What Out of Control Spending Are You Talking About, Gov. Brown?
What on earth are you talking about, Governor Brown? In your ad for Jose Solorio, who is running for a state senate seat crucial to hopes of a Democratic supermajority, you say that Solorio “was one of my closest allies in stopping the out-of-control spending” (italics mine). What out-of-control spending is that? The claim is […]
Will Prop 2 Produce More Debt?
Prop 2, while being advertised as a rainy day fund on TV, is actually a complicated formula that prioritizes debt payback. Gov. Brown and the measure’s other backers have said that by speeding up debt payback, it will reduce debt service and free up money in the long-term for investments. If only that were true. […]
Why Californians Should Love Chevron
Dear Chevron, I will not compare thee to a summer’s day. I cannot say you smell like a rose. But make no mistake: I love you. You are unaccustomed, I know, to getting letters like this. Love is usually reserved for younger, sexier companies–Google, Apple, or Twitter–across the bay from your San Ramon headquarters. You […]
How to Solve Skelton’s Riddle
In a recent column, George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times takes a sideways shot at Gov. Jerry Brown. The columnist’s charge? That the governor, by campaigning for two ballot measures (the Prop 1 water bond and the constitutional budget-and-debt formula known as Prop 2), was distracting people from the fact that he hasn’t come […]
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 […]
Shameful Journalistic Abdication on Prop 2
A hefty chunk, perhaps the majority, of media coverage of California governance in recent years has been about the budget. So why isn’t the media applying even the most basic scrutiny to Prop 2, the so-called “rainy day fund” measure that is on the ballot? People are already beginning to cast votes, but the California […]
Three Ballot Initiatives, Not Quite As Awful As Usual
You gotta take your good news where you can get it when it comes to California’s dangerously inflexible system of initiative and referendum. So this year’s three ballot initiative – Propositions 45, 46, and 47 – qualify as good news. It might be more precise to say: those three initiatives are less awful than usual. […]
My Uncle Dale’s California Dream
I had to go to a family funeral up in Apple Valley, I explained to friends and colleagues, as I canceled a day’s worth of appointments recently. They offered their sympathy, but what they said next confused me: “Have a nice flight.” Flight? No one needs an airplane to get to Apple Valley from L.A. […]
Brown Should Apply Logic of Ethics Bills Vetoes to the Rainy Day Fund
Gov. Jerry Brown should re-read his very strong language vetoing ethics bills. And then he should think hard, again, about his rainy day fund, Prop 2. Applying the wisdom of the ethics bills vetoes – that adding more ethics rules would make the already existing rules too complex – might lead him to reconsider a […]
A Lieutenant Governor’s Debate in Pyongyang
“With Bay Area public radio apparently not providing a favorable enough platform for Mr. Newsom to debate, we’re willing to accept a forum moderated by MS-NBC’s Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz. If MS-NBC isn’t favorable enough, we could be talked into doing it on either Russian government-funded RT television, or North Korea’s KCNA, although with […]