Time to Share, Senator Feinstein
Sen. Dianne Feinstein said recently that she won’t decide whether to run for governor until she sees what the current candidates plan to do with the state budget.
Fine. Budget plans are important. She should start with hers.
When asked recently by an Associated Press reporter whether she was thinking about big-footing her way into next year’s governor’s race, California’s senior senator said, in effect, “Maybe.”
First, though, she wants to see what plans the existing pack of candidates have to deal with the state’s ongoing budget woes and determine how committed they are to making the changes that are needed.
“California is in considerable distress and there have to be reforms,’’ she said.
Shocked, Shocked To Find Taping In the Attorney General’s Office
I am shocked, shocked, shocked to discover a press spokesman
taping on-the-record conversations between his boss and reporters.
This
sort of recording took place only just about every time I interviewed a
politician during the 2008 presidential campaign. And during the 2003
gubernatorial campaign. And during most high-profile campaigns for office. And
during any number of impromptu press availabilities in the state Capitol. Such
taping, after all, is only legal in 38 states of the 50 states, so such an
obviously illegal act truly is outrageous. For someone to record such
conversations over the phone now, as former Jerry Brown spokesman Scott Gerber
did… Hey, did I mention I was shocked?
And I totally share the outrage on
both left and right over the attorney general’s investigation, which was so
cursory that it only released 93 pages of transcripts and emails that, in the
effort to cover up this terrible crime, revealed that Brown’s chief deputy Jim
Humes had advance warning of at least one of the tapings.
Barack Obama Proves He’s No Bill Clinton
Milton Friedman famously observed that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program. In the political world, the Democrats have learned that something of the reverse is also true: there is nothing so temporary as a permanent political trend.
One year ago, Democrats were proclaiming they had established in 2008 a winning political coalition that would last a generation. Independent voters had joined labor unions, ethnic and other groups to form an invincible coalition that would guarantee Democrat victories for the foreseeable future.
Well, the “foreseeable future” lasted about as long as a failed one season comedy on NBC.
What a difference a year makes. Today, Democrats are clearing out of two governor’s offices while Republicans are preparing to move in. A Republican is preparing to take a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, four counties in New York State fell this month, and the list goes on.
“Hope” and “change” may have been enough in 2008, but that didn’t cut it in 2009.
Standing Up for Small Businesses
It’s been a tough year for small businesses in California. But thanks to Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, 2010 could be a little brighter because the members of our small business organization are less likely to be saddled with increased workers’ compensation insurance costs of as much as 23 percent.
Poizner recently stood up to the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (WCIRB), an insurance industry financed organization, by rejecting its call for a 22.8 percent rate increase in workers’ comp premiums. That would mean the costs of covering the hundreds of thousands of our member’s employees would jump almost 25 percent. And that’s just the average – some of our members could have seen rates jump much higher.
It’s no secret that higher operating costs means less job creation and could eventually lead to further layoffs, adding to the state’s already record-high unemployment rate.