Galloway told Cunningham that she plans to be the only Democrat on the ticket, and warned former Anaheim Mayor and current Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly, also a Democrat, against running against her.

“If I were him, I wouldn’t, and I’m going to do everything I can to get his endorsements,” she told Cunningham.

Daly had been considered the strongest democratic candidate for the job. If he doesn’t run, then he may keep his position as the O.C. Clerk-Recorder.

That could mess up a carefully choreographed game of musical chairs  for Fourth District Supervisor Chris Norby. Norby is running for clerk-recorder, presumably filling the seat Daly leaves open when he moves into the Fourth District supervisor job.

But if Daly stays, where will that leave Norby and his opponent Hieu Nguyen?

Also vying for the Fourth District seat: Democrat Rose Espinoza and Republicans Harry Sidhu and Shaun Nelson.

Post from: Total Buzz

The unemployment rate hit a 26-year high after 467,000 jobs were lost in June. Joined by a group of CEOs – including two from California companies Hara and Applied Materials – President Barack Obama tried to strike an upbeat tone by highlighting green energy as a pillar for future economic growth.

“I’m pleased to say that we’ve achieved more in the last few months to create a new clean energy economy than we had achieved in many decades before,” he said.

Investment in energy and green collar jobs is supposed to play an important role in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Orange County was recently awarded an infusion of cash for green job training. The county is going to receive $937,890 in Recovery Act funds for the Green Corps, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced earlier this week.

The Green Corps is aimed at training at-risk youth for green energy jobs. Orange County is one of 11 grant recipients for the California program.

“President Obama and I share similar priorities right now when it comes to helping the economy rebound and creating a greener California and America,” Schwarzenegger said in a press release in March when he announced the creation of the program.

There are several other Recovery Act-funded energy projects underway in Orange County, including energy and efficiency block grant programs aimed at cutting down energy use in the county.

A map of current Recovery Act projects in California can be found here.

Post from: Total Buzz

Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, told reporters this morning that most senators are headed back to their districts for the July 4th Weekend, however, Steinberg and his top lieutenants will remain in Sacramento to continue negotiations on the budget.

On the Assembly side, Orange County Assemblyman Jose Solorio, D-Santa Ana, is one of the few who will be sticking around Sacramento to help on budget talks. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office said the governor will be in Sacramento if his presence is needed.

For an outsider, taking the weekend off may look lazy, especially with the state starting to issue IOUs today. But keep in mind that lawmakers and their staffs (and reporters!) have been working virtually round the clock on this stuff since Wednesday of last week. There are a lot of frayed nerves and tired people in Sacramento today.

In other words, the roar you hear is the collective cheer from the State Capitol. Everybody needs a break.

That said, a break might push all sides into their corners, resulting in everybody hunkering down for a protracted battle. Who knows? Steinberg, for his part, said it’s time to get it done. We’ll see if the break helps.

Post from: Total Buzz

Quang X. Pham is finalizing his Federal Elections Commission paperwork today to make his underdog congressional bid official, moving it from the exploratory phase. I’ve previously mentioned his possible run here and posted this item indicating that Tran’s stature in Little Saigon may have some fissures in it.

Pham, a former Marine pilot and now owner of a pharmaceutical marketing business, has changed from a lifelong independent voter to a Republican for the race.

“Most of my supporters and most of my policies - personal liberty, less government, lower taxes, Second Amendment - are Republican,” he said. And while he’s been well received by the GOP as a new Republican, his candidacy has not been eagerly greeted by party officials.

“A lot of people have basically said, ‘Welcome to the party. What took you so long? Now drop out,’” he said. “And I understand that - that they think I should start at the local level and work my way up. But behind the scenes, I’m getting enough support from the business and Vietnamese community. A lot of people want a fresh voice.

“There’s a big difference between the two of us. Who has created jobs versus who is a career politician? Who has served in the military and knows about Afghanistan? Given where the state is today, being a state legislator could be an asset or not” for a congressional candidate.

He said he’ll be spending the summer rounding up endorsements and campaign contributions, and that by Sept. 30 there will be evidence of how strong a race he can run.

Paul Hegyi, spokesman for Tran’s campaign, said, “There’s time enough to talk about challengers later. Right now, we’re putting together the best campaign we can.”

You can read more about Pham at his Web site and more about Tran at his Web site. Both candidates are hoping they can overcome Democrats’ 12 percentage point advantage in voter registration by tapping the Little Saigon electorate.

Post from: Total Buzz

Post from: Total Buzz

“I’m not going to hide my love,” he writes.

Recalling the Cadet Prayer he recited while at West Point, Choi said he learned to “choose the harder right over the easier wrong and to never be content with a half truth when the whole can be won.”

“That’s why I can’t give up now,” he writes. “I’ve got to keep on fighting…. The only way we can win this fight for truth is if the political cost of discrimination eventually becomes too great for the system to operate successfully.”

To that end, he is gathering signatures on a petition he plans to deliver to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on July Fourth. If you don’t already see it below, click on the prompt to read Choi’s statement including links to the petition.

Here’s Choi’s statement. It was sent out by Campaign Courage, a California-based group best known for advocating a repeal of Proposition 8:

I’ve got some bad news.

After 10 years of service to our country — including leading combat patrols, rebuilding schools and translating Arabic in Iraq for 15 months — the Federal Recognition Board issued its recommendation on Tuesday that I be discharged from the Army for “moral and professional dereliction” under the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

The board’s decision to fire me is not the end. Now that this panel of four officers has recommended my discharge, it still must be approved by senior officials in the Army, a process that could take a few weeks to a year. Unless something unexpected happens, it may be just a matter of time before the Army officially fires me.

I will not give up, no matter the odds. Because I know that the only way we will win this fight to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is by facing it head on. And I need your help again to keep up the fight.

I’ve made my case to President Obama — supported by more than 140,000 of your signatures. I’ve made my case to the Army — supported by more than 160,000 of your signatures. And I will continue to make my case until they fire me for good.

Now we need to make our case to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Will you join me in asking Speaker Pelosi to strongly support legislation currently in Congress that would repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”? Please sign on to our letter before July 4th and I’ll personally deliver your signatures to the Speaker ASAP:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/RepealDADT

At West Point, I recited the Cadet Prayer every Sunday. It taught me to “choose the harder right over the easier wrong” and to “never be content with a half truth when the whole can be won.” The Cadet Honor Code demanded truthfulness and honesty. It imposed a zero-tolerance policy against deception, or hiding behind comfort.

That’s why I can’t give up now. I’ve got to keep fighting. My fellow servicemembers — and the 70 fellow West Point graduates who have also come out of the closet to join Knights Out, the organization I co-founded to push for repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — would expect nothing less.

The only way we can win this fight for the truth is if the political cost of discrimination eventually becomes too great for the system to operate successfully. We need to raise the political cost in Congress so that Speaker Nancy Pelosi understands that, as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once said, “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

Speaker Pelosi needs to make “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” a priority now and come out strongly in support of legislative action to repeal this discriminatory law. Will you stand by my side now and sign our letter to the Speaker before July 4th? You have my word that I will deliver your signatures to Speaker Pelosi personally:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/RepealDADT

As I said a few days ago, national security means many things, but the thing that makes us secure in our nation and homes is love. What makes me a better soldier, leader, Christian and human being is love. And I’m not going to hide my love.

Love is worth it.

Thank you for your support.

Daniel W. Choi
1LT, IN
New York Army National Guard

Post from: Total Buzz

The bad news: thanks to the Legislature’s inability to capture some education cuts by yesterday, the end of the 2008-09 fiscal year, the deficit has been raised by $2 billion. The state now faces a $26.3 billion deficit with State Controller John Chiang poised to begin issuing IOUs tomorrow.

Schwarzenegger squarely blamed this “sad story” on the Legislature, saying lawmakers refused to act quickly and then pandered to special interests when they did.

“The Legislature’s failure to act … sent a message to California voters and to the taxpayers that ‘We want you to make the sacrifices, but we in Sacramento don’t want to make any sacrifices whatsoever,’ ” the governor said.

Schwarzenegger’s response to the deepening fiscal crisis was three fold:

(1) He announced that beginning this month state workers will be forced to take an additional day off without pay, bringing their furlough days to three per month. For the past few months, state workers had been allowed to take their furlough days on a self-directed basis, meaning not all state workers were taking the same days off. Schwarzenegger scrapped that plan today and re-instituted furlough Fridays when state employees will all take off work on the same day, resulting in state government virutally shutting down. Furlough Fridays will begin next week on July 10, and after that occur on the first three Fridays of each month, through July 2010.

(2) Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency under Proposition 58, which gives the Legislature 45 days to pass and send a bill to the governor to address the state’s fiscal woes.

(3) The governor declared he would not sign any legislation un-related to the budget (unless it was an absolute emergency) until after the deficit is fixed.

Meanwhile, State Senators are meeting in private to discuss what to do next while the Assembly is voting on the Democrats’ majority-vote budget plan, which the governor has repeatedly vowed to veto (and has already vetoed pieces of).

Check back with ocregister.com later for the full story.

Post from: Total Buzz

The decision comes at the end of a protracted fight between California, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bush administration and automobile manufacturers about whether a state could require stricter emission standards than those required by federal law.

By the time California won the waiver, President Obama had announced his intention to pursue a federal law governing greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes.

“California’s waiver will bridge the gap between now and then,” said Lisa Page, a spokeswoman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “What it means for consumers is spurring our green economy and more fuel efficient cars.”

The standards will be applied to future model cars, not those currently on the road, Page said.

The history behind the waiver decision is convoluted. Essentially, California passed a law in 2002 requiring a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from cars. To enact the law, the state needed a waiver from the Federal Clean Air Act. In the meantime, automakers filed a lawsuit against California challenging the emission standards.

California is the only state that can get a waiver under the Clean Air Act, but once the Golden State gets the go-ahead, other states can follow suit.

California applied for the waiver in 2005. The EPA denied California’s waiver request in 2007, and in 2008 California filed a lawsuit against the EPA.

California’s application for a waiver led to hearings and a bitter battle with the EPA, during which California Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, along with Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, accused the Bush administration of being in bed with automakers.

The tide turned this January, when President Obama requested that the EPA review its decision.

In May, Obama brokered a deal where California agreed to drop a global warming lawsuit against automakers and automakers dropped the lawsuit against California, said Stanley Young, spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board.

“Everybody gave something, just like a peace treaty,” Young said.

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank, has an interesting interactive timeline about the waiver battle from 2002 through January, 2009.

The new rules probably won’t have an immediately noticeable impact on Californians. Because the emissions are measured by fleet and not by individual models, there will still be a full range of cars on the market, Young said.

Measuring by fleet means that if a car manufacturer is selling a model with high emissions and a model with low emissions, as long as its sales of the two models even out to the overall emissions standards, the company is within the law.

“You will still have highly emitting vehicles, but over time the emissions will drop markedly,” Young said.

Thirteen states have said that they plan to follow California’s lead on the emissions standards.

“It should be comforting to the American people to know that the Environmental Protection Agency is now putting science and the law back into the driver’s seat rather than politics and special interests,” Boxer said in a statement. Boxer chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Post from: Total Buzz

As a result, about $3 billion in education cuts are lost. The Senate and the Assembly are scheduled to meet again Wednesday morning.

Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, noted after the Senate’s unsuccessful session that State Controller John Chiang said he wouldn’t begin issuing IOUs until Thursday. Steinberg says he thinks that gives the Senate one more day to try.

Post from: Total Buzz

In a news conference in Syracuse, N.Y. on Tuesday, June 30, 2009, Lt. Dan Choi, who has publicly announced he's gay, vows to fight a military administrative board's recommendation that he be discharged from the the New York National Guard for violating the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. - AP Photo

Lt. Dan Choi of Tustin should be discharged from the National Guard because he violated the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays, a military panel in New York decided this afternoon.

Such recommendations are typically approved by military brass.

Choi, an Arabic linguist who served in Iraq, made an announcement on national television in March that he was gay, and co-founded a West Point alumni group called Knights Out to support gays and lesbians in the armed forces.

Choi, a combat veteran, told the Associated Press that the recommendation amounted to firing him “for nothing more than telling the truth about who I am.

“I’m a leader. A setback is an opportunity to keep fighting, and I’m going to do that through my actions,” Choi said.

An estimated 10,500 gays and lesbians have been kicked out of the military since the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was established in 1997 under the Clinton administration. Most received honorable discharges because they haven’t done anything criminal, said David Glazier, a military law expert at Loyola Law School.

“In most cases you hear about, these people are highly regarded, they’re discovered to be gay, and then they’re persona non grata,” Glazier said. He said the board’s recommendation will almost certainly be OK’d by commander.

“The approval is pretty much a formality,” he said.

But Choi and his attorney are holding out hope.

The recommendation must be approved by the First Army commander and the chief of the National Guard Bureau before Choi is discharged, a process that could take anywhere from a few weeks to a year, said Maj. Roy Diehl, who represented Choi. Until then, Choi remains an active member of the National Guard, he said.

“It’s a recommendation, not a completed act,” Diehl said, adding he hoped military commanders would reconsider Choi’s value as a soldier.

President Barack Obama said Monday that he stands by his campaign promise to allow openly gay personnel in the military. He said he is talking to Congress and the Pentagon about the change, but it will take time.

The Rev. Lou Sheldon, chairman of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, condemned Obama’s position and applauded the recommendation to discharge Choi.

“There is no question that you don’t want a man who has gender identity conflict laying next to another man on a ship,” Sheldon said.

Choi’s supporters include 77 members of Congress who signed letters urging the military to keep the lieutenant. Letters have also been signed by another 260,000 supporters nationwide.

“Dan Choi is an amazing soldier,” said Linda May of the Orange County Equality Coalition. “Dedication, honesty and integrity are foremost in his mind. He’s served in Iraq and he speaks the language. He is exactly the kind of person we want in the military.”

Choi addressed the military panel during Tuesday morning’s hearing.

“My statement talked about Army values of integrity and (about) sending a message from Knights Out to all the deployed soldiers or anyone who feels isolated, that indeed NO soldier stands alone,” Choi wrote on the Knights Out Web site.

“I also said I am gay. I refused to lie, and told them I refuse to stay silent, particularly since the soldiers in my unit respect honesty above personal gain. I recited the Iraqi poem of historic fame and of course translated it myself. In Arabic English and transliterated English.”

Choi, the son of a Baptist minister who served in the South Korean Army, was a straight-A student and president of his senior class at Tustin High School. At West Point, he became fluent in Arabic and studied environmental engineering. In 2003, he served his first stint in Iraq. In 2008, he decided not to reenlist in the Army, instead becoming a platoon leader in the National Guard.

He also enrolled at Harvard, where he is seeking a master’s degree in Middle East and religious studies. However, he’s currently on leave from school.

“Coming out as turned out to be a full-time job,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle before serving as the Gay Pride Parade marshal in San Francisco last weekend. He’d never attended a gay pride parade before.

An unscientific online poll of 307 Register readers (as of 3 p.m. today) found that 44 percent thought gays should be able to be open about their sexuality and serve in the military. Another 28 percent thought gays should be banned from the military while 24 percent favored the current “don’t ask, don’t tell policy.” The remainder want a different alternative or had no opinion. See the poll and vote in it below.

The Register’s Cameron Bird looked behind the scenes at Choi’s - and his family’s - struggle to come to grips with his sexuality. Click here to read that story.

And click here to read about Obama’s speech yesterday about “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and other gay-rights issues.

Post from: Total Buzz