Free Republic

Okay which one of you guessed global warming is the next squirrel? Sara B?  You win! We lose. Cleverly disguised as an “Executive Order” Big Guy, with the stroke of a pen, “dicktates” the following: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to prepare the Nation for the impacts of climate change by undertaking actions to enhance climate preparedness and resilience, it is hereby ordered as follows: … Hehe; that’s really a good one! “By the authority vested in me as President by the...

Fourteen sick and elderly patients were abandoned at a Castro Valley assisted living facility when the staff apparently walked out Thursday after the state ordered the home closed, Alameda County sheriff's deputies said. Paramedics called to Valley Manor Residential Care at 17926 Apricot Way on Saturday afternoon found a notice on the door from the state Department of Social Services ordering the site to be closed as of Oct. 24.

<p>SACRAMENTO (CBS/AP) — Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have banned future sales of most semi-automatic rifles that accept detachable magazines, part of a firearms package approved by state lawmakers in response to mass shootings in other states.</p>

Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have banned future sales of most semi-automatic rifles that accept detachable magazines, part of a firearms package approved by state lawmakers in response to mass shootings in other states. The governor announced signing other gun-related legislation on Friday but rejected the centerpiece bill, which would have imposed the nation’s toughest restrictions on gun ownership.

Jerry Brown, soon to be California’s longest-serving Governor, is obsessed with his legacy. Legacies, however, are judged retrospectively. For now, Brown has been receiving much credit nationally for “balancing” the budget. In truth, the budget is not really balanced and Brown is setting California up to fall like a house of cards. Jerry Brown certainly is having a good year in the media. This year, PBS told us: “Gov. Jerry Brown Makes Tough Choices to Balance State Budget.” The Atlantic recently heralded: “California’s New ‘Problem’: Jerry Brown on the Sudden Surplus.” Even BusinessWeek proclaimed that Jerry Brown had “Scared California...

In 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law California Assembly Bill 109, a piece of legislation designed to relieve overcrowded prisons in accordance with a Supreme Court decision. AB 109 enshrined “realignment” into law – a plan to place supposedly “non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenders” in county jails rather than state prisons. In other words, local governments were handed the problem of prisoners the state didn’t want to hold. On January 8, 2013, Brown said, “we’ve gone from serious constitutional problems to one of the finest prison systems in the United States.”

Calif. Gov. Brown: DOJ, Obama should 'respect' state marijuana lawsBy Zack Colman - 11/11/12 10:12 AM ET California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said the federal government should let recently passed marijuana legalization laws stand in Colorado and Washington. “It’s time for the Justice Department to recognize the sovereignty of the states,” Brown said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “I believe the president and the Department of Justice ought to respect the will of these states.” Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana for recreational use through ballot measures last week. But marijuana is still outlawed at the federal level, which...

California will avoid deep spending cuts to public schools and universities, and be able to to pull out of the fiscal swamp without slashing other services further, after voters handed Gov. Jerry Brown's signature tax measure a decisive victory Tuesday. Proposition 30 had a clear lead Wednesday morning, with 95 percent of precincts around the state counted. Voters handily rejected a rival measure, Proposition 38. Brown's tax measure has been his central focus since his election two years ago and will have major implications for the state's finances. If it had been defeated, nearly $6 billion in automatic spending cuts,...

LOS ANGELES - The choir sang, morning announcements were made and Mildred Rodgers watched as Gov. Jerry Brown took the pulpit at West Angeles Church of God in Christ. She has grown accustomed to politicians visiting in elections years. "Every voting season," Rodgers said. "It's really funny when we get two running for the same (office)." This morning there was only Brown, campaigning in four traditionally black churches here for his ballot initiative to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners. The churches Brown visited in Los Angeles' poorer neighborhoods have hosted Brown before, and...

Gov. Jerry Brown has framed it as a simple choice for voters: Pass Proposition 30 or schools will suffer early shutdowns and college students will pay higher tuition. But education leaders privately have discussed fallback efforts to spare schools from some of the worst consequences, especially after the initiative fell below 50 percent in recent polls. School groups are expected to lobby hard to reverse or ease budget reductions headed their way if voters reject Proposition 30. They have two main paths: the Capitol or the courts. "The education community will use every tool at its disposal to fight the...

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom two weeks ago criticized Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative approach, suggesting to KGO Radio in San Francisco that the governor was slow to hit the campaign trail and that he was telling college students "something that's not true." Newsom spoke to KGO on Oct. 17, a day after Brown appeared at UCLA in the first of several appearances at state colleges and universities. But the interview got little statewide notice until Bee columnist Dan Morain referenced Newsom's caustic words for Brown in today's Bee. Though both Democrats who support Proposition 30, Newsom and Brown have endured...

As the political odds turn against Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown's tax measure, political insiders are turning their attention, however reluctantly, to the fallout should, indeed, voters reject the sales and income tax hike on Tuesday. The measure would deliver $6 billion a year in new revenues and should it fail, Brown and the Legislature have already passed $6 billion in so-called "trigger cuts" that would be imposed, overwhelmingly on K-12 schools. So that would seem to be that. But it's not. As Brown campaigns – with increasing desperation – for the measure, he insists that were it to fail,...

California Gov. Jerry Brown has been known to get a little testy with reporters, but this latest tape from CBS Los Angeles suggests the campaign for Prop. 30 may be wearing on him a bit. Reporter David Goldstein’s bang-up effort to expose Caltrans employees using state cars as their own personal vehicles is tenacious and detailed. But Brown, at first, doesn’t appear much interested in the details. After all, the video showing Caltrans employees hitting Costco and Nordstrom on the taxpayers’ dime comes as Brown is trying to convince voters to hike taxes in order to pay for education and...

Superintendents Paint Dire Picture If California's Prop. 30 Fails As Gov. Jerry Brown's revenue-raising proposition loses support, school superintendents say class sizes could grow, cherished programs could die and jobs will be lost. What we face is the biggest challenge in public education since the state of California was founded," said state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson By Stephen Ceasar, Los Angeles Times October 26 As children peered at them through an elementary school fence in Cerritos on Friday, about a dozen school superintendents explained the consequences they will face if California voters fail to approve Proposition 30. In...

The governor of California may not be toast – yet – but, one might say, he's turning browner by the moment in the heat of a political campaign he hoped would be his legacy achievement. Two new statewide polls confirm what political instincts – and Jerry Brown's body language – were already telling us: His tax increase measure, Proposition 30, is fading fast with scarcely a week remaining until Election Day. Proposition 30, a $6 billion per year boost in sales and income taxes that Brown said would resolve the state's chronic fiscal problems, never was particularly popular with voters,...

Gov. Jerry Brown’s initiative that would raise taxes to help pay for schools and local public safety programs continues to lose ground among likely voters, slipping below the all-important majority approval mark for the first time in a new poll. The survey by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California released Wednesday night found that support for Brown’s Proposition 30 stands at 48 percent, posing a challenge for the governor to win over a majority of voters with less than two weeks before they go to the polls Nov. 6. Forty-four percent are opposed.

SACRAMENTO -- With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday he is doing everything he can to overcome what he called the "Orwellian propaganda" of big-monied opponents to his tax-hike measure. Brown said voters have never faced "such a stark choice" as they do with Proposition 30, which would provide $6 billion annually to the state and avert $5.4 billion in cuts to schools and community colleges and another $250 million each to the University of California and California State University. "If you vote yes, you get billions into schools, or you vote...

A shadowy Phoenix-based group contributed $11 million Monday to a campaign committee funding attacks on Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative and supporting a measure curbing union dues collection, a new campaign finance report shows. Americans for Responsible Leadership gave the donation to Small Business Action Committee PAC, which is backing Proposition 32 and opposing Proposition 30. Before the latest contribution, the PAC had been heavily reliant on more than $20 million from Charles Munger Jr.

As he began his second governorship last year, Jerry Brown warned that California faced a potential "war of all against all" if the state budget was not fairly balanced, or as the former Catholic seminarian put it in Latin, "bellum omnium contra omnes." Brown now has the war he didn't want as Proposition 30, the tax increase ballot measure upon which he has staked his governorship, and perhaps his place in political history, is hammered from the left and the right by two very wealthy siblings, Charles and Molly Munger. Republican Charles, a Stanford University physicist, is giving millions to...

Gov. Jerry Brown hoped a mix of politicking and good fortune would deter negative ads against his tax initiative in the campaign's final weeks. His luck expired in the last few days. Not one, but two, campaigns took aim at the governor's Proposition 30 on airwaves across the state, funded separately by two children of billionaire investor Charles Munger. The Democratic governor now faces a serious threat to the linchpin of his longer-term budget plan. Brown has been particularly frustrated by attorney Molly Munger's ad, which calls his campaign "misleading" and uses an animated sequence to depict politicians taking money...