A Moment with James Brady

I had one brief meeting with James Brady, President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, who died yesterday. Although brief, all the aspects of his jovial, warm personality that are being reported in many of his obituaries today came out in the short encounter. Brady’s hopes of becoming press secretary for the President of the United States […]

Election Ballot as Advisory Poll

Two separate California appellate court decisions last week – one directly, one indirectly – deal with the question that voting on state ballot measures can be used to simply get voters’ opinions. The court was directly dealing with the status of advisory measures in the case of Proposition 49 to upend the Citizens United case. […]

Taxes and Jobs

A column by journalist David Cay Johnston in the Sacramento Bee re-visited arguments made by opponents of the Proposition 30 tax increases – including me – that jobs would be killed if the taxes were increased. As pointed out in the article, California has increased jobs since the taxes took effect. However, it was not […]

Not Your Father & Mother’s GOP A.G. Candidate

The challenger to Attorney General Kamala Harris is Republican Ron Gold, http://rongold.org/ a former California deputy attorney general whose positions don’t always line up with the stances often associated with Republican candidates. Read his press releases. Gold supports legalizing marijuana and backs the U.S. Senate immigration plan and a path to citizenship. Gold calls for […]

Cost An Issue in Environmental Friendly CA

The new Public Policy Institute of California poll on the environment shows that Californians continue to be strong for environmental protections, but standing up for the environment weakens when a price tag is attached. While the poll covered a number of environmental issues, when pollsters asked follow-up questions involving possible cost increases for transportation fuels […]

Villaraigosa on Teachers Unions

Former Los Angeles mayor, California Assembly Speaker, and importantly, teacher union organizer, Antonio Villaraigosa had some sharp words for teachers unions in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. Reacting to rhetoric at two recent teacher conventions, Villaraigosa asked why the teachers unions were so resistant to change. “As a former union leader and a life-long […]

Notes from the Weekend: Perez Out; Investors of High Speed Rail in?

John Perez has ended his recount bid that had brought out critics of both Perez for seeking the recount and California’s bizarre recount system, itself, in which a candidate can choose the county votes he or she wished to explore. Given the small margin of defeat, there has also been carping about the Perez campaign […]

Judge Kills the Death Penalty

A federal judge in Southern California declared California’s death penalty unconstitutional yesterday, which will give impetus to a plan introduced by three former governors to push for reforms of the death penalty that would deal with the judge’s main objection of long delays. In February former governors George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis announced […]

They’re Writing about the Governor’s Race — of 2018!

The election to choose California’s governor is still about four months away yet two columns appeared in Los Angeles papers Monday discussing the governor’s race in 2018 – Jim Newton in the Los Angeles Times wrote about three potential Democratic candidates who might be the next governor; John Phillips in the Los Angeles Register discussed […]