"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
met with Democratic and Republican legislative leaders for the first time Monday afternoon to discuss the state's tardy budget, and one Republican emerged saying he was 'less optimistic' about negotiations," writes the Bee's Judy Lin.
"Assembly Republican leader
Mike Villines walked out of the governor's office after the hourlong meeting and indicated little progress was made even though the state is nine days into the new fiscal year without a budget.
"'We're still $2 billion apart,' Villines, of Clovis, said.
"The GOP is insisting on savings beyond what Schwarzenegger proposed in his May budget revisions.
"Senate President Pro Tem
Don Perata, D-Oakland, said Republicans proposed cutting into education and social service programs -- a move Democrats consider draconian. Perata said he might bring the budget up for a vote even though Republican support is needed to pass the budget bill, which requires a two-thirds legislative vote."
Meanwhile, "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
visited the state Senate on Monday for the first time in almost three years, but it wasn't to demand a deal on the state's overdue budget," writes Kevin Yamamura in the Bee.
"The Republican governor instead ventured upstairs to honor
Joe Weider, the muscle magnate who launched Schwarzenegger's celebrity career in the United States nearly four decades ago. Weider, 84, entered the Senate in a wheelchair, trailed by a coterie that included 'Rocky' star
Sylvester Stallone.
"The state Senate issued a resolution recognizing Monday as "Joe Weider Day," at Schwarzenegger's request. Weider financed and promoted Schwarzenegger's career from the time the governor was a fledgling Austrian bodybuilder through his current life as a politician.
"Weider, a Canadian native who lives in Woodland Hills, founded an empire of bodybuilding and fitness magazines that celebrated muscle-bound athletes and offered training tips. In 2003, he sold his magazines, which included Muscle & Fitness, Men's Fitness and Shape, for $357 million to American Media Operations Inc."
"Facing a deadline Friday, lawmakers this week are considering
a range of bills concerning everything from health care reform to the controversial expansion of death row at San Quentin State Prison," reports the Merc's Steve Geissinger.
"The long list also includes legislation barring the use of trans fats in restaurants, a requirement that bottled-water labels show the source of that water and the renewal of a law aimed at shutting down late-night and weekend 'sideshow' gatherings by illegal street racers.
"
Bills originating in either the Assembly or Senate must pass their first policy committee tests in the other house by the end of the week - a major indicator of whether they'll make it through the Democrat-dominated Legislature to Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk.
"'If a bill clears the first policy committee in the second house, it's one of the last of the high hurdles it needs to jump,' said
Steve Maviglio, spokesman for Assembly Speaker
Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles.
"
Latinos will become the state's majority ethnic group by 2042, according to new population projections that portray a future California whose fortunes will increasingly depend on the skills of a predominantly non-white workforce," reports Mike Swift in the Merc News.
"Population numbers released Monday by the state Department of Finance predict that 52 percent of all Californians will be Latino by 2050, when whites will make up just 26 percent of the population.
"The forecast, probably the last until after the 2010 Census, 'implies a younger non-white workforce supporting an older white retirement-age population,' said
Mary Heim, the state de mographer, who helped produced the projections.
"Some question whether a state that has a growing mismatch between the general population and a voting population dominated by whites will make the right decisions now to ensure its future success."
"'
There's going to be a racial generation gap occurring,' said
Bill Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He worries that white voters and corporate leaders in future decades will be 'not as connected to the younger part of California, just simply because it's not their own children or their neighbors' children.'"
The LAT's Patrick McGreevy
checks in on the lobbying on both sides of the doggy eugenics bill.
"The Senate Local Government Committee, which takes up the proposal Wednesday,
has received nearly 20,000 letters, faxes and other communications from animal control experts and thousands of pet owners, with slightly more of them supporting the bill, said
Elvia Diaz, a staffer for the panel who said she had never seen so much response to a piece of legislation.
"Both sides have enlisted cultural icons for their campaigns:
TV's Bob Barker made the rounds at the Capitol on Monday in favor of the bill, while opponents say they have the canine film star who played
Lassie, or at least the dog's owner,
Bob Weatherwax, to speak against the measure. Weatherwax and the collie, the ninth in the Lassie lineage, plan a tour of the legislative hallways today.
"'I'm not an expert. I give away refrigerators,' joked Barker, the recently retired host of the game show 'The Price Is Right' at a news conference Monday. But 'there are just too many cats and dogs being born for all of them to have homes.'"
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made
his first public appearance since confirming his affair with Telemundo's Mirthala Salinas, and
tried desperately to begin changing the subject. Not surprisingly, that didn't go so well.
LAT's Duke Helfand reports, "At two events staged by his staff to demonstrate the mayor's business-as-usual resolve, Villaraigosa strove to stay composed as he faced relentless television and newspaper reporters pressing for him to reveal the most intimate details of his love life.
It was the kind of persistent media coverage usually reserved for Hollywood royalty hunted by paparazzi in search of a money shot."
Did we just read "money shot" in an LAT news story?
And it looks like
Gavin Newsom finally got a challenger he should worry about. "If
Chicken John is elected mayor of San Francisco, one of his first orders of business
will be to hold a raffle so that some lucky person wins the chance to drive a truck smack into the gigantic bow-and-arrow sculpture that sits on the Embarcadero.
"Mayor Chicken John would see to it that more city money goes to the arts, but not the kind of art like the 60-foot-tall fiberglass and stainless-steel structure by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen erected nearly five years ago on San Francisco's waterfront, which he calls an insult to every artist in the city.
"
His platform, he says, is the bed of his 1975 GMC pickup, which he converted to a zero-emissions vehicle that runs on coffee grounds and walnut shells. His party affiliation is simple: '
I like to party. Party hardy.'
""So what if Chicken John, ne
John Rivaldi, doesn't pay much attention to city politics and the only thing he has ever really run for in his life was from a fight as a child (hence the chicken nickname). The longtime Burning Man devotee, who is a superstar in his own right among the large community of festivalgoers, hopes to give Mayor
Gavin Newsom a run for his money in November.
"And if he wins, Chicken John promises that through art and innovation he will bring a sense of comedy and whimsy to San Francisco City Hall."
We thought
Chris Daly already did that.
