Free Republic

Fanning the Flames Melanie Morgan's swing from liberal to right-wing radio shouter may not have happened overnight, but it's permanent -- and profitable Morgan at the mike from which she led the charge to recall Gov. Davis and rails against Spare the Air Day in the KSFO studios. Chronicle photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez lighter side of Morgan: playing with Rufus, a golden retriever/chow mix from the SFSPCA as Tracy Pore tells listeners that he's up for adoption. Chronicle photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez Joe Garofoli Sunday, October 8, 2006 In the predawn darkness shortly after 5 a.m., Melanie...

As Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger looks toward a second term, he has vowed to make access to health care a top priority. Schwarzenegger intends to unveil a major health-care plan in January, if re-elected. In preparation, Schwarzenegger has hired a top-level staff to actually write the proposal that includes ranking health-care experts from former Gov. Gray Davis' administration. Richard Figueroa, a veteran health-care consultant and go-to person for health issues on Davis' executive staff, is joining Schwarzenegger's team next week, according to Capitol and private sources with direct knowledge of Figueroa's new position. They confirmed that Schwarzenegger intends to release...

As Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, looks toward a second term, his administration has vowed to make access to health care a top priority. The govenror hopes to unveil a major health-care plan that he hopes to unveil in January if he is re-elected. In preparation, Schwarzenegger has hired a top-level staff to actually write the proposal that includes ranking health-care experts from former Gov. Gray Davis' administration. Richard Figueroa, a veteran health care consultant and go-to person for health issues on Davis' executive staff, will join Schwarzenegger's team next week in the Department of Managed Health Care, according to Capitol...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger got off to a fast start in his annual September Veto Parade yesterday by saying he would reject state Sen. Sheila Kuehl's nonsensical, poorly drafted bill mandating that California adopt socialized medicine. It is a sad commentary on the Legislature that Kuehl's bill made it this far. Perhaps the governor next can tackle measures that are, respectively, anti-consumer, anti-common sense and pro-corruption. AB 2592, by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would allow car-rental companies to omit the cost of airport fees when advertising rental rates. How does Leno – who sees himself as a classic liberal do-gooder...

SACRAMENTO Despite a midsummer heat wave that has pushed energy use to an all-time high this week, experts say Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger probably does not have to fear the blackouts that ended former Gov. Gray Davis' political career. And he has Davis to thank for that. The long-term contracts Davis signed, at great political cost, guarantee plentiful energy for the next few years at what now look like good rates. "In an interesting twist of fate, he's benefiting from the decisions that his predecessor suffered for," said Frank Wolak, a Stanford economist who specializes in energy. "The terrible contracts" Davis...

In a rare show of bipartisanship, former Govs. Pete Wilson and Gray Davis asked state legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to stand behind curriculum standards and testing they credit with improving performance in the state's public schools. "Standards provide a measure of excellence regardless of one's skin color, family income or ZIP code. We believe that if we set expectations high, students will respond," Republican Wilson and Democrat Davis wrote in an open letter Friday. The governors' letter came a week after Democratic lawmakers stripped funding for the Board of Education from the state budget. Lawmakers had warned the board...

The purveyors of revisionist political history are back at work this week, inspired by the death of Enron Corp. founder -- and convicted felon -- Kenneth Lay to revive the myth that were it not for Enron and Lay, California wouldn't have experienced its 2001 energy crisis. ... --snip-- Attorney General Bill Lockyer had the good manners to remain silent about Lay's death from heart disease three months before he was to be sentenced for lying to mask the failing company's condition. It was Lockyer who in 2001 told an interviewer that "I would love to personally escort Lay to...

SACRAMENTO – In a new television ad, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says his Democratic rival, Phil Angelides, will take the state backward "to a time we never want to see again," which the ad says was "when soaring taxes forced jobs and businesses to flee our state." The problem is, there is no such time. Campaign officials acknowledged Friday that the ad refers to the administration of former Gov. Gray Davis, who presided over the stock market bust and the recession and state budget crisis that followed. But Davis did not raise taxes, except for suspending a few small credits, such...

Let us today hoist a glass — preferably of cool, clean Colorado River water — to Keith Brackpool, a walking illustration of how the generous bestowal of campaign donations and other largess can keep a man cozy with California politicians, even in the face of evidence that what he's selling may not be worth buying. Brackpool is the chairman and chief executive of Cadiz Inc. For years, Cadiz tried to entice the Metropolitan Water District into a $150-million scheme to store surplus water from the Colorado in the Mojave Desert. The skeptical MWD, which serves most of Southern California, finally...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can't say his public works bond proposals aren't getting thorough consideration by the Legislature. Whether he'll like the final product is another question. Legislative committees held nine hearings last week on various aspects of Schwarzenegger's plan, which includes selling $68 billion in bonds to help pay for transportation improvements, water and flood control projects, new schools, courthouses and certain other facilities. There are another 11 hearings scheduled this week, including the first meeting of a two-house conference committee that will try to put together a bond package for voters to consider, possibly in the...

The order came late in the morning on Jan. 17, 2001. Faced with shrinking electricity reserves, California officials at 11:40 a.m. ordered the first statewide rolling blackouts of the energy crisis. Blocks of homes and businesses throughout Northern California suddenly lost power. Lights died, elevators stopped in their tracks, computer screens went black. The crisis had been building for months. But on this day five years ago, the full scope of the disaster finally became clear. By the day's end, Gov. Gray Davis had declared a state of emergency and ordered the state Department of Water Resources to start buying...

BACK IN 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger vilified Gov. Gray Davis as an incompetent tax-and-spend chief executive who needed to be booted from office. Everything that was wrong with California was laid at Davis' feet. The Republican Schwarzenegger won the recall election, and Democrat Davis suffered the ignominy of being the first California governor to be recalled from office. Davis didn't exactly slink away from Sacramento into oblivion, but he was viewed by many as a sort of Charlie Brown character who never got things right. Two short years later, Gov. Schwarzenegger stood next to Davis in the state Capitol and extolled...

...The conservative betrayal Posted: December 9, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com The past few weeks have been a wakeup call to those Republicans, and especially those conservatives, who got stars in their eyes and supported movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor during the historic Gray Davis recall campaign. On the heels of a decisive defeat in the recent special election for his reform ballot initiatives, the Terminator is acting like he wants to terminate his alliance with the Republican Party. Since he has failed to even slow the nonstop spending of the California Legislature, Arnold's false reading of...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A couple of former political foes, Gray Davis and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, joined forces Wednesday to unveil Davis' official gubernatorial portrait - a bright painting showing a smiling Davis standing in a field of golden poppies with Carmel Bay in the background. "I love it," California's 37th governor said after the portrait was hung on the third floor of the Capitol's historic west wing. "I hope that portrait reminds people how beautiful California is and of our obligation to preserve it for future generations." It hangs next to paintings of his four predecessors - Ronald Reagan, Jerry...

Arnold Schwarzenegger's selection of archliberal Susan Kennedy, a former Cabinet secretary to Gray Davis, as his new chief of staff "is the last straw for a lot of grassroots California Republicans," says California Republican Assembly president Mike Spence to TAS. Spence describes the appointment as the equivalent of "George Bush appointing Howard Dean to be his chief of staff." Even the jaw of George Skelton (the Los Angeles Times columnist who has spent much of his career telling the California GOP to move left) dropped after the appointment of Kennedy, who is one of the state's leading abortion proponents, a...

A prominent Democratic political consultant in Sacramento has testified that he molested two boys more than 30 years ago while working at a Los Angeles-area YMCA. The admission from John Robert Stevens — a former high-ranking advisor to Gov. Gray Davis and Assembly speakers Antonio Villaraigosa, Herb Wesson and Fabian Nuñez — came in a lawsuit accusing the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles of failing to protect two brothers from Stevens' abuse. --snip-- Stevens "is ashamed and would like to find a way to make it right," said Boucher, whose law firm represented Stevens in his deposition. Stevens is not...

LOS ANGELES A consultant to top state Democratic leaders has admitted that he molested two brothers while working at a Y-M-C-A more than 30 years ago. John Robert Stevens was an adviser to former Governor Gray Davis and Assembly speakers Antonio Villaraigosa (vee-yah-ry-GOH'-sah), Herb Wesson and Fabian Nunez. In April, he testified in a deposition for a lawsuit accusing the Y-M-C-A of Metropolitan Los Angeles of failing to protect the boys from Stevens' abuse. He admitted he fondled and masturbated the brothers, who were then 13 and 10, when he was youth director of the Rio Vista Y-M-C-A in South...

Los Angeles -- Former Gov. Gray Davis is adding teacher to his resume as he joins the University of California, Los Angeles as a distinguished policy fellow. Davis, who is also an attorney, will serve as a guest lecturer in classes, participate in panels, and generally serve as a resource for faculty and students on issues involving California state politics at UCLA's School of Public Affairs, department spokesman Stan Paul said Thursday. Former state senate minority leader Jim Brulte also was appointed as a policy fellow. Together they provide a complementary perspective. Davis is a Democrat, and Brulte is a...

...Mr. Schwarzenegger's goals as governor include shaking up Sacramento, where an intransigent legislature beholden to special interests had turned the state into an economic basket case. Arnold does have something to show for his efforts to date, insofar as the fiscal bleeding seems to have stopped. California's credit rating is out of the gutter, and the economy has created a quarter-million new jobs in the past year. Still, important reforms remain unaddressed, and the passage of Proposition 75, also known as "paycheck protection," would go a long way toward ending California politics-as-usual. By forcing public-sector unions to get written permission...

SACRAMENTO — California First Lady Maria Shriver named as her top aide Tuesday a former senior official to ex-Gov. Gray Davis, the Democrat her husband tarred in the 2003 recall campaign as the symbol of ineffectual government. Daniel Zingale, who served under Davis as the link between the governor's office and the vast state bureaucracy, will be the new chief of staff to Shriver, a Democrat. He will return to the governor's suite of offices on the first floor of the Capitol, this time surrounded by many Republicans who labored to oust Davis. Zingale has also been an unpaid political...