Posts Tagged: political

ProPublica: Charity for troops aids Tea Party

An illustration of promotional material from Move America Forward. (Photo:ProPublica)

by KIM BARKER posted 08.12.2014

From ProPublica: Move America Forward calls itself the nation’s “largest grassroots pro-troop organization,” and has recruited a bevy of Republican luminaries, including former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, to support its efforts. Yet an examination of its fundraising appeals, tax records and other documents shows that Move America Forward has repeatedly misled donors and inflated its charitable accomplishments, while funneling millions of dollars in revenue to the men behind the group and their political consulting firms.

Election 2014: Gov. Brown on Wednesday signed into law new disclosure rules for nonprofits, a move prompted by the 11th-hour flood of stealth cash that roiled the November 2012 elections. The bill takes effect in July – after this year’s primary elections but in time for the general election.

Legislature: Elections signal drop in number of women

Assemblymember Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, the incoming Speaker of the state Assembly. March 2014. (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

by SAMANTHA GALLEGOS posted 05.06.2014

ELECTION 2014: The number of women in the California Legislature is on the decline, a trend that — for now — is hitting Democrats, the majority party, more than Republicans. Nine women legislators from both major parties will be leaving the Capitol after this year’s general election.

OPINION: The six-states plan would newly create two of the poorest states in the country, “Jefferson” at our state’s northern border and “Central California” encompassing a huge swath of out Central Valley including the cities of Stockton, Fresno, and Bakersfield. In both states, one of every five people would be living below the poverty line.

Pérez, Steinberg: A tense relationship — but productive

State Capitol, Sacramento. (Photo: David Monniaux)

by ANTHONY YORK posted 05.01.2014

ANALYSIS: Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez of Los Angeles are both Democrats, but the two are hardly friends. The events of the last week captured the uneasy, though often productive, working relationship between the two leaders.

Covered California targets voter registration

Into the ballot box: A man votes in a California election. (Photo: Vepar5)

by JOHN HOWARD posted 04.23.2014

Under the terms of a legal settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union, Covered California is sending out registration mailers to nearly four million people who sought health insurance. The mailings, which have already begun, are the first step in an ongoing voter registration effort that will include this year’s month-long open enrollment period in the fall, when people choose new coverage plans or switch existing ones, and then continue into the future.

The state’s elections officer on Tuesday cleared the way for the measure’s backers, led by organized labor, to circulate petitions for signatures of registered voters. The proposal needs the signatures of 504,760 voters to qualify for the November ballot. The deadline to submit the signatures to election officials is July 10

A year-end report of California’s campaign law enforcer includes hundreds of violations, ranging from failure to report donations to money laundering to the infusion of millions of dollars in stealth cash to influence measures on the 2012 ballot. The 16-page annual report by the Fair Political Practices Commission’s Enforcement Division said violations involving two categories — political campaigns and lobbying — “were at the highest level ever in 2013” and that “conflict of interest prosecutions continued at record high levels.”

OPINION: Nearly a year has passed since the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) asked you and the Legislature to address a pension deficit for which it seeks a 30-year $240 billion cash injection, starting with $4.5 billion per year.

Susan F. Rasky, a former Congressional reporter for the New York Times who taught for two decades at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, died Sunday following a long illness. She was 61.