By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009 – 12:00 am | Page 3A

Just days before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators finalized a water package, including an $11.1 billion bond issue, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer warned them not to do it.

California is already deeply in debt, Lockyer warned, has huge budget deficits and can’t afford another big bond issue.

“The days of blithely heaping more and more debt burden on the general fund are over – at least they should be,” Lockyer said.

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10:00 PM PST on Saturday, November 28, 2009

The Press-Enterprise

Federal judges and state officials should recognize that dumping more inmates into jampacked county jails is not an acceptable way to ease the state’s prison crowding. Requiring counties to pick up the burden of the state’s prison neglect would provide the illusion of progress, not a practical solution.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest proposal for cutting the number of inmates in state prisons rests heavily on local jails, however. California this month handed federal judges a proposal that would trim the state prison population by more than 42,000 by 2011. But nearly 14,000 of that total would come from shifting state inmates to local jails.

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11:31 PM PST on Saturday, November 28, 2009

By JIM MILLER
Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO – Inland developer Stephen Russell Holgate spent well into the six figures to propel the legislative aspirations of San Jacinto Councilman Jim Ayres, according to Riverside County prosecutors. But why would he?

Land-use decisions have long been the turf of city councils and county boards of supervisors. The Legislature includes 120 people. Ayres, if his 2006 Assembly campaign had been successful, would have been just another member of a heavily outnumbered Republican minority.

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Posted: 11/28/2009 07:54:41 PM PST

We like and respect Assemblyman Bill Emmerson of Redlands. We have endorsed him in past elections and think he does a good job in the Legislature – to the extent anyone does in that dysfunctional body.

But we’re not so high on his becoming state Sen. Bill Emmerson of Hemet.

Call us old-fashioned – even Bob Stern of the Los Angeles-based Center for Governmental Studies would – but we still think representatives of the people should come from among the people they represent.

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By Liz Hazelton
Last updated at 4:57 PM on 27th November 2009

British banks were teetering on the brink of a fresh meltdown today after it emerged they had invested heavily in crisis-hit Dubai.

An $80billion debt default in the emirate has already reawakened the spectre of a global ‘double dip’ – that the first shoots of recovery could be wiped out by a second wave of recession.

But the level of exposure that the crippled British banking sector faces is now under renewed scrutiny.

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By Stuart Leavenworth, Editorial page editor
sleavenworth@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009 – 12:00 am | Page 6E

If California’s Democratic Party had a motto right now, it would probably be, “No drama.”

The party doesn’t like surprises. It doesn’t tolerate family fights. Its preference is to anoint candidates who can breeze through the primary carrying lots of money into the runoff.

That’s one big reason the Democratic Party is so … boring.

Any week now, Jerry Brown will officially announce his candidacy for governor. At that point, the Democratic race will be over. Brown has so much Read the rest of this entry »