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.

Links!

• Well, well, this is interesting. Dana Rohrabacher voted to admonish Joe Wilson for his little “You Lie” stunt. Something about decorum.

• Warren Buffett isn’t particularly impressed with the economy. The Wizard of Ohama/Newport Beach resident thinks that “It’s sort of plateaued at the – at the bottom right now.”

• Some protesters showed up at the UC Regents meeting, angry at recent fee hikes that the Regents have approved.

• NPR News takes a look at the Healthy San Francisco Program, which includes the usual hue and cry from the Golden Gate Restaurant Association about cost.  Some businesses have found ways around that, however.  With health care on everyone’s minds at the national level, Healthy SF is getting more scrutiny.

• The USGS is going to do some studies on subsidence in the Central Valley. Part of the subsidence is due to pumping, and some to the natural settling of what used to be part of an ocean. That being said, it is clear that the subsidence has greatly increased since groundwater pumping has been accelerated. There is now concern that the California Aqueduct might be affected.

• Trying to reach the Secretary of State? You may get a busy signal, as they cut some phone service. Well, sort of anyway. Catch a full list of the cuts from the non-Governor Constitutional offices here.

• Where were you one year ago? Well, Carly Fiorina was telling the press (YouTube) that pretty much all of the candidates for Prez and VP were entirely unqualified to run HP.  And that ended her political experience, well, the following day.

• Possible trouble for LA Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, though the evidence looks a little thin.

Good News for you Google/Calitics Fans: The Google Phone (Android) version of the Calitics is now available in the Android market.  

Now, the links:

• Unlike Carly Fiorina, money is flowing like water from Meg Whitman’s bank account. She poured $250,000 of her cash into the CRP’s accounts.

• CalBuzz lays out their thoughts on the Clinton endorsement for Gavin Newsom. They point to the 1992 Brown/Clinton debate (video). Wow, that’s some good times. There is no love lost between Jerry Brown and Bill Clinton.

• LA City Councilwoman Janice Hahn will run for Lt. Governor, taking on Sen. Dean Florez and Senator Alan Lowenthal.  Hahn has been waiting for Jane Harman to retire for a while so she could run for Congress, and this announcement signals that Harman is staying put.

• If true, this is a great catch by Steve Maviglio and a complete outrage:

I walked by the Governor’s office on the first floor of the Capitol yesterday and saw something I never saw before: a photo display for the Latino Water Coalition.

For those of you who don’t know, the Latino Water Coalition is a PR front for Burson-Marsteller, one of the worlds largest public relations agencies that has a contract to push dams, canals, and other environmentally-unfriendly “solutions” in California water policy. It’s a classic “greenwash” campaign.

Is the Governor really leasing out the wall space by his office to PR outfits?  Srsly?

• One thing I didn’t mind the Legislature failing to approve was the homebuyer tax credit that was essentially an developer’s bailout, since it could only be applied to new construction at a time when we have plenty of existing homes on the market.  Also, the way it was structured, the credit only went to people of means.  Bad idea, good to see it go.

• Some (marginally) good news for the schools. There was a slight uptick in the measurements in the state’s schools.

• Major news in Los Angeles today, as the City Council will vote on an early retirement plan for union city workers that would result in maybe 1,000 layoffs if it’s not passed.  The city agreed to this in June and now the Mayor wants to back away from it, even vowing to veto any plan including early retirement.  The Council heard two hours of public comment today, and the unions say they identified $60 million in cuts that would allow the early retirement plan to go forward.  We’ll see the outcome of the vote later today.

• CalTrans is in the midst of some big litigation over their minority contracting program.

Sorry so late.  Here’s some other stuff we missed:

• The state’s going back to the bond market looking for $8.8 billion in revenue anticipation note money, which they fully expect to get.  Of course, the horrible credit ratings as a result of the budget crisis have not turned around, so the interest rates will be plenty higher than necessary, despite the fact that the state is in no threat of default on any loan and never was.  The Wall Street scam to gouge California continues unabated, and everyone who had a chance to stop it dropped the ball.

• Really horrible story about cuts to senior programs in Stanislaus County, as a result of the state wiping out dozens of senior programs in the big budget purge.  As said before, remember these moments.

• The DC media has decided that Brian Bilbray is a moderate.  This is true, based on the Village mindset that real Murca is a bunch of center-right deficit-hating warmongers who hate the hippies, in which case Bilbray fits right in.

We would be remiss not to note the importance of the date. We should never forget.

Now to the links:

• Arnold has officially lost at least one battle on the question of furloughs.  The State Compensation Insurance Fund ruling disallowing the furloughs went final today.

• Former Asm. Jerome Horton won confirmation to Judy Chu’s former Board of Equalization seat today.  Horton was always a moderate in the Assembly, and lost the primary to Chu in 2006.  He would have to run for re-election in 2010 if he desires to keep the job. One would hope that there is no incumbency advantage for an appointment by this lame duck governor.

• One very bright spot in the big PPIC survey is that the concept of a part-time legislature, which would be a dream for special interests, has almost no support, with only 23% in favor.

• Well, the Spanky Duvall story is definitely keeping the Sacramento types entertained.  Dan Walters loves it while traditional journalists just like writing about the sordid details.  And, on the other side, there were a couple stories using the affair as a basis to discuss the perils of lobbying.  Outside the Capitol, Zachary Roth has a tick-tock on TPM Muckraker about who leaked the story to the media, which looks more and more like Jeff Miller, the OC Yacht Partier sitting next to him in the committee room.  Would be fun to see Jon Fleischman pop up in the comments and explain himself out of this.

• This state audit of the corrections system has lots of juicy tidbits, including the factor of overcrowding on overtime spending (almost 1 in 3 of all prison guards earned more than the top pay rate for someone two ranks above them because of all the overtime) and eventual pension payouts (costing the state up to $1 billion in the future).  And this:

Nearly 25 percent of the inmate population is incarcerated under the three strikes law. We estimated that the increase in sentence length due to the three strikes law will cost the State an additional $19.2 billion over the duration of the incarceration of this population.

The entire report is here.

• Well, here’s one point for transparency advocates: the FPPC began posting warning letters online. Previously, you had to go request the letters from the commission. This simply makes access easier.

• The San Diego Sheriff’s Department deployed “military-type crowd control” devices at town hall meetings held by Reps. Darrell Issa and Susan Davis last month. The Long-Range Acoustic Devices, deployed but not needed, are “primarily used in Iraq to control insurgents and can cause serious and lasting harm to humans.” Great.

• Jon Fleischman has announced he’s withdrawing his proposed CRP bylaw which would have closed the GOP primary to Decline-to-State voters. Good news for the Whitman/Fiorina wing, less so for folks like Chuck Devore.

Links:

• Capitol Weekly points out something that Paul Hogarth mentioned during the CA-10 campaign: Garamendi’s replacement will have a big impact upon off-shore oil drilling.

• No internet poker bill this year. To say that California passing internet poker would piss off other state governments is putting it mildly. We’d be attracting gambling dollars from the other 49 states.  The online “gaming” lobby had made the most traction in California, but for practical purposes, they really don’t need it to be California. ANy other state would likely work just as well.

• Ethics probes galore into former Assemblyman Duvall’s conduct, specifically whether he traded votes for sex. Incidentally, Jeff Miller (R-Orange & Riverside Counties) was the grayed out Assembly member. I don’t know what his ties to the OC/Norby power play are, but he certainly makes a good suspect for the “leak.” The OC Register has a cleaner version (well, better AV anyway) of the Cal-Channel discussion, embedded here. Miller was apparently enjoying the conversation, at least enough to laugh at Duvall’s rather poor sense of humor. –>

• Steve Lopez had a great column yesterday showing the double standard of what constitutes “offensive” in this day and age.  In short, the only thing offensive is whatever challenges corporate power.

• Another semester is upon us, and it looks like students at UC-Irvine should get ready for another fee hike soon.

• I don’t know if we got to this, but it’s worth noting that union membership in Southern California has risen over the last two years, despite the recession.  Good news for working families.

• I’m thinking Gavin Newsom won’t be entirely pleased with this SF Weekly profile.

• California still has among the highest incidences of interest-only home loans in the country.  The pain has yet to subside, and when many of these reset shortly, it will only increase.

• The renewable power debate isn’t just as easy as trumpeting support for “green jobs.” It’s actually a rather complicated tangle of regulations, with issues like transmission throwing wrenches in the system.  And of course, everything is coming down to the last minute again in the Legislature.

• The memorial for Los Angeles firefighters killed in the line of duty will be held Saturday morning. Tangentially related, Senator Boxer’s house parties will be postponed until October so as not to compete with the service. Watch for a new date.

• That “Tea Party Express” outfit run by Yacht Party operative Howard Kaloogian is working with a group who were sued for killing 23 seniors in a bus fire during Hurricane Rita.  Good vetting over there.

Links:

• Apparently Joel Fox doesn’t understand the difference between correlation, causation, and not statistically relevant.  He thinks that a part-time legislature would yield fewer initiatives because there were fewer initiatives in the 60s.  Of course, the 60s were a much different time in California’s politics. Corporate money wasn’t quite so omnipresent, and the signature gatherers hadn’t yet taken quite the position that they currently occupy. But, yeah, it’s almost the same thing.

• A couple of days ago, I (Brian) mentioned a proposed initiative that was being funded by Mercury Insurance, saying that it would basically repeal Prop 103. That’s not really true. The initiative in question (PDF) doesn’t actually have that great of an impact. It would allow insurance companies to provide a discount for continuous coverage regardless of what company they were using.

• Dan Walters takes (yet another) look at who would replace Garamendi as LG, one of the favorite pasttimes of political reporters in Sacramento for the past few months. Not all that much insight in the column if you’ve been at all paying attention to this stuff, but he likes the conventional wisdom picks of Riordan, Abel Maldonado, or Bob Hertzberg. That’s a whole lot of milquetoast, which I suppose is appropriate given the job.

• Despite the dearth of local media generally, leading to New York City newspapers potentially jumping in to fill the gap, there’s one local market where print media is thriving – the Vietnamese-language dailies serving Little Saigon’s 150,000 Vietnamese residents.  There are five of them, and all are doing well.  This probably has to do more with a search for news from Vietnam, and the cultural signifier of a free press to the community, than any desire on the part of these dailies to deliver important local news, however.

• The Citizens United Case is scheduled to be reargued soon. If you’ll recall, the Calitics Editorial Board was a party to an amicus brief filed by the Brennan Center. If the limits on corporate spending are completely tossed out, woe be progressive causes. Just consider this, if ExxonMobil had spent 1% of their profit on political spending last year, they would have outspent both McCain and Obama…combined.

• Happy 100th birthday, Santa Monica Pier.  As the story notes, its survival is a testament to fighting back against runaway development (it was almost toppled in favor of a man-made island with a resort hotel in the 1970s).

To those of you in Bay Area, hope you like your side of the Bay. Now, to the links!

• Consumer Watchdog has been hounding Mercury Insurance for a while now, what with the 10 reasons not to trust them list.  A few weeks ago, they put up a sign on Wilshire near Mercury’s HQ saying: ‘Consumer Watchdog Says: “You Can’t Trust Mercury Insurance.”‘ CBS Outdoor approved that sign when it went up initially, but has now pulled it down under pressure from Mercury.  Incidentally, Mercury is a huge political donor in the state, and was a good friend of Chuck Quackenbush, the Insurance Commissioner who resigned in shame.

• In a related story, Mercury Insurance is trying to get a proposition on the ballot to essentially repeal Prop 103, the landmark insurance regulation proposition passed by Harvey Rosenfield, the founder of Consumer Watchdog. Unfortunately for them, they screwed up in their petitions and will have to throw out a bunch of signatures.  Whaa-whaa.

• Showing that it’s not just the insurance companies who are the problems in health care, the state fined 6 SoCal hospitals for violating guidelines and safety standards, including several cases which resulted in death.

• The Yacht Party smells blood and thinks they can beat Joan Buchanan next year after she failed in her effort to jump to Congress.  Certainly, the CA-10 race didn’t bode well for her, but she clearly has the means to compete, although the massive self-funding for the Congressional seat may lead labor to let her go it alone.  I don’t think Buchanan is completely safe, but she’s not dead in the water, either.

• Speaking of insurance, the Senate narrowly passed AB 1200 that would allow insurance companies to be more heavy handed about bringing your car into a body shop of their choosing rather than one that you choose that isn’t on their list.

• The State prisons aren’t the only ones that are overcrowded. LA County’s jails are also packed to the gills.  The Senate approved AB 1369 (Davis) to allow some prisoners to be transferred to home detention with GPS monitoring.

• Former Assemblyman Tom Umberg, who lost a primary to Lou Correa…(thanks Don Perata), was activated in his role as US Army reserve Colonel. Umberg previously served in the Clinton Administration fighting the so-called War on Drugs. Good luck and be safe Mr. Umberg!

• Some pet breeding legislation is moving (or not moving as the case may be) through the Legislature. One bill would increase regulations on puppy mills and the other is the long controversial bill about spaying and neuturing dogs.

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.