One need not be a pollster or political scientist to conclude
that with each passing day, California voters have become increasingly wary and
frustrated with government’s (in)ability to get it right.  Once again, our state faces a
multibillion dollar deficit and the news will not get better for many years to
come.

How are taxpayers expected to have any faith that the very
politicians and bureaucrats that have mismanaged government agencies,
departments and budgets time after time would be any more competent assuming
and managing something as critically important as healthcare? 

The
sad but proven truth is that government-run healthcare will add more
bureaucracy and a hefty price tag to California taxpayers, small businesses and
jobs.  That is why the National
Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) so strongly opposed a recent
single-payer proposal in the form of Senate Bill 810 (Leno).

A new poll by the AB 32 Implementation Group showed voter support for California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) has dramatically declined. After hearing arguments for and against the measure, 56% of voters approved of AB 32 and 40% opposed.

The fact AB 32 won’t have any measurable impact on reducing global warming, its price tag of billions of dollars in higher energy costs and hidden tax increases, and its impact on jobs drove voter opposition to the measure.

Voters were particularly concerned about the conclusions from the California Small Business Roundtable’s study of the impact of AB 32 on small business in California. This study found that AB 32 would cost the average small business in California about $50,000 per year and would destroy more than one million California jobs.

Carly Fiorina’s new anti-Tom Campbell video may be one of the most bizarre (baaa-zare?) campaign hit pieces the state has ever seen, but since it has people talking about the GOP Senate race, it’s mission at least partially accomplished for the former Hewlett-Packard CEO.

But behind the low-end effects, the ovine-metaphor overkill, and the cheesiest red-eyed sheep suit in history, there’s a real gamble taking place, one that could decide who will challenge Democrat Barbara Boxer in November.

Fiorina and her team are betting just about everything on their conviction that California Republicans are so vehemently anti-tax that even a hint of support for new levies spells doom for a GOP candidate.

That’s why the tough-talking three-minute-long video, available on Fiorina’s new website, FCINO.COM, depicts Campbell as “Taxin’ Tom,” a liberal-leaning career politician whose only solution to California’s fiscal problems is more taxes.

Joel Fox is offering a guarantee against rising oil prices!

Well, he didn’t explicitly offer that guarantee, but that’s the inference I drew from his recent column in which he worries that alternative fuels elicited by Governor Schwarzenegger’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard could raise transportation costs for California consumers. Apparently Joel is so certain that gas prices won’t rise that he’d rather California remain reliant on that product for 97% of its transportation fuels than seek alternatives.

I’m glad he’s offering that guarantee because I’m not comfortable with that bet. Instead, I’m betting Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and Venezuela want oil prices to rise, and I’m betting that gasoline demand by the three billion new drivers in China, India and other rapidly-developing countries is likely to make that happen. So I would like alternatives.

What an entertaining week! No, I’m not talking about the re-emergence of the LOST TV series. I’m talking about the dramatic and open fratricide practiced by high profile Republican candidates in California.

“Cutting up” opposition candidates is part of the political game. However, resorting to the use of a “wood chipper” to accomplish this goal takes the analogy to the extreme, as Meg Whitman consultant Mike Murphy did in his infamous email referring to the damage Whitman could inflict on gubernatorial political rival Steve Poizner.

Poizner running off to the FBI over the offending email brought the first of what appears to be a weeklong rush to the thesaurus to find words that match “weird” and “bizarre” to attach to Republican political tactics. Attorney General and would be governor Jerry Brown received one of Poizner’s complaint letters. He’s probably using the letter to cover up his month so we can’t see his smile while he says he’ll keep an investigation alive until, oh let’s say, the first week in June.

Repair California, the committee trying to qualify
constitutional convention measures for the California ballot, says it is being
blacklisted by at least some of the state’s major signature gathering firms.

In a press release and in letters to signature gathering
companies, Repair says it’s not merely that gatherers won’t carry petitions. In
some cases, its own volunteer circulators are being blocked. "Also, there
is evidence of "dirty tricks" designed to thwart the Constitutional Convention
petition effort," says the release, available at Repair’s web site.
"For example, persons acting on the signature gathering firms’ behalf may
have thrown valid signatures away." The cease-and-desist letter, as
released by Repair, does not identify the companies in question.

When I asked Repair California’s campaign director, John
Grubb, on Wednesday which firms appeared to be carrying on the blacklist, he
named three firms. California has six such firms. I’ve decided not to name the
three firms here, for the time being, as I try to learn more about this. The
owners of two of the firms mentioned did not return my calls yesterday. The
owner of a third firm did, but would not comment for the record.

They blinked at layoffs. They blinked at eliminating or slashing funding
for the disabled, for the elderly, for Neighborhood Councils, for
Environment Affairs, Arts, Culture, for just about everything that was
proposed to stave off bankruptcy.

They blinked and squinted in the face of the daunting task they face of
cutting spending, cutting staff, streamlining government.

Watching hour after hour on Wednesday of the City Council confront the
truth of what they have wrought was like suddenly being transported to a
strange planet where everything works backwards.

Are they crazy? Or is it us for allowing them to get away with creating
such a calamity?

The battle over California’s greenhouse gas regulations has shifted to the federal courts in an effort to slow down and shed more light on the issues surrounding the first in the nation mandates for cleaner, low-carbon fuels. Those regulations need to be vetted to understand what they mean to California consumers and the economy.

The way CARB regulations and other attacks on oil production are shaping up both consumers and the economy are bound to suffer.

Yesterday’s filing in the U.S. District Court in Fresno was the third lawsuit to challenge Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulations adopted by the California Air Resources Board.

The National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, American Trucking Associations, The Center for North American Energy Security and the Consumer Energy Alliance claim in the lawsuit that the regulations interfere with interstate commerce and do little to reduce the country’s greenhouse gases.

That was a short campaign.

Less than a week after leaking a private poll that showed her trouncing a crowded field of Democrats in the primary for attorney general, Jackie Speier has decided to hang on to her congressional seat.

That’s bad news for the legion of Bay Area Democrats yearning for that rare chance to run for an open, non-term-limited congressional seat in a district Abe Lincoln couldn’t win for the Republicans.

“She’s going to remain in Congress where she can focus on issues that she cares about,” said Nathan Ballard, a former spokesman for S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom who’s now working for Speier.

The decision came as a surprise to many political junkies, since officeholders who announce that they’re “considering” a run for another office typically already have the campaign signs painted.