Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.
Sen. Blanche Lincoln said minutes ago that she will vote to let the debate start on health care reform.
The Arkansas Democrat was the last holdout Majority Leader Harry Reid needed to start deliberations on the most massive overhaul ever of the nation’s health care system.
“Although I don’t agree with everything in this measure,’’ Lincoln said, she believe its more important to start debate “rather than simply drop the issue and walk away.’’
After 17 years with Wylie Aitken at the helm, the Democratic Foundation of Orange County has a new leader today.
Tustin attorney Dan Jacobson was elected the new chairman of the foundation last night at the organization’s annual membership dinner at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach. More than 170 were on hand for the dinner, which honored the retiring Aitken and the late Dick O’Neill.
The Democratic Party of Orange County has scored House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as its guest speaker at its big annual fundraising Harry S Truman Dinner on Dec. 4. Tickets start at $125 for sustaining members and $150 for general admission. For reservations, write melahat@ocdemocrats.org
Pelosi last made a public appearance in Orange County on April 13, at the funeral of Democratic activist and O’Neill family patriarch Dick O’Neill. Click here for the story on that.
This awards: The Harry S Truman Award honoree will be Assemblymember Jose Solorio. The Samuel Gompers Award honoree will be Florice Hoffman. And the Lifetime Achievement Award honoree will be Marti Schrank.
In a tremendous surprise, the Norwegian Nobel Committee today awarded President Barack Obama the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
See our latest coverage on Total Buzz.
When President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress today at 5 p.m. pacific time, California Sen. Barbara Boxer hopes he will put a personal face on this debate and make it clear the benefits of health reform to those with and without insurance
Whenever a president gives a major speech like this, especially a rare joint address to Congress, pundits muse about how vital it is to his presidency. This time they may be right.
Health reform, the president’s signature domestic issue, is at a crossroads.The summer was marked by angry town hall meetings. Obama’s leadership on this matter is sinking in the polls. His own party is fractured over the details on a plan.
So tonight he must not just convince lawmakers to give his ideas a chance, but try and move the American public to tell their representatives to vote yes. I’ll be blogging on what’s in the speech, including excerpts if we get them beforehand. And I’ll be writing a story afterwards, getting comments from our Orange County lawmakers.
As I’m sure many of TBuzz’s readers have heard, the parent company of the Orange County Register filed for bankruptcy this week. So what does that mean for the capital-L Libertarian slant on the editorial page?
Freedom Communication’s bankruptcy filing calls for the founding Hoiles family, which has owned the newspaper company since 1935, to give up control to the banks. Although the family will hold a small share, the bankruptcy opens the possibility of the lenders selling the company to another entity or entities — in whole or cut up in parts. That, depending on who buys the papers, could change the editorial direction away from the family’s longstanding Libertarian views that have been heralded in all 33 daily papers in the chain.
Although a sale doesn’t seem imminent, given the economy and the state of the newspaper industry, leading Libertaritans were dismayed at the news of the possible loss of a leading voice for their philosophy. Libertarians support individual freedoms over government intervention, focus on personal property rights and champion broad civil liberties.
After a delay of more than a week, the California State Assembly approved today a plan to reduce the prison population and reform the parole system — however the bill was a dramatically watered-down version of what the State Senate approved on Aug. 20.
Like the Senate, the Assembly plan passed without Republican support and by the narrowest of margins, 41 to 35, with three not voting, even though the Assembly plan removed the most controversial components of what the Senate approved.
Gone were provisions to allow inmates to serve part of their sentences on home confinement and to establish a sentencing commission that would have had the power to rewrite the penalties for major crimes in California.
In May, I filed this story about how O.C. Democrats had failed to take turn national momentum toward Democrats into more local victories. County Democratic Party Chairman Frank Barbaro said he was working to change that, and a new hire at the party may help.
The party today announced that Henry Vandermeir will start Tuesday as its political director. Vandermeir has more than a decade of experience working with the California Democratic Party, and is currently president of the California Democratic Council.
Vandermeir replaces outgoing political director Lindsay Hopkins, who’s going to work for Political Data Inc.
When Sen. Edward Kennedy came to Orange County he didn’t draw a crowd. And county Democratic Chairman Frank Barbaro said that’s the way he wanted it.
“He didn’t want or need the notoriety,’’ said Barbaro, who was Kennedy’s convention floor captain in 1980 when the Lion of the Senate made his failed bid for the party’s presidential nomination against Jimmy Carter. “He was here for a purpose, sometimes to relax. It wasn’t about Ted Kennedy.”
I’ll be writing a Letter from Washington later reminiscing a bit about the years I covered Kennedy, both as a reporter for Newsday in New York and for the Register, particularly during the immigration debates. And I’ll be adding more remembrances from others in Orange County who knew the senator.
UPDATE: Click here to read my column on Kennedy.
Former senator and presidential candidate George McGovern is at Chapman University today. McGovern, who is 87, said he came to the Senate on the same day in 1962 as Kennedy and sat next to him in the chamber.
“He was one of the most remarkable men I think I ever knew,” McGovern said. “I think he became the greatest senator of the 20th century.”
As expected, the State Legislature isn’t going to take up prison cuts today — but it will this week.
Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said his house is scheduled to take up the issue on Thursday. When the Legislature passed its last budget in July, it approved more than $1 billion in unallocated cuts to the prison system, with the understanding that the Legislature would decided on the nature of the cuts after its break, which ended today.
As we explained earlier, this issue is expected to be divisive, as Democrats want to achieve the spending cuts by reducing the prison population — including through the early release of prisoners — while Republicans oppose anything that even smells of early release. Further complicating matters is that our Republican governor has been working on a plan to reduce the prison population by tens of thousands of inmates through the very means supported by Democrats.
