Dan Walters

As local government officials ask voters for tax increases, they are reluctant to tell them that the extra revenue is needed to cover pension costs. But one city is not being coy about it.

A collection of commentaries by Dan Walters over the past week.

Jerry Brown has signed his 16th and final state budget, bragging that he fixed California's financial mess. But that claim, and his claim of securing the state's fiscal future, are overblown.

Three initiatives that had qualified for the November ballot were dropped last week after their sponsors negotiated deals with the Legislature. Was it extortion? Not in the criminal sense, perhaps, but it was the adroit use of leverage.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that compelling non-members of public employee unions to pay dues is unconstitutional. California's unions are now scrambling to avoid an erosion of their memberships, their revenues and their political clout.

California once had a strong and successful Republican Party but over the last few decades, it has shrunken to a small minority of voters and if ti loses several congressional races this year, Democrats will have achieved total domination.

A collection of commentaries by Dan Walters over the past week.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck a blow for free speech when it struck down a California law that requires anti-abortion clinics to tell their clients about the availability of abortion services.

International financier George Soros has had some success in his dabbling in California politics. But he "hit a brick wall," as he terms it, in trying to unseat three California district attorneys this year, and his support for challengers may have backfired.

California will get hit hard by a new federal tax law that limits deductions for state and local taxes. California politicians had hoped to sidestep the law, but the Internal Revenue Service has squelched that notion.