Posts From Anthony Pignataro

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Anthony Pignataro

Anthony Pignataro

Brown Is One Hell Of A Story

OCT. 29, 2010 For a long time now, I’ve accepted that I have a vested interest in chaos. After all, what good is an investigative reporter when government functions honestly and efficiently? And who wants to write about government officials

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FPPC Fights For Public Records

OCT. 21, 2010 When I was a reporter in Orange County a decade ago, calling the Fair Political Practices Commission could be a frustrating experience. “We cannot comment on the existence of an investigation,” the nice spokesperson would tell me

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Hard Hats And Enviros Hold Hands

OCT. 14, 2010 Don’t sweat it if you’ve never heard of the Blue-Green Alliance. I had never heard of it either, until a rally Thursday over at the Federal Building in downtown Sacramento for organized labor, Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial campaign

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Are Smaller Parties Finished?

OCT. 7, 2010 For someone who may be the last of her kind, Laura Wells is remarkably chipper – even when talking about the new law that has made her essentially obsolete. “Prop. 14? I hope it has a boomerang

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State Opens Dusty Files

OCT. 1, 2010 On Thursday I took a break from high-speed rail controversies and death penalty analysis by walking over to the State Archives.  Located a block away from the Capitol, the Archives are home to our state’s most precious

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Reading Meg's Tea Leaf

SEPT. 24, 2010 Meg Whitman fascinates me. She’s a former (and quite successful) CEO of a major dot.com who until two or three years ago showed precisely zero interest in anything involving elected politics. She didn’t vote or engage in

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Shame To See Wright Go

SEPT. 17, 2010 You don’t find the words “state senator” and “indicted” in the same headline very often. But when I saw this Sept. 16 Los Angeles Times story on the eight-count felony indictment of Sen. Rod Wright, D-Inglewood, for

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Capitol Mischief on Admission Day

SEPT. 10, 2010 Thursday was California Admission Day – the 160th anniversary of California getting admitted to the United States. Over at the state Capitol, they celebrated the old fashioned way, with a bunch of people dressed up in 1850s

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No hope for finance reform success

SEPT. 2, 2010 As you read this, please keep in mind that I want the new Political Reform Act Task Force to succeed. As someone who’s spent about a decade reading through the campaign finance and personal disclosure reports the

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What Hath Arnold Wrought?

AUGUST 26, 2010 We’re at that time in a governor’s term when we start hearing the word “legacy” on a nearly daily basis. A Nexis search of the terms “Arnold Schwarzenegger” and “legacy” in newspapers over the last month yielded

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