The Skinny

For all you Capitol conspiracy theorists, we’ve spent way too much time coming up with this one: Lt. Gov. John Garamendi was involved in the effort to save the two wayward whales in the Sacramento River. The former lite gov, Cruz Bustamante, just showed up on a lobbyist filing for the Dinuba Unified School District. The lobbying contract has been awarded to Strategic Education Services, but subcontracted to lobbyist Esperanza Ross. Meanwhile, Greenpeace has a ship, the Esperanza, currently trying to stop Japanese whaling ships in the Ross Sea. Coincidence? We think not. …

Do you hate potholes? Love poker? Have we got an initiative for you! A new measure submitted to the attorney general’s office for title and summary would propose using online poker to raise money for filling potholes. Under the initiative, 90 percent of all of these revenues would go to cities, counties and towns “for the specific purpose of repairing potholes and broken streets.” The other 10 percent would go to gambling-addiction programs. Under the provision, a two-thirds vote in each house could divert the money into the state’s general fund. …

Speaking of initiatives, the author of a measure to make elections nonpartisan isn’t going to win any style points for this prose. “The people of the state of California do hereby declare their no confidence frustration with: (1) partisan political malfeasance and (2) duopoly polarized partisan political party failure to produce desirable visionary candidates of viable eclectic-pragmatic leadership competence.” And we thought reading Capitol Weekly was tough …

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