Proposition 67 Plastic Bag Ban Makes Good Environmental — and Business — Sense
More than 450 organizations are backing the Yes on 67 campaign, the effort to preserve the state’s plastic bag ban. There are some you would expect, like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Surfrider Foundation, and Environment California. But the list is also heavily populated by many that fall in the “not-your- usual-suspects” category: heavy-hitter business groups like the […]
Trump’s Campaign is a Testament to the Strength of Democracy.
The 2016 presidential race has gone from improbable to inevitable to tragic to plain ludicrous. It has turned from a contest about who will be the elected the next leader of the free world into an ugly school yard brawl—a boxing match between two badly mismatched contenders that any observant referee would have stopped a […]
Would Two-Thirds Democratic Control of the Legislature Even Matter Now?
Once again, we’re confronted with the possibility of Democrats grabbing two-thirds control of both houses of the California Legislature. As with the U.S. Senate at the national level, because of higher voter turnout Democrats in California generally do better in presidential election years (2008, 2012) than in the non-presidential years (2010, Tea Party time, and […]
“No Organized Opposition” Is A Bad Argument for a Ballot Initiative
Prop 52’s TV ads push the fact that there’s no organized opposition to the measure (which locks in a hospital fee and Medi-Cal funding) as a virtue. Backers of Prop 54 (a legislative “reform” measure) and Prop 55 have made a version of the same argument. It’s another example of how rotten our system of […]
Prop 54: Too Good to be True?
Too good to be true? Probably is. Proposition 54 is another example of the adage. Pledging to bring more transparency to the legislative process, this proposition simply provides another tool for moneyed interests to stop progressive policies in California. Sponsored by billionaire Charles Munger and wealth manager (and former legislator) Sam Blakeslee, this Constitutional Amendment would […]
California, Focus on What Matters: Legislative Races
With 17 initiatives on the cluttered November ballot and so much attention on the Presidential race, California Republicans cannot forget about the consequential elections for congressional and legislative seats. Since Republicans aren’t positioned to determine the outcome of the Presidential election in California, and there isn’t a strong conservative voice to support in the Senate […]
Clinton Follows CA Bad Plan for Business
Do more people find Hillary Clinton unreliable, calculating, deceiving, morally bankrupt and lacking in core beliefs or Donald Trump immature, petulant, unqualified, temperamental and egocentric? We will know the answer on election night. But when it comes to serious issues like job creation, it seems easier to have faith in Trump if he is elected […]
Reading Ballot Initiatives—Fixing Errors
Perhaps the worst of the many bad things about the California method of direct democracy is that inflexibility is the default. We’re the only place in the known universe where a law passed by the voters can’t be altered or fixed without another vote of the people. The good news is that some initiative sponsors […]
Handle Your Presidential Debates With Care
(Editor’s Note: This essay is part of U.S. Presidential Elections Have Always Been Crazy, an Inquiry produced for What It Means to Be American, a partnership of the Smithsonian’sNational Museum of American History and Zócalo Public Square. A shorter version of this article appeared previously in Fox and Hounds). Today, presidential debates between candidates are considered fixtures of our political […]