Gov. Jerry Brown plans to deliver his state of the state address on Wednesday, then take his campaign to raise taxes on the road. Among his first stops: Los Angeles City Hall.
From Chris Megerian in the LAT: "Gov. Jerry Brown doesn’t plan to waste any time selling his vision for California this year."
"Hours after his State of the State speech Wednesday morning in Sacramento, he’s scheduled to be in Los Angeles to speak at City Hall. Then he’ll be in a private meeting with teachers at Bret Harte Elementary School in Burbank."
"The governor plans to continue his tour the next day, stopping at a meeting of the Orange County Business Council in Irvine in the morning and then at the City Club of San Diego at noon."
"Gil Duran, a spokesman for Brown, said the governor's travels will be the start of a series of trips this year to "amplify his message." "He’ll be making the case around the state," Duran said. "And that means getting out of Sacramento."
Amazon, recently embroiled in a tax war with the state of California, intends to launch a new distribution center that will bring 1,500 jobs to the Central Valley.
From the Bee's Dale Kasler: "Amazon is expected to announce soon it will build a 1,500-employee distribution center off I-5 in Patterson, west of Modesto. The facility would be the first of several Amazon sites in California."
"No deal has been finalized yet in Patterson, and city and county officials will refer to the new employer only as Project X. But according to the Modesto Bee, the company is widely believed to be Amazon."
"City Manager Rod Butler said he expects an announcement in a week or two."
"They're talking 1,500 full-time jobs throughout the year, going up to 2,500 or more seasonally," he said.
If California is to receive funding from the No Child Left Behind law, it is going to have to toughen its evaluation procedures for teachers and principals and peg them to student scores. Louis Freedberg in EdSource has the story.
"As a result of deep unhappiness with many aspects of the law, the Obama administration is inviting states to apply for waivers from the law. But federal officials are making it clear that if California were to apply for a waiver, it would have to fully implement any plan it submits by the 2014-15 school year."
"That was the message that Acting Assistant Secretary Michael Yudin in the U.S. Department of Education brought from Washington to the State Board of Education meeting in Sacramento last week."
"Remarkably, Yudin was unable to tell the state board what the consequences for California would be if it failed to implement everything contained in its plan were it to apply for the waiver."
"The waiver the Obama administration is offering would offer all kinds of incentives to states and schools. It would, for example, suspend the requirements whereby states have to set “annual measurable objectives” that schools and districts must meet. But the U.S. Department of Education would also require states to implement a slew of provisions to get these benefits, including the teacher and principle evaluation requirements."
Stephen Glass, the one-time journalistic wunderkind who was disgraced after it turned out that he had fabricated numerous stories in national magazines, wants to be a lawyer but he's being challenged by others in the profession, who say he's not fit to be an attorney.
From the Bee's Dan Walters,who says give Glass another chance: "Even before he was outed as a fraud, however, Glass had already begun to attend Georgetown Law School. And after his bid to become a licensed lawyer in New York was rejected, he moved to Southern California, began clerking for a Beverly Hills law firm, passed the California bar exam and applied for admission to the California bar in 2007."
"The State Bar's Committee of Bar Examiners turned Glass down, but he appealed to the independent State Bar Court, which ruled 2-1 in his favor, citing "overwhelming evidence of Glass' reform and rehabilitation" and an impressive list of character witnesses, including the former editor of the New Republic magazine, which had published many of Glass' fabrications."
"The bar examiners, however, appealed. The issue moved to the state Supreme Court, which agreed to review Glass' application."
"The appeal has generated a storm of controversy within journalistic and legal circles centering on the concept of redemption, and both professions appear to be divided over whether Glass, having committed the ultimate sin of journalistic malfeasance, should be granted another opportunity in another field of endeavor."
And from our Friendly Skies file comes word that passengers in a British airliner were sitting comfortably and enjoying the trip over the Atlantic when a message suddenly came over the intercom, warning them that they were going to crash land in the ocean.
"For 30 seconds or so, everyone thought they were going to perish over the Atlantic – the water not being particularly warm at this time of year."
"Thankfully, the PA system had got it wrong. The pre-recorded message had been played by mistake. Some mistake. Passengers have since complained the apology they received from cabin staff did not adequately measure up to the gravitas of the situation."
"We guess most were kissing the tarmac when they landed at Heathrow."
