Dealing With Tell-All Memoirs: Lessons From The Reagan Playbook
One of my duties as a young aide in the Reagan White House was to prepare responses whenever a former appointee penned a memoir in which the Gipper was portrayed in an unflattering light. In April 1986, former OMB director David Stockman released The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, for which he had […]
“Sticky” Numbers in California’s Lobbying and Ballot Initiative Wars
To catch on in a crowded marketplace of ideas, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, a concept must be communicated in a way that is simple,unexpected, and credible. Last year, voters were confronted by a 200-page voter guide, 17 statewide ballot measures and a swarm of local questions. […]
Tax Reform Kabuki Theater Ready to Take Center Stage
Last month, the Legislature sent 600 bills to Governor Jerry Brown for his signature (or veto). Senator Bob Hertzberg’s SB 8 was not among them. Hertzberg created a buzz when he introduced his proposal in late 2014. Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton wrote Hertzberg’s proposal “points the way to needed reform”; San Francisco Chronicle […]
Dog Days for Defenders of Plastic Bags
Columnist Katy Grimes recently criticized SB 270, California’s new law banning single-use plastic bags and replacing them with reusable bags and recyclable paper bags, and praised efforts by a handful of out-of-state plastic bag manufacturers to suspend implementation of this law through the state’s referendum process. “Staring at a gigantic German Shepherd poop on my […]
The Lessons of Six Californias
What a fiasco. Tim Draper’s misguided proposal to declare California a failure and break it into six pieces has failed to qualify for the November 2016 ballot, despite his investment of nearly $5 million in an army of signature gatherers, media consultants and lawyers. Had Draper’s “Six Californias” initiative not imploded last week, it would have certainly failed at the ballot box in 2016. So Draper avoids spending untold […]
Decision Time for Tim Draper
I like and respect Tim Draper, the venture capitalist. His investments in start-ups in Silicon Valley and around the world have helped fuel the global economy and given us new products and services we use every day. But Draper newest idea – a ballot initiative to split California into six new states – is a bad […]
Why Tim Draper’s “Six Californias” Measure is Like a Bad Breakup
How many times in the past few decades have politicians and pundits declared that California is ungovernable in its current state? In the late 1980s, Republican political consultant Stu Spencer offered an identical perspective to then-Sen. Pete Wilson, who was contemplating a run for governor. Spencer’s warning didn’t discourage Wilson, who went on to serve […]
Immigration Reformers Must Tell a Better Story
In a recent column, Washington Post Wonkblog writers Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas ask: “Why hasn’t this been immigration August?” Five years ago, they write, individual members of Congress were “engulfed by tea-partiers” protesting the Affordable Care Act at town hall meetings. But this summer, nothing approaching that level of intensity surrounds immigration – from […]
The California Reform Industry: A Prognosis
Cross posted, Advancing A Free Society, Hoover Institution In the current recession, the ranks of the unemployed in California have swelled by nearly 1.2 million. Still, one industry seems to be thriving in America’s nation-state: the California “reform industry.” The key organizations in the Golden State’s world of reform are California Forward and Think Long, […]
Lazy is in the Eye of the Beholder
Last week, at the annual Milken Institute State of the State conference, California Lieutenant Governor had this to say about California’s job climate: “We cleaned everyone’s clock, we left everyone in the dust between 1950 and 1980 in California. The last 30 years, we put up our legs, we sat back. We’re like the aging […]