by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Enjoy your fireworks in areas not so dried out that it's not a fire hazard to display them.  I leave you with two thoughts:

1) Tila Tequila is responsible for marriage equality in the state, just so you're aware.  So go find her and thank her.

(this thread mainly posted for the tags)

by Dante Atkins (hekebolos) [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

...than gobs and gobs of dollars to fuel political campaigns.

Russ Warner's campaign in CA-26 is reporting over $100,000 raised, with around $150,000 COH.

Unfortunately, that's all I can find for California Q2 right now.  Maybe I should leave this to the professionals like Dave Dayen.  Post reports in the comments, and I'll keep updating.

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By David Dayen
d-day

Congratulations, California! It's July 1, the start of the new fiscal year, and you don't have a budget, again. And if Mike Villines is to be believed, you won't have one for some time:

"We're doing meetings, but we're not making a ton of progress," Villines said on the final day of the 2007-08 fiscal year.

"The four legislative leaders are meeting regularly, but "a lot of it is building a rapport."

I hope they're playing that "trust" game where one of them falls to the ground and relies on everyone else to catch them, that's always a good one. Maybe they could swing a team building trip to Joshua Tree while they're at it!

According to Villines, those mean old Democrats are just irrationally sticking to raising taxes at a time of budget deficits between $15 and $20 billion dollars! Don't they know they could just stop funding public schools and everyone could go home for the summer?

In part, he blamed Democrats for sticking to a plan to raise taxes - $11 billion in the Senate and $6 billion in the Assembly - for stalling talks. He called such figures "totally unfounded and out of touch with reality."