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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:
$3.05 gallon
Ask yourself why?
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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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 Appeals Court says 'Under God' not a prayer
By Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle
The
federal court that touched off a furor in 2002 by declaring the words
"under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance to be an unconstitutional
endorsement of religion took another look at the issue Thursday and
said the phrase invokes patriotism, not religious faith. The daily
schoolroom ritual is not a prayer, but instead "a recognition of our
founders' political philosophy that a power greater than the government
gives the people their inalienable rights," said the Ninth U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals in San Francisco in a 2-1 ruling. "Thus, the pledge is
an endorsement of our form of government, not of religion or any
particular sect." The dissenting judge, Stephen Reinhardt, said
statements by members of Congress who added "under God" to the pledge
in 1954 show conclusively that it was intended to "indoctrinate our
nation's children with a state-held religious belief." In a separate
ruling, the same panel upheld the use of the national motto, "In God We
Trust," on coins and currency. The language is patriotic and
ceremonial, not religious, the court said. Reinhardt reluctantly joined
the 3-0 decision, saying he was bound by the court's newly established
precedent in the pledge case.
21% of small businesses on brink
By ELISE VIEBECK, CalWatchdog
A
report released last week showed that 21 percent of California small
businesses believe they will fold in the next three years. The annual
survey, conducted by advocacy group Small Business California, revealed
low confidence in the state’s business and political climate among
business owners. Other research confirms this trend. According to
analysts at Equifax, a credit firm, bankruptcies among small businesses
in California have increased 81 percent since last year.
In the Legislature:
Legislative leaders target two-thirds requirements
By the Sacramento Bee
Targeting
California's bitter budget fights, Democratic legislative leaders
proposed a wide-ranging overhaul Thursday that would allow lawmakers to
pass budgets by a simple-majority vote and would require them to
forfeit pay if they are late in passing a spending plan. Senate
President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez
hailed the package as a way to restore public confidence by making the
budget process more efficient and ensuring that costly new programs are
not approved without a way of paying for them. But Senate Republican
leader Dennis Hollingsworth said the GOP could not accept any package
that would allow Democrats to pass a budget without any Republican
votes.
Campaign and election news:
GOP candidates look for votes with new books
By the Sacramento Bee
Both
Republican candidates for California governor have released books as
they campaign for their party's nomination this spring. Bee Political
Editor Amy Chance sums up the high points in case you weren't planning
to read them yourself.
Whitman's funds could pose conflicts
By Evan Halper and Michael Rothfeld, Los Angeles Times
Billionaire
GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has invested her vast wealth in
firms that sought to profit from the country's credit crisis, in
venture capital and hedge funds open only to the wealthy, and in oil,
gas, healthcare and other concerns seeking to influence state policy.
The first public glimpse into the financial portfolio of the former
EBay chief came Thursday, when she filed an economic-interest
disclosure required of candidates. The holdings present potential
conflicts of interest for a governor. Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei
said the candidate would "likely" move her holdings into a blind trust
if she is victorious "and will scrupulously avoid any conflicts of
interest."
 Mayor Newsom announcing for lieutenant governor
By Heather Knight and John Coté, San Francisco Chronicle
San
Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will announce this morning that he's
running for lieutenant governor of California, The Chronicle has
learned. The move fuels a firestorm of speculation about his odds of
winning and who might replace him in Room 200 at City Hall if he heads
to Sacramento. Newsom had remained coy about whether he'd run for
weeks, but on Wednesday he took out nomination papers and paid a
$2,609.80 filing fee. Many political analysts say Newsom will be the
candidate to beat in the Democratic primary June 8. A statewide poll of
likely voters conducted earlier this year by San Francisco pollster Ben
Tulchin showed Newsom grabbing 33 percent of the primary vote.
 State GOP goes into convention 'on the offense'
By Carla Marinucci and Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle
More
than a year after taking a beating at the ballot box, the California
Republican Party is energized by "Tea Party" revivals and declining
Democratic poll numbers as it heads into a three-day state party
convention this weekend, charged up and "on the offense" for the
statewide and mid-term elections. That's the official mantra as nearly
1,000 California Republican activists, candidates and officials gather
at the Santa Clara Hyatt starting today to hear from statewide
candidates - including those in crucial gubernatorial and U.S. Senate
contests - and to prepare for fundraising and get-out-the-vote
activities in this year's elections.
Fight splits backers of ballot initiative to suspend state's global warming law
Ted Costa says his group, People's Advocate, has been shut out of efforts to suspend AB 32
By Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times
A
fight has split backers of a November ballot initiative to suspend
California's 2006 global warming law. "Big money interests have come in
and shut out the people," said Ted Costa, chief executive of the
Sacramento-based anti-tax organization People’s Advocate, one of the
initiative's original sponsors. Costa, whose populist group has
promoted conservative ballot propositions for more than two decades,
had drafted the initiative along with Assemblyman Dan Logue
(R-Marysville), Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay) and Sacramento
attorney Thomas Hiltachk. But he said he was shut out of the process
after a group, the “California Jobs Initiative Committee,” raised about
$600,000, reportedly from two Texas-based oil companies. The two
companies, Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp., operate major
refineries in California that could be forced to slash their emissions
of greenhouse gases under the law.
Energy news:
DWP ratepayers facing a bigger possible surcharge
Surcharge would go to improve conservation and obtain solar, wind and geothermal power
By David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times
Los
Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's political team has spent the last
two months talking up the need for the Department of Water and Power to
adopt a so-called carbon surcharge, one that would require ratepayers
to pay more to cover the cost of renewable energy. Now, that proposal
has been incorporated into a larger increase, which would also force
DWP customers to pay more to cover the cost of fossil fuels, such as
coal and natural gas, which generate much of the utility's electricity.
Villaraigosa plans to announce his proposal Friday for increasing the
DWP's surcharge, known as the Energy Cost Adjustment Factor, by 2.7
cents for every kilowatt hour of electricity consumed. Of that total,
0.7 cents would be set aside to improve conservation and obtain solar,
wind and geothermal power, said Jay Carson, Villaraigosa's chief deputy
mayor.
Education news:
 More California youth applying to out-of-state universities, say admission officers
By Lisa M. Krieger, San Jose Mercury News
With
the state's higher education system in crisis, more California students
are vying for admission at out-of-state universities, applying for
seats at campuses from the hills of upstate New York to the snowy
flatlands of Ohio to the deserts of Arizona. University officials at
public and private schools across the country are reporting record
levels of California applicants to next fall's freshman class — an
intellectual flight pattern that worries public-policy experts, who
fear students may never return.
| Legislative overhaul likely DOA
By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee
Democratic
legislative leaders, acknowledging the dysfunction of state government,
say they want to place reforms before voters this year. Senate
President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said the "system of finance is
broken" as he and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez unveiled their package
Thursday, a mixture of constitutional amendments and internal
legislative reforms. Pérez said the reforms would "make our government
more accountable, more effective." Recent polls do indeed indicate that
voters are disgusted, with approval of the perpetually gridlocked
Legislature barely breaking into the teens, and are open to change. But
what kind of change is still uncertain since one person's reform is
another person's power grab.
Bet on the donkey in this race
The fact is that as a Democrat, Jerry Brown starts with a built-in advantage in his gubernatorial bid
By Ethan Rarick, Los Angeles Times
Now
that both parties have candidates running for governor, Californians
are sure to hear a bit of conventional wisdom about state politics:
Voters typically elect Democrats to the Legislature but Republicans to
the governorship. Like so much conventional wisdom, it's dead wrong, or
at least seriously misleading.
How to worsen the state job climate
By the Orange County Register
Putting
his best foot forward, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed, "I'm
absolutely convinced that AB32 will create more jobs than kill jobs."
It may be the governor's first acknowledgement that his legacy
legislation, Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, will,
in fact, "kill jobs." Worse yet, growth is projected for jobs that, for
the most part, don't exist yet: "green jobs." Jobs that will disappear
do exist, such as in energy production. A reasonable person might
conclude that unknown growth in currently nonexistent jobs isn't a good
trade-off for losing jobs in industries the law is designed to punish.
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