Congratulations to Laurence Zakson and Becca Doten on their DNC wins over the weekend. Now, to the links:

• A What to Do and What Not to Do for medical marijuana dispensary policy. [West Hollywood has built a sustainable and uncontroversial program, while Los Angeles is still struggling to come up with anything resembling a working policy.

• John Wildermuth politely asks Dianne Feinstein to share her plan for the state budget, at least as long as she is going to toy with the idea of running for governor.

• Jerry Brown is having a huge fundraiser in Hollywood for his campaign for governor.  A note here on “exploratory campaigns” and state finance rules.  Specifically, at the state level there isn’t such a thing. His campaign account says that he’s running for governor. Might as well just announce it. Meanwhile on his facebook page, he says he will announce something next year.

• Arnold is stopping in Milan to talk about climate change on his way home from his Middle East trip. What a jet-setter, that Arnold.

• This just in–or maybe not: Chuck Devore is a birther.  Not that Devore has a choice–he needs the teabagger fringe if he’s going to beat Fiorina.  UPDATE: follow through for recently released statements from Devore dissociating himself from the birther movement.  Both ends, meet middle.  All three, meet Chuck Devore.

• Los Angeles City Councilwoman and candidate for Lieutenant Governor Janice Hahn launched her website today.  If you’re interested in learning more about Janice Hahn, check out the Calitics interview.

Links for your weekend:

• Susan Kennedy might leave the Schwarzenegger administration to shepherd the water bond through the 2010 election process. Meanwhile, Arnold is doing everything he can to explain away the $11.1 Billion pricetag of the bonds.

• While the initiative system is clearly causing some problems, the Center for Gov. Studies has an interesting point that most of the expensive ones come from the Legislature. Also of note, the most expensive measure to pass since the late 1980s? Yup, Arnold’s Prop 49 for after school programs.  Not that it’s not a worthy program, but on occasion, you have to quote the famous philospher Pogo: We have met the enemy…and he is us.

• The Whitman and Poizner campaigns are spitting back and forth about who responded or didn’t respond to calls for debates. It’s a fascinating issue for the electorate, I’m sure.

• Joel Anderson gave back $100,000 at the heart of an FPPC investigation into whether Anderson laundered money improperly though the Placer County Republican Party Central Committee.

• Milken Institute released their rankings for business climates (PDF). No California cities finished in the top ten, and Bakersfield was our top performer at # 36.

• The Capitol Notes podcast is back with KQED’s John Myers and Capitol Weekly’s Anthony York.

I (Brian) am looking forward to the CDP’s E-Board meeting; Robert will be there as well. If you are there, be sure to say hi!  Now, to the links.

• The FDIC and the state shut down United Commerical Bank. The bank caters to the Chinese community, and has been taken over by East-West Bank. East-West serves the same community from its Pasadena HQ. As a side note, United Commercial’s logo was a triangle with the Chinese character for luck.  When turned upside down, the character means uncertainty. The triangles are now upside down at many of the branches and ads around the city.

• Conveniently enough, all three GOP guv candidates are calling for Jerry Brown to appoint an independent investigator into the secret recording of conversations with reporters. I guess it doesn’t hurt that the media loves to report on itself and that the GOP candidates get to “stand up” to the likely Dem. nominee.

• Not sure what to say about this, but as the Lobbyists pretty much rule California, here’s your “meritocracy” in the form of Capitol Weekly’s Lobbyists Awards.

• CalBuzz asks if Fiorina’s strategy of ignoring Chuck DeVore is going to blow up in her face. At any rate, the GOP Sen primary should be fun.

• CalBuzz also found the video to the right of Rep. Loretta Sanchez’s purse on Politico.

Links:

• From Chuck Devore, the guy running for United States Senate: “Unlike many veterans, I have been fortunate not to see combat.  I was “officially” shot at only once; during the Los Angeles riots in 1992 (well, there was that time in Lebanon, but that wasn’t official; and I was carjacked in 1988 by Panamanian paramilitaries).” That guy is a character.

• OC Attorney (and dentist!) Orly Taitz is at it again. Apparently, she is very upset about the fact that several people that she tried to get as witnesses in her case trying to prove President Obama was not born in the US filed affidavits saying that she tried to get them to lie in the court.  Hopefully the State Bar will take up the case of Ms. Taitz. This conduct is egregious; we can’t have lawyers suborning purjury.

• Timm Herdt takes a look at the LG selection through the prism of offshore drilling. Garamendi was a strong opponent of drilling from that perch, but a replacement is unlikely to have such objections. This could make a big difference as the State Lands Commission might flip to supportive of drilling under a Schwarzenegger appointment.

• Attorney General Jerry Brown’s office ruled that the actions of their former colleague, Scott Gerber, were not illegal. Gerber has been embroiled in controversy after admitting to recording phone calls with reporters without their permission.

• Michela Alioto-Pier, San Francisco Supervisor and 1998 Secretary of State Dem. nominee, got a big endorsement: former Vice President Al Gore. She has very little name recognition, but neither do the two Assembly members  in the race, Dave Jones and Hector De La Torre. Also,as the only announced female candidate in a three-way race, she gets a demographic boost.  That might end up being a pretty interesting primary.

• A federal judge has cleared the way for a lawsuit against former Bush legal aide and UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo based upon his memos to authorize torture. Yoo’s lawyers say that it will open a flood of litigation against Bush administration officials. Perhaps that is because they took a flood of illegal actions.

Links:

• Not really, California, but I (Brian) found this so offensive that I thought it worth a mention here. As we speak, David Horowitz, the “conservative” winger at frontpagemag.com, is going around writing stories that say “The Fort Hood killings are the chickens of the left coming home to roost” because diversity is a bad thing.  According to Horowitz, we should be segregating them and going around telling people about the dangers of Islam.  As a Jew myself, this sentiment both shocks and saddens me.  How soon some Jews can forget what becomes of such McCarthyism. It never ends there.

• More on the Scott Gerber, recording phone calls story. Apparently, he recorded 6 calls after being told not to do so.

• Aww, snap. Carly Fiorina’s web team got all fancy with a new website.  It’s at CallMeBarbara.com and it goes after her request to be called Senator rather than ma’am. Apparently, it was a big outrage on the right. How dare she request to be called the title to which she won election!

• Clint Reilly, a big-time political consultant in San Francisco, has been hired by Repair California, as they try to get their broken Con-Con measures on the ballot.

• DiFi loves to people guessing, so say CalBuzz.

• OFA is having their California headquarters grand opening tomorrow in Los Angeles starting at 6pm in Los Angeles–well, technically, Culver City: 6700 S. Centinela Avenue.  A plethora of Party officials and elected officials will be speaking or in attendance.  Might be a good place to catch up with (or harass, depending on your preference) your favorite electeds.

Hey, so as you may have noticed, Calitics is a bit slow these days. With David Dayen leaving us for FireDogLake, and others of us just being busy, we haven’t had as much content on Calitics as we’d like.  So, we’d like to invite others to join us. It’s not a lucrative gig, as Calitics is a labor of love, not so much profit.  If you are interested let Brian know at brian at calitics dot com.

Now, to the links:

• The LA Times poll that has been trickling data for the last few months reveals that apparently California progressives aren’t that “disappointed” with President Obama.

• PG&E is putting on a measure on the ballot to make community choice aggregation, ie a public competitor to the power companies, more difficult by requiring votes of the people when it passes. They’ve dumped a big pot o’ money into the effort.

• John Benoit delayed his swearing-in http://blogs.pe.com/politics/2… as Supervisor to allow the special election to be combined into the June primary.

• The federal government settled a lawsuit concerning citizenship applications in SoCal, and will now have to make decisions on those applications within 6 months.

A quick reminder to all of you Android and iPhone users, check out the Calitics App, available in their respective AppStores. It’s pretty rocking!  To the Links:

• Check Speaker Bass’s video regarding the water deal –>

• Meg Whitman has already spent $19 million, and plans on spending a lot more. If her pace continues according to the normal trendline, we’re talking about a campaign that will rival the presidential campaigns from just 10 years ago. In 2000, George Bush raised $193 million and Al Gore raised $133 million. Well, I guess this will be the test of whether money can buy the governor’s race, because Whitman looks set to dump as much money as necessary.

• The AG’s office and medical marijuana advocates are trying to overturn an appeal’s court decision to invalidate the ID cards associated with the program. The interesting part is that both parties in the lawsuit are opposed to that portion of the court of appeal ruling.

• Tom Del Beccaro, a CRP bigwig, praised David Harmer, despite Harmer’s failure to get within 5 points of Garamendi. At any rate, it looks like this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Harmer. AD-15 perhaps…

• Speaking of Garamendi, Speaker Pelosi wants him in DC and sworn in for the health care vote on Friday.

• More from the Chronicle, Carla Marinucci has got VC John Doerr on the record as not being interested in running for governor.

• Republicans want a probe of the taped phone calls incident in the AG’s office.  

Links:

• CW Nevius calls Newsom’s exit from the race a healthy wake-up call, because he didn’t properly deal with people in small groups and with the press.

• This is a very sad story in the Chronicle about an East Bay group that helped rehab Michael Vick’s dogs. He did some really disgusting things to those dogs. That is one depraved dude.

• The CalBuzz crew has a piece in the LA Times calling the current crop of candidates for the governor gig unininspiring.

• Republicans boycotted a hearing with Sen. Boxer’s committee to look into climate change legislation. How very 8th grade of them.

• What exactly did this character do for $53 million in CalPERS money?

Links:

• Scott Gerber, the AG’s press frontman, has been put on administrative leave for secretly taping calls with reporters. Last week, CalBuzz called for him to be fired, and the Union-Trib compared this to the ACORN hidden camera incident. Now, as far as ACORN goes, it’s quite a different thing to record an on-the-record call between a press flack and a reporter than secretly taping somebody who has no idea that the conversation will ever be heard from again. UPDATE: Gerber has resigned today.

• For some reason, the media still seems intent on finding some sort of race in CA-10, where there really isn’t one. Today, Joe Garofoli talks turnout. The GOP will get a favorable turnout model as it is a boring special election. Nonetheless, Garamendi will win this one by double digits.

• Joel Fox takes a look at Asm. Anderson’s sketchy money transfers.  He hates Prop 34, which limits contributions, sort of. It isn’t hard to dislike, but the fact is that there isn’t a wall that money can’t find a way to flow around. Only a real clean money system with government funded campaigns will stem this tide.

• The lobbyist at the center of the media storm with the former Asm. Duvall story is not pleased about the whole situation. She claims that it was just Duvall making everything up. Hmm…Republicans lying…who’d of thunk?

• Looks like CoCo County Supervisors are getting ready to approve a casino on the Richmond waterfront. It is still many years away, as there is a lot of regulatory hoops to jump through, but think, soon you too will be able to sit in a smoky casino and have your quarters slowly extracted from your pocketbook to the tune of oxygen ventilators and wheel of fortune sounds.

To the right you will see the Brians’ attempt to carve a “pugkin” Let’s just say Better Homes and Gardens makes carving a dog-kin look a lot easier than it actually is. Now, to some links, some scary, some not:

• You want something scary, huh? Well how does the AG’s office secretly taping phone calls with reporters sound? CalBuzz thinks Brown needs to fire Scott Gerber, the press person who did the recording. Of course, Gerber should have told everybody he was recording. But there is an argument the other way, principally that it was an on-the-record call for publication the next day. Either way, Gerber is in the wrong, but the consequences are still up to Jerry Brown.

• Dan Walters has a story on the Edvoice vs CTA skirmishes. EdVoice is a pro-charter school group founded by a bunch of rich dudes, while CTA advocates a return to real investment in our public schools.  Under the dome, Edvoice tends to go for somewhat moderate Dems. In the Supt. of Public Instruction race, it looks like CTA will be supporting Torlakson, and Edvoice Sen. Romero.  Walters, a victim of Sacramento bubble syndrome, kind of ignores Supt. Larry Aceves, who has been getting some pretty good fundraising numbers. If the fight gets nasty between the two Legislators, Aceves may be the beneficiary.

• Garry South is showering some love on Tom Campbell. The cynic would say that South just doesn’t want to face Campbell in a general if Newsom gets that far, but that would be, oh, right, very Garry South.

• John Garamendi holds a ten point lead in the CA-10 race, according to a SUSA poll. The third party seems a bit higher than you’d expect. My guess is that Garamendi pulls in about 55% or so, Harmer 40%, and then the rest scattered about. The LA Times takes a look back at Garamendi’s career.

• Monday is World Pneumonia Day. It’s a huge problem in the developing world, but can be cheaply and effectively treated. It is simply a matter of resources.

• California is among the top tier in testing requirements as compared to other states.

• The Los Angeles County Democratic Party is hosting an Activist Summit on Sunday, November 8, at Cal State LA.  Click for details.  The summit will focus on communications strategies and building club infrastructure.  I (Dante) will be joining my brother David in presenting on new media and social networking.