As readers who saw Jon’s commentary yesterday know, Disney is circulating a ballot-box zoning initiative designed to prevent SunCal Companies from developing a condominium project within the Anaheim Resort District [full disclosure: I’m a member of the consulting team for SunCal’s project].

Disney has hired petition circulators to gather the 20,000 signatures necessary to place their initiative on the February 2008 ballot. During the last two weeks they’ve been posted at several shopping centers in Anaheim. On several occasion I drove around Anaheim visiting these shopping centers and getting pitched by these signature gatherers.

Interestingly, I never say Disney circulators at any of the several supermarkets, like Gigante, Northgate Markets or Jax Markets, that cater to Anaheim’s working-class Latinos. That can be explained, in part, by the sales pitch invariably used by the circulators to entice Anaheim residents to sign the petitions:… Read More

Yesterday the Democrats passed a bill out of the Assembly Human Services committee that would allow felons convicted of selling illegal drugs to get food stamps (AB 508, authored by Assemblyman Sandre Swanson).

A little background: Currently, federal law imposes a lifetime ban on food stamps and other welfare-related benefits for people with felony drug convictions. However, federal law allows states to opt out of this provision. In 1997, California declined to opt out when we passed our welfare reform package. According to the legislative analysis of AB 508, a 2005 report of the Sentencing Project reports that 11 states, plus the District of Columbia, have entirely opted out of the ban. An additional 14 states have partially opted out of the ban, either by limiting the ban to certain offenses (such as sale or trafficking) or establishing qualifying conditions which relate to participation in or completion of drug treatment programs. Governor Gray Davis vetoed several attempts to overturn the lifetime ban during his tenure. Three attempts were made to run bills that would have softened, but not have completely lifted, the ban. He vetoed… Read More

Last night, the Newport Beach City Council definately decided to place politics over principle in a decision to declare a 45 moratorium on the permitting if transient housing in the city. Aime

The Council voted unanimously (with Don Webb absent) to impose this rediculous restriction on property owners in their own city.

Courtesy of the City of Newport Beach website, you can contact these folks below.

(A tongue-in-cheek post, with a serious thought at the end…) My State Senator, Repubican State Senator Tom Harman, recently held a little contest in his district where he asked for suggestions from local students on potential legislation. For the winner of the contest for the best bill idea, who happened to be a local high school student, Harman agreed to introduce their suggestion as legislation. I would like to encourage the Senator to have another contest. This one would be to ask bloggers in his district for our ideas for legislation. In anticipate of the Senator seeing the wisdom of this idea, I am going to get ahead of the game by laying out my proposed legislation right now! In the Sacramento area, there is a home being used for business purposes in a residential neighborhood. What’s happenning is that this that every room in this home has been rented a transient occupant — specifically, state legislators! For our… Read More

A couple of weeks ago, I had a lengthy conversation with my friend Debra Saunders, a columnist over at the San Francisco Chronicle. We were talking about the fact that all of the Republicans in the State Legislature (save one) had just signed the Americans for Tax Reform no new taxes pledge.

Debra was making the case to me that she thought that it didn’t make a lot of sense to sign a pledge against ever raising taxes, using the argument that if you spend the money, you have to be able to pay for it — and that spending more than you have (deficit spending) was a worse alternative.

Debra made a point that the focus is always on not raising taxes, rather than on not increasing spending.

As Debra and I spoke, somehow we ended up talking about the fact that what is really needed in California is a "no new spending" pledge. This is so true.

Tomorrow there will be a lot of news coverage of a "deal" struck on prison reform, to deal with the massive prison overcrowding issue, and the looming specter of a federal judge doing who-knows-what if we don’t solve the problem.

Given that the starting-off point… Read More

SB 850 by Republican Abel Maldonado and Democrat Lou Correa was a simple bill. The bill would allow mothers to request a "certificate of birth resulting from stillbirth". This seems simple enough. Women who feel the need to recognize their child would have that option. This seems like a compassionate bi-partisan bill. And it was until Sheila Kuehl and the lobbyists at Planned Parenthood got hold of it in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Despite Maldonado’s attempt to have an up and down vote, the committee added language that "(j) (1) Through its courts, statutes, and under its Constitution, California protects a woman’s right to reproductive privacy. California reaffirms these protections and specifically its Supreme Court decision in People v. Belous (1969) 71 Cal.2d 954, 966-68..” … Read More

Plaintiff Jim Gilchrist has cried "Uncle" and dismissed his own case in Orange County Superior Court in which he attempted to gain back control of the Minuteman Project, Inc.

The Court was scheduled to hear argumentstomorrow (4/25) on whether or not Minuteman should go into receivership pending a trial on who the members of the Board actually are. (Background: the lawsuit was brought by Gilchrist on 2/22/07 against my clients, Deborah Peterson, Barbara Coe, and Marvin Stewart, who state they are the majority of the Board of Directors. Gilchrist claims to be the "sole director.") In the short time since filing the case, Gilchrist and his lawyers lost three applications for Ex Parte Orders, lost a request for a Writ of Possession of the property of the organization, lost most of his request for a preliminary injunction, and were headed to defeat on the issue of receivership set for this Wednesday. His only victory was a tangential interim "preliminary injunction" pending trial restrictingDefendants from spending $4,000 of Minuteman funds in their possession and using stationary for fundraising under Jim Gilchrist’s name… Read More

Breaking news, we just confirmed that Judge Randell Wilkinson, Department C-19, Orange County Superior Court, will hold the scheduled hearing on Minuteman receivership tomorrow at 1:30 pm regardless of Gilchrist’s Notice of Dismissal of his own case!!! The Court may be inclined to DENY what is usually a routine request for dismissal and nevertheless order Minuteman into receivership anyway! Hold on!… Read More