Can’t Figure Out the Ballot Measures? Video Voter Will Help You Out
With Election Day less than a week off, millions of Californians are warily turning their attention to the ballot. While most have decided how they will vote in the presidential election, they still face a long list of other choices, including decisions on 17 ballot propositions—the most on a single ballot since 2000. For the […]
Time to Re-think State’s Failing Water Policies
As the debate rages over the election of the next President, it seems that another debate with significant implications for California has yet to take place. It concerns the one commodity which our state and the planet cannot do without—water. As California enters its sixth year of a historic drought, the solutions from Sacramento […]
Will Special Interest Campaign Cash Turn the Election?
Since California is not a battleground state, we have been spared from many of the inane ads for Hillary and The Donald. But that is not to say we are off the hook as an estimated $400 to $500 million will be spent on the State’s 17 ballot measures by powerful special interests trying to […]
Questions for the California Electorate
California is about to overwhelmingly elect and sustain for decades to come one-party rule. There’s more money going to the Democratic Party and Republicans don’t seem to have any hope making a dent in LA County outside of Steve Fazio and Mike Antonovich possibly winning Senate seats. But there are a number of public policy […]
The Single-Subject Rule Is Dead
It may surprise you to know that ballot initiatives in California are supposed to be governed by a single-subject rule. Put simply, they only deal with one subject. But that rule is effectively dead. Many of the 17 statewide initiatives dance on its grave. And California’s judges, who are as deeply infected by the California […]
Taxes “Я” Us: CFT Explains Prop. 55 for Members
I learned a great journalistic method from Tom Wolfe and his 1979 book “The Right Stuff,” on the early space program. He went back and read the internal newsletters of NASA astronauts, engineers and others in the late 1950s and 1960s. I used to subscribe to government union and other newsletters, but nowadays all these […]
Is The California High Speed Rail Authority Violating the Law?
At the Rail~Volution Conference held in San Francisco on Oct 12 2016, Authority Chair Dan Richard delivered a talk and made some remarks. Chair Richard clearly stated the Authority’s real mission is not High Speed Rail, but Rail Modernization. Quoting from a transcript of his remarks we read: “Well thanks.. One of my biggest frustrations is that we actually […]
Real Estate Doesn’t Make An Economy
From Southern California to Shanghai and London, inflated real estate prices have evolved into a simulacrum for broader prosperity. In an era of limited income gains, growing inequality, political dysfunction and fading productivity, the conjunction of low interest rates and essentially free money for the rich and well-placed has sparked the construction of often expensive, […]
Whither the California Tax Revolt
(Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in The Wall Street Journal print edition October 27, 2016) Ronald Reagan noted in his autobiography that California voters set a “prairie fire” across the U.S. in 1978 when they passed Proposition 13, which cut property taxes by about 57% and made it more difficult for legislators to increase taxes. Nearly 40 […]
Are the San Francisco and San Diego Elections Rigged?
Maybe Donald Trump would be right in a different context. How can anyone accept the results of this November’s elections in San Francisco and San Diego? The California ballot is so long, with various offices and 17 statewide measures, to raise serious questions about democratic legitimacy. How much credit can we give to results when […]