Speaking to an audience gathered in Santa Monica last night to commemorate the life of late political consultant Kam Kuwata, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein concluded her praise for her long time friend with a surprise announcement. She said she had to keep a lot of secrets as the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, but she added, she was going to share one secret. At 7:30 pm tonight, she went on, the president is going to come on television to announce Osama Bin Laden had been killed.

There were gasps from the audience, and after another sentence or two from the senator, applause. About 200 people attended the event including a number of state and local officials such as Former Governor Gray Davis and state Controller John Chiang.

Her announcement actually occurred a little after 7:30 pm by my watch, but the president would not get to make his speech for another hour or so.

One benefit of having a political system as stuck as
California’s is that Gov. Jerry Brown should be able to think of his health
first and take as much time as he needs to rest up and recover from the removal
of a cancerous growth – the very common basal cell carcinoma — on his nose.
Get well soon, governor. Though your office says you’re still working — but
not going out in public for a few days – you should feel no shame about getting
whatever rest you need.  Everyone, from your
allies to Republican legislators, will be in the very same place that you left
them when you get back.

That said,
I am a little bit curious how much attention will be paid to the way the
administration handled this announcement.

A couple
Thursdays ago, on April 21, Brown made an appearance in Santa Clarita with a
small bandage on his nose. This was the first Brown event I’d been to in a
couple weeks, and I asked reporters if this was new. It was. When a Sacramento
Bee reporter asked about the bandage, Anne Gust Brown said the governor had had
something removed but it wasn’t cancerous.

Today, in California, workers and families are struggling in way they have not in recent memory. With 12% unemployment – second highest in the nation – many workers cannot find jobs to pay the mortgage and cover basic expenses like food and clothes. In addition, nearly seven million Californians are uninsured meaning few families can afford the medical care they need and many do not have access to doctors outside those in hospital emergency rooms.

In light of this, legislation that requires a prescription to purchase common cold and allergy medications with pseudoephedrine (PSE) is misguided and would punish those who need care the most. Making basic medications like Claritin-D and Sudafed accessible only after seeing a doctor would unnecessarily increase costs and place burdens on those who can least afford it. A prescription mandate would force students and workers who depend on these medicines to miss days in the classroom and hours on the job exacerbating already difficult situations.

And for those without insurance, the inability to obtain routine medicines they and their family depend on would result in ailments turning to sicknesses requiring immediate care, which would place additional strains on local hospitals, many of which are reeling from recent budget cuts. During allergy season, these numbers could grow significantly and impact Californians suffering from asthma and allergies.

On April 19, McDonald’s franchises across the nation held a
National Hiring Day with the goal of hiring 50,000 workers nationwide,
including around 2000 in Northern California. Scott Rodrick is the owner of 10
McDonald’s in San Francisco. His experience on this Day sheds light  on the current state of the  economy in California, and on the role of
McDonald’s jobs in the state’s labor market.

Rodrick  grew up in a
McDonald’s family ("I have ketchup in my blood"). His father  purchased a McDonald’s franchise in Florida in
1965. Scott’s first job was in a McDonald’s. After attending Dartmouth as a
undergraduate and working for a time in finance, Scott purchased his first
McDonald’s store in 1989. At present he owns 10 of the 19 McDonald’s in San
Francisco.

Rodrick estimates that each of his McDonald’s employs an
average of 50 workers.  Roughly, 35 of
these workers are full-time, 15 part-time. Each store has 5-6 management staff,
with the bulk  of the line workers
cross-trained to handle kitchen duties, cash register, and maintenance.

The Sacramento Bee recently reported that both Senate President Pro Tem Darryl Steinberg (an attorney) and Treasurer Bill Lockyer (an attorney) are suggesting that the Legislature will cut funding for certain government services and programs to citizens in GOP districts if the legislator representing said districts refuse to budge on tax increases to close the budget deficit.

Steinberg is reported to have said: “You don’t want to pay for government, well then, you get less of it.” Further, he is quoted as saying: “When it comes to kids or the vulnerable, I wouldn’t want to make distinctions between who lives in a Democratic district and who lives in a Republican district, but when it comes to sort of basic services, convenience services that affect adults … I have an open mind.”

The Bee reported that the Treasurer shares the same view, stating that Lockyer “has suggested that an all-cuts state budget should focus on the districts of lawmakers who oppose putting $11 billion in tax extensions before voters.”

So much
for austerity.

In his
first billion-dollar giveaway that places Union bosses ahead of struggling
taxpayers, Governor Jerry Brown shows in deed that it’s business as usual at
the Capitol these days.

On
Monday, the Senate is scheduled to vote on Senate Bill (SB) 151 – the quickest
giveaway of taxpayer dollars to a political ally that I can remember in recent
history.

In a
deal between Governor Jerry Brown and the prison guards’ Union in California
last week, Brown agreed to a contract that removes the limit of vacation days
and other days off that prison guards can "cash in" on when they retire – all
at their highest rate of pay. We’re talking big money here. Nearly a billion
dollars. Now, I know that prison guards work hard. In fact, I’ve been on a tour
to one of their facilities with a candidate, and I appreciate their keeping us
safe despite a skirmish in the yard. But come on. Under the current system,
prison guards are already entitled to eight weeks of vacation annually. I know
of no other employee (hard worker or not) who has that much time off, outside
of maybe France.

Apparently you can’t. So far this year the Assembly Judiciary Committee has blown bills containing legal reform out of the water like sitting ducks. I’m not sure what it will take for the Legislature to embrace legal reform, but the evidence that lawsuit abuse is costing California jobs is mounting.

This past Sunday in The Sacramento Bee, Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants headquartered in Carpenteria wrote anop-ed about what California has to do to add jobs and make this state prosper once again. He laid out the question of whether California is a smart place to expand your business considering the tax, regulatory and legal climates or if it is smarter to just head to Texas. If you have not read it, you should. It should be required reading, especially for our Legislators on the Judiciary Committee.

What was more surprising is that he said in the 10 years he has been a CEO, he has never received a call from one of California’s Governors. It seems like the only time he spoke to a Governor was when Governor Perry of Texas called him to thank him for expanding the number of restaurants in his state. The Governor also asked what it would take to move CKE’s headquarters to Texas.

Autism Awareness Month is coming to a close. Despite all of the “angels” that are out there in the world who are seeking answers to the why and how of autism or who educate children and adults with autism, I am left with a sense of foreboding. Perhaps it is a reflection of my own mortality viewed through the prism of my daughter who is autistic and who is now a young adult.

My daughter is part of the initial and growing wave of rapidly aging individuals diagnosed with autism. She lives in a state and a society which is completely unprepared, and perhaps incapable, of dealing with her needs. I wake up in the night, wondering what her life will be like when my wife and I are gone. It is at those moments that fear creeps in.

I
suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at the Economist Magazine’s series of articles this
week upbraiding California and the initiative process. You can look back over
the years and find the Economist’s disdain for Proposition 13. What is
surprising is how unbalanced the articles are. Hardly any supporters of the
initiative process were given a chance to speak and some of the outlandish
comments against the process were left unchallenged.

Here’s a
prime example: The article quoted former Assembly Speaker Karen Bass saying,
"any billionaire can change the state constitution. All he has to do is spend
money and lie to people." In elections just the past few years, ultra-rich
individuals T. Boone Pickens (Prop 10, Alternative Fuels, 2008) and Stephen
Bing (Prop 87, oil severance tax, 2006) and free spending companies PG&E
(Prop 16, two-thirds vote for public energy provider, 2010) and Mercury
Insurance (Prop 17, discount auto insurance, 2010) all failed to change the law
with their money. Yet, not a word to counter the inaccurate picture Bass paints
in that article.