Dan Walters

When California's political consultants share war stories, 1988's immensely expensive, multifront battle between insurance companies and lawyer-backed consumer groups takes center stage.

Jerry Brown's first governorship was marked by what one might term – charitably – a high degree of flexibility.

When the state assumed full financial responsibility for the court system a decade ago, it was billed as a way of relieving pressure on county finances.

As America's trade with the Far East – principally China – expanded massively during the 1980s and 1990s, California reaped the benefits as the gateway for both exports and imports.

Advocates of overhauling California's troubled pension system for public employees couldn't have chosen a more providential moment to launch their reform campaign.

When the Legislature was drafting its massive water plan, it included a number of specific appropriations as political lubricants.

Maywood is one of California's tiniest and most troubled cities, a plot of scarcely 750 acres southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

Last June, the Public Policy Institute of California released a highly critical report on California's "enterprise zone" program that provides big tax breaks to businesses for supposedly hiring workers in areas of high unemployment.

Mike Genest, who announced recently that he's resigning as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget director, deserves a respite after four years of dealing with the state's chronic fiscal crisis.

A batch of amendments to a massive water bond bill was submitted to the state Senate's clerical desk Monday, and one, as it turned out, had nothing to do with water.

Winston Churchill paid tribute to the young fighter pilots who staved off Nazi Germany's aerial assault on England during the Battle of Britain with characteristic eloquence: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, testified at a recent legislative hearing on how California might improve its bollixed budget process by emulating other states.

Exactly one year from today, California voters will pretend that electing a new governor will somehow improve their chronically ineffective state government.

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and political reform groups enacted a ballot measure to shift legislative redistricting from the Legislature to an independent commission, they purposely left congressional redistricting in lawmakers' hands.

One of the more obscure – and probably more important – of California's many political conflicts pits an organization called EdVoice against the California Teachers Association and other school unions.

They're fighting over water in the Capitol, but lurking just below the surface is the real issue – how and where California develops land in the years and decades ahead.

The "Steve Peace death march," so-named for the state legislator who pushed a massive overhaul of the state's electric power system through the Legislature in 1996, occupies a special niche in Capitol lore.

Remember the old saying, "Once burned, twice shy"? It's supposed to mean that when one has a bad experience, one should be more cautious in similarly dangerous circumstances.

For decades, Stockton has been pumping money – often taxpayers' money – into its moribund waterfront/downtown area, hoping it would become an entertainment destination that would recapture its 19th century prominence as a portal into California's gold fields.