Fox and Hounds Daily Says Goodbye
With this article, we end publication of Fox and Hounds Daily. It has been a satisfying 12½ year run. When we opened in May 2008, our site was designed to offer an opportunity to those who wished to engage in public debate on many issues, especially in politics and business, but found it difficult to get placed in newspaper op-ed pages.
Co-publishers Tom Ross, Bryan Merica and I have kept F&H going over this time investing our own time, funding, and staff help. Last year at this time we considered closing the site, however with an election on the horizon we decided to keep F&H going through the election year. With the election come and gone, and with no sense of additional resources, we have decided to close the site down.
Fox and Hounds will live on, at least, with my articles collected in the California State Library.
On a personal note, I have spent over 40 years in California policy and politics. There have been some incredible high moments and some difficult low points. It pains me that politics too often is a blood sport, frequently demonizing the motives of opponents and using the legal system as a weapon in public discourse. At Fox & Hounds, we tried to adhere to the practice of giving all a voice in the debate, yet keep the commentaries civil and avoided personal attacks.
F&H offered the opportunity to publish different perspectives (even ones that criticized my writings!). We had success as indicated by the Washington Post twice citing Fox and Hounds Daily one of the best California political websites and many other positive affirmations and comments received over the years.
Tom, Bryan and I want to thank our many readers and writers for being part of our journey. The publishers of Fox and Hounds Daily believe that we added value to California and its people. We hope you agree.
Prison Realignment: Hope Meets Reality
Advocates were wishing and hoping that California’s high recidivism rate – the percentage of inmates who commit new crimes soon after release from prison – would decline when prison realignment took hold. The idea was that as the state downsized its prison population by 25,000 by transferring inmates to county jails, local officials would be better able to provide community-based corrections that would reduce recidivism.
Skeptics (we were and are among them) understood that limited jail space for parole violators meant that counties would end up releasing inmates early and that already overloaded probation officers would have difficulty monitoring with an increased workload. We were also concerned that the program was underfunded.
California’s 20th-Century “Voting Experience”
A drive through the office parks of Silicon Valley may fool you into thinking California is a state with its eyes focused firmly on the future. But there’s nothing like a national report from a presidential commission on state election systems to make you feel like you’re living in the Dark Ages.
Silicon Valley, meet Paper Mountain.
While parts of “The American Voting Experience” study from the bi-partisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration are a great antidote to insomnia, vast sections speak to election systems of states in a parallel universe – one more advanced than California’s. Specifically, two sections of the report illustrate how, despite its status as most technologically advanced corner of America – the Golden State is saddled with a 20th-century experience when it comes to voting.
The Conservative Case for a Higher Minimum Wage
Over the last couple of months the minimum wage has moved into the political headlines, but most of the arguments for raising it have come from liberals. That’s fine, but since I’m not a liberal, I’d rather focus on the conservative reasons for supporting a much higher minimum wage, which are just as compelling.
Cutting Social Welfare Spending and Reducing Hidden Government Subsidies
Each year the American government spends over $250 billion on social welfare programs for the working-poor, individuals who have jobs but can’t survive on their wages. This funding represents a hidden government subsidy to low-wage businesses, allowing them to shift the burden of their low-wage employees over to the taxpayer.
Wrong Analysis by Calbuzz’s Trounstine
Phil Trounstine writing in CalBuzz about the disgorgement of funds the Small Business Action Committee made to the state under an obscure law made the serious accusation that SBAC laundered the donation. That was not even suggested by state investigators.
The record is clear. Our organization did nothing wrong, confirmed by two state investigatory agencies, the FPPC and Attorney General’s office who called our group the only one completely clean involved in the incident. It took these agencies a year with subpoena powers to discover the route the money took, something we could not uncover in a weekend. However, we did our due diligence at the time, as the FPPC acknowledged, informing the donor to make full disclosure under California law.
What Did All That Seniority Get Us?
The recent retirement from Congress of venerable Democrat Henry Waxman is just the latest of a surprisingly long list of departures of senior California congressmen. One reporter calculated that California has lost 400 years of Congressional experience from these two most recent election cycles.
Recent retirees comprise veterans from both parties, serving in influential positions both formally as committee chairmen or as confidantes of House leadership. Besides Waxman, other recent or announced retirements (including forced retirements) include George Miller (D), Buck McKeon (R), Howard Berman (D), Jerry Lewis (R), David Dreier (R), Dan Lungren (R), and Pete Stark (D), among many others.
Wanted: A Rationale for Kashkari
Neel Kashkari would seem to have it all, save two things: hair on top of his head, and a rationale for his candidacy.
The first is probably forgivable, though, if you ask this writerly middle-aged man with a full head of terrific hair, going bald diminishes one easy advantage he might claim over the balding incumbent.
The second thing is a bigger problem.