{"id":8571,"date":"2009-04-17T04:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-17T04:30:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-04-17T02:24:05","modified_gmt":"2009-04-17T02:24:05","slug":"april-16-2009-open-thread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/04\/17\/april-16-2009-open-thread\/","title":{"rendered":"April 16, 2009 Open Thread"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Straight to it:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 John Chiang has a cool new <a href=http:\/\/tr.im\/j047>feature on his website<\/a> that lets everybody see how much cash is coming into the state day by day.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Does Arnold Schwarzenegger seriously have nothing better to do than bring back gigantic bear sculptures to put in front of the horseshoe? I mean, I can&#8217;t think of anything that would occupy his time. But, the <a href=http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/static\/weblogs\/capitolalertlatest\/021536.html>Bee&#8217;s caption contest makes it kinda ok<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 A slap fight on the right, as Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman fight over <a href=\"http:\/\/calbuzzer.blogspot.com\/2009\/04\/poizner-blasts-whitman-on-ebay.html\">which one is a more disastrous manager<\/a>. &nbsp;I say split the difference, chaps &#8211; you&#8217;re BOTH awful!<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 This is a <a href=\"http:\/\/pasadenaweekly.com\/cms\/story\/detail\/babies_bibles\/7127\/\">truly horrible story<\/a> about Avenues Pregnancy Clinic in Glendale, where the fundie directors browbeat women into believing they risk eternal damnation for &#8220;living in sin.&#8221; &nbsp;And they get state licensing and accrediting for that! &nbsp;Awesome.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 The business interests who want to shut down LA&#8217;s Clean Trucks program have <a href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/latimes\/news\/local\/~3\/2ia92jnLgRQ\/la-me-clean-trucks16-2009apr16,0,2758349.story\">failed again<\/a>, as a US District Court judge rejected the motion to halt the program. &nbsp;There&#8217;s a lot of money and effort being spent fighting the law when they could just comply with it &#8211; and in the process stop thousands of kids from coughing and choking every five seconds from the smoke and soot.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 The CBP had <a href=\"http:\/\/californiabudgetbites.org\/2009\/04\/14\/turning-down-federal-money\/\">this<\/a> the other day about the legislature risking turning down federal stimulus money for low-income families. &nbsp;The Legislature needs to get to work on this.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 CalChamber&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/static\/weblogs\/capitolalertlatest\/021568.html?mi_rss=Capitol%20Alert\">job creator list<\/a> is here!!! &nbsp;I can&#8217;t wait to live in a state where such job creator bills like eliminating meal breaks are law! &nbsp;There actually are a couple bills in there, like flexible work schedules and the research and development credit, which aren&#8217;t too bad.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 One of the most misleading statistics you will see today: there have been <a href=http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/business\/story\/1785796.html?mi_rss=Business>gains in the number of houses sold in Sacramento for 12 straight months<\/a>. Yay, right? Well, it&#8217;s good that more houses are being sold, but they are being sold at fire-sale prices after foreclosure. On the other hand, median price of those homes sold has fallen for almost the entire period, with this month being the sole exception. &nbsp;The median now stands at $165,000, up $5,000 from last month, but down over $200,000 from the peak in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Speaking of real estate, General Growth, one of the nation&#8217;s largest owners of malls and commercial property <a href=http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/la-fi-general-growth17-2009apr17,0,1032608.story>has filed for bankruptcy<\/a>. It is the largest real estate bankruptcy in the history of the universe. Or well, at least the largest in US history. They run a whole <a href=http:\/\/www.ggp.com\/Properties\/MallDirectory.aspx>slew of malls in California<\/a>, from Stonestown Galleria in San Francisco to the Glendale Galleria. They are expected to remain open during the bankruptcy.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Did you just have a busy hour? Well, the state&#8217;s fundraisers have. Since 2000, there has been an average of over <a href=http:\/\/www.capitolweekly.net\/article.php?xid=xwt2eropaihfg3>$14,000 every hour<\/a> raised for political campaigns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Straight to it:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 John Chiang has a cool new <a href=http:\/\/tr.im\/j047>feature on his website<\/a> that lets everybody see how much cash is coming into the state day by day.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Does Arnold Schwarzenegger seriously have nothing better to do than bring back gigantic bear sculptures to put in front of the horseshoe? I mean, I can&#8217;t think of anything that would occupy his time. But, the <a href=http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/static\/weblogs\/capitolalertlatest\/021536.html>Bee&#8217;s caption contest makes it kinda ok<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 A slap fight on the right, as Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman fight over <a href=\"http:\/\/calbuzzer.blogspot.com\/2009\/04\/poizner-blasts-whitman-on-ebay.html\">which one is a more disastrous manager<\/a>. &nbsp;I say split the difference, chaps &#8211; you&#8217;re BOTH awful!<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 This is a <a href=\"http:\/\/pasadenaweekly.com\/cms\/story\/detail\/babies_bibles\/7127\/\">truly horrible story<\/a> about Avenues Pregnancy Clinic in Glendale, where the fundie directors browbeat women into believing they risk eternal damnation for &#8220;living in sin.&#8221; &nbsp;And they get state licensing and accrediting for that! &nbsp;Awesome.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 The business interests who want to shut down LA&#8217;s Clean Trucks program have <a href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/latimes\/news\/local\/~3\/2ia92jnLgRQ\/la-me-clean-trucks16-2009apr16,0,2758349.story\">failed again<\/a>, as a US District Court judge rejected the motion to halt the program. &nbsp;There&#8217;s a lot of money and effort being spent fighting the law when they could just comply with it &#8211; and in the process stop thousands of kids from coughing and choking every five seconds from the smoke and soot.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 The CBP had <a href=\"http:\/\/californiabudgetbites.org\/2009\/04\/14\/turning-down-federal-money\/\">this<\/a> the other day about the legislature risking turning down federal stimulus money for low-income families. &nbsp;The Legislature needs to get to work on this.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 CalChamber&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/static\/weblogs\/capitolalertlatest\/021568.html?mi_rss=Capitol%20Alert\">job creator list<\/a> is here!!! &nbsp;I can&#8217;t wait to live in a state where such job creator bills like eliminating meal breaks are law! &nbsp;There actually are a couple bills in there, like flexible work schedules and the research and development credit, which aren&#8217;t too bad.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 One of the most misleading statistics you will see today: there have been <a href=http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/business\/story\/1785796.html?mi_rss=Business>gains in the number of houses sold in Sacramento for 12 straight months<\/a>. Yay, right? Well, it&#8217;s good that more houses are being sold, but they are being sold at fire-sale prices after foreclosure. On the other hand, median price of those homes sold has fallen for almost the entire period, with this month being the sole exception. &nbsp;The median now stands at $165,000, up $5,000 from last month, but down over $200,000 from the peak in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Speaking of real estate, General Growth, one of the nation&#8217;s largest owners of malls and commercial property <a href=http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/la-fi-general-growth17-2009apr17,0,1032608.story>has filed for bankruptcy<\/a>. It is the largest real estate bankruptcy in the history of the universe. Or well, at least the largest in US history. They run a whole <a href=http:\/\/www.ggp.com\/Properties\/MallDirectory.aspx>slew of malls in California<\/a>, from Stonestown Galleria in San Francisco to the Glendale Galleria. They are expected to remain open during the bankruptcy.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Did you just have a busy hour? Well, the state&#8217;s fundraisers have. Since 2000, there has been an average of over <a href=http:\/\/www.capitolweekly.net\/article.php?xid=xwt2eropaihfg3>$14,000 every hour<\/a> raised for political campaigns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2450,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[194,1153],"class_list":["post-8571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-32","tag-194","tag-1153"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2ef","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2450"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}