Committee News

The Voter Education Committee's First Project

Last Updated on Wednesday, 07 December 2011 23:05 Wednesday, 07 December 2011 22:17

THE OPPORTUNITY TO VOTE IS A PRIVILEGE

DON'T WASTE IT

BE AN INFORMED AND RESPONSIBLE VOTER

BeAnInformedVoter.com is a website being created to provide California voters with a credible source of timely and reliable political information. It is intended to provide the user with information regarding their elected officials' voting records, pending and passed legislation and judicial candidates. It will be non-partisan, and as forthright as possible.

By entering their ZIP codes and selecting items from a list of 1 to 30 subjects of special interest the user will be able to access the following:

• The names of their California legislative representatives and their contact information.
• Expanded information about actual legislation relating to items of special interest to them and how their representatives voted on those legislation issues regardless of if the incumbent is currently from their district or new to the district as a result of re-districting and a method to score their past performance of record.
• A list of the non-incumbent candidates running for elective office within their district. Their position on the chosen subjects of interest if available and a method to score their performance in private life as judged by the user.
• Links to information and issues related to the challengers competing for an incumbent's seat.
• Links to information regarding pending legislation and other relevant political information not yet acted upon.
• When completed, the users may print out their own Voter Guide based on their own rating of their representatives' performance on their selected subjects of interest.

It is important that voters be informed and are aware of the facts regarding their representatives, candidates, legislation and issues to be an informed and responsible voter. This is critically important to the future of California.

Court bill stalls after Calderon gets personal with chief justice

Tuesday, 05 July 2011 10:32

Dan Walters: Court bill stalls after Calderon gets personal with chief justice

By Dan Walters

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Published: Monday, Jul. 4, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 3A

Last Modified: Tuesday, Jul. 5, 2011 - 7:57 am

When Assemblyman Charles Calderon commented on the physical and mental attributes of Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye – positively – flags went up.

Women's groups and Democrat Calderon's female colleagues fired bullets at Calderon's allusion to Cantil-Sakauye while talking about a court management bill he was carrying.

"It isn't 'Is she nice?' 'Cause she is," Calderon said in May. " 'Is she smart?' 'Cause she is. 'Is she attractive?' 'Cause she is. It isn't about that."

The media paid a lot of attention to the barbs, especially when Cantil-Sakauye told an interviewer that she was "troubled" by the remark in conjunction with "a very serious hearing."

"That's when that answer is unresponsive," she said, "and is offensive and is not at all responsive to the question."

Outside the legal press, however, media have given little notice to the bill itself, the focal point of a very bitter battle that pits Cantil-Sakauye against a band of rebel judges called the Alliance of California Judges.

As both houses of the Legislature moved hundreds of bills last month to meet deadlines, one of the measures left behind was Calderon's Assembly Bill 1208, which would give local judges more authority over how their courts are managed, including finances, and therefore would take some authority from the Judicial Council, which the chief justice chairs.

A basic tenet of Capitol politics is that a legislator moves a bill when it has the votes, so one must assume that his contentious measure that would change how the court system is managed doesn't have the votes.

That makes it a tactical win for the judicial establishment and Cantil-Sakauye and may stem from those tone-deaf remarks Calderon made during a committee hearing. The Assembly's Democratic leadership, which had supported Calderon, backed away after the uproar erupted.

When the state assumed financial responsibility for the courts, it made them – like schools, prisons and welfare programs – another player in the annual budget game.

The dissidents contend that the Judicial Council and the Administrative Office of the Courts have spent too much of very limited court funds on a bloated bureaucracy in San Francisco and an unworkable statewide computer system while forcing local courts to reduce operations. AB 1208 aims at curbing the diversions.

The rebel judges' ire was concentrated on Cantil-Sakauye's predecessor, Ron George, and his now-retired court administrator, William Vickery, but she inherited the issue and was plunged into the judicial civil war.

Although AB 1208 is in limbo, the war is continuing, even escalating. The just-enacted 2011-12 state budget whacks another $350 million from the courts. Cantil-Sakauye and rebel judges are already jousting over how the fiscal pain will be distributed.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/04/3745758/dan-walters-court-bill-stalls.html#ixzz1RG08mTlj

Water for Central Valley farms plentiful, but drought signs remain

Last Updated on Saturday, 02 July 2011 11:18 Wednesday, 29 June 2011 11:28

Water for Central Valley farms plentiful, but drought signs remain

BY GOSIA WOZNIACKA, The Associated Press | Tuesday, Jun 28 2011 07:00 PM

Last Updated Tuesday, Jun 28 2011 09:31 PM

Jaclyn Borowski / The Californian

Signs protesting the water cut to Central Valley farms are posted off I-5 at Stockdale Highway. Though these were posted in a empty lot, many have been spotted alongside farms both on I-5 and Hwy 99.

Jaclyn Borowski / The Californian

Signs protesting the water cuts to Central Valley farmers are posted at an empty lot on Stockdale Highway just off Interstate 5. Similar signs are posted at farms along Highway 99.

FRESNO -- Drive on Highway 99 or Interstate 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and you will see plastic banners scattered among wine tasting ads and billboards hawking the latest pesticide.

"Man-made drought," the banners draped across fences and cotton trailers proclaim in large, bold letters. "Congress-created dust bowl" and "Food grows where water flows."

The signs in the Central Valley, which provides many of the nation's fruits and vegetables, are a reminder of California's decades-old water war, a conflict stemming from large numbers of people living and farming in areas where the resource is scarce.

Some signs, put up by farmers long ago, are weathered from rain and faded from sun. Several hundred others went up in recent weeks, courtesy of an advocacy group for farmers.

But in a year of heavy rains and a formidable Sierra snowpack, with California's three-year drought officially over and most farmers getting all their contracted irrigation water, the signs strike some as odd.

"I just drove on the highway and those signs have a backdrop of green fields, green grasses," said Jim Metropulos, an advocate at Sierra Club California. "I said wow, these fields seem to be planted with a commodity crop, farmers seem to be irrigating. Where is the drought?"

http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x1928173741/Water-for-Central-Valley-farms-plentiful-but-drought-signs-remain

The People’s Republic of Kalifornia: Unions’ Takeover Nearly Complete

Last Updated on Saturday, 02 July 2011 11:16 Wednesday, 29 June 2011 10:35

ObamaCare Repeal Means Waivers for Everybody

Thursday, 26 May 2011 15:41

ObamaCare Repeal Means Waivers for Everybody

The Examiner

By Grace-Marie Turner

May 22, 2011

Can't we all just get a waiver from Obamacare? Unfortunately not, but the list of people applying is getting longer by the day.

There are now 1,372 companies, labor unions and states that have applied for and been granted waivers from an early provision of the law that says health policies must provide at least $750,000 a year in insurance protection.

In the latest batch of waivers, one in five went to expensive restaurants, spas and other businesses in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco. What a coincidence!

Nearly two dozen states have either applied for or have been granted waivers from an Obamacare provision that forces health insurers operating in their states to comply with strict federal limits governing how much they can spend on administrative costs versus reimbursements for medical bills.

And now we learn that the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday issued regulations explaining that health insurers will have to justify to the federal government health insurance premium increases above 10 percent.

But the rules include an interesting exemption for Medicare supplemental insurance policies. Surprise, surprise! The top marketer of these so-called Medigap policies is AARP, which spent millions of dollars helping to get Obamacare passed.

This is the same AARP that makes upwards of $1 billion in profits from marketing Medigap policies. Clearly, if you have friends at the White House and pay your dues, you, too, can be exempt from Obamacare's rules.

This is crony capitalism at its worst as people and companies seek special favors to escape the destructive 2,800-page law.

In a bizarre near-admission that the so called "Affordable Care Act" is anything but, the White House issued a blog post defending itself. It is issuing waivers that exempt employers "from the annual limit provision of the law if it would disrupt access to existing insurance arrangements or adversely affect premiums, causing people to lose coverage."

In other words, Obamacare would cause people to lose their insurance coverage or cause costs to go up if they don't grant these waivers. Wasn't Obamacare supposed to do just the opposite?

President Obama himself is personally getting into the waiver act. He has said he wants Congress to change the law to give states waivers to implement Obamacare their own way, starting in 2014 rather than having to wait until 2017, as the law now requires.

Likely Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says that, if elected, on day one of his administration he would give each state a waiver to implement Obamacare its own way. (If it sounds like there is an echo here, you are right. It's hard to tell the difference.)

What's really being waived here is the rule of law.

The waves of waivers remind all of us how angry we were at all the special deals -- such as the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, and so on -- that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid handed out to get Obamacare through the Senate in 2009.

Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell was right when he said that the American people saw the passage of Obamacare as "a crime against Democracy."

But it is also a crime against the American principle of fairness. Obamacare is barely in place, and we see administration officials using it to pick winners and losers based upon political favorites.

The voices of the American people may have gone silent for now, but they will not stand for a law that would re-engineer one-sixth of our economy and demolish the core American value of equal justice and equal treatment for all.

Obamacare is the most sweeping piece of social and spending legislation in our country's history. It is extraordinary that 14 months after it was enacted, a majority of the American people still want it repealed.

The waivers are just one more reminder of why Obamacare will not stand.

California retailers back bills that would force Amazon to collect sales taxes

Thursday, 26 May 2011 09:20

By Timm Herdt

SACRAMENTO — California retailers large and small — from Walmart and Target to main street bike shops and tire stores — have joined together to fight back against online competitors they say are costing them $4.1 billion in sales each year by exploiting a legal loophole to avoid collecting sales taxes from California consumers.

The main culprit, they say, is Amazon.com, the Seattle-based retail giant that is able to skirt collecting sales taxes because, unlike online competitors such as BestBuy.com, it has no bricks-and-mortar stores in the state.

On Wednesday at the state Capitol, more than a dozen store owners and trade associations joined three Democratic lawmakers to urge passage of their bills designed to close the loophole and put in-state retailers on a level playing field with Amazon and other out-of-state competitors.

"Enough is enough," said Bill Dombrowski, president of the California Retailers Association. "It's time to pass legislation that will adopt e-fairness in this state. Essentially, billions of dollars in economic activity is leaving our state with the click of a button."

By not collecting sales taxes, out-of-state retailers are able to sell products with a bottom-line price nearly 10 percent cheaper than retailers that do collect the taxes. "Ten percent," Dombrowski said, "is a big deal."

The coalition of retailers pushing for the bill's passage includes thousands of small stores, several regional chambers of commerce and the statewide association that represents large national firms such as Target and Sears.

Supporters note what they are proposing is not a tax increase, as state law already requires consumers to pay a tax on all goods they purchase. They seldom do, however, as only the most conscientious taxpayers keep receipts from online sales throughout the year and then pay the sales taxes when they file their income-tax returns.

Read more: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/may/25/california-retailers-back-bills-that-would-force/#ixzz1NTollkSe

- vcstar.com