Few things gall California Republicans more than realizing they hold just 14 of this state’s 53 seats in Congress, only 26 percent of California’s representatives. Opposition Democrats, with a mere 14 percent more registered voters, hold 39 seats, 74 percent. The GOP had a big chance last year to remedy this, targeting vulnerable Democrats who won their offices by narrow … Read More

Listen to water officials from Gov. Brown to local officials and you would think replacing lawns with drought-resistant plants or artificial turf is a pure good, no negatives involved. They know lawn replacement, often called “xeriscaping” because it can use cacti and other desert plants, generally leads to at least a 30 percent cut in household water use. But…you could … Read More

Top University of California officials, including President Janet Napolitano and several campus chancellors, publicly deplore the way activists pushing U.C. to boycott Israel seemed to spawn outright anti-Semitic actions and outcries over the last few months. However, they have done nothing to stop it. Students who set up mock checkpoints on campuses to harass Jewish students and no one else were not penalized. … Read More

Like a time bomb, the court decision in Vergara v. California has been mostly dormant since the last election season ended in November. But its explosive potential remains as large as ever. Vergara, to refresh memories, is the ruling by a previously obscure Los Angeles Superior Court judge that would throw out California’s teacher tenure system and end rules making … Read More

If there is one main reason for the distrust Californians feel for government and elected officials at all levels, it may be the way special interests from corporations to labor unions to individual billionaires pour millions of dollars into elections campaigns while hiding their identities. Almost five years ago, Julia Brownley, then an obscure Assemblywoman and now a Democratic congresswoman … Read More

Let nurse practitioners in California have almost all the authority that doctors now possess, urges the state Senate via a proposed law it already has cleared. If this bill passes the Assembly unchanged and it’s signed by Gov. Brown, warns the doctors’ lobby, what would be the point of spending 10 to 12 years studying and training to become a physician? … Read More

It was inevitable once the number of signatures needed to put a constitutional amendment initiative on the statewide ballot dropped by 300,000 following last fall’s election: A measure to change the pension system governing many California public employees will be voted on in November of next year. Equally unsurprising are the identities of its two major sponsors: former San Jose … Read More

Reform of the California Environmental Quality Act has become a mantra for many California politicians over the last several years, all the way up to Gov. Brown, who found himself frustrated by CEQA a during his years as mayor of Oakland. One person’s reform can sometimes be another’s disaster. California may be about to find out what CEQA reform could … Read More

Democrats in Congress never will say so publicly. They know, though, they have little or no hope of taking back control of the House of Representatives until 2022 at the earliest. That is because gerrymandering in states like Texas and Georgia and North Carolina has concentrated the many Democratic voters in those places into just a few congressional districts, leaving all … Read More

When former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel asked Congress last year to authorize a new round of military base closings, alarm bells went off in many parts of California. This state has been victimized more than any other in the two already-completed rounds, which saw the military fail to realize most of the savings it hoped for, while people and communities … Read More