Links:

• Rancho Santa Margarita is a lovely suburban town with a wingnutty City Council as you’ll ever find. Check out this little faux pas. The RSM City Council sent the President a letter calling on him to cut it out with the “Socialized Medicine.” I guess what’s good for the goose isn’t so good for the gander, as they are digging on their government provided health care plan that costs the City $83K over the fiscal year.

• It looks like San Diego may well lose another superintendent, this to Houston. “America’s Finest City” has had something of party up top, with nobody sticking around too long.

• Anthony Wright discusses some key health care bills going through the legislature in the next few weeks, including some pretty good insurance market reforms.

• Asm. Hector de la Torre asked for an audit of the Regional Center system. It is a quasi-governmental body that assists developmentally disabled Californians purchase services. However, the agency is not subject to state whistleblower laws, and there have been some speculation about retaliation against workers who call out waste in the system.

• Anthony Woods snagged the endorsement from the Bay Area Reporter in the CA-10 primary September 1, and given the BAR’s slant to the LGBT community, this isn’t much of a surprise.

• The area around Sebastopol produces some really good Gravenstein appples. Yummy! Unfortunately, the numbers of the trees are dwindling, causing some folks to worry that they might disappear forever. So, a group of food preservationists and slow food folks have been marketing the apple to the greater Sonoma area.  Next time you are in the area, you should definitely grab a few pounds of the Gravensteins and taste what people are so worried about disappearing.

• You want to see what a health care crisis really looks like? Well, after a slew of community health care clinics close down, it won’t be so tough to visualize.  3 of the clinics have closed down over the past month, and a large group are in desperate conditions.  These clinics serve rural and other underserved communities, regardless of their ability to pay. The bulk loss of these facilities will be tragic for the state.

• Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter) wants to extend the non-tribal card playing monopoly for the current card rooms for another five years. I guess it’s not really that shocking considering Florez has received over $150K from card room interests.  Ah, monied politics, you really have to um, hate it.  That is not to say that adding new card rooms or other gambling facilities is a good idea, just that money is too big of a player in our system.