The AP picked up the story that Steve Westly made good on his promise to
kick millions into his own campaign. "'If I'm Angelides, I'm going to say, pick a side. You were with Arnold last year; you're with us this time,' [Schwarzenegger strategist Mike] Murphy told reporters last week. 'I think Angelides will be the nominee.
And if Arnold runs, he'll beat him like a slow mule.'"
And if Arnold doesn't run, fellow Republicans will beat him like a stray dog.
Stranger than Pulp Fiction? If the governor decides not to run for reelection,
Quentin Tarantino has a job for him. Tarantino has begun casting his new war epic, Inglorious Bastards, and as of last month "Tarantino was still trying to get his dream cast of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis for three key roles."
We know there's a pro-Democrat joke in there somewhere, but we can't quite pull it out at this early hour.
From our Chicago bureau: The Chicago Sun-Times
reports: "The Terminator came to Chicago Monday, but he acted more like the Invisible Man. California Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was here to raise money for an organization he formed to push a package of ballot initiatives in his home state -- and Republican donors were the only ones that got more than a glimpse of him."
But a Sun-Times gossip columnist, or one of his tipsters, got a glimpse of the guv in the Windy City. "Muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's controversial governor, apparently has a hard time making food choices. So
he settled for only ice cream at the posh RL eatery Monday . . . in all three flavors: vanilla, chocolate and strawberry."
Does the governor have a Neapolitan complex?
And, yes, the
California Nurses Association was there, with a plane flying above towing a sign saying "Arnold. Don't Sell CA to Big Business."
The San Mateo County Times reports that the
governor keeps on raising cash to be used for a special election. "'I think it's very likely an election is going to be called,' said
Philip Trounstine, director of the Survey and Policy Research Institute at California State University, San Jose, and former spokesman for Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. 'The governor's people feel very confident that once Schwarzenegger engages the public, it will revive his popularity.'"
In other words, last year it was thought that the governor's popularity would carry ballot measures to victory. Now, the governor needs a special election to restore his popularity.
Meanwhile,
immigrants rights groups rallied at the Capitol yesterday against the governor's recent remarks praising the Minutemen border patrol effort. "Assemblyman
Mervyn Dymally, D-Compton, called Schwarzenegger 'the most anti-immigrant immigrant' in the U.S.," writes the Riverside Press-Enterprise.
California's legislators will break the century mark with a
12% raise effective December 5, the first raise since 2000. The L.A. Times reports "Lawmakers' pay will jump from $99,000 a year to $110,880 starting Dec. 5, under a unanimous decision by the California Citizens Compensation Commission, a panel that meets annually to set salaries and benefits for the state's top elected officials."
The Contra Costa Times
connects with Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman to talk about the raises. "They've taken their action, and it's fine with me," Ackerman said of the commission. "Some of the people, myself included, took a pay cut to come here and had pension plans at other jobs." Ahhh, the liberty of a very safe district.
The move does not affect the $138 per day in tax-free per diem for living expenses, which will undoubtedly be written about on Friday when the two houses convene for a special Friday session to keep the cash flowing over the three day weekend. The independent commission did not propose raises for the governor and other statewide officers. "
Obviously now is not the right time to be giving more money to politicians in Sacramento," said Schwarzenegger spokesman
Vince Sollitto. "It certainly sends the wrong signal to California taxpayers."
Press spokesman however...
Speaking of salaries, the Register's John Gittelsohn reports "[l]awmakers from both parties, responding to an Orange County Register investigation,
called for an examination of the salaries of members of state boards and commissions who earn full-time pay for part-time work."
What about an investigation into that commission that raised the pay for legislators, many of whom also get paid full-time pay for part-time work?
CRT to hit the airwaves? Chargers owner and GOP money man
Alex Spanos kicked in $1 million yesterday to the California Recovery Team. Can a new Schwarzenegger ad be far behind?
Dan Weintraub looks at
CalPERS's decision to switch its accounting methodology, resulting in lower state and local government contributions by providing a longer horizon for the fund to recover from economic doldrums. "If a private company changed its accounting procedures to make its profits look bigger in good years and hide its losses in bad years, we would call that fraud. It's not fraud when a public pension fund does it. But it is cause for concern."
Meanwhile, Dan Walters is
challenging the governor's intellectual honesty. "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger committed a bit of intellectual dishonesty over the weekend when he touted his proposal that $1.3 billion in sales taxes on fuel be spent on transportation projects, as voters decreed in a 2002 ballot measure. The measure allowed the state to retain the money in the general fund if budget conditions required. Citing the 2002 vote, Schwarzenegger told radio listeners that "the politicians had other ideas. They took the money away from transportation."
What the governor left out is that he proposed and implemented a full fuel sales tax diversion, more than $1.2 billion, into the general fund in 2004-05."
The L.A. Times's Nancy Vogel
goes in depth on Oregon's experience with a law similar to
Patty Berg and
Lloyd Levine's proposed
California Compassionate Choices Act.
"Californians have just begun the debate over whether government should sanction physician-assisted suicide, but Oregon has seven years of experience. In a sense, it is the nation's laboratory, so it is no surprise that Californians on both sides of the issue are looking to Oregon's example for evidence to support their cases.
There, the worst-case scenarios cited by opponents — that people would move to Oregon from all over the country to die, that inheritance-hungry children would coerce elderly parents to take the lethal drugs — have not come to pass."
Finally, even more proof that
smoking is bad for you. "Arkansas state troopers say
Jeff Foran jumped from a car going 55-plus, to get a cigarette that flew out the window. Arkansas Trooper
Jamie Gravier says Foran is lucky to be alive. He suffered injuries to his nose, eyes and chin after his ciggy leap.
