I have spent four years on the Woodland City Council and three on the Yolo County Board of Supervisors. This time of year I always get to be the lone "No" vote on taking positions on several ballot propositions.

On Tuesday one of my colleagues has put a resolution to oppose Prop 16 on our agenda. I oppose Prop 16 too. I also hate PG&E. I just don’t think local governments should be endorsing political candidates or measures.

Some of you will clearly be saying to yourself that "But this impacts local government. Cities and counties need to take a position." Nope.

I would argue that Jerry Brown is bad for local government. So why don’t we just have cities and counties all over the state endorse for Governor too? We can just take a position that we want "Anyone but Jerry Brown". That is good for local government yet almost everyone would say that is inappropriate.

It is wrong for local governments to get involved in the political process. I personally don’t see the distinction between ballot measures and candidates. Thus, I will be voting no regarding Yolo… Read More

In the upcoming election for Orange County Tax Assessor, of course I support Claude Parrish. I’m his "ex officio" appointee to the Orange County Republican Central Committee. Parrish is a long-time Republican activist, who moved to Orange County a few years ago and is doing the right thing in challenging incumbent Webster Guillory, one of just two Democrat elected officials in Orange County government. Parrish is endorsed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the National Tax Limitation Committee, and former Republican Governor George Dukemejian. Parrish has been a prodigious vote getter in Orange County, having won six times in the county for his two successful races for Board of Equalization (primary and general) and his race as the California State Treasurer four years ago (winning primary and general in Orange County but losing general statewide to Bill Lockyer).

It is puzzling to me, therefore, that Parrish has not been endorsed by peripatetic taxpayer crusader, Supervisor John Moorlach, who appears instead quite preoccupied with whether a 32 year old candidate for county Treasurer is qualified to serve. The… Read More

A pot-pourri from around the region…

Poway Schools’ big fuss on our dime… In the North County Times, Sunana Batra skewers the Poway Unified School District for continuing to pursue a legal battle against a teacher’s display of phrases such as "In God We Trust" on classroom banners. I have to wonder if the math teacher had used dollar bills in lessons and his students accidentally read the phrase, would he be in as much trouble. Just asking.

From Batra’s piece:

U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez ruled that (the teacher) did in fact have the right to display banners in his classroom which promoted specific phrases from our founding documents.

The questionable phrases would seem benign to most: they included "In God We Trust," "God Bless America" and "All men are created equal, they are endowed by their creator."

One would expect the Poway administrators to take some time after this resounding defeat to lick their wounds and move… Read More

This morning the Sacramento Bee had this piece about Sacramento City Councilman Ray Tretheway’s staff tearing down the signs of an opponent. Read/watch it here. This seems to happen every cycle somewhere.

Many of the readers of this blog remember the incident in May 1998 when Rich Sybert was caught tearing down Tony Strickland’s signs. Read here if you don’t remember.

Some people might say that this is the same thing. It is not. The amazing thing about the incident in 1998 is that it was not the signs being torn down that made it so bad for Sybert. It was the lie.

Sybert had told the LA Times that he was in bed when the signs were torn down. If I remember correctly he even encouraged people to ask his wife who was in bed with her at that time of night.

The opponent for Tretheway got this video yesterday. It is in the paper today and they are probably giddy. The reality is that the people involved will apologize, Tretheway will win and life will go on. If the… Read More

I take a vacation out of town for a few days, and of course nothing conveniently "slows down" in my absence. Guess I’ll play catch-up on this whole CalChamber/Jerry Brown dust-up, but I didn’t want to miss posting up this latest commercial from Steve Poizner… This spot is real "hard ball" and it will be interesting to see if a couple thousand rating points behind it in a statewide buy has an impacts. It represents the first time statewide voters will be exposed to the issue of through tv advertising to Meg Whitman’s lackluster voting record (briefly, in this ad)… (Team Whitman blasts Poizner for this ad here, though they don’t seem to say that anything in it is inaccurate, they just assault Poizner’s own record.)

… Read More

I misspent my adolescence in the 1970’s. In the first part of that time, I went to public schools that were the best in the nation. Ronald Reagan was Governor. 80% of the people could afford a median price home (about $25,000.00 at the time). Freeways took about 5 years to build. Gasoline was about 20 cents per gallon. California had just finished to California Water Project. It cost $300 a year to attend a UC school, and the total state budget was around $7 billion a year. There were no government employee unions, and CalPERS was the example to the nation of the right way to run a pension system

Interesting time. Recently my youngest daughter has hooked me on the television series "That ’70’s Show" which is rampant with sex, drugs, and rock and roll (which unfortunately the zeitgeist of the ’70’s), but really funny. I had friends who were like the characters in that show. I think that is what makes it so funny. The show is set in Wisconsin, which is unfortunate, because it is so applicable to the State Capitol of California in the 1970’s.

The Chamber just stopped its commercials on Jerry Brown,… Read More

There’s no shortage these days of informed opinion about how California is on the brink of economic disaster, no longer represents a place of creative innovation and may even become America’s first failed state. And those are the more optimistic ones. Kidding aside, these are dark days for the Golden State and they stand to be tough for a long while longer. But while midway through a critical election year and the middle of a severe recession seems like no time to review and evaluate the future direction of major public policy, that’s precisely what California needs to do. In every way, a shortfall of vision created many of our problems in the first place. Our budget deficits, pension crisis, record unemployment and unprecedented housing foreclosures are effects – not causes – of bad policy choices California has made over the past several years. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the public institutions that traditionally represent the best of California and the role they will play… Read More

There’s no shortage these days of informed opinion about how California is on the brink of economic disaster, no longer represents a place of creative innovation and may even become America’s first failed state. And those are the more optimistic ones. Kidding aside, these are dark days for the Golden State and they stand to be tough for a long while longer. But while midway through a critical election year and the middle of a severe recession seems like no time to review and evaluate the future direction of major public policy, that’s precisely what California needs to do. In every way, a shortfall of vision created many of our problems in the first place. Our budget deficits, pension crisis, record unemployment and unprecedented housing foreclosures are effects – not causes – of bad policy choices California has made over the past several years. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the public institutions that traditionally represent the best of California and the role they will play… Read More