Meg Whitman said she'll post her tax returns online.
Maybe. Ken McLaughlin ha the details.
"Meg Whitman, the Republican front-runner for
California governor, said Wednesday that 25 years of her tax returns are
ready to be posted on the Internet.
But first, she said, presumed
Democratic nominee Jerry Brown must release his tax
returns from the
1980s to show that he wasn't "cashing in" from his two
terms as governor
or from the "contacts" of his father, former Gov.
Pat Brown.
"Whitman
said her quarter-century of returns will show the arc of her life —
from her late 20s, when her neurosurgeon husband made $16,000 a year as a
resident at UCSF Medical Center and she earned a relatively
modest
salary at Bain & Company, to her final years at eBay, when she
earned tens of millions.
"You will see the whole progression,"
said Whitman, 53, the former CEO of the online auction house. So, she
argued, it's only right that California voters see
the arc of Brown's
financial life."
For the record, the arc of my financial life is a rainbow...
Speaking of rainbows, Steve Poizner tells Martin Wiscol how he's going to
win the Republican Primary.
“We’ve been up aggressively on TV now for about four weeks.
That’s
it. The reason I didn’t start earlier is, hey, it takes $3 million a
week to advertise on TV and I wasn’t going to spend that obscene amount
of money.
“You’ve got to note the massive momentum in my direction.
I have an
excellent chance to win this.”
We still thing the chances of Poizner willing are about
as good as Poizner becoming a best-selling author. Oh, wait a sec...
Malcolm Maclachlan looks at how Poizner wound up on the NY Times bestseller list. Briefly.
"In early April, Matthew Donnellan received a copy of
Steve Poizner’s new memoir, “Mount Pleasant,” in the mail from
Amazon.com. But the San Diego area
college student, who is active in local Republican
clubs, said he never ordered the book.
“I wasn’t too sure if the book came in as a joke from a friend
who was a Whitman supporter or as a gift from a friend
who is a Poizner supporter,” Donnellan said.
An Amazon representative
he reached told him the book was purchased with a gift
card — and that card had also been used to buy copies of
“Mount Pleasant” for 249 other people, all of whom had first names that
began
with “M.” Donnellan
kept asking Amazon questions.
He was told the book was purchased with card was purchased
under the unlikely-sounding name “Joe
Shome.” But the actual card was paid for by one Mat Miller,
of the San Diego-based firm Pink Moon Media. The same person told
Donnellan
that Miller bought “a number” of other gift cards.
The name “Mat Miller” also pops up on Google as a contact for
ResultSource,
Inc. This Carlsbad-based company bills itself as “The leader in book
marketing and thought-leadership promotion.”
The company’s website offers to “Let ResultSource launch your
next book as a New York
Times Bestseller,” and goes on to say, “Having a bestseller initiates
credible growth — exponentially increasing the demand for your thought
leadership, skyrocketing your speaking itinerary, giving
you a national (even global) spotlight.”
Ah, but can they win you a Republican primary?
"Poizner’s campaign declined repeatedly to discuss the issue
with Capitol Weekly. Calls to Pink Moon and ResultSources
were not returned."
Jim Sanders reports Sen. Darrell Steinberg accused the governor of pushing a
state commission to cut lawmakers' pay.
"Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg accused
Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger on Wednesday of leveraging legislative pay to pressure
lawmakers in budget talks over a projected $18.6 billion deficit.
"I
have no doubt that the administration's imprint is
all over that
decision," Steinberg said of a proposal being considered by
the state's
independent salary-setting commission to cut legislative pay and
benefits by up to 10 percent.
Steinberg suggested that
Schwarzenegger is playing political games with pay
because he has few
other weapons to pressure lawmakers.
Aaron
McLear, Schwarzenegger spokesman, responded that "it's
an independent
commission that makes its own decisions."
Add one more initiative to the November ballot -- apparently. The folks who brought you Proposition
1A (the local government revenue protection measure, not
the tax hike measure) have turned in signatures asking voters to renegotiate
their deal. The new version, backed by "a coalition
of local government,
transportation, business, public safety, labor and
public transit
leaders" would limit the Legislature's ability to borrow local
dollars to balance the state's budget.
Will the fight over Abel Maldonado slow down the state's
budget talks? Maybe. Maybe not. But it's a good sign
that some of the members of the Big 5 may not be going bowling together any time soon.
"This week’s installment of Capitol political theater features
a battle between a new Assembly speaker trying to establish
himself as a new power broker and a lame-duck governor determined to
stay relevant and show
he cannot be bullied by the Legislature. All of this
is part of what Gov. Schwarzenegger derisively calls
“the kabuki” of Sacramento politics, and it was on full display
this week, boiling over into a war of words and angry
exchanges in the Capitol.
"The strategic game of chicken devolved into a heated
exchange, moderated through the media, between Schwarzenegger
on one side and Perez and Senate leader Darrell Steinberg,
D-Sacramento, on the other. Tempers were apparently still
flaring Wednesday when Steinberg accused Schwarzenegger
of encouraging the state commission that handles lawmakers’ salaries to
threaten to cut lawmakers pay “to try to influence public policy.”
"The Schwarzenegger administration has been frustrated
with Perez since he took over for Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, in March.
They say the new speaker was
complicit in an attempt by the California School Employees
Association to change the ballot summary of Proposition
14, the change to the state’s primary election system backed by
Schwarzenegger
on the June ballot -- a charge Perez flatly denies."
And finally, from our Don't Mess With Texas Files,
"A woman was trying to figure out what to do after
a demolition crew
wrongly tore down most of her house, instead of one across the street.
Francis Howard told the Denton
Record-Chronicle that "I don't have the words to say" about what
happened to her family's longtime home. The 69-year-old woman, who
lives with her son in Frisco, said Monday that the
family had resided in
the Denton, Texas
home for 47 years."
Oops.
