Why Cooley Lost
With GOP attorney general candidate Steve Cooley’s loss to
Democrat Kamala Harris now confirmed, the Republicans have now lost every
statewide office for only the second time since 1882. What’s worse, this happened in the midst of
national GOP landslide, and Cooley’s loss was unexpected; in fact, every
pre-election public and private poll showed Cooley winning. So why did he lose?
Three reasons.
The first was of his own doing. Asked by a Los Angeles Times reporter if he
planned to "double dip" by taking his district attorney pension along with his
$150,000 a year salary as attorney general, Cooley answered, "Yes, I do. I
earned it. I definitely earned whatever pension rights I have and I will certainly
rely upon that to supplement the very low, incredibly low, salary that’s paid
to the state attorney general."
Harris blanketed the airwaves with a TV spot
repeating this statement and asking the obvious question, "$150,000 a year
isn’t enough"? In a state with families
struggling to make ends meet in this recession, here is poor Mr. Cooley unable
to live on $150k a year. How much
sympathy do you suppose the ordinary voter had for that? Democratic operatives say that Cooley’s
numbers began falling in their polls as soon as the TV spot ran.
Will Jerry Brown challenge the status quo to fix California?
This article originally appeared in the Washington Times.
On Election Day, the once and future governor of California convinced voters that “I have the preparation, the know-how and the independence to challenge the status quo.” Now it will be up to Jerry Brown to deliver on that claim.
California’s struggles are well-known, as are its causes. We have the nation’s third-highest unemployment rate. Last year for the first time in living memory of most Californians, our economy actually shrank. No longer does the Golden State embody the American dream. People are leaving California at a faster rate than newcomers arrive from other states.
We suffer from some of the highest taxes in the nation. We have seen our education system crumble along with our roads. And the California legislature has piled up budget deficits that will haunt the state for years to come even after raising taxes by $18 billion. These days state government seems to excel only in producing regulations and fostering litigation.
Bringing California’s Unemployment Insurance Fund Out of the 1930s
The Legislative Analyst’s Office recently released its
report on the state Unemployment Insurance (UI) fund ("California’s Other Budget
Deficit: The Unemployment Insurance Fund Insolvency"). It is a well-written
report, summarizing the current insolvency ($8.5 billion and growing), the
staggering imbalance in revenues and benefit payments ($11.3 billion in
benefits paid to workers in 2009, with only $4.5 billion collected), and the absence
of legislative agreement on how to address the insolvency.
Information/Internet Attack: Wiki Leaks . . . a New Form of Warfare?
We awoke Monday to news of the latest Wiki Leaks document dump of some 250,000 documents or cables or whatever. Early news had stories of our State Dept. personnel, from top down, furiously making international calls over the Thanksgiving Weekend just passed (now, just a belly-busting memory), to try to mitigate the almost incalculable damage. But, the information leaked and posted worldwide to anybody with a computer and an internet browser, is so massive that it will take time to digest all of it and to assess the damage to our relationships with our allies, our enemies, and governments, big and small, all over the globe. To say nothing of how many people flying below the radar, making comments or working behind the scenes, are now seriously jeopardized.
It is hard to imagine a more threatening act of pure terrorism, which, having searched my own soul, truly cannot benefit anybody rational at this point – other than the obvious and increasingly ominous risk that one fine day like this one, we will all look up from our work (or play) to our last sight on this planet this time around . . .. a flash . . . .