'I've got plenty of time and plenty of money'

As the wisest and most powerful actors in California's journalistic and political words, Calbuzz did me a great favor by putting me in my place today.

In fact, what they said is an honor. It is especially gratifying to get such a knuckle-rap from bloggers who - in these times of great challenge - focus their reporting on important public service topics, such as Jerry Brown's eyebrows.

One strong bit of evidence that the Calbuzzers are right about my not having done enough reporting is that I have never been able to confirm the factual claims that Calbuzz makes in their attack on me. My meager reporting for example failed to turn up the fact that:

-the Whitman campaign bowed to Calbuzz in deciding to become accessible to the press corps.

With San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom running for lieutenant governor, the race is getting way more attention than it probably deserves. It’s also opened the way for a hazy bit of Democratic historical revisionism.

In a story that’s spread all over the liberal blogosphere, Paul Hogarth of Beyond Chron asks whether Newsom could become “the Angelides of 2010.”

Hogarth argues that state Democratic Treasurer Phil Angelides lost to Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger four years ago because a grueling primary with Steve Westly and his campaign consultant Garry South “left (Angelides) so bloodied that he went on to lose the general election by a landslide.”

Without the nasty attacks South orchestrated against Angelides, California might now have a Democratic governor, Hogarth suggested.

One of the concerns of the business community and taxpayers is that the legislature is calling taxes “fees” to get around the constitutional two-thirds vote requirement to pass a tax.

This deceptive practice has caused an initiative to be launched in an effort to put a check on this procedure, which is adding to the economic burden of California businesses and citizens. The California Taxpayers Association and the California Chamber of Commerce head up the Stop Hidden Taxes Coalition. The Small Business Action Committee is a member.

The coalition expects to qualify the initiative for the November ballot. For more information on the initiative and the effort to stop hidden taxes, visit www.nomorehiddentaxes.com.

Cal Tax recently highlighted four such “fees.”

Kids do it when they’re in trouble. Husbands do it when they want to watch a game instead of doing chores. Dogs do it when they bring you a toy after they’ve had an “accident.” Even army generals do it when they want to disguise their retreat or find a devious way to win. And, according to Machiavelli, so do politicians.

That’s what is happening with the California Forward budget reform proposals introduced by Democrat legislative leaders - they are a distraction to facilitate deception.

Maybe we should call the proposal a diversion - a game or smokescreen - instead of reform. The real goal of this effort is to allow Democrats to raise taxes with a majority vote and eliminate the power Republicans have to stop their overspending.

The proposed “reforms” are riddled with loopholes that will render them useless, but the major hole in budget policy - the reduced vote count to raise taxes - will allow Democrats to carry on with their drunken spending barrier free--despite what voters have said they want in every poll taken since Proposition 13 was passed in 1978.

The Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association is opposed to AB 1604 by Assemblymember Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) not just because it creates a whole new tax that will cause a larger drag on our economy, which is already struggling to recover.

We also oppose the deliberately misleading tactics being used to promote the oil severance tax. Assemblyman Nava and his supporters like to say that California is the only oil-producing state without a severance tax. This is true on its face, but is misleading.

California taxes oil producers in ways other states do not. For example, we have the highest corporate income tax in the country. Texas, Nevada and others have none. California charges a sales tax on the purchase of the expensive manufacturing equipment used in oil production. Most states do not.

California is already taxing oil producers at a high rate. The addition of the AB 1604 severance tax would give California yet another area where it has the highest taxes of all.

Recent revelations concerning the fall of Lehman Bros. and other financial shenanigans have revealed the fun side of accounting - fun, that is, as long as you don't get too hung up about honesty and the ethics of ripping off other people's money ("OPM").   The staggeringly huge Lehman bankruptcy, the biggest in the history of American business failures, recently produced a 2,200 page report and related documents released by Anton Valukas, the court-appointed examiner charged by Bankruptcy Judge James M. Peck, to figure out just what happened.  Judge Peck said Valukas' report read "like a best-seller."  Here's the short version.

So let's say you have decided to take advantage of today's historic lows in home loan rates and refinance your home - before interest rates start going up, perhaps later in the year.  You owe a lot of money on your credit cards (having not learned that paying for those lavish dinners and weekend getaways with plastic and then paying the minimum on your monthly bill is just a dumb trap).  You also have those student loans to the tune of umpety-ump thousand dollars and a nagging obligation to support wife #1, even though you are on to the greener pastures of wife #2, who spends your money like it is water.  It is obvious that if you listed all these debts, nobody in their right mind would re-fi your house.  What to do? What to do?

While she’s anything but an unbiased source, Janice Hahn makes a good point in her effort to have the state’s election cops shackle Gavin Newsom’s fund-raising efforts in the Democratic race for lieutenant governor.

The Los Angeles councilwoman and her attorneys have filed a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission, arguing that Newsom shouldn’t be allowed to accept money from anyone who gave him more than $6,500, the contribution limit for the LG race, during his aborted run for governor.

By collecting big contributions for his run for governor, spending the cash before dropping out and then raising new money from the same people to finance a run for lieutenant governor, Newsom “has flouted state (campaign finance) law in an unprecedented manner,” Hahn’s FPPC filing said.

The stakes are huge for both Newsom and Hahn, even if the power of the LG’s office isn’t. Since the contribution limit for the governor’s race is $25,900 and Newsom collected more than $2.3 million from a whole bunch of donors before waving the white flag, the San Francisco mayor has lots of deep-pocketed friends who could find themselves maxed out on contributions before the LG race even gets started.

Recently, Allan Zaremberg penned a piece for Fox & Hounds announcing the launch of a new website, CalChamber2010.com, for the upcoming gubernatorial election.

I think the one thing that struck me most about this site, which any true politico should visit regardless of political stripe, was the way that the site presents a depth of information in a highly organized and approachable way. (Full disclosure: one of my partners in Fox & Hounds, Bryan Merica, heads up the digital creative shop that built the Chamber's 2010 site.)

In particular, there are two really original features that I haven't seen anywhere else. Both of these features (Video Vault and Head-to-Head comparison) can be accessed using the Chamber's "widget" posted below:

When I wanted to try out a restaurant or a store or hotel that’s new to me, I’d first go online to check out the reviews by patrons.

I wrote that in past tense for a reason: I don’t do that too much anymore. I grew too suspicious of supposed critiques by supposed customers.

You’ve probably noticed that many online reviews fall into one of two categories. Using restaurant reviews as an example, there are the flowery critics (“This breathtaking restaurant is amazingly superb in every imaginable way!”) and there are the snarky ones (“Expensive mush served by resentful dropouts in a hard-to-find place with sticky floors.”).

Reviews in the first category apparently are ginned up by restaurant owners or their mothers or their bankers. Those in the second apparently are written by competitors or ticked-off ex-employees.

Momentum, thy name is Meg Whitman. The newly released Field Poll caps an extraordinary surge in energy for the Republican gubernatorial candidate in less than one week.

Just a week ago, Whitman was being excoriated by the media for holding a press availability and then would not talk to the press. Questions were asked whether she could handle the heat of a political campaign and the knock-about, unscripted situations that test one’s mettle during a campaign.

She quickly turned those doubts around with two steady performances in front of the media microphones at the state Republican convention and topped it off with a confident turn at the Monday debate with Republican gubernatorial rival, Steve Poizner.

Now the Field Poll finds Whitman pulling away and trouncing Poizner by 63% to 14%. For good measure, the poll revealed for the first time Whitman was ahead of Democratic gubernatorial opponent, Jerry Brown, 46% to 43%.