And we’re off!

But to where?

Does the name Martha Coakley ring a bell?

Oh Shit.

Not Moonbeam again, I can almost hear Linda Ronstadt singing ‘Distant Drum’ to him. Again, also.

I’ve heard those Meg Whitman ads. Talk about delusional!

Yet another political race with bad choices. Sigh.

Cthulu for Governor! You don’t have to settle for the LESSER evil!

Boxturtle (Still my favorite political bumpersticker of all time)

that’s right, “oh shit” is what came to meg w’s mind, when she finally heard the news.

what makes jerry brown a bad choice? care to share?

does anyone have a better candidate in mind? i don’t. jerry b is as good a candidate as a progressive can wish.

He can make those work in his favor, if he hires Bill Hillsman. I can see the ads now:

[Linda Ronstadt sings "Different Drum", then fade out as voiceover kicks in as a montage of prosperous 1970s Cali images fill the screen]

Voiceover: Remember when we had the best schools in the nation?

Remember when we were the state that other states envied?

Remember when our state laws didn’t allow companies like Enron to shut down the electricity to our hospitals during heat waves?

Remember when Silicon Valley owned the computer industry?

[Slow fade in of Jerry circa 1976, then fade/dissolve/replace with Jerry now]

This guy was our governor back then. He’s ready to take the reins again, and make California great again.

[Fade out, replaced by "Jerry Brown 2010" on the screen]

I should have made my comment a response to Larue at 4.

One would think, in a state with over 30million inhabitants, that the Dems could find a new candidate to run against the newly minted goopers.

Exactly. She’s spent gazillions and months working on chipping into his lead, and he hadn’t even announced yet — and is still leading her.

Now that he’s actually in the race, all he has to do is remind Californians how much better off they were when he was governor — and how the Republican governors who followed him messed things up.

Who would want to govern California with its crazy legislative rules?

Rhetorical question.

still looking to the dem party? why repeat the same and expect a different result? jerry b is a dem technically but a very independent one. all his life.

Jerry was the last decent Governor California had. His appointments were generally excellent (esp. good judges), he restored funding to stuff the Repubs had cut, and he launched the best energy efficiency and alternative energy programs in the country (my first job at the California Energy Commission). The “moonbeam” label was attached by elists/corporatists and right-wing morons. The guy is smart.

Brown carries a lot of baggage, some of it deserved, some of it not. The Gov. Moonbeam title really hurt, because he came across as somewhat of a space case at times. It’s been a long time, people have likely forgot.

Honestly, I can’t even remember what it was that earned him the Moonbeam name. I know that Mike Royko came to truly regret coining that title when Brown ran in 1980 as Brown was the only one talking sense.

Still, Obama got a peace prize for being Not Bush. Perhaps being Not Arnold will also carry the day.

Boxturtle (Why not a flake, we’ve had an asshat for 4 years)

if money becomes an issue for jerry b’s bid, progressives all over the country will chip in, as they did for obama and others.

i doubt the size of the war chest will be a deciding factor, though.

jerry can galvanize the voters better than anyone.

he should campaign on building independent and sustainable (economically and envioronmentally) local economies.

jerry b always made a lot of sense to me. the righties have done s good job painting him into some space cadet, which only proves my thought: jerry is a progressive.

Whether Brown will understand the changes in California’s statewide political picture from the 1970s to today is a larger question.

While it’s been a long time since he was governor, I’d bet on Jerry Brown to understand the current political environment of California before Meg Whitman – every day of the week. And speaking of Her Nibs: Count on Whitman to start dragging out the heavy artillery. She’s got deep pockets and she’s a major-league sleaze bag.

He should campaign on making Calif governable again. Even if he wins in a landslide, there will still be enough republican votes to block any budget under Calif’s rules.

Then he’ll have to beat off the GOP attempts to reverse whatever he does via ballot initiative.

Boxturtle (And by the he gets done with THAT, it’ll be time to run for reelection)

Great comments….he can be the “Take back the state from Reagan” guy. A theme with a national message.

No definitely not. I gave up on the dems being a viable alternative to the MIC party a long time ago. Brown is, however, a dem. Spit and polish him all you will but he is still a dem and a retread at that. He may well be better for California than the gooper alternatives but I was merely wondering why, with the large population, the dems could not find a younger, newer candidate. Of course I would love there to be a viable Progressive candidate but we are, I fear, a few years away from that.

I remember Jerry as gov. Bein’ a spaced out hippie at the time I rather enjoyed the Moonbeam and Linda Ronstadt soap opera. She’s still got a great voice.

I’m moving back to Oakland in a month (and, thank you Jesus, away from Arizona, which has already been driven well into the ditch by the wingnuts in the state legislature). Brown is OK with me; as someone said in the Joe Mathews piece, he’s one of the most sophisticated politicians in California. There are plenty of things to dislike about him (like his military schools in Oakland) but he has the money and the stature to stave off certain disaster if Whitman or any other Republican were to win.

Also, I’m hoping the Republicans in general get tagged with Carlyfornia’s wolf in sheep’s clothing ad, which in terms of loopiness rivals anything Gov. Moonbeam was ever accused of.

Jerry was guv when we moved from California when I was a kid. After all these years, it looks like I’m finally moving back in about a year, and he’s likely to be guv again when we move back. Weird…and really cool!

Brown has been criticized for spending months without announcing his candidacy, while billionaire Republican Meg Whitman ran positive biographical ads all over the state airwaves…

“Positive”? Everyone hates those ads. The wingnuts hate her because she’s not wingnutty enough, and so she’s been veering into anti-immigrant anti-welfare territory, thus alienating all the non-wingnuts. Plus, that whole “I’m not a politician” bullshit is really old after Ahnuld. Brown’s going to be the next governor.

Yes, cool and entertaining – hopefully in a good way.

On 14 Feb 2009 Gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown was interviewed by Micheal Savage an avid supporter of American sovereignty and a staunch opponent of the illegal immigration occupancy of the SANCTUARY STATE of CALIFORNIA. No issue is more important than the disaster that has placed a dark cloud of illegal immigration that has asphyxiated the financial stability of this border state. Sacramento has ignored the interests of the California taxpayers and condemned them to higher taxes, deteriorating public services as they cater to millions of illegal alien families living of the state-county welfare system. Today the current governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has looked to the federal government to bail out this once prosperous state. California has a deficit to the amount of $20 Billion dollars and the Democrat Liberal assembly has looked the other way, with their tax and spend syndrome.
“Uncompensated Care” carries a significant expense to taxpayers. Billions of Billions of dollars are forced from the taxpayers wallets paying for illegal immigrants, who should never crossed into American soil in the first place. We pick up the bills for education to at least k-12 for children of illegal aliens, but where does the money come for illegal students in state colleges? Then they use the word “Uncompensated care” for health treatment of emergency care that has closed down many hospitals in California. But their are finally the unknown amount of government at state, county and city entitlement. This doesn’t even account for the “uncompensated money” that is paid out for hundreds of thousands of “Anchor Babies” of pregnant Mothers who intentionally slip through the enforcement net at the airport, border to give birth and thereby getting instant citizenship; a travesty of our immigration laws opening the door wide-open for food stamps, housing, MediCAD, MediCAL and the rest of the families settlement here. legal pregnant women have to pay for there natal care, unless they are low income. Uncompensated care is passed onto any US patient in their potential bills, the insurance companies unlike for illegal nationals who pay—NOTHING. These people know the welfare system better than any American and take full advantage of it, including the use of fraudulent drivers licenses, social security numbers extracted from the deceased records, infants just born and even our soldiers fighting overseas. With the assistance of ACORN they have even fraudulently qualified for home mortgages.
This is a summary of the interview with Micheal Savage and how Jerry Brown sees the crippling extraction of taxes in California, where some of my immediate relatives live. The voters of California should decide for themselves if Jerry Brown, should win the governors race as he seems to promote supporting–no-matter-the-financial consequences and imminent disaster of catering to the illegal alien invasion. Fed up with the Federal governments refusal to enforce illegal immigration laws, many individual states are legislating their laws to terminate welfare programs to there illegal populations. Whereas, these families see California open to exploitation and freebies and therefore will pack-up their vehicles and head for the entitlement promise land of a wilting California.

Turning to the issue of illegal immigration and its effect on California, Savage said that “here we have a state that’s going broke. We have a budget deficit of $41 billion by the best estimate – no one knows how much. In all the talk about balancing the budget from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s so-called Republicans, why has there not been one discussion about cutting off services to non-citizens, even in the emergency rooms? That would save $10 billion to $15 billion.

“Why is it that the government seems to think that the illegal aliens have more rights than the legal citizens?” Savage asked Brown.

Brown responded by denying that illegal immigrants have more rights, and insisted that the children of illegals are not “responsible for what their parents did, and they ought to be taken care of. When someone has been in an auto accident and is bleeding to death, you have to take care of them.”

Savage noted that he had been in emergency rooms three times in the last year and that he had seen “crowds of illegal aliens being treated not for auto wrecks or such, but they are taking their children in for the common cold and the flu. It’s costing the state billions and billions or dollars. And yet in all this rhetoric, not one governor has said that the people cannot afford it. We have to cut back somewhere – how about cutting back with regards to benefits for illegal aliens? I’m bringing up hospitals, but there are many avenues where [benefits for] illegal aliens could be curtailed in some way. The citizens are being told that they have to cut back. Why not the non-citizens?”

While agreeing that all citizens are going to have to cut back, Brown asked: “What are you going to do, round up several million people and take them down to the border and dump them?”

Savage suggested that the state could put a California Highway Patrol officer in every emergency room and ask people for proof of citizenship.
“Do you have any idea how many hospitals are going bankrupt in this country because of the burden of treating illegal aliens, as required by federal law? I would think that you as Governor — if you want to run and become Governor — you would have to look into these things.”

GET INVOLVED AND BOMBARD YOUR PITIFUL REPRESENTATIVES IN WASHINGTON AT 202-224-312. Learn more at NUMBERSUSA & JUDICIALWATCH We also the 287 (G) local police arrest and detainment enforced and mandated for every law department across the country, including in every so-called Sanctuary Haven for illegal aliens. Nor should President Obama and his Homeland Security Secretary rescind No-Match-Letters to businesses from the IRS or drain funding from ICE raids.

No Copyright! Pass around. American Jobs for American Workers. One flag, one language.

A younger newer candidate? Like O’Rhambama? California voters should be grateful that Jerry Brown is willing to take the job. He is better than they deserve.

California is beyond help. I know because I lived there many years. The progressive Dems (you people) have run it into the ground for the past forty years and now it’s dead broke. Money isn’t its only problem.
I’d like to share with you the words of another blogger whose name I do not even know. His words express my beliefs but in a much better way than I ever could.

“The condemnation of California is a stereotype of the overall state of affairs there. Not its people. When the great migration started to California it was because of the opportunities, the climate, and the people. Over the past 4 decades, what made California the greatest state also led to the immigration of all the lowest elements of society. At one time, California had the greatest education system in the world. Opportunities were boundless for anyone seeking a better future. In turn, Californians adopted a “Benefactor mentality” which was ideal in nature but dooming in pragmatism.
Its liberal legal system, built upon the premise that no one’s rights should be infringed, has now led to an atmosphere where no one’s rights are protected.
Its social system, built upon the charitable belief that all are entitled to certain basic things has led to a massive immigration of people that believe that they are entitled to everything.
In an effort to protect natural resources, it has developed policies that allow few the affordability to enjoy those same resources.
In summary, the blessings and beauty of California have brought about its own decline. The weight of the burden exceeds the strength of the benefits to support that burden.”

Very heavy word. Very true.

Ah, the return of Governor Moonbeam.

California (where I was born) is a permanent catastrophe as far as government is concerned.

Brown has no reason to return to state politics at this point that aren’t self-serving. Probably the City of Oakland needs him more.

It was run into the ground by a right-wing thingy called Prop 13.

Heh, only ‘Different Drum’ is a breakup song, and I’m not into THIS ‘Reunited’ replay!

You and I travel to the beat of a different drum
Oh can’t you tell by the way I run
Every time you make eyes at me
Wo-oh

You cry and moan and say it will work out
But honey child I’ve got my doubts
You can’t see the forest for the trees

Oh don’t get me wrong
It’s not that I knock it
It’s just that I am not in the market
For a boy who wants to love only me

Yes, and I ain’t saying you ain’t pretty
All I’m saying is I’m not ready
For any person place or thing
To try and pull the reins in on me

So good-bye I’ll be leaving
I see no sense in this crying and grieving
We’ll both live a lot longer
If you live without me

Oh don’t get me wrong
It’s not that I knock it
It’s just that I am not in the market
For a boy who wants to love only me

Yes, and I ain’t saying you ain’t pretty
All I’m saying is I’m not ready
For any person place or thing
To try and pull the reins in on me

So good-bye I’ll be leaving
I see no sense in this crying and grieving
We’ll both live a lot longer
If you live without me

PS, your storyboard is a great one!!! The song will have to be replaced as it’s a DUMPED song, hafta find an up tempo ‘Reunited’ tune . . . . from the 70′s of course. Maybe the Dead’s ‘Casey Jones’ . . . ;-)

And also 8 years (’66-’74) of Ronald Reagan who dismantled, deregulated and broke up every good thing CA had. What Reagan did to the CA Master Plan For Education alone was horrible, but he also busted unions, lowered taxes and cut safety nets . . . .

which, i believe, was ushered in on Jerry’s watch.

To all of you California haters out there, you are wrong. This is still the greatest state in spite of having stupid Republicans in charge for 25 of the last 30 years. We have the 8th largest economy in the world, were we our own country, and we give way more than we get to the Federal government. You people should be thanking us every day instead of disrespecting us. You know why Real Estate costs so much in California? Because it’s worth it.

When Jerry Brown was running for president he supported single-payer health care. Some months ago he told a meeting of California Dems it wasn’t going to happen. Period. Then yesterday HuffPost has this
…Health Care: Brown who as a presidential candidate supported a single-payer health care system, said he would be hesitant to create a government-run health care system in the state. Instead, he suggested Congress ought to pass President Obama’s plan for expanded health care at the national level. This doesn’t give me a warm feeling for our Legislature continuing to pass the bill on for signature. And the SF Mayor, Gavin Newsome, who decided he wouldn’t the Dems someone else to vote for, I seem to remember hearing that he didn’t feel any warmth towards it either. Yet, I know he’s done real progressives things for SF.

Actually Ca is messed up because of the Grover Norquist freaks who passed a law by less than one percentage point that says that the state needs 2/3rds majority to raise taxes.

Haters… You guys are funny. I’m glad you left we don’t need you, population keeps increasing and not all of them are Brown people.

We have tried younger (Newsome) candidates and he couldn’t get any traction, so what do you want? Villaraigosa has too many problems in LA, got somebody else? They tried to recruit Di-Fi and she said no, so like I said who else do you want?

Do you want a weak Dem candidate? Unlike the Republican Party we haven’t built a Farm System from the ground up that could have produced a excellent and younger candidate every 4-8 years for Governor.

California is strange state that is dark blue for the most part, but has had more Republican Governors than Democrats. In fact The Browns have been the only Dems in office for the last 50-60 years or something.

Most of the better Dems go off to Congress, notice how many Dems from California are in the Progressive Caucus?

Some of it might be the deep financial crisis California is in, some of it might be the 2/3rd’s rule for budget related issues, empowering the minority party in this case the GOP.

Whatever the case it does no good to spend 15 mins on FDL to complain about Brown. If you have a better choice how come I haven’t heard about it until now?

I believe you can pretty much count on three things happening with Brown in office -

Legalization of Marijuana

SB810 making Single Payer Health Care the law

Expansion of subway, light rail and high speed rail throughout the State

Legalizing Marijuana would save the State a ton of money and gain a tax base. With that and the savings from switching to Single Payer Health Care, we could spend on the infrastructure unlike other states can.

With this positive movement then we can change the rules to eliminate 2/3rds needed for budget issues by using Populace Pressure.

None of this is easy and lots of work needs to be done, but I can say that Health Care is more than half way home and the Legalize Pot movement submitted 700,000 signatures only a month into the requirement period.

I believe Reno is aiming for the Elections in Nov to push through SB810 and without any media Legalizing Pot polls around 56%.

I should also add that Brown before this announcement is out polling both GOP candidates and Whitmann in a straight up battle. Besides as more stuff comes to light about Whitmann and laying off 12,000 workers at Ebay in a State with 12% unemployment will prove to be her undoing.

That and trying to flatout BUY the Governors seat.

Well hopefully he can win – Mother of God spare us from Meg!