July 3, 2008 - 4:59PM
FROM STAFF REPORTS
First District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt released the following statement on San Francisco’s policy to relocate eight illegal alien drug dealers to unsecured group homes in San Bernardino County.

• San Francisco has declared itself a sanctuary city for illegal aliens, yet they apparently thought these criminal illegal aliens would be better off in San Bernardino County.

• San Francisco’s blatant disregard for our nation’s laws has put our county’s residents at risk. Continue reading this post…

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer

Thursday, July 3, 2008

(07-02) 17:47 PDT — GOP presidential candidate John McCain’s decision to tap a tough California political operative and former adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to head his campaign operations is being hailed by Republicans as evidence that the Arizona senator’s campaign is on a new track.

Steve Schmidt was the strategist behind President Bush’s 2004 re-election “war room,” and his hard-core approach to high-level politics has won him a reputation as a political “artillery shell.” He will assume full operational control of the campaign, McCain’s team confirmed Wednesday. Continue reading this post…

Lauren McSherry, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 07/03/2008 09:52:39 PM PDT

San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors Chairman Paul Biane says his proposed charter amendment will address the weaknesses in the elected office of county Assessor Bill Postmus that were identified in a grand jury report released Monday.
But Supervisor-elect Neil Derry says the proposed charter amendment will affect no one except himself. Continue reading this post…

08:49 AM PDT on Thursday, July 3, 2008

This week’s grand jury report about the San Bernardino County assessor’s office suggests Assessor Bill Postmus is unfit for office. The arrest of a top aide this week adds possible criminal conduct to the report’s litany of sloppy ethics, mismanagement and self-serving politics. Continue reading this post…

Article Launched: 07/02/2008 08:56:25 PM PDT

Properly safeguarding public dollars and increasing public trust in government has always been - and will continue to be - the hallmarks of my career in public office.
- prepared statement from San Bernardino County Assessor Bill Postmus after his assistant was jailed.

The statement above, allegedly from the county assessor, seems to have come instead from some bizarre alternate universe where up is down and right is wrong. Continue reading this post…

News Release
July 03, 2008
For Immediate Release
Contact: Abraham Arredondo 916-324-5500
Print Version

RIVERSIDE–California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. and District Attorney Rod Pacheco today sued TXI International, a Riverside cement plant, for exposing people to the potent carcinogen hexavalent chromium without providing warnings to the community as required by law. Continue reading this post…

From Senator Runner:

As we celebrate this Independence Day with family and friends, let’s keep in mind the true cost of freedom. The traditional fireworks and backyard barbeques enjoyed by all Americans are possible thanks to our men and women in uniform, past and present.

It has always been the American warriors that have dedicated their lives to protecting our independence. Continue reading this post…

11:30 AM PDT on Thursday, July 3, 2008

By RICHARD K. DE ATLEY and BEN GOAD
The Press-Enterprise

Inland auto dealer and Republican contributor Mark A. Leggio used checks made to look like bonuses or payments for used furniture to illegally reimburse employees who made campaign contributions to six Inland GOP candidates, a prosecutor told a grand jury. Continue reading this post…

For anyone wondering, this entry is getting tons of hits this a.m. from all over the country (law enforcement and government agencies). So I tried to move it to the top of the blog so they wouldn’t have to wade through all the Postmus/SBPEA stuff but instead lost it altogether. It will re-post later but for now I added a new entry so if you see the same video back-to-back you’ll understand. BTW, you need to get through the first minute and a half or so before they bring out all the guns and point them at you. You just want to slap these punks upside the head.

The “star” of the video was arrested a few days ago in the Rialto gang sweep. They found 18 guns in his home.

Continue reading this post…

The entry below was sent to me by one of our bloggers. The whole thing did not copy over so here’s the link if anyone wants to see it.

A financial analyst fresh from a tour of construction sites in the Inland Empire is warning Wall Street of a “ghost town” where finished homes sit vacant and additional homes are still under construction.

“At several properties, there were a significant number of fully built homes sitting vacant along with a large number of additional homes still under construction,” Sandler O’Neill & Partners analyst Aaron Deer wrote today after touring developments in Corona and Ontario. “At one master plan community, the entire development appeared to be vacant — with the exception of crews working on new construction, it was a ghost town.” Continue reading this post…

I wish someone could explain to me why he has no problem approving a housing development on every corner but has a problem with something that will help preserve resources rather than delete them. Oh, I forgot, these projects won’t be built by his developer friends who filled his warchest with over a million dollars.

July 2, 2008 - 10:15PM
FROM STAFF REPORTS
SAN BERNARDINO — San Bernardino County officials bristled Wednesday after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management lifted a moratorium on new applications for solar energy projects in the region.

“All we are asking is that we slow down to make sure these projects don’t do irreparable harm to our shrinking desert,” said 1st District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, whose district includes much of the Mojave Desert where scores of wind and solar energy projects have been proposed. Continue reading this post…

07/03/08 00:00:00

We need a truth-in-labeling law for politics. That might prevent Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata from lying about Proposition 11, the redistricting reform measure on the November ballot. He’s trying to kill the initiative because it would make legislators more accountable to voters.

Perata won’t debate the issue on its merits, and is resorting to distortion. His campaign is being funded by lobbyists and special interests who get government goodies from California taxpayers. Continue reading this post…

By Daniel Weintraub - dweintraub@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Story appeared in METRO section, Page B9

Print | E-Mail | Comments (16)|

Californians will get a chance to make history this November, an opportunity to seize control of their government from the politicians, handlers and consultants who have rigged the game to serve their own interests.

Proposition 11 would take from the Legislature its power to draw political boundaries and give that job to an independent bipartisan commission that would operate under strict guidelines designed to ensure fairness for all parties and protect the rights of minorities. Continue reading this post…

10:00 PM PDT on Wednesday, July 2, 2008

By RICHARD K. DE ATLEY and BEN GOAD
The Press-Enterprise

“I would say he was someone who’s positive, encouraging during the race, one of the people who would say. ‘Keep going, you can do it.’ No one I would confide in other than just positive support.”

Banning Mayor Brenda Salas, on her dealings with Mark Leggio Continue reading this post…

10:17 PM PDT on Wednesday, July 2, 2008

By DUANE W. GANG
The Press-Enterprise

Eight months after Bill Postmus became assessor, his former colleagues on the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors asked prosecutors to investigate possible political activity in his office.

New details — including how Postmus wanted to remain a political player and how documents were modified — revealed in a search warrant affidavit on Wednesday show how those steps and the actions of a county grand jury led to Monday’s arrest of a top aide in Postmus’ office. Continue reading this post…

10:18 PM PDT on Wednesday, July 2, 2008

By ZEKE MINAYA
The Press-Enterprise

PDF: Read the entire report

An assessment of a San Bernardino County trade mission to China found in the recently released grand jury report raises doubts about the benefit of the trips to the county’s economy.

The review, compiled by a college professor who accompanied the delegation of county officials and private-sector entrepreneurs, found that most of the businesses that participated were not from the Inland Empire, that government officials depended on consultants at the cost of direct relationships with their Chinese counterparts and that poor interpreters sometimes failed to bridge the language barrier. Continue reading this post…

Let me guess. Ya think Biane is aiming this at Jim Erwin. This is VERY BAD law. A board member should be allowed to hire whom he/she wants. No matter how I feel about board members and their staffs, it is important that those staff persons be loyal to their supervisor and not have to please the other four board members. This law, if anything, will make ethics worse, not better in San Bernardino County.

George Watson, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 07/02/2008 10:32:31 PM PDT

San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors Chairman Paul Biane wants to propose a charter amendment that would give supervisors final say on the hiring of any board staff members.
But even if the charter had been in place years earlier, it would not have prevented a situation like the one the county now finds itself in with its assistant assessor facing six perjury charges in connection with the altering of documents and the destruction of evidence.

A copy of the proposed amendment was obtained Wednesday night. Biane, who earlier this week said he wanted to make a change to the charter to improve ethics in county government, did not return a call for comment. He has said he wanted to promote transparency and accountability for elected county officials. Continue reading this post…

Ya’ll remember my “No honor among thieves” post? This is getting more and more interesting by the day. I cannot believe for a moment that Postmus and Aleman don’t have a lot of dirt on Biane, Mitzelfelt, and others. I still can’t see the two of them going down without taking others with them. Here is the story from the Sun

Assessor aide aimed to fix ‘blatant errors’
Lauren McSherry, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 07/02/2008 10:28:18 PM PDT

Adam Aleman said he altered documents because he found some “blatant errors” and wanted to ensure the documents were “100 percent accurate for the grand jury,” according to court records released Wednesday.
Law enforcement officials, however, saw the situation differently. They believed Aleman, the San Bernardino County assessor’s 25-year-old top assistant, was attempting to mislead a grand jury investigation into political corruption. Continue reading this post…

I was talking with someone who works at the Assessor’s office the other night and he commented about how if he had been asked to be Assistant Assessor for $57+ an hour he would have jumped at the chance whether he was qualified or not. Of course, he made the point of saying that he would have worked his tail off to learn the job. He made the same reference to the contract with Mike Richman. I don’t think his thoughts are much different than ours. Most of us would have taken that job or that contract.

Red County has an interesting editorial on the subject of Mike Richman. I have to say I agree.

Here is the link to the actual search warrant affidavit filed by the District Attorney to search Bill Postmus’ office.