April 28, 2008

Monday roundup

• Typically softspoken in his criticism, Sen. Sam Aanestad, R-Penn Valley, ripped into Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a community meeting last week, reports the Redding Searchlight.
"The fact is this governor, who came in on the mantra ... of tearing up the credit cards, has not exercised his ability to keep the budget in order," Aanestad said."People are still in the mind-set that this (economic downturn) is going to last only a few months longer," he said. "I know that's the governor's game plan. ... If he can stick it out for two more years, then Jerry Brown can deal with it when he becomes governor."

And more:

"He's much more interested in the governor's future than in Californians'," the senator said Thursday night. "He's got two more years. He can slide through and become a senator."

(Hat tip: Joe Mathews)

• There is a new Field Poll on health care out today.

The top-line results: Californians are concerned about health care, with 73 percent saying they are concerned that the state failed to enact health care reform in 2007.

Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they are concerned about not having, or losing, health care coverage.

Find the full poll here.

• Dan Walters, in Sunday's column, answers the question, "So, Mr. Smarty Pants Columnist, since you're always complaining about politicians failing to close the state's chronic budget deficit, how would you do it?"

Read his whole plan here.

"Mostly, we should accept the reality that there's no free lunch and if we want something from government, we must pay for it," Walters writes.

• Two high-tech executives, Carly Fiorina, formerly of HP, and Meg Whitman, formerly of eBay, have been bandied around as would-be candidates for governor in 2010.

So Jon Fleischman, the conservative publisher of the FlashReport and a VP in the state GOP, writes today that he wants to know where they stand on the issues he cares about.

"Word is that both Fiorina and Whitman have been 'talking' to political advisors - great. But the longer they go where they are formulating potential political plans in the shadows, the harder it will be to convince GOP activists like myself about the sincerity of their convictions," writes Fleischman, who has pounded a steady drumbeat of criticism whenever Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has strayed from the GOP party line.

Posted by Shane Goldmacher on April 28, 2008 9:46 AM