Yesterday was foreign policy day for Gov. Schwarzenegger.
"California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, speaking to the United Nations' General Assembly, today
called on world leaders to move beyond recrimination over the causes of global warming and concentrate on finding solutions," reports the Chron's Tom Chorneau.
"Schwarzenegger drew an unspoken but clear distinction between California's leadership on the issue and the reluctance of the Bush administration to fully recognize climate change as a looming crisis by opening the U.N. summit on global warming with a speech urging aggressive action on limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
"'The time has come to stop looking back at the Kyoto protocol,' Schwarzenegger told the U.N. General Assembly in New York. "It is time to stop looking back in blame or suspicion. The consequences of global climate change are so pressing ... it doesn't matter who was responsible for the past.
"'
What matters is who is answerable for the future. And that means all of us,' the Republican governor said."
"As Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad paid his controversial visit to New York on Monday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger moved to steal some of the spotlight by
announcing that California would sever ties with companies doing business in Iran," reports Evan Halper in the Times.
"Schwarzenegger, who like Ahmadinejad went to New York to address the United Nations, announced in a written statement after his speech that he would sign legislation requiring California's multibillion-dollar state pension funds to divest from the country.
"The move, pushed by a diverse coalition of activists who argued that the federal government has not done enough to keep multinational corporations out of Iran, puts California at the forefront of a national movement.
"The bill, AB 221, which passed the Legislature with no opposition, follows the state's divestment from Sudan last year."
And the LA Times takes a look at the ongoing war between the Schwarzenegger administration and the prison guards' union. "After a 16-month stalemate in an increasingly bitter contract dispute,
state officials last week took the provocative step of declaring that they would unilaterally impose their 'last, best and final offer,' attempting to recoup what in most cases amounts to basic powers to run prisons as they see fit," writes Michael Rothfeld in the Times.
"Over the union's threats to retaliate, the state would reclaim the right to question officers about such nuts-and-bolts items as sick leave and to decide how many guards -- and which ones -- should staff certain posts. Prison authorities also could make changes in operations that the union has blocked, such as determining when inmates visit medical clinics. And the state would vastly restrict the guards' use of grievances.
"In response, the union, which holds $4.5 million in political action committees, has filed a complaint with California's Public Employment Relations Board saying the state is acting improperly.
"'They are imposing a lot of things that are illegal, that they can't impose without a change in the law,' said
Ryan Sherman, a spokesman for the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn.
"'
I need some of my management rights back,'
James Tilton, secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in an interview. 'I've said, 'I'm responsible for running the department.' My goals are to make sure we make decisions as necessary, and that's what we intend to do.'
"
David Gilb, director of the state's Department of Personnel Administration, which negotiates labor contracts,
said corrections officers have so much power that the public believes they 'run the prisons, and we can't blow our nose without getting the union's permission.'"
And from our
Full Disclosure Files ,The Bee's Shane Goldmacher looks at
who is behind the initiative to split the state's electoral votes. "The campaign filings made public Monday showed a single $175,000 donation to the initiative from a Missouri-formed company, Take Initiative America.
"But who exactly is behind the Missouri organization remains unclear.
"
Kevin Eckery, a spokesman for the initiative campaign, was traveling Monday and said he did not know who had donated the money to the group.
"'That's all the information I have,' said Eckery, who added that the campaign had disclosed 'everything we need to.'"
The Bee's Jim Sanders looks at a
bill to limit the use of rebates in advertised prices. "Assemblyman
Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, said his bill stems from a simple premise: 'The consumer should pay the advertised price.'
"Customers are lured by bargain promises only to find in tiny type, often overlooked, that they'll have to pay more now but can file a rebate request later, Feuer said.
"'This is fundamentally a truth-in-advertising bill,' he said. 'Fine print is fine print for a reason. If it were meant to be focused on, it would be in bold type.'
"Under Assembly Bill 1673, stores advertising mail rebates would have two choices: Either emphasize the higher price or honor the rebate immediately and seek reimbursement themselves."
Dan Walters
draws a parallel between the GM auto fleet contract and the Oracle scandal under the Gray Davis administration.
"Television newscaster
Mirthala Salinas, who was suspended without pay for two months in August after her affair with Los Angeles Mayor
Antonio Villaraigosa became public, is scheduled to return to work Monday. But she
won't be taking up her old job as a fill-in anchor on evening newscasts for KVEA-TV Channel 52," report Duke Helfand and Meg James in the Times.
"Instead, executives with the Spanish-language Telemundo network
confirmed Monday that Salinas would be sent to the station's Inland Empire bureau in Riverside as a general assignment reporter, a notable fall for a one-time rising star who has become one of the most recognizable faces in local Spanish-language television."
Not that Riverside is punishment, per se...
And from our
New York Is For Lovers Files,
Luke Jacunski and his girlfriend were robbed at gunpoint just seconds after he proposed.
"Jacunski got on one knee and popped the question to his girlfriend of six months, Mami Nagase, in a romantic spot at a gazebo in Central Park on Saturday night. She had just agreed to marry him when, they said, a gunman jumped from the bushes and yelled, 'Give me your money and get on the ground!'
"As Jacunski, 30, and Nagase, 24, got on the ground, he was able to slip the engagement ring off her finger and hide it in his pocket.
