links for 2010-10-05

The wage claim against Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman filed by her former housekeeper says the employee estimates she is owed approximately $6,210 for mileage and hours of work she says Whitman didn't compensate.

Nicandra, or Nicky, Diaz Santillan, says on a one-page wage claim filed with California's Department of Industrial Relations that she was "only paid for 15 hours per week, yet I worked 18 hours at a minimum, per week." It also says she didn't get mileage reimbursement.

The claim says that the unpaid wages Diaz claims are for work performed between Sept. 30, 2007 and June 19, 2009. She says she was paid $23 an hour.
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Chump change to Meg Whitman. Wonde if she even dared asked her former employers for the pay off?

Doubtful because it is outrageous.

Nicandra needs to be deported.

Gloria Allred may have opened a can of worms when she introduced Nicky Diaz Santillian, gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s housekeeper, who is apparently an illegal immigrant. Allred is already being accused of using a client for personal publicity purposes, instead of legally protecting the illegal housekeeper, as required by law. And now, law enforcement agencies are focusing on Santillian and her fraudulent documentation and identification.

One agency is the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which always investigates when someone is caught with a bogus California driver’s license. DMV insiders are asking if the DMV will do the same with Santillan?
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Say hey Jerry Brown. You going to prosecute?

Democrats are pushing back these days with polls and political scenarios, trying to change the national narrative and force handicappers onto the defensive.

There is a Democratic mini-surge going on, we are told, as some campaigns produce poll numbers showing they have been prematurely written off as, well, dead.

This often happens, though I must acknowledge that it didn’t happen in 2008, when Republican campaign strategists and consultants were brutally honest with themselves in acknowledging that their candidates were going to get slaughtered in the fall elections. How refreshing that was.

This cycle, many Democrats I talk with acknowledge that big defeats are inevitable, but they then go on to argue their candidate is the one who is going to survive, pointing either to a new poll, the presence of a third-party candidate on the ballot or the alleged unelectability of the GOP challenger.
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Surging to 45% = loss no matter what. Big deal.

California officials are cutting off use of state-issued welfare debit cards at casinos across the country and on cruise ships, in the wake of Times reports that the aid cards have been used to spend or withdraw millions of dollars in benefits at popular vacation spots including the Las Vegas strip and on ships sailing from ports around the world.

More than $69 million meant to help the needy pay their rent and clothe their children was accessed in all 49 other states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, according to data obtained by The Times from the California Department of Social Services.

The department instructed the vendor that administers the debit card program to make the changes Monday afternoon, in response to a report in The Times’ Monday edition.
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Big government inefficiencies. Too little and too late. California needs welfare reform