Vetoes

SACRAMENTO - The message was in the vetoes. With a deadline approaching, Gov. Jerry Brown had hundreds of bills heaped on his desk, but just one key point to get across to voters: Sacramento had to take the tough medicine on fiscal discipline. "California faces fiscal challenges unparalleled since the Great Depression," Brown wrote in rejecting a bill that would have made it easier for the survivors of public safety workers to collect death benefits. "While much progress has been made to reduce our structural deficit, balance our budget, reform workers' compensation and rein in spiraling pension costs - much work remains.

In a landmark step to protect consumers from predatory vehicle loans, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law two bills regulating specialized used-car dealers known as Buy Here Pay Here lots. For the first time, the dealers that offer their own in-house financing and target people with damaged credit and low incomes will be required to provide warranties on every car they sell in California. The new laws also oblige Buy Here Pay Here dealers to post fair-market values on their autos while giving customers greater flexibility in making payments.

SACRAMENTO - Consumer groups are trying to kill legislation that they say may lead to the elimination of most telephone regulation in California. Last month, the Legislature overwhelmingly approved a bill to eliminate all oversight of Internet phone service in California. Proponents, led by Silicon Valley companies, assured lawmakers that it would not affect old-fashioned, copper-wire telephone service still regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission. Now the consumer groups are urging Gov. Jerry Brown to veto the bill, saying the nation's big phone companies, including AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., are pressuring Washington to phase out the copper-wire-and-switches "legacy" phone service altogether.

Admittedly I'm biased about bears. I don't think they're hunted enough in California. I say hunt them down with dogs. Hunt them with drones. Maybe roll in the tanks. I've awakened to this conclusion while watching brazen black bears grow out of control in this state. They should be properly managed just like much of our wildlife: by hunting. But they should be hunted humanely -- with hounds. That's why Gov. Jerry Brown should veto a fuzzy-headed bill, SB 1221 by Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance)

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown has spent months persuading some of California's most powerful interests to invest millions of dollars in his November tax initiative. Now, that drive for campaign cash looms over the Capitol as he considers bills that could profoundly affect his donors. In picking winners and losers among those with stakes in the slew of proposals sent to him in the legislative session that ended Friday, Brown risks alienating key allies with big checkbooks. With each signature or veto, he also puts at risk his image as an independent, above-the-fray operator dedicated to restoring public confidence in Sacramento.

A photo of a man building a house may look exactly like a picture of him making repairs or one of him taking the place apart brick by brick, so it can be hard to tell whether a snapshot shows the beginning, the middle or the end of a major project. And so it is with this year's state budget: Are we watching California being put back together or witnessing its demolition? A generation of Californians has lived through several spasms of financial restructuring, some of which hit us from outside, some of which we created ourselves.

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown sliced $195.7 million from the budget that lawmakers sent him, disappointing fellow Democrats by taking money from child care, college scholarships and state parks and adding more to a rainy-day fund. In a series of line-item vetoes detailed Thursday, Brown brought general fund spending to $91.3 billion and the overall state budget, including dedicated funds and bond money, to $142.4 billion. The governor did not explain his vetoes publicly.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Expressing both public and private frustration with Pakistan, the Obama administration has unleashed the CIA to resume an aggressive campaign of drone strikes in Pakistani territory over the last few weeks, approving strikes that might have been vetoed in the past for fear of angering Islamabad. Now, said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity in discussing sensitive issues, the administration's attitude is, "What do we have to lose?" Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta made clear the deteriorating relations with Islamabad on Thursday, saying the United States is "reaching the limits of our patience" because Pakistan has not cracked down on local insurgents who carry out deadly attacks on U.S. troops and others in neighboring Afghanistan.

It's Magic Johnson leading the break, Magic Johnson winning, Magic Johnson creating a personal empire, Magic Johnson … vetoing Frank McCourt? Hey, there's a little addition to his resume you probably didn't seem coming. Now veto is Latin for "I forbid," so finally someone appears to have the ability to bar McCourt from skyrocketing further into his own universe. Of course, it only cost them $2.15 billion. But as The Times' Bill Shaikin reports , any development that has caught McCourt's latest fancy for the property surrounding Dodger Stadium -- that he continues to have a half interest in -- can be vetoed by Johnson.

Magic Johnson has the power to veto any development Frank McCourt might propose for the Dodger Stadium parking lots, according to a provision in an agreement between McCourt and the new owners of the Dodgers. McCourt sold the Dodgers to Guggenheim Baseball Management but retained half-ownership of the parking lots. Guggenheim secured the right to approve any development and designated Johnson as the party who would grant approval. The provision, in a document that is not public, confirms what Guggenheim executives have said, that they control development of the property.