Connecting the Dots: top news stories for Tuesday, March 9th

Let's start with the elephant in the state: the general budget. Late yesterday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that called for more than $2 billion in spending reductions starting this summer...

Meanwhile, the California Legislature approved a Democratic bill, yesterday, aimed at ending three monthly furlough days for nearly 80,000 state employees. However, Governor Schwarzenegger is expected to veto the measure...

And legislation to prevent the state from taxing forgiven mortgage debt cleared the state Assembly early Monday, offering potential tax relief to thousands of Californians who lost their homes in 2009...

Californians may have the chance to weigh in on where state money can come from, as proponents of a California ballot initiative that would end state raids of city, redevelopment and transit money predict they will collect sufficient signatures well ahead of a May deadline...

Concerning transit dollars, the stimulus money spent upgrading the Napa Valley Wine Train and a related flood control project apparently hasn't trickled throughout wine country. Now, as many as 10 wineries and vineyards in Napa, where the most expensive U.S. wines are produced, will change hands in distressed sales or foreclosures this year and next, up from none in 2008, according to Silicon Valley Bank...

Speaking of splashes, the Tea Party movement made one in the North Bay, as the Bay Area Patriots, an informal regional arm of the ultraconservative Tea Party movement, assembled about 500 people at the Mill Valley Community Center to hear political candidates and allies and assure its adherents that they are the wave of the future...

A much different wave helped about 150 same-sex Washington D.C. couples become eligible to collect their marriage licenses today, after they applied last Wednesday, the first day the licenses were made available. Fifteen licenses were picked up in the first hour the marriage bureau was opened and two couples already got married and returned to pick up their certificates, courthouse spokeswoman Leah Gurowitz said...

Another movement gaining ground needs to find some focus, according to an article in Beyond Chron. Education activists in California made waves last week with the "Day of Action to Defend Education," but where they go from here is unclear. There is no measure on the November 2010 ballot that raises significant new money for education. Activists can use mass action to pressure legislators and the Governor to redirect excessive spending on prisons and other wasteful programs to education, but there is little to no chance this year of getting enough Republicans to win the necessary 2/3 legislative votes to raise taxes...

In other education news, San Francisco school officials are lambasting a controversial list of 188 schools released Monday by the state that labels 12 schools in the city among the lowest-performing in California. All three Hayward high schools made the list...

At Stanford University, nearly 40 years after anti-war protests and other complaints forced ROTC programs off campus, the military training program could be on its way back...

U.C. Berkeley Civil and environmental engineering professor Jonathan Bray has organized a 16-member team from the Geo-engineering Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association to study soil and geologic conditions in Chile. The teams will work with Chilean engineers and researchers to understand conditions before and after the quake...

Another Berkeley professor, 2nd generation immigrant Goodwin Liu, may become the youngest judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals...

Which brings to mind the famous trial of Alice in Wonderland. Over the weekend, the new film raked in more than $100 million at the box office, and it also inspired someone in San Francisco's Mission District to get a little creative.

Our Connecting the Dots blog brings the day's news together