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What has Dan Lungren done to earn your vote?
3rd Congressional District gas price watch:
When this man was elected to Congress, gas was $1.43 a gallon!
Recent price:
$3.17 gallon
Ask yourself why?
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Your tax dollars at work...
Senator's looking out for your kids... |
Prison Scandal...
Reader reaction...
"Mr.
Kelso belongs in a mental institution himself. He is mentally ill if he
thinks the Taxpayer needs to spend $96,000 annually on each of these
slimeballs. Mr. Kelso is the epitomy of a power-drunk bureaucrat."
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Campaign and election news:
It's Labor Day, and Jerry Brown hits the campaign trail
By Jack Chang, Sacramento Bee
As
he promised to do throughout the summer, Democratic gubernatorial
candidate Jerry Brown ramped up his campaign over the Labor Day
weekend, debuting his first TV ad and making a four-stop swing down the
state on Monday. Brown's ad, which will run statewide starting this
morning, touts his first two terms in the Governor's Office and repeats
his promise not to raise taxes "without voter approval." Brown also
blasted Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman all weekend as a
consultant-created billionaire candidate with a poor voting record.
Whitman appeared at just one public event over the Labor Day weekend, a
GOP barbecue held Saturday in the Gold Rush town of Columbia.
Candidate for governor Jerry Brown unveils first TV commercialBy Ken McLaughlin and Mike Zapler, San Jose Mercury NewsDemocrat
Jerry Brown will end his silence on the airwaves. Kicking off its
long-awaited TV ad campaign on Labor Day, Brown's gubernatorial
campaign unveiled a 30-second spot depicting him as a frugal yet
visionary leader who helped create 1.9 million jobs when he was
governor in the late 1970s and early '80s. The ad will begin running in
California's major media markets this morning, Brown spokesman Clifford
Sterling said. "As governor, he cut waste -- got rid of the mansion and
the limo," the ad's narrator says. "Budgets were balanced. $4 billion
in tax cuts. World-class schools and universities. Clean energy
promoted. "... California was working." The campaign of Brown's
Republican opponent, eBay billionaire Meg Whitman, attacked the ad
shortly after it was put on YouTube on Monday morning. "After eight
years as governor, he left California with 11 percent unemployment, 1.3
million people" unemployed and a $1 billion deficit, said Andrea Jones
Rivera, a Whitman campaign spokeswoman. Just four weeks before mail-in
ballots can be cast in the Nov. 2 election, one of the biggest
questions in the governor's race is whether Brown's strategy of waiting
until Labor Day to begin his race in earnest was an ill-advised -- or
brilliant -- strategic move.
Golden State's political realities may test strength of national mood
By Cathleen Decker, Los Angeles Times
With
the voters' verdict only eight nail-biting weeks away, the outcome of
California's general election rests on the answer to one question: What
happens when the national Republican wave crashes into the state's
Democratic seawall? Across the country, Democrats are morose and
Republicans jubilant about their prospects, with the intransigent
economy feeding a voter revolt against the party that controls the
White House and Congress. Prognosticators are competing to issue dire
predictions of sweeping Democratic losses in legislatures, governor's
offices, congressional delegations and Senate seats. Yet California, at
least for now, is different. The two top races, for governor and U.S.
Senate, are acknowledged by all sides to be too close to call, a
victory of sorts for both parties. Few expect much adjustment in the
legislative or congressional lineups. Part of the reason is structural:
District lines drawn to protect incumbents have isolated the lawmaking
houses from both Democratic and Republican tides for a decade. Part is
geographical: Even powerful storms lose their strength as they blow
from Washington to the West Coast.
Schwarzenegger allies to drop suit against FPPC
By David Siders, Sacramento Bee
Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger is clashing with the state ethics agency over
rules restricting politicians from using ballot measure campaign funds
for other purposes. But he will not, for the time being, protest in
court. Schwarzenegger political adviser Adam Mendelsohn said lawyers
for the governor-controlled California Dream Team, a ballot measure
committee, will today withdraw a lawsuit challenging the rules. Today
is when the lawsuit was expected to appear on a public agenda for the
next meeting of the Fair Political Practices Commission, the agency
targeted by the lawsuit. The California Democratic Party last year
complained to the commission that Schwarzenegger improperly used Dream
Team money to pay for TV ads promoting his position on state budget
negotiations. The commission had recently adopted rules restricting the
use of ballot measure campaign funds to ballot measure-related uses.
The Dream Team committee sought in a lawsuit filed in Sacramento
Superior Court last month to block the FPPC from enforcing the rule.
Among other things, it claimed the rule impermissibly restricted free
speech.
In the Legislature:
Chevron may be seeking exemption from state environmental laws for its refinery rebuilding project
By Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News
One
of Northern California's largest polluters may be trying to orchestrate
a last-minute deal with Sacramento lawmakers to evade state
environmental laws, potentially increasing its toxic emissions and
skirting two court rulings. For five years, Chevron has been trying to
rebuild and upgrade its Richmond refinery in Contra Costa County. But
environmental and community groups sued, arguing that the company was
concealing plans to process heavier grades of crude oil, which can
increase pollution. A judge agreed last year, halting the construction
work. In April, the state First District Court of Appeal also ruled
against Chevron, saying the company's environmental impact report is
"inconsistent and obscure" and fails to clearly tell the public how the
project would affect refinery emissions. Now environmentalists and some
legislators are sounding the alarm in Sacramento, saying Chevron's
lobbyists in the Capitol have been quietly trying to craft a deal to
give the company -- America's third largest, with $10.4 billion in
profit last year -- an exemption from the state law that requires
environmental studies of major projects.
Around the state:
 Orange County D.A. fires the man he was grooming to succeed him
"This conduct is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated"
By Raja Abdulrahim, Los Angeles Times
Orange
County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas has fired the man he was grooming to
succeed him and, in a departure from what he promised voters earlier
this year, will run for reelection in 2014. Rackauckas had previously
announced that 2010 would be his last term. Five years ago, he said the
same thing about the 2006 term. Todd Spitzer, a former assemblyman and
Orange County supervisor, was at one point Rackauckas' hand-picked
successor and has worked at the prosecutor's office since last year,
moving between assignments apparently to get on-the-job experience.
Spitzer has made no secret of his desire to become district attorney
and was prepared to run against Rackauckas, but he backed off when the
district attorney said he would bring him aboard and probably support
his candidacy in 2014. "What changed was the firing of Todd," said
Rackauckas' chief of staff, Susan Kang Schroeder. "He was hoping to
hand off the office to someone he trusted, and now circumstances have
changed." A statement released last week by Public
Administrator/Guardian John Williams said that an assistant district
attorney recently contacted his office seeking information to which he
was not entitled. The statement identified the attorney only as a
former assemblyman and county supervisor. "This conduct is unacceptable
and cannot be tolerated," the statement read. "I forwarded this
information regarding his conduct to his agency, and we hope the
district attorney's office handles this matter in an appropriate
manner." The statement stems from an incident in which Spitzer called
the guardian's office on behalf of a woman regarding an investigation.
 LovEvolution party plans hit snag in San Francisco
By Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, San Francisco Chronicle
LovEvolution
- the hugely popular and oft-nude bash that attracted upward of 100,000
partiers last year to San Francisco's Civic Center - will either be
delayed, moved across the bay to Oakland or canceled this year.
Organizers of the end-of-summer party, formerly known as LoveFest, had
hoped to relocate to the parking lot at Candlestick Park after city
officials nixed its return to Civic Center for safety reasons, saying
last year's crowd had proved to be overwhelming. But, according to city
officials, LovEvolution promoters showed up at a meeting Wednesday with
little more than a drawing of the parking lot with a fence around it.
"It's clearly a popular event, but we aren't going to cut corners with
public safety," said Tony Winnicker, a spokesman for Mayor Gavin
Newsom. Promoters were put off by having to get Recreation and Park
permits - something they didn't think they could secure in time for the
Oct. 2 party date. Hence the talk of moving to somewhere in Oakland.
"We'll likely have a meeting next week to decide what to do," said
event manager John Wood. "Right now, most of our board of directors is
up at Burning Man."
 California's union jobs take hit from recession
The state, which still has the nation's highest number of union jobs, is losing them at a faster clip than any other state
By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times
The
recession is taking a toll on union jobs, which are disappearing in
California at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country,
according to a UCLA study published Monday. In the 12 months ending in
June, the union membership rate dropped from 18.3% to 17.6% in
California and from 12.4% to 12.1% nationwide, the study found. The
drop was most acute in the counties of Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange,
Ventura and San Bernardino, where unionization rates fell from 17.5% to
16.5%. The loss of union jobs has wiped out two years of gains, putting
membership rates in the U.S. and California back to around 2007-08
levels, said Lauren Appelbaum, director of the UCLA Institute for
Research on Labor and Employment and the report's lead author. "Earlier
in the recession, jobs were disappearing, but these were not
necessarily union jobs, so the percentage of workers who were union
members continued to increase," she said. The losses have been
particularly acute in private sector industries such as residential
construction and manufacturing. For the first time, the number of union
members nationwide is greater in the public sector than in the private
sector: 7.76 million compared with 7.19 million, the study found.
 Open space deal sustains dairy farm forever
By Kelly Zito, San Francisco Chronicle
Robert
Camozzi Jr. is a fourth-generation Petaluma farmer who, like many
owners of agricultural land in California, was facing the ugly prospect
of having to one day sell his heritage to developers. The thought of a
business park or condominiums replacing the farm known locally as
"Uncle Henry's Ranch," after Robert's great-uncle, Henry D'Ambrogi, was
particularly troubling because his oldest daughter had just graduated
from college with a dairy sciences degree. So Camozzi did what he had
to do to save the 400 cows roaming the family's Triple C Dairy for his
five children, most of whom still prefer bovine bonding at the farm to
social-networking sites. He signed a $1 million deal with the Sonoma
County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District to keep a
98-acre parcel of rolling pasture in the Two Rock Valley off-limits to
future development. It means his land will remain in agricultural
production forever. The open space district has now amassed nearly
1,400 acres of contiguous farmland in the county's coastal zone. In
effect, the conservation easement lowers the value of the acreage
because legally it cannot be covered with homes, strip malls or golf
courses. That, in turn, makes the land more affordable for Camozzi's
children, who all still work on the farm and expect to someday purchase
the 3,000-gallon-a-day dairy operation from their parents and
grandparents. Such conservation easements are increasingly common at a
time when communities seek to balance urban and rural landscapes,
farmers struggle with low commodity prices and long-term real estate
appreciation rates mean farmers can often sell their property to
developers for much more money than it would be worth as a farm.
| State must change course before it's too late
By the Los Angeles Daily News
California
is wiping out its middle class, but there's still time to change
course. A businessman said recently that a financial backer was
interested in his project, but not in California. Another talked about
the costly and nightmarish experience of doing a construction project
at the mercy of bureaucrats in the city of Los Angeles. Horror stories
like these explain why jobs are not just scarce in California, they are
moving elsewhere. Business people seem to feel it's easier just to pull
up stakes; that there's not much they can do to change the status quo.
But, voters could. The challenge is to wake them up. It won't be easy.
From small, poor cities like Bell to big, prosperous cities like San
Diego, self-dealing public servants have emptied the public treasuries
while voters paid no attention until it was too late. Many cities
continue to cut services while paying salaries and pensions that are
right out of Fantasyland. The core problem is statewide. Politicians
have colluded with government employee unions and other lobbying groups
to create an environment that pays off only for well-compensated
government employees and a fraction of the poor, while working-class
and middle-class people go into decline. Or leave the state. It
wouldn't be a surprise to see convoys of moving vans continue to depart
the Golden State, with few heading this way.
Redistricting reforms must advance
By the San Diego Union-Tribune
In
2008, California voters took a decisive step toward improving the
performance of the dysfunctional state Legislature by approving
Proposition 11 and taking redistricting authority for Assembly and
Senate seats away from politicians and giving it to an independent
commission. The district boundary lines that politicians drew after the
2000 census had produced a Legislature and a congressional delegation
with virtually no swing districts. In Sacramento , the result has been
gridlock on big issue after big issue. Democratic legislators care
primarily about pleasing the interest groups on their side, starting
with public employee unions, whose support they need if their political
careers are to advance. Republican legislators care primarily about
pleasing the interest groups on their side, starting with big
corporations, whose support they need for their political advancement.
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