Links:

*  John Wildermuth thinks Meg Whitman is scared of the IEs against her campaign, and that’s why she’s pressing Poizner to get out of the race.

*  Looks like the only CA-Sen debate on the Republican side will be on May 6. Mark that one on your calendars, should be fun.

*  Some Republicans criticize earmarks. Not Jerry Lewis. He’s # 2 in Congress in earmarks with over $82 million.  And by the way, that man is not looking well.

*  At least 1,500 NUMMI-related car manufacturing jobs have been lost due to the closure of the facility in Fremont.

* Oh good, Jacques Barzaghi, Jerry Brown’s Rasputin-like advisor is back in the Bay Area.

Links:

*  College Dems President Ian Magruder has an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee today about how student voters can affect the higher education funding crisis.

*  Arnold says that the Assembly is losing PR points for rejecting Maldonado as LG. Really? Does he think people really care who is LG? That’s optimistic.

*  DiFi is definitely out of the CA-Gov race. (Maybe)

*  Timm Herdt takes inspiration from a Honda commercial in advocating for clean energy sources and AB 32’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gasses.

Links:

*  Want a close-up with Jerry Brown? Well, this is pretty darn close.

*  Dan Weintraub, a former Bee columnist, has launched a new non-profit health care news website. You can find HealthyCal here.

*  Former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates has been hospitalized for a serious, but unannounced, condition. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

*  Tax benefits and loopholes are costing the state over $40 Billion each fiscal year.  Fix that, and deficit solved…

Links:

* Sen. Yee is pushing for an audit of the UC system and the Governor’s financial ties to it.

*  Rep. Baca is pushing a new bill to prevent investors from bidding on a foreclosed home where Fannie or Freddie Mach has a loan interest until fifteen days after it goes on the market. In theory, it could help home buyers get into a home and stop losing out to all-cash investor offers.  Maybe…

*  LA Unified is recalling teachers that they’ve loaned out to the County and other institutions. However, one school is fighting that for a history teacher.

*  The fight over the Oakland A’s continues after several years of wrangling.

Links:

*  Tom Campbell has raised about as much money for his senate campaign, about $700 K, than he did for governor in a year.

*  Is abstaining = voting no? Kinda sorta.

*  Republican registration continues to fall. It set a new all-time low at 30.8% statewide.

*  DiFi is getting kinda scary on water issues. She’s always been tight with the Westside farmers, but if more action comes out of this chuminess, it’s not going to be good for the Delta.

Links:

*  Tom Campbell says that he did not coordinate with Meg Whitman in his decision to change races, “period.” Steve Poizner will do his best to investigate.

*  There’s another fight over who is actually Native American brewing over a casino in Sonoma County.

*  Capitol Weekly logs the furlough suits.

*  The prison officers union, CCPOA, owes the state $4 million.

* PG&E had a reporter kicked out of a forum where a representative was talking about their powergrab initiative.

Links:

*  iCarly News! She endorsed bankruptcy for the state, apparently unaware that it isn’t possible under federal bankruptcy law.  Oh well, but it sounds very serious.  In other news, she’s also endorsed the “paycheck protection” plan to cut unions out of politics. You think she’s going to support the measure to require corporations get approval from their shareholders when they want to spend on politics?

*  Steve Lopez has a good column calling out Mercury Insurance for their initiative (Prop 17) to legalize their already sketchy practices.

*  The Top 10 Political Givers of the last decade.  Bing and Poizner are the top two.

*  The San Diego Republican Central Committee booted out one of its members for helping state GOP chair Ron Nehring trying to cover up his domestic violence problems.

Links:

*  Sarah Palin made a stop in California, and had enough time to thumb her nose at scientists. Apparently, broad consensus on climate change isn’t enough for her. She needs they apocalypse to occur before she’ll consider climate change real. In which case she’ll be called up to heaven, natch, so it won’t much matter to her.

*  Jim Lacy, Dana Point right-winger extraordinaire, is busy these days. He’s trying to recall Asm. Diane Harkey for some ethics issues. I’m sure it’s not that hard to find something juicy on Harkey. And in his spare time, he’s working on an Impeach Obama site. Fun Stuff!

*  Steve Poizner is keeping up the heat on Meg Whitman over the Mike Murphy email trying to get Poizner out of the race. Sometimes right-wing radio can be fun. –>

*  Asm. Jose Solorio’s committee has gone after the EDD staff for their failures in their IT overhaul.

* The Governor will run the Olympic torch into Vancouver’s Stanley Park before the Opening Ceremonies.

* There’s a Repair California Con-Con Information Session in Santa Clara tomorrow evening.

Links:

*  Patty Berg is officially out of the Insurance Commissioner Race. She hadn’t been really campaigning, and her campaign account shows less than $3,000. Her listed consultants are now informing reporters that she is officially out of the race.

* CalBuzz suggests Steve Poizner go blue-collar populist against MoneyBags Whitman.

*  CaliforniaWatch tells us that Meg Whitman dumped a bunch of money on radio during Raiders games. Bet that was productive.

*  Folks in Tom McClintock’s distract are saying his anti-earmark stance is hurting the district’s bottom line. Hey, maybe John Doolittle will come back for them…

Most of the statewide Candidates will be coming to the California Young Democrats Bay Area candidate forum on Saturday at 1PM in SF. Here’s the Facebook event. If you can’t make it in person, you can watch it online on VidSF or right here at Calitics.  Pretty sweet.  Anyway, I (Brian) will be there, so it’s sure to be a blast.

Here are some links for your weekend:

*  Jerry Brown’s office was cleared in wrongdoing in the secret audio tapes made of calls with reporters.

*  Tom Berryhill’s right-wing opponent, Heidi Fuller, in the senate primary to replace Dave Cogdill, is suing to block Berryhill from the ballot. He’s just now moving to the district and Fuller says that doesn’t meet a one-year residency requirement.  Berryhill says that the one year rule is unconstitutional under a Supreme Court case striking down a similar law in Tennessee.

*  The Republican primary for the Senate race could be getting really ugly. It seems the Demon Sheep has triggered something between Campbell and Fiorina. Meanwhile, the radio right-wingers John and Ken surprised Carly Fiorina with a call from Chuck DeVore.

*  Speaking of Campbell, he’s going around proposing a “revenue neutral” carbon tax instead of cap and trade.  His proposal is to eliminate or restructure the federal payroll tax (FICA) and replace the revenue with the carbon tax. I (Brian) won’t argue with him that the carbon tax is more efficient than cap and trade, that much is abundantly clear. However, replacing FICA is a bit more troublesome.