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

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

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

This Just In from Fred Karger’s Presidential Campaign…

On Ron Paul’s withdrawal from the Presidential Race    Read more »

More

Symbols for the Symbol-Minded

The second bullet on Page 3 of Gov. Jerry Brown’s revised budget, unveiled May 14, proudly says he plans to eliminate “20 boards, commissions, task forces, offices and departments.”

Reporters were provided with a list of 22 boards, committees and commissions Brown would terminate. The savings from doing so in the Democratic governor’s proposed $132 billion spending plan represents less than what former Department of Finance director Tom Hayes referred to as “budget dust.”    Read more »

More

Doesn’t Sound Like So Grim a Revised Budget

For a state budget with a hole that’s now $15.7 billion  — $6.5 billion worse than the problem estimated by Gov. Jerry Brown In January – California is in great shape.

At least that’s the impression from reading the Democratic governor’s portrayal of his revised budget plan, released May 14.

The spending plan protects education and public safety, Brown says in his press release.    Read more »

More

Promontory Point Utah May 10, 1869

The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads met on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah completing the transcontinental railroad.

The connection of the two rail lines was celebrated with the hammering in of a silver and golden spike. 

Former California Gov. Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific, said this, acording to the New York Times:

“The Pacific Railroad companies accept with pride and satisfaction these golden and silver tokens of your appreciation of the importance of our enterprise to the material interests of the sections which you represent on this occasion, and to the material interests of our whole country, East and West, North and South.    Read more »

More

California Legislature: To Whom It May Concern

“There is nothing as easy as denouncing. It don’t take much to see that something is wrong but it does take some eyesight to see what will put it right again.”

— Will Rogers     Read more »

More