It’s getting a bit tired isn’t it?  In yesterday’s Sac Bee, it was reported that some fraudulent registration applications from their SoCal grassroots people. 

Several GOP voter-registration workers created fake individuals in documents submitted to the California Republican Party, which said Thursday that it discovered the fraudulent activity through an internal review and forwarded its findings to Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.

GOP spokesman Patrick Dorinson said the party caught the undisclosed number of falsified voter affidavits early enough that it avoided registering any fraudulent names with the state. (SacBee 9/1/06)

Uh, yeah, sure you did.  I’m sure you caught all of the fake people, the dead people, etc. You know, that large spike in GOP registration did seem a bit on the large side.  How many of those people really registered?

And Mr. McP says’s he’ll be all over this scandal, just as soon as he’s done campaigning on the state’s dime. Yeah, I’ll buy that promise right after I finish completing my “Facts of Life” Tootie Video Montage.  Which is to say, the 12th of Never.  So, need I mention that Debra is on the Calitics ActBlue page?

You take them both and there you have the leg session, the leg session, the leg session.  Ok enough reminiscing on 80’s TV shows…The legislative session wrapped up late last night, and to be truthful, I’m not the best source for information about it.  That would be the California Progress Report. As I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, Frank works his tail off to get probably the best coverage of all that’s been happening in the Capitol.  Go Frank!

But back to the closing of the session, it was mixed bag.  Nunez claims it was the most productive of the last few decades, but how many times has that been said in the last few decades?  I’ll snip a bit from Frank and then tell you to go check out his post

he final hours of the session saw final passage of AB 2987, “The Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act of 2006,” by the Speaker and Assemblymember Lloyd Levine by a vote of 64 to 5. (CPR 9/1/06)

And that noise you hear? That’s the closing of one more door to protect net neutrality.  From what I understand their is some money for the municipalities who will lose their franchise fees and some protection for local channel broadcasting.  And anyway, bandwidth is cheap now, I can’t imagine any of the cable or telcos fighting really hard to get rid of those. More from Frank:

The session ended with an omnibus flood bill failing passage as it was held in an Assembly Committee by Chair Lois Wolk, a strong proponent of flood control reforms who thought it was poorly drafted and did not take care of much of what needed to be done. Also failing passage was ratification of tribal gaming compacts to increase the number of slot machines by over 19,000 in the state and the prison bills that had earlier been approved by the Senate.

The Speaker gavelled the session to a close before taking up the gaming compacts, so we will likely see them when the next session opens up.  The big question there is the issue of allowing unions into the Indian casinos.  The flood bill failed because it ended up being a patchwork of bills that Perata and the Senate stuck together.  Wolk thought it was better to wait until next session to get this done than deal with a crappy bill.

All in all, an interesting session.  A bunch of stuff was completed and some wasn’t.  SB 840 was passed, we should expect a veto on that soon.  Any other highlights?

(For visibility over the longer post. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Well, it looks like Antonio Villaraigosa thinks that Arnold will sign his “Gloria Romero Educational Reform Act of 2006”, and will officially endorse Phil sometime soon.  This from Kate Folmar of the SJ Merc on her Weintraub-esque blog:

I hear that plans are in the works for LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to (finally) endorse Phil Angelides Tuesday, perhaps at events in Los Angeles and San Francisco.(SJ Merc On Politics 9/1/06)

My only question? What the F took you so long?

The Angelides Team has posted a diary at DKos.  Go give it a recommend!

(Thanks to BigDog for pointing this out earlier. I wanted to embed the video on the front page. – promoted by SFBrianCL)

I know, I know, this is not California politics in a very busy moment in California politics, but I had to include this.  Keith Olbermann’s lecture on Countdown was one of those moments that you just want to praise every which way.  It was a member of the media actually attempting to take on the administration and call out their folly.  And he was right that civil discource is part of American soceity.  We need to have the discussion and in the end we will be out of Iraq.  It’s just a matter of time, ignoring the subject helps nobody, Mr. Rumsfeld.  And so, I present to you the Olbermann smackdown of Rumsfeld.  Also note that Keith has a new book coming out.  Buy it; it should be a good one.

There’s going to be a major poll out tonight at 10PM.  I’ll have that posted as soon as it’s free and clear of restrictions. 

But real quickly, what do these polls mean? What should or shouldn’t we make of them?  I think it’s reasonably clear that Phil is behind here. I have no problem admitting that.  And as Phil showed during the primary, being behind doesn’t mean that you will lose.

What needs to happen to see Phil win? Well, many, many things. First, we need to ensure that people understand who Arnold really is.  Phil’s campaign is doing a decent job with that.

We also need to make sure people know who Phil is, and who he’s not. Part of that is just talking to your friends about him.  Don’t be afraid to talk about politics. Most of the people that are reading this are well-informed.  Share some of that information with friends and family.

So go out there and do some Phil-proselytizing.

Around and around we go.  Schwarzenegger proposes one deal, the Legislature another, but nobody faces the real issue: we have too many prisoners.  We need real sentencing reform.

Democratic legislative leaders Tuesday presented an alternative to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plans for addressing prison overcrowding, one administration officials said would force county jails to release thousands of inmates by next June.

The four bills would provide $918 million in bond and general fund financing for prison expansion, authorize the state to move 4,500 women to community correctional facilities, offer $25 million in grant money for neighborhood parole programs and allow for voluntary inmate transfers to out-of-state institutions.

But the package falls well short of the $6 billion expansion plan the governor is seeking.(SacBee 8/30/06)

We will never be able to lock up everybody.  Maybe we could look for some alternatives?