No matter who you talk to everyone agrees — California’s finances are totally screwed up. Whether you are on the ideological left, fretting over what the sour economy means for social spending, or on the right, concerned about how the private sector will recover without regulatory relief from onerous state regulations and taxes –there is consensus around the idea that state government is in turmoil.

In the private sector, unemployment in California is in double-digits. A lot of people are out of work, and many others are taking big pay cuts. In the public sector, we are seeing workers furloughed and increasing pressure to reduce the size of the state workforce.

So you have to wonder, with this as the backdrop, what decision-making process goes through the mind of dozens of legislators who have gone off to Kauai and Maui for a pair of "conferences" at resort hotels, with their expenses being paid for by either "non-profits" funded by big… Read More

The California Fair Political Practices commission will be holding a public hearing tomorrow on twelve new areas of political campaigning that it is considering regulatory changes. Most of the proposals are actually good ones. But a couple are real stinkers (see below). The meeting will start at 1:00 pm Wednesday, November 17 at the FPPC headquarters in Sacramento, and will be held simultaneously by teleconference in Los Angeles at the Center for Government Studies, 10951 Pico Blvd., Ste. 120.

The new areas of regulation and the proposed additional regulations include: streamlining and improving access to electronic filings (a good idea); simplifying forms and reports (a good idea); streamlining deadlines for filing and making more sense of them (a good idea); increasing campaign finance thresholds (a good idea); create on electronic filing system that includes state and local election jurisdictions in one system (a good idea if it does not drive up the cost of compliance at the local level); improve ability to terminate old committees (a good idea); harmonize filing deadlines for different types of committees (probably a good idea);… Read More

John Fund in today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail… … Read More

This editorial appears in today’s Wall Street Journal… (Take note of section we bolded at bottom…) The Fannie Mae Republicans Some born again reformers were once the company’s defenders. A major task for the next Congress will be rewriting the laws governing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and House Republicans have now won a seat at that table. Which makes it all the more important that their seat not be occupied by Members who were once powerful defenders of the toxic mortgage twins. … Read More

What happened to the Central Valley?

We’ve heard for years about the man-made water shortages, high unemployment, localLatinopoliticians switching to the Republican party and how unpopular are the democrats. The only problem is that 5 key counties failed to vote.

Where was the gusto ?

The statewide average of registered voters is about 55%. Yet Fresno [44.7%], Kern [53.1%] , Merced [50.9%], Stanislaus [50.7%] and Tulare [42.5%] didn’t pull their respective weights. Some Republican power bases performed well, such as Ventura [59.5%] and San Diego [ 60.3% ! ].

Had the 5 central valley counties voted at 55% , we might have a new congressman Andy Vidak. Steve Cooley would have netted an additional 30,000 votes. Today, Cooley is behind some 14,000 votes.

… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail… … Read More

The conventional wisdom in the Attorney General Race went something like this. Cooley wins; he has been elected three times as District Attorney in a large Democratic county. On top of that Harris is an extreme liberal. Cooley wins.

As of this writing Cooley is down by less than 14,000 votes as final returns are coming in. What happened?

To be fair Cooley is the top vote getter in Los Angeles County on the GOP ticket. Whitman lost by 30 points. Cooley is losing by 14 points. Obviously he did better. But the GOP experts thought he would do much better than a 14 pt. loss and secure an easy win.

Cooley’s first election as District Attorney was in 2000.Remember Y2K, the CSI premiere and Ja Ja Binks.In 2000he got in a run off with incumbent Gil Garcetti. Garcetti was punished by Los Angeles voters over his office’s handling of some high profile cases and Cooley got over 1.4 million votes and over 63% of the vote. If you remember Robert Blake and the O.J. (not the orange juice) trial you know what I mean.

If you remember back that far. That is my point. That is a decade ago. That was the last time Cooley… Read More

Damn Stanford. $600 down the drain.

In my experience in life, people I have known who graduated from Stanford just think too hard. They are all smart, folks like election lawyers Chuck Bell, Dana Reed. But they just think too hard. And that is not necessarily a good thing.

I grew up in the Bay Area. My dad, who just had a high school education, had once hoped I’d go to Stanford. He used to take me to Stanford football games. I ended up gladly at USC, because I can think, but I do not think too hard. Though I did get admitted to Stanford Law School one summer for a very successful course in civil rights litigation which actually helped me in later life.

Nevertheless, the Stanford penchant for thinking too hard really nailed me and my 84 year old father in law yesterday, when freshman tailback Anthony Wilkerson, who was on his way to a 23 yard touchdown run against Arizona State in the last minute and a half of the game slid down untouched on the four yard line, thus… Read More