Well, the holidays are rapidly approaching, and thus let's start out this week with a BANG! WooHoo, put your Monday morning smile on!  Here are a few stories of note, once again bound together with bullets.

• A vote is scheduled in the Assembly for the health care package, but as has been discussed here, it seems Senator Perata is reluctant. There have been comments here about other Senators not so sure about this plan. The vote will likely appear on the Cal Channel, but don't expect the vote to occur at 1pm when it the floor session is scheduled. I'm guessing the caucus meetings might take a while.
• SF Mayor Gavin Newsom is discussing a tax on sugary sodas. Apparently, he’s blaming obesity in children on sodas. Oh, what’s that you say, there is a link between the two? Oh, well, I guess it’s time to sell that Pepsi stock.
• There's a little tussle going on in the other side of the California blogosphere on Prop 93. Jon Fleischman opposes it. Former GOP Sen Jim Brulte has endorsed it. Check out the back and forth here. (Disclosure)
• Apparently Orange County isn't content with being the biggest municipal bankruptcy in the history of our country, they invested in a bunch of bad debt in the mortgage crisis. It's coming home to roost now. ( LA Times)
• Some writers are bypassing the studios and starting up their own new media production companies. By the by, QuarterLife, an independent web show, which was then given some money by NBC, will be shown by that network in February. (The QuarterLife folks make clear that their goal was not to create strike busting programming, but that NBC had an option to buy that they, legally, couldn't refuse) Perhaps the studios will learn a bit from these new developments. Or they won't and they'll go the way of the dinosaur. Either way, we'll likely get better content.

Over the flip you'll find the weekly Democratic radio address, this time from Assembly member Ted Lieu about the mortgage crisis. Consider this an open thread.

Hello, this is Assemblymember Ted Lieu, chair of the Assembly Banking and Finance

Committee.

    As our state faces looming budget shortfalls that threaten vital funds for infrastructure,

public safety, and social services, the emerging sub-prime mortgage crisis is poised to

jeopardize our attempts to salvage our state’s financial commitments.

    Because reckless mortgage lenders issued variable interest rate home loans to folks that

simply couldn’t afford to pay their monthly bills, 1 out of every 88 homes in California are

currently undergoing foreclosure.

    According to the Center for Responsible Lending, nearly 180,000 California homes will

be lost to foreclosure from the 826,900 sub-prime loans made in 2005 and 2006 alone.

    California could lose nearly $3 billion in property tax revenue and another $1 billion in

sales and transfer tax revenue.

    Remarkably, an estimated 61% of the sub-prime mortgage borrowers would have qualified for loans with more reasonable monthly payments, had their lenders not been so narrowly focused on short-term profits.

    But this isn’t just a problem for those about to lose their homes.

    Home prices are expected to decline in California by up to 20-percent and that’s

because each foreclosure within an eighth of a mile of a single-family home results in a 1%

decline in the value of that home.

    And working- and middle-class neighborhoods are especially in danger of being blighted due to abandoned homes.

    While this is not uniquely a California problem, our state is especially hard hit, with five

of the top ten areas with the highest foreclosure rates in the country, including Stockton,

Riverside/San Bernardino, Sacramento, Bakersfield and Oakland.

    And the response from the White House has simply been tepid and woefully inadequate.

    Clearly, the time for legislative action is now.

    Assembly Democrats have compiled a practical and effective package of bills to address

our state’s housing woes, and we have asked the Governor to call for a special session to

bring to the table all interested parties.

    Our package includes bills that will identify at-risk borrowers and determine what

lenders have done to assist them and ban prepayment penalties that essentially prevent

borrowers from refinancing.

    Other bills add consumer real estate mortgage loans to the list of consumer contracts

subject to California civil code translation requirements, protecting potential homeowners

for whom English is a second language, and we hope to end incentives and kickbacks that

spur lenders to push sub-prime loans onto buyers ill-equipped to afford their monthly

payments.

    And our bills will improve counseling services that can protect consumers from bad loans

and help them find potential avenues for keeping their homes, and we will introduce tough

income verification regulations, requiring lenders to consider an applicant’s ability to repay

over the life of a loan.

    Assembly Democrats are committed to working in a bipartisan and pragmatic fashion to

protect homeowners and preserve our state’s fiscal solvency, and we hope others in

Sacramento are equally committed.

    To allow these necessary reforms to be subject to partisan gridlock is literally not a

luxury our state can afford right now.

    Thank you for listening. This has been Assemblymember Ted Lieu, chair of the Assembly

Banking and Finance Committee