Links from around the state:

• While in LA for his $30K/plate dinner, President Obama took some time to be rather insensitive on the day after the Prop 8 ruling.  (From the comments, see this dKos diary that has a video of the incident, telling a different tale than Sullivan.) Meanwhile, the LA Gay & Lesbian Center wrote a powerful rebuke to the President for failing to live up to his rhetoric on LGBT issues.  This is going to fester unless the Administration does something about it.

• HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius did release $14 million dollars as part of the stimulus package to expand capacity for all 118 community health centers in California.  It’s a drop in the bucket, but still appreciated.

• Apparently Warehouse Workers United shut down an entire warehouse district in the Inland Empire today, protesting pitiful working conditions at warehouses that serve some of the largest corporations in America.

• Rush Limbaugh goes after Arnold for “ruining California” by going moderate.  Popcorn time!

• Barbara Boxer and Al Franken have teamed up their fundraising in what I consider a brilliant move.  Boxer helps out the man who will become the 60th Democrat in the Senate, while showing her commitment to the Democratic agenda and winning national praise.  Makes a ton of sense, great idea.

• The actual ad hitting vulnerable House Democrats for their ties to Nancy Pelosi and the CIA controversy is useless and not revelatory.  But interestingly enough, one seat is missing from the GOP’s targets – CA-11.  They seem to have given up on winning back Jerry McNerney’s district anytime soon.  That’s the only news here.

• More stupid cuts: CalWORKS. We lose $3.7 bln in federal dollars to save $1.8 Bln in state dollars.  Plus, we lose a $600 Million stimulus kicker. Hooray for short-sightedness! Who needs a safety net anyway? It’s not like people are struggling financially…oh…wait…

• Simon Johnson’s “Design A Country Rescue Contest” made me chuckle.

• State workers are far from overpaid. In fact, they earn far less than their private sector counterparts. Oh, and “California in 2007 had 103 full-time equivalent state employees for every 10,000 residents, second-lowest in the nation behind Illinois’ 97.”

• Watch out, America: apparently California has a laser fusion machine.  Give us our bailout or… oh, what, it’s not a weapon?  Never mind.  But actually, this is a significant development in terms of renewable energy.  This would be the first fusion machine to create more energy than it consumes, and could truly become a revolutionary, world-changing machine.  We need one of them.

To the news:

• Just because it’s cool: OC Progressive asks John Wesley Harding 5 questions.

• More celebrities: Pierce Brosnan is hosting a fundraiser for AD-35 candidate Susan Jordan. Jordan is an environmentalist, and is also married to the current Assembly member, Pedro Nava. There’s going to be an interesting primary in the race. The seat is a safe Dem seat.

• CalBuzz takes a look at the Prop 8 Ruling and the Guv race. Meg Whitman once again sounds ridiculous by hailing the decision in terms of grand freedoms. What a joke. Dan Walters kind of echoes eMeg. Walters completely fails to understand how completely flawed our initiative system is. It has never worked, and the system needs overhauling.

• Speaking of eMeg. She’s about to get McCain’s endorsement. Oooh, yippee. That’s sure to be worth a ton here.

• Former Assemblyman Paul Koretz has claimed victory in the 5th City Council District in Los Angeles over neighborhood activist David Vahedi.

• Sign of the times: Nearly 1 million Californians seek medical care in Mexico annually.  And of course, if we destroy the health care social safety net for low-income Californians and push 2 million more off of insurance, that number will rise.  Our health care system is completely broken.

• CalSTRS needs more money, lots of it.  They will be asking for several billion more. Teriffic, that’s what we need to hear right now.

• The pundit class, such as Tim Herdt is following the grassroots. They’re seeing the fact that the system is in need of reform.  

• As for the SF Bay Guardian, they’re looking into the background of the notion of splitting the state. While there would be some positives, notably that the Coastal, populous counties would produce some of the nation’s finest schools and services, it creates a whole slew of problems as well. Beyond the politics, it’s not clear if a Central Valley based state has the tax base to sustain itself. And there are the water issues, which would be massive.  

Enjoy the long weekend.  Here are some links…

• California’s unemployment rate fell last month. Real sign of recovery or a dead cat bounce?

• Seriously? DiFi denying a run for governor again? Wow, that’s about the 800th time that’s been written.

• Lockyer: What Arnold said.  This kind of stuff really makes me long for the days of wine and roses that were the Phil Angelides treasurership.

• The Transportation Secretary appropriated $48 million dollars this week for BART restoration, but like a lot of transportation funds in the stimulus, they provide funds for improvements to existing transit lines rather than build-outs of new lines.  Not that the funding isn’t needed to make infrastructure improvements, but this isn’t exactly an expansion.

• Pete Stark will be back at work shortly. He’s been in the hospital for pneumonia for a while, but all signs point to a full return to health shortly.

• Sadly, John Wildermuth took a buyout from the Chronicle. His reportage will be sorely missed in SF and around the state.

• The last race that was up in the air on May 5th is most likely no longer up in the air.  A large chunk of new votes were tallied in the Los Angeles City Council District 5 race, and Paul Koretz has expanded his lead over opponent David Vahedi to 551 votes (the previous margin was 335).  Barring a huge mistake in earlier vote-counting there simply aren’t enough outstanding votes for Vahedi to have a chance to make up the difference.

I (Brian) will be on Your Call Radio tomorrow morning at 11 AM to discuss the news of the week in the weekly media roundtable. You can listen on 91.7 FM in San Francisco, or stream it online. I’ll post a link to the podcast afterwards. Now, to our collaborative link efforts:

• As a coda to Tuesday’s election, we still don’t know who won the Los Angeles 5th City Council District.  Paul Koretz won on Election Day over David Vahedi by 335 votes, but there are about 3,000 provisional and late vote-by-mail ballots left to be counted.  Stay tuned.

• A big victory for Henry Waxman, as the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed his energy and climate bill, which includes a cap and trade system for carbon emissions and a renewable energy standard.  Mary Bono Mack (CA-45) actually voted the bill out of committee, the only Republican to do so.  Ultimately, the bill is compromised and could do with being strengthened – the Sierra Club has some ideas – but clearing cap and trade from the committee loaded with coal-state Congresscritters and headed by the Dingellsaurus for decades is significant.

• First Lady Maria Shriver planted a garden at the Capitol. If this budget gets any worse, we might need to expand that garden and sell the produce to pay off some of the state debt.

• It’s not so much that the SacBee posted a kind of childish op-ed on their website, it’s that they tried to scrub it unsuccessfully.  A lot of newspapers post bad op-eds, I don’t know what they were afraid of.  Nevertheless, the far right is in a tizzy about it, because they’re victim addicts and everything’s about them.

• The California budget will be the same size as it was in 1999 assuming the current projections are accurate. Because there hasn’t been any inflation since then.

• Health Access released a report (PDF)showing that at least half a million Californians have lost their insurance over the past 18 months.

As if there wasn’t enough happening today…

• Jonathan Singer has a good interview with Gavin Newsom.  In general, Newsom is a very confident, positive guy, but he lets his slip show here:

But the caveat is that unless we have the structural changes, I don’t care who your personality is, it’s going to be very difficult to navigate out of this. So that’s the big difference between Washington, DC and Sacramento. We’re going to have to, as well, at the same time address the structural questions, not just promote a different personality as Governor.

Not personality but process, as we said here back in February.

• Jerrol LeBaron, a guy from Tujunga, put into circulation The Honor In Politics Act, a ballot initiative requiring lawmakers, under penalty of perjury, to swear in an affadavit that they had read a bill before voting for it.  If they want to vote against it, all bets are off, I guess.

This initiative ought to be the ballot statement for the initiative ending all initiatives.

• Good to see that some things never change: Dana Rohrabacher is still as crazy as can be.  Ah, the stability of instability.

• We’re up to 53% of Southern California home sales coming from foreclosures.  So again, sales are up, but prices are way down.  And the foreclosures aren’t stopping, so property values continue to plummet with every sale.

• This is either a symbol of voter anger, or a reminder of the importance of teachers to the community, or a lashing out against school cuts, or just a fake controversy pushed by residents who wanted to get into political office, or something, but voters fired the entire school board in Groveland, a town in Tuolumne County, after the board fired a popular math teacher.  Kind of a wild story, give it a read.

• And finally, thanks to John Cole for the shout-out to Calitics, and in particular Dave.  Welcome Balloon Juice readers!  Send us your pet pictures!

A wrapup of pre-election day links:

• Meg Whitman was on CNN today, talking about budgeting. Mostly she just talked about how she’s going to fire 30,000 state employees. That’ll show the fires who’s boss.

• Over at CalBuzz, political consultant Richie Ross has some interesting ideas for how to balance the budget. It’s a real doozy of an electoral process where both parties present a budget to be voted on every other year. The winning budget gets implemented.  It’s a bit too much democracy for me, but on the other hand the voters would really have to own up to the problems facing the state. (h/t back to Carla Marinucci)

• More from Marinucci: her take on the GOP proposition debate between Poizner and Campbell.

• Pacific Ethanol just filed for bankruptcy, and based on the tone of this article I’m supposed to feel sorry for them getting shoved out of business due to low fuel prices.  But prices are now rising again, and the governmet just made a major long-term investment in alternative fuels.  The problem for Pacific Ethanol has always been the corn used to make it, which takes more energy than it saves.  As the industry moves into lower energy-intensive fuels, fossilized companies like Pacific Ethanol bet on the wrong horse.

• Just a couple examples from last week on the state of the California economy.  LA area port traffic remains way down year over year, and suburbs experiencing mass foreclosure are becoming ghost towns.

• The VLF goes up tomorrow for all cars with a registration date of 5/19 or later.

• Translink will finally go live on BART this summer… hopefully. The system cost $87 million to implement, but it really is quite important. It provides an interoperable ticket between BART, MUNI, AC Transit and Golden Gate Transit. BART Board member James Fang wants to use cell phone technology instead. Look, Translink has been something of the boondoggle, but let’s just get this system up and running finally before we mess with the next big thing.

• Brian Joseph at the OC Register finds some cuts are penny-wise and pound foolish.

Just a few days left now before the May election, but for this one, there just aren’t a lot of winners, either way.  But, there are things going on. Here are a few:

• The Emanuel Pleitez campaign has released a musical video, it’s an Obama-esque video about bringing voice to the people.

• The 15 Day Close Registration Report is now available from the Secretary of State. Registration is down ever so slightly, at 73.35% of eligible voters. The partisan breakdown now stands at 44.55% D, 31.05% R, 20.03%DTS. Modoc County has the highest percentage of Republicans, at 49.86%, Alameda has the highest percentage of Democrats at 57.82%.

• Arnold thinks he is qualified to give out tips for success.  Well, if you consider making a mildly bad budget a disaster a success, then by all means feel free to follow Arnold’s tips for greatness. Speaking of Arnold’s success, he has another recall petition filed against him.

• Instead of arguing over whether hand gestures always connote gang signs, perhaps Gil Cedillo and the rest of the candidates in CA-32 could comment on the video of the El Monte police officer kicking a suspect in the head.  El Monte is square in the middle of the district.

• The California Chamber of Commerce posted its bills they won’t let the Governor sign, also known as “job killer” bills.  The Governor has almost unanimously responded to this list by vetoing every bill on it that reaches his desk.  Yes, he’s famously independent, that one.

• The No on Prop 1D Campaign released an ad rebutting Arnold’s “argument” for the props.

• Yay! Schwarzenegger people think they can cut even more under Prop 98. Because, you know, education funding is optional in the Yacht Zombie Land. Apparently, a little math can lower the Prop 98 floor. I’m sure there are some lawyers out there right now who are figuring out just how wrong he is on legal grounds. On moral grounds, there can be no question.

Beware the day before the Ides of May!

• CapAlert is compiling responses to the Governer’s Budget “Summary.

• This was a few days ago, but a group from SEIU Local 1000 protested Roger Niello’s nakedly political holdup of their contract deal by picketing one of his car dealerships in Sacramento.  Given the state of the US auto industry, they were probably the first people on the lot in weeks.

• Apparently Duncan Hunter’s son had his coming out party on Hardball today, and he is cut from the same wingnutty cloth.  As John Cole says, “Not sure what is up with California Republicans, but you all have distilled them down to liquid crazy.”  True dat.

• Good story from the NY Times about groundwater rights in the Central Valley.  The surface water has been basically accounted for, and so farmers drill down to find what they need, and it’s not a sustainable solution.

• Looks like the Governor is leaving no stone unturned to fund his unsuccessful special election – now Big Tobacco has kicked in some cash.  They were spared higher taxes in the budget deal, like many of the corporations funding the Yes side.  The irony here is that Prop. 1D would raid First Five funds DERIVED from cigarette taxes.

• DiFi introduced a bill for farmworker amnesty It’s not a real resolution to our immigration issues, but it’s a decent start.

• Los Angeles Magazine called Villaraigosa a failure, and even before he’s declared his candidacy for Governor. Ouch! But, that being said, it’s nothing that the Bay Guardian hasn’t said about the SF Mayor.

• Normally in this space we insult Abel Maldonado, but I’ll take a moment to thank him for his vote of support for Harvey Milk Day, thanks to compelling testimony from “Milk” screenwriter Dustin Lance Black.

• LA Weekly asks whether LAPD Chief Bratton’s endorsements are a good thing for the City and the Department.

To the links:

• First of all, I (Brian) want to point out a great event in the city on election night next Tuesday.  While you would be busy drowning your sorrows (because let’s face it, nobody wins come Tuesday), why don’t you come out and check out the San Francisco Young Democrats Volunteer Symposium. There will be some free appetizers and a cash bar, plenty of great folks, and lots of opportunities to volunteer for some outstanding organizations.

• I (Brian) did some chanting against Prop 1A in front of the Governor’s office in San Francisco today.  And there’s video, but given that I look like a total freak I probably shouldn’t be spreading that around.

• AB 382, sponsored by EQCA, passed out of the Assembly with 65 votes, quite impressive for an LGBT measure.  Essentially the bill requires prisons to look at sexual orientation and gender identity when they review who needs extra protection. Of course if we had a fully functioning prison system, we would less special protection because people wouldn’t be getting shanked all over the yard and raped in the massively overcrowded sleeping quarters.

Also in the gay rights legislation world, Sen Leno was also able to get a Republican vote in the Senate for his Harvey Milk Day bill.  Guess which Republican it was…if you said our dear friend Abel M., then you are right. I don’t want to use his last name, for his own protection and all. Also, the Equal ID act passed out of committee. It would make it easier for transgender people to obtain accurate documents with their correct name and gender.

• Where would the Republican candidates cut? Who knows? says Carla Marinucci.

• For some reason, the Philadelphia Inquirer gave John Yoo, aka torture-memo John, his own column. Terrific, maybe he’ll recommend that Gov. Rendell put dissident legislators in stress positions.  Come to think of it, Rendell has probably done that already.

Michael Savage’s son, Russel Weiner, the CEO of Rockstar Beverages, and a Republican candidate for Assembly in 1998, gave $25,000 to Gavin Newsom’s campaign. Apparently they went to school together.

• Remember: 1A-1F and CD-32 aren’t the only issues on the May 19 ballot for many voters.  The City of Los Angeles is having runoffs in several elections, including Council District 5, City Attorney, and two Community College Board Districts.  You can see the endorsements of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party in those races here.  The special general election in SD-26 featuring Assemblymember Curren Price and his Republican and P & F opponents will also be on the May 19 ballot.  In addition, the City of Moorpark in Ventura County is having a special election to fill an unexpired City Council term.  Many local Democrats are lining up behind firefighter Nathan Sweet.  If there’s a local election going on in your area, let us know.

One week to go before the special, so much of the news surrounds that.  But there is other news as well.

• John Wildermuth agrees with Robert and Dave that the so-called “budget summary” is politically motivated. Boogah-boogah.

• Will the expected compromise deal on climate and energy legislation mean offshore oil drilling off of California shores?

• This very curious story about wage cuts for home health care workers takes another turn, as the White House claims no final decision has been made to rescind stimulus funds.

• John McCain crawled out of bed today and endorsed Jeff Denham for Lieutenant Governor.  Surely Denham’s a shoo-in now that he’s hitched his wagon to that star.

• DiFi is pushing two Hispanic judges for the Supreme Court, 9th Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw and CA Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno.  Separately, Barbara Boxer is leading a bipartisan push for a female Justice.  To me (Dave), you shouldn’t support any old nominee just because she’s a she or checks a particular diversity box, you should support them because they’re brilliant.  Fortunately, we have options that satisfy both criteria.

• Tony Quinn takes a look at winners and losers if the budget props go down. Basically, he says that everybody loses, because you know, he supports them. But, in the longer explanation he says the big winners are the Legislative Dems and John Burton because Dems will be able to get 2/3 in 2010.

• Assembly members are getting their budgets slashed by 10%.

• SB 247 would allow schools to use e-textbooks, assuming they can buy them equally.  Not sure how likely that is at this point, but soon perhaps.