Jerry Brown, Donald Trump And Climate Change

Even well before the 45th U.S. president is sworn in on January 20th and the glittery Inaugural Balls have played host to a the gathering swarm of Trump celebrants and big-spenders, the New Yorker’s ascendancy as the free world’s leader is setting off alarm bells across the globe. There is no lack of doomsday scenarios as we […]

Ben Franklin’s Crystal Ball

While the news coming out of Washington these days has yet to have a particularly soothing effect in the aftermath of a tumultuous election, a trip to one of America’s most fabled cities can be reinvigorating. That would be Philadelphia, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the cradle of democracy at the nation’s birth and its […]

Trump Proved He Could Win. Now He Must Show He Can Govern

Shock and Revulsion. Joy and jubilation. Two clashing views of a nation irreconcilably divided, one segment of the population mourning for itself, the other experiencing the realization of a moment that could not have been predicted just months ago. This was the picture voters woke up to last week—a wholesale political makeover that could just as […]

Donald Trump’s Victory

Donald Trump pulled it off. He will be the 45th president of the United States. Hillary Clinton had everything going for her or so it seemed—plenty of money, strong organization, a blue-chip veteran staff, a reasonably united Party, decades of campaign experience and the support of a popular president. It was not enough. Trump had […]

Time to Re-think State’s Failing Water Policies

  As the debate rages over the election of the next President, it seems that another debate with significant implications for California has yet to take place. It concerns the one commodity which our state and the planet cannot do without—water. As California enters its sixth year of a historic drought, the solutions from Sacramento […]

Election Outcome Maybe Predictable, What Happens Next is Not

What may be most telling in the final anticlimactic debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is not a strong premonition of how this race is likely to end——but what could happen after it. Trump responding to moderator Chris Wallace’s query as to whether he would accept the results of the election answered without hesitation, […]

Trump’s Campaign is a Testament to the Strength of Democracy.

The 2016 presidential race has gone from improbable to inevitable to tragic to plain ludicrous. It has turned from a contest about who will be the elected the next leader of the free world into an ugly school yard brawl—a boxing match between two badly mismatched contenders that any observant referee would have stopped a […]

Trump’s Not Going Anywhere

Before the lurid video tape revelations about Donald Trump’s sexual conquests, there were ample reasons to question the viability of his troubled candidacy through to the election. With these disclosures, even the most optimistic assessments cannot overshadow the high-risk strategy which the Trump high command seems determined to employ not by rehabilitating his dismal image […]

Some Changes to Expect Under a Trump Administration

As the Trump team contemplates relocation to Washington it isn’t too early to look ahead to some of the changes he would institute. While it is not possible to foresee all of them since the programs and solutions under a Trump Administration have yet to be revealed, and a few might not survive constitutional challenge, […]

The American Electorate Faces a Stark Choice in November

Toward the end of the first galactically anticipated and unsparingly promoted debate between presidential hopefuls, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the Republican’s standard bearer tried to inject a bit of levity that received little attention but may have capsulized his entire candidacy. Trump was making a pitch for his new luxury hotel scheduled to open […]