http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/blogs/americas-finest-blog/ Thanks, sorry for the hassles, please keep visiting me at the new URL. Chris...
[...]http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/blogs/americas-finest-blog/ Thanks, sorry for the hassles, please keep visiting me at the new URL. Chris...
[...]Community groups and Los Angeles Unified officials on Tuesday condemned an anonymous flyer handed to Latino parents that threatened them with deportation if they supported plans to convert their neighborhood school to a charter. United Teachers Los Angeles denies responsibility,...
[...]I'm back for now blogging with the old software. For years, I have believed that a reporter's last paragraph shows his real feelings. That's when I was a reporter, I tried to end my stories with benign stuff like "Supervisors...
'" [...]... this is the first time I've been able to log in since Monday night. But soon this will be fixed and I'll be back to the usual whining. Joel Anderson, I haven't forgotten that you're in your second month...
[...]Thanks for the e-mails of concern. My blog lives on. Though pretty soon after a format change it's gonna be known as America's Finest blog, not America's Finest Blog. Nice conflict of interest, Al Gore. Maybe this explains why you...
[...]Sac Bee: San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom made a surprise announcement Friday afternoon that he was dropping out of the gubernatorial race, leaving the Democrats with no declared candidate for the top statewide office. There's got to be a 50-50...
[...]http://www.helenair.com/news/article_17304d04-c44f-11de-b8fa-001cc4c0328... Brandon Patch would be embarrassed by what his parents have done. Montana's state motto is "Oro y plata" -- "Gold and silver." Is should by "estúpido y estúpido." More here....
[...]The last time I spoke with Scott Gerber, spokesman for AG Jerry Brown, was about a month ago. I asked him why the AG's office was investigating not just ACORN but the fake pimp and fake prostitute who went to...
[...]I laughed several times just reading Joe Mathews' explanation at Fox & Hounds of how the delegates will be chosen: Hold onto your hats. And take a deep breath. This is going to make your head hurt. There isn't one...
[...]To those who say, well, this is misleading, federal spending may be going up, but local and state spending isn't: Wrong. Inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending in the U.S. is up at least 60 percent since the 1983 release of the...
' [...]I had an interesting interview on KOGO 600 AM with Dan Weintraub the other day about the 2010 governor's race. (I'm now a multimedia blowhard, FYI.) He pushed back in his low-key way at my presumption that Jerry Brown was...
' [...]So the single biggest factor behind the U.S. economic meltdown, it is generally agreed, was the housing bubble and the financial industry's insane rush to lend hundreds of thousands of dollars to people who were poor credit risks. Incredibly enough,...
[...]The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted yesterday to ban the use of union-only project labor agreements. Before the vote, the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction noted the significance of this: Orange County, in January of 2000, by a...
[...]The great majority of health "reform" supporters appear to reflexively reject criticisms of the proposals now working their way through Congress, depicting them as driven by partisanship, greed or stupidity. This Olbermann-Maddow approach is grossly dishonest and is likely to...
[...]This is from the treasurer's spokesman, Tom Dresslar, in response to this post: Re "Lockyer's honesty on unaffordable pensions is welcome. But in 2005, he single-handedly sandbagged reform he now seeks." Since we're talking about honesty and truth and all...
' [...]I finally got around to checking to see if other commenters were right in their suspiction that people who posted comments strongly defending public employees often were in fact public employees -- commenting while on government time. Sure enough, on...
[...]The entertaining, must-read Calbuzz blog is ripping Meg Whitman for saying AB 32 should be suspended to held the state's economy rebound: It's a classic false choice - that we have to choose between a strong economy and environmental protections...
[...]Ten years ago last week, TIME magazine drew instant ridicule in California when it published a preposterous article -- by Steve Lopez, of all people -- that painted a picture of a Gray Davis that no one here recognized: Gray...
[...]This is from the current edition of the wonderful nationally syndicated weekly column by Chuck Shepherd: Inexplicable While state and local governments furiously pare budgets by laying off and furloughing workers, retired bureaucrats who receive defined-benefit pensions (rather than flexible...
[...]State Treasurer Bill Lockyer is back in his Mr. Blunt mode, speaking harsh truths without worrying about the fallout in a manner reminiscent of the 2003 Sac Bee interview in which he ripped the slimy, hardball, "puke politics" of then-Gov....
[...]Last December, the California Air Resources Board appeared sweeping new diesel emission rules. At the meeting where the rules were adopted, to her everlasting shame, CARB boss Mary Nichols did not reveal what top air board officials knew: that...
[...]Assembly GOP leader Sam Blakeslee has been in the news over the leak of an internal memo in which he denounced the governor's decision to sign many bills the GOP opposed: Most of us have read in today's papers accounts...
[...]Familiar-sounding stories from other states, starting with Washington: After helping Democrats win full control of the legislature in 2002, the state affiliate of the Association of Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and other unions persuaded lawmakers to lift...
[...]I was happy to see Dan Walters go after the utter farce that is the California high-speed rail project: ... skepticism is especially warranted now that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other promoters, having persuaded voters to pass a $9.95 billion...
[...]When running for re-election last year -- really, any time she makes a public appearance and talks about why she chose to enter politics -- the president of the San Diego Unifed school board makes a big deal about her...
[...]The recent six-week-long controversy over the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California's insane push to give all its employees a retroactive 25 percent pension spike while it is raising water rates for 19 million SoCal residents is fading. But I...
[...]Fiscal impact of state climate law disputed By Jim Downing jdowning@sacbee.com A local academic has emerged as the leading source of dark forecasts in a recession-fueled debate over whether California's war on global warming will hurt or help its economy....
[...]The San Gabriel Valley Tribune reports the gov is going to sign the bill giving bizarre, unique, unprecedented environmental exemptions clearing the way for a massive stadium in the middle of a crowded area in the nation's most populous county,...
[...]The new study from the UC Berkeley labor "think tank" that's being used to assert that furloughing state workers just one day a month would save the state nearly as much money as furloughing them three days a month is...
[...]You can't make this stuff up. The day before the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California pulled contentious union contracts off the table, the union representing its managers and professionals threatened to sue if, indeed, it did so. We're LEGALLY...
[...]I'm the only one who says so, but the evidence that I'm right is growing. Look at this passage from a column by Consumer Watchdog (a.k.a., Trial Lawyer Front Group) boss Jamie Court in today's Huffington Post. This, he says,...
[...]The L.A. Times' George Skelton comments favorably on George's weekend speech and endorses one of the chief justice's key points: George lamented that lawmakers and California itself "have been placed in a fiscal straitjacket" by the two-thirds majority vote requirement...
' [...]Recently, I came upon this troubling fact: The Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer server system of the computer used by CalPERS spokesman Brad Pacheco to make a post in response to this Sept. 3 blog item ... If...
[...]This is from the O.C. Register's Ron Campbell: Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector Chriss Street pulled the plug today on a proposed $80 million loan to Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside. The publicly owned hospital had hired Street's personal attorney, Phil...
[...]I haven't written about Wal-Mart in a while, but it still drives me nuts that a retail chain that has done more to help the quality of life for low-income Americans than any other single U.S. business is depicted as...
' [...]Bob Muir of MWD's communications team says he'll have more shortly but he confirmed it's off the agenda! The good guys win! For now!...
' [...]Steve Poizner came by the U-T earlier this afternoon to talk about his gubernatorial campaign. I thought Steve did a good job of making the case that he has a much longer and more impressive history of public service than...
[...]How will San Diego area representatives vote tomorrow on the insane proposal to give a retroactive 25 percent pension spike to all 2,000 employees of the giant Metropolitan Water District, main supplier to 19 million residents of Socal? The O.C....
[...]The Washington Post joins the long list of responsible independent observers wondering if CalPERS knows what the hell it is doing. The bad news the Post offers residents of California: Some pension funds are also continuing to engage in other...
[...]On Friday night, I watched MSNBC's biggest anchors aggressively defend the bizarre decision to give President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. All the Democratic National Committee talking points were recited. The Republicans criticized this. So did Hezbollah. So did...
[...]The Obama administration has asked California to explain how furloughs for state workers are affecting the state's ability to meet an escalating demand for unemployment insurance benefits and services to millions of jobless people. That's from the L.A. Times. Remember,...
[...]San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano's heckling of Arnold after Arnold made a surprise appearance at a Dem fund-raiser in San Francisco -- "You lie!" and "Kiss my gay [bleep]!" -- are sure to make him a cult hero with...
[...]Four weeks ago, I wrote the first version of this post to express my utter amazement that the Los Angeles Times -- by far the biggest newspaper in Southern California -- had failed to inform its readers that the Metropolitan...
[...]Has Jerry Brown got a secret weapon in next fall's governor's race? Maybe. Eventually the word is going to get out in much broader circles that both Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner have relatively recent histories of supporting two liberal...
[...]In August 2006, in negotiations over AB 32, Arnold told then-Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and other Dems that he could not sign the landmark anti-global warming bill unless it had language that allowed the governor to suspend the measure in...
[...]Just scant weeks after it was reported that the governor's office had been sitting on a negative story about the consequences of heavy regulations for the state economy, Arnold Schwarzenegger's staff has the gall to send an "In Case You...
" [...]The Sac Bee pushes back against Meg Whitman's counteroffensive with some success here. I wrote yesterday that Whitman might be able to spin this into a her-vs.-the-liberal-media kind of thing to her political benefit, at least in the GOP primary....
[...]If, as seems likely, the Sacramento Bee blew key parts of its huge alleged expose on Meg Whitman never voting -- the biggest bombshell yet of the 2010 gubernatorial campaign -- then the story that dealt a body blow to...
[...]I'm rarely provoked to laughter by Arnold's press releases, but this one did the trick: GAAS:587:09 For Immediate Release: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 Governor Schwarzenegger Issues Statement on National Push for Health Care Reform Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today issued the...
' [...]... in case people were wondering where their comments were. Sorry....
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