Recently in Washington, D.C. Category

Becca Doten, the communications director for Councilman Richard Alarcon, won her election as a member of the Democratic National Committee post.
Doten was one of four women seeking the post and received 180 of 281 votes cast at the California Democratic Party meeting this past weekend.'
"I am honored to have the opportunity to join the California delegation to the DNC," said Doten. "Inclusion of young Democrats as DNC members is essential to the future of our Party and I thank the Executive Board members of the CDP for the strong statement they made to ensure that our diverse delegation includes young voices."
Doten first got involved in politics in 2003, inspired and engaged by Gov. Howard Dean's campaign for President. Since then, she has given hundreds of hours of volunteer time to local, state and national campaigns. In 2006, she was named a "Volunteer of the Year" by the Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley (DP/SFV).

A fiery crowd of 1,200 crammed into the auditorium of Birmingham Community Charter High School on Sunday for a question-and-answer meeting with U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks - one of the largest turnouts ever for his town hall assemblies. Sue Doyle in the Daily News.

Angry about health care, unemployment and immigration, the audience loudly jeered and cheered as Sherman answered their questions during the 90-minute meeting that filled all 800 seats in the high school auditorium and forced residents to sit on the floor and stage or stand and listen from the lobby.

im Moorhead keeps an inch-thick stack of documents nearby as proof. Susan Abram in the Daily News.

He calls them a pile of lies.

These are letters from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, repeatedly assuring him that his application for citizenship was being processed.

In fact, it wasn't. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had held on to his file for two years with no plans to review it anytime soon.

Hoping to keep Southern California transit projects on the minds of federal officials, a local coalition on Monday unveiled a list of 21 projects it says are urgently needed to keep the region moving at a 21st-century pace.Sue Doyle in the Daily News.

From crash-avoidance technology on commuter trains to freeway lane-widening projects, the list arrives as a six-year, $500 billion federal Surface Transportation Authorization bill struggles to get through Congress.

"We're barely moving on the 101. What we need now is an offramp from congestion," said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, speaking at the eighth annual Mobility 21 coalition meeting.

"This regional transportation system is essential if we're going to connect to one another."

A year after the financial system nearly collapsed, the nation's biggest banks are bigger and regaining their appetite for risk.

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and others - which have received tens of billions of dollars in federal aid - are once more betting big on bonds, commodities and exotic financial products, trading that nearly stopped during the financial crisis.

State inspectors have identified more than $15 million in questionable expenditures using federal homeland security grants spent in California, an investigation by California Watch has found. California Watch in the Daily News.

Using the state's open-records laws, the investigative unit started this year by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting found scores of instances of wasteful spending, purchasing violations, error-prone accounting and shoddy oversight at agencies across the state during the years immediately following 9-11.

Los Angeles County officials, for instance, spent $20,000 for a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, $3,558 for 70 replica firearms and $1,500 for a shotgun safe - none of which were permitted under the guidelines for the homeland

day after President Obama blended compromise and combativeness in a speech to Congress pushing health care legislation, reactions from Southern Californians prominent in the debate were just as mixed. Kevin Modesti in the Daily News.

Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Santa Clarita, dismissed the nationally televised address as "more of the same with maybe a new wrapper on it," and was displeased that Obama scolded Republicans for what the president said were lies about his specific proposals.

"It was like we were being taken to the woodshed for doing what we thought was our constitutional responsibility," McKeon said in a phone interview Thursday. "We've read the bill, and we've tried to explain it to the American people, and the American people have told us they

Dozens of workers diagnosed with cancer after their employment at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory may have more leverage in claiming federal compensation to help with their health care.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health first granted a special designation earlier this month for those assigned to the field lab's 270-acre Area IV, where much of the nuclear work was conducted. The designation applies to those who were exposed to radiation for at least 250 days, between Jan. 1, 1955 and Dec, 31, 1958.

Karen Brewster of Sherman Oaks wants to tell her congressman in person how strongly she dislikes President Obama's health care proposal. Tony Castro in the Daily News.

The problem is, Rep. Howard Berman, D-Van Nuys, hasn't held a town hall meeting on the issue.

"I want to go to a town hall and tell my congressman what I think," Brewster said.

"There are no words to describe how opposed I am," she added. "I don't want any government control of my health care."

Pedal to the metal, Congress sent President Barack Obama legislation Thursday night with an additional $2 billion for "cash for clunkers," the economy-boosting rebate program that caught the fancy of car buyers and instantly increased sales for an auto industry long mired in recession.AP in the Daily News.

The Senate approved the money on a 60-37 vote after administration officials said an initial $1 billion had run out in only 10 days. The House voted last week to keep alive the program, which gives consumers up to $4,500 in federal subsidies if they trade in their cars for new, more energy-efficient models.

Maybe it's just a hangover effect from all of those Barack attacks we've had in the past year.
Bob Strauss in the Daily News.
But both anecdotally and intuitively, it seems that Barack and Michelle Obama - the first youthfully attractive couple to occupy the White House since the Kennedy administration - are influencing the look and attitude of one of television's first responders to cultural change: commercials.

"I don't know if it's connected, necessarily, to now having a black president and first lady, but I think it probably is," said Rebecca Yee, the Screen Actors Guild's director of affirmative action/diversity.

"From talking to our members, our own anecdotal experiences and just being in the industry, the advertisers are actually ahead of the curve when we talk about diversity."

Los Angeles will get $16.3 million in federal funds to hire 50 police officers and boost the size of the Los Angeles Police Department to more than 10,000 officers, officials announced Tuesday.
Daily News.
The three-year federal program revives one started under former President Bill Clinton designed to reduce crime nationwide and create jobs. The grants cover the salaries and benefits and associated costs for the officers for three years.

Perhaps the quickest way to get a high profile job here and in Washington, D.C., these days is through the offices of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Two top aides and a department head all are gone and a top staff announced Thursday he is leaving,.
Speechwriter Jonathan Powell has taken a job with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, to work on her speeches.
Powell is the latest to leave Villaraigosa.
Two weeks ago, the mayor's attorrny, Thomas Saenz, announced he is leaving to head MALDEF.
Earlier, Housng Department General Manager Mercedes Marquez left for a job in HUD and environmental advisor Nancy Sutley left to head the White House Office on Environmental Quality.

Some 200 Valley residents braved the heat to attend a town hall meeting Sunday held by U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, voicing their concerns over the lingering recession, health care, foreign affairs and other pertinent issues for the congressman. Talai Ansari in the Daily News.

Sherman, who serves on the House Committee on Financial Services, opened the meeting by addressing economic issues facing the nation including bailouts and state budget woes. Sherman reminded his constituents that he did not vote for the Wall Street bailout, to which the crowd applauded.

But he warned attendees at the packed Reseda High School auditorium that "the recession would be hard on us for another two years."

Even as the White House held a summit on immigration Thursday, Latino leaders in Los Angeles called on President Obama to quickly press immigration reform legislation despite reports the votes aren't there in Congress for its passage. Tony Castro in the Daily News.

"Rest assured that the individuals gathered at this conference are impatient for action now on a broken immigration system," Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said on the opening day of the group's annual conference.

"We are ready to work with this president, this Congress, in partnership to assure that this reform occurs. We need it now. It can't wait. We need it in the first term of this president."