Multiple "Golden Pen Award Winner" John Fund wrote this for today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal Political Diary e-mail…

Minimum Rage

With even GOP Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California calling for a $1 an hour increase in his state’s minimum wage, political momentum has clearly shifted in favor of the unions pushing similar hikes in other states. About half of Americans live in 17 states where mandatory hourly wages exceed the federal government’s minimum of $5.15 an hour.… Read More

Some things are just too unbelievable to read. Today when I got an email from FR friend Carl DeMaio of the San Diego-based Performance Institute, with a link to an online version of a research paper, I was blown-away with what I read.

Clicking this link took me to a 79 page analysis by some guy named Lee Cokorinos at the website of the Center for Policy Initiatives. To read it, you start to think of that Mel Gibson movie, Conspiracy Theory. Your eyes start to go wide, and you start to look for photographs of black helicopters on each page.

This bizarre look at one left-wing analysts view of conservatism in San Diego is called Target San Diego: The Right Wing Assault on Urban Democracy and Smart Government.

This is their brief discription of their study:

My kids get a kick driving by the Pixar Studios when we’re running errands in Emeryville. They love knowing that there are big kids (masquerading as grown-ups) inside who spend their days creating family-friendly movies like "The Incredibles" and "Finding Nemo." Yesterday my 10-year-old daughter had the same reaction to the big Disney-Pixar deal as many of us grownups when she asked doubtfully, "Um, does that mean that Disney is going to make the Pixar movies now?" You don’t have to be over 5′ tall to know that Pixar is the king of animation and Disney runs a slow second. For Disney maniacs like me, it was painful to watch Michael Eisner at the helm of Walt’s company. I never felt that he cared about Walt’s vision. Iin the end, Roy Disney didn’t care for Eisner’s leadership either and resigned the board in 2003… Read More

In a typical Bay Area approach to problems, local government officials in Oakland and Contra Costa are blaming fast food restaurants for littering and juvenile obesity.

Oakland‘s City Councilmember Jane Brunner is proposing a new tax on fast food restaurants that are located near schools (read the SF Chronicle story here). Why? She says that they need to pay because they "are making a profit off of students." Gee, how about holding the kids doing the littering accountable for their behavior rather than making it more expensive for local businesses to do business in Oakland?… Read More

On Tuesday I took an eight hour drive from San Diego back to Sacramento. I made myself one promise the Monday before – that I would NOT be stuck going over the hill on the 405 looking at the Getty Center at 5pm. That I would plan to avoid one of the worst bottlenecks in the state by leaving on time from San Diego at 1:30 or 2:00. Instead I left at 3:00 and found myself, you guessed it, looking right up at the Getty Center at 5pm.

I’ve now made the drive back and forth probably 100 times in the last ten years, and based on this experience I am going to state some rules of thumb for statewide campaigns on the road, since my experience is everyone’s estimates are different. Assuming light or no traffic and averaging 75 miles per hour on the parts of the road that are not totally urban, it is three hours from downtown San Diego to downtown Bakersfield. It is an hour and a half from Bakersfield to Fresno. And generally two and one half hours from Fresno to Sacramento. I’m driving down again in a month and a half and will relay the time from Sacramento to Stockton to Modesto to Fresno to Bakersfield to downtown LA to Irvine to Carlsbad to downtown… Read More

Forty-two days after Ernie Dronenburg announced he would be resigning from the board of education, two weeks after the board adopted the timeline and process for filling the vacancy, 10 days after I started railing about the lack of info (with Voice of San Diego following the lead), and a mere TWO DAYS before applications are due, someone finally did something.

The County Office of Education has posted to its website the fact that there is a vacancy on the board and applications are due this Friday, giving anyone who sees it plenty of time to jump through the hoops.

This, apparently, is how you define successinabureaucratic world.

Most telling of the County Office’s posted info: The headline, "Hartley is New President of County Board of Education; Applications Now Available to Fill Dronenburg Seat," still takes second fiddle to the now-long-posted main… Read More

ASSEMBLY REPUBLICANS’ PAY-AS-YOU-GO PLAN GOOD NEWS There is much written today about the new proposal introduced by Assembly Republicans for a "Pay-As-You-Go" plan for infrastructure investment in the state. In essence, this plan says that the fiscally prudent course for California to set when looking at building and improving our state’s highways and roads, state universities , water storage, and flood control is to use money in the bank now – rather than maxing out the state’s ‘credit card’. We should be putting aside money every year from the general fund targeted towards these essential projects. You see, over the past decades, there has been a total failure on the part of legislatures and Governors to address infrastructure needs in the state. The Democrats in charge of the legislature are intent on using tax dollars for their social engineering projects, and have preferred to let infrastructure needs be handled in a piecemeal fashion through assorted bond measures. Any responsible strategic growth plan must… Read More

GOP Congressman Howard "Buck" McKeon (Santa Clarita) represents the 25th District that includes portions of LosAngeles andSan Bernardino Counties (okay its has Mono and Inyo too.) McKeonhas joined Congressman Dan Lungren as a signer of the petition to have elections for several House leadership positions. He was one the signers released publicly by supporters of the vote that could change many House leadership positions and becomes the second California Congressman associated with this possible overthrow of leadership. See the story here.

Supporters of a shake-up in leadership say they have 30 of the 50 votes needed to force a meeting. McKeon is on the Armed Services Committee and is senior member of the House Education and Workforce Committee. He isn’t your normal rabble-rouser and his support for a vote shows thatleadership has some problems. You can see FR Publisher Jon Fleischman’s commentary on the topic here.

Will there be athird Congressman… Read More