( – promoted by jsw)

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: The Enron convictions, Angelides, Westly, Schwarzenegger, Jerry Brown, Paid-For Pombo, 15% Doolittle, the CAHSEE and California’s rankings, immmigration, several interesting think posts, and more.

The One To Read

Lest we forget, Robert Silvey reminds us that the conviction of Ken Lay (devoted Bush supporter) is related to their company’s predation on California, abetted by Dick Cheney and the Republican Administration, which led in turn to the recall election of Grey Davis and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, this stuff is all connected. No, that’s not a conspiracy theory.

Statewide Races

• Marc Cooper plugs his own LA Weekly article on the Dem gubernatorial primary. Go read it: it goes well beyond the ordinary “how much money” and “how many ads” coverage that seems to dominate political reporting.
• To paraphrase both loosely and badly from Shakespeare, Governor Schwarzenegger learns the hard way that he who pisses away his money loses only his money, while he who pisses away his reputation loses everything.
• Julia Rosen from ABC posts on the amount of money the Dem candidates have put into the primary (too much, frankly). She also quotes Bill Bradley opining that without the IE campaign run by his friends, Angelides would not be doing as well as he is. I find this puzzling. By this logic, Arnold Schwarzenegger would not do well without his personal fortune or his contacts. Westly would not do well without his personal fortune or his contacts. I see no distinction.
• Randy Bayne comes out for Angelides. Oh, and Garamendi.
• Julia Rosen of ABC on indecision and turnout.
• Bill Cavala thinks we’re nostalgic for Jerry Brown. Could be.
• In addition to Brian’s great response to Kos’ frustration with the Dem candidates for governor, you should also read Delta’s take on the atmosphere created by the negative campaigning.

15% Doolittle / CA-04

• I think a “Heh, indeed” is appropriate here.
• The more I read about the Republican involvement in protecting the people who were exploiting women in the Marianas (sweatshops, forced prostitution, forced abortions, rape), the more I wonder how people like 15% Doolittle can sleep at night. Family values, indeed.
• Good news for the 15% Doolittle family! They’ve made up to $150,000 from their campaign contributors this election cycle!

Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

• McNerney and McCloskey both want to know what Paid-For Pombo knew about the exploitation of women in the Marianas by Jack Abramoff’s clients, and when he knew it.
• Paid-For Pombo: Objectively pro-global-warming.
• This is disappointing. Progressive 11th reports that Filson’s FEC report suggests he’s paying for astroturf slate mailers. (More about why this is so disappointing below.)
• Say No To Pombo has an interesting post about the shibboleths of “centrism” and “electability”.

Education

• The Educational Justice Blog reports that the Cal Supremes have reinstated the California High School Exit Exam. They’re not pleased.
• The Citizens are happier with the reinstatement of the CAHSEE.
• The Capitol Observer reports on the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress state rankings: we’ve beaten Mississippi, and only Mississippi. No-one should be happy at that.

Immigration

• D-Day thinks that the recent Senate compromise on immigration doesn’t suck all that much, though he doubts that anything good will come out of the conference committee. Tex Sensenbrenner provides support for that hypothesis.
• Marc Cooper comes down in roughly the same place as D-Day.
• Politics in the Zeros doesn’t like it.
• The Talent Show is not thrilled with the Senate’s immigration bill, and gets its flaws (in the real world) just about right. The comments are worth reading, as they descend into nativist nuttery pretty fast. More from the real world here.

Other Electoral

• Remember, it’s not just Republicans who are a wee bit too friendly to corporate interests. It’s certain Democrats as well. In a lot of races. The difference is that we expect better from Democrats.
• Shane Goldmacher of the California Observer crossposts a Capitol Weekly piece on the nastiness of some campaign direct mail. It is useful to read this piece in conjunction with the descriptions of Gary South and Tom Mulholland in Marc Cooper’s LA Weekly piece.
• Assembly Member Tim Leslie (R – 15% Doolittle) shows why he needs to be termed out, even if nobody else does.
• Keeping one’s eyes on the prize in CA-50.
• If you want to know what a male feminist Christian professor is voting for this June, here’s your answer.
• Here are Progressive 11th’s picks.
• The SCCDP blog has been following the dustup over the Silicon Valley CofC’s false attacks on Cindy Chavez, San Jose mayoral candidate. The chair of the SVCOC has resigned, and a former chair has made public his resignation from the SVCOC. Still no apology for the lie, though.

Think Pieces

• Bill Cavala has a short piece at California Progress Report that nonetheless manages to be a glorious mess. He seems to be advocating public financing, redistricting reform, and the elimination of term limits as a unified platform, even while admitting that the public only supports the first of those.
• Joe Dunn explains the oligopoly problem in California’s gasoline supply.
• janinsanfran thinks that Mi Familia Vota is looking to go national from Florida and has some thoughts on the matter. The piece is worth reading, and not just because I agree wholeheartedly with big chunks of it.
• Howie Klein on the bogus slate mailer problem. Man, I hate these things — first up against the wall when the revolution comes. I think the slimiest version I have personally seen was put out by the pharmaceutical industry last year, which recommended progressive positions on every Proposition except Props 78 and 79. Here’s a good one, though.
• Incidentally, the California Club For Growth is sending out its slate mailer with the discount for “non-profit philanthropic organizations”. Related, did you know that AEI and the Heritage Institute are officially 501(c)(3) non-profits, so contributions to them are tax-deductible. Couldn’t make that up if I tried.

Other

• Randy Bayne explains exactly why indexing the minimum wage to inflation is important.
• Kvatch, from Blognonymous (and a few others) have been pursuing an interesting anti-war campaign.
• We bloggers is journamalists. Is that a step up, or down?

You can help pick the winners of a contest that will give California students scholarship money for college. Before 11am PDT, May 21, visit the contest page of the Campaign for College Opportunity. There you can read finalist essays by middle and high school kids and view the posters and TV ads they’ve created on the theme “Save a Spot for Me in College.” Take a look and cast your vote for the overall winners.

Do this and you’ll be participating in an innovative grassroots lobbying effort.

The Campaign for College Opportunity seeks to impress on state legislators the need to support community college education for all students who graduate from high school. The state master plan has called for such support for many years; the state’s higher education system has been much of the engine of California’s prosperity. But state government has been hamstrung by the refusal of Republicans to agree to any new tax measures, and consequently, community colleges have begun to crack under demand that exceeds the supply of places. They have raised fees, limited the availability of classes, and cannot provide the counselors who might help get students through the bureaucratic maze.

So the Campaign wanted to collect California students’ own thoughts and dreams about college to share them with legislators. What better way than a contest with real money prizes?

Last month I wrote about serving as a reader in the first phase of the contest. It was a fascinating experience. Hundreds of us helped winnow down 8000 entries.

Now the Campaign seeks our online votes which will be used alongside those of a panel of judges who include:

• Farai Chideya, author and correspondent for National Public Radio

• Don Hahn, Interim Head of Feature Animation at the Walt Disney Company

• Joe Kapp, former NFL star

• Josefa Salinas, radio personality for Hot 92 Jamz in Los Angeles

• Peter Schrag, columnist for the Sacramento Bee

• Mike Sklut, host of “High School Sports Focus” on Action 36 in the Bay Area

Reading these student essays, what came through so poignantly is that these young people, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, want to be what they think of as “good people” — productive workers, supports to their parents, participants in their community. Read their own words at the contest page and help give them a leg up toward their dreams..

(Bumped for visibility over my long front-pager(s) – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: November initiative preview, the race for governor (money and TV ads, same as always), the budget process, education stuff, reform stuff, 15% Doolitle, Paid-For Pombo, immigration, typical Republicans, CA-50, CA-45, urban living.

Initiative Preview

John Myers runs down the likely November ballot initiatives, which apparently don’t include the initiative to constitutionalize religious opposition to homosexuality. We’ll be writing more about these as the summer wears on.

Governor’s Race

• More money for Schwarzenegger from the usual suspects.
• More money for Westly from the usual suspect.
• New ad from Phil Angelides, and a promised new pro-Anglides IE ad from the unions. And one more new ad each from both the Angelides and Westly campaigns.
• Greg Dewar wants you to tell him about the campaign mailers you get.

Education

• Assembly Democrats lay out their differences with Governor Schwarzenegger with respect to, vis-a-vis, and regarding the new budget. Alberto Torrico (AD-20), chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee thinks that Schwarzenegger is shorting transportation costs.
• Educational Justice Blog reminds us that the big chunk of education funding in Schwarzenegger’s budget is only there because ABC and the CTA browbeat the Governor into actually keeping his promise. Why is it that Schwarzenegger needed to be pursued by the very people he attacked last year in order to keep a promise he made to the children of California?
• California Progress Report has a guest piece expressing concerns about the high school exit exam.
• The Mad Professah has written a thoughtful (and brief) post on the high school exit exam.
• Randy Bayne is not so impressed with Sheila Kuhl’s proposal to call out the contributions of GLBT folks in California textbooks, arguing that it perpetuates labelling. I would have agreed with Randy once, but the problem is that almost everyone assumes that people (historical or otherwise) straight unless it’s pointed out that they’re not. Not mentioning a difference like that continues the assumption that GLBT folks haven’t contributed.

Reform & Reformers

• Californians are interested in non-partisan redistricting: SCA 3, Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters.
• Debra Bowen would like $25K from the grassroots (which one has to assume includes the netroots). If you give, throw on a penny so they know where it comes from.

Immigration

• Marc Cooper reacts to Bush’s immigration speech: tried to steer a middle course without offending anyone, and in the process, offended his base. The discussion in comments is worth reading as well.
• Tom Hilton points us to a story in which an undocumented immigrant is paid below minimum wage, fights her employer on it, and then, surprise surprise surprise, is “anonymously” reported to INS. To the extend that undocumented immigration may depress wages in certain sectors, that would be why.
• Ms. Geek has Round 2 of an immigration discussion she’s been hosting / having.
• Old Hickory’s Weblog is talking sense, and so is sure to be ignored.
• David Neiwert is not in California, but this post is worth a glance.
• Does anyone remember Cheech Marin in “Born in East LA”? The Republicans do. Papers, please.
• Ooooh, shiny!

Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

• Apparently, Paid-For Pombo is feeling the pinch on his sacrifice of the California salmon fisheries. So, the correct response is? You guessed it: destroy marine sancturies. The guy is a one man cascade failure.
• Paid-For Pombo is all about stifling dissent, both in committee and in his campaign.
• It seems that the Pombo-McCloskey debate was a slugfest. Good.
• If I lived in CA-11, I would not vote for Pete McCloskey in the general, although I don’t think he’s a bad guy. I think a Republican majority in the House is a bad thing. The Republican Party is just too corrupt and too destructive for the few remaining honest Republicans to try to rein in. Pete McCloskey is not really a modern Republican, a charge also made by Pombo’s people. McCloskey takes umbrage and responds, proving that he’s not a modern Republican.
• Jerry McNerney on renewable energy, at Daily Kos.

15% Doolittle / CA-04

• Courtesy of Down With Doolittle, this SacBee graphic showing the CA-04 candidates.
• It’s GOOD to be on the Appropriations Committee!
• 15% Doolittle hearts sweatshops. And sweatshops heart 15% Doolittle.
• 15% Doolittle also hearts his kids, so much so that he pays for their child care out of his campaign funds. Y’know, if 15% Doolittle’s wife didn’t work outside the home collecting the family kickbacks, if they had a more traditional marriage and better family values, maybe 15% Doolittle wouldn’t have to rely on his campaign donors to take care of his children.

General Purpose Republican Corruption

• Just so we’re all clear about Paid-For Pombo and 15% Doolittle, VP Dick Cheney is coming to California to raise funds for them. Three of a kind: self-dealing extremists with nothing but contempt for democracy and civil liberties.
• Still more corruption from California Republicans. This time it’s Ken Calvert (CA-44), with a classic scam: buy some land, legislate to increase the land value, sell some land, repeat until wealthier.
• Down With Tyranny continues to do yeomans’s work on the avatar of Republican corruption that is Jerry Lewis (CA-41). See also this from Pacific Views. California Republicans must be so shameless proud.

The Rest

• Now Bill Hauf is in the CA-50 primary race. Jon Fleischman must be very happy.

Also, AnthonyLA at DailyKos documents the Republican lies in CA-50 and asks, inter alia: “This is the guy that isn’t conservative enough for the California Republicans?”

• Uneasy Rhetoric puts up a good discussion of the perceived costs and benefits of living in a far-flung suburb vs. living in a city center.
• That Mad Professah is talking about AD-45 again. This time it’s about LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s endorsement.
• California Republicans at their finest.

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: No cash for levees, Bush visits, Arnold photo-ops, clean money, minimum wage, education, public health, Rovism resurfaces, Paid-For Pombo, outside influence in CA-11, CA-50.

P.S. Yr. Humble Editor will be unavailable for several days; the Blog Roundup will return on Monday.

Pot-Pourri is at the top today

• California will get no federal help for the levees in Sacramento. Big shock. Not that the levees are likely to fail, or anything.
• AB 583, the California legislature’s clean money bill, is up for a hearing in the Senate Elections committee today. We’ll keep an eye out.
• on pretty much every aspect of the indexing of the minimum wage to inflation: political, moral, exponential.Shame on us.
• Dunner’s Stunners has some thoughts on the Sheila Kuhl bill on including GLBT individuals in public school history courses.
• Take that, free market fundamentalists!
• The Mad Professah notices that HIV+ diagnoses are now to be reported to the state by name, no longer by unique (but anonymous) identifier.

Governor-ish

• Bush’s California schedule: looks like it will be dissent-free.
• Unless of course, Governor Schwarzenegger has a complaint about California’s status as net donor state, particularly with respect to the recent “sorry, but no” from the feds on levee funding.
• ABC points us to the Chron’s reporting of a Schwarzenegger campaign listing of media mentions, identified as “attacks” and “opportunities”. ABC mentions that media mentions aren’t usually characterized quite that aggressively. For me, this is just more proof that they’ve imported the Rovian campaign strategy to the Schwarzenegger campaign, one part of which is viewing the press as just another special interest to be bullied or bought, as the situation demands.
• Looks like Phil Angelides will have some help (uncoordinated, of course) from some friends.

Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

• Progressive 11th has a quick and pithy summary of the current state of fundraising in CA-11.
• In that vein, Say No To Pombo has an interesting excerpt from the April 15 FEC filings: looks like the DCCC picked sides in the CA-11 primary, despite saying they wouldn’t.
• More Paid-For Pombo flip-flops (or flat-out lies) about his H.R. 4437 position.
• PomboWatch notices that Paid-For Pombo doesn’t seem to be inclined to actually discuss his positions in front of his constituents.

CA-50

Apparently, the Republicans in CA-50 may have an interesting choice for the June 6 primary: Eric Roach, who is acceptable to California Republicans, but well to the right in the national party, or Brian Bilbray, who is well to the right of the national center, but not still not extreme enough for the California Republicans.