California Needs to Get Over Its Fantasy of Constant Growth
California has an official state flower (poppy), an official state insect (the dogface Butterfly), even an official state theater (the Pasadena Playhouse). But no official state sport. Unless you count the great Californian pastime of overestimating our population growth. It probably should be enough that we’re the most populous state in the Union. But California’s […]
The LAO Is Getting Higher Ed Wrong
Recently, one of my weekly syndicated columns at Zocalo Public Square looked at the wrongheaded way Californians think about their own public university systems, particularly the UC. I made a brief, critical reference to the Legislative Analyst’s Office work on this. Now I’d like to expand on it, in hopes that LAO will do some […]
Don’t Trust Anyone Who Won’t Let You Vote on the Internet
They want to make it so much easier for you to vote, say California’s leaders. It’s hard to believe them. Then why do their suggestions double down on methods of voting that actually constitute barriers to voting? Instead of eliminating voter registration, they want to expand it. Even as the mail gets less reliable, they […]
What Amnesiac California Needs Is a Museum of the Great Recession
Californians are bad at remembering things, especially about California. Our memories are so gone that our politicians, from Gov. Brown on down, can’t stop reminding us that only just a few years ago, we were in a recession and a budget crisis. So now—even with housing prices soaring, unemployment under 7 percent, and the state […]
Del Beccaro Wins on Books
He doesn’t have much of a chance of winning in next year’s U.S. Senate elections. But if former California GOP chair Tom Del Beccaro can somehow make the 2016 contest a referendum on the quality of the candidates’ books, he could make it a race. I recently sat down to read – out of duty, […]
Do All Californians Need to Take an Oath Before They Vote on Ballot Initiatives?
It’s a fair question. Indeed, it’s a question raised this week by none other than the Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts. Roberts was writing in dissent to the court’s 5-4 decision that the redistricting commission in Arizona (and presumably a similar commission in California) was constitutional. The case turned on what the […]
Justice Scalia Is Right. California Isn’t the Real West
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was on the wrong side of most Californians, and history, in his cranky dissent to last week’s landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage across the nation. But, much as we might hate to admit it, Scalia was right when, in the same dissent, he argued that California isn’t part of […]
We the Legislature
In a 5-4 decision preserving Arizona’s redistricting commission (and presumably California’s by extension), the U.S. Supreme Court had a direct and useful reminder for Californians: when we cast ballots on ballot initiatives, we’re acting as the state legislature. Specifically, the court found that while the U.S. Constitution requires the State Legislatures to handle redistricting, the […]
Are We Finally Off the Hook for Prop 8?
Celebrate that marriage equality is a 50-state reality. (OK, 49 – it wouldn’t be a major advance in American civil rights if Mississippi weren’t engaged in defiance). Run a victory lap if you like (take the baton from Gavin Newsom, since he must be getting tired with all his victory laps). Get hitched while you’re […]
The Pope vs. AB 32
One of the surprises of Pope Francis’ new encyclical on climate change was that he criticized so-called “cap and trade “ systems of pollution credits. California has such a system, and the funds produced by the selling of the pollution credits are the subject of considerable fights. But the Pope doesn’t like such credits. In […]