The Great Seal Of California
 

Today I went to the Secretary of State's office; Her actual office. I've never been up that high in that building before. She has a nice office with a little curio cabinet of trinkets and awards, and one of them refers to her as "the General". Don't know what that's about, but there a few other neat things, and I was on official Save Our State business, so I didn't ask about the other trivial stuff.
We served a public records request upon her office a few weeks ago, and I hadn't heard a thing about that, so we paid a personal visit. While a nice lady went to gather our requested docs, I snapped a picture of the contraption that makes the great seal of the state on various documents. Since I was alone, I placed a copy of our documents request on the maching and cranked her down. It left a nice imprint in the paper, but it wouldn't actually copy in the scanner, so I can't show you anything but the machine itself.

I'd like to know the back story on the machine itself, because it looks kinda medieval.

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...ateseal039.jpg


http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...ateseal038.jpg


The real order of business turned out to be a bigger eye opener, and it was no small wonder why I had trouble tracking down just who was responsible for the material requested , and who has possession of them now. I guess the secretary of state herself is the caretaker of those, and I encountered some resistance to my request. I verbally sparred with the nice lady who works for the Secretary, but ended up getting the military runaround.
We'll be back there real soon, but in the meantime we'll also be making a personal visit to the Lt. Governor's office, the Attorney General's office, and the state controller's office.

I'll be bringing everyone up to speed on this next week, both on this forum, and on a special episode of SOS RADIO!

I had to return to the secretary of state's office this week to review what documents they did have on this matter, and made another imprint with the Great Seal machine. The person at the front desk tells me that machine is about 150 years old:eek:
He also told me the symbolism is related to either an Inca or Mayan chief:(

Anyway, after a bit someone came and got me to lead me to another room where the documents could be reviewed. It ended up being the law library and conference room in the sec of state's office. Nice view of Sacramento skyline from the windows up there:cool:

Then she handed me a folder with documents I requested from as late as 2009, and going back as far as the 80's. I'll be relaying this on the Tuesday special broadcast of SOS RADIO!
This project has been interesting, and what I thought I might find was not what I found, but found something as disturbing, but not entirely out of line with the current management of our state, whick is less proper than it should be.

I delivered another letter to the same office for Secretary of state Bowen, this one not a records request, but rather a demand, and then headed off to the state capitol to deliver a similar demand to the LT Governor. After that was done, went to the state controllers office for the same...18 floors up :eek: and you're not allowed to take the stairs up; only down. The doors are all locked from the inside of each floor. I ended up braving the elevator, and was quite sick when I got to that office.

I finished out my tour by dropping off the demand letter at the state Attorney General's office, and then headed off hoime

Rode the 20 speed bike the past two times I made this trip to save fuel money, parking meter fees, and aggravation. Very tired today

Thank you AG, thank you, thank you, thank you.

You're very welcome

And this morning I made the trip back to the Capitol to deliver a petition to the Governor. This time they made me go through the mail room instead of into the governors office like when we asked him to sign the BP flag. But it went well there, and then I was off to a few offices within the capitol to serve up another records request. Some of the records we're asking for are quite unusual, and they shouldn't be, but no one knew where to find them, so I left the request in their capable hands?:)

I also stopped at Donnelly's office, as I usually do, and kept them advised as to our activities, and to see if they had any information about some bills that were recently passed. His staff has been treating me rather well since that other guy that didn't care for us got out of there.

I'll be posting the petitions, records requests, and demand letters in another thread just prior to the SOS RADIO! broadcast Tuesday at 7:00
Hope you all can tune in, and I hope the broadcast works properly this time

You are a great man