But the doubts that have been raised publicly and privately by the Spanos family — the owners of the Chargers — about the the city’s financing plans and expectations of quick environmental OKs appear to have sunk in with the NFL’s upper brass. The league’s executive vice president, Eric Grubman, had a good news-bad news reaction to the meeting with San Diego officials in an email to the Union-Tribune:

Grubman was also positive after the meeting … praising the city for its large team of environmental experts and for giving the NFL a thorough understanding of its accelerated timeline for environmental approvals and a January public vote.

 

Grubman also said the city’s proposed stadium design has “all the key elements we would expect at this stage.”

 

But he stressed that the design was only conceptual, no actual negotiations took place on Tuesday and that the financing plan presented by the city includes “very significant funding from NFL and Chargers sources.”

That was a reference to the $400 million to $500 million that the team and the league are expected to kick in for construction and related costs.

Is a mostly subsidized stadium not good enough?

Grubman’s critique prompted a sharp response on social media from some who wondered how the world’s most lucrative professional sports league could gripe about a proposal in which taxpayers bore two-thirds or so of the cost of a stadium for the league.

But as an indication of how NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and other team owners felt about the Chargers’ interest in moving, it was telling. Past assumptions about the league not wanting to risk a backlash over a moneymaking team leaving a community that had supported it for more than a half-century may have been based on a sentimental view about how the NFL operates.

So where do things go from here? The Union-Tribune’s coverage suggests a meeting in less that two weeks could be absolutely crucial:

[San Diego officials will make] a presentation scheduled for Aug. 10 in Chicago to the NFL’s relocation committee — a group of six team owners overseeing possible franchise moves to Los Angeles.

 

The day after that presentation, all 32 NFL owners are scheduled to meet in Chicago to discuss how to handle relocations to the Los Angeles area, where the Chargers, Oakland Raiders and St. Louis Rams are working on stadium projects.

How — and how much — does Atkins want to help?

The fact that the San Diego political establishment is not united on the stadium issue came up again Tuesday. The involvement of Atkins in the meeting with Grubman was treated as a huge plus by Mayor Faulconer, but her decision not to join him at the press conference and the vagueness of her confirmed comments led editors of the Voice of San Diego to wonder what help she was actually providing.

On Twitter, VOSD’s Liam Dillon paraphrased her position this way: “Atkins: I’m happy to expedite the mayor’s Chargers plan, but I don’t have a position on the mayor’s Chargers plan.”

An aide to Atkins said she was ready to help the city and the team maneuver through the obstacle course of state environmental rules in building the stadium. But the City Council member whom Atkins appears closest to — former interim Mayor Todd Gloria — is very cool to Faulconer’s stadium push.

So how much Atkins actually wants to do to help keep the Chargers in San Diego is open to question. For now, city Republican leaders appear far more inclined than elected city Democrats to subsidize a Chargers stadium, wherever it is located and however the taxpayers’ share of costs is provided.

Following the budget press conference Thursday, Twitter was atwitter with comments.

Many lawmakers sent out formal press statements with their thoughts, like the statement (below) by Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford.

Memorable Tweets

CA Democratic Party: GOP budget naysayers will be out in force but wont change basic facts: CA went from deficit to surplus under Gov. Brown & cuts to edu.

CA Democratic Party: ‪@abelmaldonado the Governor cleaned up your Republican Party's mess, balanced the budget & stopped cuts to education. What's that you say?

Jon Coupal:Does Governor realize that supporting lowering 2/3 vote on local bonds is a direct attack on Prop 13?  We'll make sure everyone knows that.

Phillip Ung: Missed this in the live ‪#cabudget broadcast, but ‪@JerryBrownGov says paying down debt should not be considered spending.

Gavin Newsom: The Gov. has kept his promise to be straight w/CA, releasing a sensible, balanced & socially progressive budget.”

Tim Donnelly: Bottomline – California's finances not as rosy as Governor Brown would have you believe. Time for him to go. Time for a Brown-out.

CA Assembly GOP: Asm GOP Ldr Conway on #cabudget: Democrats are going to want to “spend, spend, spend.” http://goo.gl/82iSzz  @kcranews

CTA: California teachers appreciate Gov's commitment to public education and to repaying the billions of dollars cut from our schools. #cabudget

Capitol Weekly: Brown's budget plan contradicts earlier bipartisan compromise over 'rainy day fund' …http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/01/rainy-day-fund-proposal-pulls-back-from-2010-deal.html … #cabudget #caleg

Darrell Steinberg: My statement on the proposed Jan. #CAbudget. I look forward to working with Gov. & my legislative peers in days ahead http://sd06.senate.ca.gov/news/2014-01-09-steinberg-statement-governor-proposed-2014-15-state-budget …

Speaker John Perez: I’m pleased to see how strongly ‪@JerryBrownGov has embraced the rainy day fund that is the cornerstone of ‪@AssemblyDems ‪#CABudget proposal.

‪Thomas Del Beccaro: @JerryBrownGov Jerry Brown's Paradoxical Budget:  Increases spending 9% to pay down debt?

That Jim Berg: There should be money in the #cabudget for #arts funding. $5million isn't too much to ask @JerryBrownGov

Ben Adler: ‪@JerryBrownGov presents his ‪#cabudget. Lots of charts, little suspense after it leaked out last night.

Ron Nehring: The ‪@jerrybrowngov budget leaves California uncompetitive, w/ highest sales and income taxes in America.

Desperado budget

The funniest response to Gov. Jerry Brown’s new budget plan came from Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, who responded using lyrics from an old song by the Eagles: “Governor Brown, why don't you come to your senses?”

Vidak left off the word “Desperado,” the title of the song. He was referring to Brown's budget proposal to use AB 32 cap-and-trade money to fund the controversial and doomed High-Speed Rail project – which could be looked at as a desperado attempt to save the project.

Ironically, the Eagles used to be a backup band for Linda Ronstadt — Jerry Brown's high-profile girlfriend in the 1970's when he was governor the first time around.

Ronstadt did her own beautiful rendition of Desperado in 1976.

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses
You've been out ridin' fences
for so long now
Ohh you're a hard one
I know that you've got your reasons
These things that are pleasin' you
Can hurt you somehow

A 2012 Bloomberg News analysis headlined “The Facebook Effect” laid out the picture:

“The potential for California (STOCA1) to see a tax windfall from a Facebook Inc. public stock offering this year demonstrates how much the state relies on capital-gains taxes, a volatile revenue stream that hampers its credit rating.

“Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, the world’s most- used social-networking site, is considering the largest initial public offering for an Internet company on record, a person familiar with the plans said last year. Estimated at $10 billion, the offering would make instant millionaires of company employees and require the state to adjust its revenue forecast to reflect additional capital-gains taxes they’d pay, the state’s legislative analyst said yesterday.

“That kind of unanticipated boost shows the boom-and-bust cycle that capital gains taxes often inflict on California’s budget. In fact, capital-gains tax revenue as a percentage of the state’s general fund plummeted from 12 percent to just 3 percent between 2007 and 2009 as investors pulled away from the stock market, a decline of $9.3 billion, according to state finance department figures.”

'I can’t imagine foreign buyers trusting American products'

This reliance on capital gains could haunt the Brown administration and the Legislature in short order if the NSA scandal keeps damaging the reputation of Facebook and other California industry giants like Google, Yahoo and Twitter. A Tuesday report on Forbes.com has some context:

“Princeton technologist Ed Felten — who used to be government-employed at the Federal Trade Commission — writes, 'This is going to put U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage, because people will believe that U.S. companies lack the ability to protect their customers—and people will suspect that U.S. companies may feel compelled to lie to their customers about security.'

“'I can’t imagine foreign buyers trusting American products,” says security expert Bruce Schneier. 'We have to assume companies have been co-opted, wittingly or unwittingly. If you were a company in Sweden, are you really going to want to buy American products?'

“Earlier this summer, technology analyst Daniel Castro authored a report suggesting that revelations about corporate cooperation with the government through programs like PRISM would take a toll on cloud computing businesses to the tune of $22 to $35 billion over the next three years 'if foreign customers decide the risks of storing data with a U.S. company outweigh the benefits.'”

This backlash is well under way. Facebook, Google and Yahoo are begging the Obama administration to be allowed to reveal the extent of their cooperation with the NSA. Whether or not the White House agrees, the corporate titans are sending a message to the world that things aren't as bad as they may seem. Are they telling the truth? Who knows?

But they know what the perception is. It's why Google is also taking other decisive steps to address its image problem. This is from the weekend Washington Post:

“Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments, company officials said Friday.

“The move by Google is among the most concrete signs yet that recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance efforts have provoked significant backlash within an American technology industry that U.S. government officials long courted as a potential partner in spying programs.”

Jerry Brown and state lawmakers better wish Google good luck, and Yahoo and Facebook, too. Otherwise, the fallout from the largest spying scandal in world history could buffet state budgets for decades to come.

Maybe this will finally end the inexplicably blithe reaction most Californians have to the fact that their government is spying illegally on millions of Americans with the coerced assistance of the Golden State's tech giants.

By Katy Grimes

A local Sacramento politician recently issued a threat to punish businesses who disagree with him. His threat barely received a blip in the news.

In a recent State of the City speech, West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon said he would “make sure that not one penny of the hundreds of millions of dollars” his city spends on construction projects would go to companies that would undercut the Blueprint and thereby hurt West Sacramento.

Is this how business is done now? The seriousness of this type of behavior by an elected official should send a chill throughout the business community.

This is a shame because Cabaldon has done an admirable job of supporting policies to allow the growth of the once industrial West Sacramento into a thriving, viable community.

Government and business

Last week the Sacramento Bee ran an editorial supportive of the Sacramento Area Council of Government’s governing board  vote on a resolution to reaffirm the council’s support for the region’s “Blueprint” growth strategy. The “Blueprint growth strategy” is another sustainable communities plan, spawned from Senate Bill 375, and AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

SACOG board members, made up entirely of local elected officials from the region’s six counties and 22 cities, are being asked to back the agency’s staff on the sustainable growth plan. But a local building association charged the SACOG staff with lobbying on behalf of SACOG.

“The vote is necessary because SACOG is under attack,” the Bee editorial board wrote. “As the recession draws to a close, the region needs to recommit to sound planning principles.”

The Editorial Board of the Sacramento Bee claimed the recession is coming to an end. But Sacramento and California still top the nation’s unemployment numbers.

“If it doesn’t, it could head back to the era of leapfrog development, worsening air pollution and potential loss of federal transportation funding,” the editorial said. “Influential developers and their elected allies complain that SACOG staffers have gone beyond providing technical assistance to ‘lobbying against projects.'”

The Bee accused Region Builders, a Sacramento trade coalition comprised of companies in the Sacramento building industry, as well as 13 local trade and professional associations, of  “going after West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon, a strong SACOG supporter.”

The Bee has rarely attacked other area developers, particularly the local cabal supportive of Democratic politics, politicians, and causes.

One Bee reader left an apropos comment:

“The Bee mentions the lawyer, a Republican, is threatening to sue that little weasel Cabaldon but fails to mention the biggest developers in the valley, all Greeks, that support almost exclusively Democrats.  Angelo Tsakapolis and the Angelides family have paved over more farm land in this valley and also hold lavish fund raining parties for the likes of Hillary Clinton. Spare me the Republican hit, Bee.”

But the video above makes clear that in his recent State of the City speech, the threat that came from West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon,  was unequivocally directed at Region Builders.

Cabaldon, a Democrat, said he would “make sure that not one penny of the hundreds of millions of dollars” his city spends on construction projects would go to companies that would undercut the Blueprint and thereby hurt West Sacramento.

The Bee claimed Region Builders has attacked Cabaldon, who is a strong SACOG supporter. But in his recent State of the City speech, Cabaldon said he would “make sure that not one penny of the hundreds of millions of dollars” his city spends on construction projects would go to companies that would undercut the Blueprint and thereby hurt West Sacramento.

The Bee editorial said “Cabaldon may have crossed a line with that comment,” but accused Region Builders of going even more overboard by hiring a lawyer. “The group has hired a lawyer – Harmeet K. Dhillon, vice chair of the California Republican Party – to threaten a lawsuit against Cabaldon, according to a letter received Friday by Cabaldon and West Sacramento’s city attorney,” the editorial said. “It’s an obvious attempt to muzzle Cabaldon after previously trying to muzzle SACOG Executive Director Mike McKeever.”

Twitter tells the story

While the Twitter fight played out, the Mayor  said he promised to “forgive” members if they repudiated Region Builders. Cabaldon suggested he would push for prosecution of members who did not.

And more recently the Mayor escalated the conflict when I heard he suggested that members of Region Builders were responsible “if his mangled corpse was found in a ditch.” And  the Mayor claimed Region Builders was pushing a recall against him.

By Joseph Perkins

Randi Zuckerberg made news recently when a family photo she posted on her Facebook account was reposted on Twitter without her knowledge or consent.

The big sis of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was not amused. “Digital etiquette: always ask permission before posting a friend’s photo publicly,” she admonished the culprit who trampled upon her privacy.

This is the brave new world of social media. While it offers tremendous utility to the hundreds of millions of us who have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other such accounts, it also poses a clear and present threat to our privacy rights.

That’s why those of us here in the Golden State who routinely use social media owe a debt of gratitude to state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, and Assemblywoman Nora Campos, D-San Jose. Both are authors of legislation, which took effect New Year’s Day, that provide new privacy protections for selected social media users.

Yee’s measure, SB 1349, prohibits California colleges and universities from requiring students, or prospective students, to disclose, divulge or otherwise provide access to their personal social media.

That not only includes electronic content appearing on a student’s Facebook, Twitter or other such account. But also blogs, podcasts, emails and instant and text messages that are accessible on the Internet.

Campos’ measure, AB 1844, makes it unlawful for employers to require employees or job applicants to disclose the user name and password to their personal social media accounts. And, like Yee’s legislation, it’s inclusive of all forms of electronic content.

There are some who suggest that the measures by Yee and Campos address problems that do not as yet exist.

Indeed, the assemblywoman acknowledged that very well may be the case with her legislation, which she described as a “preemptive measure.” And the same may equally apply to the senator’s measure.

Privacy under attack

But what is beyond dispute is that the privacy of our personal information, on- and offline, is under attack like never before.

Not only by colleges and employers seeking to snoop into the private lives of students and workers, but by every conceivable information-gathering beast individuals encounter in their day to day lives.

Indeed, why did Williams-Sonoma and other California retailers until recently require customers to provide zip codes when making purchases with a credit card?

Why does California-based 24 Hour Fitness require biometric scans of members before they work out?

And why does Pacific Gas & Electric Co. electronically swipe the driver’s licenses of all visitors to its main office?

If retailers, health clubs, utilities and others that gather personal information guaranteed that the info would never, ever be used for purposes never imagined by those who provide their zip codes, biometrics and driver licenses, if they could assure those whose personal information is stored in their data bases that it will never fall into the wrong hands, there would be no need for new laws protecting privacy.

But we have seen all too many cases in which personal information gathered for one specific purpose is used for an entirely different purpose. As in the shocking 1989 murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer by a stalker who obtained her home address from California DMV.

And we also have seen far too many instances in which supposedly “secure” data bases have been penetrated by hackers. Like the data base maintained by Barnes & Noble, which was infiltrated this past  September by cybercriminals who made off with credit card numbers of the bookstore’s in San Diego and several other cities.

Once the personal information of students, employees, consumers or social media users like Randi Zuckerberg is out in the open, there’s really no repairing the damage done.

That’s why Sen. Yee, Assemblywoman Campos and their fellow lawmakers serve the public interest by passing laws that address the growing threats to privacy rights.

Ever wonder if America is a police state? Wonder no more. Reports the Daily Mail:

“Two British tourists were barred from entering America after joking on Twitter that they were going to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe’.

“Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.

“The Department of Homeland Security flagged him as a potential threat when he posted an excited tweet to his pals about his forthcoming trip to Hollywood which read: ‘Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America’.

“After making their way through passport control at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) last Monday afternoon the pair were detained by armed guards.

“Despite telling officials the term ‘destroy’ was British slang for ‘party’, they were held on suspicion of planning to ‘commit crimes’ and had their passports confiscated.

We’re tyrannized over by a bunch of dumb thugs. They don’t understand that British English is different from American English. They don’t want you to have fun. They don’t want you to party. They want you to obey, pay taxes and shut up.

And note that the government spies on Twitter, as it does on Facebook. Big Brother not only is watching you, he’s reading everything you write.

Welcome to 1984 — in 2012.

Jan. 30, 2012

Some liberals in California, at least, understand that taxes are too high and need to be cut. And those liberals run the ultra-liberal city of San Francisco. Reports the Bay Citizen:

San Francisco lawmakers approved the mid-Market “Twitter tax break” on Tuesday in a near-empty board chamber, drawing an anticlimactic close to a debate that had polarized the city for two months.  The legislation freezes payroll taxes along the mid-Market corridor for six years, a move supervisors hope will keep Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco.

It would have been better if they had frozen payroll taxes in the whole city — instead of giving the break mainly to one highly visible, popular company.

But the principle is the same: Businesses respond to taxes. If taxes are too high, they move. If taxes are cut, they stay.

Now, why can’t Gov. Jerry Brown, the Democrats who run the state Legislature, George Skelton and other tax-obsessed columnists get that message?  Why can’t they understand that high taxes kill jobs?

Why don’t they care about the businesses leaving California, the millions of jobs killed because of the state’s anti-business, anti-jobs climate?

April 20, 2011