The City of Salinas received national attention last year for its decision to close municipal libraries due to a shortage in city funding and the subsequent “Measure V” campaign which raised the city’s sales tax half a cent. National figures and celebrities such as Hector Elizondo, George Lopez and others donated to the “Rally Salinas” campaign which raised over $500,000 in private funds to keep the libraries open until a public solution could be found. Mayor Anna Caballero received much of the credit for spearheading this effort and for “saving” the City of Salinas libraries.

A few weeks ago Mayor Caballero declared her intention to run for AD 28 setting up an interesting primary showdown with Watsonville Mayor Ana Ventura Phares. Although Caballero is well liked and has incredible name ID within the district, Ventura Phares has picked up some heavy endorsements including the UFW and a ton of Sacramento legislators including Cindy Montanez, Jackie Goldberg and Jenny Oropeza. … Read More

The biggest regional issue for Sacramento area voters this year will be whether or not the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) will be able to annex portions of Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) territory in Yolo county.

For more than a year the fight has been intense — SMUD went on the offensive early and received support from almost all the local elected officials in Yolo County. SMUD was really running up the score in Yolo County and it looked like annexation was a sure bet, but PG&E wisely changed the playing field.

PG&E countered with a petition asking SMUD to give Sacramento County voters the ability to vote on the annexation (last week the SMUD Board agreed). PG&E is hoping that Sacramento County voters (who currently enjoy the second lowest utility bills in the state) will reject an expansion into the Yolo cities of Davis, West Sacramento and Woodland out of fear that it will increase their monthly utility bills.

You can bet the farm that PG&E will spend what it takes to defend its service territory. They have defeated 2 similar measures in San Francisco by overwhelming their… Read More

Miguel Pulido, the boyish Democratic mayor of Santa Ana, has some ‘splainin’ to do.

The OC Register’s Martin Wisckol reports that the long-time Santa Ana pol was down in Bolivia meeting with it’s newly-inaugurated president Evo Morales — a buddy of anti-American Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez..

Morales styles himself as the new Fidel Castro and has repeatedly vowed to become America’s "worst nightmare."

You can read more about Morales’ "new leftist agenda" in today’s Contra Costa Times.

Wisckol:

One of Buzz’s reliable tipsters suggested we catch up on our Latin American newspaper reading, starting with Bolivia’s Los Tiempos. In the Nov. 30 edition, we found an attention-getting article, "Evo se reunió con alcalde… Read More

With the commenting system now live on the FlashReport (see Jon’s entry below), thus making the electronic democracy of ideas even more…well, democratic…as well as yesterday’s reference to Steve Greenhut’s OC Register piece, "It’s a brave new media world," this morning’s SD Union-Tribune blurb is also appropriate…

Although political hacks may have missed it because it ran in the U-T’s "Personal Tech" section, the wire story says that 2005 was the year that blogs took off, with nine percent of adult web surfers writing them and 27% doing the reading:

2005 was the year of the blog How big have blogs become?

Bigger than Jesus. Bigger than sex.

More than twice as big as sex, actually, the CEO of Blogpulse found when he typed the words "blog" and "sex" into the Google search engine. That big. References, as well, to… Read More

There is a lot of great stuff to which I want to draw your attention to on the main page today.

COMMENTING SYSTEM LIVE! But first let me start by announcing that the guest-comment feature on the FlashReport is finally up and running! As this site has been custom built, adding complex features takes time, unlike if we had gone with an ‘off the shelf’ blog program for that part of things. Nevertheless, the feature is up and running, so when you are over on the blog, you can now press on the comment link below any post to read comments, or make one of your own!

The only catch is that the first time you try to post, you will have to register with this site and give a username and password. We’ll get you approved quickly, and then you can make the FlashReport an interactive experience!

**There is more – click the link**… Read More

What do you do when you can’t get what you want from government? Answer: Buy the domains names of the politicians involved. Set up a web site and put pornographic images on it with vulgar comments about them. Now that is redressing our grievances toward government.

That is what David Grant did after he didn’t get satisfaction from Los Angeles Unified School District over an injury he suffered. He reserved the domain name of LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer – royromer.com – and domain names of the workers’ compensation attorney an others he didn’t get satisfaction from.

Now they are settling for $360,000 if the internet issues are resolved as well. See the story here.

LA Unified is on dangerous ground. What if parents did something along this line to get better test scores or teachers to get pay increases?

I know what some of you are thinking and MikeSpence.com is already reserved. Is yours?… Read More

There is a lot of great stuff to which I want to draw your attention to on the main page today.

COMMENTING SYSTEM LIVE! But first let me start by announcing that the guest-comment feature on the FlashReport is finally up and running! As this site has been custom built, adding complex features takes time, unlike if we had gone with an ‘off the shelf’ blog program for that part of things. Nevertheless, the feature is up and running, so when you are over on the blog, you can now press on the comment link below any post to read comments, or make one of your own!

The only catch is that the first time you try to post, you will have to register with this site and give a username and password. We’ll get you approved quickly, and then you can make the FlashReport an interactive experience!

Great reading today (all stories on the main page): TAX OR FEE? … Read More

At the recent meeting of the Republican National Committee a debate between two resolutions on immigration created a controversy. California Republican National Committeewoman Barbara Alby (pictured right) co-sponsored the tough on illegal alien resolution sponsored by Arizona Committeeman Randy Pullen. You can see FR Publisher Jon Fleischman’s commentary on it here.

The Bushies had another resolution that endorsed his guest worker program along with some illegal alien enforcement provisions. Dick Cheney and other big guns came to the defense of the President. Pullen withdrew his resolution and by a voice vote the Bush version passed. See the Human Events article here. … Read More