Obamacare: A Fiasco by the Numbers
Three months ago, California had six million people with no health insurance; now thanks to Obamacare’s forced cancellations in the individual market, that number has risen to well over seven million (Associated Press says 7,471,000). Yet despite this, the first six weeks of sign-ups on the state’s insurance exchange are pretty paltry – only 59,000 […]
A Virginia Lesson For California
After all its bluster and threats, the Tea Party finally faced something Tuesday it could not overcome: voters. The defeat of Republican Ken Cuccinelli, a Tea Party favorite, in Virginia’s governor’s race has major national implications, and important implications for Republicans in California. Cuccinelli, Virginia’s attorney general, should have been an easy winner in Virginia’s […]
Obamacare by the Numbers: Not a Pretty Picture
“The Affordable Care Act is no longer a political abstraction,” writes a Washington Post blogger. He’s right; it’s underway and the picture of Obamacare “by the numbers” is not pretty. The national rollout has been a disaster because of a crashing website that has prevented people from signing up and may take months to fix. But Covered California, […]
Ridding the GOP of the Tea Party
It is time for California Republicans to confront the real enemies who are dragging them from defeat to defeat, and this means dealing with the Tea Party extremists in their own ranks. Until the state GOP faces up to this it cannot be rebuilt, and 2014 is exactly the time to start. Brave talk about […]
Why are the Airports Still Open?
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste and Democrats seem not to have wasted the fiasco over shutting down the government to defund Obamacare. But the greater crisis is yet to come and this provides an opportunity for Democrats and the Obama Administration to really get tough. The debt default is rapidly approaching, and […]
The “Top Two” System: Working Like It Should
California’s new “top two” election system is now having exactly the impact that its sponsors hoped it would. It is moderating the legislature. This can be seen in the remarkable success the business community enjoyed in this legislative session despite the fact that the Democrats enjoy a two-thirds majority in both houses. At the beginning […]
Tom McClintock on Amnesty
Congressman Tom McClintock is against amnesty, or so he says. He’s against amnesty for an 18 year old high school valedictorian with straight “A”s who was brought here illegally as a child. He is against amnesty for the Latinos who labor in the fields in 100 degree weather picking crops for the McClintock table or […]
Democrats Foolishly Blow an Easy Win
What’s wrong with those voters in Fresno and Bakersfield? Don’t they know the party bosses pick the candidates and their only job is to troop to the polls and vote for them? Apparently not, since the Democrats just blew a safe Democratic Senate seat in a Central Valley special election in which the bosses achieved […]
The Anomaly of the Voting Rights Act – And a Special Election
The US Supreme Court’s decision on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act stirred up a lot of controversy over voting rights in the Southern states that it mostly covered, but completely overlooked was its strange impact on California elections. Section 5 required certain states and counties to submit election law changes to the US […]
A Special Interest War; And a Special Senate Election
Like the set piece battles of World War I, where huge armies fought over territory of little value, California legislative elections have become wars between interest groups with little concern for voters or the actual candidates. No better example exists than the special election in Fresno and Bakersfield for the 16th Senate district between Democrat […]