At the Read-In at the Cesar Chavez Library this weekend, close to 800 signatures were collected on a petition to Governor Schwarzenegger. An online petition on the United Farm Workers website has close to 4,000 signatures to date. Plans are in the works to take the petitions and all of the signatures to Sacramento to present to Arnold Schwarzenegger on April 12, which is National Libraries Day.

If you have not had a chance to sign either of these petitions, please take a moment now to do so.

The online petition can be found at www.ufw.org under the green words “TAKE ACTION.�

Click on the first item “Farm Worker Children Need to Read Too – SAVE OUR LIBRARIES!�

If anyone would like to help in sending a busload of children and their parents to Sacramento to deliver the petitions, please contact us by replying to this email. (Donations can be made payable to Salinas Action League and sent to P.O. Box 5789, Salinas, CA 93915. Please write “For Sacramento Bus� on the check.)

From the petition: Why is it that $80 million in taxes paid by Salinas’s residents can be siphoned off to help pay the bill for the war in Iraq, but $5 million cannot be found to keep the libraries open?

Funding for public libraries should be one of the State’s top priorities, right along with public education and Head Start programs. We ask you to take a leadership role in finding a long-term solution for funding public libraries throughout the State of California.

Dianne Feinstein’s Remarks - excerpt

"As we all know, this budget cuts a score of critical domestic programs: food for women and infants; community development block grants for
cities, which cities use for vital purposes; and health and education programs for children.

That is just a few. It cuts Medicaid by $15 billion over 5 years. It zeros out reimbursements to States and counties of the cost of incarcerating criminal aliens. It is an unfunded mandate in that regard.

Yet this budget contains $41.3 million for nuclear weapons initiatives including $8.5 million for a nuclear program that scientists say is impossible to achieve.

The seriousness of the issue and the clear intent of this administration to renew funding this year for this nuclear initiative that was zeroed out by the Congress last year compel me to come to the floor today....