to weigh in on the $2 billion revenue debate. If they're ultimately inclined to use a more conservative number, then that means deeper cuts now; if they choose to be more optimistic and that optimism doesn't pay off, it means deeper cuts down the road.

And rest assured that the cuts/taxes narrative will be playing out on two fronts this spring: here in Sacramento through legislative debate and on a street corner near you as someone hawks the new tax increase initiative for voter signatures.

NOTE: Apologies to podcast fans for missing our usual Friday installment of political analysis and smart-alecky-ness. My schedule at the end of the week caused me to be absent from Sacramento during normal podcast taping hours. Stay tuned, though, next week. Not only do we expect a Monday installment to make good on our absence... but Friday's podcast will be very important -- with an announcement about the future, and a grateful thanks from yours truly. --JM

Is there time for a compromise tax initiative? (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty)

Multiple sources confirm a compromise is being crafted that would adhere in some ways to Brown's existing initiative -- mainly, by still including a small sales tax increase -- but would boost the income tax increase on the wealthy above where the governor has proposed, while still making all of the taxes temporary.

Neither leaders of the millionaires tax campaign nor Brown's political team have confirmed any of the details, after the story was first reported this morning online by the Los Angeles Times. But conversations with several Democratic and Capitol sources reveal a tax proposal that feels much more like the governor's than the one being promoted by a coalition including the California Federation of Teachers.

The signs of a negotiated truce between the two sides seems to be taking some in political circles by surprise, after weeks of increasing tensions between the two camps and Brown's own prognostication on Monday that multiple tax measures appeared a done deal for November.

But two questions seem most prominent as this news breaks. First, can the deal actually withstand the scrutiny of daylight? That is, will the most die-hard supporters of solely an income tax hike on millionaires... and one that's earmarked for a number of programs... accept an initiative that still includes a sales tax increase and does not permanently raise taxes on the wealthy?

Similarly, after a week which saw the state's powerful business groups formally oppose all but Brown's tax hike, what will those groups say if Governor Brown embraces a different measure? Sources report the proposed compromise goes beyond the Brown initiative's 11.3% tax on incomes over $1 million. It also would apparently be a longer temporary tax than the five years in the governor's current measure.

These are all questions that will no doubt be answered in the hours/days/weeks to come. But there's also a huge logistics question to answer: is there time to draft and qualify an alternative tax initiative?

Here's where it gets tricky. By law, an initiative must have collected sufficient valid signatures at least 131 days before election day -- that's June 28. But to hit that date, the Secretary of State's office is already suggesting that the second week of May is probably the de facto deadline for actually submitting signatures to elections officials.

Plus... any proposed compromise still has to receive an official title and summary from the Attorney General's office, which also takes time.

All of this means that a compromise tax initiative may have to break records in how fast it qualifies for the ballot... and how much money is spent gathering signatures. Keep in mind that Governor Brown's proposal, which is taxes plus language codifying the 2011 state/local realignment, is a constitutional amendment. That means 807,615 valid signatures.

There doesn't seem to be any official record of the fastest qualifying initiative in state history, but the consensus among politicos seems to be the November 1998 initiative authorizing Indian gaming, for which backers submitted more than a million signatures in just 28 days.

Even at that blistering pace, a compromise tax increase initiative would have to be on the streets by mid-April. And that means political and policy wrangling aside, the real question here could come down to campaign cash and logistics.

4:45 p.m. Update: Perhaps not surprisingly, the initiative's language had already been drafted and it's just now been officially filed with the Attorney General (PDF), though a more easy-to-digest version can be found in the governor's official news release on the deal from this afternoon.

In the heat of the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, a conservative political group called Citizens United produced a “documentary” that vilified democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. But when the group tried to run the piece on TV within a month of the primary election, the Federal Election Commission prohibited it from doing so, ruling it a form of corporate “express advocacy” banned by current campaign law on corporate spending.The group sued and the case eventually made it to the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission.

The key issue at play was whether political campaign spending should be considered  a form of speech or an overwhelming source of political corruption.  Arguing on behalf of the plaintiffs, lawyer Ted Olson told the Court:

“The most fundamental right that we can exercise in a democracy under the First Amendment is dialogue and communication about political candidates. We have wrapped up that freedom, smothered that freedom, with the most complicated set of regulations and bureaucratic controls.”

Apparently, Olson was quite convincing. In a bitterly divided 5-4 decision, the majority ruled that political spending (on campaigns) should indeed be considered a form of  speech protected under the First Amendment, and that the government has no business regulating political speech.

What that boils down to: money is speech and corporations have the same First Amendment protections as people.

The decision reversed previous campaign law and allowed corporations, unions, and other organizations to contribute unlimited amounts of money to groups called “independent expenditure” organizations that work on behalf of candidates but do not directly coordinate with them.

And so the Super PAC was born.

Strong opposition
Over the last two years, a growing number of political leaders and organizations have consistently spoken out against the Citizens United ruling, arguing that it allows unlimited corporate money to flood the political process and have a corrupting impact on democracy.  Among the strongest concerns is that candidates, if elected, will be beholden to the individuals and groups that help put them in power.

Legislation has even been introduced in the Senate to enact a Constitutional amendment that would overturn the decision.

In the Court’s dissenting opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote:

“At bottom, the Court’s Opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding and have fought against the distinctive potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt.”

In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama staunchly condemned the Supreme Court’s decision. With the nine justices sitting close by in the audience, Obama said:

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign companies — to spend without limit in our elections. Well, I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.”

The Court’s decision has already profoundly effected this year’s presidential race, as hundreds of Super PACs supporting the Republican candidates have sprung up and collected unprecedented, and formerly prohibited, levels of financial contributions from wealthy private interests. It’s predicted that more private money will pour into this election than ever before.

Interestingly, Obama’s reelection campaign recently announced that it was asking its supporters to form their own Super PAC and start raising money. The campaign argues that if the Republican candidates are all participating, it needs to as well.

By Alison van Diggelen

President Obama made a strong State of the Union commitment not to walk away from the promise of clean energy. Was it a shrewd long-term strategy or a political liability that will result in even more “Solyndras” here in California?

On the one hand, Obama’s clean energy focus has helped expand the clean energy job market, into a sector with more than 2.7 million jobs, with investments in smart power grid, energy efficiency, electric cars and renewable power. In 2011, the federal clean energy push led to a remarkable $56 billion investment in the sector, surpassing even China’s.

These investments have helped boost California’s green economy, particularly in the renewable power industries.

A new report entitled “2012 Many Shades of Green, California’s Shift to a Cleaner, More Productive Economy” confirms that California’s green economy showed greater resilience at the height of the last recession, performing better than the overall economy and retaining more jobs. Employment in California’s green economy grew by 53% from 1995 to 2010 compared to a 12 % job growth in the wider economy. And this trend looks set to continue.

As TriplePundit reports, California started the New Year with five approved alternative energy projects, stimulated by the state’s Renewable Power Standard (RPS), a mandate to draw 33% of electricity from renewable resources by 2020.

Sunnyvale’s Bloom Energy has benefited from federal investment tax credits, spurring the installation of Bloom box fuel cells throughout the state, from Google and Adobe in Northern California to Caltech in Southern California; and the creation of 1,500 green jobs. In addition, the California Air Resources board recently approved new rules to accelerate the move to zero-emission electric cars which will encourage California electric carmakers, Tesla, Fisker, and CODA. Tesla Motors has set up shop in Fremont’s old NUMMI (GM-Toyota) plant and expects to create 400 jobs this quarter as it ramps up production of its Model S sedan.

But Fremont is also home to the solar manufacturer, Solyndra, which went bankrupt last year and has become toxic evidence for critics of the president’s green vision. His green mantra has been described as a Captain Ahab-like folly that will result in Obama’s final demise — politically that is.

Critics are also quick to point out that the $16 billion federal loan guarantee program is out of cash, subsidy programs are under threat; and some say, much of the president’s political green capital has been exhausted.

Democrats and Republicans appear to have deep philosophical differences on green energy investment, including a seemingly uncrossable chasm over climate change. GOP front-runner Mitt Romney has an energy plan that calls for concentrating alternative energy funding in basic research. His Believe in America plan states:

“We should not be in the business of steering investment toward particular politically favored approaches. That is a recipe for both time and money wasted on projects that do not bring us dividends.”

Yet the Obama administration remains committed to Green. Last week in a Fresh Dialogues interview in Silicon Valley, David Axelrod, the president’s chief strategist, reaffirmed the administration’s commitment to clean energy. “We need to command the clean energy technology of the future,” said Axelrod. “Or we’re going to see that go to other parts of the world.”

So the stage is set. If the president succeeds in getting support for his green vision and passing clean energy tax credits and renewing subsidies, the Golden State, with its clean energy and cleantech focus, is poised to benefit. If not, the state is likely to continue to pursue its green path, but at a slower pace, and the US may cede the race for clean energy dominance to China and India.

Among the dozens of ballot measures now gathering signatures in California — is one seeking to repeal the death penalty and replace it with life sentences without the possibility of parole.
It’s chief proponent is Jeanne Woodford.

“I’m arguing for ending the death penalty because it doesn’t serve us” says Woodford. “It’s not a public safety tool.”

You might say Woodford is an unlikely opponent of the death penalty. As warden of San Quentin Prison, she presided over four executions.

“I tell people at the end of every execution someone on my staff would ask ‘Did we make the world safer tonight?’ And we all knew the answer was no,” said Woodford.

Today, Woodford is director of Death Penalty Focus, a non-profit fighting capital punishment. Woodford thinks deliberately killing inmates is immoral. But her main arguments against it: The death penalty doesn’t deter crime, it costs too much and it doesn’t help victims’ families move beyond their horrible loss.
“You know I think people wait years for an execution that may or may not happen,” said Woodford. “I mean people come to the prison hoping that that execution will somehow bring closure to them and I’ve never had anyone say that it did.”

Don’t tell that to Marc Klaas. His 12-year-old daughter Polly was kidnapped, assaulted and murdered by Richard Allen Davis. Davis has been on death row since 1996. And while there is no execution date, Klaas knows where he’ll be the day Davis is scheduled to die.

“I’ll spend that day in the execution chamber watching him,” said Klaas. “And i would hope the last thing he’d see is my eyes — just as the last thing my daughter saw before he strangled the life out of her — after he raped her — were his eyes.”

Woodford’s initiative is retroactive — so if it makes it to the ballot and passes, all 719 people on death row — including Richard Allen Davis — would get a reprieve. Their death sentences would revert to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
State Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate won’t say where he stands on the death penalty. But, in an interview last year before this initiative was written, he acknowledged the difficulties of implementing it.

“We have enormous responsibilities and the regulatory and legal hurdles are significant,” said Cate. “It is very complex.”

But efforts to expedite capital punishment — by shortening the appeals process for example — have all failed in the State Legislature.

Opponents of executions say ending the death penalty could save the state more than a $100 million, a figure cited by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst.

Well it would be less expensive and less complicated, that’s for sure,” said Cate. “But the real debate hinges on whether those costs and complexities are worthwhile.”

The campaign to end capital punishment is well funded. Supporters have raised more than a million dollars. But if their measure gets on the ballot, it’s sure to face powerful opposition, from law enforcement organizations and crime victims groups. Proponents have until mid-March to collect their signatures.

Listen to the radio story:

But Thursday that same panel will hear two somewhat ancillary issues:

1. An appeal of a District court order to release the Prop. 8 trial tapes. Plaintiff's attorney Theodore Olson will argue the case for releasing the digital videos. Attorney Charles Cooper will speak on behalf of overturning the lower court's decision and keeping the tapes sealed.

2. An appeal of a decision rejecting efforts to have Judge Walker's decision vacated because he had a conflict of interest as a gay man in a long term relationship. Mr. Cooper will argue for Prop. 8 proponents, while David Boies will present the oral arguments on behalf of the lower court decision striking down the motion to vacate.

Both decisions were made in the past year by federal Judge James Ware, Chief Judge of the Northern District of California. Regarding the tapes, Judge Ware wrote that unsealing and releasing them to the public was in the public interest and necessary to maintain transparency in a case of such fundamental importance. His decision is supported by a coalition of media organizations, that includes Fox News, the NY Times and KQED among others. An attorney representing that coalition will participate in Thursday's oral arguments.

In strongly rejecting the motion to vacate, Judge Ware said that were Judge Walker required to recuse himself under federal statutes, all minority judges would have to recuse themselves from any case involving civil rights, something he said Congress could not have intended in writing the recusal statute.

Neither of these issues go to the central legal merits of the constitutionality of Prop. 8. That is especially true in the video tapes question.

However, the oral arguments regarding Judge Walker's obligation to recuse himself because of his status as a gay man in a same sex relationship may reveal more about where the panel is heading.

How forcefully will the panel of judges suggest that gay and lesbian rights are of interest to all American judges who care about a society with equality under the law, not just LGBT judges? Will they draw parallels with civil rights cases and minority judges, an indication they see gay rights on par with issues like interracial marriage, segregation and racial discrimination?

It may shed some light on where the panel is ultimately heading on the issue that is central to the appeal: Whether to uphold Judge Walker's decision striking down Prop. 8. That decision will likely come next year, but not before the panel also rules on whether Prop. 8 proponents have legal standing to file the appeal in the first case.

The wheels of justice do grind slowly!