Getting Closer to Perhaps Beginning to Start to Pass a Budget

This is a modestly edited advisory from the state Senate: Senator Denise Ducheny, a San Diego Democrat has announced that the special two-house Budget Conference Committee, which she chairs, will reconvene on Wednesday, October 6, at 1:30 p.m., in Room 4203, the Senate’s largest hearing room. An agenda will be made available after 9 a.m. on Wednesday, October 6 — both in hardcopy in the Senate and Assembly Budget offices — and posted to the Senate Budget Committee website. A more detailed report on the budget will be available at the end of the day from both budget committees.

#####

October 6 will be the [....]

More

One of the Alternatives to Candidates Whitman and Brown

Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman aren’t the only choices California has for governor. In fact, a third choice – Carlos Alvarez of the Peace and Freedom Party – attended Candidate Brown and Candidate Whitman’s first debate September 28 at the Mondavi Center at the University of California at Davis. Candidate Alvarez, a youthful and bespectacled 23, did not share the stage with Candidates Brown and Whitman and told debate attendees and media representatives outside the Mondavi Center that he felt he and other minor party candidates were wrongly excluded. Candidate Alvarez, a grocery worker at Vons/Pavillions and member of [....]

More

Questions That Weren’t Asked in the Gubernatorial Debate

(Editor’s Note: As part of the first gubernatorial debate between Republican Meg Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown at UC Davis’ Mondavi Center, the university solicited questions to ask the candidates. From this list, the question that did get asked – Number 6 – dealt with restoring cuts to higher education. Below is the university’s list of submissions with some punctuation editing. One of the questions that wasn’t chosen was subsequently asked of Candidate Brown at his post-debate soiree at Bistro 33. His answer follows that question.)

DEBATE QUESTIONS THROUGH 3:00 PM, SEPTEMBER. 28

1) My question is directed toward former Governor Brown. Mr. Brown: [....]

More

Backers – Mainly One Man – of Proposition 20 Hit the Mailbox

Through September 27, Charles T. Munger, a physicist who works at Stanford University’s Linear Accelerator, has contributed roughly $7.5 million to pass Proposition 20 and defeat Proposition 27. Proposition 20 would vest the power over drawing legislative district lines for California’s congressional delegation in the hands of a citizen’s commission approved by voters as Proposition 11 in November 2008. At the moment, the commission is only charged with drawing the boundary lines for California’s 120 state legislators. Proposition 27, backed by the state’s congressional delegation and some state legislators, would eliminate the commission and return district line drawing to the hands of lawmakers. Below is the inside of a [....]

More

Californians Can Keep Buying Kangaroo for Another Five Years

A good day for California soccer players and a bad day for kangaroos as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has extended the state law allowing the importation of dead kangaroo parts. While the state prohibits the importing of products made from various exotic dead animals, an exemption was created for kangaroo in 2007. Prior to the exemption, California was the only state prohibit ing the importation of products using kanagaroo. Kangaroo leather, which is strong but flexible, is favored by many soccer players for their shoes. It is also used to make boots worn by law enforcement. An exemption to the kangaroo ban [....]

More

Some Facts About Meg Whitman’s Factory and Start-Up Taxes

Twice in her one-hour debate with Democrat gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, GOP candidate Meg Whitman said she wants to rid California of the “factory tax.”

What Candidate Whitman calls the “factory tax” is the absence of a sales tax exemption or tax credit for purchases of manufacturing equipment.

According to legislative budget writers, such an exemption costs the state $870 million annually in tax revenue.

In her campaign materials and by inference in her debate remarks, Candidate Whitman calls the lack of such an exemption a “major obstacle to keeping high-paying manufacturing jobs in California.”

California previously had a “Manufacturer’s Investment [....]

More

Some Vignettes From Jerry Brown’s Post-Debate Celebration

Unlike GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, Democrat Jerry Brown elected not to enter the “spin room” at UC Davis’ Mondavi Center after their September 28 debate and field a few questions. Instead, he repaired to Bistro 33 a few blocks away at 3rd and F Streets in downtown Davis where he celebrated with supporters.  Candidate Brown, his wife Anne beside him, sat on the eatery’s patio at the right end of several pushed-together, round tables. The two shared a salad. At one point, Candidate Brown helped load up a  server with empty plates to remove from the tables. The trim 72-year-old [....]

More

An Advisory for California’s Capitol Readers…

(Editor’s Note: In a recent post sparked by the first gubernatorial debate between Republican Meg Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown, the chief correspondent of California’s Capitol chose to explicate the phrase “boil the ocean” which Candidate Whitman used in one of her answers. Highlighting this phrase with a post of its own seems excessive since anyone who has followed Candidate Whitman’s campaign knows she uses this phrase with callous regularity. Rather than place a letter in the chief correspondent’s employment file, management has elected to merely chide him. This reduction in data storage also assists management in improving the bottom-line, [....]

More

No Real Surprises — Or Knockouts — in Gubernatorial Debate

Mondavi Center, University of California at Davis – The two gubernatorial candidates met for the first time September 28 and echoed their respective campaign themes — neither scoring a knockout punch. Overall, Republican Meg Whitman stuck tenaciously to her themes, staying on-script and offering little detail as to what she would do as governor. “I come from the real world where you actually have to get things done,” she said, labeling Brown a  ”career politician,” who’s soft-on-crime and beholden to labor unions. “I thought I got across my points. I thought the contrast was exactly as I’d hoped I would,” [....]

More

“Boiling the Ocean…”

At one point during the September 28 gubernatorial debate between Demcorat Jerry brown, Republican candidate Meg Whitman said this: “I am a big believer in a crisis you can only focus on a small number of things. You cannot go to Sacramento and boil the ocean.” For those unfamiliar with the idiom, WiseGEEK offers this assistance:

“Boiling the ocean … can have a few related meanings. One is that it is obviously impossible to boil theocean. Where would you start? Thus boiling the ocean can refer to an impossible task — something so complicated it’s hard to know where to begin.

“Another [....]

More