California: Ca 45

July 3, 2009 - 03:39 pm

Number of references to public employee unions in NYT's 8,000-word look on why California is a disaster: Zero. I repeat: Zero.

I begin reading the long story by Mark Leibovich in this coming Sunday's N.Y. Times magazine with dread. I have literally not read a single story by an East Coast-based newspaper or magazine in five years that goes beyond the...

July 2, 2009 - 07:09 pm

California has more recipients in key welfare category than next eight states combined

When I heard Assemblyman Chuck DeVore in a radio interview saying a never-discussed part of the budget debate was how California's failure to aggressively implement the 1996 federal welfare reform act had kept its welfare rolls far bigger than other...

July 2, 2009 - 04:21 pm

Budget debacle: It's Bill Lockyer's turn to blame the victim (i.e., those idiot voters)

Bill Lockyer, in apparent seriousness, had this to say yesterday, according to the L.A. Times: How about two budgets? One for the liberal coast and another for the more conservative inland regions. "We'll have the budget for the coast that...

July 2, 2009 - 02:11 pm

Busby incident, five days later: Where's the video? The pictures? The corroboration?

In September 2007, when a questioner caused a ruckus at a forum featuring Sen. John Kerry at the University of Florida and was handled roughly by police, the video of the incident made it on YouTube within hours. "Don't...

July 1, 2009 - 07:36 pm

Open invite to public employees: Prove high pay and benefits are crucial to retaining public employees

Open invitation to any public employee or anyone else: Please refute the following with any hard stats or data: The truth that's waiting to be discovered is that public employee pay in nearly every category could be frozen for years,...

July 1, 2009 - 06:46 pm

'Talk radio isn't the problem; the Legislature is the problem'

Bruce Maiman has a great op-ed in the Sac Bee on Karen Bass' absurd likening of her loudest critics to "terrorists": She's made this claim before, but at the risk of being overly hyperbolic and dramatically incredulous, may I ask...

July 1, 2009 - 06:46 pm

'Talk radio isn't the problem; the Legislature is the problem'

Bruce Maiman has a great op-ed in the Sac Bee on Karen Bass' absurd likening of her loudest critics to "terrorists": She's made this claim before, but at the risk of being overly hyperbolic and dramatically incredulous, may I ask...

July 1, 2009 - 01:48 pm

The Francine Busby follies

It got her attention from Keith Olbermann and probably works as a fund-raising tool, but I think Francine Busby someday will regret hinting that she is the victim of some vast right-wing plot because of her supporters' confrontation with...

June 30, 2009 - 02:35 pm

Busby fund-raiser had a previous arrest on assault allegations

Hospital CEO/political blogger Barry Jantz has a juicy addendum to the stories in recent days about the incident at a Cardiff home fundraiser for 50th congressional district candidate Francine Busby in which host Shari Barman was arrested by a sheriff's...

June 30, 2009 - 01:59 pm

Journos using euphemisms for tax hikes: One more sign of their contempt for public they see as petulant and stupid

Last year, I wrote a post about UC Berkeley linguist George Lakoff, who became a Democratic Party guru a few years back when he wrote essays arguing that the main reason Democrats were then in the doldrums was because they...