• A slew of LA County employees rallied outside the county administration building as their contract expires tomorrow.
• Dean Andal was fine $9,500 by the FPPC for failing to label a mailer he sent out in a 2004 school board race. The mailer actually went outside of his own district to attack a candidate in Stockton as an added bonus.
• The Governor, at least, has come out in favor of the Parsky Commission recommendations, but there’s not much love for it in the legislature, on the left or the right. Still looks DOA from the reactions out there.
• Mark Yudof, president of the UC system, is taking a lot of heat for this interview in the NYT Magazine where he seemed to dismiss questions about runaway compensation and program cuts. Looks to me like Yudof was trying to be a little too cute at a time of suffering for many students and faculty.
• Sen. Boxer’s version of the climate bill will have bigger emissions cuts than the House version. It’s great to see Boxer out on front of this issue.
• Apparently some elected leaders, including DiFi and Rep. Costa, didn’t get the memo about the fact that the Latino Water Coalition is a thinly veiled front for the PR firm Burston-Marsteller, who has been hired to push big construction projects within the California water sphere.
• LAANE (Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy), the venerable social justice and organizing coalition in Southern California, launched their new website today, signaling an entrance into online media in addition to their highly successful campaigns to organize grocery workers, get a living wage for hotel employees around LAX and push the Safe Ports program at the Ports of LA and Long Beach. Madeleine Janis, the executive director of LAANE, has a blog up at HuffPo about poverty rates in Los Angeles and what we can do about it.
UC is way out of control – all those fee increases don’t pay for any actual education, they pay for admin costs including big pay for the top brass. People are being put in to thousands of dollars of debt to support these people. They are told big pay is necessary to get “the best people” and yet these “best people” mismanage millions and millions of dollars annually.
Someone has to step in and we know it won’t be regents like Difi’s hubby – they’re all too busy enjoying the perks and don’t care about our state anymore.
I felt some empathy for Yudof given the challenges of leading UC — until I read the interview via your link. All gone now. He says he thought he’d end up at a law firm? I wouldn’t want him as my advocate or counsel or law partner. Time for him to go.