Bloggers won a court victory here in Orange County on August 24, when OC Superior Court Judge ruled in favor of Mr. Christopher Lotts, a blogger who works in the Santa Ana office of the state Department of Labor Standards Enforcement.

You can read my June 24 post for a more complete backstory, but I’ll cover it quickly here:

Lotts runs a blog called No Labor Standards, in which he exposes what he sees as waste and incompetence in the DLSE. Department management had been hounding Lotts for months, in hopes of shutting down his blog. Specifically, they wanted him to reveal who were his sources and to turn over his private journals.

Lotts hired Garden Grove Councilman Mark Rosen and sought a writ of mandate telling the DLSE to back off trying to get Lotts to couhg up his sources and journals. I had the opportunity to testify as an expert witness on blogging when the trial began back in late June.

On August 24, Judge Sheila Fell handed down her ruling, which I excerpt here:

The

Greetings from the California Republican Party State Convention. As you can see by the timestamp on this commentary that it is very late, indeed, and so this will not be a long one. The State GOP is gathered at the Renaissance Esmerlda Hotel in Indian Wells, out in the Coachella Valley east of Los Angeles. I am not going to spend a lot of time talking about Governor Schwarzenegger’s speech to conventioneers at last night’s dinner banquet. You can pretty much read about what he said in a plethora of articles highlighted on our main page (look for various comments from me in the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, and the San Diego Union Tribune). In short, the Governor came before us, declared that the State GOP was in trouble, and in essence prescribed that the ‘cure’ for our party’s ills is to move to the left on major policy issues in order to capture the political center. Frankly, and to be honest, I couldn’t disagree more. First and foremost, the purpose of a political party is to achieve it’s public policy goals. No where in our goal is a massive and costly government… Read More

Just minutes ago the influential Initiatives Committee of the California Republican Party voted unanimously to recommend that delegates put the GOP on record as opposing the Nunez- Perata scheme to extend their time in office. This action means that it would take a 2/3 vote of the full committee to change this recommendation!

Those present got to see the lively debate between myself and fellow FR blogger, Senator Jim Battin. FR friend Assemblyman Bob Huff weighed in on behalf of my resolution.

Also of note, the committee has also recommended that delegates support the California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act, as well as to oppose the efforts (both legislative as ACA 8 and as a threatened initiative) by the redevelopment industry and the League of Cities.

All great news!… Read More

I thought it was quite magnanimous of the industry group that represents private hospitals to summarily announce that they are "willing" to endure a $1.7 billion tax on all private hospitals as part of a "health care solution" for California with the notion that a huge percentage of this tax will come right back to them in government support.

A few thoughts come to mind. The first is that if the private hospitals in this association want to contribute $1.7 billion to some sort of program to assist those without insurance, that’s their choice. But leave government out of it. They can simply assess their members and use this pot of money to subsidize providing services in their hospitals to those in need. Of course look for a lot of that $1.7 billion cost to be passed along to those very patients seeking services. Why? Well, private hospitals are businesses. They cannot operate in the red. They have investors and stockholders who expect a return on their funds. The reality of the… Read More

In 1997, Tom Hudson on my staff came to me with a great idea–why don’t we distribute our presidential delegates to the winner of the primary in each congressional district? At that time, California had about 180 presidential delegates (three per congressional district and about 21 bonus delegates), all of which were awarded to the presidential candidate that won the most votes in the presidential primary. Given this system, most presidential candidates would show up in California about a year away from the primary, have a bunch of fundraisers in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento, then come in about two weeks before the primary and spend several million dollars on commercials. Not a system designed to build a stronger party operation.

My experience in politics taught me two principles of politics. Principles dictate positions. Systems dictate strategies. If California Republicans wanted a stronger party operation, they had to devise systems that encouraged people to develop that operation. A winner take all by congressional district system would do that. California has double the delegates of any other state, and five or six… Read More

In 1997, Tom Hudson on my staff came to me with a great idea–why don’t we distribute our presidential delegates to the winner of the primary in each congressional district? At that time, California had about 180 presidential delegates (three per congressional district and about 21 bonus delegates), all of which were awarded to the presidential candidate that won the most votes in the presidential primary. Given this system, most presidential candidates would show up in California about a year away from the primary, have a bunch of fundraisers in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento, then come in about two weeks before the primary and spend several million dollars on commercials. Not a system designed to build a stronger party operation.

My experience in politics taught me two principles of politics. Principles dictate positions. Systems dictate strategies. If California Republicans wanted a stronger party operation, they had to devise systems that encouraged people to develop that operation. A winner take all by congressional district system would do that. California has double the delegates of any other state, and five or six… Read More

Update: The call was lifted earlier and only four more aye votes were cast, making it 32-34. There are 77 members present to vote on today’s file. SB 110, that would create a prison sentencing commission, basically allowing "another 2nd chance"for criminals convicted of serious crimes to have reduced sentences, was onour floor minutes ago. It has run into problems with even many of the Dems as it is on call with a 28 aye to 34 no count…wow. [6 Dems voting "no", all Reps present, "no"]… Read More

by a 34-37 vote… Read More