Scoring High on the Irony-Meter: MD Fundraiser at Gun Range

(Editor’s Note: Don’t see this combination often, even in the Central Valley. Pity to have missed the event. Hopefully, the good doctor will throw some commemorative photos on her Facebook campaign page.)    Read more »

More

Legislature Makes Changes Aimed at Improving Work Quality

The Legislature proposed a series of bipartisan operational changes March 22, including stricter limits on bill introductions, aimed at improving the caliber of their work product.

Announced at a joint hearing of the Senate and Assembly Committees on Improving State Government, the changes include a greater focus on examining whether existing state programs work well or should be revamped.    Read more »

More

Pay-as-You-Go? No, Go as I Pay, Everybody Pay-Go Tonight

When did “pay-as-you-go” become “pay-go?”

No memo was received that “as,” “you” and two hyphens have gone the way of the dodo.

Are we in that much of a hurry that “as” and “you,” which are the two words that actually explain the budgetary concept of “pay-as-you-go,” must be eliminated?

Apparently in the busy world of the California state Legislature, there simply isn’t sufficient time to say “pay-as-you-go,” only enough time for “pay-go.”    Read more »

More

Don’t Overlook: The Latest from the Fellini of Political Ads

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJKlc77K5dg&feature=player_embedded

(Editor’s Note: Paging Terry Gilliam, Mr. Terry Gilliam. Please come to the White Courtesy Phone.)    Read more »

More

Assembly Fails to Pass State Parks and Beaches Smoking Ban

One of the most sweeping smoking bans in the country, which would ban smoking at state parks and beaches, fell five votes short of passage in the state Assembly March 18.

The measure, SB 4, would impose a $100 fine on those who smoke cigars, cigarettes or other tobacco products at California’s 279 state parks and beaches.     Read more »

More

Rumors Persist the First Eight Choices Felled by Scarlet Fever

Diarmuid Philpott (above, from left), John Burton and Irish Consul General Gerry Staunton at City Hall.

(Editor’s Note: Burton was the Grand Marshal of March 13’s 159th St. Patrick’s Day Parade in San Francisco.  The parade is sponsored by the United Irish Societies of San Francisco. Photo and caption from Catherine Bigelow’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle.    Read more »

More

Other Political Parties Angling for Space on California’s Ballot

Infinite Love Flag

This is the flag of the Utopia Manifesto Political Party, which, as the name implies, champions creation of a utopian society.

“The flag is red for love and white for purity and in the center is a heart inside a heart — meaning our heart inside the Sacred Heart of Jesus — over red Infinite Love Waves,” according to the party’s website.    Read more »

More

Of Charter Schools, Inconsistencies and Profiles in Courage

Someone who wishes to become the governor of California should form the habit of reading legislation before making pronouncements about it.

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has commissioned a series of wildly disingenuous 15-second, substance-free television commercials about her GOP opponent for governor, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

Poizner, for his part, is engaged in a similarly vapid ad campaign, attempting to portray himself as the most “conservative” GOP candidate, a bold tax-cutter and rescuer of California “from liberal failure,” who would “require law enforcement to report illegal aliens who are arrested” and will “save billions by cutting taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens.”    Read more »

More

State Government Is Not as Bloated as Meg Whitman Claims

(Editor’s Note: California’s Capitol was preparing a posting about GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s assertions that axing 40,000 state employees will help rein in the state’s excessive bureaucracy. As the chief correspondent’s former colleage at the San Francisco Chronicle points out at California Watch, it isn’t so:)

March 15, 2010 | Robert Salladay

Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman wants to chop the state’s workforce by 40,000 employees, a pledge she made again this weekend at the state GOP convention.    Read more »

More

Changes Ordered in Description of Open Primary Proposition

In a response to a lawsuit brought by the California School Employees Association, a Sacramento Superior Court judge has modified the ballot description of Proposition 14 on the June ballot, an initiative that would create a so-called open primary.

Supporters of the measure, which would have the top two primary vote getters regardless of party affiliation advance to the November general election, argued that the changes sought by the union and the lawyers representing it were aimed at making the measure appear less attractive to voters.    Read more »

More