Capitol Weekly's Shane Goldmacher reports the
national NAACP has overridden the state chapter and
opted to back a new cigarette tax on the November ballot.
"The national NAACP this weekend endorsed the tobacco tax on California's November ballot, putting the national branch at odds with the state arm of the NAACP and its president
Alice Huffman.
The vote, which took place at the national board's meeting in St. Louis, Mo. comes less than two weeks after Capitol Weekly reported that Huffman's political consulting firm, A.C. Public Affairs, had received $100,000 from cigarette-maker Philip Morris at the same time the California NAACP was opposing the new cigarette tax.
'From our earliest days, the health status of African-Americans has been a major NAACP concern. Proposition 86 will be a great step toward that goal," said
Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP's board of directors, in a statement after the vote."
Phil Angelides cannot catch a break. Even
his jokes are being scrutinized for possible plagiarism. The Bee's Kevin Yamamura investigates. "You have to question the origin of Angelides' best line [on the Adam Carolla show last week], which came when he suggested Reep incumbent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's hair 'looked like it was dipped in Tang.'"
Only the day before, L.A. Times columnist
Steve Lopez had opined in his column that it looked like the guv's head "was dipped in a bucket of Tang."
Of course, it should be noted that former Miami Herald columnist
Dave Barry had previously linked the instant breakfast drink to the heads of both the late U.S. Sen.
Strom Thurmond and the billionaire developer
Donald Trump.
For the record, a spokesperson for Kraft Foods, the manufacturer of Tang, said that in her admittedly short time with the company, she had not heard anyone suggest its use as a hair product, even for politicians."
Now that must have been a fun phone call to make...
Hey, I'm not in college, so why should I care? That, in essence seems to be the reaction to
Phil Angelides' plan to cut college fees, reports LAT's Rebecca Trounson. "But several political analysts said it was not clear that Angelides' proposal to cut fees, a key element of his stump speech, has resonated much with the wider public in his campaign to unseat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The analysts add that a simple fact makes Angelides' plan a tough sell: Despite several years of sharp increases early in the decade, fees were frozen for the current school year for University of California and California State University students. And the charges for community college students are actually scheduled to drop — from $26 to $20 per unit — in January.
In Los Angeles, planners are dreaming of
a train line to LAX, reports the Times' Jean Guccione. "Los Angeles officials are drawing a new route aimed at finally closing perhaps the biggest gap in the region's mass transit system: A lack of a rail line flowing directly into Los Angeles International Airport.
Planners envision a new light rail line that would run along Crenshaw Boulevard and Florence Avenue between Exposition Boulevard and the airport. Although still in the early planning stages, officials believe that the line could be opened by 2015
if they can secure the $1 billion needed to build it."
George Skelton
breaks down the ballot, bonds and all. "For people who lean toward fiscal moderation, California voters are being asked for an awful lot.
They're being asked to roughly double the infrastructure bond debt the state already owes — $45 billion, plus $42.7 billion on the Nov. 7 ballot.
That's not the whole story.
There's currently $30 billion worth of authorized bonds still waiting to be sold. For every dollar borrowed, figure paying an additional dollar in interest over a normal 30-year loan period.
To put all this in political perspective, only last June California voters rejected a small, innocuous $600-million bond issue for local libraries and a controversial $2-billion income tax hike on the rich to finance preschool for 4-year-olds.
Frequent voters in this state are closely divided between those who want lower taxes and fewer government services, and those who desire the opposite, according to polling by the Public Policy Institute of California.
Therefore, many fiscal centrists no doubt are facing a dilemma as they prepare to vote.
Dan Walters says
the $400 million being spent on the election ain't nuthin but a thang. "Although $400 million sounds huge, in fact it's probably less than one-thousandth of the stakes involved in state-level political decision-making every year. The state budget, the allocation of federal funds, state bonds, insurance premiums, utility rates and the investment of public pension funds easily amount to at least $400 billion, not counting the indirect consequences of the hundreds of bills that move through the Legislature.
The Bee's Peter Hecht says
Latino voters may be the key to the parental consent initiative on the November ballot. "Sister Rosa Gonzales says she can count on receptive audiences when she knocks on doors in Latino neighborhoods to urge a "yes" vote on Proposition 85, the parental notification initiative on abortion.
'When they see that nun's habit, they listen,' she says."
Hey, it's a hard habit to break. Ba dum-dum. Moving on...
"The sight of Sister Rosa walking voter precincts near the Resurrection Church east of downtown Los Angeles is but one illustration of how the Catholic Church and Proposition 85 proponents are targeting a critical constituency: Latino voters.
The outreach in Latino communities -- by both anti-abortion and abortion rights forces -- reflects the competitive stakes of the parental notification initiative. The measure, a modified version of last year's Proposition 73, would require doctors to notify a parent or guardian before performing abortions on girls under 18."
From our stubborn futility files, looks like Orange County Republican
Tan Nguyen is refusing to step aside in his race against Loretta Sanchez.
"Just two days after his office was raided in a probe of a mailer warning immigrants against voting, Republican congressional candidate Tan Nguyen said Sunday he would keep campaigning and rejected what he said were "ridiculous" calls to resign from the election.
'I am not going to quit this race and I am going to win this race,' Nguyen told reporters called to his campaign headquarters for a press conference."
Well, one out of two ain't bad...
For those of you who just scan this column and skip to the bottom,
don't expect a happy ending. Looks like San Francisco is cracking down. "Anyone who wants to open a massage parlor in San Francisco would first have to meet their future neighbors at a public hearing, under proposed rules intended to weed out spas that serve as fronts for brothels.
The Board of Supervisors will vote on the proposal Tuesday. It's part of
an effort by city leaders to curb the illegal sex trade in San Francisco, part of the growing $8 billion international sex trafficking industry.
'My ordinance is aimed at immigrant women who are here working in the massage parlors against their will,' said Supervisor
Fiona Ma, a candidate for state Assembly who introduced her idea shortly after federal agents raided 10 Asian massage parlors in San Francisco in summer 2005."