These bad Gwynn/Gwinn baseball metaphors or going to have to stop.

In response to yesterday’s Sunday San Diego, in which I referenced the rumours afloat of former San Diego City Attorney Casey Gwinn taking a shot at Congress, he weighed in directly, indicating such is not the case:

I hope you are well. I saw your piece in FlashReport. I too consider you a friend. I am not a candidate for the congressional seat and will not be.

My life is going a different direction and I am going to keep dedicating my time to my work in family violence. On Friday, I was honored to be interviewed on CBS – The Early Show by Harry Smith about our new National Family Justice Center Alliance –… Read More

In today’s in box was the Capitol Alert from the Capitol Resource Institute, a pro-family lobby group in Sacramento. The State Senate passed SCR 46 declaring the second week in November “California Anti-Bullying Week”. One part of the definition given for bullying is"…excluding others on purpose..". The alert goes on to remind folks of Perata’s actions towards fellow Democrats he didn’t like. Remember locking members out of their offices? See the whole thing here.… Read More

It’s hard to keep up with the barrage of updates from Mike Spence (see the post below this one for the latest) on the GOP primary in Assembly District 60 (this seat straddles LA, San Bernardino and Orange Counties).

North Orange County is the largest piece of real estate in the 60th, and there is no member of Congress more popular in the area than U.S. Reprsentative Ed Royce, who just endorsed conservative candidate Larry Dick, who at this point is locked in battle for endorsements with San Bernardino County’s Curt Hagman.

Congressman Royce (a former employer of this humble website publisher) had this to say about Larry: “These tough times require conservative leaders like Larry Dick committed to lower taxes and to protecting taxpayers. Larry Dick has the courage and the experience to stand up to the liberals. He’s earned my trust, he deserves yours."

Since Mike keeps his updates short, I will close by saying that Royce’s endorsement is a great one to have because he works… Read More

FR readers will be happy to know that starting last Friday and going through early this week, the programming team over at Cloudspace (the folks who created this outstanding site for me) are working hard to retool every page of the site to significantly increase how quickly the site loads into your browser.

In addition, we’re changing the loading priority so that the site content comes up first, followed by our premium advertisements (across the top) and then our regular advertisers (down the right side of the page).

As I post this, the main page has been finished. Look for the blog, blogscan and the other pages to be ‘sped up’ in the next day or two…… Read More

Brian Jones, Casey Gwinn in CD 52 Fray?… If you missed it, Santee City Councilman Brian Jones has filed committee paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for an open Duncan Hunter seat (see Friday’s post).

Following the Jones news, Red County/San Diego reported that former San Diego City AttorneyCasey Gwinn is also looking at the seat. Casey moved to East County a few years back (having lived in San Carlos, pretty close already, as in a couple of blocks) and some at the time were anticipating he’d be running for Jay La Suer’s termed out 77th AD seat in 2006. That clearly didn’t happen. Has enough time elapsed since his SD days?

I consider Casey a friend and a stand-up guy. I have to urge caution here,in the extreme sense. East County is not the… Read More

From the onset, I always thought Tim Escobar was a front runner for this distirct. Very Popular with GOP folks. Name ID and fundraising experiencefrom taking on Linda Sanchez for Congress. He has great ties to the LA part of the disctrict, but also the OC part. Some tried to recruit him for the Dunn seat.Respected. Conservative. An awesome person and candidate.

I have confrimed he is not running. He recently returned from a 17 month tour of Iraq (he was called up) and places a premium on time withhis family. While I’m not completely shocked, he would have been my personal pick. I hope there isnext time.… Read More

After years of effort and prodding from Supervisors Roberta MacGlashan and Susan Peters (and a looming budget shortfall) the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors finally tackled a multi-million dollar budget problem by eliminating costly “extra” benefits for future retirees.

It’s a start — but it’s not the only budget busting pension issue: Sacramento County has nearly $950 Million in pension obligation bonds that have to be serviced from the General Fund – at the same time they’re facing significant budget cuts.

The scary thing is, Sacramento is not alone – all across California, bloated and under-funded (how did they manage to do both?) pensions have spawned a financial monster; and with few exceptions, no one is dealing with it. Public employee retiree pensions and benefits threaten to swamp already stretched budgets – throwing taxpayers into a fiscal nightmare. It’s the monster under the bridge everyone tries to… Read More

After years of effort and prodding from Supervisors Roberta MacGlashan and Susan Peters (and a looming budget shortfall) the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors finally tackled a multi-million dollar budget problem by eliminating costly “extra” benefits for future retirees.

It’s a start — but it’s not the only budget busting pension issue: Sacramento County has nearly $950 Million in pension obligation bonds that have to be serviced from the General Fund – at the same time they’re facing significant budget cuts.

The scary thing is, Sacramento is not alone – all across California, bloated and under-funded (how did they manage to do both?) pensions have spawned a financial monster; and with few exceptions, no one is dealing with it. Public employee retiree pensions and benefits threaten to swamp already stretched budgets – throwing taxpayers into a fiscal nightmare. It’s the monster under the bridge everyone tries to… Read More