Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: infrastructure bonds and the governor’s race, just the governor’s race, CA-50, CA-04, CA-11, immigration, CA-45, auto insurance, levees.

Infrastructure Bonds

• Alliance for a Better California outlines the effect the infrastructure bonds may have on the race for governor. Also, Julia’s got the two main Democratic candidate’s press releases on the topic: Angelides thanks the Democratic leaders, while Westly uses the “bipartisanship” buzzword.
• Frank Russo likes the bonds, but doesn’t think the bonds will help Schwarzenegger much, given that the legislative leaders asked him to just stay out of the way. Apparently, when Schwarzenegger governs least, that’s when he governs best.
• See also Bill Bradley: Arnold wants the “Bipartisan” cred anyway and is looking for ways to use the current revenue windfall, probably politically.

Gubernatorial Race

• Fired Up! California points us to a Sherry Bebitch Jeffe op-ed, which suggests that in supporting Schwarzenegger the extremist California Republican Party will, against their instincts, truly be choosing the lesser evil.
• Apparently, we now have to learn “flip-flop” in a variety of Native American languages in order to describe Arnold Schwarzenegger’s approach to Indian gaming.
• New Westly ad in Spanish: it’s clean, fast and optimistic.

CA-50

• Down With Tyranny explains that CA-50 is a choice between sane and honest Democrat Francine Busby on the one hand, and on the other either extremist Republican Roach or corrupt Republican Bilbray. Oddly, the Republicans don’t seem to be doing as well as their voter registration numbers suggest they should be.
• San Diego Politics notes that Cheney, McCain, and Hastert will be raising money for the corrupt Republican.
• Words Have Power notes that Christian values don’t seem to go much past gay-bashing and anti-choice positions in CA-50.

15% Doolittle / CA-04

• Dump Doolittle has a nice summary of 15% Doolittle’s corruption, delivered in convenient bite-sized pieces, with quotes. Also, some creative signage in CA-04.
• This is rich: 15% Doolittle has gone too far in opposing civil rights even for Tex Sensenbrenner, the Republican chairman of the House Justice Committee that wanted to turn assisting out-of-status immigrants into a felony.

Immigration

• janinsanfran spent some time on Sunday thinking about the new immigration movement. In related news criticism, left i on the news notes the peculiar disparity in coverage of two different rallies.
• Dan Ancona also penned a meditation on immigration issues.

Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

• Not even Republicans like Paid-For Pombo. That makes sense. Paid-For Pombo doesn’t really like America.
• Progressive 11th has a news roundup covering Jerry McNerny and Paid-For Pombo.
• Say No To Pombo asks the timeless question: “Does Paid-For Pombo’s knowing lie in a campaign mailer constitute mail fraud?”

The Rest

• Frank Russo. One post, one idea: Clean Money.
• Get Your Blog Up notes another entrant into the CA-45 race, but doubts the wisdom of the entrant.
• Whatever It Is, I’m Against It is actually for Proposition 81, but against Proposition 82. So, I guess he’s against being against Proposition 81?
• The California Observer reports a new battle in the auto insurers’ decades-long war on John Garamendi. What’s amusing about this is that the auto insurers are attacking Garamendi in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, when his competition is Jackie Speier. First, this is just punitive, since he’s termed out of the insurance commissioner position. Second, do they think that Speier would be more insurer friendly?
• There is no industry so libertarian that it won’t seek a government subsidy.
• The mess at Devil’s Slide.
• Running statewide, downticket.
• Brian Dennert here asks a good question: Is Tom McClintock really from Thousand Oaks, or has he gone all Sacramento?
• California Progress Report asks what happens when the levees fail? Terry Preston thinks we’ll get it sorted, no help from the outside.

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Longish, as it’s been a while. More regular roundups will resume shortly. Teasers: Marc Cooper on the state of the Democratic Party, the horse race (meh), PPIC exposes some “and a pony” thinking on education, 15% Doolittle, Paid-For Pombo, the impending Roach / Bilbray primary in CA-50, electoral and finance reform, and last, miscellany.

This roundup does not include any posts from yesterday, as I was at the CDP Convention. I’ll try to post a supplement and a Convention after-action later today.

• Marc Cooper has written a great article / blog post at LA Weekly concerning the schlerotic California Democratic Party and the extent to which the primary race for the Democratic gubernatorial candidacy is determined by ridiculous endorsement races, money tracking, all aided and abetted by the punditocracy and punditeriate more interested in color commentary on the horse race than actual issues.
• And speaking of horse race crapola, we have the Westly complaint against Angelides lodged with the Fair Political Practices Commission. I have a hard time taking seriously the Westly campaign mouth noises about positive campaigning (including Westly’s prepared speech for the CDP convention) when they’re pulling this kind of stuff.
• Frank Russo has a pretty good thumbnail of the recent PPIC poll on the most important issue for Californians: the state of our education system. Of particular interest, most likely voters want to increase funding for education, but they don’t really want to do what’s necessary to pay for it. And of course, Phil Angelides is willing to step up and challenge this “and a pony” kind of thinking that the Republicans exploit, for which he’ll no doubt be punished. See also Bill Bradley.
• Alliance for a Better California points us to a pair of SacBee articles comparing the recent Angelides & Westly ads.

CA-04, CA-11, CA-50

• Republican corruption: it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Does 15% Doolittle, family man, moral exemplar, feel any concern about his assocation with procurers? No? What about pimps?
• A small miscellany from Delta at Say No To Pombo. Also, Delta likes Steve Thomas as much as or more than either of the major candidates.
• Down With Tyranny comes out for Jerry McNerney and against both Paid-For Pombo and Rahm Emanuel.
• Words Have Power has been on fire for the last few days. First, he’s got George Will’s endorsement of Eric Roach in the CA-50 Republican primary. Sweet! And of course, one might question whether the megachurch fundamentalists in CA-50 will turn out for Mormon Roach.

Reform

• The Young Democrats have a guest post at Frank Russo’s place, laying out a new primary plan. Worth pondering. See also Mayor Sam’s Sister City on AB 2949, intended to make California’s presidential primary earliest.
• John Drzal likes AB 2948, which would throw California’s electoral votes to the popular vote winner.
• Public finance! Public Finance!

Miscellany

• One of my hobbyhorses: auto insurance companies don’t want to rate people according to their records, but extraneous personal factors.
• ABC has got this gem: Governor Schwarzenegger wants automatic increases for his own budget, even while he’s resisting cost-of-living increases in the minimum wage. Good for me, but not for thee, apparently.
• Lockyer takes on the oil companies. Go, Bill.
• Last, because it’s purty, Tom Hilton’s pictures of Mendocino.

Today’s Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Feingold in LA, CA-11, CA-50, CA-36, gas gouging, a little on the Dem Gov Primary, and a lot of neat stuff in “Other”.

Feingold Blogger Lunch

OK, first of all, some Los Angeles bloggers got to lunch with Russ Feingold yesterday. Here are their reports:

• Joseph Cannon of Cannonfire (a new blog to me, to be added to the big blogroll)
• Howie Klein of Down with Tyranny
• RJ Eskow of Night Light (and HuffPo)
• Steve of SteveAudio
• Brad Friedman of the BradBlog

CA-11

• Progressive 11th attended the Tracy Candidates’ Forum and reports back. Prog11 supports McNerney, near as I can tell, but assuming his report of Filson’s attitude toward the grassroots is correct, it isn’t very happy-making. More important, those grassroots are the people you need to run through brick walls for you in the general, so you might not want to dump on them in the primary.
• Jerry McNerney was interviewd on the Quake today.

CA-50

• In addition to the new polling data that WHP notes in his diary, Chris Bowers of MyDD has an interesting discussion about determining the baseline for success in CA-50.
• Busby reports that she’s got a narrow lead over Bilbray in her tracking polls. Interesting.
• Brian Bilbray refuses to repudiate the swift-boating of Francine Busby. Let’s check again. Nope, still won’t call for the ad to be taken down, even though he’s done it in a different campaign. Funny, we saw the Bush Campaign do the same nothing in the incident that gave rise to the term. Guess we know what kind of Republican Bilbray is: too chicken to do the dirty work, too nasty to call it off.
• Eric Roach may run against Bilbray in the Republican primary to be held the same day as the special election runoff. I think that’s a good idea: primaries are healthy.

CA-36

Marcy Winograd, the primary challenger to Jane Harman in CA-36, introduced herself at MyDD (and yes, we need to send them an email). The comments are interesting. Down with Tyranny is all for Marcy.

Black Gold! Texas Tea!

• Arnold. Oil. Beholden much? And even more fun, the guy that Arnold wants to look into price-gouging is a pro-extractive industry, anti-regulation lame duck. It’s impressive that Arnold could take action that’s ineffective on almost every level.
• Frank Russo has a rundown of current efforts to tax oil windfall profits and push back the price gouging.
• You’ve seen it all over the place, but I’m going to give D-Day the link for Nancy Pelosi’s short sermon on the effect of putting two oilmen in the White House.

Dem Gov Primary

• ABC has videos of the new ads for Angelides and Westly.
• ABC draws a contrast between Bill Bradley’s negative take on the Angelides campaign with the Washington Post’s take.

“Other”

• Terry Preston of Blue Bear Republic got the same robo-call I did from the forced-breeding lobby in their attempt to resurrect Prop 73. (Also, remember Proposition 75, intended to reduce the power of public employee unions? If you check the Secretary of State’s initiative website, you’ll find pretty much that propostion all over again.) There’s an important lesson here for progressives: the Republicans never consider a matter settled, and neither should we.
• Jesus’ General (not a California blog) comes to the defense of 15% Doolittle.
• janinsanfran reports the immigration discussion from a meeting between the Episcopalian laity in San Francisco and the candiates for the bishopric thereof.
• Mayor Sam’s Sister City reports on some poo-flinging in the race for AD-38. More poo-flinging ensues in the comments. And people say we aren’t related to apes…
• The Assembly Health Committee has been busy with a whole boatload of pro-consumer bills.
• Terry Preston again with an explanation of why teachers teach where they do.

Today’s California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: the independent expenditure campaign for Angelides, a bit more on the Angelides/Westly matchup, Governor Schwarzenegger’s manifest and multitudinous failings, the import of CA-50 and the Republican swift-boating of Francine Busby, more 15% Doolittle and his defenders moral relativism, Paid-For Pombo’s self-dealing and propaganda, and some miscellaneous commentary I found interesting on Di-Fi, Bush’s visit, California Senate Staffers, etc.

The Angelides / Westly Matchup

• I was away for a long weekend and return to lots of commentary on the independent expenditure effort on Phil Angelides behalf. I rather like Shane Goldmacher’s California Observer post, which has a good summary of what’s happening and notes, sensibly, that most of the carping and speculation that one hears is really all inside baseball which likely won’t affect the voters. Bill Bradley has a bit more on the genesis of the IE campaign, as well as a lot of inside baseball and personality gossip, for them as are interested in that sort of thing.
• Bill Bradley also notes that Steve Westly has bought a fair bit of cable TV advertising. That’s likely to be pretty closely targeted, so if someone has an insight as to which channels, that would be interesting.
• Another day, another Bill Bradley critique of the Angelides campaign.
• Angelides is green. No, wait, Westly is green. OK, they’re both all Kermitesque. So are the Dems in the State Senate.

Governor Schwarzenegger

• Richocheting off of a piece by Frank Russo, ABC notes that Governor Schwarzenegger’s workers’ comp reform seems to have worked pretty much in favor of the insurance companies at the expense of the workers. Why is anyone surprised when a Republican initiative hoses working people? It’s as predictable as gravity . . . maybe more so.
• Arnold good with California’s prison system? Not so much.
• Arnold getting some federal help to donor-state California to strengthen the levees in the Sacramento Valley? Not so much.
• Arnold enforcing laws intended to help the working poor? Not so much.
• Frank Russo asks if Governor Arnold “5 Hummers in my garage” Schwarzenegger will do anything about what looks very much like gasoline price gouging? Hey, the man owns five Hummers. If he can take it, surely the rest of us can. Wimps.

CA-50

• Chris Bowers at MyDD ponders whether a Busby win in the runoff would be a harbinger for realignment, and whether a loss would indicate the opposite.
• Francine Busby responds to the Republican swiftboat-style ads in CA-50. Turns out those ads are pretty much all lies and distortions. Whoda thunk it?
• Words Have Power notes that the NRCC, which is paying for the ad, seems to have no-one able to comment on it. Apparently the ad sprang organically from the Republican party infrastructure in the dark of night (rather like a mushroom).

15% Doolittle / CA-04

• Can 15% Doolittle stop lying? Now it turns out that a 15% commission paid (to the candidate’s wife) on amounts raised is not actually standard practice in the fundraising industry. See also the SacBee editorial that Dump Doolittle points toward. Seriously — this is a flat-out bribe. B.R.I.B.E. Doolittle might as well have had a menu like Cunningham’s printed up.
• Oh, wait a minute: maybe 15% Doolittle does have a menu. Here’s WHP again with a 15% Doolittle connection to Duke Cunningham’s favorite bribe source.
• And in 15% Doolittle’s defense, we get another Republican saying “as long it’s legal”, it’s ethical. That explains a lot about the modern Republican party: both their corruption and their burning desire to pass laws to regulate private behavior. They’re just trying to stop themselves before they sin again.
• But wait, there’s more. Words Have Power finds Jon Fleischman of the Flash Report (also former Executive Director of the California Republican Party) joining the fan club for 15% Doolittle. Seriously, these people have no moral compass.

Paid-For Pombo / CA-11

• Progressive 11th has a pretty good litany of Paid-For Pombo’s self-dealing as the nominal representative of his constituents. Look, if one is a doctrinaire movement conservative like Paid-For Pombo, believing that government has no real purpose, why not strip-mine it?
• Again from Progressive 11th, a roundup of links concerning Paid-For Pombo’s use of public money to distribute anti-conservation propaganda. See also Seeing The Forest.

Smörgåsbord

• The mighty King of Zembla looks, briefly, at Dianne Feinstein’s financial ties.
• Martini Republic wasn’t all that excited about Ned Lamont dropping in for a fundraiser in Oakland.
• janinsanfran has a useful categorization of political types, jumping off from a reading of Crashing The Gates.
• The California Observer profiles the top Democratic staffer on California budget issues. Craig Cornett sounds like an impressive guy, but I am reminded again of the extent to which term limits force us to rely on staffers and lobbyists for institutional memory.
• Also from The California Observer: a net loss in the absolute number of jobs in California, with a particular weakness in the building industry. The reader is left to make his or her own inferences.
• left i on the news has a brief and piquant critique of the Washington Post’s reporting on President Bush’s visit to California. liotn also has some coverage of the protest of Bush’s presence at Cisco, which is most notable for the photo showing the distance of the “free speech zone” from Bush’s august person.
• Last, the SF Chronicle endorses Debra Bowen, as reported by … Debra Bowen.

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.