Tag "Chris Reed"
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Oct. 3 key deadline for CA response to anti-bullet-train ruling
The implications of Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny's Aug. 16 ruling that the California High-Speed Rail Authority had failed to comply with Proposition 1A — the 2008 state law giving $9.95 billion in bond seed money to the project
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Harkey has long history of whining — about coverage, questions and more
The coverage of Assemblywoman Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point, and her $10 million lawsuit against Sen. Mark Wyland, R-Solana Beach, over his allegedly defamatory comments about Harkey's family's legal problems focused on the political subtext of the dispute. Harkey and Wyland
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Life imitates sci-fi: Why CA pension crisis is sure to get far worse
The debate in California over public employee pensions has grown familiar in recent times. Those who demand reform finally appear to have momentum. In Sacramento, Gov. Jerry Brown won passage of a pension reform measure in September 2012. While many
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No Nixon-goes-to-China for Obama on CA school-testing retreat
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said last week that testing students was vital to measuring their progress and to improving student and teacher performance. Duncan warned California not to proceed with a reckless move away from standardized testing. That didn’t
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CA public schools: ‘Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job’
The notion that one heard fairly often about Sacramento for much of 2013 — Abel Maldonado’s election reforms actually had led to a more moderate batch of lawmakers coming to town — was annihilated in the final week of the
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BART strife: Bay Area liberals mugged by union reality
The old joke about many conservatives being liberals who were mugged by reality has a lot of heft to it. The older one gets, the more taxes one pays and the more one figures out that liberalism in California is
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CA minimum-wage hike: Expect 'very large' effect on low-wage jobs
Gov. Jerry Brown's signalling that he'll approve a bill to raise in two steps the minimum wage from $8 an hour to $10 an hour has prompted the usual dumb coverage of minimum wage increases, which notes that business groups/Republicans
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Why Arnold owes U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars (non-bullet train edition)
Two interesting pieces published recently make a strong case that government can be made far more efficient if we actually tried empirically to evaluate what worked and what didn't. On the Zocalo Public Square website, Pepperdine academic Pete Peterson takes
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NSA scandal could take huge toll on CA capital-gains revenue
Will the ever-burgeoning NSA spying scandal come back to haunt Jerry Brown and other state leaders when they craft the next budget? Given how much they are counting on capital-gains revenue from executives who cash in their stock holdings in
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A dramatic illustration of teacher unions’ grip on Sacramento
The Obama administration has had enough of the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers and how they use their clout to undercut education reform. “Hours before a key vote in the Legislature, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
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