Wednesday morning headlines

Stocks down a bit: You can tell it's two days before Christmas. Dow is off about 5 in early trading.

Governor seeks U.S. help: The deficit continues to strangle CA. Schwarzenegger says he needs $8 billion - otherwise, he threatens to severely cut or eliminate CalWORKS, the state's main welfare program; the In-Home Health Care Services program for the disabled and elderly poor, and two tax breaks for large corporations. From the LAT:

Activists were particularly alarmed by the potential cuts to social service programs, which have taken big hits recently. "Families are struggling, we have an incredibly high unemployment rate, and we can't afford to cut these programs any more," said Nancy Berlin, director of California Partnership, a statewide coalition of advocates for the poor based in Los Angeles. "Sacramento has got to pull it together and find another way out of this. They can't take more from low-income families. If they do, we will find more people on the streets."

Toyota coverup?: The automaker has been less than forthcoming on a variety of safety issues, as reported aggressively by the LAT. Here's how today's front-page story opens:

During a routine test on its Sienna minivan in April 2003, Toyota Motor Corp. engineers discovered that a plastic panel could come loose and cause the gas pedal to stick, potentially making the vehicle accelerate out of control. The automaker redesigned the part and by that June every 2004 model year Sienna off the assembly line came with the new panel. Toyota did not notify tens of thousands of people who had already bought vans with the old panel, however. It wasn't until U.S. safety officials opened an investigation last year that Toyota acknowledged in a letter to regulators that the part could come loose and "lead to unwanted or sudden acceleration."

Grocery mogul gets off easy: George Torres, who once faced life in prison after being convicted of ordering the murders of former associates, became a free man under a sentence that gave him credit for time served. He pleaded guilty to a single tax charge. (Daily Journal)

No second wave: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner tells NPR that there will not be a repeat of last year's financial crisis. "We will do what is necessary to prevent that and that is completely within our capacity to prevent," he said.

Preparing the checkbooks: After a terrible year, venture capitalists are ready to inject some badly needed cash into start-ups. Already, several deals have been announced. From the WSJ:

Tom Baruch, a venture capitalist at CMEA Capital, says that with the IPO window now appearing to open, he expects up to half a dozen of his firm's start-ups to file to go public in the foreseeable future. He says he's been spending about a third of this time working with the start-ups to meet investment banks that would help lead an offering and is advising companies on pricing and other IPO-related processes. "We were getting zero phone calls" from investment banks about taking companies public six months ago, says Mr. Baruch, who adds that 2010 could shape up to be the busiest IPO period for his firm since 2000. "Now we're getting phone calls constantly."

Stripping homes: Just check out Craigslist for cabinets, sinks, toilets, appliances - all kinds of fixtures on houses about to be foreclosed. From the NYT:

If that seems like a situation tailor-made for the police, it is -- at least in Arizona, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation has used Craigslist to arrest a handful of people for stripping homes and trying to sell the goods, charging them with felonies under a state fraud statute. In other parts of the country, however, the police are stymied. As it turns out, several troubled states, like Nevada, have no specific criminal prohibition against stripping fixtures from a property before foreclosure.

Another BlackBerry outage: Email service has been restored after being down for a few hours. (Bloomberg)

Tiger ties loosened: Golf Digest is suspending his monthly instructional pieces, though the magazine has not totally severed its connection with Woods. There's a long-term contract valued at $3 million a year. (NY Post)