Newsom Dealing With Addiction to Politics
If politics is an addiction, Gavin Newsom needs an intervention.
A few weeks after telling the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd that he was ready to finish his term as mayor of San Francisco and become “the clerk in a wine store,” Newsom was talking Tuesday about a run for lieutenant governor.
“I’m considering it,” he said in a City Hall news conference, admitting that a campaign for the office is a serious possibility.
This is the same Newsom who spent a year running for the Democratic nomination for governor, then dropped out last October, citing his responsibilities as a husband, father and mayor.
The decision was “made with the best intentions for my wife, my daughter, the residents of the city and county of San Francisco and California Democrats,” he said.
Abel Maldonado II – Judgement Day
“Sequels can be better than the original … T2, Get the DVD, you will see.”
With those words, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger defended his re-nomination of state Senator Abel Maldonado for Lt. Governor. Throwing his arm around the shorter Maldonado, Schwarzenegger called him a “good man” who was capable of doing the job.
Maldonado did not secure the necessary 41 votes in the Assembly to be confirmed, but neither did he have 41 votes against him to reject the nomination outright. To avoid a court battle over whether the lack of 41 NO votes meant rejection, Schwarzenegger simply decided to try, try again.
Sticking with his man may indicate what the governor’s going to do with the other big issue facing him – the budget. During the press conference, in response to a reporter’s question, the governor said once again the state must live within its means. The usual rhetoric? Or does the action with Maldonado add some significance to his determination?
Government unions are focused
Campaign 2010 is up and running, if money transfers by unions are any indication.
Enormous deposits by labor unions into campaign accounts are just now being disclosed, and the depth of their commitment is becoming evident.
Item: The California Teachers Association has staked more than $660,000 to a proposed ballot initiative to repeal several business tax incentives passed by the Legislature in 2008 and 2009.
Item: Two more government employee unions have dropped more than $1.1 million into a proposed ballot initiative to remove the ability to subject certain tax and fee increases and other state policies to a voter referendum.
Public Safety First
The primary role of government is public safety. Sadly, there is no question our State often fails to fully fund essential public safety services. All too often, public safety takes a back seat in State budget discussions. Furthermore, bureaucrats and politicians frequently propose new taxes to fund public safety, when it should be funded with the first dollars of the budget, not the last. But given the current budget shortfalls, it is clear increased funding for public safety is not possible without new funding sources. That is why I and 30 other pro-public safety Legislators are proposing AB X8 42 to protect public safety by supplementing fire protection throughout California without adding painful or counterproductive taxes on families and small businesses that cannot afford them.
To boost public safety funding, AB X8 42 would utilize a portion of the new revenues that would be contributed to the state as the result of a proposal to allow more efficient and environmentally friendly oil drilling to occur off the coast of Santa Barbara at Tranquillion Ridge. This modern, high tech process would replace several existing oil platforms and allow more oil to be produced locally with minimal visual impact and minimal potential threat to the environment. While I cannot claim there is a consensus, many local environmental groups support this project because of the benefits it could provide to the region and state.
Not the End of the Line for Con Con
Given all the uncertainties of California politics, here’s one thing you can bet on:
We haven’t heard the last of a constitutional convention.
There are two reasons to believe the idea isn’t going away, despite the failure of convention backers to raise enough money to qualify two initiatives for the November 2010 ballot.
1. This was a successful failure.
The history of big changes in California is a history of successful failures, similar to con con’s. In the 30 years between statehood and the state’s last constitutional convention, in 1878 and 1879, there were three major efforts to call a convention, each of which failed.
Howard Jarvis, co-author of Prop 13, had a decade’s worth of failures with similar measures before he got his initiative on the ballot and changed California’s tax and governance systems forever.