Senator Tom Berryhill has opted not to challenge a $40,000 fine for money-laundering after the Fair Political Practices Commission panel upheld the penalty in April. Jim Miller has the story in the Sacramento Bee.
“Berryhill, R-Twain Harte, had until late last month to file a lawsuit in Superior Court challenging the Fair Political Practices Commission’s April approval of an administrative law judge’s proposed decision that Berryhill committed ‘serious and deliberate’ violations of campaign-finance rules.
“Charles Bell, Berryhill’s attorney, said the lawmaker, brother Bill Berryhill and the Republican central committees in San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties decided to pay the fine but still maintain they did nothing wrong.
“’They believe they did not violate the law,’ Bell said. ‘They just made a business decision to move on.’”
In remarks at a hearing on Tuesday, the federal judge handling the Stockton bankruptcy case said that he may be open to the idea of cutting CALPERS pensions – or not. Just the suggestion that government pensions could be at risk is remarkable in a case that could become a landmark. Ed Mendel reports in Calpensions.com:
“U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein yesterday outlined an argument, a ‘summary from 50,000 feet,’ for treating CalPERS pensions like other debt, then invited CalPERS, Stockton and other parties to respond with written briefs.
“The judge said he wanted to share his ‘preliminary thoughts’ to give the lawyers in the case a chance to ‘straighten me out before I make some dramatic boneheaded mistake’ about a simple understanding of the law.
“Klein emphasized at the end of his remarks that his view of the ‘jigsaw puzzle’ of how state pension law fits with federal bankruptcy law is still tentative. ‘I could be persuaded of opposite propositions,’ he said.”
Josh Richman reports in Political Blotter that Governor Brown has signed AB 2488, a law allowing for wine and cider tasting at Farmer’s Markets.
“Brown signed AB 2488 by Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, which had passed the Assembly and state Senate with unanimous votes.
“The new law, effective immediately, lets wineries or cider makers who grow all of the fruit in their product to offer tastings to potential customers at farmers’ markets. But nobody’s going to get schnockered: Market managers still have discretion on whether to allow tastings; only one winery can offer tastes at a market on a given day; the tastings must happen in a cordoned-off area; and the grower can pour no more than three ounces of wine or cider per adult customer.”
History may not remember Warren G. Harding as one of our best chief executives, but it turns out he was a pioneer in one area: presidential sexting.
A series of racy letters penned by future president Warren Harding to his mistress (and rumored German spy) Carrie Fulton Phillips have been made public, a century after they were written.
“The correspondence is intimate and frank — and perhaps the most sexually explicit ever by an American president. Even in the age of Anthony Weiner sexts and John Edwards revelations, it still has the power to astonish. In 106 letters, many written on official Senate stationery, Harding alternates between Victorian declarations of love and unabashedly carnal descriptions. (While Phillips’s notes and some drafts of her letters have been preserved, her actual replies were not.) The president often wrote in code, in case the letters were discovered, referring to his penis as Jerry and devising nicknames, like Mrs. Pouterson, for Phillips.”
One word, Warren: "Snapchat."