Before Fleischman e-towel slaps me for this entry not being "California enough," it is coming from a CA-based consultant, so I’m goin’ with it.

Either Jennifer Kerns at K Street Communications’ blog is putting herself out there on this one, quoting an anonymous "high-placed DNC insider," or — if she is somehow correct — no one will soon forget….

The Street is hearing from a source this morning that a high-placed DNC insider has confirmed that Vice Presidential pick Joe Biden will step down from the Democratic ticket. The report is that on or about October 5, Biden will excuse himself from the ticket, citing "health problems," and he will be replaced by Hillary Clinton. This follows weeks of a post-Palin bounce following the RNC Convention, and significant… Read More

The fine crew at Capitol Weekly (www.capitolweekly.net) have the details I could not give. Ah, the constraints of being fair but totally biased…… Read More

Legislative Republicans, not having had a majority in the legislature since 1958, and only twice had a majority in one house of the Legislature since then (1968-70 and 1994-96) won a big one. Despite the Governor’s bluff and bluster, he ultimately agreed to a couple of small changes in the deal cut by the Legislative leaders, and it appears that the budget will now be signed.

Without new taxes.

Let’s face it. That is what this fight was all about, and the Republican Legislators won that fight hands down, no questions asked. They did a Pacquiao on the Democrats and the Governor, and got a budget without new taxes. Not a good budget, but, quite frankly, no budget has been good in the last 10 years. Ever since Gray Davis began the spending splurge that this current Governor continued, the budget roller coaster has sailed up and down with the economy, from spendthrift to crisis to spendthrift to crisis. If the Democrats and the Governor don’t end the spendthrift times, we will move from the current crisis to the next very soon.

As I said before, the one good thing about a budget that uses gimmicks to balance a budget is that the… Read More

The Senate will go into session at4 PM Friday and the Assembly will thenmeet at 5 PM to vote on the fixes that were hammered out this afternoon with the Governor and the other Big 4 leaders, avoiding the veto and the veto override threats.… Read More

I won’t go into the irony of Governor Schwarzenegger’s office pushing out a quote from Senator Tom McClintock. But I think it is worthwhile for FR readers to see (and hear) what McClintock has to say about this budget proposal, and whether the Governor’s veto should be upheld.

Apparently McClintock appeared on the John & Ken Show yesterday… The exchange on this issue went this way…

QUESTION: “What did you think of the Governor’s Veto?” SENATOR MCCLINTOCK: “I think he’s absolutely right. The budget that was adopted this morning makes the problem significantly worse. It defies the first law of holes, which is, when you’re in one; stop digging. We dug an eleven billion dollar hole this past year. That is, we spent $11 billion more than we took in during the past year. This… Read More

We can dither about California politics all we want here, but Wall Street is imploding on the watch of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox (pictured right, Cox was a long-time Californai Congressman before being appointed to his SEC post by President Bush in 2006), and he needs to be fired or resign immediately. There are many components feeding the crisis in banking and equity markets, but the SEC has failed in its oversite responsiblities under Cox.

The "regulations" set to go into effect tomorrow are merely enforcement actions of laws on the books already. Christopher Cox needs to exit the stage – now. His lack of proactive leadership has cost Americans trillions of dollars of net worth already.… Read More

[Publisher’s Note – This particular opinion piece rambles on a bit. Somewhere in this is a point to be made. Discerning readers will have to figure it out… Flash]

There is definitely no road map for a conservative legislator when dealing with the state budget debacle, which is why if you look at the vote’s on the state budget in the Senate and Assembly, Republicans are split – many reliably conservative legislators voted for the bill, while still many others voted against it.

Welcome to the intersection of policy and politics. I mean, let’s be clear. The budget that sits on Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk, that he has vowed to veto on Friday (presumably Friday to maximize inconvenience to legislators who would have to come up on the weekend for a potential over-ride vote, with one Assemblyman, Lloyd Levine, having to choose between a budget vote in Sacramento, and his own wedding in Seattle), is riddled with reasons for a conservative to vote no. Frankly, it doesn’t contain nearly enough… Read More

The Governor’s petulance over the budget vote is just the latest in his exercise of ego as an element of government policy. It is now clear that he cares little about anything other than getting his own way. Policy has long ago left any discussion. In his mind, it is now all about the Governor.

While it is true the budget is flawed, it has one major benefit. Recessions do not last forever, revenues will recover and will recover soon. Spending that extra money on current bills, rather than program expansions prevents even worse spending crises in the future. The only time this Governor exercised any spending restraint was when he was paying off the bills incurred by Gray Davis. Maybe if we force him to pay off the bills he incurred yesterday from future revenues, we can prevent this spendthrift from sending the state into another budget crisis.

And that is why his criticism today is so hypocritical. It was his spending policies that created this mess. It was his deals with the Democrats that cause the collapse of the current budget. For him to criticize this budget, which is attempting to fix his mess, on the grounds that it doesn’t… Read More