This graduate of the elite, private Polytechnic School adjacent to the Caltech campus in Pasadena has not spent substantial time in California since 2000, and very little in the six years before that. Essentially, Kruger left California to attend Harvard University and Yale Law School, returning only for short stays, including summer internships in the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles in 1999 and with a large Los Angeles law firm the next year. That raises a question Mr. Brown ignored …

Both the current president of the Public Utilities Commission and one of its member commissioners admit to improper, unethical contacts with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. over items which judges should rule on the utility's cases. President Michael Peevey and Commissioner Mike Florio recused themselves from voting on current PG&E cases. That, however, didn’t stop them from voting in mid-November to give the Southern California Edison Co. and the San Diego Gas & Electric Co. fully $3.3 billion in customer money (over 10 years) to help pay for Edison's incompetence at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in northern San Diego County.

Politicians and public employees drawing pensions had high hopes they would get clarity on a key question from the federal bankruptcy judge presiding over the city of Stockton’s ongoing attempt to regain its financial health. It now appears that unique inland port city will emerge from two years of bankruptcy without …

Neither devoted Republicans nor dedicated Democrats are happy about one obvious message of this month’s election: At least in California, there’s no need at all to choose or join a political party. This message came across in several ways. For one thing, the two Republican candidates for statewide office who refused to endorse their party’s candidate for governor both did far better than all other GOP candidates for major office. For another …

A strong spotlight shines these days on the state Public Utilities Commission as it gets set to rule on how much the state’s biggest utilities will have to pay for their sometimes fatal blunders and how much consumers will be soaked for the negligence of utility executives. As much as $8 billion over the next decade rides on decisions of the five-member commission, about to rule on the 2010 PG&E gas pipeline explosion that killed eight and destroyed dozens of homes in San Bruno and on the Southern California Edison decisions that caused the premature shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

So much for populism. At least when it comes to fighting the interests of big-money corporations. In every vote this week pitting the interests of ordinary Californians against those of large companies, the corporate interests won big. Big bucks essentially convinced millions to vote against their own best interests.

The main result of this year’s election in California was not the least bit surprising: Four more years of Gov. Brown working with a Democratic-dominated Legislature. Next election season began the moment this year’s ended. Every indication is that the long logjam that has frustrated ambitious Democrats for most of the last two decades will break up.

During his first eight years as governor, Jerry Brown was so imaginative about what state government could do that he won the nickname Gov. Moonbeam. It took Mr. Brown, then in his 30s, to theorize that a state could launch its own communication satellite. And that a governor should deal person to person with presidents and prime ministers of foreign countries. Common sense ideas today, but visionary in the 1970s.

These are days of optimism, maybe even delusion, for the California Republican Party, which hasn’t won a statewide race of any kind since 2006.

Of all the issues in Prop. 46, an omnibus measure on the Nov. 4 ballot aiming to improve patients’ rights in several health care areas, money is the one that counts most. The central question boils down to: Should victims of medical malpractice and their lawyers get rich? Or should malpractice insurance companies stay rich?