For Brown, It Won’t Be Easy to Just Say No
Gov. Jerry Brown knows he’s in trouble when even President Obama seems to be ganging up against him. One of the high points of the president’s State of the Union address the other night was a clarion call for universal pre-school education, paid on the public dime. You know, almost exactly like the proposal by […]
Big Money in Lawyers vs. Doctors Initiative Fight
In a battle between doctors and lawyers the doctors have the upper hand – if you’re keeping score by counting campaign contributions. A proposed initiative to change the non-economic damages cap under the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) while also requiring drug and alcohol testing for doctors is in the process of gathering signatures […]
Prison Realignment: Hope Meets Reality
Advocates were wishing and hoping that California’s high recidivism rate – the percentage of inmates who commit new crimes soon after release from prison – would decline when prison realignment took hold. The idea was that as the state downsized its prison population by 25,000 by transferring inmates to county jails, local officials would be […]
California’s 20th-Century “Voting Experience”
A drive through the office parks of Silicon Valley may fool you into thinking California is a state with its eyes focused firmly on the future. But there’s nothing like a national report from a presidential commission on state election systems to make you feel like you’re living in the Dark Ages. Silicon Valley, meet […]