Naturally when I am out of the country on vacation, we have one of the busiest days in California political news in a long, long time. It took me a long time to put together the main page this morning, which means less time to write up a commentary on the news. We’ll try it in bullet-point format today:
- The lead column today is by California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson. Today marks the one-year anniversary of his appointment to this post by Governor Schwarzenegger, filling the vacancy left by the resignation of Democrat Kevin Shelley. Shelley had been elected to the post in 2002, but was forced out of office due to scandals. McPherson has really been doing a great job with the office – and has thoroughly ‘cleaned house’ from the previous administration. The culture of corruption has been replaced with a culture of hard work, and desire to bring the principles of representative government to every Californian. Please take a few minutes to read his column!
- Yesterday Rob Reiner finally called it quits from the Prop. 10 commission. In doing so, he may be attempted to shift the limelight away from the boatload of controversy surrounding his actions in directing public funds to be spent on advertising about the importance of pre-school at the same time he was paying signature gatherers to help him qualify a measure for the June ballot that hiked up tax rates in order to create a centralized pre-school bureaucracy. You can be sure that the spotlight will still be focused on Reiner. Don’t miss FR friend Karen Hanretty’s column on this (one of her TWO Golden Pen awards today – a FR first). I was VERY surprised to see Governor Schwarzenegger immediately replace Reiner with someone who appears to be another liberal. More on that…
- Speaking of the Governor – there is a new Field Poll out showing that his popularity among Californians is on the rise. There are a lot of stories on this on the main page.
- There is a flap going on in the 50th Congressional District race concerning a photo on former Assembly Howard Kaloogian’s website that was apparently mislabeled – saying it was in Iraq when it was actually in Turkey. My ten cents on this — no big deal. It was probably a mistake. If there was some doubt that Kaloogian had traveled to Iraq (in support of the troops) that would be one thing, but since he did travel there, everyone needs to take a ‘chill pill’ and move on.
- Legislative liberals are moving forward with an attempt to throw another state mandated wage hike requirement on California businesses, in a quest to make it that much harder to run a profitable business in the Golden State. The bad news is that the Governor is supporting a dollar hike. The good news is that like with the bond measure, perhaps the Democrats want to be too greedy. They have bottled up the $1 increase bill authored by Senator Abel Maldonado, in committee, and have moved forward with a more aggressive plan that would create automatic increases in the future. The Governor has pledged to veto this ‘auto-increase’ measure if it reaches his desk.
- Don’t miss the lengthy articles on Congressman Richard Pombo and Congressman Gary Miller.
Have a great day!
Jon
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