We are done until January 7, notwithstanding any special session action on water and health. The process of going though bills at the end wasvery fast and furious, not a great way to debate or contemplate bills. Workingtill 3:30 AM, whether trying to disc a straight line in a rice field, or do legislation, can get marginal results. … 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

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

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

From a trusted legislative advocate….

Governor Schwarzenegger, just a few minutes ago, called the Legislature into Special Session, starting tomorrow, to work on State Health Insurance Reform. He also called a Special Session on water projects.

The Governor also announced at his press conference that he would veto AB 8, as expected, the Democrat’s health insurance proposal.

It is anticipated that the Special Session on health care will operate mostly behind the scenes, with the political leaders trying to craft a solution.… Read More