Links:

• Jon Ortiz of the Bee counts the furlough lawsuits, and comes up with a number of 19. The main difference between California and other states with furloughs? Other governors worked with the unions rather than simply imposing the furloughs.

• Meanwhile, the LA City Council approved additional layoffs and furloughs for city staff.  The controversial early-retirement plan is still under discussion.

• During a press conference today, Speaker Pelosi teared up a bit on a thought of the events of 1978 in San Francisco. At the time, Pelosi was a Democratic activist with close relationships to the the political families of SF.

• Rep. Maxine Waters (D), made the CREW Most Corrupt list, a dubious honor indeed. The House will be investigating her relationship with OneUnited Bank’s federal bailout funds. Her husband sat on the board and had invested $350,000 in the bank.  Given the way the Treasury was giving away bailout money last year, this seems like some pretty weak sauce.

• The BBC reports that Silicon Valley is seeing a revival, due to mergers and more VC spending.  One thing not mentioned by the Valley boosters – unemployment in the region still hovers close to 12%.  When they start hiring, we can talk about recovery.

• Love supermajorities? Well, you’ll really dig on PG&E’s latest scheme: an initiative to require a 2/3 vote for community choice aggregation by municipalities. CCA allows munis to buy power and resell it, thus (kinda) competing with PG&E.

• John Burton has sent out a call to action to contact the Governor and tell him not to veto SB 14 and AB 64, the renewable energy bills.  The Governor has made his intentions clear, so hopefully Burton is just setting this up for some follow-up action.  Anyway, you can contact here.

• Opposition movement has already begun on the part-time legislature proposal, with Steve Maviglio signed up for the effort.  Maviglio, of course, was a part-time legislator in New Hampshire, but that’s obviously a much smaller state with far different concerns (though expect the wingnuts pushing this thing to bring that up as some kind of “gotcha”).  With the part-time legislature polling badly and no institutional support yet for it, I’m not sure this is the best use of effort, but I’m all for pre-emptive strikes.