2 Cal Democrat Scandals - Why Have a Green Party?

Consider the Los Angeles Times front page below. Not one, but two major scandals rocked the California Democratic Party in the same week.

UPDATE: SCROLL DOWN TO SEE LIST OF DURKEE CAMPAIGNS

Both scandals involve big bucks from the Democrats' fat cat campaign donors. Moreover, the scandal of the bankrupt Solyndra solar energy company helps retro Republicans attack Green Energy.

Thanks a lot Democrats. Why have a Green Party? Tell me again how we don't need Greens, Peace & Freedom, Libertarians, and the A.I.P. because we have this great "choice" between "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans.

Published by The Los Angeles Times
Audits Detailed Mishandling of Campaign Funds
By Abby Sewell

When state Sen. Ted Lieu (D- Torrance) learned a few months ago that a state audit had found irregularities in his campaign finances, staffers immediately called Lieu's longtime treasurer, Kinde Durkee.

Durkee assured them that everything was fine, Lieu said, and he took her word for it. He forgot about the incident until this month, when Durkee was arrested in a sweeping federal fraud case that is sending shock waves across the Democratic Party establishment.

Durkee is accused of stealing perhaps millions of dollars from her clients, who include dozens of prominent California Democrats. Authorities have not laid out the full scale of the alleged crime, but clients including Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Los Angeles) have said that that they believe Durkee wiped out their campaign funds. Feinstein announced Friday that she plans to put $5 million of her own money into her reelection campaign to make up for funds that may have been taken.
. . .
"Politics in both parties is an old boys and old girls club, and most of the candidates … figure if everyone else is using Durkee, she must be all right," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. "If you were the only campaign thinking about hiring a person with this record, you might think twice about it, but there's safety in numbers."

In Lieu's case, an audit by the State Franchise Tax Board found that $186,190 in credit card contributions to his unsuccessful 2010 race for attorney general had not been deposited in the campaign bank account, in some cases for well over a year. An additional $161,964 that was reported as having been transferred from Lieu's Assembly committee to his attorney general campaign in December 2008 was not deposited until two years later.
. . .

And This

Published by The Los Angeles Times, September 17, 2011
Solar Firm's Obama Links Probed

By Matea Gold and Stuart Pfeifer

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles—
The White House faced mounting political complications as a second top fundraiser for President Obama was linked to a federal loan guarantee program that backed a now-bankrupt Silicon Valley solar energy company, and as two California lawmakers called for investigations of a state tax break granted to the firm.

Steve Spinner, who helped monitor the Energy Department's issuance of $25 billion in government loan guarantees to renewable energy projects, was one of Obama's top fundraisers in 2008 and is raising money for the president's 2012 reelection campaign.

Spinner did not have any role in the selection of applicants for the loan program and, in fact, was recused from the decision to grant a $535-million loan guarantee to Solyndra Inc. because his wife's law firm represented the company, administration officials said Friday.

But Spinner's role as a top official in the Energy Department program, which had not been previously revealed, is likely to spur new inquiries into whether political influence played a role in the handling of the "green" energy fund. Solyndra faces a congressional probe, a criminal investigation and separate internal inquiries at the Energy and Treasury departments.

. . .

The largest investments in Solyndra were funds operated on behalf of the family foundation of billionaire George Kaiser, another major fundraiser for Obama in 2008. Kaiser has denied personally investing in the solar energy company or talking to White House officials about the loan.

Some Republicans in Congress charge that the White House pushed to get the loan approved for political reasons, which the White House denies.

Before its collapse, Solyndra was a showcase of the White House initiative to develop clean-energy alternatives. Obama visited the factory in May and praised Solyndra as a green technology company that would create jobs and help lead the country's economic recovery.
. . .

The point is this. Even when so-called liberal Democrats in California want to do the right thing, such as promote alternative green energy, the implementation is all wrong. They just cannot help turning it into something that can feed the Democratic Party Machines and its rich campaign contributors.

It is instructive that one of the Democrats biggest campaign contributors is billionaire George Kaiser, with a direct interest in the national healthcare debate. Our Green Party candidates in Assembly District 53 strongly advocated universal, single-payer heathcare. But they didn't have to get permission slips from fat cat campaign contributors.

UPDATE: LIST OF DURKEE CAMPAIGNS

Posted on the Web Site for the Sacramento Bee, September 4, 2011
'I've been robbed,' California Lawmaker Says
By Dan Smith

See a list of all the state campaign committee reports Durkee filed in 2011, according to Secretary of State's office data.

KindeDurkee

Cluelessness and Courage in AD 53

Democrat Ted Lieu in 2006

No Taxes! No Worries! Be Happy!

Green Peter Thottam in 2006

Warning! Tough times are coming!

Green Lisa Green in 2010

Clean Money! Clean Politics! Universal health care!

Green for 2012

It is not too early to start thinking about who might be the best choice for a Green Party presidential candidate in 2012. You know that both the Democratic and Republican Parties are doing just that… some like Minnesota Gov. Pawlenty are already spending a lot of time in other states.

It is with that in mind that I think it a valuable exercise to describe the characteristics I would want to see in a Green Party candidate. Click Read more! to pursue that idea.


Economy: If Greens are to have a real impact in the next presidential election cycle, we must have a candidate who can articulate what being Green means to the typical voter. Whether you view that voter as Joe the Plumber, or just as you next door neighbor, we do know that there is a diverse population of voters whose needs must be met in order to secure their vote. Aiming a campaign only at some imagined progressive block will only further marginalize this party and, in my opinion, increase the likelihood of having to travel The Road of Cormac McCarthy.

James Carville coined the phrase "It's the economy, stupid" in the 1992 Clinton campaign. If Greens try to turn that into "It's the stupid economy" and run from the issue rather than embracing it, then it would be better not to run at all. Significant (over 80%) majorities of voters in the recent NJ/VA gubernatorial elections said that they were most concerned about the economy. This is not likely to change by 2012. Republicans will surely exploit this in every way that they can, linking every weakness to Obama's liberal big government spending.

It takes some 18 months before employment numbers turn positive after the economists say that a recession is over. We will still be recovering as candidates truly engage in the POTUS dance. Greens will only make inroads if they make economic sense.

Ecology: The only way to truly expound the Green way of thinking is to forget about the environment and start talking about ecology. Words have meaning. The terminology we use is important. As Dr. Frank Luntz wrote, "It's not what you say, but what people hear." The environment carries the connotation of a place that is far away. People go out into the environment. The Glenn Beck's and Rush Limbaugh's use "enviros" as a term of derision. Let them try that with "ecologists".

By 2012, we will not have resolved the climate change issues. This battle will still be fought and right now. It is a battle of people against the universe and, sad to say, we are winning. The ecological truth is that we need to view it all as a system and find ways to make the system work together like a well tuned engine. The fundamental change in thinking is that ecology means we consider how decisions that we make over agricultural practices in Iowa will have an effect on shrimp fishing in the Gulf of Mexico or the probability of another Katrina-like strike at New Orleans. It is all that interdependent.

It means that the measures we take to control climate change must be explained in terms of their economic impact. If the Republicans, who have long waged a war on science, are allowed to define this in Sarah Palin terms, millions will die.

Social Contract: Most of the truly revolutionary changes in American politics, especially those that came out of a time of crisis, have defined a new social contract for Americans. Whether it came with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, LBJ's Guns and Butter or the Newt Gingrich's (really Frank Luntz's) Contract with America, leaders were able to articulate a vision of how government should work for all of the citizens of this country.

We should not make the mistake of blurring the enemies lines of demarcation. There are real difference in this area between Democrats and Republicans though both buy in to the concept that all good comes from growth. Their difference lie in how to achieve that goal and those differences can be exploited.

The real difference is with the Green view of the social contract, one expressed in terms of social ecology, where free individual choices need to be seen in terms of the entire system in which they are made. It is extremely difficult to do this, but it must be done.

Past Green Party presidential campaigns have failed to ignite enthusiasm because they accomplished none of the above goals. They talked to Greens rather than to all Americans. One might be able to speak to a hip-hop audience in their own terms, but may have to deal with the fact that hip-hop listeners want their President to rise to a different level, to be, in fact, presidential.

The Green Party has to do a lot of soul searching and candidate searching between now and the next election. We better get it right because the fate of mankind may just depend on what kind of president we have in 2012.

How smart is your grid?

UCLA economic professor Matthew Kahn has a blog devoted to Urban and Environmental Economics. According to today's post (linked above) IBM has been taking out full page ads in the NY Times, lobbying for a "Smart Energy Grid". This is not new from IBM. The company set up a coalition with Center Point Energy to digitize electrical grids.

I note that the idea of a smart grid has come out of the mouth of Obama on more than one occasion as a prerequisite for the deployment of wind and solar system.

Matthew Kahn is professor of economics at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Environmental and Energy Economics Group. He’s author of Green Cities: Urban Growth and the Environment.

Kahn says that he will be on NPR tomorrow(Nov. 24th). The show is On Point and the subject is Obama and the Green Economy. Unfortunately it will not be carried from KQED or other local public stations. So, I will have to download it later if I want to listen, and I do.