Flap’s California Morning Collection: June 10, 2011
Today the California Citizen’s Redistricting Commission will release draft maps on California’s 53 Congressional Districts, 80 Assembly Districts, 4 Board of State Board of Equalization Districts and 40 State Senate Districts.
The Commission will meet at 9 AM PDT and once approved the draft maps will be posted here.
The 14-member independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission will meet at McGeorge School of Law in Classroom C for a Business Meeting from 9:00 a.m until close of business on June 10, 2011. The Commission was created by California voters to draw state Congressional, Assembly, Senate and Board of Equalization Districts.
You can watch the Live Broadcast of the meeting here.
California’s largest union is trying to help elect…Republicans? And the GOP is ticked
With 700,000 members, the SEIU is California’s largest labor union and on Thursday it announced they would be doing something a bit un-SEIUish: The were starting a political action committee to help moderate Republicans reach office.
Waaaa?!? You mean the same union that spent $85 million nationally to put President Obama in the White House and were the foot soldiers for Guv Jerry Brown’s winning California campaign?
Yup. SEIU California has 87,000 Republican members (216,000 Dems and 80,000 decline-to-state and others) and at Thursday’s rollout of the PAC, a few of the Republican ones said they felt the party of Reagan had deserted them. Now, it is held captive by social conservatives and anti-tax types who had no interest in the art of compromising. And that — along with extremists from the left — were the source of the state’s political gridlock.
Where is the love for good ol’ middle-of-the-road Republicans, several asked. The hope was that — with the SEIU’s help– that more moderate Republicans would be elected to serve in Sacramento.
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Former CA GOP chair Ron Nehring raises a point about the REAL motive behind the SEIU’s Republican outreach:
“Notably absent from this PAC’s plans are to increase the total NUMBER of Republicans in the caucus. Rather, they are interested only in changing the COMPOSITION of the caucus by electing pro-tax Republicans in Republican districts where there is no chance of electing a Democrat.”
Ron tells us: “The SEIU effort is unquestionably about replacing anti-tax Republicans with pro-tax Republicans. Obviously the Republican Party has no interest in that.”
Dan Walters: Here comes the California budget (again)
Darrell Steinberg, the president pro tem of the state Senate, says that today’s debate on a state budget package “is no game.”
“This is not a drill,” Steinberg continued, using the pejorative term that Capitol insiders use to describe a bit of meaningless political theater. “This is the beginning of the budget debate.”
It’s not exactly the beginning, since the debate has really been under way for many years as the budget has drifted in and out of solvency, mostly the latter. But it could be the beginning of the end of this particular segment of this particular year’s version.
Drill or not, Democrats will put on a big show to present their budget, including an extension of billions of dollars in temporary taxes that otherwise would expire.
They’ll recite tales of woe from police, fire and education officials and warnings that thousands of felons will be released from prison under federal court order.
Supposedly it’s all aimed at shaming at least a few Republicans into voting for the tax extensions that would remain in effect until voters decide, as much as a year from now, whether they would be extended even further.
Of the more than 2.1 million jobless Californians, one out of three has been unemployed for a year or more, according to the latest figures from the state Employment Development Department.
And as joblessness drags on, unemployment checks run out. About 1.1 million people in the state currently receive jobless benefits, which averaged $291 a week in April. But as of this week, more than 439,000 Californians had exhausted all their benefits – up to 99 weeks.
How many of these “99ers” have gone on to find work is unknown. But for many in the state, where April’s 11.9 percent jobless rate was the second highest in the nation, unemployment lingers.
Enjoy your morning!