links for 2010-10-15
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Jerry Brown's 1977 veto of a death penalty bill and his appointment of the overtly anti-capital punishment Rose Bird as the state's chief justice haunted him as well, playing a major role in his losing a U.S. Senate bid to Republican Pete Wilson in 1982.
Kathleen Brown enjoyed a big lead over then-Gov. Wilson when she began her 1994 run for the governorship, but Wilson hammered her on capital punishment and won in a landslide.
"Kathleen Brown is against the death penalty," one Wilson TV spot said, "even for drive-by killings … even for carjackings that take innocent lives. Kathleen Brown has the same position on the death penalty as her brother, Jerry Brown, who appointed dangerously lenient judges like Chief Justice Rose Bird, who voted to overturn 68 out of 68 death sentences."
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Meg needs to pursue this line of attack. -
One, in the heat of a reelection campaign, Boxer will say just about anything so long as she can get away with it. And she usually can. Two, she is under extraordinary pressure from Fiorina, by far the strongest Republican candidate she’s ever faced. Three, Boxer is a tough, resourceful, and shrewd campaigner and not too haughty to correct a false statement when necessary to avert trouble.
Often that’s not necessary. Boxer, 69, makes so many dubious, untrue, hypocritical, or outlandish remarks in a single debate that most of them fly by without registering.
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Pretty much explains Boxer and her camapign.Let's retire her.
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What an odd race. Things tightened up in early September, then Boxer bounced out to a six-to-eight point lead, which made this ol’ eeyore’s fragile little heart think she was pulling away. But no: The three polls taken this month have had the race by three or four points, and now suddenly via Reuters we’ve got a virtual dead heat.
If memory serves, Fiorina ended up pulling away in the last few weeks of the GOP primary thanks to a statewide ad bombardment. Boxer’s actually outspent her on TV two-to-one thus far, but I can’t believe that’ll continue when Fiorina’s budget for the race is basically infinite.
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Brand new ballgame -
Critics, however, contend that the program emphasizes building over producing power, with insufficient safeguards for taxpayers. The grants are more generous and likely benefit more companies than the tax credit they supplanted, analysts said. And government watchdogs questioned how much business growth the spending actually stimulated.
"It's essentially funding economic activity that already would have occurred," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "So it's just a pure subsidy."
Money spent on those projects might have helped the economy more had it been used for other efforts targeting the most troubled states or workers, Ellis added. The stimulus bill "threw cash" at programs, he said, without a comprehensive plan.
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Big government boondoggle -
One of the reasons Democrats thrive is that when they run a place for a long time — think the East Coast’s big cities, or New Jersey until 2009, or California (at least the state legislature) — they tend to enact policies that drive out those who oppose them. Some will object to counterproductive liberal policies at the ballot box, but many others will vote with their feet. Why do Democrats run Washington D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Detroit? Because their policies have driven most who demand better out to the suburbs.
If these electorates really do make their decisions based on housekeepers and casting calls . . . those states will deserve what they get.
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Well, California business will certainly vote with their feet and their employees will go with them. -
At this juncture, I am still sticking with a 1994-level outlook: Eight Senate and 52 House seats are the over and under, with a 50 percent chance that Republican gains will be higher and a 50 percent chance that they will be lower. House gains in the 60s, 70s, or even 80s seem unlikely, as do Senate gains of 11 or 12, which would require the GOP to capture or hold 100 percent of the 18 or so Senate seats that could change hands. Even so, Republicans stand poised to make sizable gains that will flip the House and bring them close to winning the Senate.
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Continues to be a good year for the GOP. For a party that was down so far just wo years ago what a comeback.
2 Comments
Bill Bean
Boxer is amazing. I know most everyone in CA is nuts but how could you keep voting her in?
ZZMike
There’s no doubt that Boxer needs to go home. But I can’t find any good reason to vote for Whitman, other than she’s not Jerry Brown.
People go into Governor’s races thinking they’re going to run it like a business: fire people, reorganize divisions, generally shake things up.
But State government isn’t like business. You can’t fire people, you can’t reorganize divisions, and since the Democrats are in power, there’s not a lot you can do.
I think that’s what turned Governor Arnold from the apparent go-getter to the “I Give Up Kid”.
I’m thinking of voting Libertarian, since that’s the closest I can come to “none of the above”. (The other parties are too ludicrous to consider.)
California is a train wreck, it’s a Titanic on the iceberg. Unless we bring spending under control – and that means bringing the unions in check – it’ll only get worse. Maybe I can clean up selling “The last business to leave California, please turn out the lights. Unfunded pensions are another boat-anchor. I read that CalPERS bases their forward-looking projections on assumptions the market will grow 20% a year. This is the economic school of Dr Larry, Dr Curly, and Dr Moe.
Another thing we have to do is disband the California Air Resources Board – whose charter is to rid California of all those nasty cars and trucks, and the California Coastal Commission – whose charter is to make sure nothing ever gets built within 800 miles of a body of water.
Speaking of water, why did Boxer refuse to let the water back into the San Joaquin Valley? Are the supposed ecological benefits really worth turning one of the world’s best farmlands into a dust bowl?