Category Archives: Jerry Brown

Posted on by

female CEO’s to the rescue in california

Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina didn’t think it would be so easy. Both women fought hard and campaigned like champions. Both Women had Republican challengers that ran aggressive campaigns against them. But both Carly and Meg won big. And both races were over shortly after 9 PM.

Meg Whitman seemed to have a scary primary race developing when Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner ran a series of immigration ads in the last few weeks that made the race tense and close. Meg quickly responded with tough ads of her own to correct her record. More importantly, she never lost her cool. Meg proved she was a tough leader that knows how to fight. She showed California voters that she can handle the rough and tumble world of politics. Poizner’s aggressive campaign ultimately made Meg a better candidate. While she may have started as a soft spoken CEO, Poizner forced Meg into finishing as a sturdy leader that is focused in her message and comfortable in her abilities.

Carly Fiorina also had a tough primary battle. While Tom Campbell had little money, his message hit Carly hard. But Carly responded with both brilliant campaign ads and old fashion retail politics. Carly worked hard to criss-cross the state and campaign vigorously. She seemed to enjoy one on one conversations with everyday Californians in a way many pundits didn’t think possible. Carly knows the issues and is surprisingly and genuinely personable. Carly, too, is a better candidate because of Tom Campbell.

For Meg, Jerry Brown is the perfect opponent. And for Carly, running against Barbara Boxer presents voters with drastically different choices. Brown is all talk with very little to show for his decades of political activity. The last time Jerry Brown was Governor, he left the state with record unemployment and a budget deficit of more than $1 billion. Meg is soft spoken with a lifetime of business success. While voters across the country are tired of career politicians like Brown and Boxer, Californians in particular are wary of self-serving politicians that have left the state near fiscal collapse. Barbara Boxer, who is known as mean-spirited and difficult to get along with, is the poster-child for out-of-touch politicians with stale ideas. Boxer has many detractors who are energized to throw her out of office but few vocal supporters outside of the traditional union members that support all democrats. Carly, on the other hand, is smart, new to the scene and optimistic.

While east coasters erroneously think California voters are overwhelmingly liberal, Golden State residents are consistently anti-tax and fiercely independent. Californians are progressive and willing to try creative solutions to problems. Unlike other risk-adverse states, California tries everything out. How else can you explain a state that elected Hollywood icon Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor and overwhelmingly passed Proposition 8, the anti-gay state-wide ballot initiative? Solidly liberal states would never have voted for Arnold and Prop 8. The current political climate for incumbents, combined with California’s penchant for continuous improvement and inventive ideas, spells trouble for old guards like Brown and Boxer.

This November, California voters have a clear choice – Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer who are uber-liberal career politicians with a history of support from special interests or Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, female Chief Executive Officers with decades of business experience and new ideas to try and turn around California’s dwindling future.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Posted on by

jerry brown’s “investigations” are campaign stops

It must be campaign season. How else do you explain Jerry Brown’s recent fascination with investigations and allegations announced with lots of media in tow and advantageously timed to benefit traditional Democratic constituencies and issues? There is no doubt that the Brown campaign committee and political advisors are strategically planning the roll-out of official attorney general “investigations” to maximize public attention and perception. But what is most troubling about Jerry Brown’s use of the Attorney General’s office to campaign for his return to the governor’s mansion is that his cavalier press conferences, media interviews and announced investigations are only chasing Democratic political issues while ignoring real public safety concerns. Brown has turned the Attorney General’s Office into a political machine with subpoena power — and Republicans and their allies are the target.

In the month of April alone, Brown has launched investigations to embarrass Sarah Palin, aggressively promote union membership, clear ACORN of criminal activities, play catch-up on the Wall Street scandal by trumping up charges against Wall Street giant Moody’s, go after an oil company politically active in defeating California’s new green house gas emissions law, and grab headlines on issues ranging from home foreclosures to former child star Corey Haim’s death. In just one month, Brown has shown that his race for governor starts by using his legal office to help traditional Democratic allies beat back their opponents. The tactics Jerry Brown is using and the public position he is abusing leaves the public with no other choice but to ask Brown to give up his position as the top law enforcement official in California if he is to run an honest campaign for governor.

Brown has promoted his investigation of Sarah Palin’s speech at California State University Stanislaus nationwide in an attempt to raise campaign money from Democrats across the U.S. By using the Attorney General’s office to investigate the Democrat’s favorite villain, Brown has turned the AG’s office into his political fundraising operation. It just isn’t credible for Brown to suggest that Palin’s speech contract deserves the scrutiny of the top law enforcement agency in California – no matter what the details of the contract are. Brown’s hyperbolic and emotional rants on the issue just don’t pass the straight-face test.

Brown has also taken aim at a Texas based oil company that recently launched an initiative in California to stop a state greenhouse gas bill from taking effect in 2012. Valero is leading the challenge to AB 32, an anti-business bill passed in 2006 that will force California businesses to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% with costly mandatory caps beginning in 2012. With environmentalists and union leaders aggressively supporting AB 32, Brown has gone after their opponent, Valero, who is trying to overturn the law by taking the controversial issue to the people through a statewide ballot initiative.

http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/capitolalertlatest/2010/03/valero-oil-firm.html

This month, Brown also launched various “investigations” of construction companies that union leaders love to hate. The California Labor Federation, a consortium of 1,200 unions, has been a loud vocal supporter of Brown’s campaign and Brown has happily returned the favor. This is no unbiased union doing the due diligence work of its union members. The union’s website uses the same verbiage as the Brown campaign and covers the same messages, including the exact same lame charges leveled against Brown’s opponent. The obvious quid-pro-quo support appears with Brown’s multiple “investigations” launched against construction companies who don’t support union rules, including two drywall contractors this month alone. The message is clear – either you help Democrats and their allies, or you face possible “investigations” from AG Brown.

http://www.calaborfed.org/index.php/site/page/california_labor_federation_endorses_jerry_brown_for_governor

http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1898

http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/release.php?id=1889&&

Another recent target is Moody’s Corporation, the Wall Street rating agency. Why Moody’s? Look no further than Brown’s own press release, which reads: “Moody’s is one of the most profitable companies in the country. It had the highest profit margin of any company in the S&P 500 in the years leading up to 2008 – higher than Google or Microsoft…” In a lame — and late — attempt to seize headlines by grabbing a piece of the Wall Street scandal, Brown launches a political “investigation” of a Wall Street giant to support the latest Democratic talking points.

Brown’s cavalier language when talking about his recent “investigations” is so outrageous and laced with mis-information and unfounded charges that his characterizations are best left on the political stage. The over-the-top language should not be used by methodical and factual law enforcement officials. In an all-out final push to restore his political family’s glory and return to the Governor’s office, Brown has turned his current Attorney General’s office into an aggressive partisan shop where supporters’ favor is curried through subpoenas and innuendos. The business community is being bullied by Brown and his team through Chicago-style politics. If Jerry Brown wants to restore California to its golden days, then he should start by stepping down as attorney general and giving the citizens confidence that the highest law enforcement official in the state will not also be running for governor at the same time.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Posted on by

jessica yellin’s favorite “top law enforcement official”

Friday night, April 16th, 2010 Jessica Yellin got a chance to sit in for Campbell Brown on CNN’s show “Campbell Brown.” Yellin wasted no time in bringing her partisan political views front and center for the CNN audience to witness firsthand. Yellin brought on for a one-on-one interview the man running for Governor of California – Jerry Brown. In a live performance from the California Democratic Convention in Yellin’s hometown of Los Angeles, Yellin shockingly interviewed Brown and never told the viewers that Jerry Brown is running for Governor of her home state or that he was sitting at the California Democratic Convention in the town where she grew up.

In a cozy conversation, Yellin introduced Brown to CNN as “California’s top law enforcement official” – immediately positioning him as someone more interested in issues than politics even though Brown is in the middle of a hot campaign for Governor. Yellin threw Brown multiple softball questions throughout the interview with not a single follow-up question to Brown’s long diatribes and no interruptions to Brown’s soliloquies. Yellin, who is known for her liberal political views, even trumpeted the Brown campaign’s messages about the assumed Republican opponent, Meg Whitman.

Starting off the interview, Yellin warms up with asking Brown what he thought about the Goldman Sachs’ scandal. Brown quickly proclaimed “regulators let people get away with murder….this is a massive meltdown, the biggest around the world….we are being stymied by federal laws and rules that often block the Attorney Generals from enforcing anti-fraud statues based on state law…this was, you could say fairly, the biggest bank robbery in the history of America.” Yellin just smiled approvingly but didn’t ask a follow-up nor question Brown’s pandering answers. While unbiased journalists may think to question a man running for Governor about why he hasn’t done more to combat the Goldman Sachs type of problem in his current position as Attorney General, or why, as a Democrat, he thinks the Obama Administration has allowed this to happen, Yellin had nothing to say. She had no follow-up question nor did she bother to push back on anything Brown said.

Yellin’s next question was on Sarah Palin. And Yellin didn’t miss the chance to declare the Democrats talking point in her question: “You are investigating a California school that invited her to speak but then wouldn’t disclose the terms of her contract….why does this merit the attention of the AG?” As Brown went on and on about how “we want to make sure that charitable foundations do what the rules require” and wondered “is the foundation connected with this state college following the rules of charitable trusts?”, Yellin once again let Brown talk without interruption or a single follow-up question. While an unbiased journalist, interviewing a man running for Governor of California, may have wanted to ask Brown WHY he suddenly started his new campaign to rid charitable foundations of financial abuse just this week with a Republican star like Sarah Palin, Yellin just smiled and moved on to the next topic – Meg Whitman.

In a casual and flippant comment, Yellin referred to the man she first introduced as “the top law enforcement official in California” as having an interest in the Governor’s race when she oddly said, “Let me turn to another focus of your attention these days – the Governor’s race. Your likely Republican opponent…has already pumped a remarkable $59 million of her own money into this race, she’s vowing to spend so much more….How do you build momentum against her at this point?”

It was a moment that the Brown campaign couldn’t have orchestrated better. Yellin positioned Brown as the non-politician, asked him questions on easy topics, allowed him to speak without challenge, messaged Meg Whitman as a wealthy politician whose spending “so much” of her own money and characterized Brown as an underdog. Yellin went on to hammer home the Brown message that Whitman is “pumping” millions of dollars of her own money into the race and is “attacking” her opponents. It was a television moment that made all of Jessica Yellin’s friends at the Democratic State Convention in her home state of California cheer as they watched the interview from the Convention in LA.

Yellin gave Brown free air time to talk about…the importance of going to the people, and that the race is really dead-even, and how 1.9 million jobs were created the last time he was Governor, how strongly committed he is to getting our economy better, to protecting the environment and fixing our schools. Brown continued with a claim that Whitman is a billionaire trying to buy the race and that she’s never even voted. And Yellin sat quietly, pleased with her Governor’s answers. Not surprisingly, no follow up questions from Yellin.

Yellin wasn’t done yet. After playing some of the Whitman commercials which Yellin labeled “attack ads”, she asked, “how do you plan to go up against attacks like that when they come your way?” It was a question the Brown campaign had hoped she would ask by labeling Whitman an attacker and positioning Brown as the David to the oncoming Goliath. Brown said, “Making stuff up about the opponent is silly….” And there was no response from Yellin.

As they wrapped up their comfy chat and said good-bye, Yellin couldn’t help herself and blurted out, “Thanks Mr. Attorney General, I always enjoy talking with you….” Mr. Attorney General? For heaven’s sake, Jessica, he’s running for Governor and you are a journalist – can’t you even fake it?

It was an interview that the Whitman campaign should complain to CNN about and ask CNN to report to the FEC as an in-kind contribution to the Brown campaign. It was outrageous and Yellin should be barred from conducting her style of journalism on California political races ever again.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post