January 2015 | Page 7 of 10

Archive

Boxer’s departure draws CA contenders

Sen. Barbara Boxer’s announcement last week she wouldn’t seek re-election in 2016 provided ambitious California Democrats a rare new opening for statewide office. With a number of well-known political figures contemplating a run to replace her, the future of the state Democratic

Look for the budget trailer-bill details

Wayne Lusvardi January 12, 2015

Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal, released Friday, is just that: a proposal. It’s a starting point. What’s key are the details he and his allies include in the “trailer bills” to the budget they advance for fiscal year 2015-16, which

Harry Jaffa, RIP

John Seiler January 12, 2015

Harry Jaffa, 96, died on Saturday. He was one of the rare persons who combined an influential academic career with activism in politics, in particular the Goldwater Movement of 1964. Professor Emeritus at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University

Some crucial context on Brown’s new energy policy and AB 32

Chris Reed January 12, 2015

Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision to seek to extend the state of California’s push against global warming to 2030 with a further embrace of costlier-but-cleaner energy got a positive response from many environmental groups and journalists. The idea that California would

Brown talks taxes at budget press conference

Joel Fox January 12, 2015

Reading Gov. Jerry Brown’s meaning on some issues, with or without a dictionary and history text, can be tricky. But it was worth looking for signals on tax issues at the governor’s Friday press conference introducing his record, $113 billion general-fund budget

Martin Anderson, RIP

John Seiler January 11, 2015

One of the architects of American prosperity died last week, economist Martin Anderson. He was a key architect of Reaganomics in the early 1980s, which provided the foundation of prosperity in America, and worldwide, until the 2008 Great Recession. Anderson long was

Oxy CA energy spinoff has bumpy launch

Chris Reed January 11, 2015

When energy giant Occidental launched a spinoff to focus on California energy exploration on Dec. 1, the circumstances facing California Resources Corp. were daunting. The plunging price of oil made unconventional energy extraction methods, which cost more, less attractive. And

Brown’s budget draws careful criticism

James Poulos January 10, 2015

Fresh from his historic inauguration to a fourth term as governor, Jerry Brown unveiled his proposed 2015 budget with a Friday press conference that swiftly attracted reactions from Sacramento and beyond. All told, Brown envisions a general fund totaling $113.3 billion.

State in use-it-or-lose-it mode with $4B in bullet-train funds

Chris Reed January 10, 2015

The California bullet-train project — stalled for years by legal fights over land acquisition and the state’s business plan, uneven progress in planning and Gov. Jerry Brown’s abrupt downsizing of the scale of the project in 2013 — had its symbolic

CA regulations hatch legal food fights

James Poulos January 9, 2015

Have you noticed egg prices going up as much as 40 cents a dozen? Look to California voters. In 2008, they passed Proposition 2, which mandated more comfortable hatching quarters for chickens. Because of the cost to farmers of expanding chicken