Links!

• Over at HuffPo, a good opinion piece about the dearth of leadership in the LGBT community. I (Brian) would disagree slightly, however. Not because there isn’t a lack of leadership, but more because he kind of brushes aside much of the grassroots leaders now emerging. Look, if you look at the HRC, and here in CA, EQCA, you see a couple of organizations struggling for meaning. Much of that has to do with their own leadership as well as a growing mistrust. Grassroots activists can find smaller, more nimble organizations that are doing some great work in the field. The money people are getting frustrated with the return on investment in these groups.  With luck, we’ll see some solid ROI in the Maine Equality campaign.

• The DSCC makes a funny about Carly Fiorina’s entry into the US Senate race:

“This is a person who was fired from Hewlett Packard for running the company into the ground, fired from the McCain Presidential Campaign for incompetence, and now thinks the people of California are going to hire her. Carly Fiorina was named one of the twenty worst CEOs in the country yet still escaped with a 21 million dollar golden parachute.”

• CalBuzz has a good story on some of the abortion questions from Jerry Browns’s past. Let’s be clear, Governor MoonBeam is gone. Jerry Brown today is very different from Jerry Brown in 1972.

• Candice Reed is dumping California.  Can’t say I blame her.

• Tesla, the electric car manufacturer, is building a new facility in Palo Alto. It’s not likely to replace NUMMI in terms of scale of jobs, but it’s good to see some growth in manufacturing in the Bay Area.

• Litigation on the Cal State University fee increases continues. Yesterday, the court allowed the fee hikes to move forward, and scheduled a hearing in two weeks.

• John Yoo has returned from the friendlier confines of Orange County to teach again at Boalt Hall in Berkeley, leading to more protests and arrests.  Surely Cal-Berkeley is thrilled to have its law school reputation thrown into the toilet with each passing day.  What I want to know is, what self-respecting law student still takes one of Yoo’s classes?  Perhaps they’re compulsory.

• A citrus tree disease spread by a non-native fly is heading for Southern California, threatening much of the important citrus crop there.

• Home sales in Southern California again increased, at the fastest rate in almost three years.  And this time, the percentage of those sales that are foreclosed homes are less than at any time in a year.  Cautiously good signs.

• Another box that Arnold was really meaning to blow up, nursing certification, is still rather odious and rotten smelling. After a story a couple of months ago, about some failings in the system, the head of the commission resigned and Arnold planned to fix it ASAP. Needless to say, we are still waiting for any meaningful reform.