Thanks to hard-hitting investiagtive journalism by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Todd Wallack, the alarming mismanagement of the University of California is bubbling to the fore. Once the crown jewel of California state government, the upper reaches of UC has become a swamp of favoritism, back-scratching and a cavalier attitude toward taxpayer money.

Frankly, I hadn’t been paying much attention to it until the 76th(!) issue of the Parsky Watch alerted me to the breadth of the mismanagement and the institutional resistance to real reform:

PW 76

February 6, 2006

Gerry parsky and the uc system finance scandals: What, me worry about taxpayer money?

Remind us: whose idea was it to appoint… Read More

I hate to be flippant but I can’t help myself. I spent six years toiling on the State GOP Board as regional Vice Chairman and than Treasurer. During this time we "managed" the State GOP Convention messages and tried to come out of every convention with a positive spin. In reality, that process is of little consequence to election outcomes.

The last GOP candidate for Governor to have a pre-primary endorsement got absolutely slaughtered in the general election. What hurt him the most was the security of not having to answer to his GOP base during the general election when it seemed everyone knew he was going to lose except him. And while Dan Lungren has gone onto a good place in the Congress, he’s been made even better by having to go through a tough, tough primary in 2004. You don’t forget lessons like that if you are smart.

Whether or not the Governor has our endorsement pre primary is irrelevant to his chances of prevailing in November. Voters don’t care whether we endorse him and neither do most conservatives.What they care about are issues and whether their nominee is true… Read More

That’s the headline of OC Register editorial writer Steve Greenhut’s latest post on Orange Punch blog:

Yesterday, the President of the United States transmitted to the United States Senate the nomination of Sandra Segal Ikuta to serve as a Judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Since January of 2004, Ikuta has been serving as a member of the Schwarzenegger Administration, as Deputy Secretary and General Counsel to the California Resources Agency.

Prior to being tapped by the Governor, Ikuta had been an attorney in the Los Angeles office of the prominent law firm of O’Melvany & Myers. In the past she had clerked for former United States Supreme Court Justice Sanda Day O’Conner, as well as for Judge Alex Kozinski on the 9th Circuit Court.

Ikuta is a Republican, and specializes in environmental law.… Read More

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was "rebuffed" in his attempt toinstall former Assemblyman Richard Katz as head honcho of the powerful MWD. See the article hereand see my previous post with other links here..Look for him to use his MWD appointments and power to influence state water policy anyways.… Read More

Time to put the (Code) pink bandwagon back in the garage: anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan just announced that she won’t challenge California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who’s up for re-election this fall.

Sheehan’s logic: running for the Senate is not the most practical way to promote her crusade.

This isn’t a surprise. In fact, it’s typical of the lady’s fuzzy logic: rather than hit the campaign trail and try to win over skeptics in, say, the Central Valley and Inland Empire, she’d rather stay safely insulated in the cozy bubble that is the world of anti-war activists.

Too bad she’s not running. For one, it would have added some comic value to what otherwise appears to be a dreadfully dull race.

And it’d be nice to see if the Sheehan hype machine is more than a media fabrication… Read More

California is a very hard state in which to elect a Republican to statewide office. And by that, I mean ANY Republican. With occasional exceptions, we have seen Republicans of all stripes – conservative, moderate, liberal – lose at the polls to the most outrageously socialist Democrats. I can throw out Tom Campbell, Bill Jones, Matt Fong and Bruce Herschensohn (pictured) as examples of GOPers of all stripes who have lost – and these are just nominees for the United States Senate. We can debate the reasons for the losses, but I am just trying to illustrate that electing a Republican in California is a challenge. The fact that we have a Republican Governor in California is a great thing, and I don’t have to remind you of the convergence of amazing things that all took place to achieve this… Read More

California is a very hard state in which to elect a Republican to statewide office. And by that, I mean ANY Republican. With occasional exceptions, we have seen Republicans of all stripes – conservative, moderate, liberal – lose at the polls to the most outrageously socialist Democrats. I can throw out Tom Campbell, Bill Jones, Matt Fong and Bruce Herschensohn (pictured) as examples of GOPers of all stripes who have lost – and these are just nominees for the United States Senate. We can debate the reasons for the losses, but I am just trying to illustrate that electing a Republican in California is a challenge. The fact that we have a Republican Governor in California is a great thing, and I don’t have to remind you of the convergence of amazing things that all took place to achieve this… Read More