Everything but CA-50, which is coming up next.

• California Progress Report picked us as their site of the day. Thanks! A guest poster stands up for Prop. 82,
• The Mindful Mission dissects Tom McClintock’s editorial advocating the minimum wage as low as possible. Remember folks, Tom McClintock is Arnold’s running mate, the Dick Cheney of the Schwarzenegger campaign.
• Surfk9 has an interesting meditation on personal history and immigration.
• Bill Bradley reports that the Angelides campaign has hired a new consultant. He also has an interesting post on Arnold’s failure to sell his environmental efforts as better than the leaders of his party. (Better should not be taken to mean good enough.)
• Lying Media Bastards was at the San Diego immigrant march, and shares impressions.

California News Roundup on the flip. Teasers: Immigration, a little CA-50, a lot of rain, and some news on the gubernatorial campaign, and RAIN.

• CA-50 votes today, and the Republican voters are not motivated. The last round of campaigning among the Republicans was, no surprise, negative.

California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Arnold & George: a visual history, California Progress Report, putting one’s money where one’s mouth is, a day of canvassing, the benefits of vagueness, lots of Doolittle and Pombo, and a bit of immigration.

This ‘n’ That

• The California Progress Report continues to be a great outlet for content from progressive groups in California. Here’s an article on TV competition. And two different pieces from the CNA on Clean Money: One, Two. And last, a piece on the California Compassionate Choices Act — who do you want making your decisions: you and people you love, or some religious extremists you’ve never met?
• Tom Hilton has some questions for anti-choice “moderate” Monika Rodman. I like this approach — make people deal with the legitimate consequences of their stated beliefs.
• Kaloogian supporters in CA-50 either “canvassed churchgoers” or “stuffed flyers under windshield wipers” in church parking lots on Sunday, says the discussion at SD Politics. I thought Sunday was a day of rest for the faithful, not a day of politicking. Must have been some other Bible I read.

Goobernatorial Race

• EmilyD of Daily Kos found a whole buncha pictures of Governor Schwarzenegger and President Bush together. No, Arnold’s not a Bush Republican. Pay no attention to these photos or his campaign team.
• Alliance for a Better California notes Arnold’s new ad, and says it ain’t surprising he’s running on his environmental record. It’s not bad (not awesome, either), and that’s about the only policy area where that’s true for the Governor.
• Bill Bradley ruminates on the Angelides and Westly ad strategies. And, he does some math resulting in an opinion that Angelides will have to raise taxes to do the things he wants to do. Westly, by comparison, simply hasn’t disclosed how he thinks he’ll pay for what he wants to do, so he dodges that bullet for now.

Doolittle, Do Less

• Dump Doolittle suggests that we should judge John Doolittle by the company he keeps. And, of course, he keeps company with his wife.
• Both Nite Swimming and Dump Doolittle report that John Doolittle posts at redstate.org (home of racist plagiarist Ben Domenech, among others). Doolitlle doesn’t, ah, acquit himself as admirably as one might hope.
• Last, Nite Swimming has a roundup of recent bad news for Doolittle.

Tell Me Pombo, Pombo, Pombo

• Say No To Pombo has an email interview with the three Democratic candidates for CA-11, asking them questions about the recent bankruptcy bill. Full o’ substance, and we like it.
• Richard Pombo, ever on the lookout for a handout, is “sponsoring” Medicare Part D seminars using industry front groups to explain the program. Of course, if the program weren’t such a train wreck, designed to subsidize the pharmaceutical industry, one wouldn’t need industry front groups to explain it. The thing would just work.
• Progressive 11th suggests that Richard Pombo should call the waaaahmbulance and stop blaming other people for reacting entirely appropriately to his badness.
• Pombowatch thinks that you can place a lot of the blame for the salmon closure squarely on Richard Pombo’s enviro-hating shoulders — he ignored the structural problems on the Klamath, and chose to externalize the effects to fishermen while he helped the farmers in his district. Oh, and then he blamed the Endangered Species Act.
• Defenders of Wildlife Action have a series of events, the first on April 15, 10.30 am, San Ramon Public Library for leafletting. Progressive 11th has a listing of other CA-11 events as well.

• ABC thinks about what I do of Schwarzenegger’s immigration op-ed — not much, because it says not much.
• Marc Cooper wants to blame the Senate Democrats for the failure of the half-baked compromise bill on immigration. D-Day explains why that’s ridiculous, even citing Orrin Hatch. Marc Cooper still blames the Democrats, and spins some implausible scenarios in which the immigration bill comes out of committee and doesn’t get completely perverted by floor amendments and conference committee. I kinda wonder if he’s been watching the way that Congress actually works under the Republicans.
• Cooper asks a good question here, though: “Where is the backlash?“
• The Citizens point out media bias in photo selection and cropping. Nifty.
• janinsanfran has photos from today’s immigration press event.

Todays California News Roundup is on the flip. Blog Roundup should come later today. Teasers: immigration, more on Westly payola (?), some oppo research on Angelides masquerading as news, CA-50, SacBee thrashing John Doolittle, global warming, salmon, rural roads.

UPDATE: Somehow I forgot the story concerning voter registration fraud by Republican-hired contractors.

• We lead today with immigration. First, Governor Schwarzenegger has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Editorial Pages (the nation’s most expensive platform for wingnuttery) in which he burnishes his compassionate conservative credentials on the immigration issue, without actually saying very much beyond “gastarbeiters good, I’m compassionate”. But one should check out Tom McClintock, Schwarzenegger’s running mate, to see what the Republicans are really about.
• The Mercury News profiles some of the undesirable illegals who the Republican Party wants to deport (or exploit, as long as they’re entirely outside of the law). And, the CC Times reports on Sunday’s march in San Diego.
• In the Democratic Primary, there’s a lot of news recently. First, a little follow-up on the question of whether Westly did anything wrong by recommending Healthpoint to CalPERS after taking money Healthpoint raised. In what looks like a piece of oppo research fed to the SacBee by the Westly campaign, it’s noted that in 1994, Angelides sold his minority share of a failing bank before he began his run for treasurer. The story is full of innuendo, but doesn’t seem to amount to much.
• Color me surprised — Daniel Weintraub doesn’t attack Phil Angelides for talking about fulling funding California schools. Dan Walters puts together a pedestrian response to the Angelides-Westly rhetoric ratchet that I won’t bother linking to, but he has an interesting piece on vocational education. If one can ignore the undercurrent of sneering at the “elite”, it’s not a bad read.
• CQ Politics (Is it a blog, is it news? I don’t know.) has a rundown on the mudslinging in CA-50. The one comment is particularly entertaining (maybe comments are a sufficient precondition for blogginess?) Also, the LAT notes that there is a special election in SD-35 on Tuesday as well.
• The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board explains in great detail exactly why John Doolittle’s arrangment skimming off contributions through his wife is so very troublesome. Their news page does a rundown on the rest of the candidates in CA-4.
• The Union-Tribune explains the current set of players, rationales, and proposals concerning California’s current thinking on global warming. Schwarzenegger, of course, wants to do less, not more. In related news, there’s still a shortage of raw materials for solar panels.
• 75 fish per boat per week. That’s the restriction on the California Salmon fishery this year. I’ve worked in the salmon fishing industry — on shore — and have a hard time imagining how few fish that is. When I worked, we pulled brailers full of fish off of the fleet from 6 at night until we were done, sometimes 3 or 4 the next afternoon.
• Last, I just thought this piece on the condition of rural roads was interesting. Turns out people who live in the sticks have pretty much the same needs as the rest of us.

Not a lot of California-related blogging going on today. Maybe it’s the weather. No teasers, no flip. It’s all right here.

• Frank Russo of California Progress Report does a pretty good job making flood control interesting and explaining the politics of it. It’s boring until the flood hits. Then it better be boring, or you’re hosed. This kind of grunt work on infrastructure is most of what a government should be doing, and exactly what the Republican Party does not do.
• BeyondChron is disgruntled today. Well, they’re generally disgruntled, but excessive gruntlement is a sign that one is not paying attention. In particular today, Media Alliance worries that the Google / Earthlink tag team that the City of SF picked for citywide Wi-Fi may not provide proper privacy protections and other good public interest provisions.
• Dan Gillmor tips us to a foreign takeover of a local media outlet.
• Alliance for a Better California doesn’t like Dan Walters’ Generic Union Bashing Column any more than I did, but they go into much more detail.
• Beep informs us that there’s a ballot proposition in Santa Barbara County to split the county in half. The history on this should be interesting, especially as the northern half of the county seems to want the split, but the southern half funds the county. This sounds vaguely familiar to me somehow…
• The Santa Clara County Dems have some endorsements for June.
• Progressive 11th just points us to a couple articles on dirty money that tell us more of what we already know about Dirty Dick Pombo.
• From My Left Wing: It’s funny because it’s true.
• Kingdaddy at Arms and Influence just doesn’t write about domestic politics much, and never about state politics. But he’s worth reading if you’re at all interested in military theory and history. Today he writes about the Diggers, Quakers, Levellers and a host of other sects that arose in England in the 17th Century and the our current theocrats. It’s just interesting.

Today’s California News Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Schmidt spins, Salmon season chopped, immigration mess, telco infrastructure in California, Angelides interviewed.

Schmidt Spins

• John Myers’ Capital Notes notes that Schmidt said both that the election will not be a referendum on Schwarzenegger and that Schwarzenegger will run on his record. Newspeak is alive and well in the Schwarzenegger campaign.
• This AP article running on Inside Bay Area focuses more on the contrast between the Schwarzenegger team’s Bush-Cheney roots and their insistence that Arnold is not that closely tied to Bush.
• Daniel Weintraub notes the number of attacks on Westly and the promise of negative campaigning, though without personal attacks from the Schwarzenegger campaign. That’s a promise, but not the promise it appears to be. The swiftboating of John Kerry was not done by BC04, though they didn’t stop it. Expect whisper campaigns and third party ads from people like the US Chamber of Commerce to do Schwarzenegger’s dirty work.
• Oh, and Carla Marinucci does some steno work.

Everything Else

• The Pacific Coast salmon season will be drastically cut back this year, based on the decimation of the Klamath coho run by excessive damming and agricultural water use. At least it’s not closed, and there may be some remedies over the next few years. Local ocean-caught salmon will be expensive this year, but if you can afford it, support the local fisheries. Farm-raised salmon is not the same thing, and it’s not particularly good for the environment. Tom Stienstra has the rules for anglers. [Side note: the best coverage on this issue today was from the LA Times — not a fishing town paper. Odd, that.]
• Something’s happening in the Senate on immigration. But nobody seems to know what. The SacBee says the bill is tanking. Knight Ridder (through the CC Times) seems more optimistic, but the quotes from the deport-them-all wing of the Republican Party are not encouraging. Either way, the proposal sounds like a mess, dividing up immigrants without a documented date of entry into different groups by length of stay with different citizenship tracks. And even if it passes the Senate in some form, it will go to conference committee, where the radical House Republicans will remake the bill in their image. Whatever happens, more marches are coming.
• Fabian Núñez introduces a bill to allow telcos to compete with cable companies for television services. It sounds like a good idea — more competition and all that — but the devil is in the details (some of which are laid out in the linked article.
• The OC Register has an AP syndication of an interview with Phil Angelides on a number of issues, with requisite counter-quotes from Westly’s campaign and former Bush adviser Steve Schmidt, now running Schwarzenegger’s campaign.
• Steve Westly will be returning $15,000 in campaign contributions raised by a VC fund he later recommended to CalPERS.
• The Chronicle has a brief piece on the upcoming renewal (one hopes) of certain portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The three provisions up (1) require federal approval of new voting procedures in jurisdictions with histories of discrimination, (2) require federal observers in jurisdictions where there’s been intimidation of minority voters, and (3) require bilingual ballots in areas with substantial non-English speakers. These provisions affect different California counties to different degrees, but pretty much every county has the bilingual ballot requirement.
• A new form of Generic Dan Walters Column may have been spotted: Structural Problem X exists. Blame Union Y for it, even though the problem results largely from the anti-government constitutional amendments passed in the seventies and eighties. Today, X = School Funding, and Y = the California Teachers Association.
• This not important to anyone but me, but the Red Vic will now be allowed to sell beer.

California Blog Roundup is on the flip. There’s a lot, as I’ve been busy with other things (mea maxima culpa). Teasers: Call to Action from Debra Bowen, Eric Roach, Busby campaign responds to NRCC ad buy, lots of CA-11, some CA-4, Schwarzenegger’s ratings and his campaign staff, clean money advances (slow boring through hard boards), more immigration, and a fun little potpourri of links at the end.

Call To Action

• Debra Bowen wants us to email Bruce McPherson to ask him to repeal the “exact match” regulations which are more restrictive than HAVA requires and are causing legitimate voter registrations to be rejected in unprecedented numbers. Yes, we know we need to work on our outreach to get those things here. A big shout out to Mary Scott O’Connor for saying our name in the comments at DKos! Thanks, MSOC.
• In vaguely related news, the California Teachers Association endorsed Bruce McPherson for Secretary of State instead of Senator Bowen. No, we don’t really know why.

CA-50

• Calitics Front-Pager Words Have Power is simply thrashing Eric Roach at his own shop. Why hasn’t Roach bothered to participate in politics before now? Why does Roach have to hire temp workers as “volunteers”?
• The Busby campaign responds to the NRCC attack ad buy in CA-50. The “scandal-plagued” lobbyist in the script is a member of the Keating 5 who gave Busby $500. So is John McCain. One might want to note as well that jailbird “bribe menu” Duke Cunningham gave more than half a million dollars to the NRCC. So they’re using his bribe money to attack Francine Busby for that. Satire is dead.

CA-11

• Say No to Pombo has a great explanation of how the California Democratic Party chooses an endorsement in a primary, in the context of explaining how Jerry McNerney almost got the supermajority necessary to get the tentative endorsement, despite armtwisting on Steve Filson’s behalf by Dem officeholders.
• SNTP again has an interesting discussion on the relative benefits of voting in the Democratic primary vs. voting for McCloskey in the Republican Primary, and the need for movement-building. It continues in the comments, so keep scrolling.
• Progressive 11th reprints Jerry McNerney’s press release: he raised over $50K in the first quarter of the year. If someone has the cash-on-hand numbers and the Filson fundraising info, that would be great — we’ll add them. Otherwise I’ll go dig up the reports.
• PomboWatch wonders if Pombo is using the House Resources Committee as some sort of personal vendetta against the environment.

CA-4

Doolittle keeps Abramoff money. Doolittle is the guy who bought little gold hammers to hand out in support of indicted felon Tom Delay. Doolittle: the Delay of Northern California.

Governor’s Race

• ABC finds an interesting Op-Ed from Ukiah, which argues that Schwarzenegger is in trouble: people just don’t think he’s doing a good job, pretty much based on the job he’s doing, not any easily blamable extrinsic factors.
• On that note, I like Frank Russo’s extraction of wisdom from the most recent poll. Schwarzenegger has 90% name recognition among poll respondents compared to half that for Angelides and less for Westly. And Schwarzenegger is neck-and-neck with two comparative unknowns.
• Frank Russo also catches this article profiling the Schwarzeneggger campaign team. They just hired Alex Castellanos, attack ad hitman from the Bush Campaign, and the creator of the infamous “White Hands” ad from the Jesse Helms 1990 campaign against a black opponent. We’ve discussed the kind of campaign Schwarzenegger is likely to run, based on the team he’s assembled and the McClintock partnership. It’s going to be vicious. More at ABC.
• Angelides comes out with the fiscally responsible and painfully obvious position that in order to have the schools our children deserve, we will actually have to pay for them. Daniel Weintraub was agitating for that a while back — I expect him to now punish Angelides for that honest and responsible position.
• Julia Rosen of Alliance for a Better California found both positive and negative things in Phil Angelides’ performance in the debate. She also penned (typed?) a think piece on momentum in the Democratic primary which is worth reading.

Reform

Don Perata supports AB 583, the clean money bill. Note that the current version is no longer just a display bill, but would have teeth. Time to really pay attention to this one.

Immigration

• Down With Tyranny starts a meditation with Dana Rohrbacher, swerves into punk rock, then back to Rohrbacher. Just go read it.
• People who read the right-wing blogs will have read about Josh Denhalter, the SoCal high school student who staged an anti-MECha protest. Turns out he had some support from the Minutemen and from Save Our State — just a smidge nativist. Everyone should know who the Minutemen are. I have to admit I didn’t know anything about Save Our State. I’m not sure I’m a better person for knowing. Here’s one example of their thinking. And one should read the interchange on their forums where Denhalter asks for support. It’s enlightening. I particularly like that his location is identified as “Third World Cesspool”. Don’t know if he chose that or it’s automatic in the Save Our State forums. Either way, it says a lot.

Everything Else

• John Drzal (recent Calitics diarist — we love you, man!) reports that Wally Herger (Republican CA-2) has a problem with consistency on civil liberties, and when candid, seems to think that “suspected terrorists have no rights”. That sounds jim-dandy as a bowlegged swaggering Marion Wayne sound bite, but it should scare most people. Herger clearly thinks he’s the one who gets to decide who’s an unperson. That’s un-American.
• BE for Change has a link to the webcast of the recent debate in the Lt. Governor’s Democratic primary.
• We’re still paying off Schwarzenegger’s Special Election — but the good news is that the state stiffed the counties!
• California Progress Report has an interesting piece by State Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Garden Grove) arguing that the oil companies have basically created a seller’s cartel in California.
• Tom Hilton of “If I Ran The Zoo” follows up on the “Battle Cry” convention in San Francisco last week, and the way it hoodwinked the Chron’s editorial board into thinking that it was just “religious” not “political”.

News Roundup from the last couple days on the flip. Teasers? We don’t need no stinking teasers! Oh, alright then: Millionaires, Schwarzenegger, pay-to-play(?), more immigration, San Diego corruption, emissions, energy, salmon, water water everywhere, Prop 82, and earthquakes.

Special roundup of news coverage of the Univision debate up next and then much later today, a belated blog roundup

Pure Politics

• The CC Times reminds us that only millionaires are running for Governor. This may be in part an unintended consequence of limiting contributions while allowing unlimited spending on a campaign from one’s own wealth. Of course, lifting the contribution limit will allow millionaires to buy their own candidates, so I fail to see where that would help. Sounds like public financing is the way to go.
• Dan Walters thinks that 2006 is setting up the pool of California’s elected officials for the next big things. But isn’t that true of pretty much every major election?
• Daniel Weintraub reports, mostly without injecting his personal biases, on a pending problem: a recent court ruling that initiative petitions need to be translated from English into the language(s) spoken by any large minority of the population of the relevant political unit.
• Schwarzenegger’s approval ratings rising . . . some. This story is mostly notable for the Schwarzenegger spokesman pushing the “it’s a choice” message. Wouldn’t want Schwarzenegger to have to run on his record — no accountability for Republicans.
• Steve Westly probably didn’t do anything really wrong when he suggested that CalPERS have a look at a VC fund that raised contributions for him (especially when one considers how little outside funding he really has. But still, it looks like pay-for-access. Public financing, people.

Environment

• There’s a lot of coverage of the global warming pollution restrictions being discussed in the California State Government. The CC Times has a good summary of the larger picture. There’s a nifty quote from an oil company lobbyist, who admits that “climate change is real”. Wow. After all those millions (and probably billions) of dollars spent by the oil industry attacking the science and delaying any effort to deal with the problem, now global warming is real. Of course, the oil companies don’t want do do anything about it, so that hasn’t changed.
• In other news, moderate Republicans who aren’t in the pocket of the extractive industries seem to be educable on the problem. Now if only they’d buck the Bush-Cheney-Oil wing of the party and do something about it.
• Re that issue, for example, see this SacBee editorial calling out the Bush DOT’s usurpation both of state regulatory authority and the EPA’s authority.
• Vinod Khosla and Steven Bing are teaming up to sponsor a ballot initiative to tax the oil industry and fund alternative energy technology.
• The looming salmon fishery closing has effects beyond just the commercial fishing industry. There’s a big group of people who fish recreationally and a lot of merchants who serve them.

CA-50

CQ Politics has a great piece on how corruption in San Diego politics is driving the Republican side (sides?) of the race in CA-50.

Immigration

• CQ Politics rounds up some academic opinion on the political effects of the immigration debate. Not too much consensus there.
• “Immigration hardliners not gaining much traction” says the SacBee. The Merc reports that people have mixed feelings about immigration. Apparently, so does Congress, and it shows. Yesterday’s CC Times reminds us that nativism is a bad electoral policy, no matter how good it feels.

Water: Not Enough, Too Much

• Generic Dan Walters: There’s a problem with X. Politicians need to stop listening to special interests and fix X. Today, X = Water Policy.
• Non-generic Dan Walters: Local governments shouldn’t be able to freeload on the state’s liability for flood damages by building in known danger areas.
• Some federal money may be coming to strengthen the levees.
• And from a professor who actually studies, y’know, ecosystems ‘n’ stuff, a flood control plan that doesn’t rely on building artificial canyons or lakes.

Other

• Think tank doesn’t like Prop 82 much. And it doesn’t seem to be ideological.(Link fixed by Brian)
• If the big one hits before we fix some (well, a lot) of stuff, the Bay Area is screwed. Oh, the Delta too: levees down, floods everywhere. And does anyone think that a Republican-controlled federal government will help us godless librul eleets, even if by some miracle, they’re competent to do it right?