Dan Weintraub’s review of a recent Bustamante speech is withering:

With just a few words tucked in the middle of his speech, Bustamante demonstrated that despite the image, despite the build-up, despite the resume, his knowledge of state government and its problems is woefully thin.

Sounding no more informed than a cranky letter writer to the local paper, Bustamante badly mischaracterized the roots of California?s budget crisis, falsely claiming that the electricity purchases the state made on behalf of the utilities in 2001 erased the budget surplus and forced the state to cut vital programs. While that’s a widely held perception among the general public, it is completely untrue, and any second-year staffer in the Legislature could tell you so.