Congratulations, I guess.

After a messy in-house squabble, Assemblyman John Perez of Los Angeles was anointed Thursday as the next speaker by his fellow Democrats. Although the formal vote on the Assembly floor isn’t anticipated until January, it’s expected to be a mere formality, with no Republican votes needed

So Perez, who’s been in office less than a year, now gets to step into what historically has been one of the most important posts in California after a landmark win for a young politician.

He should be careful what he wishes for. Just ask Karen Bass.

Bass, who’s also from Los Angeles, was sworn in as speaker in May 2008. During her first two terms, Bass pushed hard to make life better for California foster children, provide health insurance for California young people and make improvements in her district.

The battle over Race to the Top federal education grants is a perfect example of what’s wrong with California lawmaking and lawmakers. To satisfy federal guidelines and capture up to $700 million in federal Race to the Top school reform funds, separate factions in the legislature have engaged in a tug of war instead of pulling on the same end of the rope to secure the funds.

As usual, there is one faction of lawmakers doing union bidding. The unions object to the stronger charter school language in the bill passed by the Senate that also gives more power to those pesky parents who demand excellence from their children’s schools.

Under the Senate bill, authored by Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), if a petition is signed by more than fifty percent of the parents, the school may be taken over by new leadership, including charter school operators. The union backed Assembly bill put forward by Julia Brownley (D-Santa Monica) offers a watered down version of the parent trigger, which would just set off a bureaucratic paradise of hearings and little action to improve education for students.

In the latest political indicator to show further shift toward Republicans, independent voters are now favoring GOP congressional candidates by 22% over their Democrat competitors, according to Gallup.

The ongoing shift of unaffiliated voters toward the Republican Party stands in stark contrast to the 2006 and 2008 elections when independent voters preferred Democrats. Taken alone this trend is significant enough, but when viewed together with falling Presidential approval (47%) and growing numbers of Americans who are identifying with the Republican Party (40%, up from 35% in Jan.), we see that we are working in a political environment very different than the one we were in a year ago.

When reviewing political trends, one common mistake is to assume that by definition independent voters are all ideological centrists whose personal philosophy falls somewhere in between the Republican and Democrat parties. The subsequent advice from those who make this assumption is that victory goes to whichever side chooses to “move to the center.” Simple.

I have been afforded the opportunity to interview academics and scholars from throughout the world. I have to say I am quite frightened by what I have learned. I am even more concerned about what the average citizen does not know about what is happening in our world today.

For instance, due to a virtual media blackout, unless you peruse certain internet sites or watch Fox News, you have not heard about what is perhaps the greatest scientific scandal of our time involving some leading scientists and academics on the subject of global warming. The scandal has been dubbed “Climategate”. It involves the most important and central scientists in the world who have led the effort which would serve to scare us into believing that the core manufacturing, transportation and energy sectors of the world are destroying the planet and something must be done immediately or else.

On a cold, bright winter day in December 1986 I waited with a throng of reporters and aircraft devotees in the Mojave Desert for the return of the Voyager. The specially built aircraft designed by Burt Rutan and piloted by his brother Dick Rutan and Jean Yeager was completing a nine-day first ever non-stop flight around the globe. I thought of that event as I watched on the Internet the Mojave ceremony unveiling the latest Burt Rutan flying craft, the Virgin Space Ship Enterprise – the first commercial manned spacecraft.

Sponsored in large part by entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, the spacecraft, which can carry six passengers and two pilots, was developed and built in California at the Mojave Air and Space Port. It will be tested there for a couple of years before moving to its home at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Both California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson attended the ceremony on Monday.

It’s been two months since Ronald George, chief justice of the California Supreme Court, gave a speech sharply critical of the ballot initiative process.

It was an important address. And, for the most part, the speech was on target in identifying California’s peculiar initiative process (we’re the only American jurisdiction in which a statute passed by initiative can only be altered by another vote of the people) as a culprit in the state’s governing and fiscal crisis.

But in the past couple months, as I’ve thought more about the speech, a few things have bothered me. I re-read it recently and offer two small criticisms, and one large one:

– George exaggerates in the speech how easy it is to qualify and pass an initiative constitutional amendment. California permits a relatively small number of petition signers – equal to at least 8% of the voters in the last gubernatorial election – to place before the voters a proposal to amend any aspect of our Constitution.” That’s not a relatively small number – right now, it works out to just under 700,000 valid signatures. As a pratical matter, petition circulators who want to be sure to qualify for the ballot need to gather more than 1 million signatures. That’s at least a $2 million process. There’s nothing “relatively small” about such an enterprise.

The recent news that Dubai may make a stunning financial belly-flop probably shouldn’t be surprising. After all, Dubai is now finishing construction of the world’s tallest building.

If you said, “Huh?” here’s the explanation: There’s a correlation between tall buildings and falling fortunes. A Deutsche Bank economist 10 years ago came up with the Skyscraper Index, in which he postulated that unusually tall buildings tend to get built (or announced to be built) just before recessions, depressions and financial panics.

Examples abound. The Metropolitan Life Tower in New York was the world’s tallest building for a few years; its construction was announced a couple of years before the Panic of 1907. Three buildings in New York – the Chrysler Building, 40 Wall Street and the Empire State Building – were constructed about the same time and each had a claim as being the world’s tallest, although the claim was brief for two. All three flung open their doors just in time to usher in the Great Depression.

Comfortably ensconced in a Sussex Countryhouse Hotel, at the Future of Finance Initiative, a conference organized (“organised,” if you are a British journalist) by The Wall Street Journal, top flight bankers and financiers are meeting to discuss the near-death experience of the banking industry in Fall 2008, and whither we goest from here. Former US Fed Chairman Paul Volcker told the impressive assembly that they had better ‘wake up’ before it is too late.

When I say these things here, it is just me; when Mr. Volcker says them, financial movers and shakers might actually listen.

Volcker told them that they failed to understand just how close to the edge the US economy, and therefore the world economy, had come in the Fall of 2008. He also told them they were being pigs about excessive compensation and that complex and exotic financial products (that I have written about here too many times to count), such as credit default swaps (CDS) were a real Witches Brew of trouble.
Volcker was in charge of the US Fed from 1979 to 1987 and currently chairs President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He should know from whence he speaks as Volcker presided over several up and down cycles in the US economy (for those who remember back that far).

Political consultants, both Republicans and Democrats, likely breathed deep sighs of relief last week when a federal appeals court blocked efforts to force Prop. 8 supporters to turn over private campaign strategy records to supporters of gay marriage.

It wasn’t the politics of the case that put the usually dueling opponents on the same side, since the Democratic consultants generally support same-sex marriage, while many of their GOP counterparts oppose it. No, this one was strictly business.

If political enemies – or even friends – could subpoena the private and often uninhibited musings that consultants put out during a hard-fought campaign, a new day was going to be looming for campaign work. And it wouldn’t be fun.

In an amicus filing in the case, the ACLU of Northern California, a longtime backer of same-sex marriage, argued that opening campaign documents for legal fishing expeditions would have a “chilling effect” on political campaigns.