It’s Time to Get Rid of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act
The US Supreme Court seems poised to declare Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, at least according to Wednesday’s oral arguments. Good riddance; this law has created ridiculous and unnecessary districts in California for four decades and it is time for it to go. Two sections of the Voting Rights Act impact […]
Pink Slip the Teacher Pink Slip
A simple common sense change to the law requiring notification to teachers that their jobs might be in danger has to sidestep political opportunists who wouldn’t mind keeping the current law intact. Senator Bob Huff’s SB 559 would push back the date schools have to send warning notices to teachers informing them that they may […]
Bridging the Political Technology Gap
Remember 2008? It was primed to be the first election cycle where Internet technology would play a prominent role in campaign strategy. The political world was buzzing about how innovations like Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, and smartphones would be used. At the time, consultants were committed to making better websites, providing online organizing tools and […]
CEQA Must be Amended
We need to support Governor Brown in his efforts to reform CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. CEQA requires that all projects be analyzed to determine if the potential exists for the project to have a significant impact upon the environment. The devil is in the details! Just what constitutes a significant impact and what […]
The Graveyard or the Base? Part 2
In Part 1, I put some of the latest Pew Latino polling on the table and argue that the Republican base has a problem with the left, not with Hispanics per se. I argue that Governor Pete Wilson’s Prop 187 was a mistake and that a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite is to insist our […]