Maybe we should make April Fool's Day into a week, or maybe even a month. I know that I enjoyed the hilarious attempts by staid news organizations to try to be the Onion for a day. Everybody gets into the act, but my fave was the Economist Magazine's Amusement Park idea. Boy, I wish we could just have that everyday! Anyway, to the links:
- Steve Poizner is already attacking Jerry Brown, pointing out that he, gasp, has been in public office for a long time.
- Asm. Anthony Portantino's AB 53 salary freeze measure moved out of the assembly's public employees committee.
- California
BackwardForward endorsed all 6 ballot measures for the May 19 ballot, and I can't think of a better reason to vote against them all than that. - I know that most of us here style ourselves as much better budgeters than the legislature. Now we can prove it. Over at Next10 you can take the “California Budget Challenge” and try to balance California's books yourself. The fun of an online game like Doom with the subject matter fit for long subcommittee hearings on 5-year projections of discretionary spending. What's not to like?
- Ooh, decentralized leadership in the GOP? Well, isn't that something.
- California Blue Dog, who's a complete moron, thinks it very untoward to have Executive Secretary Treasurer of the LA County Labor Fed, Maria Elena Durazo, deliver the Democratic weekly radio address. Neglecting, of course, that Durazo's late husband, Miguel Contreras, worked with Chavez, and was a Founding Member of the Chavez Foundation. So CalBlueDog's beef, as I understand it, is “person with knowledge of Cesar Chavez shouldn't deliver address about Cesar Chavez.” Anyone know which Sacramento consultant this tool is?
- Asm. Fiona Ma's bill, AB 223, to force San Francisco to reinstate JROTC made it out of committee with thanks to Republican votes. I don't care how you feel about JROTC, but the state forcing one school district to offer one specific elective is not a good idea. In fact, San Francisco's other Assembly member, Tom Ammiano said the bill was an attempt to “bully a local school board.” Hopefully, this bill will see be buried in the Assembly and never make it across the hall.
- And finally, apparently even the uber-rich ride Southwest Airlines. Capitol Alert informs us that Poizner and Whitman were on the same Southwest flight this week. I bet they paid for BusinessSelect.
Though unfortunately I had far more success balancing Philadelphia’s budget than California.
The vote was 20-3. Senator Leno and someone from CTA went on at length supporting the package. Nobody spoke in opposition. They’ve already allocated funds to support it.
In slightly better news, the 6th Assembly District Democrats Club, the first AD organization to get chartered, did not endorse 1A (which they voted on with 1B).
Sen. Leno said that there was a loophole in the spending cap that Democrats had ingeniously sneaked passed Republicans so that new taxes would raise the cap. Republicans may be mad, but they don’t seem quite that stupid. Moreover, I’ve read the full measure several times through and I can’t find where this loophole is, does anyone know where it is in the language, if it’s there at all?
West Hollywood Democratic Club voted overwhelmingly to oppose 1A, 1C, 1D, and 1F. They voted to take No Position on 1B, and narrowly voted Yes on 1E.
From the blog:
The CalBlueDog blogger is Stevan Allen, a Central Valley Democrat who grew up in Modesto, the son of independent-thinking Republicans. He has spent his 24-year career working in and around journalism, communications, public policy and politics. The views expressed here are his alone, and may or may not be related to issues or projects he is currently working on in Sacramento.
He allegedly worked for Lt. Gov. Davis, but no one I know who worked for Davis has heard of him.
I hadn’t been to his blog before and he states that a “well placed source” at the state capitol says that Joe Canciamilla will declare for Congress.
The source continues,”He has $$$ in the bank and is being supported by a group of Silicon Valley types who supposedly will provide funding.”
For starters if Canciamilla has “money in the bank” he cannot transfer or spend non-federal funds on a Federal election. And if he is actively working to raise money from people in the SV then I believe he needs to declare with the FEC his exploratory committee.
So BlueDog is either too stupid to realize that his source doesn’t know what he is talking about, or they are both one and the same… idiots.
I ended up with a 600 million dollar deficit, but that mostly came after I raised taxes massively in every category which can’t happen with the 2/3rds rule unfortunately.