Legislative Analyst Recommends Giving Public Schools Less Funding to Reduce Cuts Elsewhere

Gov. Jerry Brown’s revised budget gives public schools $1.7 billion more than he is required under state funding formulas, causing reductions of a like amount in other state programs, according to the Legislative Analyst’s recently released assessment of the Democratic governor’s new spending plan.

The analyst encourages lawmakers, who face a June 15 constitutional deadline to send Brown a budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, to “reconsider the governor’s overall May Revision package – a package that spends more on schools and community colleges while simultaneously cutting other areas of the state budget, primarily health, social services, courts ad state employee compensation more deeply.”    Read more »

More

Actor Roger Moore Narrates a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Video on the Making of Foie Gras.

A Group of Chefs Opposes California’s Impending July 1 Ban on Foie Gras Sales     Read more »

More

From the “No on Proposition 29” Campaign Mail Bag…

(Proposition 29, on the June ballot, raises taxes on a package of cigarettes by $1. Taxes are currently 87 cents per pack. The additional revenue will be used to pay for cancer research and anti-smoking programs. The last panel notes that major funding for “Californians Against Out-of-Control Taxes and Spending” comes from Philip Morris USA and R.J.    Read more »

More

Happy Birthday Governor Budd!

  May 18 is the birthday of James H. Budd, California’s 19th governor, who served from January 1895 to January 1899. He was the last Democrat to hold the office until Cuthbert Olsen was elected in 1938. 

A Stockton resident and lawyer, the “genial and jovial” Budd ran on an anti-Southern Pacific, trim-the-fat in government platform.    Read more »

More

Rational Behavior

“When proper temperament joins with proper intellectual framework, then you get rational behavior.”

                                         –Warren Buffett     Read more »

More

A Dark Day 94 Years Ago for Free Speech — With a SIlver Lining

On May 16, 1918, Congress approved the Sedition Act. The law was an expansion of the previous year’s Espionage Act, which allowed the Postmaster General to remove seditious or treasonable material from the mail and punished anyone convicted of interfering with military recruitment with up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $10,000.    Read more »

More

An Ad from a Recent Issue of Time Magazine

(Editor’s Note: Among the 14 bullets of warnings, the one at bottom right says the most common side effects include: “ejaculation problems, trouble getting or keeping an erection (impotence), a decrease in sex drive (libido), decreased amount of semen released during sex, dizziness, enlarged or painful breasts (if you notice breast lumps or nipple discharge, you should talk to your healthcare provider), and runny nose.”)    Read more »

More

In Case There Was Some Reason To Hear Exactly How Bad The Budget Is One More Time — Gov. Brown’s May Revision Announcement    Read more »

More

Happy Birthday to the Royal Historian of Oz

May 15 is the birthday of L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and more than 55 other novels.

Lyman Frank Baum was born near Syracuse, New York in 1856. At 26, he married Maud Gage. Her mother was close to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, leaders of the women’s rights movement.    Read more »

More

From the Mail Bag in the San Diego Mayor’s Race

Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, formerly a Republican now an independent, and Carl DeMaio, a GOP City Councilman, are hoping in June to advance to a November run-off. Here’s some of what they and independent expenditure committees are sending to voters:

   Read more »

More