Hundreds of union members celebrating the 90th anniversary of women’s suffrage rallied Thursday at the state Capitol, holding signs that said “Women vote for women who vote” an attack on the state’s first female Republican nominee for governor.

The signs were criticizing the abysmal voting record of former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, who has acknowledged that she failed to vote for most of her adult life. The rally was organized by the California Nurses Association, a vocal Whitman critic.

Many marchers wore wide-brimmed hats adorned with flowers, long skirts and high necklines, in reference to the attire of the era of suffragettes. While some speeches focused on the struggles women went through to secure the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, other speakers touched on a modern political issue: the upcoming November election.

A group of California Teachers Association members chanted “Teachers vote without fail, California’s not for sale.”

Whitman, a billionaire businesswoman, has contributed $104 million to her campaign to date, breaking all previous state spending records.

At a campaign event Thursday in the City of Industry, Whitman called the rally a distraction from the most pressing issues facing the state.

“That is the union bosses trying to distract from the fact that I will go to Sacramento and I will change Sacramento,” she said. “I will get the public pension under control. I will fix our K-12 education system. So in my view, my voting record isn’t perfect, but the main issue here is how are we going to turn California around, and I think I have a plan.”

Whitman has been a vocal critic of public employee unions, which largely support her Democratic challenger, state Attorney General Jerry Brown. He re-emerged on the campaign trail this week after a quiet summer spent fundraising for a costly campaign this fall.

The California Nurses Association has held rallies around the state with a colorful “Queen Meg” character who proclaims she would like to buy the state. Whitman has responded in kind, skewering the union in mailers sent to some nurses’ homes calling out executive director Rose Ann DeMoro’s $293,000 annual salary.

Whitman says she supports the group’s signature issue upholding the California law that requires hospitals to have at least one nurse for every five patients. The CNA successfully lobbied for the law.

But Jan McDermott, 63, a postpartum nurse from San Francisco, said she doesn’t believe Whitman would uphold the law or other patient safety protections.

“She’s apparently anti-union. And anything we’ve won, we won through the union,” said McDermott.

Associated Press Writer John Rogers in City of Industry also contributed to this report.

An open letter from a group of progressive experts finds the Republican’s policies if implemented would deepen the budget crisis, raise unemployment and cut growth.

Meg Whitman’s economic policies are based on a flawed understanding of the challenges California faces, and the Republican gubernatorial nominee’s proposals would make the state’s troubles worse, according to an open letter to Californians signed by a group of mostly Democratic economists from throughout the state.

“The evidence and theory that Whitman uses to diagnose California’s problems are unscientific and an unsound basis for policy,” the economists write. “As a result, her diagnosis and her proposed economic policies are both deeply flawed. If implemented, her policy proposals will deepen California’s budget crisis and are likely to reduce employment and economic growth.”

The letter and an 18-page report detailing their findings will be released Tuesday by the advocacy arm of the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning nonprofit think tank in Washington. The professors who signed the letter are well regarded in their fields and include Kenneth Arrow, a Stanford University economist and Nobel laureate.

Whitman’s supporters said the report was tainted by partisanship.

“The same people who are engineering our nation’s blundering economic recovery are now criticizing candidates who are committed to balancing budgets through spending cuts, targeted tax relief and job creation,” said Crystal Feldman, spokeswoman for the California Republican Party. “If these guys were so smart, maybe unemployment wouldn’t be at 9.5% and our national deficit wouldn’t have ballooned to over $13.3 trillion.”

A spokeswoman for Whitman declined comment.

The study, written by UC Berkeley economist Michael Reich, analyzes the 48-page policy booklet Whitman unveiled during the primary campaign. Reich said he saw the book and instantly noticed statements that he knew were inaccurate, so he rounded up fellow economists who were willing to scrutinize it.

“She claims to have a plan that’s very detailed and based on careful research. But it really isn’t careful at all, and it’s misguided,” Reich said. “It has a lot of incorrect assumptions. A lot of studies she draws on are useless or kind of misleading and don’t agree with well-accepted economic research…. They’re making promises that cannot be fulfilled.”

Reich said Whitman’s Democratic rival, Jerry Brown, had released too few policy documents to conduct a similar review, and he hopes to complete an assessment once Brown announces more plans.

Whitman has said California is suffering because its residents are overtaxed, businesses are over-regulated and the state’s bureaucracy is bloated.

Reich writes that each of those suppositions is not based on fact and that Whitman relies on suspect science to overstate the problems. The study and the letter quote two economists who say that one of the studies she cites is “schlock science.”

For instance, in saying that California has nearly the worst tax climate of any state in the United States, Whitman relies on a study that looked at the state’s highest income d failed to consider its property taxes, which tend to be lower than in other places.

When property levies are included, California’s overall taxes are slightly higher than the average for all states, and during recessionary times, state taxes are lower than average, he writes.

Whitman fails to understand that the real foundation of the state’s problems are the national economic downturn, the housing bubble’s burst, which hit California particularly hard, and the lack of a state “rainy day” fund that can be used during downturns, Reich writes.

Reich takes issue with many of her proposals to improve the state’s economic viability.

The swollen size of state government is a favorite talking point for the candidate, and she has pledged to reduce its ranks by 40,000 workers.

Reich writes that California ranks 48th out of the 50 states in the number of employees compared to population. Her plans to trim the state workforce exclude the University of California system, prison guards and police. That means the other areas — education, health, foster care, and the Department of Motor Vehicles — would see one-quarter of their ranks cut, resulting in severe tolls on state services that directly affect Californians’ lives.

He says Whitman’s proposal to deal with the state’s $20-billion budget deficit could do the same. The candidate proposes cutting $15 billion from the budget in her first year in office and reducing taxes by billions of dollars.

“Alas, these numbers do not add up to $20 billion,” he writes. “And her plan does not specify where most of the cuts will fall.”

Since most of the state’s general fund is spent on K-12 schools, higher education, health and human services and prisons, Reich writes that much of the cost-cutting must occur in those areas. He argues that such cuts not only would harm the state’s economic recovery and reduce federal matching funds but also would harm the state’s long-term productivity.

“Cuts in these programs will therefore reduce the state’s potential to grow in the future,” he writes.

A Celebration of the 90th Anniversary of  Women’s Suffrage and a Protest of Meg Whitman Whose Voting Record Dishonors that Tradition

“I was not as engaged in the political process [voting]
as I should have been. I was doing lots of other
things…building companies [and laying off workers].”

— Meg Whitman, March 15, 2010

Join our special celebration of a woman’s Right to Vote and protest billionaire CEO Meg Whitman’s record of rarely voting for nearly three decades — except now that she is on the ballot.  Join Us — Thursday, August 26, Sacramento

Hop on board to join us for a very special celebration of the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment legalizing the right of women to vote in the U.S.  Thousands of women, and men, fought for decades to secure this basic democratic right.

On August 26, we will honor the achievements of the suffrage movement, and the women who were imprisoned and abused in the fight. We will also continue our protest of Meg Whitman, who has disgraced the suffragists’ legacy, and now thinks she is entitled to be governor because of her wealth and privilege as a billionaire corporate CEO.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Gather for March
3:00 pm
Convention Center, Sacramento

March and Rally
4:00 – 6:00 pm
Capitol West Steps, Sacramento

Join us for this special occasion. Hosted by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United with other community and labor organizations. You’re encouraged to wear historic clothing of the era or black and white attire. Friends and family are invited to join the march and rally. Celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment

For more information and to RSVP, please contact Bonnie Castillo, RN or Deanna Furman (916) 446-5019

Download a PDF of the flyer to print or email to share with your friends.

Share the flyer with your colleagues!

According to campaign finance reports filed yesterday, Whitman has spent $99.7 million the past two years, a figure that the Associated Press notes climbs to $100.3 million when including donated services.

Those numbers, which shatter campaign spending records in California and believed to exceed the amount any candidate running for any office in the U.S. other than President has spent, signal a campaign that is out of control and that shows little regard for the real life of most Californians.

With more than 2.2 million Californians are out of work (Employment Development Department, July 16, 2010), at least 6.4 million are uninsured (U.S. Census Bureau as of 2007), and California ranks 41st in the U.S. in per capita spending per pupil (National Education Association rankings), such massive resources could surely be put to better use.

Those are just three of the many signs of crisis in California that show the appalling contrast with the disgraceful spending spree by one billionaire candidate who seems to be driven by personal ambition and little else.

If Whitman, whose main qualification for office appears to be her unlimited wealth, really wants to help the state, there are many other ways she could use those resources to add real social value to our state, and help Californians who are hurting, who are sick, or to bolster our education system.

(And her profligate spending is another reminder of why we have characterized Whitman as “Queen Meg.” You can check out the latest on Queen Meg at www.QueenMeg2010.com.)

The California Nurses Association, with its research arm, the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, has some suggestions.

Here’s what Whitman’s $100 million could done:

• Pay monthly unemployment benefits for 82,237 unemployed Californians. (Average unemployment benefit in California is $1,216) Source: Orange County Register, July 19, 2010

• Pay the unemployment benefits for two months for the 40,000 workers she would lay off. (The U.S. Department of Labor calculates that by its broadest measure, the U-6 rate which is defined as total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, California has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, 21.9%.)

• Pay yearly health insurance premiums for 7,477 families. (Average yearly health insurance for family coverage $13,375) Source: Employer Health Benefits, Annual Survey 2009, Kaiser Family Foundation

• Fund 18,018 students at the Pell Grant maximum. (Pell Grant maximum for school year 2010-2011 is $5,550.) Source: United States Department of Education.

• Pay for 11,447 pupils in California K-12. (Average expenditure per pupil in 2008-2009 school year was $8,736) Source:
California Department of Education

• Pay the “fees” for 10,770 students to attend one of the University of California campuses for academic year 2009-2010. (Fees to attend UC are $9,285.) Source: University of California, Fees and Financial Aid

• By our calculations, help as many as 5,714 households avoid foreclosure The California Housing Finance Agency, the state’s affordable housing bank, estimates it will help 40,000 or more households avoid foreclosure with principal write downs and other plans unveiled Wednesday. In all, the agency received $700 million for the relief programs. Source: James Wasserman, “California to help pay down homeowners’ mortgage debt.” Four out of the Top ten cities for housing foreclosures are in the Central Valley. Source: Realty Trac.

o Modesto is ranked second in the nation with 5,138 homes or 2.93 percent of all housing units in foreclosure in the first quarter
o Stockton is ranked fifth, with 6,327 homes in foreclosure, or 2.77 percent of the city’s homes.
o Merced is sixth. It had 2,307 homes in foreclosure in Q1 or 2.76 of all homes.
o And Bakersfield is ninth in the nation, with 6,343 homes in foreclosure or 2.33 percent of all housing units]

• Hire as many as 1,755 new grad RNs in California for a year. Source: United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2008 Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates

Like your hospital CEO or Chief Nursing Officer, billionaire Meg Whitman thinks she knows what is best for California nurses and patients.

So, after CNA refused Whitman’s demand that we give her every CNA member’s home address and other personal information — and after Whitman rejected our offer to have her speak directly to RNs in forums where nurses could ask unscripted questions — Whitman decided to bombard RNs with campaign mailings, and a misleading phone survey to nurses. And, she created a website to attack CNA, and the gains RNs have made, just as hospital attorneys and anti-union consultants have done before her. Don’t be deceived.

Whitman poses a threat to our patients, our standards, and our voice.

1) Protect Our Patients and Our Ratios. In the primary, Whitman wouldn’t support our ratios. Now, when she wants our votes in November, she claims she does. Gov. Schwarzenegger said he supported ratios, too. Then he issued an executive order to roll back the ratios, and severely weakened ratio enforcement by the Department of Public Health. Can we trust Whitman, who employs the same anti-regulation rhetoric and whose campaign chair, ex-Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed a prior ratio bill, not to follow in Schwarzenegger’s footsteps?

2)Protect Our Pensions. Whitman denounces “gold-plated retirement benefits” of UC and other public nurses, and says she will raise the retirement age, extend vesting periods, require RNs to contribute more to pension plans, and replace defined benefit plans with more risky 401(k) plans. We can not allow Whitman to seek to divide RNs. Her plan to cut public RN retirement will only encourage all hospital employers to demand huge cuts in the pension and retiree health benefits all California RNs have worked so hard to win.

3) Protect Meal Breaks and Overtime. Whitman wants to eliminate guaranteed meal and rest break laws and overtime pay. If she succeeds every employer will be demanding more mandatory overtime and abusing break relief.

4) Protect the Public’s Health. Whitman wants a “moratorium” on all new consumer requirements, including workplace health and safety rules and consumer protections against polluted air, water and food toxins. Whitman also will continue to cut funding for California’s public health safety net, which impacts the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society, especially children.

5) Protect Our Union. Whitman’s assault on CNA could have been scripted by hospital management, and is intended to silence nurses by weakening our collective ability to fight to improve patient care and RN standards, and to protect our voice at the bedside and in the public arena.

Download the PDF from the California Nurses Association

Meg Whitman is a household name, at least among households with habitual readers of the business press, especially those who invest in technology stocks. She is the near-legendary manager of the Internet giant eBay. Under her stewardship eBay grew from a kicky startup Web site where people could sell and buy stuff, but which made no income to speak of, into the stellar success it is today.

Whitman’s resume is fairly typical for a top American manager. She’s a graduate of Harvard Business School. Her career stops include a stint as senior vice president at Disney Consumer Products, CEO of Florists Transworld Delivery and head of Hasbro’s Preschool Division, where she managed Playskool and Mr. Potato Head. Then, in 1998, she came to eBay.

And for years she served as a director on Goldman Sachs’ board. During that period she, like other directors, won priority to participate in offerings the investment bank led, on which she made a pretty penny.

Upon leaving the management of eBay in January 2008 (though she remained on the board another year ), having made a fortune from generous pay and a massive exercising of stock options, Whitman turned to politics. Now she is running in the California governor’s race, which will be decided in November.

While Whitman is a household name, not many have heard of Rose Ann DeMoro. Nor is the organization she heads, the California Nurses Association, as well known around the world as eBay.

DeMoro is not a nurse by trade. Her career track is very different from Whitman’s. Her career stops include working as a cashier in St Louis and mainly, political activity in trade unions.

Yet the careers of the two women are on collision track because of Whitman’s plans for California.

Whitman, who stands a good chance of winning the November poll, plans to slash California’s budget, which is in no better shape than Greece’s. Most of the cut will be in public-sector wages and pensions. That will affect people such as policemen, teachers, firemen – and nurses – the ones led by the indefatigable DeMoro.

Getting personal

Under DeMoro’s stewardship, California’s nurses have begun a well-publicized campaign in which they call the candidate “Queen Meg” and portray her as a callous billionaire detached from the lives of ordinary folk. They depict her as someone using her fortune to buy power – Whitman is expected to spend about $150 million of her own money on the campaign.

The claws are out. Nurses demonstrate outside Whitman’s home and have thrown their support behind the Democratic candidate Jerry Brown. Their attacks have also taken a personal nature.

Whitman’s campaign isn’t sitting there and taking it: The attacks on DeMoro have also taken a personal bent, revealing her pay, which is a lot higher than the average pay nurses make.

Whitman’s people are constantly driving home that DeMoro isn’t a nurse to begin with.

In general, the campaign for Whitman, a Republican, tries to distinguish between public servants, who are cherished, and trade union leaders, who are not. It’s a classic divide-and-rule tactic.

The clash between Whitman and DeMoro has all the earmarks of a good story: The polarity of the warriors, each representing a totally different agenda; their differences in style and appearance; and the fact that things have turned personal. The stage is set for drama.

Candidate Whitman wears suits and comes armed with a tightly focused economic plan based on steep spending cuts. Her ammunition is a Harvard-style accurate list of the tough steps that need to be taken to save California’s budget. Labor leader DeMoro has her picture taken in union T-shirts. She waves placards, not lists, and delivers her speeches through a megaphone outside Whitman’s house. She tells stories of people’s lives, not numbers and economic data.

I don’t know who will win the gubernatorial race, or which of the two poles will prevail. But the story of the California race is the same story unfolding just about everywhere else in the world, and investors would do well to watch not only the indexes, but this race very closely.

This is not just another story of another local election. The nurses versus Queen Meg represents the growing gap in society, in America and elsewhere. On the one hand you have the high-tech and finance royalty, the white-collar people and businessmen, who are Whitman’s natural constituency. They support balanced budgets and tax cuts.

On the other hand you have public servants and blue-collar workers, whose pay and living standards have been steadily eroding.

It is the perennial battle over the distribution of the pie, and when the pie has been shrinking, as it has been these days, the fight turns bloody.

The cutbacks reach the public sector

Since the global economic crisis began two years ago, the business and consumer sectors in America have been shrinking, while cutting back spending and investment. The number of employees has tumbled.

But the increase in unemployment and wage erosion have been confined to the business sector. Until now the public sector has been immune, at both the federal and state levels. If anything, the public sector increased spending to stimulate the economy and alleviate the symptoms of the recession.

If Whitman is elected, all this is likely to change. She has said 40,000 jobs will be cut from the public sector, and the remaining employees will face wage cuts. Other states are likely to follow suit, including New Jersey, Illinois and Michigan.

If that happens, the United States will be in a strange situation. At the national level, the federal government is adopting Keynesian strategies of spending more and more, increasing its deficit and striving to preserve jobs. But at the state level, governments will do the opposite, adopting a pattern spreading in Europe – tightening their belts and reducing their deficits, despite the danger of a short-term jump in unemployment.

Economists are watching these opposite directions in America and Europe: deficit spending versus discipline. Those two opposing approaches are now arising in America itself: proponents of increasing the deficit versus proponents of budgetary conservatism. It is internal strife that will only get worse as November approaches and the voters have their say.

The writer is the CEO of Psagot Compass.

In her gubernatorial campaign, California billionaire Meg Whitman fancies herself a turnaround artist, not unlike CEOs who take on failing companies and put them in the black. In her analysis of why the nation’s most populous state and the world’s 12th largest economy has a chronically dysfunctional government, one villain stands out: public-employee unions.

The former eBay CEO promises she will cut the state-government payroll by 40,000 jobs. She says she can do this because, as a self-funded candidate willing to spend a mind-boggling $150 million of her own money, she will take office owing the unions and other special interests no favors. Whitman has declared, “I am tough enough to stand up to the unions and the politicians they control.” Republican consultant Kevin Spillane says it is an open secret in Sacramento that public-employee pensions, benefits and pay are not sustainable at current levels. “Given the severity of the recession,” Spillane tells TIME, “it is both politically possible and financially necessary for compensation and pensions to be reformed.”
(Read “Is California sold on Meg Whitman?”)

The unions, of course, have taken notice of Whitman’s attack and are fighting back. Led by the feisty California Nurses Association (CNA), they are challenging Whitman on the campaign trail and backing the candidacy of Democrat Jerry Brown. And so in one corner, the nurses engage in street theater that entertains and provokes as they take on Whitman. In the other is the candidate who has spent an astonishing $91 million thus far, hiring the best political consultants money can buy. “Californians love nurses, teachers and firefighters, but they hate the unions that these folks belong to,” says Jack Pitney, a professor at Claremont McKenna College and a former GOP official. “If it’s Meg vs. nurses, teachers and firefighters, she loses. [But] if it’s Meg vs. the union bosses, she wins.” (For now, the frugal Brown is neck and neck with Whitman in the polls, even though he has spent all of $500,000.)

In satire meant to resonate with people suffering in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the nurses’ union has shadowed Whitman at campaign events with an actress dressed as “Queen Meg.” Nurses leader Rose Ann DeMoro says the parody campaign, complete with a bus and supporting actors, mocks Whitman’s “assumption that her vast personal wealth of $1.3 billion and record spending in the Republican primary entitles her to be anointed governor and carry out her corporate agenda of eroding public and workplace protections, slashing safety-net programs and muffling the voice of working people and their unions.”
(See why California is still America’s future.)

Last week, as Whitman campaigned in Southern California, more than 1,000 unionized nurses wearing red hospital scrubs held a rally outside her home in Atherton, a leafy enclave of Silicon Valley’s rich and powerful. Wearing a blue gown and gold crown, Queen Meg was accompanied by two assistants wearing tuxedos with sashes of “Goldman” and “Sachs,” in reference to Whitman’s time on the reviled investment bank’s board of directors. “We are not going to let Meg Whitman push us around,” said Margie Keenan, a nurse from Long Beach, addressing the crowd. “We are here to push back and defend our state.” The Whitman campaign shot back with a statement by retired nurse Alice Hansen: “The radical leadership of this union does not represent the vast majority of California nurses.”

On the spreadsheet, public-employee unions would seem a ripe target for cost-conscious politicians. Across the nation, many state and local government workers are able to retire earlier than their private-sector counterparts and enjoy generous benefits including pensions. But flesh-and-blood public servants — nurses, schoolteachers, firefighters and highway-patrol officers — perform essential functions. When public coffers run so dry that the police department no longer answers nonemergency calls — as was announced by crime-ridden Oakland recently when it laid off 80 police officers — public-sector pain affects the community at large.
(Comment on this story.)

Only a small percentage of CNA’s 85,000 nurses work for the state, but budget cuts and furloughs affect the state agencies on which the nurses depend. CNA spokesman Chuck Idelson gives this example: In November, the union filed a detailed complaint about conditions at UC Davis Medical Center with the California Department of Public Health. Idelson says, “As of mid-June, the department had still not assigned an investigator to the case.”

Whitman says she wants to “downsize or rightsize” Sacramento and take the state’s payroll back to what it was five years ago. At that time, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was in his first term. The Terminator came to office promising to curb the power of the unions but met his match when his ballot initiatives, designed to reform California’s government in a sharply conservative direction, were decisively defeated at the polls. The countercampaign was smart and irresistible. In the run-up to the vote, Schwarzenegger’s nemesis on television was a petite Asian-American schoolteacher castigating the governor for turning against the public schools.

The Whitman team is trying to avoid the Goliath-vs.-David trap Schwarzenegger fell into. “Meg is trying to differentiate between the leaders and the profession,” says former Republican consultant Allan Hoffenblum. “She is going after the union leaders while saying, ‘I love nurses.’ It will be interesting if this works.” Gale Kaufman, a Democratic strategist who led the coalition that derailed Schwarzenegger’s conservative agenda, is skeptical. “Whitman has shown little understanding of what public employees do except in the broadest strokes.”

Last month, Schwarzenegger convinced six of the state’s public-employee unions to agree to pension concessions and pay cutbacks. If the state’s other public-employee unions made similar deals, it would save the general fund $1.2 billion and help close California’s $19.1 billion deficit. Whoever is sworn into office in January — be it Whitman or Brown — will have to take up the laborious task of getting the unions to agree to cutbacks.

Nurses rally outside home of GOP nominee Whitman

By Nardine Saad
Associated Press
July 15, 2010

Atherton, Calif. (AP)–Hundreds of unionized nurses wearing scrubs held a raucous rally Thursday outside the Silicon Valley home of GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman to protest her proposals for the state, which they say will hurt working people.

Dozens of police officers descended on the leafy streets surrounding Whitman’s two-story colonial home in Atherton. An estimated 1,100 protesters chanted “We’re going to beat back the Whitman attack” as an airplane paid for by the nurses union circled overhead, trailing a banner that read, “Nurses say no to Whitman.”

The colorful display was part of an escalating feud between Whitman and California Nurses Association, the 85,000-member union that has trailed the former eBay CEO at her campaign events with an actress dressed as “Queen Meg.” The union says Whitman, a billionaire who has never before run for public office, is trying to buy the governor’s race by spending tens of millions of dollars from her personal fortune.

The “Queen Meg” character made an appearance Thursday, standing in front of Whitman’s white picket fence surrounded by two tuxedo-wearing bodyguards with sashes identifying them as “Goldman” and “Sachs.” It was a reference to Whitman’s time serving on the Goldman board, during which she was paid $475,000, and criticism that she benefited from a questionable practice in which executives whose companies did business with Goldman were given preferential access to stocks.

“Queen Meg” acted out a scene in which she pushed a woman dressed as California to the ground, saying she would eliminate public employees and give tax breaks to the wealthy. It was a play on a recent report that Whitman agreed to a confidential settlement while she was chief executive of eBay after she instigated an altercation with an employee.

Whitman also has proposed eliminated 40,000 state government jobs.

Jen Lendl, a 38-year-old nurse at Kaiser-Oakland, said Whitman’s proposals would roll back benefits and pensions for public employees, who she described as hardworking.

“She’s threatening the rights of nurses, patients, also attacking the teachers and firefighters. These are good people,” she said.

Whitman was not home Thursday. Instead, she had a campaign event at a flashlight-manufacturing company in the inland Southern California city of Ontario.

Afterward, she told reporters that the rally outside her home was a distraction and that she would remain focused on one of her top priorities — developing ways to create private-sector jobs in California.

“Everywhere I travel, and you could see it here today, people are very worried about jobs,” she said. “The thing on people’s minds is who has the best chance of fixing the job climate in California?”

Her campaign spokeswoman, Sarah Pompei, said Whitman is making an effort to describe her positions directly to nurses. Whitman has mailed letters and fliers to nurses’ homes, urging them not to believe their Democratically aligned union leaders. She says she supports the nurses’ signature issue, a state law that requires one nurse for every five patients, and does not believe all nurses support the union’s antics.

Jeanmarie Wong, a nurse at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center, is among those who has been targeted by Whitman — both as a nurse who received the fliers and a registered Republican. But Wong said she cannot support Whitman in November unless she is persuaded she would protect patient safety.

“I didn’t necessarily want to vote for her unless she comes out to say that she is in line with the policies that are best for the patient safety and best for nurses in California,” Wong said. “We don’t want to go back, when (nurses) couldn’t get paid, they couldn’t get anybody to listen to them about what was best for health care.”

Union leaders say Whitman’s proposal to eliminate thousands of state government positions would leave regulatory agencies that oversee health care understaffed and put patients at risk of having too few nurses. They also say Whitman’s proposed regulatory rollbacks threaten their meal and rest breaks.

The nurses association and other unions support Whitman’s Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jerry Brown.

Nurses attending Thursday’s protest said they planned to send the mailers back to the Whitman campaign with letters explaining why they do not support her.

Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the nurses union, said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he backed nurses — until he was elected and filed a lawsuit against the nurse-patient ratio law. She called Whitman “Schwarzenegger on estrogen.”

Dan basking in the glory of his THING

So now we know…Dan’s search for the perfect THING is over and he is now the proud owner of a 1973 VW THING. For some of us who were around to witness the “roll out” of this fabulous das auto—it is really exciting to see the THING is as adorable as we remember. OK, a few scratches and scrapes—ALRIGHT—big dents and 240,000 miles later—she’s still a gem!! Stay safe Dan and here’s hoping you have AAA.

Nurse Talk Co-Host Dan "The Man" Grady on his new THING, contest winner Leslie White and Nurse Talk Host Casey Hobbs, who is gone with the wind!

Read the Daily Kos at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/6/23/878572/-Meg-Whitman-Declares-War-on-Nurses-%28Updated%29