The ongoing decrease in the number of people smoking in California is a major public health achievement. With California adults smoking 25 percent less than the rest of the nation, our state continues to benefit from lower rates of tobacco-related illnesses.

The online travel and lodging industry clearly needs to improve its reliability. Simply put, when your site is unavailable to consumers you lose business. Marriott sets the standard for site reliability and responsiveness in the lodging industry. It is very rare for one site to top our rankings in both these areas, so clearly Marriott is the site to model after from a technical standpoint.

The only consolation is that prices in North County tend to run about 3 cents cheaper (than the rest of the county).

The only education part of the lottery will come 10 years from now when we see that the money that was supposed to go to education isn't there, ... In one respect, getting this off the table may be a good thing. Maybe now we'll start concentrating on those things that will improve the lives of our people.

The only factors that actually prevented the first quarter from slipping into negative territory ... were the high starting point heading into it and the pre-war spending and inventory building we saw in January. As far as the second quarter is concerned, we are clearly losing momentum as we approach it.