Interest in InlandPolitics.com is growing at a rapid pace with the site achieving the 35,000 hit threshold yesterday.

We attempt to post and promote content that is of interest to out readers. Sources for our content may be local, regional, national, or international, which has a direct or indirect impact on the Inland Empire of Southern California.

Our content focus remains politics and government, with a smattering of finance and economics affecting the region.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Administrator at 1 February 2010

Maybe when San Bernardino County’s Chief Legal Eagle Ruth Stringer is booted in a few weeks, President Obama will appoint her to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

From our experience she would be a perfect fit with the aberrant justices already sitting on that bench.

Read the rest of this entry »

Meg Whitman

By Jack Chang
jchang@sacbee.com The Sacramento Bee
Published: Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010 – 12:00 am | Page 3A

Republican Meg Whitman spent $19.5 million on her gubernatorial campaign in 2009, an unprecedented figure nearly a year before Election Day, according to spending reports filed Monday.

By comparison, Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown, who unlike Whitman is unlikely to have serious competition for the party nomination, spent one-fiftieth of that amount last year, or $370,525.

Read the rest of this entry »

Republicans Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman have contributed nearly $60 million of their own money to their gubernatorial campaigns. The presumptive Democratic nominee has conserved his funds.

By Shane Goldmacher

February 2, 2010

Reporting from Sacramento – With four months to go before the June primary election, the two leading Republican candidates for governor have poured more than $58 million of their personal fortunes into their campaigns while the presumptive Democratic nominee, state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, has conserved his money for the fight ahead.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com The Sacramento Bee
Published: Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010 – 12:00 am | Page 3A

The Republican duel for governor turned nasty – and thus became much more interesting – Monday when Steve Poizner accused rival Meg Whitman of using threats and bribes to get him out of the race, and her campaign questioned Poizner’s mental health.

Poizner released an e-mail from Mike Murphy, a top Whitman campaign adviser, to Poizner’s pollster last week asking, “Is there anything we can do to get SP to reconsider this race?” and suggesting that Whitman, the very wealthy former eBay honcho, “can spend $40M+ tearing up Steve if we must.”

Read the rest of this entry »

February 1, 2010 | 2:00 pm

Another 16 California lawmakers and aides have agreed to pay fines after California’s ethics agency found they failed to report gifts from lobbying groups, according to documents released Monday.

That brings the total number of officials penalized in the last month to 42, and total fines to $12,100. Those fined have admitted they did not file required public disclosures of gifts received in 2008, including sports and concert tickets, meals, spa treatments and hotel stays.

Read the rest of this entry »

Capitol Alert
The latest on California politics and government
February 1, 2010

After the jump see a list of the California lawmakers who have agreed to pay fines for not reporting gifts received from lobbyist employers in 2008.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, $600 fine, for failing to report three dinners – from AT&T, $113; Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians, $94; and from Chevron Corp., $59.

Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, $600 fine – concert tickets from Verizon, $300; a meal from Medtronic Inc., $190; and golfing fees from the California Cable and Telecommunications Assoc., $250.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wyatt Buchanan, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

(02-02) 04:00 PST Sacramento — California’s leaders have been looking to Washington, D.C., for budget money they say is owed as a matter of law and fairness, but President Obama’s spending proposal released Monday shows he largely disagrees with those assertions.

The president has proposed giving California $1.5 billion of the $6.9 billion that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders had sought during a highly publicized trip to the nation’s capital two weeks ago, according to the state Department of Finance.

Read the rest of this entry »

Economy Is Beginning to Recover on the Coast, but Inland Areas Remain in a Rut

By CARI TUNA

California’s economy is showing signs of stabilizing, but progress is uneven as coastal regions begin to rally and inland areas continue to sink.

Unemployment rates are dipping and home prices are rebounding in the San Francisco Bay area, which is driven by its technology industry and exports, and in coastal Southern California, where entertainment and other industries are starting to benefit from the economic thaw. But in the state’s Central Valley and Inland Empire regions, where the downturn struck earlier and harder, unemployment rates are still rising and the battered construction industry keeps shedding workers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bernard Parks has asked the city’s top budget analyst to outline a layoff plan that includes public safety agencies, which have been largely shielded from earlier budget cuts.

By Maeve Reston and Phil Willon

February 2, 2010

As the Los Angeles City Council weighed options to address a $208-million shortfall, Councilman Bernard C. Parks on Monday ordered the city’s top budget analyst to prepare a plan that could include layoffs of police officers and firefighters.

Last week, City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana outlined plans for the elimination of as many as 1,500 city positions, but none of those cuts were from the Police Department or the mayor’s and council members’ offices.

Read the rest of this entry »

By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: February 1, 2010

WASHINGTON — In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power.

According to the 2011 budget, the projected deficit in the coming year is nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output.

The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.

Read the rest of this entry »