Links:

• Republicans are jumping the Poizner ship for Team Meg Whitman. Get used to talking about slave labor.

• Melissa Rodgers’ op-ed offering 10 lessons for health care reform based on California’s 2007 lesson is actually pretty decent, but there’s a difference between health care reform at the state level and the national level, and that’s the ability for the federal government to print money.  That additional constraint tied health care reform’s success in states to the national economy, and as we have seen, that’s an impossible constraint.

• (Dave wrote this one) The Very Serious Journalists at CalBuzz tell us that they did some actual reporting and discovered that the Bay Area Council may, contrary to a report here, may offer some steps to alter Prop. 13.  And that looks to be true, Prop. 13 has multiple elements to it.  But let me just suggest that the Bay Area Council may not actually be a completely reliable source on what the Bay Area Council wants to do, especially things that may put them in a negative light.  I’m no Serious and Important Journalist, but I hear that sometimes organizations spin the press in ways favorable to their agenda.  Stenographers of the world beware!  In addition, the BAC language that delegates to a Constitutional convention will be prohibited from changes to “Property taxes associated with Proposition 13” is certainly a problem to many people, including Phil Ting, and is absolutely worth debating, actual reporting or not.

• Jon Kyl (R-Ariz) put a hold on Ellen Tauscher’s nomination.  It’s not clear how long Kyl is prepared to let this go, but Tauscher has more than the traditional 60 votes.  Either way, this brings up the possibility of a delayed special in the CA-10.  Kyl, by the way, just loves building more nuclear weapons, and that’s the source of his “concern” about Tauscher.

• Sen. Wiggins turned in her state car, and then promptly bought it back from the dealership that the state had sold the hybrid Civic to.

• I see no reason why a years-long drought couldn’t trigger a federal declaration as a major disaster area, as is the case in Fresno County.  Actually, it’s an economic disaster area these days.

• If noted moderate California Blue Dog is pushing a single-payer system, you know that it’s absurd to have it walled off from the national debate.

• Timm Herdt ruminates on possible third candidates in the Dem. primary.