Brown Debate Idea May be Ahead of it’s Time; But Not This Year
Jerry Brown’s weekend suggestion at the state Democratic convention that a pre-primary debate take place between him and his main Republican rivals is a way for Brown to insert himself into the Republican primary. He is following the example of his one time chief-of-staff and later governor, Gray Davis, who jumped into the 2002 Republican gubernatorial primary. Davis ran ads to undercut his most feared opponent, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan.
Davis was sitting on enough campaign cash in those pre-billionaire candidate days to afford to spend some campaign funds and weaken his rival. Brown needs to husband all the money he has for a November election battle so his plan is to disrupt leading Republican candidate, Meg Whitman, by drawing her into a three-way debate.
As Riordan rival Bill Simon welcomed Davis’s ads nearly a decade ago, Steve Poizner saw Brown’s move as an advantage to his tough uphill campaign and eagerly agreed to the debate.
Main Street Menace: SB 885 (Corbett) – No Gift for Small Business
While the legislature is in session, the National Federation of Independent Business/California will be profiling anti-small business bills and the adverse effect they would have on California’s job creators. This is the first column of the 2010 series.
We’ve all got them in our wallets, purses and desk drawers. They hide from us and we forget that we have them until we “discover’ them again. What are we referring to? Gift certificates – the best one-size-size-fits-all present for those family members or friends that are the hardest to shop for. But as usual, the California legislature can’t leave anything alone…now they’re proposing a change to gift certificates that is no gift for small business, especially mom-and-pop retailers.
Senate Bill 885 doubles the gift certificate redemption provision from a value of $10 to a value of “less than $20” and requires a printed disclosure statement be included on each card or certificate. Doubling the value of the cash-out provision increases the burden already facing small business owners by expanding potential financial liabilities with outstanding gift certificates.
Who Will Get the Disappearing California Construction Jobs?
Construction employment in California has been in free-fall since reaching its high water mark in August 2006, as shown in the table below.
Over the past year, federal Stimulus infrastructure projects in California have moved forward and hired construction workers. This is particularly true of transportation projects, for which Caltrans is closely tracking payroll data on employees, hours, and total payroll.
What is not widely recognized, though, is that public infrastructure jobs are only a small part of total construction jobs in California. These public infrastructure jobs are the higher paid construction jobs, but amount to around 10% of construction employment.
10,000 in Plesanton say Bailouts Are Not The Answer
In 2000, I did a rally at the Pleasanton Fairgrounds as Bay Area Chairman for Bush-Cheney that drew 5,000 people. I remember at the time, Bush Chairman Gerry Parsky told me that the soon-to-be-Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney “felt like a rock star” speaking before such a large crowd in the Bay Area.
My estimates when I spoke at Thursday’s rally was about 1,000 attendees, but according to the Contra Costa Times, the rally drew 10,000 throughout the day. Those are police estimates – not organizers’ estimates.
The Pleasanton TEA Rally received statewide press this week in the LA Times and San Francisco Chronicle due to organizer Bridget Melson’s un-invitation to “birther movement” leader Orly Taitz, who believes President Obama is not constitutionally qualified to be president. This is crazy talk, and the organizers did the right thing in ousting her from the program. Dr. Melson held an orderly rally – complete with radio talk show hosts, comedians, bands, and oh yeah – political speeches.