"With a resounding 'aye,' the California Assembly today
elected Karen Bass, a Los Angeles Democrat, as its 67th speaker," reports Nancy Vogel in the Times.
"'I am deeply honored and deeply humbled by the trust you have placed in me,' Bass, 54, said moments after the vote that will vault her to one of the California's most powerful political positions. She will be the first African American woman to hold the job.
"The daughter of a mail carrier and homemaker, Bass grew up in the Venice/Fairfax area and worked as a physician's assistant and community organizer before her 2004 election to the Assembly. She will assume the speakership duties from Nunez, who must leave the Assembly because of term limits, at a date that has not been announced yet."
Dan Walters writes that Bass
has a difficult year ahead of her.
Back when he was a candidate for Speaker,
Chuck Calderon sent yellow roses to all of the Democratic women in the Assembly for Valentine's Day. The flowers came with a note: "If I can't have your heart, I'll settle for your vote. Please be mine, Chuck Calderon."
Yesterday, Bass, along with Assemblywomen
Noreen Evans and Mary Hayashi returned the favor. Hayashi and Evans, who were both strong, early supporters of
Karen Bass, sent Calderon some yellow roses Thursday to "thank him for being such a gentleman," Hayashi said. According to Hayashi, Calderon was among those who jumped on the Bass bandwagon when it became clear the Los Angeles Assemblywoman had the votes to become the next speaker.
So while Calderon may have missed out on the brass ring this time around, things are already looking rosier, thanks to Bass, Hayashi and Evans.
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
told business leaders Thursday he supports a proposal by nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill to rescind $2.7 billion in tax credits, but he later softened that stance and said he doesn't necessarily support all of her recommendations," reports Kevin Yamamura in the Bee.
"Hill last week found a dozen tax breaks that could be reduced or removed to help bridge an $8 billion budget gap remaining for the next fiscal year. The largest would be a $1.3 billion rollback of credits for those who claim child dependents, going from $294 per dependent down to $94.
"'
She has identified $2.5 billion of tax loopholes, including the yacht tax,' Schwarzenegger said at a Los Angeles economic town hall, using a long-term annual estimate of Hill's proposals. '
I think that we should go after those tax loopholes because we would need the extra $2.5 billion. This is $2.5 billion we can give straight to education. I'm totally for that ... and I agree that we should go for it, and we should do it because everybody has to give something in order to make this work.'
"But speaking to reporters afterward, Schwarzenegger said, according to a transcript provided by the administration, '
I'm not for the recommendations she made, necessarily.'"
Evan Halper
reports on the GOP response to the gov's comments: "'
If that is what he is saying, then we have a real problem,' said
Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. '
It is a fairly direct breaking of his no-new-taxes pledge. How do you dance around that?'"
"Coupal said rolling back tax credits and other deductions would raise tax bills for millions of Californians. It has the same effect as a broad-based tax hike, he said.
"Assembly Budget Committee Vice Chairman
Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) agreed. He said that those advocating a repeal of tax breaks have misled the public into believing that big money can be saved by targeting schemes enjoyed by the rich alone, such as the one that allows wealthy yacht, airplane and luxury RV owners to avoid sales taxes by keeping their new purchases out of state for 90 days.
"But that tax break amounts to only $26 million a year, Niello said. The governor is talking about raising billions."
The governor
heads to Columbus, Ohio today for the Arnold Sports Festival. Today's special focus
is Arnold's Active Aging Festival, which may or may not be sponsored by Just For Men hair coloring.
While the governor is gone,
maybe the ghosts of budgets past can get the state's house in order. The Bee's Judy Lin reports: "Former Gov.
Gray Davis, who knows firsthand how a fiscal crisis can contribute to the demise of a political career, is offering advice on how to tackle the current deficit – by tweaking voter-approved mandates such as minimum school funding.
"'We might want to take a look at re-examining what voters have done over the years,' Davis said Thursday during a luncheon hosted by the Public Policy Institute of California that also featured former Gov. Pete Wilson. "Maybe we should tweak the initiatives. … Right now, a lot of these decisions are locked in."
"Davis, a Democrat, offered no specific details for changing current rules but said special interests have passed ballot initiatives over the years as a way of protecting themselves against budget cuts – much to the detriment of California's fiscal health.
"Among the initiatives cited by the former governor were a guarantee that a minimum of roughly half of state funds go to public schools (Proposition 98); a requirement that property and sales tax be kept for local governments (Proposition 1A); and a dedication of gas sales tax for transportation purposes (Proposition 42)."
"Despite stalled negotiations with Democrats on
a comprehensive water plan, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger intends to move forward on studies of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, including a controversial canal, as well as call for a 20 percent per capita reduction in statewide water use, according to a letter he sent Thursday to Senate Democrats," reports the Bee's Kevin Yamamura.
The LAT's My-Thuan Tran and Christian Berthelson report that
the Republican grip on Orange County's Vietnamese community is weakening. "Since they first began arriving in the U.S. after fleeing Vietnam's communist regime in the 1970s, Vietnamese immigrants -- much like the Cuban refugees who settled in Florida -- have developed a political profile that is almost monolithically Republican, identifying with the party's historic anti-Communist stance.
"Now, after years in which they were eclipsed by their more dominant Republican counterparts, Vietnamese Democrats are beginning to emerge in Orange County, home to the nation's largest Vietnamese American community with a population of more than 150,000.
"Republicans continue to outnumber Democrats nearly 2 to 1 in Little Saigon, and the vast majority of elected Vietnamese politicians are Republicans. Few political experts in either party expect that Tran will defeat his GOP rivals for the supervisor's seat.
"But for the first time, registration of new Vietnamese voters as Democrats is outpacing Republicans in Orange County, and the number of newly registered Republicans has declined."
And it's official:
the drought is over (unless you're a San Francisco Giants fan, in which case the drought is just beginning. The Merc's Julie Lyons reports.
" The snowfall season should end above average - and that means Californians, warned to brace themselves after an exceptionally dry 2007, almost certainly won't face water shortages this summer.
That's right. No dirty cars. No brown lawns. And no saving the bath water."
And congratulations to House party animal
Dennis Cardoza, who seems to be doing just fine as a replacement for
Gary Condit. The Examiner's Yeas and Nays blog
looks at Maxim's biggest baddasses in politics.
"The magazine enlisted
Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes and Randi Rhodes to rank pols in myriad categories.
"The results:
"'Lady-killers':
Tom Coburn, John Warner and Fred Thompson take the Republican honors and
Ted Kennedy, Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards are the Democratic heartthrobs.
"'Party animals':
Randy Kuhl, Dana Rohrabacher and Jim Ramstad are the magazine’s rowdy Republicans, while
Dennis Cardoza, Barack Obama and Stephen Lynch tap the keg for Dems.
"'Trash talking':
Don Young, John Boehner and Rudy Giuliani lay down the smack for the GOP and
Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters and Tom Harkin do the Democratic dirt.
In the end, the magazine determines that Democrats are bigger bad boys than their Republican counterparts. '
It was a close one, with Republicans giving a strong showing in trash talking and surviving insurmountable odds in the field of battle. But the combo of cheerleading and crying in the final round proved to be a knockdown from which the GOP could not recover.'"