Today's Fresh Meat

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

In an op-ed in today's Los Angeles Daily News, Speaker Fabian Nunez has some strong words for school districts who punish children for the financial difficulties of their parents. "If the "dunce cap" were still in use as a schoolhouse punishment, there are several school officials in California who need to be assigned corners and fitted for cones. According to newspaper reports -- and I'm sure Charles Dickens is looking down at those reports with a nod of professional respect -- children in some California school districts are being publicly shamed simply because their parents have neglected to keep the students' pre-paid lunch accounts fully up to date."

Speaking of dunce caps, the big Central Valley papers are calling out Governor Schwarzenegger today over the California Air Resources Board scandal. "This last-minute jockeying doesn't speak well for either CARB or Schwarzenegger's inner circle," the Fresno Bee declares. And the Bakersfield Californian says that after our "chest-beating show" combating global warming, "Californians deserve some straight answers and a straightforward air pollution cleanup strategy from their governor."

If its any consolation for the governor, he won't have to face any Bakersfield Californian exposées anytime soon, now that the Californian's one man Capitol bureau, Vic Pollard, has published his final column for the paper. And he departs with a lesson worth repeating: "It's increasingly fashionable to say one's vote doesn't count, that all politicians are on the take, that the big-money interests will always get what they want anyway. But remember this: If just a few more people, relatively speaking, had voted for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in either Tennessee or Florida in 2000, we almost certainly would not have the war in Iraq that has become so unpopular." Bon voyage, Vic! Your absence is already felt.

And speaking of chest-beating shows, while the Chamber of Commerce labels close to every environmental bill to come out of Sacramento to be a "job-killer", it turns out that the emphasis on clean technologies and alternative energies has made the Bay Area "the regional leader in developing new technologies in a number of fields," says the Oakland Tribune.

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