| A generous sampling from around the state...
• Newt Gingrich, who for some reason the media finds still relevant, has discovered the Twitter thing that all "the kids" are using. On it, he blatantly lied that there has been no oil spills off the coast of Santa Barbara since 1969, and was called on it by Media Matters and Keith Olbermann. He didn't like that much, so he called upon his pals at the American Enterprise Institute to bail him out. Needless to say, they lied too.
• This conversation between Greg Lucas of California's Capitol and Bill Lockyer is well worth reading. His main point is that hijackings like Abel Maldonado throwing Constitutional amendments into the budget process are just going to embolden obstructionists in the Yacht Party in the future. "The antes will only keep going up." That calamitous Valentine's Day massacre might only be the beginning if we don't get serious budget reform.
• Dan Weintraub calms the fever dreams of the antitax crowd and notes that most temporary taxes indeed end on time, with the one recent exception being when voters chose to extend it.
• Here's Judy Chu talking about her campaign for Congress in CA-32. We should have more on this race once a date for the election is set. Gil Cedillo is set to make a big endorsement announcement this weekend.
• Is GOP Congressional backbencher George Radanovich going to get a primary challenger?
• David Leonhardt's panoramic NYT piece on the Great Recession calls El Centro, in the Imperial Valley, the "capital city" of the downturn. Unemployment there is up to 22.6 percent. |
