Jeff Adachi and Howard Jarvis – Worlds Apart, but Closer than You Think
It would seem a conservative firebrand from a generation ago and the public defender of the state’s most liberal city would have little in common. However, on political strategy, at least, Howard Jarvis, the prime mover behind Proposition 13 and Jeff Adachi, San Francisco Public Defender and newly minted mayoral candidate, made similar political moves with like motivations in mind.
With 40 minutes to spare before the deadline to register as a candidate for mayor, Adachi filed his papers for the office bringing to 16 the number of candidates who seek to be San Francisco’s mayor.
Likewise, Howard Jarvis ran for mayor of Los Angeles in 1977. Both men took on the mayoral runs with a similar purpose in mind – not necessarily to be elected mayor but to use the candidate spotlight to pound the bully pulpit for governance changes each thought was essential. Adachi wants to reform the public pension system. Jarvis’s goal was to change the state property tax formula.
It’s Legal Reform, Stupid…
Let’s pause a moment to put the ugly debt ceiling debate into perspective. If there’s one thing voters learned over the past few weeks, it is that our leaders will do almost anything to avoid an honest discussion about our country’s problems. A responsible discussion about cutting public sector costs would surely have included legal reforms, yet I did not hear that issue raised once throughout the debate.
Legal reforms are a common sense, no cost solution that would help our local, state and federal governments address the cost drivers that greatly contribute to the public sector debt. These drivers include and are not limited to health care costs and the cost of legal services to public entities.
The U.S. tort system costs every man, woman and child in the U.S. a yearly “tort tax” of $808. That is $3,232 for a family of four, a huge cost for many families that are struggling to make ends meet these days. Add into the equation the impact of lawsuits on schools and cities and counties and you it’s obvious that legal reforms would have a hugely beneficial impact for our nation.
World High-Speed Cost Increase Record
Cross-posted at NewGeography.
California’s high-speed rail project is setting speed records, not on tracks, but rather in cost escalation. Last week, the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) announced that the Bakersfield to Merced section, part of which will comprise the first part of the system to be built, will cost between $10.0 and $13.9 billion. This is an increase of approximately 40 percent to 100 percent over the previous estimate of $7.1 billion, an estimate itself less than two years old.
This "flatter than Kansas" section should be the least expensive part of the system. It can only be imagined how much costs might rise where construction is more challenging, such as tunneling through the Tehachapi Mountains and for the route across the environmentally sensitive Pacheco Pass that leads to the Silicon Valley. CHSRA officials admit that the present $43 billion cost estimate to complete the Los Angeles (Anaheim) to San Francisco first phase will rise substantially. This estimate was also less than two years old.
Another One Bites the Dust – The Long Libyan Goodbye of Another Despot?
The long
nightmare in Libya may have begun it’s final round Sunday night. Ragtag Rebels in mismatched uniforms, racing
across the desert in pickup trucks mounted with rocket launchers and
anti-aircraft guns, stormed Tripoli, taking over Green Square (their
revolutionary Ground Zero) and re-naming it Martyr’s Square. Gadhafi’s son Saif has been arrested and may be
on his way to the Hague to face an international war crimes court – an
unconfirmed report says both sons have been captured. And, tinhorn, two-bit dictators the world
over will sleep less well tonight, if they sleep at all.
The Astonishing
Arab Spring has claimed another brutal, resource-plundering, dictatorship . . .
if Libya can fall, can Syria be far behind?
Is Iran as solid as it may appear?
There are time
periods in history when the world itself seems to be in upheaval – the late
1960’s is one that many still alive can relate to; another is just shy of the
mid-century mark of the 19thC when the barricades were manned in cities all across
Europe. The WWI and post WWI era was
another, as was the post WWII time period, when the Marshall Plan saved Europe
from starvation, and/or communism, and McArthur and his military government
re-made the former empire of Japan into the constitutional democracy and US ally
that it is today. But, the Arab Spring
this year came out of absolutely nowhere, like the desert Sirocco, the
Mediterranean wind blowing with the force of a hurricane that comes out of the
Sahara. And the Arab world and Middle
East will never be the same again.