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Back to homepageBrown’s Budget Blockbuster
MARCH 22, 2011 By WAYNE LUSVARDI (Satire) Gov. Jerry Brown may have learned in Jesuit school how to put the proverbial sacrificial lamb on the state budget altar for slaying. Or maybe he learned from all those Hollywood cinema tycoons
Read MoreActivists Gear Up to Stop Tax Increase
MARCH 21, 2011 By JOHN SEILER Opponents of Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed $12 billion tax increase already are spoiling for a fight. They’re not waiting to find out the fate of the governor’s proposal to put the matter before voters
Read MoreLuntz Warns Divided GOP on Taxes
MARCH 21, 2011 UPDATED 8:15 p.m. By KATY GRIMES As nearly 2,000 Republicans from around the state met in Sacramento over the weekend for the California Republican Party Convention, the elephant in every room was the divide within the party.
Read MoreNational City Eminent Domain On Ropes?
MARCH 21, 2011 By WAYNE LUSVARDI Just as State Assembly Republicans were pulling their punches to keep eminent domain alive for redevelopment in California, a timely eminent domain case involving the taking of a youth boxing center has emerged in National
Read MoreBudget Negotiations Getting Combative
MARCH 18, 2011 By KATY GRIMES The Legislature Thursday passed the main budget bill, with nearly $14 billion in spending reductions. Budgets would be slashed for libraries, higher education, parks, programs for the poor, universities and colleges, state parks and
Read MoreFamilies, Not Relief, Still Safety Net
MARCH 18, 2011 By WAYNE LUSVARDI With implications for California budget discussions, a new study shows that unemployment benefits delay the time the jobless find work. The study comes out at a time when California’s unemployment rate of 12.4 percent
Read MoreAssembly OKs Prisoner Dump
MARCH 18, 2011 By DAVE ROBERTS On a straight party-line vote, California Assembly Democrats approved a public safety bill on Thursday that Republicans warned will dump inmates out of overcrowded state prisons and into overcrowded county jails — or release
Read MoreRepublicans Block Redevelopment Vote
MARCH 17, 2011 By KATY GRIMES With many predicting that yesterday’s budget vote in the Legislature was just going to be a drill, lawmakers surprised everyone and actually cut $7.4 billion from various state programs. It was an attempt to
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CA GOP Anti-Establishment Revolt
MARCH 17, 2011 BY JOHN SEILER Gov. Jerry Brown and his allies in the media and the Democratic Party are turning the budget battle into a question of patriotism. As reported by columnist George Skelton, Brown has reverted to Cold
Read MoreLockyer: Pensions Won't “Crush Govt.”
MARCH 17, 2011 BY WAYNE LUSVARDI Bill Lockyer’s recent harsh criticism of a bluntly honest Little Hoover Commission report, “Pensions for Retirement Security,” sounded more like Shakespeare’s King Lear than that of the Treasurer of the State of California. Lockyer is so
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