California's Republican gubernatorial candidate, Meg Whitman, is getting hit from all sides today on immigration-- not just because of her flip-flopping on the topic, but because of the shocking allegations being brought forward by her nanny of nine years, Nicky Diaz Santillan.

At a press conference yesterday, the former housekeeper choked back tears as she described her treatment by Whitman:

Santillan said she asked Whitman for help in finding an immigration attorney in June 2009, and explained to her that she moved from Mexico because she had "no job, no food, no place to live, and for that reason we made a decision to move here."

Whitman terminated her not long after she made the appeal, Santillan said, telling her, "don't say anything to my children, I will tell them you already have a new job and that you want to go to school and from now on, you don't know me and I don't know you. You never have seen me, and I have never seen you. Do you understand me?

Whitman "treat me as if I was not a human being," Santillan added, suggesting the candidate was "throwing me away like a piece of garbage."

Now, SEIU has released ads that take Whitman on over both her immigration positions and the nanny scandal (in Spanish):

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Of course, you knew as soon as you heard that open mike tape of Carly Fiorina dissing Sean Hannity, Meg Whitman and Barbara Boxer -- meow! -- that it would be only a matter of time before we'd see Fiorina on Hannity's Fox News show, purring and groveling abjectly and begging for forgiveness.

Sure enough, Fiorina was on Hannity's show last night. She tried to play the whole incident as a "compliment" -- "You're a tough interview, Sean".

Yeh, right. Anyone listening to the tape could tell that she was talking about the need for California Republicans like Whitman to distance themselves from the wingnuts like Hannity in the general election.

But it's always great for high-schadenfreude amusement value to watch these sneering conservatives grovel piteously before their masters in the right-wing media.

The influence of Big Money is everywhere. It's washing up on the shores of our Gulf Coast, creeping up on homeowners across the country and showing up in our schools and hospitals.

Our economy, our environment and our well-being are held hostage by lobbyists whose only care is retaining the power they hold. The need for reform is simple: we won't -- can't -- fix any of our country's problems until we end the dominance of money in politics.

On Tuesday, Californians have an opportunity to strike a blow against the entrenched system of money-dominated politics that puts lobbyists' interests above the public interest by voting yes on Proposition 15, the California Fair Elections Act.

Prop 15 will change the way we finance election campaigns, starting with a voluntary pilot project to provide limited public financing for Secretary of State candidates in 2014 and 2018. The Secretary of State referees our elections, so it's especially important that s/he has the best ideas and experience, not the most money.

And it pays for itself, primarily through a $350 per year registration fees on lobbyists, lobbying firms and lobbyist employers (right now, they only pay $12.50 per year in California, one of the lowest rates in the country and less than a daily fishing license).

And that's not all. From Calitics:

It also repeals a ban on public financing, so that local governments can create their own systems—and the system can be extended to other statewide offices with a vote of the legislature and the signature of the governor. Perhaps a Governor Jerry Brown might be inclined to sign a bill creating a public financing system for the 2014 governor's race, given the abhorrent spectacle of Meg Whitman spending $68 million and counting to buy the governor's office?

This isn't a full solution, but it starts us down the path of cleaning up our elections and returning power to the people. It is a great way to show the people of California that we can have democracy again, and not corporatocracy.

Prop 15 is tough:

• Candidates who agree to use public funds must prove they have substantial support by gathering signatures and $5 contributions from 7,500 registered voters.
• Participating candidates are banned from raising or spending money beyond the limited funds.
• Spending limits and reporting requirements are strictly enforced. Candidates can only spend on legitimate expenses. Violators would face fines, possible jail time, and prohibitions from running for office in the future.

Given the state of our state, this is a critical campaign. But this is not just important to Californians. People across the country are watching too, knowing that Prop 15 could open the door for similar reforms across the country. Hundreds of orgs and individuals (including Rep. Alan Grayson and Lawrence Lessig) support it. You should, too.

Don't look now, my fellow Californians, but it's official: Governor Moonbeam is back.

Attorney General Jerry Brown will declare his Democratic candidacy for governor Tuesday online, ending months of speculation about his intentions in which Brown insisted he had not yet decided whether to run.[..]

If elected, Brown will win an historic third gubernatorial term after having served two terms as governor from 1975 to 1983. His father Pat Brown also served two terms as California's governor.

Brown faces no Democratic challenger. The most likely candidate, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom dropped out of the race, ostensibly because his fundraising was inadequate to face the Republican challengers, the very wealthy Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner. Brown can seek this third term because term limits had not been enacted at the time he was previously Governor, so therefore do not apply.

I'm a big fan of Jerry Brown, the man as well as the politician. How refreshing to have an unapologetic liberal running after years of Republican rule and a ridiculously hamstrung legislature. Brown has done a very good job as our state Attorney General (one of many public service positions he's held in his life). But I don't know if he has the nest egg of funding that Whitman and Poizner have, so if you'd like to donate to his campaign, you may do so here.

Ourfuture: Fascist America – are we there yet?

Bitch, PHD: Priorities.

We are respectable negroes: They brought a knife to a gun fight - broken politics and the weakness of the Democratic Party.

Calitics: Fragmentation or obsolescence in California politics?

Existentialist Cowboy: Why the U.S. investor class are parasites.

Jesus' General: Proof that Barack Obama is a secret alien from the Slzrd Star System.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com

Among other places, I write at Calitics, the progressive site covering California politics. This is often a punishing experience. Since 1978, Proposition 13 has tilted the very structure of government in an unassailably conservative direction - 2/3 votes are needed to raise taxes, but only a simple majority to cut. As a result, politicians invariably take the path of least resistance, and as the Norquistian right rose to prominence in the state GOP, they learned that they could simply hijack the budget process for their own ends. State leaders compensated with borrowing and various gimmicks to put off the costs until after they left office. Servicing the debt became a bigger and bigger slice of the budget pie. Stakeholders who couldn't rely on the state used the ridiculously easy initiative process to pass unfunded spending mandates for themselves and all sorts of ballot-box budgeting. In good times, this uneasy balance worked... sort of. In even the most mild recessions, it would collapse.

That sets the stage for yesterday's horrendous budget deal, which closes a $26 billion dollar deficit with almost no new revenue, making steep cuts that amount to a reinvention of government's promises to its people, along with the usual gimmickry and a harsh, counter-productive set of raids on local government resources.

A local government official made a comment Monday afternoon, a few hours before the $25 billion deficit deal was reached, that seems to encapsulate everyone's feelings.

"As this budget hits the street today and people look at it," said San Mateo County Supervisor Rich Gordon, "I think Californians are going to say, 'How did we get in this mess?'"

It relies on about $15.5 billion in cuts and $11 billion in, well, other stuff (more on that in a moment).

Almost two-thirds of the cuts are in K-12 education, colleges, and universities (though it also includes a one-time supplemental payment to K-12 and community colleges of $11.2 billion). Other sizeable cuts are in corrections ($1.2 billion), state worker salaries ($1.3 billion in the current furloughs) and Medi-Cal services ($1.3 billion). Welfare assistance, health care for low-income kids, and in-home support services (IHSS) would also see cuts.

Also cut: funding for state parks, though nowhere near the level Governor Schwarzenegger proposed in May. Legislative staffers say a few parks would close, and the ones in question will be picked by the

administration.

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(full disclosure: I work for the Courage Campaign)

The California Supreme Court announced today its deeply disappointing decision to uphold Proposition 8.

It's wonderful that the court recognized the legal marriages of the 18,000 same-sex couples married in 2008, but this is a very sad day for California.

But we don't have time to mourn the failure of the state court to restore marriage equality to California.

It's time to go on offense. To be fearless in our fight for equality by building a grassroots army 1 million strong. Starting right now.

In response to the court's decision, the Courage Campaign will hit the California airwaves in the next 72 hours with a 60-second TV ad version of "Fidelity"—the heartbreaking online video viewed by more than 1.2 million people, making it the most-watched video ever in the history of California politics.

We are launching this provocative new TV ad in the spirit of Harvey Milk's call to "come out, come out wherever you are" and proudly tell the stories of the people most affected by the passage of Prop 8—in moving images set to the beat of Regina Spektor's beautiful song.

More than 700,000 Courage Campaign members are ready to restore marriage equality to California. Will you help us get to "1 Million for Marriage Equality"? Watch our powerful new 60-second "Fidelity" TV ad and sign the pledge.

If you like TV ad, please contribute to put it on the air in Bakersfield, Fresno, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and San Francisco.

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A lot of people saw this coming:

SAN FRANCISCO -- California voters legally outlawed same-sex marriage when they approved Proposition 8 in November, but the constitutional amendment did not dissolve the unions of 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who wed before the measure took effect, the state Supreme Court ruled today.

The 6-1 decision was issued by the same court that declared a year ago that a state law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman violated the right to choose one's spouse and discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation.

Prop. 8 undid that ruling. The author of last year's 4-3 decision, Chief Justice Ronald George, said today that the voters were within their rights to approve a constitutional amendment redefining marriage to include only male-female couples.

Justice Carlos Moreno, in a lone dissent, said a majority should not be allowed to deprive a minority of fundamental rights by passing an initiative.

The justices ruled unanimously that Prop. 8 was not retroactive and that gay and lesbian couples who relied on the court's May 2008 ruling to get married before the Nov. 4 election will remain legally wed.

Prop. 8, which declared that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California, passed with a 52 percent majority after an intense and expensive campaign. Sponsors, mainly affiliated with Christian conservative groups, raised nearly $40 million for the measure and opponents more than $45 million - combined, a record for a ballot measure on a social issue anywhere in the nation.

And here's the important part:

The ruling, the court's third major decision on same-sex marriage in five years, may be the last word from the state's legal system on the issue. But the matter is far from settled in the political arena. Gay-rights advocates, anticipating the decision, have discussed putting another constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2010 or 2012 to try to repeal Prop. 8.

Indeed. The Courage Campaign has a petition for you to sign calling for the repeal of Prop 8. I think we can count on it being on the next major ballot.

In the past year, 300,000 new citizens in California were sworn in - double the number of the previous year. The L.A. Times takes a look at how the new citizens are changing the face of California politics:

Mexicans, who have traditionally registered low rates of naturalization, represented the largest group, with nearly one-fourth of the total. They were followed by Indians, Filipinos, Chinese, Cubans and Vietnamese.

The new citizens are reshaping California's electorate and are likely to reorder the state's policy priorities, some political analysts predict. Several polls show that Latinos and Asians are more supportive than whites of public investments and broad services, even if they require higher taxes.

Most Latinos, for instance, support all five budget propositions on the May ballot while most whites oppose them, according to recent polls by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. Although viewed as largely conservative, most Asian Americans supported a 2004 measure requiring large businesses to provide health insurance to employees, even as it failed at the ballot box, according to an analysis by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles.

Nationally, nonwhite voters overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, while most whites voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a recent study by the Pew Research Center showed. And there were more nonwhite voters last year -- Latino registered voters increased by 3 million compared with 2004, said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voting Registration Education Project in Los Angeles.

[...] "As we have more Asian American and Latino voters, our electorate will begin to look more like the face of the public at large," said Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute. "From the standpoint of representative democracy, few things could be more important than this."

Once the Republicans stopped obstructing the confirmation of southern California Congresswoman Hilda Solis to the Secretary of Labor post Obama had nominated her, the special election for her overwhelmingly Hispanic and overwhelmingly Democratic (PVI is D+15 and McCain received less than a third of the votes) got under way. CA-32 includes parts of East L.A., Monterey Park, Rosemeade, El Monte, Baldwin Park, Azusa, Covina and West Covina; it's 62% Hispanic and 18% Asian. The Republicans haven't bothered to run a candidate there since 2002. The multiparty primary is scheduled for May 19 and the general election will follow on Bastille Day (July 14). There are an even dozen candidates but political handicappers say it all comes down to 4 progressive front-runners: state Senator Gil Cedillo, state Board of Equalization member Judy Chu, former Solis deputy district director Benita Duran, and ex-Obama transition team member Emanuel Pleitez.

Blue America hasn't taken a stand on the race because all four front-runners seem like good choices. We had Emanuel Pleitez over for a live blog session at FDL in early March and today we'll be meeting Judy Chu at Crooks and Liars at 11 am (PT).

People who wrote off Judy Chu's chances in such an overwhelmingly Hispanic district missed the fact that Judy has represented the district in various elected capacities for two decades and that many of the Hispanic elected officials in the district have endorsed her (as has Hilda Solis' family and both the SEIU and the L.A. County Labor Federation). You can check out her stands on the important issues facing the district at her website, where you can also donate to her campaign. But first, please join us below, in the comments section for Dr. Chu's first official visit to Crooks and Liars.