Monday, March 22, 2010

Morning News Round-Up -- 3.22.10: Are you a Proprietary Member of Fremont Hills?

Two stories of local politicians ignoring folks in their own backyards in order to court voters in Orange County: Tom Campbell "assails" healthcare reform and Steve Poizner goes anti-immigration. We can't leave this part of the Campbell story alone: Campbell delivered his anti-healthcare speech at the Fremont Hills Country Club in Los Altos Hills, a club that has... "...a total of 425 Proprietary Memberships, granting all members full privileges at the Club. All club memberships are by invitation only..." Oh, and an equestrian center. We can assume that zero of the owners of the 425 Proprietary Members goes without healthcare or finds it too expensive... But perhaps a neat follow-up story to this one (hint to Barbara Boxer's team) would be to see how many of the workers at the Fremont Country Club have health insurance...

The San Jose Independent Police Auditor search appears to be heading into its final stages (finally). And the Merc uncovered one of the finalists: former Judge and former Palo Alto Councilmember LaDoris Cordell. This cannot make law enforcement officials very pleased... which probably does make a whole bunch of other people very, very pleased. We guess no brothers or sisters of current police offices applied...

The Merc just can't get enough of the Happy Hollow Zoo opening... another story appeared this weekend.

Remember those fireworks that you used to love in downtown San Jose during the Fourth of July? Well, you can kiss them goodbye. Fil Maresca says the City's fees for the Police were too expensive. That's sort of what the Chamber of Commerce is saying about the Police as well -- at least their pensions...

Speaking of the Chamber...

The Chamber's political action committee, COMPAC, won a lawsuit and now the City of San Jose owes them $400,000+. Pat Dando can't help but gloat in the Merc's Internal Affairs.

Also Internal Affairs is something that was essentially lifted from San Jose Inside: one of the "also rans" in District 9 is both a Cortese and a karaoke genius...

Rounding-Up Internal Affairs this weekend, we learned Sunday that Steve Poizner shared a flight to the Southern California debate with Meg Whitman's press team. But more important than that are two more things that we learned that were embedded in the piece: 1. Whitman is flying a private jet (everywhere) and 2. the source of all things anti-Poizner that has appeared in Internal Affairs is Mary Anne Ostrom is working for Whitman now but used to work for the Merc. Hmmm... Debunking the myth that all reporters (and former reporters) are Democrats...

Attention Mr./Dr. County Executive: The Mercury News Editorial Board has a big problem with you and how you want to run the Valley Medical Center. Please report directly to the Principal's office for further instructions...

The Merc Editors have started their campaign endorsements. They start with Proposition 16 and recommend no.

There is a new blog in town... zzz...

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