Free Republic

When you drive into the city of San Joaquin, it's hard to miss the new lights at the youth soccer fields They're also a sign of what else you'll find in this rural Fresno County community: more children per capita than in any other city in California, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Here, 41% of the population is younger than 18, compared to 25% statewide. (see pie charts in article) The city of San Joaquin is not alone. Across the San Joaquin Valley, cities big and small have more children per capita than most places in...

Gov. Jerry Brown announced this afternoon that he is closing three field offices, including Fresno's, and will not have a cabinet secretary or deputy cabinet secretaries. Brown ... is reducing his press and communications staff and closing field offices in San Diego, Fresno and Riverside.

The 11th-hour appointment on Tuesday of two new state water board members dramatically changes the stakes for a crucial vote tomorrow on a new sewage treatment permit for the Sacramento region.If approved as the board's staff recommends, the permit would impose strict new limits on the treated wastewater the capital region discharges into the Sacramento River near Freeport.

Roy Ashburn, the conservative California state senator who was arrested last week for drunk driving after reportedly leaving a gay bar, has acknowledged that he is gay. CBS13 reports that Ashburn made the announcement to a radio station where he used to host a talk show. "I'm gay," he told radio host Inga Barks, according to the Sacramento Bee. "Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long."

Has anyone heard from or gal since last summer. She had developed quite a group of connected followers on Twitter and then vanished from the web. Any chance she went to work for a politico?

The Fresno County Republican Party is under the microscope for campaign contributions to a Southern California Assembly member that a leading political watchdog said look "suspicious." In the spring of this year, the party's Central Committee received $30,000 from members of a San Diego County family, according to the committee's campaign filings. In the same time period, the committee gave a similar amount -- $28,500 -- to Joel Anderson, R-Alpine. Stuart Weil, a member of the Fresno County Republican Central Committee, said the committee took the money from the San Diego County family with no strings attached."Everything is legal," he...

After consultation with many fellow supporters of my proposed change in the California Republican Party Bylaws, I made the very difficult decision just a few minutes ago to withdraw the change. To make a long story short, while I am confident that the votes were there to pass the change at the convention, the matter was becoming extremely divisive due to a lot of misinformation being spread about the proposal, and its effects.

State Controller John Chiang released yesterday a monthly report comparing the state's financial situation in July 2009 to the same month last year. Here are some key figures from the report: General Fund revenue in July 2009 dropped $365 million (-8.0%) from July 2008. Through July, the state had $4.4 billion in receipts and $9.4 billion in disbursements on the books. The state issued $1.493 billion in I.O.U.s in the month of July. Personal income taxes came in $335 million below (-11.5%) last July. Corporate taxes in July were $18.9 million (9.1%) higher than last July. Sales taxes in July...

A motorcyclist was killed Monday in a collision with a motor home on Highway 101’s Conejo Grade after he slowed rapidly in front of the recreational vehicle in an apparent road-rage incident, authorities said. The motorcyclist, a 57-year-old Ventura man, was killed about 12:22 p.m. on southbound Highway 101 near Camarillo Springs Road when he collided with a roughly 30-foot motor home driven by Michael Antoine, 68, of Thousand Oaks, said Officer Terry Uhrich of the California Highway Patrol’s Moorpark office. The motorcyclist and Antoine were both traveling about 55 mph when the collision occurred in the right lane, authorities...

"We couldn't have a better person at the table to represent our interests than Dennis Hollingsworth." You've heard that saying, "what a difference a day makes?" Well, what a difference a few months make. In talking with many of Senator Hollingsworth's GOP colleagues, it is very clear that his style of open, direct and inclusive leadership through this budget crisis has really solidified his position as leader. I have had the pleasure of knowing Dennis Hollingsworth for nearly two decades -- and in all of the time I have known him, Hollingsworth has exhibited the kinds of traits for which...

California will not impose a two-tier pension system promising lower benefits to future state workers as part of any wide-ranging deal to solve its $26.3 billion budget shortfall, The Bee has learned.(multiple sources familiar with the negotiations) The controversial proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been shelved in budget talks. Carroll Wills, of California Professional Firefighters (AFL-CIO), applauded the decision to move more slowly on pension reform. "The pension discussion, to the extent it needs to take place, (should) be a deliberative process of the Legislature," said Wills. Jim Zamora, spokesman for Service Employees International Union (AFL-CIO) Local 1000, said...

Here’s the latest on California’s chronic-turned-chaotic budget crisis. Not much to report. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger held an event this morning with some country district attorneys promoting his idea to crack down on potential fraud in the now massive, and heavily unionized, in-home health service program. He says it can save hundreds of millions, public employee unions and Democrats say no, with legislative leaders saying they’re open to some reforms, but after the budget. Not unlike a previous pledge by another set of Democratic legislative leaders to get change the redistricting system. Assembly Speaker Karen Bass boycotted this morning’s Big 5...

California’s leading public pollsters, Field Poll director Mark di Camillo and Public Policy Institute of California chief Mark Baldassare, did their usual post-election analysis at today’s monthly luncheon of the Sacramento Press Club. It was an indicative event with regard to the current state of state politics. A relative handful of those in attendance were practicing journalists, tracking the fast diminishing state of state political journalism, and most of the questions (or speeches) after the presentations were posed by non-journalists. After a lengthy awards ceremony of scholarships for the journalists of tomorrow (hmm …), the two Marks, as they are...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he's "happy" illegal immigrants get state services and says they're not to blame for California's $24.3 billion budget gap. Schwarzenegger, an immigrant himself, says the estimated $4 billion to $5 billion the state spends on illegal immigrants annually is a "small percentage" of the deficit. The Republican governor told The Sacramento Bee's editorial board on Friday that it's easy to "scapegoat" illegal immigrants. But he says the state's budget has a much deeper spending imbalance. He noted the federal government requires California to provide emergency health care and education to illegal immigrants. And he...

Assemblyman Roger Niello, who cast a key vote to pass a state budget that raised taxes this year, has been replaced as the GOP's point man on the Assembly Budget Committee. The Fair Oaks Republican will hand his committee post to Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, who is a freshman in the lower house but served a dozen years in the Senate, leaving in 1990. The switch was made by the Assembly's new Republican leader, Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo, who has stressed that taxes cannot be raised again in tackling a $24.3 billion shortfall.

The good news in California government's budget mess Friday was that there wasn't much new bad news. Instead, a two-house, 10-member legislative committee heard a quartet of fiscal experts repeat earlier warnings that the state is very low on cash, won't be able to borrow as much as it needs and will "almost certainly" have to postpone paying some of its bills. Controller John Chiang, Treasurer Bill Lockyer and representatives of the Legislative Analyst's Office and Department of Finance offered assessments that ranged from gloomy to gloomier. Jason Dickerson, a budget expert from the analyst's office, said the state would...

Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee, a Central Coast Republican in his third term in the Assembly, was chosen to succeed Assemblyman Mike Villines as the GOP leader of the lower house. The moved to replace Villines came less than two weeks before the May 19 special election, in which voters will be asked to approve a controversial mix of taxes and cuts to help shore up the state budget. The 29-member Assembly Republican Caucus selected Blakeslee in a closed-door meeting that lasted more than an hour. He is expected to formally take over on June 1. The caucus had become restive in...

State Sen. Abel Maldonado, the deciding vote in the big state budget morass, came to see me last week with a very interesting story about his fellow Republicans. I was telling him what a good name he has, because no one can figure out if it is Spanish, Italian or Portuguese. He proceeded to tell me that when he was running for state controller in 2006, he commissioned a poll to gauge the feelings of Republican voters in Orange County. The poll came back showing him losing to the Democrat by almost 2-1. "This is impossible," Maldonado said. "Orange County...

First and foremost, it's obvious on the face of it to be able to say that the six Republican legislators (Senators Ashburn, Cogdill and Maldonado and Assemblymen Adams, Niello and Villines) who actually voted for the bill that imposed over $14 billion in new taxes were critical to its passage. Shame on them. But in taking some time to contemplate the politics of the final hours of this Big 5/Big Taxes deal passing out of the legislature, you have to say, how did it happen? You needed three Republicans to support the actual tax increase legislation, and they were one...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A California appeals court has ruled that a Christian high school can expel students because of an alleged lesbian relationship. The 4th District Court of Appeal in Riverside on Monday upheld California Lutheran High School's right as a private, religious organization to exclude students based on sexual orientation. Two girls sued claiming they were discriminated against after they were expelled from the Wildomar school in 2005. A lower court said the school isn't bound by the same anti-discrimination laws as a business establishment. John McKay, attorney for California Lutheran, says the school's goal is to educate based...