George Skelton writes that anti-tax crusader
Lewis Uhler plans another shot at union political activity, albeit using an even more restrictive approach.
"'It will be modeled after a Utah law called the '
voluntary contributions act.' That law forbids public employee unions from spending any dues on politics. All politicking must be funded through a political action committee. And governments are prohibited from collecting PAC money with payroll deductions."
In contrast, Prop. 75 would have required the employee's permission before using payroll deduction for political contributions.
"'I'm not at all convinced that we as taxpayers are responsible for picking up the cost of union political fundraising,' asserts Uhler, president of the National Tax Limitation Committee, which he says has 100,000 dues-paying members."
"'What is he smoking?' asks Democratic consultant
Gale Kaufman, who coordinated the unions' victory over Schwarzenegger's ballot measures. 'They're out of their minds. What's that about?'"
Dan Morain writes that one of the lawsuits over alleged abuse of California ratepayers by natural gas companies during the energy crisis appears to be
nearing an end.
"Natural gas companies seeking to settle a lawsuit filed by Lt. Gov.
Cruz Bustamante in the wake of the energy crisis have offered to sweeten the deal by
paying $200,000 to endow a university professorship in his name."
"Bustamante's lawyers have agreed in principal to the deal, saying they would accept a settlement of $20 million — though that is a fraction of the money, perhaps $1 billion or more, Bustamante hoped to recover when he filed the case on behalf of overcharged California consumers."
"Bustamante's chief lawyer,
Raymond Boucher of Beverly Hills, said it was he who suggested to gas company attorneys that the firms pay for the University of California professorship."
Staff to Bustamante claim that the lieutenant governor knew nothing about the endowment, while plaintiff lawyers in other cases against the natural gas companies are crying foul and fear that the small settlement will injure their cases.
The Bee's Jim Sanders reports on a
loophole in the high school exit exam requirement, whereby community colleges can grant diplomas without requiring students to pass the test.
"'Clearly, it's something that legislators did not know about,' said Sen.
Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, who added, 'It's something I'm intrigued with.'"
"
Mark Drummond, chancellor of the community college system, said he knows of only seven campuses that award high school diplomas."
Drummond said the state must do something about teens who leave high school without a degree, solid skills or a job. '
We simply can't throw 50,000 people on the waste heap, year after year,' he said. 'Somebody's got to solve it. ... Is it us? I don't know.'"
"State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Jack O'Connell is concerned that no statewide standards exist for such community college programs, raising the possibility that academic expectations could be too low, now or later."
"'
Any entity that would award a student a diploma without the knowledge and skills to back it up does a great disservice to that student,' O'Connell said in a statement."
Mark Martin takes a look at the governor's deliberations on the
Tookie Williams case. Williams is
scheduled to be executed on Dec. 13.
"Just a few weeks after a special election that marked the low point of Schwarzenegger's tenure as governor, he is faced with a decision he admitted this week that he dreads.
'I know he will agonize over this,' said state Sen.
Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, who has worked with Schwarzenegger on prison reform and is advocating clemency for Williams, with whom she met earlier this month.
'I know this governor believes in redemption. He has approached crime and punishment with a little more thought than just "hang 'em high." The question is whether he will take the political risk.'"
The Oakland Tribune checks in with the
eerily quiet probe around Sen. Don Perata. "'I don't think I'd make any judgment' about whether the probe ever will bear fruit, said
Rick Smith, a former FBI agent who's now a private investigator in San Francisco. 'In those white-collar, political corruption cases, two years is nothing.'"
Perata says the investigation is not nearly as big an annoyance as the special election. "'The biggest problem with this year was the special election — I mean, that really put the Legislature on the sidelines,' he said."
But
Dan Schnur opines
the special may actually have helped Perata. 'Although he certainly didn't do it intentionally, Schwarzenegger's decision to call a special election did a great job of changing the subject for Perata.'"
Dan Walters writes about the
shrinking number of lawyers in the Legislature. "Writing in the State Bar Journal last month, the organization's chief counsel,
Larry Doyle, lamented that with the number of attorneys in the Legislature already at an all-time low, their ranks appear 'to be headed towards new depths' in next year's legislative elections. From nearly 50 percent of the Legislature in 1970, lawyers have dropped to under 25 percent. With many lawyer-legislators facing term limits next year, the proportion could drop to barely half of that, Doyle says. He quotes one of those termed-out lawyers, Democratic Sen.
Joe Dunn, as saying it "is not a harbinger of good things to come.'"
Finally, from our
I'm Going to Disneyland Files, two Minnesota turkeys begin their long journey to Washington DC
to receive an official presidential pardon. After the Capitol festivities, the turkeys will head to Disneyland, where they will serve as grand marshalls in the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Let's just hope, for the president's sake, that the poultry doesn't get as frisky as
this guy did back in 2001.
