Fox and Hounds Daily Says Goodbye
With this article, we end publication of Fox and Hounds Daily. It has been a satisfying 12½ year run. When we opened in May 2008, our site was designed to offer an opportunity to those who wished to engage in public debate on many issues, especially in politics and business, but found it difficult to get placed in newspaper op-ed pages.
Co-publishers Tom Ross, Bryan Merica and I have kept F&H going over this time investing our own time, funding, and staff help. Last year at this time we considered closing the site, however with an election on the horizon we decided to keep F&H going through the election year. With the election come and gone, and with no sense of additional resources, we have decided to close the site down.
Fox and Hounds will live on, at least, with my articles collected in the California State Library.
On a personal note, I have spent over 40 years in California policy and politics. There have been some incredible high moments and some difficult low points. It pains me that politics too often is a blood sport, frequently demonizing the motives of opponents and using the legal system as a weapon in public discourse. At Fox & Hounds, we tried to adhere to the practice of giving all a voice in the debate, yet keep the commentaries civil and avoided personal attacks.
F&H offered the opportunity to publish different perspectives (even ones that criticized my writings!). We had success as indicated by the Washington Post twice citing Fox and Hounds Daily one of the best California political websites and many other positive affirmations and comments received over the years.
Tom, Bryan and I want to thank our many readers and writers for being part of our journey. The publishers of Fox and Hounds Daily believe that we added value to California and its people. We hope you agree.
Dear California Teacher
In 2005, after having taught for 24 years, I was becoming quite agitated. All along I had been subsidizing the teachers unions’ political agenda and thought I had no choice in doing so. I then learned that I could opt out of the political portion of union dues, but the process to do so was designed to discourage such actions. Shortly thereafter I read about Prop. 75, a California ballot initiative, which would have done just what I wanted: make the payment of the political portion of union dues voluntary. Teachers and other public employees would have to give the union permission before it deducted several hundred dollars a year from each paycheck to fund its pet political causes. The unions’ largess, supporting many causes which had nothing to do with teaching or education, went almost entirely in a leftward direction – implementing a single-payer health-care system in California, limiting restraints on the government’s power of eminent domain, etc. (more…)
Yet Another Tobacco Tax Compromised by Ballot Box Budgeting
Here we go again.
Powerful and wealthy interests – including billionaire Tom Steyer – want to pursue a very necessary tax increase on cigarettes and other tobacco products. This is a great idea—such taxes add to the cost of cigarettes and discourage their use. And California has far too low a tax, well below the national average. We should be leading the country in taxing tobacco.
But cigarette taxes keep getting compromised by those who propose them. The problem? The tax increases get attached to various other policies and favored spending that complicate the measures, and create avenues for attack and skepticism. And many of these add-ons involve ballot box budgeting. (more…)
A Hamilton Agenda for the California GOP?
With the California Republican Party as stuck as it’s ever been, it might be time for Golden State GOP politicos to recalibrate the party’s stances and messaging. And that doesn’t just mean cosmetic re-evaluations of social issues. Sure, it’s great that measures were passed at the last two statewide conventions extending olive branches to the Latino and LGBT communities, but an inclusive social strategy will be doomed to irrelevance if it isn’t matched with policy dynamism.
Unfortunately, on the policy side, the California GOP is dominated by acolytes of the state party’s most hallowed son, Ronald Reagan. Or rather, its policy agenda and ideological stances are more or less determined by a libertarian policy elite that takes too literally Reagan’s ill-advised quote, “Government IS the problem!” (more…)
Moral Values That Underlie Opposition to Government Unions
Often missing from entirely legitimate criticism of government unions is an accompanying explanation of the moral values that underlie the criticism. Last month we published a post entitled “Deceptive and Misleading Claims – How Government Unions Fool the Public,” which listed ten myths that government unions use repeatedly in their propaganda campaigns. Missing in that post, and added here, are the moral values that underlie the need to expose each of these myths.
TEN GOVERNMENT UNION MYTHS AND THE MORAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST THEM
Myth #1: Government unions are protecting the middle class.
Reality: Government unions are protecting government workers at the expense of the private sector middle class. The agenda of government unions is more wages and benefits for government workers, and more hiring of government workers. To adhere to this agenda, failure of government programs still constitutes success for these unions. More laws, more regulations, and more government programs equates to more unionized government workers, regardless of the cost, benefit, or need for these programs. The primary agenda of unionized government has nothing to do with the welfare of the private sector middle class, whose taxes pay for it.
Moral value: The dignity and security of ALL workers is important, not just government workers. (more…)
CA Bans Campus Concealed Carry
Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill criminalizing the concealed carry of firearms on campus.
“Proposed by state Democrats, SB707 passed the Senate in a 23-12 vote in June sending it to the Assembly where it cleared in a largely partisan 54-24 roll call in September, moving it to Brown’s desk,” as Guns.com recounted. “Despite widespread resistance to the bill by state and national gun rights groups that included threats of litigation and 40,000 opposition letters delivered to Brown’s office last week, the governor was not swayed.”
The change upended prior state law, which had not circumscribed the gun rights of permit holders. “Those with concealed-weapons permits had previously been allowed to enter a college or university campus with weapons at will,” the International Business Times observed. State Sen. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, introduced the bill in an effort to close what she called a loophole in the 1995 Gun Free Schools Act, which “prohibits a person from possessing a firearm in a place that the person knows, or reasonably should know, is a school zone, unless with the written permission of certain school district officials,” as the Vallejo Times-Herald noted. (more…)
Game Changing California Elections
Elections matter an old saying goes. Four seasoned California political observers set out to prove that maxim by examining 12 elections that moved California policy and politics in new directions. Game Changers, winner of the California Historical Society Book Award, was written by former television and print reporter Steve Swatt, veteran legislative staff member Susie Swatt, political and public relations consultant Jeff Raimundo, and former United Press International and Gannett News Service Sacramento Bureau chief Rebecca LaVally.
The book takes the reader on a ride through momentous campaigns in California history relating stories of colorful characters and policy debates that make up the Golden State’s rich tableau of political history. More importantly, the elections directly affect our present day political landscape. (more…)