Links:

* How do we set the rates for insurance? Well, under the federal legislation, we weren’t supposed to be authorizing rates state by state.  A recent law (SB1163) would allow insurance companies to require a “acuarily sound” rate.

* John Myers looks at Dan Schnur’s efforts to expand disclosure.

* Carly Fiorina brought something of a do whatever it takes to make a buck philosophy to HP that seems to have persisted there.  They got fined $55 million for defrauding the federal goverment, but hey, they picked up a $800 million deal.  Cost of doing business, right?

* A little tiff in the OC DA’s office between former Asm. Todd Spitzer and current DA Tony Rackauckas.

* Capitol Weekly takes a look at some various last minute legislative pushes.

Links:

* The Democrats in the Legislature are scheduling votes on both the Democratic budget and the Schwarzenegger budget for Tuesday. As of right now, neither has enough to pass.

* Whitman is merging her field campaign into the Republican Party’s operations. Not totally sure what this means, but I guess the CRP is hitching their star to ol’ Moneybags.

* The CDP, meanwhile, is filing a complaint against Joel Fox’s astroturf organization for violation of 501(c)4 non-profit organization rules.

* The Governor is going to Asia with or without a budget for a September trade mission.

Links:

* Looks like sunshine wins over CSU’s secrecy. They had to release Sarah Palin’s contract.  The CSU-Stanislaus foundation paid her $75,000, plus expenses.  Her demands included first-class airfare (or a Lear jet), prescreened questions, and “bendable straws.”

* The Congressional campaign of Mike Berryhill isn’t doing too well.  The challenger for Dennis Cardoza also got slammed by a former staffer.

* SFWeekly has a profile of Nancy Pelosi. It’s a bit of a journalistic mishmash.

* The “big 5” had a meeting today, their first in a while.

Links:

* More on the Kochs, the big Oil/big anti-environmentalists on MSNBC last night.

* Some controversy at the Horse Racing Board.

* Dan Weintraub on the progress made in setting up the exchanges in the health care reform package.

* Karl Rove is up to something, and as dirty tricks are his stock in trade, expect something along those lines.  Specifically, his Crossroads organization is spending $1mil on anti-Boxer ad, but no details about the ad are available yet.

Links:

* The Center for American Progress has a piece about the Koch family and Prop 23.  The family has been very involved in the Tea Party movement…because apparently the superwealthy family can’t afford another penny!  Oh, and the family has tried this move before…see the John Birch Society.

* CalBuzz: I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore is a good start, but that won’t carry Whitman and Fiorina alone.

* You like to wash your windows while filling up? Well, sorry about that, as a large group of gas stations are going to have to remove the latches as people were sprayed with gasoline.

* PG&E’s smart meter conversions have not gone very well.

* The Governor wants to put a rainy-day fund on the ballot as part of the budget deal. Only trouble (?!) is that we are nearing the deadline to get a measure on the ballot.  Of course, there is always the fact that we don’t have enough money for today, let alone tomorrow.

* Good News/Bad News for Jerry Brown. He got an email from President Obama telling OFA folks to go to his website and sign up.  Bad news: the website crashed. The site is back live now; it appears to only have been down for a few minutes.

Links:

* Some Republicans in San Francisco are trying to unseat Democrats in the City.  That will be the day…

* Sam Blakeslee was inaugurated into the Senate. Grrrrrrr…..

* Lots of reports from the San Diego Republican Party Convention.  

Links for your weekend:

* The CA Republican party has had problems raising cash. That didn’t stop them from paying some pretty nifty salaries to the muckety-mucks though who, umm, also happen to work for legislators.  Seems sketchy.

* Speaking of the CRP, they enied the CA Republican Assemblythe fringe conservative group, access to their facilities at the state convention going on San Diego this weekend. Apparently the CRP noticed that backing Prop 187’s anti-Latino measures isn’t the way to go these days.

* Another reason to vote against Meg Whitman: she would defend Prop 8. ‘Nuff said.

* The right-wing is freaking out a little bit about Whitman’s shifting immigration stances.

Links:

* Happy Birthday to Capitol Weekly. The new version preceded us by a few days back in 2005.  It is kind of scary to look back at some of those old diary posts I (Brian) wrote back in the day.

* Prop 23 Miscellaneous Notes: Another $250K for the No on 23 campaign based upon the opportunity for new green jobs. Koch Industries, an oil company, is a big supporter of Prop 23. Oh, and they like to fund climate denial “studies.”  FInally, HuffPo has a good story on the Texas oil companies and the Adam Smith Foundation.

* Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman have been squabbling over pay and pensions for a while.  You’d think that, given her incessant television and private plane appearances, that she might want to cut back on that line of attack.

* Workers Comp insurance premiums went up sharply, mostly because Schwarzenegger has refused to let any increases for inflation.

* The Senate voted to make public university foundation records public after the CSU-Stanislaus debacle with Sarah Palin.

* Robert is heading out of town for a well-deserved vacation, but he’ll be back on Calitics’ 5th anniversary of September 1. Let’s hope California hasn’t fully melted down by then.

Links:

* State Controller John Chiang says that he will start issuing IOUs in 2-4 weeks unless a budget is passed.

* St. Abel asked to join the defense of Prop 14, the top two measure.

* Protestors in wheel chairs protested on L Street against the cuts to in-home support services.

* Bell gave loans to City employees worth about 800K.

We’re waiting for results on the Laird race, but in the mean time, Links:

* For two candidates running for statewide office, you would think Steve Cooley and Carly Fiorina would take a stand on Proposition 23, but no.  The effort to repeal AB 32’s historic greenhouse gas pollution regulations apparently don’t rise to the level of importance to take a stand.

* Speaking of Steve Cooley, California Watch exposed some punitive measures against his deputy DA’s union.  A recent lawsuit alleges that he punitively transfered deputy DAs who dared to organize, and even harassed an external media outfit working with the union. (Note: Brian does some work for Kamala Harris.)

* Roger Niello is officially running to replace the late Sen. Dave Cox, and has now received some favorable words from Cox’s widow.

* Republican SoS candidate Damon Dunn got a profile on the Sean Hannity show.  And according to the Hannity folks, he was endorsed by Willie Brown.  Except, Willie himself called that idea “crazy.”

“Hell no..are you crazy?” he said. “I do training of folks with my Institute, and I have absolutely talked to him. But I would never be for Damon Dunn against Debra Bowen, who is one of my chief operatives. One of the things I recommended to Damon Dunn is that he not run against Debra Bowen.”(SacBee)