by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Bob Brigham's pictures from the protest at the AHIP Conference in San Francisco.

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

In San Francisco, we passed Paid Sick Leave a few years back.  This week, the Assembly passed AB 2716 to provide similar benefits statewide.  Listen to a KQED program on the bill live here.

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

The CA High-speed rail authority has some cool new ways to make you really, really wish we had HSR.  First, we have the video to the right. They've also done a rather cool little Flash "simulator" for the proposed route from San Francisco and Sacramento in the North all the way down to San Diego in the South.  It has a series of animated pictures showing the proposed development along the route, some wind farms, some new big buildings.

They still have the Gallery of images and video if you want something a bit more detailed. They have a specific "Bay Area" video as well.

by Bob Brigham [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

After all that time tromping around in the snow where nobody had ever heard of him, Newsom couldn't translate his huge poll numbers in San Francisco into a victory for Hillary. How are things going for Antonio?

With the story being DTS suppression, I think tonight Bradley Whitford is looking like a better choice in the 2010 gubernatorial primary.

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Well, that was fun! We had LA Council President Eric Garcetti, a live report from Bob Brigham at the Grateful Dead for Obama show in San Francisco, and an interesting conversation between David Dayen and myself about the election tomorrow, in that order.  So, take a listen, I think, IMHO anyway, that it was pretty interesting.  I think we'll try to do this more often. Let me know if you have a topic you'd like to consider for our next show.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Consider When Negotiating Senate Bill 974 (Lowenthal)

By Peter Schrag

Had the container ship Cosco Busan run into a bridge pier and spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel in Savannah, Tacoma or even Long Beach it would have been just as deplorable. That it happened in San Francisco, the mother church of environmentalism, made it blasphemy.

So it wasn't surprising that California's politicians, from the governor down, outdid themselves demanding or launching investigations to determine who deserved the rap for the fouled beaches and the dead birds. Some quickly castigated the Coast Guard and other emergency agencies, many long underfunded, for their slow response. What if a terrorist ... ?

Next to the day-in, day-out air pollution generated by the ships, trucks and diesel railroad engines engaged in containerized transport at California's major ports, the damage from the accident at the Bay Bridge, however toxic, was small potatoes.

Still, the incident – admiralty lawyers call it an allision, meaning the ship hit a fixed object, not another ship – ought to be a loud reminder of the larger price in illness, environmental degradation and congestion that we pay for the ports.

by shayera [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

As I mentioned in a quick hit yesterday, the Secretary if State's office has filed a lawsuit against voting machine company ES&S. The suit is seeking $15 million from the Omaha, NB for selling almost 1,000 uncertified voting machines to 5 counties in California.

The lawsuit alleges that the company sold 972 uncertified machines to Colusa, Marin, Merced and Solano counties, as well as the city and county of San Francisco.
The suit also calls for a $10,000 penalty per machine. Which would result in almost $2.9 million for San Francisco alone.

The SFGate is reporting that this this is the first time that the Secretary of State's office has has to use this rule of the voting code.
The company is, of course, denying that any violations occurred. And charges that the suit would be detrimental to the voting rights of the disabled.

But Bowen responds with: