The campaigns behind the nine initiatives on California’s November 2 ballot have raised over $120.6 million according to a campaign finance analysis by the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation (CVF).

Proposition 23, which would suspend California’s global warming reduction law until the unemployment rate is below 5.5 percent, has attracted the most funding. Supporters have raised $9.1 million, primarily from oil and gas interests. Opponents, funded primarily by environmental organizations and wealthy individuals, have raised over $27 million. By contrast, Prop. 19, the measure that would tax, regulate and legalize marijuana, has raised the least amount, with supporters raising $2.7 million and opponents just over $200,000.

Crossposted www.calwatchdog.org

One of the few actual, honest issues in the California governor’s race has also been one of the least reported. And while it’s an old issue – dating back to 1977 – it’s nonetheless fascinating.

"Back when Jerry Brown https:> was governor nearly 35 years ago, in his first day in office, he gave public service unions the right to collective bargaining," Republican Meg Whitman https:> said back in April. Her time was off by two years, but the point of her argument was true enough: that granting public employee unions the right to bargain collectively for better pay and benefits paved the way for our state’s current unfunded pension liabilities, which may top half a trillion dollars.

One of the hot tax issues during Jerry Brown’s first turn as governor was indexing the state income tax. Brown has noted recently he supported indexing. That’s only part of the story.

Indexing the income tax is a process of widening the tax brackets to account for inflation. Without indexing, a taxpayer would be pushed into higher tax brackets when inflation increased his or her income despite the taxpayer gaining no "real" income gain. Government benefited from this "inflation tax."

When employment professionals in California meet today, as at the recent California Workforce Association gathering in Monterey, a central issue is the following: To what extent is the job losses brought by the Great Recession cyclical, representing the ups and downs of the business cycle? To what extent do these job losses represent structural change in a California economy that will need fewer workers?

We won’t know the answer to this for some time. However, some perspective on this discussion can be gained from going back nearly 50 years in California when we had a similar discussion in state government about technology. In the mid-1960s, California state government was up in arms about the march of automation, and the job losses following automation.

Cross posted at www.ronkayela.com.     

Few places on Earth needs to worry more about the impact of global warming than Los Angeles. If we lose this climate, we won’t have a lot left.

The big banks and big stores have all left town or closed down along with the big defense contractors that provided the middle class jobs that drove the consumer economy.

The most depressing moment of this week’s gubernatorial debate came at the end, when Tom Brokaw asked the two candidates about whether California needed broader constitutional reform. Meg Whitman ducked the question and repeated platitudes. Jerry Brown said that he would work with the system he was given.

Together, that amounted to the same answer:

So what to do? The state’s system doesn’t work. And these two candidates have no proposals – or interest, for that matter – in doing anything about it.

Over the weekend, I attended the annual Western CPAC gathering of California’s conservatives, and had the privilege to hear national independent pollster Scott Rasmussen speak about the upcoming 2010 Elections.

With just two weeks to go until an historic Election Day, his comments were more interesting than ever.

This Tuesday, October 19 the Yes on 20/No on 27 campaign is hosting a local screening of the new, critically-acclaimed film Gerrymandering at the Crest Theater in downtown Sacramento. The movie will start at 7 p.m. The film’s director, Jeff Reichert, will introduce the film and there will be a brief discussion afterwards with members of the coalition and moviegoers.

Gerrymandering looks at the practice of politicians around the country drawing their own election districts to protect their jobs and power. The campaign wants voters to know that voting Yes on 20 and No on 27 can eliminate this practice in California.

In a deranged attempt to be the first state (again) to push an aggressive environmental agenda, California Air Resources Board officials grossly inflated pollution levels in air quality statistics by more than 340 percent in order to justify the agency’s radical environmental mandates and regulations.

Heads should roll, or at the very least, a public flogging should take place on the west steps of the Capitol. One state legislator wants to hold the Chairwoman of the California Air Resources Boardhttps:>, Mary Nicholshttps:>, accountable.