San Diego Politics is on a roll today. First they break the story regarding Eric Roach’s former business partner and pedophile, Thomas White. Then they link up to a website that debunks the myth that Howard Kaloogian had anything to do with the Gray Davis recall.

According to howardisaliar.com, Kaloogian collected lots of money as part of the Davis recall movement, but spent it all on overhead and none on actually getting signatures on recall petitions. SD Politics suggests that the Kaloogian campaign should set the record straight regarding Kaloogian’s fund raising and where the money went.

The website says Kaloogian raised substantial sums of money for his recall committee but did not collect ANY signatures for the recall. Instead, the website claims that Kaloogian, “presided over a slush fund, not a campaign to recall a governor.” Additionally, the website says: “FACT: Howard Kaloogian’s only involvement in the recall was running a website and collecting money.”

So, the questions to ask of Kaloogian’s camp seem to be:

1) How many recall signatures did you collect?

2) When did you get involved in the recall effort?

3) How much money did your recall committee collect?

4) What did you do with the money you collected and how much of that was paid to Howard Kaloogian?

This isn’t the first time that Kaloogian’s involvement in the Gray Davis recall has been questioned. The fact that Kaloogian touts his involvement on his campaign website opens him to this level of scrutiny.

Millionaire congressional candidate Eric Roach is touting his business acumen and financial background as strong assets in his campaign for Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s former seat in the 5oth District Special Election.

Unfortunately, Roach’s connection with the initial source of his financial success, Lombard Institutional Brokerage, looks like it is going to create some real issues for him.

Turns out that Roach’s partner and apparent financial benefactor, Thomas Frank White, has a very disturbing record as a pedophile. San Diego Politics has the details regarding White and, more critical to Roach, the history of Lombard.

Read the story, if you can stomach it. Then decide if you think that San Diego Politics is correct in asking that Roach answer these questions:

1) Did you know that your business partner was engaged in this behavior? If so, did you confront him about this and explain that it was not OK to engage in sex with individuals under the age of 18?

2) Why is there a discrepancy about who started and funded the brokerage firm that you made your personal fortune from? Were you the principal founder or was White? Was it your money that started the firm or White’s? Or did the two of you go into the project together?

3) Since published reports about White’s activities have come out have you spoken to White? What kind of relationship have you had with him since Lombard was sold in 1997?

I think that the second question is the more germaine to Roach’s congressional campaign. Roach’s current story regarding the founding of Lombard is contradicted by information from San Francisco newspaper reports.

Certainly, it is understandable that Roach would not want to associate his name with White’s, but if Roach has been creating an alternate story regarding his business past, it is going to be hard for voters to embrace what appears to be another ethically challenged Republican candidate.

Well, Gov. Schwarzenegger and Speaker Fabian Nunez are back at work on a bond deal.  Bill Bradley from New West Notes has more (thanks Julia):

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez have a deal on the Big Bang Bonds infrastructure package. But don’t pop those champagne corks — or do the Super Bowl gatorade dump — just yet.

From a variety of informed sources in the Democratic and Republican parties, I’ve learned that a marathon negotiating session between the two yesterday, followed by further talks (but no planned for Big Five meeting this morning due to lingering bad feelings), has resulted in agreement on a plan that is actually bigger than the one that lost on a party line vote in the state Senate late Friday night/early Saturday morning.

The package now is, according to several sources, close to $50 billion. Which was, ironically, the very figure that Arnold tossed out there in the immediate aftermath of the special election last November. It is reportedly $660 million more than the deal voted down in the Senate; $400 million of that is for air pollution control. (New West Notes 3/13/06)

Personally, I don’t think this has a shot of passing, but you never know.  The GOP wants less, not more.  It has to be done soon, so I guess we’ll hear something within the next 24 hours.