Tag Archives: Republican corruption

CA-04. Great news for Charlie

An AP story shows John Doolittle at his best:  blaming the world for his troubles.

The fact that he SAYS he's running again is wonderful news for Charlie Brown.  We can only hope that it's true.

I'm a constituent of CA-04 and have very powerfully negative feelings about Doolittle.  Only that he would go.

Story below:  Grab a hanky or a barf bag.

Doolittle attacks critics as 'weasels'

Doolittle Attacks Critics As Chief of Staff Faces Grand Jury

ERICA WERNER
AP News

Sep 07, 2007 16:58 EDT

Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., denounced his GOP critics as “weasels” Friday even as his chief of staff appeared before a federal grand jury investigating Doolittle's ties to jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Doolittle also told reporters on a conference call Friday that he believes the Justice Department's long-running probe “borders on harassment.”

Prosecutors are investigating connections between Doolittle and Abramoff including payments that Doolittle's wife, Julie, got from Abramoff even after a fundraiser she was paid to plan got canceled.

Doolittle's chief of staff, Ron Rogers, spent an hour and 20 minutes before a federal grand jury at U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Friday. His appearance came two days after Doolittle's scheduler and deputy chief of staff appeared before the same grand jury.

California Blog Roundup for August 16, 2006

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-11, CA-04, John Doolittle, Richard Pombo, Republican corruption, Proposition 87, Proposition 89, redistricting, term limits, health care.

Governor’s Race

Jerry McNerney / Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

Charlie Brown / 15% Doolittle / CA-04

Other Republican Paragons

Health Care

Propositions

Goo-Goo Stuff

  • OK, here’s the deal. Redistricting lives for now, but won’t be combined with term limit reform.
  • The Mad Professah on the 2001 redistricting deal and reforming it. Have a read, but remind yourself that anything involving spending requires a 2/3 majority, so a gerrymander into a simple majority is nice, but not ideal.
  • Cathy Feng from Common Cause on redistricting. If people want to redistrict the state in some nonpartisan way, that’s fine (subject to endless caveats about the way it’s done), but for California to redistrict Congressional districts that way when Texas doesn’t is just stupid unilateral disarmament.
  • Oh, and term limits? Basically useless for anything except putting control of government in the hands of staff and lobbyists.

The Rest

California Blog Roundup for August 11, 2006

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-11, CA-04, Bill Durston, Charlie Brown, John Doolittle, Richard Pombo, Dan Lundgren, Republican corruption, Proposition 90, Proposition 89, Proposition 87, health care, global warming.

Bloggers on GovernorPhil.com

As I’m sure you know, a group of independent California bloggers (including our own sfbriancl) launched Governor Phil yesterday, to track the race and tell folks how they felt about Governor Phil (good, they feel good). Here are some bloggy reactions, in no particular order:

Governor’s Race

Jerry McNerney / Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

Charlie Brown / 15% Doolittle / CA-04

Health Care

Propositions

The Rest

California Blog Roundup, August 9, 2006

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-11, CA-04, John Doolittle, Republican corruption, Proposition 89, Proposition 85, Jerry Brown, health care.

Governor’s Race

Jerry McNerney / Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

Charlie Brown / 15% Doolittle / CA-04

Propositions

The Rest

California Blog Roundup for August 7, 2006

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry McNerney, Charlie Brown, John Doolittle, Brent Wilkes, Republican corruption, Proposition 89, minimum wage, prisons, environment, redistricting reform.

Governor’s Race

Jerry McNerney / Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

    Randy Bayne attended the opening of Jerry McNerney’s Stockton office and reports back.

Charlie Brown / 15% Doolittle / CA-04

Other Republican Paragons (Brent Wilkes Edition)

  • California Republican taught Brent Wilkes how to bribe. Awwww… isn’t that sweet?
  • Ah, the top tier of Wilkes “transactional lobbying” recipients (purty euphemism for “bribery”, ain’t it — lots of California Republicans. Makes one proud.
  • Down With Tyranny: You simply can’t walk away from the [article] without wondering why Randy “Duke” Cunningham is the only Republican in prison for the widespread corruption that virtually defines the GOP political culture of the last half dozen years in Washington, from lowlife slimeball congressmen to a lowlife slimeball president and vice president (yes, Wilkes gave BushCheney hundreds of thousands of dollars in quasi-legal bribes too).
  • Apparently, corruption is what you get when you put Republicans in positions of power. Of course, since they don’t believe in government, they probably don’t think they did anything wrong.

Propositions

Prisons

  • Politics in the Zeros: Take control of the prisons away from the Schwarzeneggers and prison guards, and force reform.
  • Don Perata: what we’re doing with the prisons isn’t working. Time to try some actual rehabilitation.
  • Schwarzenegger’s last-minute election year stunt, calling a special session to deal with the prison crisis he’s known about for years, is pretty much guaranteed to fail. No matter what the Bush Republicans say, you don’t just whip up a solution to problems of this size, just in time for an election.

The Rest

California Blog Roundup for August 4, 2006

Just in time for the weekend, today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry McNerney, Paid-For Pombo, 15% Doolittle, Dan Lungren, Republican corruption, Proposition 89, Proposition 90, minimum wage, infrastructure bonds, prisons, global warming.

Governor’s Race

Jerry McNerney / Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

Charlie Brown / 15% Doolittle / CA-04

Other Republican Paragons

Propositions

The Rest

California Blog Roundup for August 2, 2006

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Pombo, Buck McKeon, CA-50, voting, Republican corruption, Proposition 88, prisons, immigration, global warming.

Governor’s Race

Jerry McNerney / Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

CA-50

  • Lots of people posting on the lawsuit demanding a hand recount in CA-50, but I’m going with Words Have Power for this topic WHP asks a good question: “Interestingly, since he has already been sworn into office, Brian Bilbray can not be removed from his position, even if a recount shows that he actually had fewer votes than Francine Busby. How would the Republican congress handle that little issue?” This way, I’m betting.
  • In related news, Courage Campaign and Chris Bowers did an interesting post-mortem poll in CA-50.

Other Republican Paragons

Propositions

The Rest

California Blog Roundup for July 31, 2006

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-04, CA-11, Jerry McNerney, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Republican corruption, Proposition 90, Proposition 89, Proposition 87, voting, prisons, health care, immigration.

Governor’s Race

Jerry McNerney / Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

15% Doolittle / CA-04

Other Republican Paragons

Propositions

The Rest

California Blog Roundup for July 24, 2006

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-04, CA-11, CA-50, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Republican corruption, voting, health care, immigration.

Governor’s Race

Jerry McNerney / Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

15% Doolittle / CA-04

Almost all of the links below are from Dump Doolittle, who went on a serious roll over the weekend. So, to read these in situ, just go to Dump Doolittle and start scrolling.

Other Republican Paragons

The Rest

California Blog Roundup for July 21, 2006

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-04, CA-11, CA-41, Jerry Lewis, John Doolittle, Republican corruption, clean money, voting, lots of other stuff.

Governor’s Race

Jerry McNerney / Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

    SNTP has a rumination on the McNerney / Filson fundraising dead heat. Filson was the Democratic institutional “moderate” candidate who was supposed to be able to really get funded, but McNerney picked up the grassroots support and ran even with Filson. Now if only McNerney could get a little institutional help, maybe we could narrow the gap with Paid-For Pombo. You’d think there’d be a lesson here for the institutional committees.

15% Doolittle / CA-04

  • 15% Doolittle cuts through red tape for folks, if (purely by coincidence) they’re paying his wife a lot of money for services she didn’t actually provide.
  • California is a community property state. That means that half of every dollar that someone pays 15% Doolittle’s wife actually belongs to 15% Doolittle. So in Q2 2006, 15% Doolittle personally took in more than $17,500 from campaign contributors.
  • One MIL-yon Dollars! That’s what 15% Doolittle spent on his primary bid alone. If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance… Seriously, think about this. There are fewer than 650,000 people in CA-04, and the most expensive media market is Sacramento. And 15% Doolittle spent a cool million to defend himself against a Republican challenger.

Other Republican Paragons

The Rest