Checking Rough and Tumble in the early afternoon yesterday to catch up on the latest California news, the first two headlines made me think I had fallen through a time warp. The first said Tom Campbell was running for the U.S. Senate. The second said the Schwarzenegger Budget was overly optimistic. I’ve read those stories before. Must have come from the archives.

Then I came upon the third story: Assembly committee okays recreational marijuana use and proposes to tax it.

Now, here is something new. I figured that the legislature was going to try a new way to solve the budget problem. By a 4 to 3 vote the Assembly Public Safety Committee moved forward AB 390 by Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco).

I’m a softie for a few things. Children. Puppies. And immigrant entrepreneurs.

Puppies because their fresh eyes are struck with wonder and awe at what the rest of us ignore as humdrum. Children because their spirits have not yet been crushed by cynicism; they dream of doing fun, marvelous things in a long life of boundless opportunities.

And immigrant entrepreneurs because, well, pretty much because of the same reasons.

Immigrants land on these shores and are thunderstruck by what we native-born Americans dismiss as ordinary. They see so clearly what we’ve stopped seeing.

Take the word “opportunity.” Many Americans are so accustomed to that word that it seems empty. We’re not really sure, even, what it means. Or what it looks like when it smacks you upside the head.

Governor Schwarzenegger is right on the mark by making legal reform one of his top 5 priorities he outlined in the State of the State. Although legal reform was not part of his speech, it is included as one of his five proposals to get California’s economy back on track.

Focusing on the elimination of frivolous lawsuits as a part of our economic recovery is a huge step forward. Governor Schwarzenegger has always understood litigation reform. He is a businessman and and I think he better than most knows what kind of damage a lawsuit can do.

The Governor’s proposal is to focus on on an atmosphere in which businesses can thrive. He will propose a series of changes to regulations governing class action lawsuits, product liability suits and seek to cap punitive damage awards. While the devil is always in the details, this will be huge reform if delivered to the Governor’s desk later this year.

With the announcement that Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley is exploring a run for Attorney General, the Republican field is starting to look more like the Democratic field as an interesting, wide-open race.

For the longest time only State Senator Tom Harman announced for the seat on the Republican side. In the last couple of weeks, legal scholar John Eastman, Dean of the Chapman University Law School, and now Cooley said they are looking at the office.

Harman’s campaign immediately attacked Cooley with a press release from Harman supporter Mike Reynolds, chief proponent of the three-strikes-go-to-jail-for-life law. The release called Cooley “the most prominent opponent” of the law. Cooley backed a 2006 measure to add flexibility to the three-strikes law by giving judges more discretion in sentencing three-timers depending on the seriousness of the third offense.

If you’re looking for a clue about whether Republican Tom Campbell is giving up his long-shot run for governor to switch to the Senate race, it may be what Sherlock Holmes called “the dog that didn’t bark.”

It’s been four days since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released his new budget and Campbell has been MIA, with nary a speech, blog post or white board presentation. That’s not like the economics professor who takes pride in being a government finance geek.

Campbell hasn’t said a word about any change in plans, but there’s lots of evidence out there for a political CSI team.

On Campbell’s campaign web site, you’ll find plenty on “Tom Campbell in the News,” but not a single piece speculating about the possible political switcheroo. It’s not that they’re hard to find, since you can see them here, here and here, just for starters.

Remember the basic premise of Robin Hood? The rich king and his fellow nobles were exploiting the poor through excessive taxation and oppressive application of the laws of the land.

Robin Hood and his merry men embarked on a novel scheme to steal from the rich and redistribute the loot to the poor through a variety of clever means. Their outlaw hideouts were deep in the forests of England and their “uniform” was green in order to mask themselves most effectively.

Green is certainly the in vogue color, and many in the environmental movement would love to have the general public believe that the Robin Hood philosophy of redistributing income from rich to poor is their modus operandi too.

Perhaps some simple comparing and contrasting would allow us to determine whether this claim stands up to any scrutiny.

California is on the verge of adopting CALGREEN, the nation’s first set of mandatory green building standards. And oddly enough, the green building lobby is leading an effort to scuttle this proposal.

They are not opposed because they think CALGREEN standards are weak. Their materials show they are opposing this effort because it would challenge their bottom line and the monopoly they hold on labeling buildings.

When you follow the money and examine the actions of these advocates, led by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Northern California Chapter (USGBC-NCC) – a private organization – it becomes obvious that the control of who can label a building has taken precedent over a broad statewide policy that would make every building in this state greener.

This provincial perspective and fight over handing out pretty plaques is at the expense of reducing emissions, saving energy and water, and easily applying cost-effective sustainable practices statewide.

The chorus is growing louder that an oil severance tax must be part of the budget solution. Proponents of the tax on extracting oil from the ground or from under the sea echo the same refrain that California is the only oil producing state that does not levy such a tax. What supporters of the tax fail to mention is that oil production is already heavily taxed in California. Adding an oil severance tax would zoom California oil producers to the top of the tax chart by a significant degree and that has consequences.

Oil companies in the Golden State pay corporate income taxes, property taxes and sales taxes on their business. Not all oil producing states assess all these taxes, nor are the tax rates the same as high income, high sales and high corporate tax California.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has figured out a way to jumpstart the budget debate by pumping out the fiscal smoke and setting up the financial mirrors at the beginning of the process instead of at the end.

As state law requires, the governor produced a balanced budget last Friday. But to make those numbers work, Schwarzenegger and his financial team were forced to work more magic than the faculty of Hogwarts School.

Let’s take the big stuff first. After the governor added in some new revenue and subtracted some cuts, the budget was still out of balance.

But if you just figure that the federal government owes the state some $6.9 billion –and will actually pay it – then abracadabra, the budget’s in balance.