California’s Republican Legislators — a White Males’ Club
I read an interesting article last week, written by California pollsters Stephen Kinney and Matthew Jason with the California branch of Public Opinion Strategies.
According to their research, voter registration among LATINO voters is 57% Democratic, 19% Republican, 20% Independent, and 4% other; among ASIAN voters, it is 30% Democratic, 29% Republican, 39% Independent, 2% other; and among BLACK voters, it is 83% Democratic, 8% Republican, 9% Independent.
Only among WHITE voters does the GOP in California have a registration advantage, it being 42% Republican, 40% Democratic, 14% Independent, 4% other. When this group was broken down by gender, Republicans had a 46%-31% registration advantage among white males, while Democrats had a 48%-39% registration advantage among white women.
It’s All About Jobs
The ballot measures voters will decide on today, for the most part, address immediate problems with the state budget. Proposition 1A is aimed at making a longer term fix. But none of the measures address the core problem with California’s seemingly endless fiscal problems. It’s all about jobs.
If California is to flourish and get past the constant budget battles, state leaders have to concentrate on creating jobs, keeping jobs from fleeing to other states, and improving the state’s economy.
It’s a simple formula: Putting people to work means citizen’s can be more self-sufficient and less reliant on government. At the same time, productive citizens pay taxes and the state and local treasuries are enriched without resorting to tax increases while relieving the stress of budget battles.
Finally, It’s About Time We Regulate Investments that Nobody Understands
Imagine a betting window at the racetrack where you can bet any amount that a horse will not win, as opposed to the usual bet on a horse to win. You can make these bets at 30 to 1 odds every time – and you can get all your friends to join in so that your bets go up into astronomical amounts of money.
And, you can make as many bets as you want – with 7 or 8 horse in the race, it is way easier to pick the loser than to pick the one and only winner – so this helps you sell and re-sell these bets, on which, I almost forgot to mention, you are making huge profits and you are telling everybody who will listen that these are virtually risk-free bets. You can bet more money than you have in your bank account and even more money than all of us have in all of our bank accounts, combined.
And then you can keep selling and re-selling those bets on horses to lose, not win, mind you, all over the world – give them fancy French names like “tranches,” or formidable sounding names like “collateralized debt obligations,” (we’ll call them “CDO’s, for short here), including “credit default swaps.”