'See the world, let special interests pay, Schwarzenegger urges lawmakers'

See the world, let special interests pay, says the Governor.

Put that on a bumper sticker and drive it.

How does Obama get in trouble for stereotyping small town American but the Governor can say this about small town California:

"Some of them come from those little towns, you know what I am saying, they come from those little towns and they don't have that vision yet of an airport or of a highway that maybe has 10 lanes or of putting a highway on top of a highway," Schwarzenegger said. "They look at you and say, 'We don't have that in my town. What are you talking about?'

True as it might be, you can't just go around SAYING those sorts of things. Oh wait, someone did make the Obama-rhetoric connection:

Assemblyman Anthony Adams, a Republican from the mid-size city of Hesperia (population 83,000), said Schwarzenegger's comments, "while I'm sure well-intentioned, reek of a certain elitism that doesn't help foster a cooperative working relationship."

This part is true too, but if we really went with it, we'd have to disband the FPPC and that would just increase unemployment:

"I am always against when the media beats up on [lawmakers] for traveling around because someone else is paying for their trips," he said. "I mean, so what. If they were to take the money from the taxpayers, then [the media] would complain about using tax dollars to travel around the world and live in luxury and all this stuff.

We're weird, as voters

The Supreme Court's ruling upholding Indiana's voter ID law hurts youth voters, or so say the bloggers and activists, apparently.

Make no mistake, I am against impediments to voting, but is this really a huge barrier?

We, as a nation, make comments about sending people to war to protect our freedom, our right to vote. But we don't want to have to put forth too much of an effort - get an ID card, remember to carry it with us.

Weak. Plain weak.

How times change

I could have sworn I remembered reading the opposite not so long ago, but apparently, a poll now shows Clinton winning over McCain. I thought she was the sure loser in that match-up.

'Stop the drama, vote Obama'?

A great quote from a blogger just repeated on MSNBC, but will that plea to superdelegates work?

Outspent in OH and PA, Clinton still seems to win in the booth - shouldn't that mean something?

Are we wishing we were careful about what we wished for now - since we don't have a nominee? I'm sorry I talked so much smack about Iowa and New Hampshire - maybe you guys should've picked the nominee like usual.

Maybe They Should Have Retired

Two women in their 70s lured homeless into giving up personal info, took out life insurance on them and then killed them.

Just when you thought LA was getting boring with the standard gang violence and hold-ups.

I don't know if you can blame this one on video games.

Silly French People, Just Eat More

Earlier this week, France tried to ban 'inciting extreme thinness'.

The new bill would allow judges to imprison or fine offenders almost $50,000 if found guilty of "inciting others to deprive themselves of food" to an "excessive" degree.

So far, everyone in France is still skinny.

Appropriate for other reasons, too

Charles Gibson just said that a quotation from the Constitution on presidential duties was appropriate because they are at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Maybe it is more appropriate since a woefully small number of people have read the Constitution and are familiar with the actual job description of the position for which these two people are arguing.

Maybe?

Do Pennsylvanians Care?

Are you watching the debate right now? I know debates are traditionally kind of silly, but this seems especially banal. Can we get even a cursory policy question? Flag pins and who is in who's in-crowd? Honestly - I can't care about any of this stuff and I'm the kind of person who writes on a political-oriented website. I don't think they are going to win over any Pennsylvanians this way. Maybe the candidates should have only agreed if the debates were moderated exclusively by local journalists. I feel like I'm wasting time I could be using to clear the DVR.

Agency considers customer needs, adapts

That's news! USCIS, the agency that handles citizenship and visa clearances for would-be immigrants is adding weekend hours as it tries to get out from under an 18,000 person backlog.

Don't get all "taxpayers footing the bill for immigrants" on me either - USCIS is entirely self-funded. Applicant fees support the agencies work and that's all the money they get. Fees increased last year, too.

Though USCIS has been slammed for not preparing more for the huge increase in applicants immediately before the fees rose (duh, who couldn't see that coming?), I give them some credit for reacting more like private industry than a government agency in burning the oil longer.

Sky, housing prices, continue to fall

Home prices are back to 2004 levels. And still falling? Housing prices are like a wave, right? Up and down and up and down. This run-up started when? About 2003? So we're not quite back at start.

Another article I read today - can't find the link to save my life, sorry - talked about homeowners stuck because their homes aren't worth what they paid for them. This is a bar to them selling. But really, it's a bar to them selling without taking a loss, right? They could still sell the house. Short sales? I mean, I get the bind, but still. And the problem is homes aren't worth what or more than their cost right now. They once were. They may be again. They'll probably go up. It will just take longer.

Renting not so bad, you know.

We tend to know stuff - for certain - don't we? Real estate is always a good investment. Home prices always go up. Now they aren't So now real estate is not a good investment and house prices always go down. We are very focused on the now. Maybe we should chill, no?

The party in power takes the blame for bad economic times - and since we're focusing on presidents right now, I'm thinking that's a boon for the left. So, hooray, the economy is crap and your house is worthless!

Primaries, right, those are still happening aren't they

Obama is gaining in PA, or, per the headline, Clinton is losing traction. Is that a glass half full/half empty difference, or a real difference? I guess it's real. One candidate could stay steady and the other could gain or lose all on his or her own. It's those pesky undecideds.

The survey found the New York senator leading Barack Obama by just 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania, which votes next Tuesday. Such a margin would not give her much of a boost in the battle for the party's nomination.

What is more, the poll found Clinton trails Obama by 5 points in Indiana, another Rust Belt state that should play to her strengths among blue-collar voters.

Will we make it to August without a nominee?

Free Tax Day, Kinda

This Friday at the La Pintoresca Library, the State Controller's Office and the city of Pasadena will be hosting free tax prep. But only if you make under $40,000.

Look, these people don't want to have to deal with dividends, and write-offs, and charitable contributions, and yacht loopholes.

Rest in Peace Charlton Heston

In a fitting memorial, the LA Times reprinted a number of letters to the editor that Charlton Heston sent in over the years.

It turns out that Heston, along with being an epic actor, was a bit of a crank.

THE cultural and social fabric of the country is fraying around the edges as we split up into separate little Gypsy camps, each with a different agenda, heading in different directions. A while ago, I was at one of those silly "A-list" parties and fell into conversation on all this with a stunningly beautiful, famous star (not a bad actress, either) who said, "Well, look what it says on the dollar bill: 'e pluribus unum.' From one, many." "Actually, you've got the Latin backward," I replied. "It translates, 'From many, one.' As in one nation . . . indivisible?" "No kidding?" she said, amazed. "Well . . . whatever." And there you have it. We live, increasingly, in a "well, whatever" nation. God help us all.

Immigration post trick: three is a magic number

While SF welcomes and seems to benefit from border crime money, Arizona is making life a nightmare for immigrants and plenty of residents and citizens too. With pride, they speak of proving a state can do it alone, without the feds:

In recent years it has barred illegal immigrants from receiving government services, from winning punitive damages in lawsuits and from posting bail for serious crimes. A new state law shuts down businesses that hire illegal workers. And the sheriff of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and three-fifths of the state's population, dispatches his deputies and volunteer "posses" to search for illegal street vendors or immigrants being smuggled through the county. . . .

Juan Carlos Ochoa, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in an upper-middle-class subdivision near Phoenix named Laguna Hills, can't find a job because a government database classifies him as a possible illegal immigrant. Pauline Muñoz, a 39-year-old mother of six who was born in Phoenix, has been afraid to leave her apartment since being held by sheriff's deputies for 15 hours for a driving infraction -- an example of what she believes is racial profiling.

The problem is the E-verify system that, if you aren't up-to-date with Social Security, can label you as a possible illegal. Not for sure, just possible. Getting duplicate papers, however, can take up to 10 months from Department of Homeland Security.

This article doesn't contain any jaw-droppingly offensive moments, but it is disquieting nonetheless. That Arizona takes such pride about running people out of town. And I wonder how, like, New Mexico feels.

And then there's this

No one as ever said San Francisco is a simple city. They're kinda confusing actually - a sanctuary for illegal immigrants as well as a huge freakin' siphon for federal border crime dollars. Go fig:

San Francisco's $3.7 million federal grant to help fight border crime in 2006 was the largest awarded to any county in four states bordering Mexico, according to a federal audit that found the city was not entitled to any of the funds.

City officials have not explained why a city 500 miles from the state's southern border would have prosecuted more than 2,000 cases for the federal government that were related to drug gangs and crimes near the border in a three-year period.

The audit, which was released this week and challenged all $5.4 million that the city received from 2004 to 2006, raises questions about the basis for the city's request for funding under the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative.

Compassion or calculation?

San Francisco advertises services for illegal immigrants

This week, the city launched a campaign featuring TV and radio ads, billboards and bus signs reminding residents of its status as a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants. The $83,000 blitz will include brochures distributed at police stations and hospitals, promising safe access to city services regardless of residency status.

"We're inviting people to come out of the shadows and take advantage of services," said Mayor Gavin Newsom. San Francisco has tried to make this point clear for years.

Gavin makes a lot of points, ever notice that? I want to believe him - I think what he does, from gay marriage to making it clear that making people too scared to seek help or healthcare is monsterous, is, frankly, beautiful.

But then the ugly pragmatist in me rises up and slaps me upside the head: are you kidding me? Just hand them the White House already! Predictably, one comeback is that this is an insult to the people who did things the right way, applied, waited, etc. But that's not really comparing apples and apples. San Francisco doesn't have the power to grant amnesty - which is the only thing that really might insult those who waited to get here. One healthy immigrant child means a classroom is healthier altogether. One mother less afraid of seeking help from the cops in cases of domestic violence is one less dead mother and one step closer to eradicating violence generally.

Oops, so much for pragmatism.

Shortsighted-much?

Does it have to be either/or when it comes to national security (or "national security") and the environment? Apparently, according to the feds who are prepared to exempt themselves from all manner of environmental and other laws in their quixotic quest to fence us in.

I think the saying is don't fence me in, but whatever. 9/11, 9/11, danger, fear, lookout, okay, built the fence. That about covers it, right?

We're going to mortgage our futures, our kids' futures, on faulty, ineffective protectionist antics that won't leave us safer, but will potentially leave us without an earth. Or at least an inhabitable one.

Otherwise liberal ideas that serve to make us all look bad

So, union jobs are good. Union wages are good. Protecting union jobs is good.

Forcing non-profits out of business because unions have a chokehold on public works under an expanded definition of the term? Stoooopid. Really dumb. Don't do it:

The original wage law was designed to protect union contractors from being underbid on public projects by firms using less expensive, nonunion labor. But the broader application carried the concept to an entirely new level.

Labor unions started filing complaints about local governments and nonprofit groups using volunteers on public projects. The first to surface was in Redding, where college students were given class credit instead of pay when they helped a local nonprofit group clear a brush-choked streambed. A state labor agency fined the group for violations of labor laws.

Ugh! Man. I'm sure there's more to this story than the columnist cobbles together to fit in limited column inches. But really, ugh. So unions got their way with expanded definitions of public works and then continue to pound the point home over this sort of project.

As Seth and Amy would say - Really?!

Political Theater from the State's Most Colorful Characters

Lookout - mover/shaker Richie Ross, operates-on-a-NYC-tempo Carole Migden, and uh, former something and current FPPC Chair (sorry, I ran out of creativity just then) Ross Johnson are going out it like a community college thespian club. You sue me, I'll sue you, you're retaliating against me, you started it. Phew, I'm tired just trying to figure out who the real jerk in this story is. (Make sure you click on the link to check out a scary photo of Chair Johnson. Yikes.)

Side note: political pop quiz - who is the "he" in this quote:

During a budget fight in 1983, he called Assemblyman Lou Papan, D-Millbrae, an expletive and made a vulgar suggestion in an exchange that has become Capitol lore.

If you said "John Burton" . . . you're wrong! But no one would blame you for making a highly educated guess. It was Ross Johnson, but anyway . . .

Though Johnson sounds like he's been less than well-spoken at all points in his career, it's Ross and Migden that come off like the real peaches of the story. Ross has a history of screaming vulgarites at those who cross him, deign to defy his wise demands, er, advice, and question his, um, integrity. Yeah. And that kind of sounds like Migden too, except she's less screaming vulgar than screaming condescension.

I don't think mean, rude, probably law-breaking people should be rewarded with public office, so I hope Migden loses and does her penance. She should have another chance someday, after humbling herself a bit.

And Ross? Well, like he says in the linked article - everyone has a dark side. He just seems content to let his run the show.