Oakland teaches and the district reached a contract agreement last night after two years of negotiations. The district has been asking the teachers to pay for 50 percent of any future health care premiums increases, a demand to which the union refused to agree. Neither side would reveal the details of the final agreement. I’m sure the final agreement will protect teachers from the rising health care premiums the rest of us pay, but what I found particularly annoying about the deal was that the district and the union announced that parents should keep their kids home today. The teachers had planned to strike today and district administrators said it would be to confusing to hold classes. (Administrators had originally planned to hire strike teachers, but backed down on that plan when the union complained.) If parents sent their kids to school today, the district said that they would be supervised, but not taught.… Read More

I am running out the door this morning as the Orange County Republican Party is hosting a small breakfast reception with none other than northern California Congressman John Doolittle. I’ve known John for many, many years (working for him for a short spell) and he is a fine Congressman. He’s a strong, conservative voice in the House Leadership serving as House Republican Conference Secretary. It will be good to see him, let alone a couple miles from my front door!

Look for some great work the next three days from guest editor Nicholas Romero, who will be filling in for me. Also, look for some FR ‘regular faces’ to be filling in for me on this Daily Commentary page! Today the FR features a column from Assembly Republican Leader George Plescia. Plescia has just assumed the reigns of leadership from… Read More

Actually, the title should be who the elite think are important in LA. If you ever wondered, LA Weekly has profile on the elites you might here about in art, media and politics. See a listing here.It includes a profile of Villaraigosa, several other LA politicos. Have fun.… Read More

I am running out the door this morning as the Orange County Republican Party is hosting a small breakfast reception with none other than northern California Congressman John Doolittle. I’ve known John for many, many years (working for him for a short spell) and he is a fine Congressman. He’s a strong, conservative voice in the House Leadership serving as House Republican Conference Secretary. It will be good to see him, let alone a couple miles from my front door!

Look for some great work the next three days from guest editor Nicholas Romero, who will be filling in for me. Also, look for some FR ‘regular faces’ to be filling in for me on this Daily Commentary page! Today the FR features a column from Assembly Republican Leader George Plescia. Plescia has just assumed the reigns of leadership from… Read More

In LA County the Republican Governor’s appointments to LA Superior Courtrun 2 to 1 in favor of the Democrats. Today he announced three appointments. Ray Jurado, Steve Blades and… Read More

The Field Poll that was just released looks at the downticket statewide candidates running for Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Controller, and Attorney General. My favorite analysis comes from taking the favorable and unfavorable numbers, and figuring out a "net favorable" on the candidates. When you do this, you’ll never guess who the most popular down-ticket candidate is for any race from any political party? If you guessed Tom McClintock, you’d be right!

Here are those numbers, with the straight up ballot polling questions below, where you will see that Jerry Brown enjoys a seemingly uncertmountable lead, and that John Garamendi and Tony Strickland are performing very well in their respective primaries.… Read More

This year marks the 10th Anniversary of Curt Pringle’s reign as Speaker of the Assembly. This was the first GOP Speaker in some time. (I don’t count the moderates kept in power by Democrats). They have a blog set up that you can see by clicking here.

There has been a lot ofconcern and anguish about the Governor’s appointment of Kennedy, now Nunez, and the lack of firing of Reiner etc… The Governor Appointments Secretary to the CRP executive Committee there were over a 1000 vacancies that needed to be filled.

Speaker Pringle did thing differently. I know because today marks the 10th Anniversary of my appointment by him to the California Library Services Board, now know as the Library of California Board.Please feel free to email me questions about how the transaction reimbursement rate on inter library loans is determined.

Upon taking the Speakership, Pringle and his staff immediately started recruiting people to fill slots that were open. I worked with John Nelson. Now the Library Board wasn’t the most powerful. But I got… Read More

There is a lot of interesting stuff going on in California politics today: * The latest Field Poll numbers show that the public is wising up to the poor public policy behind actor/producer/director Rob Reiner’s "universal pre-school" measure. The measure, which would create a new tax burdon on Californians, creates a centralized, statewide bureaucracy to provide pre-school. Conservatives oppose the measure both for the new taxes and another government-run program (a massive one, at that) — but also Democrats are starting to oppose the measure (such as former Senate President John Burton) because they feel that a lot of wealthy folks who already send their kids to pre-school will be the primary beneficiaries. * FR friend Bill Bradley, a columnist for the LA Weekly and blogger extraordinairre at New West Notes (you though I wrote a lot, this guy types circles around me) reveals that there is a new independent expenditure firing up on behalf of Phil Angelides. * Negotiations are underway again to negotiate an infrastructure funding package for the November ballot. This is your opportunity to contact your… Read More