The State of California Public Schools

Are California’s 9,903 schools better off financially now than they were five years ago?

As the largest recipient of cuts — something on the order of $14 billion — in the efforts to close the state’s annual mutli-billion dollar budget shortfalls it seems likely the Golden State’s 1,042 school districts would be a lot less golden now than in 2007. Read more »

2.06.2012

Sound Familiar?

“The time has come for us to decide whether collectively we can afford everything and anything we think of simply because we think of it. The time has come to run a check to see if all the services government provides were in answer to demands or were just goodies dreamed up for our supposed betterment. Read more »

2.06.2012

Happy Birthday Mr. President! (and Governor)

Ronald Reagan, California’s 33rd governor and the 40th President of the United States, was born in Tampico, Illinois 101 years ago on February 6.

A number of books have been written about the actor-turned-politician. Among the best are those by Reagan biographer Lou Cannon.

Rather than rehash territory well covered by others, here’s a brief Reagan anecdote from February 1981, upon the occasion of his 70th birthday:

Speaking to a Washington Press Club dinner on February 4, the GOP president noted that the group was founded by six Washington newspaperwomen in 1919. Read more »

2.05.2012

Still The Most Creative Super Bowl Ad of the New Millenium Read more »

2.02.2012

Et tu, Aesop?

“We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.”

~Aesop

And a related fable:

The Man, the Boy and the Donkey

A man and his son were going with their donkey to market. As they were walking along beside the beast, a countryman passed by and said: “You fools, what is a donkey for but to ride upon?” Read more »

2.01.2012

Me Either

“I guess I’m just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee and I care not who writes the nation’s laws.”

And, more portentously:

“The fact is that all of us have only one personality and we wring it out like a dishtowel. Read more »

2.01.2012

Fish Walking on Land

“Can you really explain to a fish what it’s like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it and one day of running a business has exactly the same kind of value.”

–Warren Buffett Read more »