California Governor Jerry Brown deserves our heartfelt appreciation for his hard work for the Yes on Proposition 30 campaign these past few months. The percentage of Proposition 30′s victory mirrored the percentage of the vote Brown won in 2010 when he defeated in the governor’s race the former Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman. Working...
Largely lost in the media din in the closing 48 hours of the debt ceiling “debate” was the fact that the Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street high rollers were urging their servants in Congress not to throw the nation into default because it was going to hurt their bottom lines. The last minute...
On April 13th California State University students and faculty are organizing demonstrations at all 23 CSU campuses across the state to protest the latest wave of brutal budget cuts. CSU students, faculty and staff, alumni and their families have a special obligation to make their voices heard in supporting pragmatic solutions to the state’s...
Last November, Californians did not elect Republican Meg “Money Bags” Whitman to be their governor. We elected a Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in the State Assembly and the Senate. Yet five members of the Republican minority once again are in the driver’s seat and they’re determined to run the state right over the...
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently submitted a “budget” to the legislature that eliminates CalWORKS, the state’s highly successful welfare-to-work program that is needed now more than ever. This move would make California the only state in the nation to dismantle its safety net. He’s even willing to throw away the federal matching funds CalWORKS...
In California today there is zero respect for members of the Assembly or State Senate. Everybody hates them. The colossal failure of our elected “leaders” to deal humanely with the state’s finances cancels out any effort by well-meaning legislators who might be trying to do the right thing. The Republicans, who control the state’s...
Before the music swells, the long dissolve, and the credits roll, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his merry band of right-wing Republicans who control a third of the state legislature are intent on making one final power play to squeeze the last drops of blood from California’s public institutions. Schwarzenegger’s hackneyed “State of the State”...
Remaking California: Reclaiming the Public Good
R. Jeffrey Lustig has compiled (and contributed) to an amazing set of useful essays that examine the many maladies plaguing California’s politics and public institutions and provide food for thought that points to possible remedies. Remaking California: Reclaiming the Public Good, is the most important book on contemporary California politics to be published in...
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