In my LJ postings, emails, and conversations, I come off as a conservative to liberals, and a liberal to conservatives.

About two thirds of the time I support Republican candidates, but I must say I am excited to support...
Jerry Brown, Democrat, for California Governor.A few must-see YouTube videos for any Californian ( Read more... )

(wrote this a few weeks back and have been meaning to post it when attached to the internet...)

On the one hand, I'm disappointed.

On the other hand, I'm relieved.

Dealing with our Flexible Spending Account administered here has been a pain: The back-end accounting aspects of it (wellness dollars vs 2009 dollars vs 2010 dollars) has been far ( Read more... )

Awesome:

We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html

Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time ( Read more... )

Wow, this is pretty outrageous:

The New Fat Cats
The indefensible pensions of public-sector employees.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/new-fat-cats

Money quote:
In California, 9,111 retired government workers have pensions of more than $100,000. One retiree ( Read more... )

[shrieking like a little girl] OMG OMG OMG ( Read more... )

Is this good, or bad ( Read more... )

The graphic on the cover caught my eye, and I had just read one of those historical plaques about cable car and street car service over by the Ferry Building, so I sat down and read the dead-tree edition of this article, "The Muni Death Spiral," in the SF Weekly.I won't summarize it heavily here (no money quote) other than to say, WOW, Muni is ( Read more... )

I earned a speeding ticket out on Highway 152 in Madera County in October of last year ( Read more... )

I read a week-old news item this morning about California's pension liabilities in CalPERS, CalSTRS, and another system (I forget which) being about half a trillion unfunded, which is about four times the state's annual budget. In a given year that budget pays for schools, transportation, prisons, health and human services, and more ( Read more... )

There's a great NY Times piece lamenting the complexity of consumer life in America and giving a few tips on wringing some dollars out of our various financial and consumer arrangements ( Read more... )