San Diego mayoral election Tuesday; party-switcher Fletcher on ropes

San Diego has a special mayoral election Tuesday to fill the seat vacated by serial perv Bob Filner. The conventional wisdom has always been that it would be Republican Councilman Kevin Faulconer versus the versatile Nathan Fletcher, a Republican assemblyman

Read More

LAT, Sac Bee fracking coverage: Same old glaring omission

Here we go again. On Friday, the state government released its draft fracking regulations. And while in their coverage, the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times cited environmentalists’ dire warnings about fracking, the papers once again made a gigantic

Read More

No Assembly video for Donnelly, but ok for Speaker Perez

Last week gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly was warned he was about to receive a cease and desist notice from Assembly administrator Jon Waldie, telling him he was not allowed to use Assembly video footage in his political campaign. Yet the

Read More

My experience ‘enrolling’ in Obamacare/Covered California

With all the hoopla surrounding Obamacare, I decided to call and sign up for its implementation in our state, Covered California. I dialed 1-800-300-1506. Jose answered. He was polite but rattled when I told him I’d rather talk to him,

Read More

Elizabeth Emken: ‘It’s time to un-ring the Obamacare bell’

Note: This is the second in a series of profiles of the four major candidates for the crucial 7th Congressional District in California. The first, on Republican Igor Birman, is here. Elizabeth Emken says it is a good time to

Read More

AG Kamala Harris’ blatant-but-legal corruption

California Attorney General Kamala Harris isn’t exactly alone in abusing her powers as the state’s top law-enforcement official when it comes to ballot measures. When they had the post, Gov. Jerry Brown and Treasurer Bill Lockyer reveled in using the

Read More

How the president is fixing Obamacare

A new report describes the president’s announcment today: “Responding to his administration’s ongoing struggles with the launch of Obamacare, President Barack Obama announced a proposal today that would enable insurance companies to grant one-year extensions to the health plans of

Read More

Book describes CA problems, how to fix them: Part 2

This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Part 1 is here. The book reviewed is “The Beholden State: California’s Lost Promise and How to Recapture It,” a collection of essays edited by Brian C. Anderson, the editor of City

Read More

Gov. Brown’s ambitious school reform morphs into union payoff

In 2013, maybe more than ever, the key to figuring out how California works is understanding that by far the most powerful forces in state politics are the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers and the 500,000

Read More

Young CA programmers build better health care website

On Tuesday, Quinnipiac University released a poll indicating that President Obama’s approval rating had hit an all-time low. He has lost the faith of a majority of voters on issues ranging from the budget to healthcare. To put it in

Read More