Links:

• The media is always verrry interested in the consultants on campaigns.  Not surprising really considering that these are the people they talk to most often.  It’s like high school gossip published daily rather than in the yearbook. It’s no different with CA-Gov, as Carla Marinucci takes a look at the consultants on each of the campaigns.

• The Supreme Court asked the Obama administration for their opinion on whether Healthy San Francisco is a violation of ERISA, a benefits law.  Obama has praised the program, but the Bush administration opposed it.  It would be very surprising to see Obama’s crew side with the Golden Gate Rest. Assoc. on this one.

• Michael Hiltzik calls the Tax Commission a waste of time, a sentiment widely shared around these parts. Instead of actually producing necessary changes, they shifted taxes from the rich to the poor, he writes.  In contrast, Dan Walters tries to blame the inevitable failure of the commission recommendations on a dysfunctional political system, as if any bill no matter the implications must be passed to prove the Legislature’s worth in Walters’ eyes.  And Reagan/Bush 41 official Bruce Bartlett just loves it.

• CalBuzz notes that for somebody claiming ideological purity, Poizner has a lot of past squishiness on his record.

• Orange County’s wastewater recycling (“toilet to tap”) is now pretty much at full capacity.  The system is actually one of the leaders in water recycling, and has gotten some good national press.  So far, the water quality has been better than the previous water that just came through the pumps.

• I (Brian) will admit to driving in San Francisco, and occasionally using the meters. However, I am happy to pay for them. The City was studying the idea of adding metered parking as well as adding hours on the meters. (The new meters were also supposed to be the fancy credit-card accepting kind.) Anyway, Mayor Newsom backed down from this idea, and as of yet, has no real plan on how to pay for MUNI going forward.  We need that revenue for public transportation, and the meters were a responsible plan to get it. It is disappointing to see the idea scuttled now when we need it more than ever.

• Matt Yglesias has been hammering the idea that gerrymandering is to blame for the nation’s woes.  We discuss this a lot at Calitics, so it seemed worth noting.

• Meg Whitman was scheduled to do a fundraiser for Bob McDonnell for VA Governor. Yup, the same guy who wrote that working women were “detrimental” to the family. Good to see that Whitman, a, um, working mother, had her priorities in line.  But the moment the media got wind of this, Whitman abruptly canceled, citing a “scheduling conflict”.