Lance Williams takes a closer look at Meg Whitman's fundraising, and finds some patterns.
"State records show that of the $10.2 million, about $1.6 million
came in bundled donations - checks written by several officials from
the same corporations who often made their donations
at about the same
time, often at the legal limit of $25,900.
"Executives from eBay, where Whitman was CEO until
2007, have been
especially generous. Eleven eBay employees combined
to give Whitman
$151,600, state records show. She got $25,900 each from CEO John
Donahoe, from the head of strategic initiatives, Eskander Kazim, and
from Rajiv Dutta, who has headed ebay subsidiaries Skype and Paypal."
Paul Elias looks at Jerry Brown's record as attorney
general, and finds his main goal was to not make waves,
"Jerry Brown has spent his three years as California's
attorney
general as he has his five decades in politics: being a predictably
unpredictable office holder and perennial candidate.
As
California's top prosecutor, the lifelong Democrat
with distinguished
political bloodlines has won wide support from district
attorneys,
police chiefs and sheriffs.
"But he has disappointed many death
penalty foes, consumer advocates and gun control proponents
who hoped
he would support their causes.
"Former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp, a
Democrat, said he had expected Brown to use the office more
aggressively and creatively. "I think that his mind probably has
been on running for governor and has been for some
time," said Van de
Kamp, who launched his own gubernatorial campaign in
1990 at the end of
his eight-year term as attorney general. "That's very time consuming
and distracting."
In case you missed it yesterday, Ted Lieu and Alyson Huber attacked the state's new prison policy. John Perez is set for a March 1 swearing-in. And the term-limits fight appears to be heading back to the ballot.
The details are in the Capitol Weekly/LA Times California Politics blog.
Wyatt Buchanan looks at Gov. Schwarzenegger's latest
off-the-cuff proposal -- building new prisons in Mexico.
"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday that the state
could save $1
billion by building and operating prisons in Mexico
to house
undocumented felons who are currently imprisoned in
California
"We pay them to build the prisons down in Mexico and
then we have
those undocumented immigrants be down there in a prison.
... And all
this, it would be half the cost to build the prisons
and half the cost
to run the prisons," Schwarzenegger said, predicting
it would save the
state $1 billion that could be spent on higher education."
There's that linkage again...
Meanwhile, the state's new prison policy is getting
plenty of heat from the politically ambitious.
Patrick McGreevy reports: "State prison authorities Monday began reducing the
number of parole
violators sent back behind bars and offering inmates
more opportunity
to shorten their sentences, as part of a plan to decrease
the prison
population by 6,500 inmates over the next year.
Low-risk offenders, including those convicted of nonviolent
crimes,
will not have regular supervision by a parole agent.
And they will no
longer be returned to prison for technical violations
such as alcohol
use, missed drug tests or failure to notify the state
of an address
change.
Parole agents will reduce the number of inmates they
supervise to focus
on those the state deems to be at highest risk of committing
more
crimes, such as people who have committed sexual crimes
and other
violent offenses. Each agent's caseload will fall from
70 parolees to
48."
Delta fish are in the crosshairs again, reports Mike Taugher. "Federal
regulators have agreed to reconsider a controversial
and apparently
unprecedented Bush administration decision to remove
a Delta fish from
the list of protected species.The 2003 decision to reclassify
the Sacramento splittail is believed to be the only
time a fish that
has not gone extinct has been removed from the list.
"Tainting
the decision was the involvement of former Bush Administration
official
Julie MacDonald, who heavily edited the final rule
despite her personal
stake in the outcome as a landowner in an area near
Davis that is
affected by the fish's status.
And finally, from our Powdered Sugar Files, " Tennessee police said a Knoxville woman who was later
arrested for cocaine possession
initially told an officer that she had been eating
a powdered doughnut. A 21-year-old woman was arrested on Thursday and charged
with possession of a Schedule II substance with intent
to sell or
deliver. She was also cited for driving on a suspended
driver's
license, driving without proof of insurance, failure
to maintain her
lane of traffic and possession of drug paraphernalia."
Hmm, that's the first time we've ever heard of the
old Homer Simpson defense not working.
