Links!
• Gov. Schwarzenegger is deferring to the federal court on Prop 8. The opinion doesn’t really have much impact on the case, but it’s noteworthy nonetheless.
• It’s been clear from here in Los Angeles that Antonio Villaraigosa wasn’t running for Governor, but his election as second VP at the US Conference of Mayors almost clinches it. Villaraigosa would be in line for the Presidency of the organization in 2011 – if he stuck around as LA Mayor. And he probably wouldn’t run for this office if he wasn’t.
• From the Wow department, Josh Richman has a story on Prop 36 today. Essentially, cuts to Prop 36 funding will deny treatment to eligible offenders. However, they can’t be forced to prison, so they just move along back into the same environment that created the problems in the first place.
• One budget cut I didn’t notice in the Democrats’ version was phasing out the completely failed enterprise zone program, which would save $500 million dollars, not bad for one program.
• We’re actually down an Assembly seat right now, and the Secretary of State set a date for the election to replace Curren Price. The primary would take place September 1, and if nobody wins a majority, the general election would be November 3.
• Charter schools do not provide the performance results that advocates claim? Math results are significantly lower in charter schools than public schools? Get out of town!
• There are rumors that the Fremont NUMMI plant, a joint project of Toyota and GM, may make the Toyota Prius. Well, they say that manufacturing will be part of California’s recovery, so maybe this is the start of something.
• A group of lobbyists were booted from court in their attempt to remove the clean money initiative from the ballot in June 2010. If it passes, the SoS election in 2014 will be a clean money election and would be paid for by a tax on lobbyists.
• Is this the first actual good economic news I’ve seen in a while? – median SoCal home prices actually increased last month. Well, no, as Calculated Risk explains, prices are still dropping, it’s a matter of a different mix of sales raising the median.
• Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll thinks that what will happen after the budget crisis will be more ballot box budgeting. We’ll get some more revenues for specific programs, and the budget will be even more difficult to manage.
I’d be surprised if the voters knew that, but the authors did. It’s another crafty move by Soros’ policy empire, which is where the measure originated and got funded. When it passed in 2000, it was already clear that California was going to hit the cliff eventually, and they wrote it so that when it did, it would effectively convert to decriminalization. And if the legislature tries to wiggle out of it, they’ve already proven plenty willing to spend the money to litigate them right back into the corner.