Are Bonds Free?
Voters in California have hundreds of local bonds to consider in this election but I suspect many voters don’t understand how the bonds are funded. They won’t find out by reading ballot summaries. I can’t speak for all the bond summaries throughout the state, but I looked over the 24 bonds on Los Angeles County […]
Prop 67 Should Be Prop 51
The long statewide ballot, with 17 different measures, demonstrates many things wrong with California-style direct democracy. Here’s another one: we put referenda last, when they should be first. The terms referendum and initiative are often used interchangeably, especially by out-of-state media (yes, I’m looking at you, Washington Post). But they are different. A referendum is […]
Goodbye Payphones, Hello Progress
If Clark Kent wanted to turn into Superman in California today, he’d struggle to find a phone booth. Across the entire state there are only 27,000 payphones left, down 70% from 2007. It’s no big surprise that the payphone is going the way of the dodo bird. According to the Pew Research Center 92% of American adults […]
The New War Between the States
In this disgusting election, dominated by the personal and the petty, the importance of the nation’s economic geography has been widely ignored. Yet if you look at the Electoral College map, the correlation between politics and economics is quite stark, with one economy tilting decisively toward Trump and more generally to Republicans, the other toward […]
Election Outcome Maybe Predictable, What Happens Next is Not
What may be most telling in the final anticlimactic debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is not a strong premonition of how this race is likely to end——but what could happen after it. Trump responding to moderator Chris Wallace’s query as to whether he would accept the results of the election answered without hesitation, […]