Governor’s Pembroke Welsh corgi To Visit 30 California Democratic Party Field Offices to "Bark out" the Vote for Prop 30 in Order to Stop Cuts to Education

Sacramento – Supporters of Governor Brown’s “Yes on Prop 30” measure will receive reinforcements this week as Sutter Brown, California’s “First Dog,” puts paw to concrete and hits the campaign trail on a “30 for 30” tour of the California Democratic Party’s Battleground California field offices. 
 
Sutter will help “bark out” the vote in support of Prop 30, which stops the cuts to education and tuition hikes by investing in California’s future. Volunteers who show up on tour stops and make at least one hour of phone calls to voters will have a chance to meet Sutter as he travels across the state.
 
“With only two full weeks left before Election Day we’re unleashing our cutest and cuddliest secret weapon out into the field,” said Tenoch Flores, Communications Director for the California Democratic Party. “Across the state Californians are lending a hand, and in some cases a paw, to the effort to pass Proposition 30 to stop the cuts to education. In addition to volunteering at participating local Democratic Party offices, voters can help by using a dedicated online phone bank to make calls from home.”
 
Volunteers who show up to phone bank at one of the thirty Sutter Brown tour stops will also get a limited edition Sutter Brown trading card as a souvenir of this unique campaign effort. Volunteers are also being asked to kindly leave their canine companions at home if they plan on coming into a California Democratic Party campaign office to volunteer for this event as many offices are not set up to accommodate multiple dogs.
 
Proposition 30 helps California avoid steep tuition hikes, and invests in schools and colleges this year.  Prop. 30 asks California’s wealthiest to pay a little more so the middle class doesn’t have to bear the burden. Under Prop. 30, families making below $500,000 a year will pay no additional income taxes.  Even with a 1/4 cent increase, the sales tax will remain lower than it was last year.
 
Prop 30 will:

•     Stop another $6 billion in cuts to our schools this year.
•     Prevent steep tuition hikes for college students and their families.
•     Invest in schools and colleges to create a skilled California work force.
 
In addition, Sutter will help promote a dedicated "Yes on Prop 30" online phone bank that activists and supporters can use to Get Out The Vote from the comfort of their own home (or dog park): https://onlinecampaigntools.com/Pages/PhoneBankLogin.aspx?org=40020736&link=PROP30Home
 
Here are the confirmed stops on Sutter Brown's "30 for 30" Tour with more locations to be added soon:http://yesonprop30.com/images/SutterStatewideTour.pdf
 
Go to: www.yesonprop30.com for more information.

IN a courtroom, you have to swear to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." But public pension opponents, perhaps because they aren't under oath, have no trouble distorting and making up statistics to bolster their arguments.

The masters of the "half-truth" attack on these pensions are former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, his pension-funding "special advisor," David Crane, Northwestern University Professor Joshua Rauh and now the Little Hoover Commission.

Schwarzenegger and Crane started off by repeatedly touting the claim that public pension costs had risen 2,000 percent since 1999. To make this assertion they cherry picked 1999, the year when California made its lowest-in-decades contribution ($159 million) to CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System. The contribution figure was very low because the calculation starting point used was at the tail end of a four-year "pension holiday," during which CalPERS investment earnings were substituted for the required contributions.

In the years before the pension holiday, the state's contribution reached $1.2 billion. But Crane used 1999, which allowed him to make the grossly misleading claim that California would have to greatly increase its future CalPERS contributions to meet pension obligations.

Not content with their misleading, pension opponents cleverly decided to rent the good name and reputation of Stanford University to evaluate the "true unfunded" liability of California pensions. They paid a few Stanford graduate students and their advisors to create a "study" that cut by half the assumed return rate of the pension funds in its projections. Since the funded status of public pension plans are determined by their assumed return rate, cutting this rate in half would make the unfunded liabilities soar.

“Why are you refusing to remove an ad that has proven to be false and therefore misleading despite claims from both Bill Clinton and the CNN reporter who initially provided the fallacy? Why would you both knowingly and purposefully run a campaign that is based on lies?”
 
That was the first question Meg Whitman was asked during a question and answer session with Yelp employees in San Francisco yesterday.
 
After spending almost a year at controlled and contrived infomercials disguised as “campaign” events with planted softball questions that would make even the Iranian Information Ministry proud, Meg Whitman finally met her match at an event yesterday at the Yelp headquarters in San Francisco.
 
Though “eMeg” may have been anticipating a friendlier crowd given her technology background, someone forgot to tell Dorothy that she wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

In lieu of the expected softballs, Whitman was forced into an uncomfortable game of dodge-ball by the Yelpers who weren’t buying into her predictable dog and pony show – and the only “yelping” happening at this event was likely taking place behind the scenes, by panicked, scurrying Whitman staffers.

Here are the early reviews:

SF Chronicle: Yelper to Meg Whitman (VIDEO): "Why would you knowingly and purposely run a campaign that is based on lies?"
 
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=72438&tsp=1
 

Sacramento Bee: At Yelp, Whitman gets mixed reviews

http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/09/at-yelp-whitman-gets-mixed-rev.html

At America's most respected conservative magazine, the price of dissent is termination. That's the lesson Christopher Buckley, son of conservative icon and National Review founder William Buckley, learned after penning his piece, "Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama" (h/t Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire). After an outcry from readers, Buckley offered his resignation, and it was promptly accepted.

"I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal," Buckley wrote in reaction to his ouster.

Buckley's case is that of a principled conservative concerned, yes, for country first:

"John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking? ...

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While the Hillary Clinton campaign continues to operate aggressively throughout the early primary states of New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina -- it is also going full steam into the February 5th states.
 
The Primary is about the number of delegates a candidate gets in order to earn the party's nomination, the number of delegates needed is 2,025 (or 50 percent plus one). As it stands right now, Hillary is winning the overall delegate count 169 (52%) to Obama's 66 (20%). It is predicted that the delegates received from Iowa will be Obama 16, Hillary 15, and Edwards 14.
 
California makes up about 20% of the delegates needed to win and Tsunami Tuesday (otherwise known as February 5th) will determine 47% of the total delegates. That's why, from day one, the Hillary Clinton campaign has assembled a well-organized campaign operation in California and other Tsunami Tuesday states.
 
We are in this campaign for the long run and have laid the foundation and support needed to remain competitive through February 5th when this election will be decided.
 
In California, our ground game, grassroots organization, and volunteer network throughout the 58 counties are unmatched and will allow us to remain strong.

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Yesterday the Field Poll released a statewide survey that shows Hillary Clinton continuing to enjoy a strong double-digit lead among likely voters in the Golden State. With just weeks before Californians start voting in their primary, a double-digit lead, in a multi-candidate race with a field of strong candidates, is welcome news for our campaign.
 
The Field Poll shows that Hillary has a 14 point lead over Senator Barack Obama among likely California voters – 36 percent to 22 percent. And a recent Public Policy Institute Poll released on December 12 found Clinton with a 24 point lead in the state with Clinton at 44 percent, Obama at 20 percent and Edwards 12 at percent.
 
And when you look beneath the surface of today’s Field Poll, the news is even better: Field Director Mark DiCamillo told the Sacramento Bee that “support for Clinton in California remains ‘formidable.’ Women support her over Obama by 20 points - 41 percent to 21 percent. Similarly, she maintains a 20 point lead among Latinos - 42 percent to 22 percent.  Clinton also continues to lead Obama among male voters and leads with Asian voters by 24 percentage points.
 
In addition, Clinton has overwhelming support as a nominee among her party's voters.   By nearly a 3-1 ratio, Democratic voters believe the New York senator has the best chance of winning the presidency if she becomes the nominee with 52 percent of likely voters saying that Clinton is the candidate with the best chance to win in November 2008. Just 18 percent say this about Obama and 16 percent say Edwards has the best chance.
 
The poll also found that Clinton maintains strong leads in key geographic regions of the state: Los Angeles County and theSan Francisco Bay Area. She is also stronger with voters in every age group including a 4 point lead among California’s young voters.

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