Championing what he calls "prudence, not exuberance," Governor Jerry Brown on Tuesday rolled out the annual "May Revise" of his proposed California state budget. How's it playing? Oh, and what's the play?

With Republicans in such profound disarray, can Democrats still screw up their opportunity for ongoing dominance?

Will Jerry Brown be unopposed for reelection? Technically, no. Effectively? We'll see.

Does Brown want to fence with Perry in such a way as to help him with his right-wing Republican base and hurt him with moderate voters? Is he just messing about? Does he want to have some fun at the expense of a relatively unarmed man?

There is no shortage of kudos now for Governor Jerry Brown, who with his State of the State address last Thursday tied the late Governor-turned-Chief Justice Earl Warren for the most such addresses in California's history. Does he have things sewn up politically in the battered but brightening Golden State?

The societal harm caused by judicial budget slashing to crisis levels obviously stretches far beyond the damage caused to parties in individual cases. It undermines our democratic system.

California's generation-long chronic budget crisis is over, but, while the sun is shining, metaphorically speaking, happy days aren't here again. (To reference the Democratic Party's New Deal theme song.) Not just yet.

How massively unsustainable must our system of taxes and borrowing get before we decide to rethink our asphyxiating choices? What happens when the next shock comes and the few key pillars of wealth cannot hold?

The dust is still settling from Governor Jerry Brown's big win with his Proposition 30 revenue initiative. While it may be premature to say that the Prop 13 era has given way completely to the Prop 30 era, this is clearly a very big deal, with ramifications that will play out over a period of years.

Brown's Proposition 30 revenue initiative, which consists of temporary hikes in income taxes for the wealthy and a quarter-cent sales tax for all to stop education cuts and stabilize the long-reeling state budget, is a big win that may point to a path forward for national Democrats.

How did Governor Jerry Brown pull off the strikingly sizable victory for his Proposition 30 revenue initiative? Think three words: Focus, foundation, and fortune.

I've predicted that Prop 30 -- the California initiative to temporarily raise taxes on the rich, along with a quarter-cent sales tax hike, to stave off big education cuts and stabilize the state budget -- will lose. Sometimes I like being wrong. This would definitely be one of those times.

After a mostly sleepy summer and fall, California's initiative campaigns are concluding in a paroxysm of the bizarre. Here's the latest in the wild banana republic-style funding action, and a forecast of the outcomes of the various initiatives on the ballot.

Jerry Brown may have thought that the bad old days of campaign finance were gone. At least for a fleeting historical moment. But now he's finding himself in the midst of some bad new days.

Brown's plans to match his big budget cuts with new revenues were already somewhat complicated by heiress Molly Munger's rival income-tax-hike-for-the-schools initiative. But a much bigger threat emerged in dramatic fashion late last week.

It's been a fairly quiet campaign season so far in California with the exception of Proposition 32, the effort to rein in campaign spending by public employee unions by taking away their ability to have automatic paycheck deductions from union members.

This month has brought some more progress on the chronic California budget crisis, the beginning of some results for reform efforts, and, as the state Republican Party continues its devolution, telling early returns on the appeal of independents.

Most of the important happenings of the past few weeks in California politics has been about setting out the terms of debate and decision around Brown's fiscal moves.