Clearly, there is a broken record at the UC. How many more scandals, oversight hearings, and new laws do we need to have before the University will finally clean up their act? It is truly unconscionable that they continue to mislead the taxpayers and students… There is absolutely no justification for these bloated salaries. The UC administration continuously violates the public trust by catering to the University’s elite rather than serving the students, faculty, and workers they are appointed to represent. The public deserves better from the UC administration.

When Governor Schwarzenegger signed the state’s current spending plan in August, he called it “a balanced budget”. Even before then, however, the slumping housing and credit markets had begun cutting into state tax revenue and threatening to make next year’s budget even worse. Economists had warned that thedecline in new home sales and construction, layoffs and bankruptcies in the mortgage-lending industry, and a volatile stock market were erasing revenue that lawmakers thought would materialize to cover California’s $145 billion budget.

“Knowing the challenges that we face, throughout the fall, my administration has been examining a variety of options to close next year’s budget gap,” Governor Schwarzenegger said in a statement. ” I have not made any final decisions yet, but it’s clear that the decisions that will be involved will be tough.”

Mr. Speaker, a small suggestion. when you are in a hole, stop digging. First of all, campaign funds- or public funds, should not be used to “broaden your horizons” – that is what your own money is for. Second, as we have said here at least a dozen times, people will forgive an occasional international junket if you you also come up with some meaningful and international policies or programs- but the Legislature and the Schwarzenegger administration have done neither. You might, like the Governor, be able to fool some people into thinking that using these shadowy “non profits” with “undisclosed donors” to fund your junkets is good public policy, but those of us who follow this issue closely know better- and eventually everyone else will too.

In a sad and familiar refrain, the Times also reports that “it is not clear how these activities have related to legislative business, as state law requires, because the Los Angeles Democrat refuses to provide details on tens of thousands of dollars in such expenditures.”

Haven’t we been here before? California’s politicians seem to be far better at taking these junkets then they are at making quality policies- especially as it relates to international business and trade. We have harshly criticized Governor Schwarzenegger for the “undisclosed donors” he uses fund his international trips, and it is disconcerting to learn that this kind of corruption has apparently also spread to the Legislature. Read the whole sorry story at this link: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-nunez5oct05,1,1069266.story?page=1&cset=true&ctrack=1&coll=la-headlines-california

Critics consider it ludicrous to put the state’s sole overseas trade office in such a small and isolated country. If California were a nation, it would have the world’s eighth-largest economy, they note. Armenia ranks 128th. The contract with the state required a minimum of $150,000 (amount of business) for 2006, a June 30 report from the Schwarzenegger administration to the Legislature said. The report cited only one significant achievement, a deal between a North Hollywood spirits importer and Safeway to market a high-end Armenian vodka. “It appears the trade office did not successfully complete any of the priorities set forth in the contract,” read a letter signed by Dale E. Bonner, secretary of the California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, which oversees the trade office.

What’s more, critics warn that bureaucrats in Sacramento don’t have the money to effectively supervise the operations of a faraway entity. Bonner noted in his letter that the Scott legislation did not provide “budget authority for direct supervision or ongoing oversight.” As a result, the state could be legally liable for any misconduct by unsupervised representatives working in a part of the world not known for especially honest or stable governments. “This is an invitation to a scandal,” said Jock O’Connell, a veteran trade consultant in Sacramento. “They’ve created a system that allows a private company to obtain for a ridiculously small amount of money the right to represent California commercial interests in a distant country, while effectively prohibiting any state agency from looking into the activities of the people who are representing us overseas.”

At the end of March, lawmakers and members of the Public Utility Commission joined corporate executives on a trip to Japan. The expenses, valued at $8,000 to $9,500 per person, were picked up by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy – a nonprofit in San Francisco funded and connected to firms represented on the trip.

Lawmakers say trips like these are valuable educational experiences; government watchdogs say they’re attempts to buy influence and circumvent the law, which bars corporations from buying trips for government officials or funneling money through organizations that can.

But without evidence, like a memo or an e-mail, directly linking corporate money to officials’ travel, the law says it’s OK. ‘It’s extraordinarily frustrating,’ said Carmen Balber of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer and Rights. The foundation recently uncovered documents showing the value of the Japan trip. ‘You don’t need a smoking gun in California to know a $10,000 gift to the Speaker of the Assembly is illegal,’ Balber said. ‘But the law does require that smoking gun if that $10,000 gift is funneled through a nonprofit organization. And that’s absurd.’

The Jack Abramoff case illustrates the kind of concrete evidence needed to substantiate such a connection. By now, it’s known the disgraced former lobbyist used the National Center for Public Policy Research and other nonprofits as intermediaries for himself and his clients to pay for trips to Scotland and other things. (At the time, businesses were allowed to pay for House of Representatives trips; Abramoff was trying to dodge a rule that required trip sponsors to be directly connected to the reason for the travel.)

But proving those links required a mountain of documentation and testimony: e-mails showing Abramoff arranging pass-through payments; donations dated the same day trips were taken; sworn statements by insiders. I asked Bryan Sierra, a Department of Justice spokesman, why political corruption cases require reams of evidence. He said the burden of proof can be incredibly high.

For bribery, he said prosecutors have to prove the intent of two parties: the briber, who must be shown to have offered something of value and delivered it, and the bribed, who must be shown to have taken an official action directly because of that thing offered or delivered.

“The people of California, in support of the men and women serving in the Armed Forces of the United States, urge President Bush to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq and immediately begin the safe and orderly withdrawal of all United States forces; and further urge President Bush and the United States Congress to provide the necessary diplomatic and non-military assistance to promote peace and stability in Iraq and the Middle East.”

The California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, a San Francisco-based nonprofit not required by law to disclose its donors, is paying for the trip. The group’s board of directors is populated by the top executives at the biggest energy and telecom companies in the state — among them AT&T, Verizon, PG&E, Chevron, Sempra Energy, Southern California Edison and BHP Billiton — as the lawmakers and regulators tour Japan to discuss telecommunications and energy technology.

Along on the Asia trip — whose participants departed Thursday — are Timothy Simon and Rachelle Chong, two of the governor’s appointees to the Public Utilities Commission, the powerful state board that regulates California’s multibillion-dollar telecommunications and energy industries. Also participating are Sen. Christine Kehoe of San Diego and Assemblyman Lloyd Levine of Van Nuys, both Democrats, who chair the legislative committees that oversee energy and telecommunications policy in California. Sen. Alex Padilla, a freshman Democrat from Los Angeles and a potential swing vote on the Rules Committee — which will decide the fate of embattled PUC nominee Simon — is on the trip, as well.

“What makes this trip so particularly egregious is that the corporations are focusing on the exact levers of power in hosting this junket for the state’s top utility cops,” said Doug Heller of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a consumer-advocacy group. “If you had to identify the people with the most responsibility over utility issues in the state, they’ve brought the two in the Legislature and 40 percent of the Public Utilities Commission.”

One of the corporate executives traveling this week in Japan is Kenneth McNeely, the president of AT&T California. Last year, McNeely helped secure major legislation allowing phone companies access to the state’s cable TV and Internet market. AT&T spent $23.6 million in lobbying for the bill, which was jointly written by Levine and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, and signed into law by Schwarzenegger… On Friday, the Public Utilities Commission announced that it had approved a video franchise agreement to allow AT&T access to California’s lucrative broadband market. McNeely, who was traveling with PUC members Chong and Simon in Japan when the deal was announced, issued a laudatory statement, which Heller jested was made “over sake shots with the regulators, no doubt.”

The article did not mention that AT&T also gave generously to the Schwarzenegger reelection campaign, and some of this money may have been used for the huge bonuses the Governor recently paid to his senior staff. A smaller campaign contribution of $25,000 was transfered from Schwarzenegger to his Chief of Staff Susan Kennedy just a few weeks after she voted to approve the purchase of AT&T by SBC Communication, leading many to believe that this was a payment made by the giant telecommunication firm in exchange for this vote.

While Nuñez and his group are in France this week, five state senators are in Taiwan to consider opening an office to promote trade with California. Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, said the trip will include stops in Taipei, the capital, and Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second-largest city. He said visiting the cities will give lawmakers ‘an understanding of their ability to foster trade and enhance trade with California.’ In addition to Yee, the delegation includes Sens. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, Ron Calderon, D-Monterey Park, Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, and Denise Ducheny, D-Chula Vista.

Another five legislators are in Japan on a trip sponsored by the California Foundation for the Environment and the Economy. The San Francisco-based group finances annual overseas trips for legislators that focus on a particular issue facing the state. The foundation’s board of directors includes representatives of oil and telecommunication companies, utilities, labor unions and environmentalists. Alex Traverso, a spokesman for Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Sherman Oaks, said Levine went on the trip to look at ‘new innovations in cell phones and broadband.’ Also on the trip are Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, and Sens. Jim Battin, R-Palm Desert, Bob Margett, R-Arcadia, and Jack Scott, D-Altadena…

Assemblyman Ira Ruskin, D-Redwood City, is the lone legislator on another European trip this week, one organized by the California Climate Action Registry. The nonprofit organization was created by the state to promote greenhouse gas reductions. Also on the trip are several Schwarzenegger administration officials, said James Lee, a spokesman for the California Environmental Protection Agency. Lee said the registry was covering costs. The eight-day trip includes meetings with Belgian, German and British officials to discuss their efforts to combat global warming.”