IS PHIL ANGELES CRYING? I’m sure Phil Angelides is crying somewhere right now, depressed that he is not in Sacramento to sign the outrageous shift towards socialized medicine that has been passed by legislative Democrats and placed on the Governor’s desk. Much time has been spent on this page criticizing Governor Schwarzenegger for his own proposal to significantly increase the size of government and state government’s role in health care. That said, today is a good time to take a pause, and appreciate that the extreme agenda of Don Perata and Fabian Nunez is too far to the left, even for the port-side shift of Schwarzenegger. The Governor has vowed to veto AB 8 and he should be applauded for doing so. Perhaps if Mr. Angeles is bored, he can print out a copy of AB 8 on his computer, and sign the bottom of it. That’s about all of the relevance that he will have in this process — thank goodness! THE LINE IN THE SAND ON REDISTRICTING REFORM Lost… Read More

Cal Grant financial aid, fee waivers,for illegal immigrants in a bill, SB 1, passes off of our floor tonight, 45-29.… Read More

Just six years ago, our two oceans protection strategy crumbled.Radical Islam’s resurgence came swift and deadly.Central Europe faced the same resurgence just 324 years ago.

My family visited Vienna last summer. When we asked the hotel’s concierge where we would find Monuments of Vienna’s most important day, the Siege of Vienna by Muslim Jihadists in 1683, the otherwise bright guide didn’t understand my inquiry.

In Sept 11 and 12th of 1683, the Ottoman Turks, after years of planning, had Vienna under siegeby hundreds of thousands of soldiers. After hundreds of years and countless victims conquering Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania and most of eastern Europe, the Turks were determined to conquer Europe. The most effective soldiersfor the Turks armies were the legendary Janissary. Mostly composed of Greek and eastern European Christian boys seized from their families to create a "new soldier". Much like the modern day totalitarian armies, boys, as young as… Read More

I keep hearing persistent feedback that there are some legislative Republicans who think that the legislature granting a big pay raise (plus) to the CCPOA is a grand idea. Clearly the Governor does not, I and I have been critical.

This is the Governor’s statement: "I did not veto $700 million from the budget to give it all to CCPOA in a backroom deal. This bill makes an end run around negotiations and mediation, reverses an arbitration decision that saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars, kills any hope for management reform, and reinstates, in full, the contract signed by Governor Gray Davis. This is the same contract that Republicans and Democrats derided as the biggest sweetheart deal in California history." Please educate me on the CCPOA side of this equation…. Someone? I am truly open to hearing both sides of this issue. Drop me a line here.

Thanks in advance.… Read More

Senator Don Perata took the lead in pulling hte plug on redistricting reform. So, unless a redistricting reform measure qualifies for the ballot via signature petitions, don’t look for it on the ballot next year.

Of course, it is now full-speed ahead to kill the Perata/Nunez Term Limits Weakening Initiative that is on the February ballot. If we aren’t going to have fair districts, the last thing we need to four and six more years of Perata and Nunez, respectively.

These guys need to go find jobs in the private sector, where they cannot torture the taxpayers anymore.… Read More

UPDATE: See attachment

I’ve been reading on the FlashReport and hearing around that the prison guard union is trying to codify the sweetheart deal contract that they got from Gray Davis into a law. It’s very ironic that in this situation, our global warming alarming "green action hero" Governor is actually doing the right thing — which is negotiating firmly with a union, trying to undo some of the lavish pay hikes that they were given by Davis. More insidious than the big bucks in that contract was that Davis literally bargained away much of the management authority of the Corrections Department. I figured it would be a labor-loving Democrat that would be carrying this dog-with-fleas legislation. So it piqued my curiosity when I heard that termed-out GOP Assemblywoman Bonnie "Ban the Trans-Fats" Garcia was carrying this last-minute gut-and-amend bill. Thanks to the internet, I took a peek over at the Secretary of… Read More

Apparently the prison guard’s union is skulking about the capitol, looking for some crony to carry a bill that will give them a big, fat pay raise. They’re unhappy with the near-$1 billion raise that the state has already offered them as part of contract negotiations.

Rather than keep negotiating, they feel entitled to circumvent the state entirely and just ask legislators for a check. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that I’m incensed by this flagrant abuse of power and access. But it might surprise you to know that another union, that of the California Highway Patrol -is also fed up with the infamous “Devil’s Deal” contract negotiated by the prison guard’s ultimate crony, Gray Davis.

The bill that CCPOA is floating is motivated by nothing but greed, greed and more greed. It keeps the tie to CHP salaries-nevermind that the union representing these dedicated, brave and hard working law enforcement officers wants nothing to do with CCPOA. This bill gives the equivalent of a whopping 23 percent salary increase over three fiscal years, to the tune of $882 million. And it will cost the state nearly $650… Read More

Amidst the steady stream of stories of ineffective bureaucracy, poor tracking, and management mishaps that cost the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) millions, we rarely see a story about the school district failing to pay its own. Just when we thought it could do that part of its job correctly, the LAUSD proves us wrong again.

According to The LA Daily News (August 27, 2007), "Seven months after Los Angeles Unified rolled out a $95 million computerized payroll system, school officials are prepared to pour at least another $37 million into the project to fix thousands of problems as [the district braces] for the start of the school year." We have become anesthetized to absurd figures concerning LAUSD’s waste, the United Teachers Los Angeles President explains, "[However, this situation is] an 8.9 on the Richter scale… It’s very bad[,] and it promises to get worse when [the] traditional school [year] starts." LAUSD’s interim chief operating officer explains that "the… Read More