Mid-Week Review While Awaiting the Budget
The budget is 77 days late. No one seems to care except those state vendors who are borrowing to stay afloat, state workers, those who keep tabs on records (we’re nearing one) or have a bet in the Sacramento Bee budget prediction game.
While waiting for the budget, other news is being made on California’s political front that deserve some comment.
Jerry Brown’s new ads continue his campaign strategy of calling Meg Whitman a liar. And, Whitman’s campaign attorney called the California Teachers Association a liar because of an anti-Whitman ad and told television stations to take it down. Where’s George Washington when you need him? Come to think of it, the legendary story that declared that George Washington could not tell a lie … was a lie.
UC Berkeley Conference: Why Would Anyone Want to be Governor?
Why
would anybody want to be governor of California? With huge budget
deficits, a dysfunctional system of governance, and a grumpy
electorate, can any governor actually accomplish very much?
Five experts on California politics will gather Monday, Sept. 20 on the
Cal campus in Berkeley to talk about what the next governor should do
— no matter who ends up taking the oath of office.
The panelists include writer Mark Paul, author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It; Debra Saunders, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle; Yvonne
Walker, president of SEIU Local 1000, California’s largest state
employees union; and Bill Whalen of the Hoover Institution. Ted
Lempert, former member of the Assembly and current president of
Children Now, will moderate.
Poll: Latino Support for Preschool
As the
campaign season heats up, candidates are crisscrossing the state
talking about the need to create jobs and fix our education system.
Results from a new statewide poll of Latino voters, a critical mass of
business support and an abundance of research all point to how we can
both strengthen our economy and take a critical first step in K-12
reform: by providing our children with high-quality preschool.
As candidates increase their efforts to woo Latinos – who account for 1
in 5 registered voters in California – they should consider the results
of a new, bipartisan poll of 895 Latino voters. The statewide poll
found that education is a top priority for Latino voters as a pathway
to opportunity, but that they give California poor marks when it comes
to providing those educational opportunities.
The poll, conducted by The Tarrance Group and Hart Research Associates,
showed that Latino voters see preschool as a critical piece of the
state’s educational mission and believe it provides important benefits
to children. Nearly 7 in 10 Latino voters said they are more likely to
support candidates who back preschool. And about three quarters said
candidates who support preschool and early learning are focused on the
right priorities, and will lead California to a better future.
Urban Plight: Vanishing Upward Mobility
Since the beginnings of civilization, cities have been crucibles of
progress both for societies and individuals. A great city, wrote Rene
Descartes in the seventeenth century, represented "an inventory of the
possible," a place where people could create their own futures and lift
up their families.
What characterized great cities such as Amsterdam-and, later, places
such as London, New York , Chicago, and Tokyo-was the size of their
property-owning middle class. This was a class whose roots, for the
most part, lay in the peasantry or artisan class, and later among
industrial workers. Their ascension into the ranks of the bourgeoisie, petit or haute, epitomized the opportunities for social advancement created uniquely by cities.
In the twenty-first century-the first in which the majority of
people will live in cities-this unique link between urbanism and upward
mobility is under threat. Urban boosters still maintain that big cities
remain unique centers for social uplift, but evidence suggests this is
increasingly no longer the case.