by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

The Yes on the Recall Campaign has a new ad up talking about Sen. Jeff Denham's little pay hike scam. You know, where he told the media that he was rejecting pay hikes, only to quietly accept them a few months later.  Pretty sweet deal. All the fun of the press coverage without all the problems of actually getting less money.

Also in the Denham recall race, Simon Salinas has launched his website. It's not going to win any awards or anything, but it's got some good info on there.

by Robert in Monterey [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

I'm on my way over to Salinas for the "First Presidential Primary in the Nation" (a local straw poll event), but I thought I'd share with you an op-ed I have in today's LA Times: "Why won't The Times talk tax hikes?"

Obviously you'll have to go to the link to read the whole thing, but the basic point is that the Times has, in its recent reporting, been framing the budget crisis as a problem on the spending side, while not being sufficiently attentive to structural revenue deficiencies. If we're really going to fix the state budget without using this crisis as an occasion to further gut badly needed public services, we need to understand the entirety of the problem, not just one dimension of it.