Here’s a little something so you can head into the weekend informed.

• The SEIU put together a rally of over 1,000 members in Sacramento today, demanding a budget solution.  More are expected in Sacramento, San Francisco and Fresno tomorrow.  Given the desperation, I see nothing wrong with taking it to the streets.  You can also contribute to their letter-writing campaign to the Governor here.

• Here are a couple of real victories for organized labor and working people.  First, UNITE-Here’s workers won a court decision that will expand the Living Wage ordinance in Southern California and gives 550 laundry workers a better chance to sue Cintas for back wages.  Speaking of back pay, TV networks settled two class-action lawsuits with reality-show workers for $4 million dollars.  These workers were made to falsify time cards and work up to 20-hour days without overtime or meal breaks.  I have some friends in the industry who were parties to these lawsuits and I’m very happy they reached a good conclusion.  The fight continues.

• The Senate GOP is slow-walking the confirmation of Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary, which is annoying.  She is more than qualified and her views on the Employee Free Choice Act, which is a legislative fight, are hardly germane as well as well-known.  She deserves a vote and not this nonsense.  America needs a friend to labor at the Labor Department again.

• I have no idea why Rocky Delgadillo is running for Attorney General again.  Rocky has been a real hero in fighting insurance industry malfeasance like rescission, but his recent troubles over his wife running his city-owned SUV into a pole (and she didn’t have a license) and paying for it with city money is a 30-second ad waiting to happen.  Maybe he should wait out a cycle?

• The FDA has approved a Menlo Park-based company for a human trial for a stem cell treatment, the first ever in the US.  This is not just a victory for science but could prove to make California a real leader in medical therapeutics.  We need some expansion in industry here, anyway.

• Good article from Open Left about how cleaner ports can add lots of middle-class green job, as it has with the Clean Trucks program at the port of Los Angeles.

• Shorter Phil Bronstein: Leave Bush ALOOOOOONE!