California Politics 53 items | updated Mar 24 2012

CNN) -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill commemorating Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician elected to public office in the state, a spokesman for the governor said Monday.

Milk was assassinated in 1978.

Under the measure, the governor each year would proclaim May 22 -- Milk's birthday -- as a day of significance across the state.

The bill was one of 704 signed Sunday -- most of them near the midnight deadline -- by Schwarzenegger, said spokesman Aaron McLear.

The legislation passed the state Senate in May and the state Assembly last month.

Milk served briefly as San Francisco's supervisor before he and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back.

The legislation has been divisive, with the governor's office receiving more than 100,000 phone calls and e-mails, most of them in opposition, spokeswoman Andrea McCarthy said last month.

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California made the news again last week with an effort by marijuana advocates to put three measures on the ballot that legalize small quantities of marijuana for personal use. Will capitalism and science combine to make marijuana legal throughout the US? California is making the case ...

ONCE A MONTH a tractor-trailer rolls up to the Family Early Learning Center, a one-room preschool in East San Jose, Calif., that doubles as a food pantry for poor families with young kids. On a bright Friday in August, a dozen or so women from the neighborhood gathered for the truck’s arrival. Volunteers as well as customers, they had come to help unload the monthly delivery of groceries from the local food bank.

The truck driver moved a huge pallet of potatoes onto a pallet truck and rolled it to the door of the school. Then came big, round watermelons; then purple onions.

“Cantaloupe?” the driver called out, wondering where to unload it.

“We’re going to do that outside,” a woman answered.

The women broke down the pallets as fast as they could. A crowd of customers would gather soon. Anything the women could carry went inside the school — boxes of celery, onions, eggs, pinto beans, generic corn flakes, rice and creamy peanut butter. Outside, the driver unloaded green peppers, plums, apricots, bags of potatoes, ears of corn and pears, arranging everything in two rows of big, open bins.

It didn’t look like food for the needy. It looked like a farmers’ market.

Traditionally food banks have gathered mostly leftover or damaged boxes and cans from supermarkets, food processors and other mass distributors and then passed along the food to soup kitchens and food pantries like the one in East San Jose. Food banks have always found some fresh produce to give away; a few have managed to give away a lot. But for the most part, they have trafficked in processed foods — widely available free, simple to transport and warehouse and quick to fill empty stomachs.

Increasingly, though, food banks have been looking to agriculture. California is at the forefront of this change. Since 2005, the California Association of Food Banks has struck deals with farms and packers across the state, where, on behalf of its members, it collects truckloads of fruits and vegetables that are too small, ripe or misshapen for supermarkets to sell.

This shift toward more healthful food is partly about obesity and its rise among the poor. But it’s also a product of necessity: the food industry has become more efficient, squeezing the traditional supply of surplus cans and boxes. Fresh food offers a big, new food supply — and maybe, for the food banks themselves, a beneficial new role.

“There’s an almost unlimited supply of produce that’s not being adequately distributed,” says Vicki Escarra, the president of Feeding America (formerly America’s Second Harvest), the national network of food banks. Last month she formed a fruits-and-vegetables task force and plans to bring in 25 percent more farm produce through national donors in the next fiscal year. “Identifying where it is and how we can get it and how we can subsidize it — there are a lot of lessons that can be learned in California,” Escarra says. “What they’re doing is really innovative.”

California will soon begin testing the installation of a device to block ignition on vehicles, driven by drunk driving convicts, at the first detection of alcohol.

LOS ANGELES — In a rare public rebuke of state government and policies delivered by a sitting judge, the chief justice of the California Supreme Court scathingly criticized the state’s reliance on the referendum process, arguing that it has “rendered our state government dysfunctional.”

In a speech Saturday before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Mass., the chief justice, Ronald M. George, denounced the widespread use of the referendum process to change state laws and constitutions. And he derided California as out of control, with voters deciding on everything from how parts of the state budget are spent to how farm animals are managed.

The latest figures show that California is facing resurgent fiscal strains brought on by the U.S. recession. Since February, Schwarzenegger and lawmakers have cut $32 billion from spending, raised taxes by $12.5 billion and covered $6 billion more with accounting gimmicks and borrowing. Even with those actions, state budget officials predict an additional $38 billion in deficits in the next three fiscal years combined, including $7.4 billion in the year starting July 1.

California’s revenue collections trailed its forecasts by $1.1 billion during the first three months of the fiscal year, showing new deficits are emerging in the budget Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed July 28.

Revenue was 5.3 percent less than was assumed in the $85 billion annual budget during the three months ended Sept. 30. Income tax receipts led the shortfall, as unemploymentreached as high as 12.2 percent in August.

“Revenues more than $1 billion under estimates and recent adverse court rulings are dealing a major blow to a budget that is barely 10-weeks old,” Controller John Chiang said in a statement. “While there are encouraging signs that California’s economy is preparing for a comeback, the recession continues to drag state revenues down.”


as seen on : huffpo

But I have to give him credit, that does look like a healthy breakfast.

As Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is pressuring the legislature to come up a the water bond proposal that includes a peripheral canal, Restore the Delta and representatives of other organizations will unveil alternative water policy recommendations.

He threatens to veto some 700 Bills on his desk to get a water deal passed in Sacramento.

Such action would also send the state into a headlong conflict with the U.S. government while raising questions about how federal law enforcement could enforce its drug laws in the face of a massive government-sanctioned pot industry.

Under federal law, marijuana is illegal, period. After overseeing a series of raids that destroyed more than 300,000 marijuana plants in California's Sierra Nevada foothills this summer, federal drug czar Gil Kerlikowske proclaimed, "Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine."

SAN FRANCISCO – Marijuana advocates are gathering signatures to get as many as three pot-legalization measures on the ballot in 2010 in California, setting up what could be a groundbreaking clash with the federal government over U.S. drug policy.

At least one poll shows voters would support lifting the pot prohibition, which would make the state of more than 38 million the first in the nation to legalize marijuana.

Such action would also send the state into a headlong conflict with the U.S. government while raising questions about how federal law enforcement could enforce its drug laws in the face of a massive government-sanctioned pot industry.

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With the White House quietly working behind the scenes to continue to gain momentum in
drawing support from political opponents, on both sides of the aisle and outside of the Washington elite, they're also sending a clear message to hardline "right-wingers". They will not allow "obstructionists" to interfere with progress. And the White House wasted no time appealing to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to convey the message for bipartisan support in overhauling the healthcare system.

In a statement released by Schwarzenneger earlier today, the governor has made no secret that he has been a longtime supporter of Obama's reform plans. "Our principal goals, slowing the growth in costs, enhancing the quality of care delivered, improving the lives of individuals, and helping to ensure a strong economic recovery, are the same goals that the president is trying to achieve," said Schwarzenneger.

Mayor Bloomberg, an Independent running for re-election on the Republican ticket released a separate statement endorsing the bill stating that this legislation had "great potential to reduce costs for families, businesses and government at every level over the long term, while extending coverage to many millions of the uninsured and investing in proven, cost-effective public health strategies."