Author: Dan Walters

Four of the 12 measures on California’s November ballot were placed there by the Legislature. Let’s assume that legislators had also appropriated $100 million in

While marking time as lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom wrote a book about how technology could transform government. “I want to make government as smart as

A year ago, the California Department of Education released a draft of guidelines for implementing “ethnic studies” in public high schools. It unleashed a torrent

The March primary election was rough on advocates of new taxes. Hundreds of tax hikes — sales and parcel taxes, mostly — were placed on

There’s no question that the COVID-19 pandemic and the severe recession it spawned are widening California’s economic divide. California already had the nation’s highest rate

Just a few weeks ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom was boasting about California’s apparent success in suppressing COVID-19 infections in implicit contrast to other states, such

The tsunami of righteous indignation over the suffocation death of a black man, George Floyd, by a Minneapolis policeman, like all crises, creates both opportunity

Someday, the COVID-19 pandemic will have subsided, probably when effective biologic treatments and vaccines emerge. Someday, California’s economy will begin recovery from the sudden and

The first step to effectively deal with any problem is defining it accurately — and the recession-battered state budget is a case in point. There’s