PROP 23, the initiative to suspend AB-32 (California's Cap & Trade) has qualified for the Nov 2010 ballot and is ready for YOUR support! Please visit www.suspendab32.org to learn more.

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Pot plan worries small growers
By the Associated Press
Posted: 07/19/2010 01:01:10 AM PDT
OAKLAND (AP) -- After weathering the fear of federal prosecution and competition from drug cartels, California's medical marijuana growers see a new threat to their tenuous existence: the "Wal-Marting" of weed.
The Oakland City Council on Tuesday will look at licensing four production plants where pot would be grown, packaged and processed into items ranging from baked goods to body oil. Winning applicants would have to pay $211,000 in annual permit fees, carry $2 million worth of liability insurance and be prepared to devote up to 8 percent of gross sales to taxes.
The move, and fledgling efforts in other California cities to sanction cannabis cultivation for the first time, has some marijuana advocates worried that regulations intended to bring order to the outlaw industry and new revenues to cash-strapped local governments could drive small "mom and pop" growers out of business. They complain that industrial-scale gardens would harm the environment, reduce quality and leave consumers with fewer strains from which to choose.
"Nobody wants to see the McDonald's-ization of cannabis," Dan Scully, one of the 400 "patient-growers" who supply Oakland's largest retail medical marijuana dispensary, Harborside Health Center, grumbled after a City Council committee gave the blueprint preliminary approval last week. "I would compare it to how a small business feels about shutting down its business and going to work at Wal-Mart. Who would be attracted to that?"
The proposal's supporters, including entrepreneurs more disposed to neckties than tie-dye, counter that unregulated growers working in covert warehouses or houses are tax scofflaws more likely to wreak environmental havoc, be motivated purely by profit and produce inferior products. http://www.thereporter.com/ci_15549235?source=rss

THE DEATH OF TRUTH :eMEG AND THE POLITICS OF LYING
Perhaps it’s just a case of wishful nostalgia, but it seems to us that before the rise of Fox News, Rovian manipulation and the abnegation by certain people of fact-based reality, there was some sort of agreed-upon truth that was adjudicated daily by the mainstream media.
A candidate couldn’t say one thing one day – like, for example, that they were opposed to a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants — and another thing another day – like they basically agree with an opponent who favors a path to citizenship. They’d be afraid of being called a liar in the papers, and that would actually matter.
But in the California governor’s race it now appears that we are witnessing the Death of Truth. From a cosmic perspective, this has come about because:
– The attention span of the average citizen, never very long, has been hyper-accelerated by the rise of new media, including the Internets, where something is old before it barely new — and certainly not fully digested — and everyone is off on the next new thing. Beyond that, the rise of ideologically-sated outlets like FOX and MSNBC ensures that partisans will never again have to watch something with which they disagree.
– The lugubrious mainstream media is often strangled by self-imposed, on-the-one-hand-on-the-the-hand, false-equivalency “balance,” in part intimidated by loud, if unfounded accusations of “bias” most frequently lobbed by the right-wing. Thus the MSM at times seems unable and/or unwilling to cut through the miasma and call a lie a lie or a liar a liar. (Even Jerry Brown won’t call a spade a spade, referring instead to Meg Whitman’s “intentional, terminological inexactitude.”)
– It’s now clear that a candidate with unlimited resources can and will blow off complaints, critiques and factual analyses of those who dare to speak up and will instead declare that the truth is whatever he or she says it is — in their paid advertising and the assertions of their mercenary prevaricators.
http://www.calbuzz.com/2010/07/the-death-of-truth-emeg-and-the-politics-of-lying/

FPPC to take up 'express advocacy' issue today
Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau 07-19) 04:00 PDT Sacramento - --
California currently requires groups that run campaign ads that expressly tell voters how to vote for certain issues or candidates to disclose where they got their money and how it was spent.
But if an ad simply informs the public about an issue - even if that issue has some connection to an upcoming election - the state's disclosure laws about who is bankrolling the effort are murkier.
That's because over the past decade, state laws and regulations have been curbed to comply with court decisions that limited who can be forced to disclose their donors.
Now, some state officials believe that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision may have changed things. Today, staff members from the state's campaign watchdog agency, the Fair Political Practices Commission, will hold a meeting to explore whether to revisit its rules on an issue known as "express advocacy."
The million-dollar question: If a political ad doesn't specifically advocate for or against a candidate or campaign - for example, say "vote for" or "vote against" - should it be considered express advocacy, and therefore should the donors be disclosed? And if those so-called "magic words" are not part of an ad, is it legal to force that disclosure?
"We're not trying to prevent independent voices from being heard in California - this is all about disclosure," said FPPC Chairman Dan Schnur. "In express advocacy, there is transparency about where the money is coming from. What we're interested in is giving voters the opportunity to find out who's funding something so they can make an informed decision on the election. ... But we come into this with a genuinely open mind."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/19/BA7I1EFH0E.DTL&feed=rss.news#ixzz0u9Y5RERA

Conservatives Shine in Showdowns in S.D, N.C & WA
by John Gizzi
07/17/2010
South Dakota’s At-Large U.S. House District
Noem vs. Herseth-Sandlin
“Baptism by fire” is the way to describe what happened to Kristi Arnold when she was 20. While Kristi was working on the family farm in Castlewood, S. D., her father Ron Arnold was killed while unloading a grain bend with 50,000 bushels. Along with experiencing the tragic loss of a parent she loved, Kristi had to quit college to help her mother, brothers and sister run the farm.
This all gave Kristi a full-blown education. The Arnolds expanded their farm and started a hunting lodge and restaurant, which Kristi managed.

These early “adult responsibilities” proved very helpful to Kristi after she married and, as Kristi Noem, managed an insurance business and a ranch with her husband. And they proved invaluable when she was elected to the state house of representatives in 2006 and became assistant Republican leader in ’08. As South Dakota faced a massive deficit, it was state Rep. Noem who helped lead the charge for cutting spending by trimming programs. In addition, the two-term lawmaker helped craft a measure that made property taxes more equitable and rolled back regulation that was discouraging wind-power developers from coming to South Dakota.

“And I’m still working on that bachelor’s degree!” said Noem, now a mother of three. But finishing her classroom education will have to be put off, since the 42-year-old Noem defeated two opponents in the Republican primary for South Dakota’s lone U.S. House seat and now faces Democratic Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38111

THE POLITICAL ANIMAL
By Steve Benen
July 18, 2010
A LIKELY SCENARIO IN 2011.... It's hard to say with confidence which party will hold the congressional majority next year, but Paul Krugman noted yesterday that "fake scandals" will be all the rage in the 112th Congress if there's a Republican majority.
[W]e'll be having hearings over accusations of corruption on the part of Michelle Obama's hairdresser, janitors at the Treasury, and Larry Summers's doctor's dog. If you don't believe me, you weren't paying attention during the Clinton years; remember, we had months of hearings over claims that something was fishy in the White House travel office (nothing was).
This may sound hyperbolic. It's not. In the Clinton era, House Republicans held two weeks of hearings investigating the Clintons' Christmas card list, and the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform fired a bullet into a "head-like object" -- reportedly a melon -- in his backyard to test his conspiracy theories about Vince Foster. All told, over the last six years of Bill Clinton's presidency, that same committee unilaterally issued 1,052 subpoenas -- that's not a typo -- to investigate baseless allegations of misconduct. That translates to an average of a politically-inspired subpoena every other day for six consecutive years, including weekends, holidays, and congressional recesses.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

Prop 19 Battle Continues At CDP E-Board
by: Robert Cruickshank
Sun Jul 18, 2010 at 07:00:00 AM PDT

Yesterday the California Democratic Party Resolutions Committee took up the question of November ballot initiative endorsements. After some debate, the committee narrowly rejected Tom Ammiano's proposal to endorse Prop 19, and then unanimously approved the original plan to remain neutral on that initiative.
The speakers in support of Prop 19 - Ammiano and Alice Huffman of the California NAACP - made powerful arguments in support of the measure. Ammiano cited the more than 20,000 signatures we at the Courage Campaign (where I work as Public Policy Director) gathered in support of the initiative, the stack of which you can see at right, alongside the strong case for Prop 19 on the merits - to provide prison reform, help fix the budget, and to admit that our policy of prohibition has failed.
Huffman's case was even more powerful. Rejecting claims that Democrats should be skittish of Prop 19 out of concern for their candidates on the November ballot, she called on delegates to "show courage" and endorse Prop 19 for the sake of ending the devastating war on drugs that has hit young African Americans and Latinos so hard, and seek a more sensible and rational regulatory policy of cannabis.
However, the more skittish view prevailed on the committee. In spite of the evidence showing that California Democratic voters support Prop 19 and their own party chair's view that Prop 19 will boost turnout for Democrats, these folks worried that Democrats running in purplish or red areas would be hurt if the party endorsed Prop 19, even though some candidates in those kinds of districts already have gone on record in support of Prop 19.
I'm sympathetic to that view, but I think it also misreads the 2010 election. This is a turnout election, not a persuasion election. Democrats win by driving our people to the polls, plain and simple. Prop 19 will bring Democratic-friendly voters to the polls. If the CDP were to be on record in support of Prop 19, those voters might also be willing to cast their vote for Democratic candidates. If the party is neutral, then that might not occur at the levels we'd like.
Today the entire E-Board will take up the endorsement. It will require 60% to endorse. My feeling is the vote will be close. There's no chance the CDP will oppose Prop 19, so the question is whether the party will endorse it or remain neutral. We'll know by noon.
http://calitics.com/diary/12156/prop-19-battle-continues-at-cdp-eboard

Another View: Get serious, Prop. 24 poses threat to workers
By Greg Hines
Special to The Bee
Published: Sunday, Jul. 18, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 3E
So you might think in the face of an ongoing recession – 2 million Californians out of work; businesses continuing to struggle – that state tax reforms aimed at those very problems might deserve a good look.
But that's not the way it read in Dan Morain's column on Proposition 24 ("Tax break faces union effort to end it"; Viewpoints, July 8).
If you read his column, you wouldn't have any idea that Proposition 24 threatened reforms that had anything to do with jobs, or the economy, or even that there were hard times in California outside of the Capitol dome.
At issue are three reforms to state tax law, passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor – reforms to end policies that taxed new job creation and that pushed businesses out of California.
Our coalition of California employers, small businesses, biotech and high-tech organizations thinks those reforms are good ideas – and surely ideas worth a serious look.
Proposition 24, which would reverse those reforms, is a bad idea, but we expect The Bee would give that position a serious look, too.
Instead, we got this glib response from a Proposition 24 supporter. No problem, he says or "scoffs": "They'll move to another state? Please. There is no evidence that this (initiative) is going to drive business away."
So a backer of Proposition 24 assures us that Proposition 24 is safe as milk.
Let's try evidence instead. For example, The Bee could have consulted a new study (by a USC professor of economics) which finds Proposition 24's impact would cost 144,000 jobs.
Or talked to the 23 other states that have some of these reforms in place.
Or talked to the state's legislative analyst. He said this about using tax policy to serve public policy (though not specifically about Proposition 24): "I want to stress that tax expenditures are not loopholes. … These are done intentionally – they're appropriate to do."
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/18/2895894/get-serious-prop-24-poses-threat.html#ixzz0u3ZwhZ7T

The humor of Brown, Whitman campaigns
Posted at 12:00 AM on Sunday, Jul. 18, 2010
By Jim Boren
Most of us regularly complain about our candidates for governor in California, but is there any state that offers more entertainment at election time?
Consider the 2003 recall election that featured Arnold Schwarzenegger and a supporting cast of a hundred, including pornographer Larry Flynt, porn star Mary Carey and a woman who sold thong underwear on her Web site.
Oh, sure. Minnesota had Jesse Ventura for a short time, but the celebrity status of the rest of the nation is in very short supply. Even Illinois' Rod Blagojevich would be a second-tier hoodlum in California.
With Schwarzenegger about to make his gubernatorial exit, we're now complaining about Republican Meg Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown. But these candidates are very amusing in their own way as they try to position themselves for the November election.
We should appreciate their flexibility, as they reinvent themselves -- Whitman changing from a few months ago and Brown from a few decades ago. The gubernatorial match-up in California could be called the "Battle of the Flip-floppers."
Whitman, the right-wing conservative in the Republican primary, is now the centrist Californian in the general election, claiming that her current views represent most voters in the blue state.
So what happened to the candidate who was tough on illegal immigration when she was pitching herself as the "true conservative" in the primary? Just joking, says the GOP nominee with a wonderful sense of humor.
Conservative Republicans who voted for Whitman in the primary must be doubled over laughing at her comedy routine on illegal immigration. But what are they going to do? Vote for Brown? Now that would be funny.
Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/07/16/2009092/the-humor-of-brown-whitman-campaigns.html#ixzz0u3aiCiO1

Silicon Valley company appeals ruling on electronic signatures
By Shaun Bishop
Daily News Staff Writer
Posted: 07/17/2010 03:00:00 AM PDT
A Silicon Valley startup that aims to give California voters the option of signing initiative petitions electronically is appealing a decision by a San Mateo County judge who ruled that a digital signature submitted by one of the company's co-founders is not valid under the state elections code.
Verafirma had previously pledged to appeal the April ruling by Superior Court Judge George Miram, who said company co-founder Michael Ni "did not substantially comply with the requirements" of the elections code when he turned in the signature he captured using his iPhone and software developed by Verafirma.
Miram's ruling went in favor of the county and Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum, who said he rejected Ni's signature because he could not determine whether it complied with state law.
Ni filed an appeal of the decision with the California Court of Appeal on June 7, but neither side has filed briefs outlining their arguments yet.
"We've always felt this would be the beginning, not the end of our legal effort," said Jude Barry, a San Jose political strategist and Verafirma co-founder. "Sometimes government bureaucracies are resistant to change, even when the change is good for the public and will ultimately save taxpayers money."
Barry called it "a case where new technology meets or exceeds the requirements of old law," and said he is confident the company will prevail on appeal.
County officials say they believe the appeals court will uphold the ruling. http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15537343?source=rss

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What's up with Central Committee elections? [By James Lacy - Political Law - Flash Report]
6:40 am - Flashreport
As implementation of Proposition 14 looms - which will emasculate political party primary elections - the organization and activities of local Republican Central Committees will become all the more important in helping to define differences between ... http://www.flashreport.org/blog.php?postID=2010061810201295

Meg Whitman's opposition to Arizona immigration law could attract Hispanics in November
5:35 am - CA Independent Voter Network
With a whopping victory of sixty-four percent over Steve Poizner's twenty-seven percent, Meg Whitman is prepared to fight her Democratic opponent Jerry Brown in November for the big cheese. As one of her strategies, Whitman is ready to round up the… http://www.caivn.org/article/2010/06/18/meg-whitmans-opposition-arizona-immigration-law-could-attract-hispanics-november

Jerry Brown hopeful about Proposition 14

While the state Republican and Democratic parties have opposed the voter-approved open primary measure Proposition 14, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown expressed support Tuesday for the idea, saying it could help break partisan gridlock paralyzing Sacramento. When asked by The Bee in March about the initiative, Brown refused to take a position. Brown was in Mountain View on Tuesday to announce an eight-point plan for investing in renewable energy technology, which he says will create more than half a million green jobs. He opened his remarks to the Silicon Valley Leadership Group by lamenting polarizing partisan politics. He then segued into Proposition 14, which would advance the primary's top two vote-getters to the general election, regardless of their party affiliations. "With the recent enactment of this open primary, that may hold some promise so that people can converge in a more moderate perspective," Brown said. "People can run and appeal to voters from the other party. ... You'd get two members from the same party where you would actually get more choice than you might otherwise get if you have parties as gatekeepers as they are now. "This has the possibility of opening that up, and therefore it gives me some optimism." Brown warned, however: "Most of the history of reform is one of unintended consequences Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/06/jerry-brown-hopeful-about-prop.html#ixzz0qy6ae2qB

NOV 2010 PROPOSITIONS

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2010 CANDIDATES

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*The following list is a a work-in-progress. More offices will be added as time permits. While we are working to present a complete list of candidates for each office, we may inadvertently miss candidates or need to remove those who are no longer running. Please contact us if you have corrections.