Gov. Jerry Brown, sitting on a fat, unused campaign war chest, says he is considering placing a measure before voters next year on the statewide ballot, possibly relating to climate change or his bullet train and proposed Delta tunnels. Reporters traveling with him in Paris caught the story.
From the Bee's David Siders: "There’s a few things which I’m not ready to lay out for what we do,” he said. “We’re going to do something.”
"The Democratic governor holds about $24 million in two campaign accounts and is in his final term. The November election in a presidential year offers a likely favorable Democratic voter turnout."
"Brown said, “It’s a good election year,” adding that his administration still has “a lot of authority.”
The LAT's Chris Megerian also was on the scene as Brown began to head home from Paris.
"There are some things we're looking at," he said. "I'm not ready to talk about them yet."
"...The governor's plans for water tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta are facing a ballot challenge from a wealthy farmer who wants to force the state to seek voter approval before launching projects costing more than $2 billion in revenue bonds. That measure qualified last month for the November 2016 ballot."
“Consumer Watchdog, which found the emails in a batch of other records it had requested, made the emails public on its website Wednesday. The organization also posted its letter to Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León demanding ‘full disclosure and a full investigation’ of racial bias within the department.
“’We think you will agree that it’s outrageous that those charged with protecting communities would slander them with racist stereotypes,’ the organization’s consumer advocate, Liza Tucker, wrote in the letter to de León.”
And from racism to xenophobia - the San Diego Union Tribune polled 500 San Diego residents about Donald Trump’s recent comments about barring Muslims from entering the US and the comments of his rivals. Just over half the respondents agreed with Trump. Click for full poll.
Millions of dollars in charitable donations sit unspent in state coffers, either unallocated or not dispersed quickly enough. Wednesday, a Senate committee began the process of making sure the funds reach their intended destination in a timely manner. Don Thompson, AP:
“Lawmakers and state agencies on Wednesday began exploring ways to make sure millions of charitable dollars donated annually by California taxpayers aren't stalled for years and don't wind up in state coffers…
“Sen. Bob Hertzberg, chairman of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee, called the hearing in response to an Associated Press report in August that found California agencies failed to spend nearly $10 million in taxpayers' charitable donations over 10 years…
"’Sometimes the money has fallen through the cracks,’ Hertzberg said at the hearing in Los Angeles. ‘Does the money get there and how long does it take?’"
A new Census Bureau report finds that California has one of nation’s highest median incomes, and one of the worst poverty rates – the worst by one calculation. Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee:
“Fourteen states had [poverty] rates higher than California’s, topped by Mississippi’s 21.9 percent, while New Hampshire was the lowest at 9.2 percent.
“However, the official poverty rate calculated for the report used a half-century-old method that makes no allowance for regional differences in either incomes or living costs. The bureau has developed a ‘supplemental measure’ that takes those and other factors into account and by that method, California’s poverty rate is the nation’s highest at 24.3 percent, largely due to its extraordinarily high housing costs.
“Californians’ median family income, $61,927, was well above the national median of $53,657 last year and one of the nation’s highest. Just seven other states had higher incomes, topped by Massachusetts’ $73,859. The lowest median income was West Virginia’s $41,030.
And finally, a story that underscores just how different Donald Trump is as a candidate in modern American politics, and how difficult it is for the media to cover him. BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief issued a memo to his staff, telling them that it was OK to refer to Trump as a racist. From Hadas Gold at Politico:
“BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith told staff in a memo on Tuesday that it's permissible for them to call Donald Trump a racist as a fact on social media.
“Smith wrote the memo in response to queries from staff about what was OK for them to post on social media networks such as Twitter or Facebook about Trump. While BuzzFeed News has a policy that staff not be political partisans on social media, Smith said Trump ‘is operating far outside the political campaigns to which those guidelines usually apply.’ BuzzFeed's entertainment staffers have more leeway when it comes to expressing opinions.
"’It is, for instance, entirely fair to call him a mendacious racist, as the politics team and others have reported clearly and aggressively: he's out there saying things that are false, and running an overtly anti-Muslim campaign. BuzzFeed News's reporting is rooted in facts, not opinion; these are facts,’ Smith wrote.”