Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO — California will go toe to toe with global warming, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Wednesday as he set targets for reducing the state's greenhouse-gas emissions in coming decades. His executive order calls for reducing these emissions — mostly carbon dioxide from cars and power and industrial plants — to their 2000 levels by 2010, to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. The targets aren't as ambitious as those of the Kyoto Protocol, a reduction pact adopted by more than 140 nations but rejected by the United States. The Assembly sent a...

It's all so terrible. The governor has proposed a budget that significantly increases government spending, but not nearly as much as the various government-dependent groups would like it to increase. Listen to the weeping and gnashing of teeth. Children will go hungry. Union workers might actually have to retire with a defined- contribution plan (a promised amount of contributions) like most of us have in the private sector, rather than with the CEO-style, taxpayer-funded defined-benefit plan (a promised amount of benefits) they now have. Overall state spending will go up by only 4.2 percent, K-12 education will go up only...

Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez launched a broadside attack at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday, saying the GOP governor is acting increasingly partisan and will see his popularity fade if he keeps it up. "He was elected to put an end to the bipartisan bickering," Núñez, D-Los Angeles, said. "He cannot continue to bash the Legislature unjustly and at the same time want to work with us to solve problems in the state." "I think it comes at his own peril," Núñez said. "The Democrats that give him high numbers now, approval ratings, when they see that he's really more of...

SACRAMENTO -- By 2006, California could have a dramatically different political landscape, with part-time and more moderate legislators and a more streamlined state bureaucracy, if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's renewed threats against the status quo catch fire with voters. As the governor fights against a Legislature he says is resisting his calls for change, he is campaigning this weekend against individual lawmakers. He has again threatened to push a ballot measure to create part-time Legislature. Combined with an open-ballot primary initiative on the November ballot pushed by Schwarzenegger supporters, the crop of politicians elected in 2006 could find themselves both part-time...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Barbara Boxer would rather have a president with whom she agrees on environmental issues. Instead, she has a campaign issue she believes is ready-made for California politics.</p> <p>Once a week, Boxer stands before reporters and cameras and blasts away at Republican retreats on clean air, water and cleanups of toxic sites.</p>