If you were to look up "dysfunctional legislature" in the dictionary, you’d a photograph of the California State Capitol. We’re now a couple of weeks into the fiscal year without a state budget, and outgoing Senate President Don Perata has apparently dismissed Senators from Sacramento, advising them to be "on call" to come back and vote on a budget on short notice. Last I checked, we are paying every single member of the State Senate, and also the State Assembly for that matter, a full-time wage. If there is no state budget, the last thing that I want to have happen is for all of the legislators to go back to their districts, and leave budget nogotiations to small group of legislative leaders, to primary take place in a back room. Frankly, every legislator has a responsibility to be in Sacramento, at the Capitol, and working together to try and solve this overspending crisis.

State government is huge, and complex, and the negotiations surrounding an income and spending plan should be broadly approached by our legislators. Democrat and Republican State Legislators should be rolling up their sleeves, taking portions… Read More

Floyd Brown has produced a new advertisement thatcontrasts on Barrack Hussein Obama’s recent lament that Americansdon’t know enough foreign languages. You can see it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W7srmHLclw.… Read More

If you were to look up "dysfunctional legislature" in the dictionary, you’d a photograph of the California State Capitol. We’re now a couple of weeks into the fiscal year without a state budget, and outgoing Senate President Don Perata has apparently dismissed Senators from Sacramento, advising them to be "on call" to come back and vote on a budget on short notice. Last I checked, we are paying every single member of the State Senate, and also the State Assembly for that matter, a full-time wage. If there is no state budget, the last thing that I want to have happen is for all of the legislators to go back to their districts, and leave budget nogotiations to small group of legislative leaders, to primary take place in a back room. Frankly, every legislator has a responsibility to be in Sacramento, at the Capitol, and working together to try and solve this overspending crisis.

State government is huge, and complex, and the negotiations surrounding an income and spending plan should be broadly approached by our legislators. Democrat and Republican State Legislators should be rolling up their sleeves, taking portions… Read More

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aide of their country. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aide of their country. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aide of their country. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aide of their country. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aide of their country. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.… Read More

Today’s front page of the Wall Street Journal offers a perfect example of the idiom "fiddling while Rome burns." At the top of the page, there’s an article about the run on IndyMac bank in Burbank, accompanied by a picture of worried customers trying to withdraw their money. Let your eyes drift down the page and you’ll see another article about California—-a front page story about Senator Jack Scott’s proposed ban on foil balloons. So let’s recap: California is experiencing a horrible fire season, and our national and state financial system is in dire straits, but our lawmakers are busy stopping teenagers from singing the national anthem in the capitol rotunda and trying to ban metallic balloons. Oh, and as Jon wrote about today, our legislators still haven’t passed a state budget. What exactly are we paying these people to do for us?… Read More

The Party’s sails were slack. Voters saw it as "callous, bigoted, and sleazy". In ‘blind tastings’ voters who liked the Party’s ideas withdrew approval when they heard which party supported them. In short, the brand was toxic. As politicians and the Party faithful started to lose seats their first strategy was to double down on the issues and message which had done so well, for so long. It didn’t work, and things got worse, much worse, for a long time…

So, with thanks to ten years of The Economist throughout this writing, the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom since Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in trouble. Since the late 1990’s the Conservatives stumbled through the wilderness in British politics, snagging their coats on every briar along the way. They lost three straight general elections and there was some thought by otherwise reasonable people that the Conservative Party may have outlived itself.

Todaythe generic ballot is 45 Conservative 25 Labor.

Of course, one of thereasons for the re-animation of the Conservative Partyis that, usually, the party in power exhausts itself and… Read More

Not since the Chia Pet or the Clapper has a commercial like the medical alert program featuring a lady that had fallen and couldn’t get help caught the fancy of untold thousands of Americans.

Always looking to be on the edge, the State Senate and soon the State Assembly will pass SCR 77 that would declare the first week of fall as “Fall Prevention Awareness Week”. Get it? First week of fall!

The bill has received no negative votes to date and will pass easily unless there is some activity from the pro-falling lobby (trial lawyers?).

What does it do?

“This measure would urge the California Department of Aging and the area agencies on aging to incorporate fall prevention in their upcoming state and local area master plans and recommend the California Health and Human Services Agency develop standardized definitions and reporting methods that will improve available information on falls. This measure would also recommend that fall prevention guidelines be incorporated into state and local planning documents that affect housing, transportation, parks, recreational facilities,

Language amending abill to delay Prop 1 from the November 2008 ballot until the November 2010 ballot was accepted on the Assembly Floor today. SB 298 will contain language that will be referred to the proper committees for consideration. I was the floor manager for the amendments, which received a 54-9 vote, with only Dems voting "no" and a bunch not voting, to send the proposal to committee. Delaying a $10 Billion railbond vote during this fiscal mess makes sense to me. We’ll see what happens in the committee process as there isn’t much deadline time left to pull items off of the ballot that the legislature placed there.… Read More