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.
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 enrolled in new policies out of the 7.4 million uninsured Californians. This amounts to less than one percent of the uninsured.
Covered California naturally is trumpeting this number. “A very proud day for Covered California,” says state director Peter Lee. But if sign-ups remain at this pace, only 360,000 Californians will have signed up by the end of the enrollment period March 31, 2014. And even if that number is doubled, it comes nowhere close to the 1.1 million California individual health care policyholders who have been told their health care is being cancelled as of December 31, 2013.
Our Industry and Our Jobs
In 1910, D.W. Griffith shot the first silent movie, “In Old California,” in Hollywood. It was the beginning of a quintessential California industry. The pioneers of the movie industry came to California because the State is tailor-made for film with great weather and every natural backdrop a director could want. For a century, a network of communities and businesses have grown up to support these productions and place a unique California stamp on world culture.
As our elected leaders in Sacramento plan for the 2014 legislative session, job creation and economic expansion should reign supreme as the top priority. The single most effective action they can take to create jobs and add fuel to our economic engine is to increase and reform the California Film Tax Credit program.
The Good in a Washington State Initiative on Initiatives
Note: This post was written last month. Eyman’s measure lost in the November elections, winning just over 37 percent of the votes.
If you haven’t heard of Tim Eyman, you probably haven’t lived in Washington state. He’s a libertarian-minded activist and force of nature who is responsible for more initiatives than any one in that state’s history.
I know and like Tim personally, but disagree with him not only on policy issues but also on the initiative process. Still, there’s a lot of good in his current initiative, numbered 517 in Washington state, and people interested in governance reform in California should take a look at it.
Tim frames his initiative as protecting the initiative process. And in so doing, he raises an issue that is far bigger than the initiative process and deserves more attention: public space.
Gov. Brown’s Ambitious School Reform Morphs into Teacher Payoff
In 2013, maybe more than ever, the key to figuring out how California works is understanding that by far the most powerful forces in state politics are the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers and the 500,000 people they represent and collect dues from.
So when a Los Angeles Unified teacher feeds semen to his students and has to be bribed to quit, instead of enacting rules to make it easier to fire classroom sexual predators, the Legislature passes a fake reform that would have actually increased protections for pervert teachers.
The Calderon Affair
The Calderon affair just got messier – and the spotlight on state government just got harsher – but lost in the drama could be the promise of innocent until proven otherwise.
Senator Ron Calderon is now accusing the FBI of seeking revenge against him for allegedly not cooperating in an investigation of the state senate and other senators. Such legal filings crank the gossip machine without any charges being made against anybody — Calderon included.
If it is proved that Senator Calderon sold his vote or position as alleged in a leaked FBI affidavit then hang him (metaphorically, of course.) But until anything is proved, this rush to judgment must be contained to protect the rights and reputations of all the senators so far tagged in this story — Calderon included.
Why I’m Disappointed In The Alleged Calderon Corruption
Here’s another problem with California’s broken governance system, albeit one that you don’t often hear about: Even our corruption is lame.
This is a big, grand state, so our corruption should be big and grand. Alas, our system so constrains politician that even their corruption is embarrassingly small.
Take the Ron Calderon case, and the details from an affidavit obtained by Al- Jazeera America.