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...

Morning News Round-Up -- 3.17.10: It would be a lot cooler if you did...

The budget is bad in San Jose, real bad. Yesterday was a hum-dinger at the Council meeting as it pitted people who love parks, libraries, and other City services against City employees who love their jobs. According to the Mayor (in the Merc story): "Although this is the ninth year we've faced significant budget shortfall, this year is by far the worst..." What he didn't say: "Because things are so shitty, we are going to give card rooms the latitude to turn San Jose into Las Vegas..."

To help move things in the right direction, the City also approved a series of pro-business incentives... and... they also approved a rezoning thingy to allow the Earthquakes to build a soccer stadium right off Coleman avenue. Hey, if the Earthquakes play it right, they could take over the airport site (when the airport fails) and build the San Jose version of Estadio Azteca...

Happy Hollow got its facelift,

Happy Hollow got its (taxpayer) gift.

Now take your kids,

And you will see,

That it isn't as crappy as it used to be...

Ironically, the Happy Hollow story in the Merc was written by Holly Hayes... Holly Hayes' Happy Hollow story. Who said the Editors at the Merc can't be cute?

This is a story with so many interesting angles it will make your (political) head spin... Palo Alto firefighters are looking to put a ballot measure on the November ballot that would block Palo Alto from firing firefighters as Palo Alto balances its budget. This will get every firefighters union in the county (or the world) to call their political consultants as soon as possible this morning... Another layer of intrigue is that the head of the Palo Alto firefighters union putting this thing together? Tony Spitaleri... why does that name sound familiar to you? That's because he's on the Sunnyvale City Council. Just wait until the Sunnyvale Public Safety Officers put a ballot measure on Sunnvyale's November...

Speaking of the ballot box, but let's move up to this spring. 8 (8?!) school districts are looking for parcel taxes on ballots this spring: Milpitas, Mt. Pleasant, Alum Rock, Palo Alto, Fremont Union, Loma Prieta, Lakeside, and Union.

Back to Palo Alto... they are going to do a tad bit more outreach before re-writing their recycling regulations. It seems folks had a bit of a privacy issue with having the city go through garbage. Shocker.

We'll end today with a little political reporting from the good folks as the Fly/ San Jose Inside. It seems that Cousin Cortese, who is running in San Jose City Council District 9 is a Karaoke DJ master. Seriously. Watch Dog has confirmed, however, that his ballot designation is not Karaoke DJ, although, to paraphrase Dazed and Confused, it would be a lot cooler if it was...