Expediting a New Spending Limit Honors the Voters’ Show of Faith
I give credit to California Democratic leaders. Flush with victory, they acknowledge their party’s weakness for fiscal profligacy. In the wake of the first successful voter approval of a statewide tax increase in eight years – after eight straight defeats – Democratic leaders have expressed due caution on returning to old habits: Governor Brown began […]
Will Prop 30 Replace the Lottery as the “School Funding Solution”?
Members of the education establishment tell us that despite the success of Proposition 30 at the polls, the issue of school funding has hardly been resolved. They argue that the Prop 30 funds do little more than maintain a status quo that must be improved. Translation: more money for education is needed to fulfill the […]
We Are Courting Serious Trouble
There are not a lot of issues that legal reformers and trial lawyers agree on, but one of those issues is court funding – specifically, the need for an adequately funded court system to ensure access to the civil justice system. According to the National Center for State Courts, there were more than 1.2 million civil […]
Off the Rails: How the Party of Lincoln Became the Party of Plutocrats
For a century now, Republicans have confused being the party of plutocrats with being the party of prosperity. Thus Mitt Romney. To win back the so-called 47 percent—an insulting description Romney doubled down after the election when he blamed his loss on Obama’s “gifts” —Republican might look farther back, past Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover to […]