SEPT. 27, 2010 It's easy to conclude that California may become, as former state librarian Kevin Starr put it, a "failed state." It's just too big, unruly and diverse to be effectively governed, commentators frequently say. Californians are also said to be different from people in other, less...
Columns-September, 2010More Fixes Won’t Fix ThingsMonday, September 27th, 2010Audit By Invitation OnlyFriday, September 24th, 2010SEPT. 24, 2010 With the City of Bell scandal fresh on the minds of nearly everyone in the state who pays taxes, legislators are now questioning the exorbitant salaries and benefits some local governments are paying in order to prevent such compensation abuses from ever happening again. Some say t... Reading Meg’s Tea LeafThursday, September 23rd, 2010SEPT. 24, 2010 Meg Whitman fascinates me. She’s a former (and quite successful) CEO of a major dot.com who until two or three years ago showed precisely zero interest in anything involving elected politics. She didn’t vote or engage in the public arena. Then suddenly, like a bullet being fire... More On Right Up For A FightSunday, September 19th, 2010SEPT. 19, 2010 For years, Republican establishmentarians have taken their grass-roots supporters for granted, knowing that, come Election Day, activists will vote for the lesser of two evils – i.e., that even a bad Republican is better than a Democrat. In the primaries, Republican leaders often... Shame To See Wright GoFriday, September 17th, 2010SEPT. 17, 2010 You don’t find the words “state senator” and “indicted” in the same headline very often. But when I saw this Sept. 16 Los Angeles Times story on the eight-count felony indictment of Sen. Rod Wright, D-Inglewood, for perjury and voter fraud, I was surprised. I didn’t kno... The (Big) Money’s On WhitmanFriday, September 17th, 2010SEPT. 17, 2010 Earlier this week, gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman made a campaign stop at Yelp, a user-generated business review Web site. She received a bruising and biased barrage of questions from employees, critical of Whitman’s self-funded campaign financing. It was reported this we... Fighting good fight for freedom!Monday, September 13th, 2010SEPT. 13, 2010 I, as a nattering nabob, see negativism everywhere. The Legislature manages to do just about everything wrong. The Obama administration – like the Bush administration – is an embarrassment bordering on a disaster. Debt is rising, freedom is receding, and our governments keep... Brown: Proverbial Weather VaneFriday, September 10th, 2010SEPT. 10, 2010 Brownian movement in physics: The constant zigzag movement of particles in a gas or liquid, the position of none of which can be predicted ahead of time. Jerry Brown, the Democratic candidate running for governor (again), is trying to reinvent himself (again). But the past is a ... Capitol Mischief on Admission DayFriday, September 10th, 2010SEPT. 10, 2010 Thursday was California Admission Day – the 160th anniversary of California getting admitted to the United States. Over at the state Capitol, they celebrated the old fashioned way, with a bunch of people dressed up in 1850s garb handing out cake and ice cream while photographer... Is budget a tragedy or a horror?Thursday, September 2nd, 2010SEPT. 2, 2010 As entertainment goes, the final regular-season episode of the Budget Show in the Capitol was shoddy. The actors – the Assembly members and senators – are B-rate. The speeches, despite their strained attempts to sound Kennedy-esque, were pretentious. Those of us in the audien... |