Free Republic

"Dear Governor: I hope you or someone will take a moment of time to read my letter here about my experiences with EDD. I know you are trying hard to get this economy corrected while also managing the multitude of problems within the state of California: the air we breathe,this flu, the ocean on our coasts, the redwoods, the homelessness, the budget, the prisons. It's a very long list..." (snip) "I turned to EDD for unemployment the first weekend after losing my job. Putting those forms online was brilliant. No waiting in lines, getting everything submitted correctly from the homey...

California consumer affairs chief resigns Carrie Lopez, director of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, resigned Friday in the wake of disclosures about expenses she charged to taxpayers. Carrie Lopez quits when shown results of a state audit that found questionable expenses she incurred. The findings went beyond those reported earlier this month by The Times, an official says. By Michael Rothfeld March 28, 2009 Reporting from Sacramento -- The director of the California Department of Consumer Affairs resigned Friday in the wake of disclosures about expenses she charged to taxpayers, including for transportation to attend a Justin Timberlake concert...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger formally ended months of political fighting Friday by signing a new state budget - but not before taking another shot at constitutional officers. Among $1.3 billion in vetoes, Schwarzenegger sliced budgets of the attorney general, controller, treasurer, secretary of state and Board of Equalization by 10 percent to compensate for savings that would have occurred from furloughing employees. Schwarzenegger chopped even more from the budget of Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a potential gubernatorial candidate in 2010, slicing his budget by two thirds - from $2.78 million to $1.04 million, saying he did so "to ensure that sufficient...

Former eBay chief Meg Whitman is preparing to run for governor in 2010. Considering that California is so broke that next month it may have to issue IOUs instead of checks, I cannot imagine why anyone would want the job. And considering that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger started out as a political outsider who promised to parachute into Sacramento to clean up the mess - only to allow it to grow messier - I wonder if voters will be eager to pick another parachute-in Republican for governor. Not that the alternatives are all that appetizing. If Whitman may seem too new,...

The cost to taxpayers of protecting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California's other top officials has nearly tripled since the Governator took office, to close to $38 million a year, figures obtained by The Chronicle show. The California Highway Patrol, which guards the officials, won't release budget figures covering just the governor out of security considerations. But it's pretty clear from what people tell us that the big spending isn't on the state schools superintendent or the insurance commissioner - it's on Schwarzenegger.Five years ago, during Gray Davis' last year in office, the CHP spent $14.4 million providing security to the...

Arnold's Health Flop After Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled his universal health-care plan for California in January, almost everyone was laying down palms in Sacramento. Here was a Republican Governor putting aside political squabbling and "doing big things that Washington has failed to do," as Time magazine put it. What a change seven months later, with the plan on the cusp of collapse. There's a lesson here about health-care "bipartisanship" when it's merely a cover for bad policy. The California legislature is now in the second month of the fiscal year without a budget. Deadlocks are routine because the state requires a...

Moore to Schwarzenegger: Adopt Austrian health care system Wednesday, June 27, 2007 By: DAVID GERMAIN - Associated Press LOS ANGELES -- Michael Moore has a suggestion to help California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger bring universal health care to the nation's largest state: Just do it the Austrian way. "I would like Gov. Schwarzenegger to say that he wants the citizens of California to have the same, fine, universal health coverage he got as a young man in the country of Austria," Moore said Tuesday of the Austrian-born governor. "That's all we're asking for, governor. Just give us the Austrian plan," Moore...

Are we safe from robots that can think for themselves? By REBECCA CAMBER Robots that can think for themselves could soon be caring for our children and the elderly and policing our streets, say experts. Scientists told yesterday of a new generation of robots which can work without human direction. They predict that in the next five years robots will be available for child-minding, to work in care homes, monitor prisons and help police trace criminals. And while it may sound like something out of a science-fiction film, the experts say advances in technology have made the thinking robot possible....

Sacramento -- Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to be governor for four more years and a surprising number of Republican party activists aren't happy about it. GOP officials at this weekend's twice-a-year state party convention talked gratefully about how much Schwarzenegger's landslide win over Democrat Phil Angelides meant to the party that saw few other bright spots last November. But there was plenty of grumbling among the 1,250 rank-and-file delegates concerned that the governor's inauguration day call for a new "post-partisan" agenda in the state showed more concern for moderate Democrats and decline-to-state voters than for the GOP's conservative core....

PRESIDENT BUSH -- whose approval rating has fallen to 35 percent -- seemed to borrow a page from the Team Arnold playbook when he delivered his State of the Union address Tuesday night. The Bushies should want to mimic Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's impressive turnaround. In 2005, only one-third of California voters approved of the governor. In 2006, Schwarzenegger handily won re-election and a majority of voter approval. How did Schwarzenegger do it? The governator admitted that he erred in holding a special election, assured voters that he got their message and promised to play better with state Democrats. Bush lacked...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opened his second term by declaring this the era of "post-partisanship," but Democrats sounded a lot like Democrats and Republicans sounded a lot like Republicans in the week that followed. Even if Schwarzenegger wants to work both sides of the aisle, both sides seem reluctant to work with one another, a potential roadblock for the governor's agenda. His big-ticket proposals will require two-thirds support in the Legislature, which means he can't rely solely on majority Democrats as he did last year on many of his high-profile bills. Schwarzenegger needs Republican votes on the budget, $43 billion in...

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger leaves the stage after unveiling his $143.4 billion 2007-2008 budget in Sacramento, Calif., Wednesday, Jan. 10 2007 (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

RUSH: Stan in San Francisco. (You note that I'm delaying playing these Ted Kennedy bites because I really don't want to hear them. I'm struggling here with: I've got the duty to play them to you and do I want to sit through 'em and listen to them, and I will probably opt to play some of them.) Anyway, Stan in San Francisco, you're up, sir, welcome to the program. CALLER: Thank you, Rush. Greetings from one of the 99 conservative Republicans in her speakership's district. RUSH: (Laughing.) CALLER: There were a hundred of us until it was clear she...

To national political observers, Arnold Schwarzenegger's landslide re-election as California's Republican governor was nothing short of miraculous, given the state's generally Democratic leanings, the Democratic tide that swept over the rest of the nation and Schwarzenegger's very low popularity when the year began. Schwarzenegger is touting his win as reflecting a new political paradigm -- centrism and bipartisanship -- that should be emulated at the national level. He established new genres in bodybuilding and movies and implies that he's doing it again in politics (just a year after trumpeting anti-politician populism as his shtick, it should be noted). "Well, it's...

With a decline in home sales driving a slowdown in California's recent economic boom, lawmakers will find it "much tougher" to balance the state budget next year than they did this year, the Legislature's nonpartisan budget adviser said in a report Wednesday. The economy is still doing slightly better than lawmakers expected when they approved the current $131 billion state spending plan in June, partly because oil prices have dropped since the summer, the report said. But if trends continue, the state will still take in about $5 billion less than it spends for the fiscal year beginning July 1,...

California's Republican voters stayed home in droves on election day, as preliminary figures show voter turnout falling well below the state average in some of the most reliably GOP parts of the state. Although the final totals won't be known for weeks, election day turnout in Fresno, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and SanDiego counties, which all have Republican pluralities, ran as much as 10 percentage points below the state's 44 percent average turnout. "The turnout in Republican counties was low compared to the turnout in counties where Democrats hold the edge,'' said Patrick Dorinson, a spokesman for the state Republican...

Whatever pitched partisan battles might be looming in Washington, D.C., Tuesday's election was a victory for collaboration over confrontation in California, as the state voted overwhelmingly to give a second term to a celebrity chief executive who has redefined what it means to govern from the center. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's landslide victory and the approval of his package of proposals to rebuild the state's public works showed that in the Golden State, voters will value and reward politicians who reach out and work with their opposition rather than trying to run them over in pursuit of total policy victories. Schwarzenegger...

It is on days like this one that we sympathize with anyone awakening from a three-year coma and suddenly reading today's headlines. "Arnold Schwarzenegger re-elected governor." Whaaaaaat? Yes, its true, this Hollywood icon has again won the governor's race. This news doesn't shock anyone who has been awake in recent months, but to the uninitiated, it may sound like an April Fools' Day prank. We sympathize with them now, as they sit in their hospital beds, incredulous at the headlines, wondering: How did this happen? How did Schwarzenegger become governor? Many Wednesday-morning quarterbacks will point to Schwarzenegger's superior star power,...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's political rehabilitation and re-election has Democrats wondering whether he'll take on Sen. Barbara Boxer when her term comes up in 2010. Termed-out state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, has already raised the question, and so has former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. The thinking? "His wife is part of the Kennedy clan, and so it would be natural for a glamorous Kennedy star to elevate himself to the U.S. Senate as the next Barack Obama,'' Brown said. After all, "here's a guy investing $15 million to $20 million of his own money in the governor's race,'' Brown said....

The election excitement sweeping across much of the nation isn't flowing into California, where the turnout for today's statewide general election isn't expected to be much better than 2002's record low, according to a Field Poll estimate released today. With races for governor and U.S. Senate at the top of the ballot, turnout is expected to be 51.5 percent, second worst in history for a regularly scheduled election, behind only the 50.6 percent of registered voters who showed up four years ago to re-elect Democrat Gray Davis as governor. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson's slightly more optimistic prediction of a...