California Roundup: When Good Bills Go Bad; Obama's Traffic Hangover; Jerry vs. Business; Bell Wrung; and the Need for Concealment In O.C.

* The pension reform bill has been turned: Assembly Bill 1987 -- which was designed to curb pension-spiking by public employees -- has now become a bill to make pension-spiking a permanent feature of public employment. Controller John Chiang has withdrawn his support for the bill, as has the state's Association of Counties. Yesterday, Marcia Fritz of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility told me vetoing this bill (which passed the Assembly handily) would be one of the last important acts of the Schwarzenegger administration -- and it appears the governor agrees. A spokeswoman says the governor will not sign the bill, which "fails to truly address the problem of pension spiking."

* Has Obama lost L.A.? His Presidentialness visited the City of Angels Monday to scare up a million bucks for the Democrats, and ended up drawing a billion dollars worth of rage from Angelenos pinned down in rush-hour traffic. L.A. Times readers holler. The City Council fumes. The Secret Service may be looking for a secret scapegoat. The generally irate consumer advocate Jamie Court calls the Beverly Hills-to-Hancock Park parade a "mighty metaphor for the how narcissistic and out-of-touch this White House has grown when it comes to the priorities of the middle class."

* Are you speaking for Jerry? Joel Fox and the Small Business Action Committee put together an advocacy campaign to urge Attorney General and candidate for governor Jerry Brown to stop vilifying businesses and driving them out of the state. Even California's Fair Political Practices Commission seems to think the ad is A-OK. But a group of Brown supporters have discovered the dark truth: The backers of this campaign to ask Brown to stop destroying California businesses are…California businesses!

* Daily Bell: State assembly member and L.A. supes seek refund of tax overcharges to Bell property owners. Former city manager Robert Rizzo and two council members got shady loans from the troubled L.A. County town. Bell's new leaders are meeting with state lawmakers to get more tax ripoffs refunded.

* How the Orange County pension system spends time and money: Trying to prevent the O.C. Register from finding out how much its members are actually making. And an oldy but goody from the Register: How much will Jerry Brown get from his own pension -- if he can ever be compelled to retire?

Comments

[80sfan]

I remember when Clinton got the haircut at LAX... man, those were the days

[Pro Libertate]

You know, Jerry is starting to look like Gandalf.

[John]

I am thinking more Sauroman.

[Pro Libertate]

Politically, I fear you are right.

[Aresen]

I would have said Palpatine.

[President Obama]

My beautiful world! It's melting...melting...

[?]

One man, who did not want to give his name, said it had taken his wife four hours to drive home from Brentwood.

Area Cuckold Represses Something

[BakedPenguin]

Nice Onion headline.

[Fire Tiger]

On the advertising front, if I put out an add for a canidate, but name my foundation, "He's A Lying Bastard" would that meet the full disclosure rules.

[dbcooper]

So, is the reign of tag terror over?

[Pro Libertate]

Maybe so. A sad moment, but I hope the other threads stand as a testament to the Day of the Commenters.

[-]

H&R's webmaster is packing a dead fish with your name on it.

[John]

The web master can't stop the bots. I think the web master is 15 and spends the money Reason gives him on dope.

[Pro Libertate]

Actually, I think he does a pretty good job. He shut this business down pretty easily. Remember how bad the service used to be around here?

[John]

True. The servers would not take your comment about half the time. And maybe the anonomyty bot is the webmaster.

[Pro Libertate]

What? I was only obeying orders.

[80sfan]

This is so. The 10 Reason Commandments do seem to mention: "get high on thine OWN supply only; and covet no manservant except for his/her sweet ass"

[Pro Libertate]

No such luck. It's all disappearing. Crap.

[-]

Now comes the retribution.

[Fist of Etiquette]

They could take away our ability to link from comments and I would not consider it unfair punishment for the grievous sins of those few.

[-]

Maybe we'll just have to wear hairshirts for a month.

[John]

If they come for you, just come back under new names. I suggest All Pro Liberace.

[-]

I had nothing to do with it, Comrade. But my neighbor, Alexei...the things I could tell you.

[capitol l]

I am Spartacus!

[-]

Pay no attention to that gay gladiator with a Bronx accent behind the tunic!

[Fist of Etiquette]

Et tu, cap?

Names must be named! wylie started it, but Pro Lib and Tulpa were the worst offenders. I don't know who else, but I will point them out when I see them. They should be sent to the same gulag where twenty-four-a-head toils, so vile were their deeds, so dastardly were their actions, so wanton the destruction.

THEY BREACHED TEH PEACE!

[capitol l]

C'mon man, think of it. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then all of those Palin/mosque/illegals threads could be summed up with a few strategic pics. No more wading through hundreds of comments looking for originality or insight...or, god forbid, humor.

I swear sometimes you are worse than a fucking ANCHORBABY, Fist.

No scratch that, no one is worse than a fucking ANCHORBABYHATE'EM?.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Better a brownish baby who hasn't earned the right of citizenship than someone who's sullied the purity of a H&R comment box.

Black, white and orange forever!

[Pro Libertate]

FREEE-DOOOOM!

[Tulpa]

The Lonewacko/24ahead/Orange Line gambit.

...who still hasn't removed the immigration protest picture from his blog's comments section, I might add.

[Pro Libertate]

So long as there are blogs of oppression, we will utilize the rebellious tools given us by the HTML gods.

[Tonio]

^Why I hang out here.

[John]

"Former city manager Robert Rizzo and two council members got shady loans from the troubled L.A. County town"

Why is the town loaning money to anyone, shaddy or not?

[Ratso Rizzo]

Le ville, c'est moi

[Tncm]

I don't understand why you even try to apply logic to the government's actions, local, state, or federal. I mean, Jesus, a penny costs more than a penny to make, but the government shows no signs of ending that little bit of stupidity. Giving loans to people using the taxpayer's money makes just as much sense.

[QuietDesperation]

It's frustrating, isn't it? This shit comes out on a daily basis now, but the peanut gallery stands around acting shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you!

If I woke up tomorrow to the news that that they had dug up the bodies of 20 raped little boys from Rizzo's back yard I would not even blink. The absolute filth that is in charge here in California is capable of anything as far as I'm concerned.

[Kawliga]

Cal's got nothing on Illinois.

[Ken Shultz]

"The generally irate consumer advocate Jamie Court calls the Beverly Hills-to-Hancock Park parade a "mighty metaphor for the how narcissistic and out-of-touch this White House has grown when it comes to the priorities of the middle class."

There hasn't been a middle class in LA since the '80s.

It disappeared right about after Spring Session M; nobody walks in LA, and nobody 'fesses up to being middle class.

[Pope Jimbo]

When your lede is about it taking your wife 1.5 hours to commute 2 miles, you instantly lose everyone in the midwest.

2 miles? Holy Shi-ite! I hope Jamie Court doesn't pontificate about the evils of green house gases and global warming if his wife is driving 2 miles to work.

[Ken Shultz]

That's pretty standard.

It usually took me about 45 minutes to get from Manhattan Beach to Torrance; that's probably less than five miles. ...but I didn't have to take the freeway, so it was a lot faster.

I run more than four miles every other day for exercise; takes me half an hour. I know I could have jogged to work in less time than it took me to drive.

That's mostly during rush hour though.

[Ken Shultz]

That's a fascinating cultural development right there that some culture critic somewhere should figure out...

How and why did being middle class become so completely uncool in Southern California?

You can be gay or a hipster; you can be rich or a yuppie; you can be ghetto or an immigrant...

But nobody calls themselves "middle class" in LA. ...and I'm gonna say Santa Clarita doesn't count--that's basically Orange County for these purposes, like being in Irvine.

When people in Irvine say they're "middle class", it isn't what people elsewhere are talkin' about when they talk about middle class.

It's a weird thing when the middle class refuses to accept its own existence.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

Dude, why are you putting out these negative waves? Sherman Oaks, Long Beach, Claremont, Glendale: You can still get away with middleclassitude in those places. They may be mockable if you've lived in L.A. County all your life, but if you come from anywhere else in the U.S., they're paradises.

[Amakudari]

Yeah, in all fairness, what are you supposed to do when you get to work?

I've run myself (well, the stop-and-go uphill jogging that SF entails), but I actually had a membership to a gym that was literally across the street from my building and I'd pop in for a shower.

[Pope Jimbo]

Um, you could walk or buy a bike. I didn't say they had to run.

Maybe it is because I grew up on the edge of the prairie that 2 miles doesn't seem like an inordinately long walk.

[Pez D. Spenser]

Wow, that's cool. I like it.

http://napkins.czi.cz/

[Dan]

Check out http://mittromneycentral.com/2.....new-op-ed/ if you want to see President Obama get completely owned.

[dbcooper]

Dan, would you describe Mitt Romney as a mainstream libertarian candidate for president?

[monty.crisco]

"But a group of brown supporters have discovered the dark truth: The backers of this campaign to ask Brown to stop destroying California businesses are...California businesses!"

I knew there was a reason those Cali liberals were against the Arizona law! They are all supporters of the current LIBERAL AG for Governator!! (Although I think this sort of terminology is somewhat pejorative...)

[leavemealone]

From the same link:

It is not surprising that this week we learned that Utah is now poaching businesses in California.

Utah based Oracle purchased Silicon Valley California based Sun Microsystems in spring 2009. Now?

[Ken Shultz]

"They are all supporters of the current LIBERAL AG for Governator!!"

This is the man who, as AG, sued the County of San Bernardino (and all other counties by extension) to force developers to include global warming in all Environmental Impact Reports...as part of CEQA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.....uality_Act

In other words, he sued to force more or less anybody that wants to build anything much bigger than a house or two to do a report explaining what impact the project will have on global warming. ...which, of course, can and does make projects objectionable on those grounds when they go out for public comment and in front of local government for approval.

As governor, he will subject the state to world class buffoonery--there is no telling how far his buffoonery will go...

The reason California's Republicans, however, are against the Arizona law publicly is because being in favor of our version of it (Prop 187) made every Republican who was associated with it (see Pete Wilson as an example) so unpopular that the only Republican that could get elected after that fiasco was himself an immigrant.

You may see something similar happen after Governor Moonbeam gets elected to the Democrats--just like the last time he was elected... Being a liberal after that was the kiss of death--see Rose Bird.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Bird#Reconfirmation_Loss

California has always been a state of extremes. Most people associate the period from 1967 to 1975 with California and hippies--California elected Ronald Reagan as governor back then. It has always been a highly reactionary state...

San Francisco, Hollywood and Palm Springs get all the press, but it's also the land of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. These are the people who voted in "three strikes". Remember, these people voted via Prop 187 to deny practically all state services to illegal immigrants. These people voted to deny gays the right to marry. It's just that a lot of those conservatives are of latin ancestry.

It shouldn't be surprising that conservatives in Boston, for instance, don't spend a lot of time saying thing that might be interpreted in such a way that it would tick off people of Irish ancestry. That would be stupid.

It's the same thing in California with people of latin ancestry. You can't screw with that and get elected.

[leavemealone]

Jerry Brown will be clobbered in November. I never vote for my own peculiar reasons, so I'm not saying this as a partisan or Meg Whitman fan. But if Meg Whitman wrote a kooky manifesto advocating that Coolies should lay railway for the bullet train, Wetbacks should stick to farm work, only baptized Christians should get married, and construction workers should wear lipstick. She'd still win.

[lee]

I don't think the state itself is "extreme". It has plenty of passionate single issue voters. Or it looks like that way to me.

Prop 8 won on the votes of (religious)minorities. White voters made up the majority of the no vote. Of course, the former group also voted for Obama and endorsed his economic plans, but their conservative / Roman Catholic family upbringing led them to support on that one issue of traditional marraige.

White voters from rural regions (supposedly) helped defeat Tom Bradley to protect their gun rights. The second amendment is not really a hot issue for most minorities and immigrants that make up most of the population.

Immigration isn't a battle ragining between the left and the right in CA. It's a fight against a largely white (democrats included) "Secure the borders" crowd and militant Latino amnesty groups. But beyond that issue, you may find that they'll acutally vote for the same bad policies or the same kind of brand name candidate.

[monty.crisco]

So, nobody got that then? It should have read "Brown supporters", not the potentially racist "brown supporters". WTF, people? Why SO SERIOUS?!?!?

[DRM]

California State Legislator Annual Salary: $113,098

Texas State Legislator Annual Salary: $7,200

[Ken Shultz]

I wish California's problems were so simple that cutting the salaries of our legislators could solve them.

[DRM]

It would probably change who you got as legislators, at least. And at least it couldn't hurt.

[R C Dean]

I wish California's problems were so simple that cutting the salaries of our legislators could solve them.

Cutting salaries, no. You need to be cutting something a little more . . . personal.

[Benito]

The Republicans are so funny, when the economy is good you say let's all celebrate "Cinco de Mayo, my brothers" but when the economy is down "it's all your fault, you damn immigrant". When most Americans (with Latin America roots) go to the polls this November we will remember that the GOP has gone on a nationwide rant in proposing and passing several anti-immigration legislation and have continue to blame us for the flat economy or worse. We will remember who stands with us and who stands against us, so trying to stop it now is somewhat funny, but go ahead, you will not change our minds. Your hate made you do it, in November; you will reap what you have sown.

[Christmas Gifts]

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