Here’s a sampling of hypertext “links”, which can be clicked on to view the full story:

• In the continuing Verizon/EDD saga, the two sides have reached a deal so that Verizon will cut the EDD’s bill for offering answering machine messages (to the tune of millions) but not eliminate the deal.  Verizon will basically give the EDD credits toward future payments.  The state is charged 5 cents a pop every time an unemployed resident calls the line and gets an answering machine because all operators are busy.  Seems to me like hiring more operators would be cheaper, given the raw numbers of how much we’re paying Verizon.

• An update on Pete Stark’s tax snafu with the state of Maryland – it turns out a number of Congresscritters, Democrats and Republicans alike, took the same deduction on their Maryland residences, which was legal until the law recently changed.  None of this has stopped former Laura Bush press secretary Andrew Malcolm from accurately reporting the truth by following up his breathless item on “liberal Democrat Pete Stark” with the fuller context.  I know Malcolm reads this space because I get a congratulatory email from him anytime I attack a Democrat, so Andy, buddy, punim, do your job.

• This is a great move by the LA County Board of Supervisors – beatings against the homeless have increased significantly in recent years, and they ought to be charged as the hate crimes that they are.  The violence against this vulnerable group should end.

• In DiFi’s world, a time of tremendous energy challenges, when we need to set aside space that would be perfect for solar and wind energy projects also means a time to develop national monuments and put desert lands off-limits.  I know this is contentious, but I respectfully disagree that we can shield the Mojave Desert to solar sites.  I am happy to be disabused of this notion.

News from around the state:

• Polls close in the SD-26 election between Asms. Curren Price and Mike Davis shortly. We’ll update with election results upon their release.

• CalPERS/STRS are attempting to be the lead plaintiffs against Bank of America in the Merril Lynch bonus scandal.  Both organizations have been outspoken advocates for sound corporate governance.

• Imagine this, a bipartisan bill in Sacramento!  With Dave Jones, Nathan Fletcher and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner all aboard!  And the cause is noble!  Basically, this bill would allow workers at small businesses with under 20 employees to be eligible for federal subsidies to COBRA in the same way that workers in firms with more than 20 employees are eligible under the economic recovery plan.  The bill is AB23, and should pass out of the Assembly Health Committee today.

• An interesting story about the relationship between Speaker Pelosi and President Obama, and how the Speaker views her role as a leader. Much of it is not all that insightful, but it does take a look at how Pelosi is trying to use the House as a counterpoint to the more conservative Senate, and to Obama’s compromising instincts.

• OC Progressive takes a look at cuts to OCTA, the county’s bus service. Unfortunately, at a time when we should be investing heavily in public transportation, services are being slashed throughout the state.

• Sen. Tony Strickland (Yacht Party-Thousand Oaks) may be able to ball, but that picture of him in uniform for the minor league Los Angeles Lightning, for whom he will actually play May 2 for a one-game special in his district, should get him disqualified from a political career.  Memo to politicians – lay off the tank tops.

Hopefully Obama will come back to hang out with us this weekend too.  California just isn’t the same without him.  Meanwhile…

• Pete Stark got some heat for claiming a home in Maryland as his primary residence to receive a $3,770 tax break.  The house happens to be the only one Stark owns; he rents a townhouse in his district in Fremont.  Also, this is a local Maryland tax break, not a federal one, so snark about him being on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee is somewhat less operative.  Stark defends himself to Josh Richmond.  In the end, if people have a problem with mortgage deductions, I think we as a country should have that debate.

• Measure B, the solar-energy proposal in Los Angeles, officially went down to defeat in the March 3 election, as per the final tallies.  Now the City Council and the mayor will probably just pass it as legislation anyway, and everyone will scratch their heads and wonder what that was all about.

• In between budget crises, the Governor has been racking up wins in court that will be potentially harmful for state workers in the next round.  In the latest, a judge decreed that the Governor can reduce state worker paychecks to the minimum wage temporarily if the legislature fails to pass a budget, although he would have to pay all the lost wages back in full after any budget deal.  Schwarzenegger will use this and other tools (like furloughs and layoffs) next time around.

• The Vice Chairman of the Yacht Party is keeping busy by forming a new PAC to combat the Fairness Doctrine, which the Senate already rejected in an amendment this year, which nobody is carrying as legislation, and to which the President has signaled his opposition.  Of course, the real goal isn’t to kill the already-dead Fairness Doctrine, but to block common-sense efforts at media diversity and stop the breaking trusts and conglomerates.

• The White House, related to the California visit, has released a list of funding in the first 30 days since the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

• I actually agree with Dan Walters: we don’t need a Lieutenant Governor.  Other lines of succession in the case of a gubernatorial vacancy could easily be drawn, and the agencies upon which the Lieutenant Governor sits could easily be awarded to others.  Quick, name the last time anyone had to break a tie in the State Senate.  I’m grasping to understand the core function of the office.  

Lots going on in the past 48 hours, here’s a roundup.

• After yesterday’s public meeting between Mike Genest and Bill Lockyer, I am convinced that the trigger which would reduce budget cuts and taxes will not be pulled.  While it is conceivable that $10 billion dollars can be gleaned from the federal stimulus package to the General Fund, I don’t think either of these two have any interest in doing it, so they are content to fake the numbers, which are really unknowable at this point and subject to interpretation.  Their position is that pulling the trigger today would make the eventual budget gap down the road worse, even though that’s not necessarily true (more money for the General Fund would fill that gap).  Even if Lockyer could be convinced, in the event of a deadlock the trigger would not be pulled, and the Governor has no problem cutting health care for the truly needy, so this game is over.  The results will be tragic.

• Despite not having a working knowledge of the ins and outs of state government (and it’s hard to expect him to), President Obama and his staff did work up this handy backgrounder on the economic situation here.  We all know this intimately from covering it for so long, but it’s amazing to see in print.  Meanwhile, there is a state-based version of recovery.gov available now to track the stimulus spending, at Recovery.CA.gov.  One of the first projects is the launching of a state Green Corps to put at-risk young people into green jobs.

• It’s not just foreclosures – California’s Central Valley saw an 83% rise in personal bankruptcies, the second-highest in the nation – behind only LA County and Southern California.

• Verizon has helpfully pointed out to the state how they can save millions of dollars in phone service messages to unemployment call centers.  Another way would be “buying an answering machine for $20” or “allowing a busy signal,” but for some reason Verizon didn’t offer that advice.

• Former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson is out of jail and has been returned to Minnesota after serving seven years in prison.  Because she’ll be on the parole system in Minnesota and not California, she is far less likely to actually return to jail.

• Planning meetings for the Westside Extension, also known as the Subway to the Sea in Los Angeles, are moving forward, and there would be no greater transit outcome maybe in the country than to finally see this become a reality.

• Dan Walters mentioned Calitics in his column the other day, but instead of quoting us, he quoted us quoting other people.  Walters has yet to figure out the mystery of the blockquote.

I think I deserve $450 million in bonuses for doing these open threads, and anyway I signed a contract with myself to get them, so there’s nothing you can do about it but read the links:

• Speaking of AIG, the SF Valley’s Brad Sherman, who has been a leader on various aspects of the banking crisis, says that Treasury dropped the ball by not instituting his policy to claw back bonuses:

We had a provision in there that said Treasury was supposed to establish, by regulation, standards for executive compensation. We required that to be done — had it been done, it would have been binding, whether [or not] these contracts had been signed earlier. It’s entirely within the power of the federal government to have contracts modified [at companies receiving public aid]. Nixon had contracts modified by the federal government. We gave a similar power to Treasury.

Sherman believes we should put AIG into receivership and I don’t imagine he’s getting a lot of heat for that position today.

• I think Maxine Waters is out of the woods, or at least on stronger ground.  It’s not just her explanation of her efforts to get OneUnited Bank in front of Treasury so they could receive some TARP money, it’s the letters she released, from the National Bankers Association, that support her contention that the meeting was set up to help a number of minority banks and not just OneUnited, which her husband worked for at one time.

• The story that conservative talk radio is on the wane is getting a lot of buzz, but I think it’s just that radio, in general, is on the wane, at least in Southern California, with the demise of Indie 103.1 and KLSX 97.1.  There are perhaps more of these Rush wannabes throughout the state, and so they’re getting hit particularly hard, but I don’t think this is a reflection of their ideas, failed though they may be.  The true test of the decline of conservative talk radio is if these recalls for Yacht Party members who voted for the budget fizzle.  So far, Anthony Adams, who is getting a fundraiser from the Governor and who has the endorsements of his entire Assembly caucus, looks like he’s in solid shape.

• There is actually a State Senate race next week in SD-26, to replace LA Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.  Assemblymember Curren Price has the inside track, though he was attacked as a crony for special interests at a recent forum.  It’s unlikely that anyone would get 50% of the vote, and so this won’t be decided until the general election on May 19.  And should Price or Assemblyman Mike Davis win this election, the most likely outcome, the Senate’s gain of one more Democratic seat would be the Assembly’s loss, prompting yet ANOTHER special election to fill it.  We will remain short in total legislators well into the rest of the year.

• Lots of publicity for the Sacramento-area Bushville, the homeless encampment on the American River.  City officials need to come up with a manageable solution.

• Finally, give it up for blogger John Mirisch, writer of Blog Beverly Hills, who in a major upset got elected to the Beverly Hills City Council in a close race, defeating an incumbent who was seen as very pro-development.  He’ll now serve with Earl Warren’s grandson Willie Brien, also elected on March 3.

Have a fine weekend!  Here are your links:

• After a somewhat contentious debate, California Democratic Party chair Art Torres and Republican Duane Roth have been named co-Vice Chairs of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (the voter-approved stem cell research agency), after the board agreed to split the position in two.  Torres will take half the salary that he would have received if he were sole vice chair.

• Labor Secretary Hilda Solis had her formal swearing-in ceremony today at the Labor Department, and Vice President Biden had some nice words to say about her.  It’s good to see a friend of labor back at the Labor Department.

• Here’s an interesting article in the California Journal of Politics and Policy about the effect of debt loads on California’s fiscal condition.  The answer is they suck.  We have borrow to pay for government for decades because of the conservative veto against returning to fiscal stability, and that borrowing comes back with interest every year, interest we should never have started paying but were forced to because the Yacht Party wants to believe you can have all the services you want and never have to pay for them.  Interestingly, Republican Diane Harkey has introduced a bill, AB1278, that would require explanations of the long-term effects of bonds in initiatives, but it’s about 30 years too late.

• Students at Village Academy High School in Pomona created a heartbreaking video about the

financial troubles their families are facing, and in President Obama’s speech on education this week he referenced it.  Now the full story of the video is told in the LA Times.

• There will be a worker’s rally for the Employee Free Choice Act on Tuesday, March 17 at Noon, on the North Steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento.  Lt. Governor Garamendi and labor leaders will all be there.  Expect more of these kinds of actions as the battle over Employee Free Choice heats up.

The time comes in every open thread’s life when it offers links.

• The National Nurses Movement has more on SB810.

• Maria Shriver will not run for public office in 2010.  Um, who asked her to?  I mean, if the credentials are simply “being famous in California,” I guess she’d be on the list, but I can’t think of any reason otherwise.  After all, our experiment with celebrity lawmaking isn’t going terribly well.

• As a case in point, the Governor today vowed to fix the problem that is causing California to pay out 5 cents to Verizon every time a caller to the unemployment hotline cannot be helped by EDD staff.  Sounds like a pittance, but the state has paid $4.4 MILLION DOLLARS to Verizon since the fall.  The real answer is to hire more people, but since that would – horrors! – cost money (as if the $4 mil to Verizon isn’t), I’m guessing they’ll just offer up a busy signal instead.

• The date for the CA-32 special election has been set, and as expected, it’s May 19 for the primary, coinciding with the statewide special election.  The special general election would take place July 14, if nobody running gets over 50%.

• Former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg is the new chair of California Forward, replacing CIA Director Leon Panetta.  Best of luck to him strangling real reform by refusing to tell the truth to Californians about what is responsible for our perpetual budget crisis.  By the way, Bob, the blood that’ll be on your hands as your organization lurches forward with its “sensible centrist” solutions doesn’t wash out.

• US News writes about Oakland solar power start-up Bright Source Energy and its renewed hope, thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

• Here’s a hazard unique to our economic situation – homeowners in Merced being hit with tax liens for unpaid utility bills from the previous owners.

• It looks like King-Harbor Medical Center might open again by 2012, run by a nonprofit.  Very good news – there is practically no access to health care for residents in this area.

We missed a day with Ye Olde Open Thread, so this may be an expanded version:

• Good for Gordon Brown, attacking Prop. 8 as “unacceptable.”  It’s kind of curious that he brought it up at all, even in context, but I’m glad he did, especially the part where he said, “This shows why we have always got to be vigilant, always got to fight homophobic behaviour and any form of discrimination.”

• OC Progressive asks Kevin Drum 5 questions, and on the 2/3 requirement, he calls it “senseless” but says it’s impossible to change it through the initiative process because we’ve tried before and got whomped.  Not only do I think opinions have changed in the wake of budget hysteria, but they will continue to change, since the budget is still in desperate crisis, and we’ll see plenty more Yacht Party obstruction between now and June 2010 or whenever such a measure is on the ballot.  Drum supports a constitutional convention as “less impossible than the initiative process,” even though it would involve the initiative process twice, once to convene it and once to pass the new constitution.  I obviously don’t see the initiative process as an insurmountable barrier, but that reasoning is weird to me.

• Here’s another John Galt-worshipper in the Congressional Republican caucus.  Do they know Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction?  

• Speaking of works of fiction, here’s Victor Davis Hanson’s column in the Fresno Bee.  Apparently California’s big problem is that the weather is too nice and it makes us entitled.

• After he and his staff broke all kinds of campaign finance and public disclosure laws and showed multiple ethical lapses in accepting gifts from industry with business before the state, Arnold Schwarzenegger has instituted an ethics policy.  As a point of reference, he became Governor in 2003.

• More from the decline of the American newspaper – Sacramento-based McClatchy is cutting 1,600 jobs, and three of their 30 daily papers, including the SacBee, the Modesto Bee and the Fresno Bee, are right here in California.  I think you’ll see more journalists jump into public policy work as a result.

• CA-48: Beth Krom is obviously serious about her challenge to John Campbell – she just launched a temporary campaign website.

• In the aftermath of President Obama’s shift of federal policy on stem cell research, UC-Merced is building a new stem cell facility.

What we do here is link to items with the option of pithy commentary.  Good for the reader, good for the writer.  Win-win!

• The Fresno Democratic Central Committee endorsed Chris Finnie for Party Chair, depriving John Burton of one more email crowing about an endorsement that he can send out to his list.  Money quote from an attendee: “If we end up with a horse’s head in our bed, it’ll be more than we’ve ever gotten from the CDP in the past.”

• Tomorrow will be the final furlough Friday – until the next budget crisis, of course, when the Governor will find this to be a useful tool to screw public employees and the unions who represent them.  It set a really bad precedent and I fully expect for it to be used again.

• There was an EPA hearing today about granting a waiver to California and several other states to set their own tailpipe emissions reduction targets.  It’s a matter of time before they rule on the matter in the affirmative – but the auto industry is still pulling out whatever it can to block it.  They ought to focus on their own survival at this point.

• A scary incident in a courtroom in Stockton today, as the defendant in a murder trial stabbed the judge and was eventually shot.

• Stimulus package good news: the legislature is fast-tracking changes to unemployment law to make the jobless eligible for an extra $839 million.  Stimulus package bad news: officials are mostly pessimistic that the state will hit the trigger of federal money that would have reduced some of the worst budget cuts and also some taxes.  Really bad news for those who rely on the state for health care – almost all of the cuts are in that sector.

• The terrible Metrolink crash in Chatsworth that killed 25 is forcing new inquiries into rail safety.  Especially when rail and transit are set to become a larger part of America’s transportation needs, this is desperately needed and I’m glad it’s happening now, although the circumstances are grim.

• There are indications that Sacramento is coming out of its subprime mortgage crisis, but of course now, with housing prices cratering, the problem is much bigger than subprime.