With campaigning disappearing and becoming irrelevant as we head into the 4th of July weekend, something remarkable has taken place in the race to replace term-limited Arnold Schwarzenegger as California's governor. We're now essentially one-fifth of the way through the general election. Billionaire Republican wannabe governor Meg Whitman has spent a record-shattering $100 million. Jerry Brown has spent virtually nothing. Yet Whitman's campaign has failed to change anything in the overall dynamic of the race.

The Assembly Health Committee today approved the California Universal Health Care Act, authored by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). The bill guarantees all Californians comprehensive, universal health care while containing ballooning health care costs and improving the quality of care and delivery of health services statewide.

The findings, researchers say, raise the possibility that the so-called "pay-for-performance" initiative could inadvertently worsen existing healthcare disparities. Pay-for-performance reimbursement plans essentially reward hospitals and doctors for meeting certain treatment goals established in medical guidelines. For example, guidelines state that heart attack patients should be given aspirin and drugs called beta-blockers when they are admitted to and discharged from the hospital; centers that better meet that goal would get greater reimbursements.

The California Nurses Association said the incident shows how disconnected the GOP gubernatorial nominee is from working people. At a news conference outside its Oakland headquarters that was attended by 150 nurses in red scrubs, the union unveiled a new ad campaign - "Nurses Won't Be Pushed Around" - and released posters showing a heavily jeweled hand adorned with rings that was meant to represent the billionaire candidate.

Remember back in December 2004 when California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told nurses protesting staffing cuts that they were “special interests,” who “don’t like me in Sacramento because I kick their butt?” The California Nurses Association (CNA) then sued the Governor, and helped defeat all of his ballot measures in the November 2005 special election.

In a radio interview, the Republican said the altercation was a verbal dispute and characterizes the media interest in the story as the 'fascination of the chattering class. After a week of silence, Meg Whitman has spoken out about a report that she shoved a subordinate when she was chief executive of EBay, characterizing the altercation as a verbal dispute and dismissing the uproar about it as "a fascination of the chattering class."

Registered nurses at Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center and Tenet Healthcare Corp. reached their first tentative agreement for a new three-year contract. The National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas, the organizing arm of National Nurses United, represents about 300 registered nurses at the hospital.

The last 35 years have been disastrous for American unions. The percentage of the workforce represented by unions has declined from about 30% to barely 10%. As the unionized island in the center of the workforce has shrunk, every element of labor relations affected by unions - job security, promotions and lay-off, job descriptions, wages and benefits (pensions, vacations, health care, etc.), grievance procedures, attention to safety - has slid away from workers. There has been a similar deterioration in union influence in electoral politics and public debate about key issues.

Valley Regional Medical Center in Brownsville was the latest domino to fall in a drive by the National Nurses Organizing Committee-Texas to unionize registered nurses at Hospital Corporation of America-owned facilities in a handful of Texas cities.