It’s no secret that there is a desperate need for California political reform. Whether it’s electoral, campaign finance, tax, educational, or any other California political arena, independent voters seek specific and effective California political reform. Measures that increase transparency, enhance competition, inspire voter participation, and operate within the boundaries of strict, fiscal discipline are badly needed in a state that has become inefficient, ineffective, and paralyzed by corrupt, partisan politics. In 2010 and beyond, independents will put various California political reform models to the test and aim to encourage robust intellectual debate in the public forum.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, the California Green Party is suffering from a shrinking membership. Currently, it’s downsizing from an enrollment of 158,000 registered Greens (0.95 percent of California voters) to 111,000 (0.66 percent).
Jerry Brown has a long, varied, and colorful history in California politics. Most anyone, friend or foe, would say he’s a maverick. He definitely does things in his own way and doesn’t much care what the crowd is doing. How many politicians would go from being governor of a state to mayor of a city in that state?
The California School Employees Association has filed a lawsuit to amend Proposition 14's language, and legislators, who voted for the initiative last year as part of a budget compromise, have directed their attorneys not to fight the legal challenge. If the lawsuit is successful, critical elements of the Top Two Open Primary initiative
If you really want political change, you must vote the change you want to see. This means coming to terms with the impossibility of solving economic and social problems with the same strategies that created them. The Democratic and Republican parties have offered nothing but ineffectual solutions to the issues that plague California.
Borrowing a page from Mitt Romney, former Bush strategist and current Fox News analyst, Karl Rove, is claiming that history will look favorably upon President George W.
Four county registrars of voters told an Assembly committee March 2 that their costs of printing and processing ballots would increase if Californians approve Proposition 14, the so-called “open primary” initiative on the June ballot. The informational hearing of the Assembly Elections and Redistricting Committee was dominated by Assemblyman Sandre Swanson, an Oakland Democrat, who voted
While some cheer for the quick and painful erosion of mindless campaign finance regulations, others rue the day the funding restrictions were ever questioned. Those who appear to be shouting the loudest also tend to be those who quickly point to “big business” as the root of all evil. San Diego and Los Angeles are currently hot spots of campaign finance reform/free speech decisions,
Thank God (can I say that?) the legislature is on it when it comes to the big issues. No cussing week is finally a reality in California. About time, dammit. Too many potty-mouth Californians are probably at the heart of our serious problems: the budget crisis, poor educational results throughout the state, massive traffic jams. If only that driver hadn’t cursed be
It was only a year ago that President Obama was inaugurated in what some commentators hailed as a sweeping endorsement of socialism: more European-style central economic planning, federal regulation, and entitlement programs. But it would seem that the pundits misread the Democrats' victories in 2006 and 2008. America didn't want more, it wanted less.
