Prop 1 Roots Go Back to Water Bonds that Built California
You might say that Proposition 1, the water bond, carries the DNA of bonds that promoted a growing and prosperous California. Water bonds helped build the Los Angeles Aqueduct in the early 1900s to make possible the growth of one of the world’s great cities. Another bond helped build the State Water Project half-a-century later, […]
November Turnout Could Deliver Pleasant Surprises for GOP
In my 20 years of waging California GOP campaigns, I’ve never seen turnout trends quite like those shaping up for 2014. As more surveys are conducted, it appears that California voter turnout could drop below 45%, possibly even lower than 40%. Democrats have little interest in this election. Republicans are more motivated, but the wildcard […]
Can a Higher Minimum Wage Lower Your Quality of Life?
Will you actually be richer when your pay is raised to $15 per hour? Perhaps the question seems ludicrous. Of course you’re better off making $15 an hour than you were at $9 per hour, right? But the answer is, unfortunately, not as obvious as you might think. And the question itself–will workers getting a […]
Darkness at Noon
Earlier this week, the death of David Greenglass at age 92 was announced in the New York Times. Few Californians today have heard of him or even of the espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1951, in which he was a key witness. Yet, both the trial and the subsequent revelations have important […]
CA Supreme Court ‘All Aboard’ For High-Speed Rail
All aboooooard! In what probably is the last train stop of opposition to California’s high-speed rail project, today the California Supreme Court refused to hear a case that could have stopped it. The case, by Kings County and two local landowners whose property would be bulldozed for the project, objected that the Legislature had altered the […]