“No Bye-Bye-Jerry”—The Wink that was Heard
There was no wink from Gov. Jerry Brown when he said he wouldn’t involve himself in the Proposition 30 tax extension issue at his press conference Friday, but if you listened to the context of what he said you heard an audible equivalent to a wink. He said that Prop 30 was temporary; he wasn’t […]
Irreverent and Unsolicited Advice to Transit Advocates
Part 1: Strategies Not Goals The other day I attended an excellent seminar “Future of Public Transit” sponsored by the Lewis Center at UCLA, attended mostly by transportation practitioners and students who want so badly to believe that public transportation is the wave of the future. I was struck by the desire of some presenters […]
Vergara Decision: Remember the Children the Court Forgot
In 2014, California Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu ruled that the state’s teacher tenure, layoff and dismissal laws violated the state’s constitutional guarantee of a quality education for every student. Judge Treu based his decision on compelling trial testimony, much of it from students, which he said, “shocks the conscience.” An appellate court recently reversed […]
We’re Not 40 Million Yet
California just had another flare-up of one of its chronic diseases: Population overestimation. I’ve written about this malady before. We’re constantly overestimating how fast our population is growing. For years, we were going to reach 50 million by 2020. Then it was 2025. Gov. Brown has talked about us as if we were about to […]