California Insider

As someone who grew up durng the height of the Cold War, I still can't get used to the fact that "red" is now supposed to mean conservative, with the default that blue means leftist, all because of some network television graphics on Election Night. Be that as it may, a new, mostly online publication has sprung up in Orange County, and it's calling itself RedCounty.com. It includes a blog but is more than a blog, sort of a micro-local collection of essays and links about politics, life and culture in Orange County. Among the contributors are some names folks in the Capitol will recognize: Curt Pringle, John Campbell, Scott Baugh and Matt Cunningham, whose OC Blog has been folded into theis new product. Hugh Hewitt is promoting it heavily. What caught my eye was a series of blog items by Cunningham and editor-in-chief Scott Graves about their efforts to train for the Red County Half Marathon in early December, after a dare from Hewitt. Apparently neither one has done much serious exercise lately, and their musings, which run on a separate sub-blog called The Couch Potato Diaries, are entertaining.

Garry South obviously has no love for Phil Angelides, but he says here that it's time for Democrats to recognize that the governor's race is all but lost and start making sure that the party doesn't also lose a bunch of downballot races.

A national group that monitors road conditions has just given the Proposition 1B campaign some ammo: five of the seven worst major cities for road conditions are in California, starting with San Jose. The annual report is here.

Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer has found that former J. Paul Getty Trust President Barry Munitz violated his legal duty when he used Trust employees to run his personal errands, and that the Getty's trustees improperly allowed use of charitable funds to pay the travel expenses of Munitz' wife and to buy gifts of artwork for retiring board members. Lockyer has appointed former Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp to monitor the trust, the first time a California attorney general has taken such an action. The trust has already reached a settlement with Munitz that will require him to repay $250,000 and forfeit benefits that could have been worth $2 million. You can read Lockyer's report here.

The Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State says Schwarzenegger is 13 points ahead, and the attempt by Angelides to tie him to Bush isn't working.

Jim Boren says that citizens too bored by government accounting to pay attention to public employee benefit issues may live to regret it.

The Times says the parcel tax initiative is one of those measures that is "so flawed one wonders how it ever attracted enough signatures to qualify."

The Chronicle says the parental notification initiative is a "deceptive rehash" of a measure voters rejected a year ago.

The LA Times joins a large (but probably irrelevant) group of newspapers to oppose the "Jessica's Law" initiative:

Money quote:

These may sound like effective crime prevention tools, but they wouldn't be. Most evidence shows satellite tracking devices don't reduce sex crimes. The program could cost tens of millions of dollars a year when fully implemented, possibly more. The housing restrictions would make it effectively impossible for parolees to find homes in most California cities, pushing them into rural areas or underground.

The Register thinks it's good government to dedicate the sales tax on gas to transportation construction.

The property rights initiative, the Mercury News says, would make it almost impossible for local government to regulate growth and development.

The Sacramento Bee endorses Steve Poizner for insurance commissioner over Cruz Bustamante.