Cal State faculty in salary dispute set to strike at 2 campuses

From LA Times:

A California State University faculty union embroiled in a salary dispute said Monday its members will strike at two campuses next week.

The governing board of the California Faculty Assn. authorized a one-day strike Nov. 17 at Cal State East Bay and Cal State Dominguez Hills after 93% of members voted to approve the walkouts, officials said.

It would be the first strike since the union won the right to collective bargaining in 1983. The association represents 23,000 professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches at 23 Cal State campuses.

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Eric Holder has a gun problem

From The Hill:

As the chief law enforcement officer Attorney General Eric Holder came out swinging in the first months of the Obama administration as he pushed to reinstate the assault weapons ban, pointing to the rising levels of violence in Mexico and increased presence of U.S. guns south of the border.

But nearly two years later assault weapons can still be bought and Holder has found himself at the center of a quagmire involving a botched gun-tracking operation that sent thousands of high-powered firearms to Mexico in the hands of known or suspected straw buyers for drug cartels.

Amid a plethora of Republican calls for Holder’s resignation, Democrats have silently indicated their support for the attorney general. Instead of taking him to task for Operation Fast and Furious, Democratic lawmakers have tried to draw attention to what they describe as the country’s weak network of gun laws.

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Which is the real story of social progress — Obama or Cain?

From The Blaze:

Jesse Holland of the AP has a fairly neutral analysis this week on a question which has been percolating in conservative circles during the rapid ascent of presidential candidate Herman Cain. After years beyond count where the Right has continually accused liberals of playing the race card – particularly during the 2008 elections – is the shoe on the other foot? And perhaps more importantly, how are we defining “social progress” in an era when old beliefs are being continually challenged by the images flashing by on cable news?

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AT&T, T-Mobile USA Merger Means Jobs

From CA Majority Report:

California’s dismal economic outlook has squelched many job opportunities, including those that would allow employees to organize and demand better conditions. With the jobless rate hovering somewhere around 12% since 2009, one of the highest in the country, nearly two million Californians are looking for work, but are unable to find jobs. On the street, most visibly in the Occupy Wall Street movement, you can sense the frustration.

Californians are impatient with the state of the economy – and afraid that the future may not bring better circumstances.

During the worst economic downturn in a generation, it’s our job to make sure no opportunity to create new jobs and protect existing jobs is left on the table.

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SF Mayoral Race: Ed Lee Takes Commanding Lead

From BeyondChron:

Ed Lee took a commanding lead in his race to become San Francisco’s first elected Chinese-American Mayor, with victory coming as soon as tomorrow when the ranked-choice voting process begins. With 100% of votes counted (and prior to the counting of Election Day absentees and the implementation of ranked choice), Lee leads John Avalos by a 31.38% to 18.67% margin, with Dennis Herrera third at 11.27%. David Chiu and Leland Yee rounded out the top five at 8.93% and 7.48% respectively. While Lee was careful not to announce victory before he hit the 51% threshold, the combination of spoiled ballots and Lee’s second place votes from low finishing candidates makes his election virtually certain. One year ago, Ed Lee was the City Administrator who had never sought public office; today, he is on the verge of being handily elected to a four-year term as San Francisco’s Mayor.

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From SF Chronicle:

Appointed San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, a political rookie, holds a commanding lead in his effort to turn his temporary post into a four-year job.

With 16 candidates on the ballot, it will probably take a day or two for clear results to emerge in the city’s first competitive mayor’s race using ranked-choice voting, in which voters can select their top three choices. With 100 percent of the precincts reporting Tuesday night, Lee was the top vote-getter in the first round with more than 31 percent.

At an election night party with supporters, Lee stopped just short of declaring victory after he emerged from the first round of voting with an almost 13-point lead over his closest rival, Supervisor John Avalos.

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Republicans call for greater focus on public pensions

From the Sac Bee:

Four Republican state senators, including Senate Republican leader Bob Dutton, are holding a presser under the dome to highlight what they see as the urgency of reforming California’s public pension systems.

Joining Dutton are Sens. Tom BerryhillTom Harman and Mimi Walters. Their news conference starts at 10:30 a.m. in the Capitol’s Room 305.

Gov. Jerry Brown‘s own reform plan got a mixed review from the Legislative Analyst’s Office on Tuesday, as The Bee’s Jon Ortiz reported. The LAO questioned whether Brown’s proposal to split pension costs equally between employers and current employees could be legally mandated.

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Oakland business owners fear they won’t recover

From SF Chronicle:

Kevin Best and Misty Rasche remember when they had waiting lists for a Friday reservation at their bistro in the historic Old Oakland business district.

That was in 2007, before the recession hit and a series of angry protests that would come to define downtown Oakland.

Most recently, business at their B Restaurant & Bar has been harmed further since Occupy Oakland tents went up at City Hall on Oct. 10. Best and Rasche worry that the collateral damage from the protest may be the final blow for their restaurant.

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State lobby spending on pace to set records

From California Watch:

Lobby spending in Sacramento already is on pace to touch new highs this legislative session, according to third-quarter filing totals released by the secretary of state’s office.

Interest groups last quarter spent more than $72 million lobbying state government, a dip from the $77 million they spent during the previous quarter but still enough to push lobby spending to a record high by this point in the legislative session.

During the first three quarters of this legislative session, which began in January, groups have spent nearly $216 million on lobbying services. That’s a 5 percent jump over the first three quarters of the 2009-10 session.

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Is a coming student loan crisis the next to burst?

From the Blaze:

First the dot.coms popped, then mortgages. Are student loans and higher education the next bubble, the latest investment craze inflating on borrowed money and misplaced faith it can never go bad?

Some experts have raised the possibility. Last summer, Moody’s Analytics pronounced fears of an education spending bubble “not without merit.” Last spring, investor and PayPal founder Peter Thiel called attention to his claims of an education bubble by awarding two dozen young entrepreneurs $100,000 each NOT to attend college.

Recent weeks have seen another spate of “bubble” headlines — student loan defaults up, tuition rising another 8.3 percent this year and finally, out Thursday, a new report estimating that average student debt for borrowers from the college class of 2010 has passed $25,000. And all that on top of a multi-year slump in the job-market for new college graduates.

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Boehner says Obama is inciting ‘class warfare’

From The Hill:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Sunday that President Obama is inciting class warfare “every day” as he pushes Congress to pass his jobs package.

“We are not going to engage in class warfare,” Boehner said on ABC’S “This Week with Christiane Amanpour.”  “[The] president’s out there doing it every day. I, frankly, think it’s unfortunate, because our job is to help all Americans, not to pit one set of Americans against another.”

Obama, Boehner added, “is clearly trying to do [that]. And it’s wrong.”

Behind Obama, Democrats have urged Boehner and other GOP leaders to pass the president’s $447 billion jobs legislation, which includes funding for infrastructure projects, teachers and first responders, but would also raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans – a move that’s anathema to conservatives. 

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