Links:
• Sen. Mark Leno’s Harvey Milk Day Bill has once again passed the Legislature. It will now go through to the Governor, who has already vetoed it once.
• Meh: Another Commission that will likely end up with nothing: Joint Reform Commission. Mark DeSaulnier, fresh off the campaign trail, and Mike Feuer will co-chair it. And as a bonus, it feeds into the right-wing canard that government is wasteful. Sure, not as wasteful as banks and AIG-type companies who give out massive bonuses. But you know, really wasteful. Check the video –>
• Shane Goldmacher has some serious power around the capitol. His article in the LA Times got the vote delayed on a $9 million PR contract for the HSR board. More over at Robert’s HSR Blog.
• While the recall effort for Alyson Huber has stalled, that of Asm. Anthony Adams appears to be “on track.”
• The US Forest Service had permits to clear brush near the Station Fire zone in the Angeles National Forest for months, but only managed to deal with 193 out of 1,700 acres. As it turns out, this highly flammable brush gave fuel to the fire. Right-wing LA Supervisor Mike Antonovich blamed “environmentalists” for preventing controlled burns.
• California’s university system may be starved of funding, but the UC system still had the top three schools in the Washington Monthly’s annual college rankings. Congrats to Berkeley, UC-San Diego and UCLA.
• Good luck trying to widen the redistricting mandate to Congressional districts. Speaker Pelosi will never allow it, and the nominal Democratic support – and lack of much opposition – to Prop. 11 barely allowed that measure to squeak by. My (Dave’s) personal view on this, as I’ve said for a while, is that redistricting is a total red herring, and if someone wants to show me how to redistrict Bakersfield or Santa Monica or the Bay Area without it turning into re-gerrymandering, they can show me that plan.
we placed 10th. and as edge of the american west points out, if you sort by social mobility, 5 of the top 10 are UC.
I dunno that Shane Goldmacher alone got that to happen. There were already folks on the CHSRA board rounding up the votes to either kill the contract or force a postponement. Shane’s report helped, but it was part of a larger plan.
This whole thing is probably bad on the whole for the HSR project. The board doesn’t need to be split right now. The contract was handled poorly and amateurishly, but it wasn’t a bad contract. If Arnold wants to play a bigger role in leading HSR, I’m actually happy to let him do so.
I wouldnt mind trying making competitive districts that do not push out legislators out of their current districts, meaning if the state legislator is from City A, I would not remove city A.
As long as communities of interest are kept intact and ethnic groups are united in representation then it should be good.
I would like to see a SimRedistricting video game.
We all know how easy it is to defeat initiatives. There are very few winners and lots of losers. Reapportionment initiatives are especially vulnerable to attacks. But the shameful gerrymandering that we have now designed to prevent competitive elections deserve scrutiny by the voters.
Maybe fair reapportionment helps Republicans. Maybe it helps Democrats. I don’t know. But it helps democracy. It gives government greater credibility.