There’s more good news on the pensions front: today Gov. Schwarzenegger’s office announced tentative pension rollback agreements with two more unions: the Union of American Physicians and Dentists and the International Union of Operating Engineers. Like agreements announced earlier this month between the administration and four other unions, this means employees will contribute 5 percent more to their retirement funds and gain an unpaid leave day each month. Newly-hired employees will also have to work longer to receive their full retirement benefits.

These are not devastating sacrifices, or even tough changes. They are just slight, common sense modifications to the current system that will save the state a great deal of money in the long run. As Schwarzenegger has done a tremendous job highlighting, California’s pension system has spiraled completely out of control over the last 10 years, to the tune of 2000% increases and… Read More

These are not final numbers but I was looking at spending by Assembly candidates in this past primary season. My guess was that Republican candidates for the Assembly in reasonably safe seats raised and spent less money in 2010 than they did in 2008.

Total expenditures during the reporting periods are helpful because if people loan themselves money and it is real then we see it spent. $100,000 going in and out of an account does not come into play by looking at expenditures.

My comparison did not include and look at independent expenditures and was focused on the final reporting period prior to the election. 8 seats from each cycle. I tossed out AD 5 and AD 68 from this cycle because of the dominant posture of the two primary winners.

In 2008 I looked at — AD 2 (Nielsen, Schaupp) AD 3 (Logue, Horne) AD 10 (Sieglock, Hegyi, Sander) AD 15 (Wilson, Kamena, Rao, Lloyd) AD 34 (Conway, Smith, Becky Maze) AD 36 (Knight, Fox, Ledford) AD 64 (Nestande, McCarty) AD 71 (Miller, Blais)

In 2010 I considered — AD 25 (Olsen, Keating, van der Weide, Conrad) AD 29 (Halerman, McKinney, Whalen)… Read More

It’s no secret Sacramento Democrats will take any and every opportunity to pontificate about issues outside their purview. Their most common means of expressing their opinions about national or international matters is the joint resolution. As Assemblyman Chuck DeVore pointed out via Twitter on Monday, the Assembly passed AJR 27, a resolution urging Congress to oppose a free trade agreement between the United States and the South American country Colombia. The resolution reads like it was written by labor union apologists, not unbiased evaluators of America’s relationship with Colombia. The day after AJR 27 passed the Assembly (it now needs Senate approval), the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board … Read More

We are pleased to share this piece from RNC Chairman Michael Steele…

Southern California Public Radio listeners were treated to a bit of political theater yesterday, as State Controller John Chiang and Schwarzenegger Press Secretary Aaron McLear (I grabbed McLear’s Twitter avatar so you can see him in action) discussed the (unfortunate but necessary) possibility of paying state workers minimum wage next month unless the Legislature gets around to passing a budget. Chiang is an elected Democrat (read: union tool) who has in the past rather defiantly refused to pay workers minimum wage, even though a 2003 Supreme Court ruling (White vs. Davis) says that is exactly what he must do when the state is running without a budget. In yesterday’s interview Chiang, who has unsuccessfully tried to appeal the ruling before, said that his… Read More

Jerry Brown keeps working hard to draw the “I’m just not cut out to be California’s top elected official” narrative – since the primary. First we had him compare his opponent Meg Whitman to Nazi Josephs Goebbels (yes, one of Adolph Hitler’s right hand men). Who does that? Shortly after that followed his snide retort to a reporter who asked him about state’s finances, to which he said that he had a plan, but that would tell us, “after the election.” (Seriously.)

Well, now are on to #3 of “Stupid Moments For Moonbeam’s Campaign” – the state plane that he keeps announcing he sold when Governor, that he did not sell. In a campaign video, Brown bragged up in April that he sold the Executive Jet – but he did not. But their campaign did sucker our friends Phil and… Read More

We call those views "right" and "wrong" — you decide…

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The European Court of Justice, siting in Strasbourg, has just upheld on human rights grounds a Proposition 8 mirror-image law in Austria that bans same-sex marriage. The European Union’s high court found that the Austrian Proposition 8 clone is “not incompatible with the International Convention on Human Rights”. Six of 47 countries that signed the U.N.’s International Convention on Human Rights allow same-sex marriage, and a case brought against Austria by a gay couple from Vienna sought to serve as a leading case to establish precedent under Article 14 of the Convention (discrimination) in the European Union to knock out traditional marriage laws throughout Europe on human rights grounds. But the Court determined under Article 8 of the Convention (procedural) and Article 9 of the separate E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights, the question of whether or not to allow same-sex marriage is left to regulation “by the national law of the contracting state”. That’s a pretty good decision. Maybe these United Nations types really aren’t conspiring against us.… Read More