Bookworm Room

Tweet The San Francisco Chronicle has an article that both praises Governor Jerry Brown’s “balanced” budget and notes that California is in desperate financial shape.  Clearly, the Chron is lowering expectations in case Brown’s “balanced” budget doesn’t do what it promised. The Chron is wise to keep its readers from getting too excited.  I heard [...]

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Tweet The State Bar of California, which I have to pay into in order to practice law in the State of California, long-ago abandoned its core responsibility of ensuring that people who hold themselves out as lawyers to California citizens are at least minimally qualified.  As with all these mandatory organizations, it’s turned into a [...]

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Tweet I wrote a few days ago about the fact that the State of California Department of Education has gone after the Kentfield School District in Marin County, because the District’s food program relies on PTA volunteers, rather than on paid union members.  Our local paper has an update on the story say that, for [...]

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Tweet The headline in the San Francisco Chronicle was simple:  “FBI: 4 Calif. men charged in alleged terror plot.” California men, huh?  Did they have names like Big Kahuna and look like this? “Yo, dude, I’m like going to, you know, like, attack the man. It’ll be, like, totally tubular.” No? Well maybe these California [...]

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Tweet It’s time for Dianne Feinstein to go.  Please vote for Elizabeth Emken:

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Tweet (You can read more about Emken here, or at her own website.) As usual, Dianne Feinstein is nowhere to be seen when there is hard work to be done, so Elizabeth Emken went ahead and had the debate without her: The fact that DiFi is a no-show has nothing to do with age. My [...]

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Tweet A few months ago, I though Elizabeth Emken’s chance of unseating Dianne Feinstein in the Senate was about equal to the Giant’s chance of winning the World Series.  I was not optimistic.  Today, I believe that both are possible and, indeed, probable.  I’ll leave the baseball talk to others, and I’ll focus on Elizabeth [...]

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Tweet Laer, author of the fabulous Crazifornia: Tales from the Tarnished State – How California is Destroying Itself and Why it Matters to America, has posted a California voter’s guide at the website’s a companion to his book.  Unlike all other voter guides, it’s not only informative (and, indeed, it’s more detailed than most voter’s [...]

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Tweet My computer is in its death throes, so I have a new one on order.  I just get the confirmation from Dell, and it contained this interesting little notice: For shipments to California, a state environmental fee up to $10 per item will be added to invoices for all orders containing displays greater than [...]

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Tweet I thought I’d share with you some of the things my friends have posted on Facebook.  First, a cartoon that’s obviously meant to support the Progressive open border policy, but that just as obviously proves the opposite: I understand that you’re supposed to read the cartoon to mean that, without the Native American’s open [...]

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Tweet Real Clear Politics, Sunday, September 30, 2012: I’m excited not only for myself, but for Laer Pearce, whose book, Crazifornia: Tales from the Tarnished State – How California is Destroying Itself and Why it Matters to America, is the subject of the post that RCP picked up.  It’s a great book, and as many [...]

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Tweet Yesterday, I posted about the result of California’s open primary in Marin:  two Democrats running against each other for the California Assembly.  My post was about the problem that this creates for those people whose party has been shut out of the election.  The net effect of open primaries is that, rather than allowing [...]

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Tweet The theory behind Open Primaries is that it will encourage moderation in districts that are extremely Democrat or extremely Republican.  Without Open Primaries, minority opposition votes are symbolic throwaway votes.  Whoever is the majority candidate wins, regardless of the details of that candidate’s platform.  With Open Primaries, which inevitably result in two majority candidates [...]

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Tweet I galloped through Laer Pearce’s Crazifornia: Tales from the Tarnished State – How California is Destroying Itself and Why it Matters to America, which is a great book.  My review is at PJ Lifestyle: Reading my friend Laer Pearce’s book Crazifornia: Tales from the Tarnished State – How California is Destroying Itself and Why [...]

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Tweet The movie said “if you build it, they will come it.”  More and more California businesses say, “if you tax it, we will go“: Comcast announced Tuesday that it would shutter three Northern California call centers and consolidate them into other western U.S. centers in a few months, a move that will affect as [...]

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Tweet Those of you who were lucky enough to have started using the internet a few years ago probably remember Laer Pearce, who blogged at Cheat-Seeking Missiles.  Laer was one of my first blog friends, meaning that we corresponded by email and, eventually, we met.  He is precisely what you’d imagine him to be from [...]

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Tweet One of my oldest blog friends, Laer Pearce, who used to blog at Cheat-Seeking Missiles before he turned his attention to writing a book, is now on the verge of publishing his book about the insanity that is California.  The book, unsurprisingly, is called “Crazifornia.”  While you’re waiting, please consider going over to the [...]

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Tweet In ordinary times, criminals disregard the law.  In the PC Obama era, however, elected officials and state government agencies don’t have much use for the law either.  Take Obama, for example.  Contrary to the original headlines regarding Obama’s newly discovered immigration rights, Obama’s recent announcement regarding illegal immigration isn’t an executive order.  Instead, it’s [...]

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Tweet One of the hardest fought propositions on the California ballot this June is Proposition 29 which is described on the ballot as a new law that “imposes additional tax on cigarettes for cancer research.”  Doesn’t that sound nice?  Those who smoke have to fund cancer research.  It’s an indirect version of “smoker heal thyself.”  [...]

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Tweet Here in California, faced with a devastating fiscal crisis, Gov. Brown is talking about cuts.  If I were in charge, I’d cut out whole departments and agencies because they’re inefficient, redundant, unnecessary, or entirely inappropriate uses of taxpayer funds. Or within departments, I’d simply do a “rip off the band-aid” approach and fire some [...]

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Tweet This election will be the first election since California voters decided, in 2010, to turn ours into an Open Primary state.  The practical effect of having done so is that the November election, rather than being head-to-head combat between the two parties, will be a run-off between the winners from the June election. The [...]

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Tweet California used to have the finest public education system in America.  It wasn’t lack of funding that killed it; it was Leftist corruption and insanity.  Don’t believe me?  Read these two articles. From Bruce Kesler:  Important Report On The Sinkhole That Is Higher Education From Donald Douglas: California State Colleges and Universities May Screen [...]

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Tweet Jerry Brown has nominated Teveia Barnes to be the new commissioner for California’s Department of Financial Institutions.  This means that she is the ultimate regulatory authority for more than 300 California-chartered banks and other financial institutions. Barnes has an impressive resume, including a lengthy stint as associate general counsel and senior vice president at [...]

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Tweet Bummer! It’s two days before Christmas and there will be no white Christmas in Chicagoland, this year and the temperature will be above freezing. There’s not much snow north of here all the way to the Canadian border, either. Global warmening? I called a good friend in Cali’s San Joaquin valley, today: turns out [...]

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Tweet This is what Gov. Jerry Brown of California signed yesterday: The governor signed a measure allowing children as young as 12 to seek prevention treatment, such as vaccinations, for sexually transmitted diseases such as HPV without parental consent. And this is also what he signed yesterday: Gov. Jerry Brown announced Sunday that he had [...]

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