California Voices

In the main, issues that dominate any session of the California Legislature reflect what the public and news media consider at the time to be the most burning. That’s why, for instance, the state’s acute housing shortage will receive much attention during the final month of this year’s session. During Jerry Brown’s first governorship four […]

The Josh Newman recall drive is one of those petty, self-serving political exercises that feed the public’s cynicism. All of those involved – save, perhaps, Newman himself – should be ashamed of themselves for wasting the public’s time and money. To recap: Democrat Newman very narrowly won an Orange County-centered state Senate seat last year, […]

Tension between the federal government and its states has permeated American history from the earliest moments of the nation’s founding 241 years ago. Drafting the U.S. Constitution was an exercise in balancing federal authority against “states’ rights.” The Constitution’s “supremacy clause” defined federal authority, for instance, while its 10th amendment guaranteed that states could exercise […]

California obviously has a severe shortage of housing, but the crisis is felt most acutely by low- and moderate-income families. “Approximately half of all California households are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs, and nearly one‑third of all California households are spending more than 50 percent of income on housing […]

The California Public Employees Retirement System has been hammered by poor investment earnings in recent years, but got some good news last month. CalPERS reported an 11.2 percent gain on its investment portfolio in the fiscal year that ended June 30, following a couple of years of near-zero earnings that sharply boosted its pension debt, […]

Travis Allen, a Republican assemblyman from Orange County and self-anointed candidate for governor, dropped this Twitter bomb the other day: “11 counties in California have more total registered voters than citizens over the age of 18. How is this possible?” As a matter of fact, it isn’t possible. Allen’s tweet just parrots a subtle falsehood […]

When two New York baseball teams, the Dodgers and the Giants, moved west six decades ago, their ancient cross-town rivalry merged into the equally intense – and equally long – competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco for economic, cultural and, of course, political dominance of California. As the second half of this year’s baseball […]

With all the recent hoopla about California’s record-low unemployment rate and the heady prospect of its becoming No. 5 in global economic rankings, it is easy to lose sight of another salient fact: It is the nation’s most poverty-stricken state. So says the U.S. Census Bureau in its “supplemental measure” of poverty that is a […]

California dodged a big financial bullet when congressional Republicans deadlocked on overhauling or repealing the Affordable Care Act. The state had vigorously embraced the ACA, or Obamacare, and reduced its medically uninsured population by millions of persons, mostly via expansion of Medi-Cal, the state’s program for the poor, with billions of federal dollars. Had the […]

Geographically, San Diego County is a microcosm of California – a coastline as its western edge, giving way to tree-covered mountains and a searing desert to the east. By happenstance, the county is also a self-contained reflection of California’s cultural and political dynamics. Its urban core, around picturesque San Diego Bay, is multicultural and liberal/Democratic […]