{"id":9539,"date":"2009-07-31T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-31T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-07-31T02:22:33","modified_gmt":"2009-07-31T02:22:33","slug":"july-30-open-thread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/07\/31\/july-30-open-thread\/","title":{"rendered":"July 30 Open Thread"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Links: <\/p>\n<p>\u2022 I&#8217;m surprised it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/politics\/story\/2067422.html?mi_rss=State%2520Politics\">took this long<\/a>: &#8220;A California vendor sued state officials Wednesday for paying bills with IOUs, calling the notes an unconstitutional dead weight on small businesses everywhere.&#8221; &nbsp;Nancy Baird, a small businesswoman from SLO, brought the suit.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2009\/07\/29\/dem-senators-take-on-pali_n_247390.html\">Good DiFi<\/a>: She offered a bill in the Senate to specifically ban aerial wolf hunting. &nbsp;Whether it has to do with Sarah Palin or not, this practice has no place in civilized society.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2009\/07\/29\/no-difi-the-competition-is-with-canada-and-mexico\/\">Bad DiFi<\/a>: she misunderstands the reason automakers are leaving the state, not just because of race-to-the-bottom interstate tax breaks, but because of the crushing burden of health care costs in the US rather than Canada and Mexico. &nbsp;DiFi is dragging her feet on the health care bill but trying to keep businesses in California who want to leave because of the crappy health care system.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Hey, having trouble planning for all the new tax regulations that have come out of this budget &#8220;deal?&#8221; Well, you could call the Franchise Tax Board&#8217;s help desk. &nbsp;But&#8230;they just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/business\/story\/2067635.html?mi_rss=Business\">cut their hours<\/a>, so you better be able to call between regular business hours.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Not cool: The Assembly expunged the record of the vote on the Tranquillion Ridge Drilling Project, which went down by a 28-43 vote. The funny thing about this is that Chuck DeVore is absolutely right that this only draws attention to the vote. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.capitolweekly.net\/article.php?xid=y5qkza0xnwxj9g\">CapitolWeekly has the story as well as the vote tally<\/a>. &nbsp;And if you want to look at the Assembly and Senate vote tallies for all the other trailer bills, reader California Condor has posted them. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jamesarmstrong.com\/CAbudget.html\">Assembly<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jamesarmstrong.com\/CAsenate.html\">Senate<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Mark Leno <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibabuzz.com\/politics\/2009\/07\/30\/mark-leno-enters-national-health-care-fray\/\">was out in Washington today<\/a>, attending events for single-payer health care. &nbsp;Leno is carrying SB810, California&#8217;s single-payer bill. &nbsp;Leno is in particular promoting an amendment by Dennis Kucinich that would allow states to explore single-payer alternatives no matter what national health care reform passes Congress.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 BART <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidebayarea.com\/oaklandtribune\/localnews\/ci_12942631?source=rss\">negotiations continue<\/a>, but they are reaching a point of no return. If they don&#8217;t get a deal soon, BART plans on imposing terms. That, of course, will almost certainly result in a strike. Either way, expect some sort of major news on this by the weekend.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Professors at CSU have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contracostatimes.com\/news\/ci_12940520?source=rss\">agreed to take two furlough days per month<\/a>. The trouble with professors taking furlough days is that the workload really doesn&#8217;t change, so they just have to spend their personal time doing the work. Crazy stuff really.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Links: <\/p>\n<p>\u2022 I&#8217;m surprised it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/politics\/story\/2067422.html?mi_rss=State%2520Politics\">took this long<\/a>: &#8220;A California vendor sued state officials Wednesday for paying bills with IOUs, calling the notes an unconstitutional dead weight on small businesses everywhere.&#8221; &nbsp;Nancy Baird, a small businesswoman from SLO, brought the suit.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2009\/07\/29\/dem-senators-take-on-pali_n_247390.html\">Good DiFi<\/a>: She offered a bill in the Senate to specifically ban aerial wolf hunting. &nbsp;Whether it has to do with Sarah Palin or not, this practice has no place in civilized society.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2009\/07\/29\/no-difi-the-competition-is-with-canada-and-mexico\/\">Bad DiFi<\/a>: she misunderstands the reason automakers are leaving the state, not just because of race-to-the-bottom interstate tax breaks, but because of the crushing burden of health care costs in the US rather than Canada and Mexico. &nbsp;DiFi is dragging her feet on the health care bill but trying to keep businesses in California who want to leave because of the crappy health care system.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Hey, having trouble planning for all the new tax regulations that have come out of this budget &#8220;deal?&#8221; Well, you could call the Franchise Tax Board&#8217;s help desk. &nbsp;But&#8230;they just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/business\/story\/2067635.html?mi_rss=Business\">cut their hours<\/a>, so you better be able to call between regular business hours.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Not cool: The Assembly expunged the record of the vote on the Tranquillion Ridge Drilling Project, which went down by a 28-43 vote. The funny thing about this is that Chuck DeVore is absolutely right that this only draws attention to the vote. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.capitolweekly.net\/article.php?xid=y5qkza0xnwxj9g\">CapitolWeekly has the story as well as the vote tally<\/a>. &nbsp;And if you want to look at the Assembly and Senate vote tallies for all the other trailer bills, reader California Condor has posted them. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jamesarmstrong.com\/CAbudget.html\">Assembly<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jamesarmstrong.com\/CAsenate.html\">Senate<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Mark Leno <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibabuzz.com\/politics\/2009\/07\/30\/mark-leno-enters-national-health-care-fray\/\">was out in Washington today<\/a>, attending events for single-payer health care. &nbsp;Leno is carrying SB810, California&#8217;s single-payer bill. &nbsp;Leno is in particular promoting an amendment by Dennis Kucinich that would allow states to explore single-payer alternatives no matter what national health care reform passes Congress.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 BART <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidebayarea.com\/oaklandtribune\/localnews\/ci_12942631?source=rss\">negotiations continue<\/a>, but they are reaching a point of no return. If they don&#8217;t get a deal soon, BART plans on imposing terms. That, of course, will almost certainly result in a strike. Either way, expect some sort of major news on this by the weekend.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Professors at CSU have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contracostatimes.com\/news\/ci_12940520?source=rss\">agreed to take two furlough days per month<\/a>. The trouble with professors taking furlough days is that the workload really doesn&#8217;t change, so they just have to spend their personal time doing the work. Crazy stuff really.<\/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":[],"tags":[1153],"class_list":["post-9539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-1153"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2tR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9539","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=9539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}