Ted Kennedy
Last month, vacationing on Cape Cod, I drove around the corner of a street in Hyannis Port near the ocean and coming down the street was a golf cart with Senator Ted Kennedy as a passenger. I quickly pointed him out to the others in my car and we pulled over to watch as the golf cart left the road and headed onto a pier, taking Kennedy to view his beloved ocean.
As a Massachusetts native and someone who is involved in politics as a passion and as a livelihood, I constantly felt Kennedy’s presence. I spoke to him only one time, after college, while looking for work in Washington, D.C., and coming across him in the halls of a Senate Office building. Quick hellos were exchanged.
A couple of years before, spending a week on Martha’s Vineyard with teammates from my college cross-country team in pre-season training, I took a break, jumped on a bicycle and traveled to Chappaquiddick. I followed the dirt roads on the island that Kennedy said confused him in the dark a month earlier, which lead to the tragic death of the woman in his car, Mary Jo Kopechne. And, I remember thinking at the time … in the dark … could be.
Majority Vote Budget and 2/3 for Taxes: The Worst of Both Worlds
California’s budget process is broken. Democrats use their
majority to spend as much as they can. Republicans use their leverage under the
two-thirds requirement for budget and taxation to block the taxes needed to pay
for that spending. At budget times, this produces delay and last-minute
compromises that merely serve to push problems into the future.
Word
is that the folks at California Forward (and an increasing number of good
government types) say they want to change this system – by eliminating the
two-thirds requirement for budgets (to a majority) while preserving the 2/3
requirement for taxes. Among the various explanations I’ve heard for this, the
one most oft-repeated is: budgets, which last only a year, should be easier to
pass, but tax increases are open-ended (except when they’re not, as in this
year’s temporary increases) and should be harder. There’s also a political
explanation. California Forward is trying to avoid opposition from Republicans.
Assembly Will Let Judges Cut Prisons
When a panel of federal judges earlier this month ordered the state to come up with a plan to quickly move some 43,000 inmates out of the grossly overcrowded state prison system, it provided legislators with the political cover to do what they knew they had to do anyway.
But the state Assembly has decided to toss that gift aside and in effect tell the federal courts “Make us.”
Here’s a news flash for the lower house: There’s a reason it’s called an “order.” Federal judges don’t like being ignored and have plenty of ways to make their unhappiness known, as the state has found in other prison-related battles.
When the Senate passed the state prison reform bill last Thursday, there were plenty of members who didn’t like it. It didn’t get a single Republican vote and only the bare number of Democratic votes needed to pass.
An Opportunity For the Taking by Republicans, If . . .
With each passing week, the political headlines make it clear that the luster is falling off the Democrat brand quickly. Whether its Obama’s falling polls, falling numbers for his health care initiative or growing disenchantment with the Pelosi/Reid leadership, the trend is unmistakable. To make matters worse for Democrats, that trend is likely to continue in the year to come.
The so-called stimulus package will not positively affect the economy. The reason is simple: the economy is still suffering from the 2nd largest tax burden in American history and the highest ever regulatory burden. Combined with a huge debt burden, staggering deficits and the threat of new taxes, it is no wonder that talk of a double dip recession has started to make the rounds among economists. All of that spells more than potential mid-term election trouble for the Democrats – something Congressional watcher Charlie Cook notes when he says the dynamic is “out of control” for Democrats and that there is a 50/50 chance they will lose more than 20 Congressional seats in 2010.
That dynamic, however, represents only an opportunity for success – not a guaranty of victory – for Republicans nationally and in California. Whether Republicans capitalize on that success is story yet to be told.
The Day that Shook the LAUSD — Public School Choice Resolution Passes
Nearly three thousand parents showed up at the LAUSD downtown headquarters yesterday to demand change, and they got it. In the form of a groundbreaking school choice resolution, authored by Yolie Flores Agular. It will help us to revolutionize hundreds of failing schools throughout the District, and turn the new school construction program into an engine of reform. This was a watershed moment, not just because of the transformative nature of the policy itself, but also because of how we won the vote. We won because of parents. We stood up, stood together and screamed at the top of our lungs: we are fed up, and we aren’t going to take it anymore!
And we organized ourselves into a political force more powerful than the defenders of the status quo. We stand for one thing, and one thing only: our children. And we are motivated by one thing, and one thing only: our love for them. This was a great day, both because of what we did, and how we did it.
Join the Debate over California’s Fiscal Future
For most of the past two decades, the communications between the municipal finance markets and California’s lawmakers have been a one-way street, with municipal-market investors and other lenders jawboning about the state’s need to achieve long-term fiscal balance … and then, invariably, devising creative financing structures to help the state bridge its recurring budget gaps.
But this year, as the state faces its most serious budget crisis in decades, the conversation is more of a dialogue than ever before. While some players in the municipal market reacted in time-honored fashion – the rating agencies that judge municipal creditworthiness slapped California with rounds of downgrades that left it the lowest-rated state in the nation – others have been notably silent, as the global liquidity crisis tied investment bankers’ hands.