Free Republic

Media including the Los Angeles Times are reporting on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s tirade against California Gov. Jerry Brown this morning as he addressed California’s delegation to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.: “California made the bad choice by going with an old retread,” Christie told California’s delegation to the Republican National Convention here, a crowd that lapped up his message. “Let me tell you this – I cannot believe you people elected Jerry Brown over Meg Whitman. … Jerry Brown. Jerry Brown? I mean, he won the New Jersey presidential primary over Jimmy Carter when I was...

Gov. Jerry Brown spent much of last week trying to scare California voters into voting for higher taxes. Brown, speaking to community college students in San Diego, promised "real suffering by you and really our whole future" if voters reject his sales and income tax measure, Proposition 30. It's a somewhat disingenuous argument, albeit a clever one, rooted in the poll-tested assumption that education is the single most popular state program. ... Meanwhile, nearly 49 percent agreed with the opponents' argument against the measure, that the state wastes money on a bullet train and a legislative staff salary increase, while...

If the experts agree on the existence and causes of climate change, why do some public opinion polls find that only about half or less than half of the American public is convinced that emissions from human activities bear responsibility? A small but vocal group has aggressively spread misinformation about the science, aiming to cast doubt on well-established findings and conclusions. Their goal is to create confusion and uncertainty, thereby preventing meaningful action to remedy the problem. The same strategy was used cynically for decades by the tobacco industry after research showed that cigarettes caused cancer. In fact, some of...

The California Nurses Association, which antagonized Republican Meg Whitman with its relentless "Queen Meg" parody during the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, is back for a second act - this time poking fun at wealthy people opposing Gov. Jerry Brown's November ballot initiative to raise taxes. The influential union, in a campaign to paint tax opponents as "bungling billionaires," will stage a skit on Tuesday at the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco. The union promised reporters a "colorful event," with visuals including life rings and a model yacht.

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is up with its second radio advertisement against Gov. Jerry Brown's November ballot initiative to raise taxes, comparing Brown's tax campaign to street robbery. "Hey, lady, hand over your purse or the schools get it," a voice at the top of the ad says. The ad, an issue-advocacy spot running statewide beginning today, comes as the Democratic governor begins in earnest to campaign for Proposition 30, his proposal to raise the state sales tax and income taxes on California's highest earners. The Democratic governor has characterized the election as a choice between higher taxes and...

In a pointed letter critical of Gov. Jerry Brown's tax rival, California's two U.S. senators along with state legislative leaders called Thursday for a cease-fire from campaigns backing the two multibillion-dollar tax hikes on the November ballot. U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, as well as Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, said in a letter to the California State PTA that the Proposition 38 campaign has "become increasingly negative" and "engaged in personal attacks against Governor Jerry Brown and Prop. 30." The PTA has joined wealthy attorney Molly Munger in backing Proposition...

California will issue driver's licenses to hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants once the Obama administration grants them work permits, the state Department of Motor Vehicles says. The state's decision is the opposite from Arizona's, where Republican Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday afternoon signed an executive order outlawing driver's licenses for anyone who benefits from the new federal deportation relief. The starkly different responses from neighboring states show that the benefits of the new federal directive could vary depending on where young immigrants live. The Obama administration left it up to the states to decide if they will issue...

Gov. Jerry Brown released an Internet ad the other day, asking voters to embrace his multibillion-dollar tax increase. But the word "tax" is nowhere to be found. The closest Brown or other speakers in the tightly scripted ad come to the T-word is "new revenues." Mostly, it touts Brown's efforts to cut state spending and declares – wrongly – that the state's credit rating has improved. "We've made progress, but we still have very serious budget problems in California," Brown says in the ad. "We simply have to take a stand against further budget cuts for schools or for our...

California's death penalty has been in limbo since 2006, when a federal judge stayed the execution of Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for the brutal 1981 murder and rape of 17-year-old Terri Winchell. The judge was fearful lest the state's three-drug lethal injection protocol would cause Morales undue pain. Since then, a number of states have switched to a one-drug protocol. Why hasn't California? The answer could be that Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris don't want the death penalty to work. Brown and Harris are personally opposed to the death penalty, but when they campaigned...

Betrayed by the discovery of $54 million hidden in two state parks accounts, groups that donated money to keep California state parks from closing this year now say they want a refund -- or at least a binding promise from lawmakers to spend the extra money on parks. "They sort of came to us under false pretenses. They cried wolf, and we responded," said Reed Holderman, executive director of the Sempervirens Fund. "An elegant solution would be for them to refund the nonprofits, and put whatever is left into parks." State Parks Director Ruth Coleman resigned Friday and her top...

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will make a rare political public appearance today, with his schedule opening up to join Gov. Jerry Brown in San Diego at the groundbreaking and dedication of the Sunrise Powerlink — a large transmission line project that will run from the Imperial Valley to San Diego. Schwarzenegger promoted and supported that project more than four years ago.

Vice President Joe Biden was in town this afternoon. Here's The Bee's pool report from the event: Vice President Joe Biden arrived before 3 p.m. - a bit earlier than expected - at a fundraiser at the Sutter Club, near the state Capitol in downtown Sacramento. Pool was ushered into the hall about 3:17 p.m., just in time to hear Gov. Jerry Brown at the podium ahead of Biden. Biden started speaking about three minutes later to a crowd of about 130 people. "Nothing has changed," Biden said of Brown, who was governor before from 1975 to 1983. Biden said...

The state budget that the Legislature will enact this week will assume that half of its deficit will be covered by voter approval of new income and sales taxes next November. However, it's looking steadily less like a reasonable assumption and increasingly like just another in a long string of budget gimmicks, not unlike last year's bogus assumption that the tax system would generate an extra $4 billion. Indeed, one could say that Gov. Jerry Brown and fellow Democrats are doubling down on miracle money, from last year's $4 billion to this year's $8.5 billion. History does not favor new...

Democratic lawmakers have vowed all spring to fight spending cuts to programs that serve the poorest Californians, including welfare-to-work and Cal Grant scholarships. In a Capitol where fiscal maneuvers have flourished in recent years, Gov. Jerry Brown says he wants real cuts to health and welfare programs because the state cannot afford what it provides. Facing a Friday deadline to pass a balanced budget, Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez and Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg are meeting with Brown behind closed doors to find middle ground. Deal or no deal, it is nearly certain that lawmakers will send the...

As Gov. Jerry Brown barrels ahead with high-speed trains, he could find that his quest for a legacy derails the November tax measure he desperately needs to repair the state budget. For his entire political career, Brown has lived in the shadows of his visionary father, Pat, the governor from 1959-67 who brought us the State Water Project and the master plan for California higher education. The younger Brown has always been a big thinker in search of his own legacy. But, after his first gubernatorial tenure, from 1975-83, he was best remembered as Gov. Moonbeam, the ideas guy who...

Gov. Jerry Brown's tax-raising ballot initiative has the support of a slight majority of registered voters, while a competing measure headed to the November ballot has little chance of passing, according to a Field Poll released Saturday. The poll found 52 percent of those surveyed said they would vote in favor of Brown's initiative, 35 percent were opposed and 13 percent were undecided. The measure would raise the income tax for seven years on individuals making $250,000 or more a year and the sales tax for four years. The money would help fund education, along with a host of other...

After voters in San Jose and San Diego, two of California's largest cities, rolled back public employee pensions in Tuesday's election, pressure is mounting on Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature to take similar action to deal with financial crises that are crippling state and local governments. But don't expect politicians in California to attack the collective bargaining rights of public unions as they did in Wisconsin, experts said Wednesday. The Democratic Party controls both houses of the California Legislature and all of the statewide offices, and left-leaning politicians have little incentive to crack down on labor unions that are...

Jerry Brown, not surprisingly, used a ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge to tout his two bids for public works posterity – a north-south bullet train and a tunnel for water to bypass the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. "Suck it in!" Brown said. "We got to build, we got to do it right. And this bridge I think really expresses that sense." Just as the bridge proved to be an economic boon, Brown said, so would a bullet train and a tunnel to improve water supply reliability, adding that just as the Golden Gate Bridge "connects...

Taxes must be raised. Either that, or teachers and cops will be laid-off, and the people of California will suffer. So says Governor Jerry Brown, as he seeks to convince Californians that they should vote themselves higher taxes. The Golden State’s circumstances are dire, yet Jerry Brown is facing the crisis with an approach that’s nearly forty years old. He was saying this same thing – leveling these same threats - back in 1978. We’ll go back to the 70’s in a moment, but first let’s put California in its current context. Despite how anybody feels about our 31st state,...

As the state budget's deficit widens, Gov. Jerry Brown is being thrust into a three-front political battle. He must not only persuade voters to pass his sales and income tax package, but, implicitly, persuade them to reject a rival tax measure just for schools. Meanwhile, Brown is pressing liberal Democratic legislators to ignore their political DNA by making deeper cuts in health and welfare programs, not only to close the deficit but to bolster appeals to voters for new taxes. "It's not easy," Brown told hundreds of business and civic figures gathered Tuesday in Sacramento for the annual Host Breakfast....