Every few years, an industry for self-serving reasons tries to exploit California’s loose rules for putting propositions on its ballot. This doesn’t usually work, even though industries that have tried this tactic when all else political had failed them generally outspent opponents by factors of at least 50-1. Twenty years ago the tobacco industry fielded an initiative aiming to remove … Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court, in its famous Citizens United decision, tells us corporations are just like people. But we saw the opposite in the multiple convictions of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. the other day for obstruction of justice and breaking safety laws in the 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion that killed eight persons and destroyed many homes. … Read More

Watch out, warned three of California’s most powerful – and ethically shakiest – state agencies in late April and again in August. If the notoriously leaky Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field in northern Los Angeles were not reopened quickly, California would face the strong possibility of blackouts during the summer. The reasoning of the state report went this way: … Read More

Endorsements and coattails never have meant much in California politics. From Ronald Reagan, whose strong efforts could not keep major state offices in Republican hands after his first term as governor, to Jerry Brown, who usually endorses only after fellow Democrats have already been assured their party’s backing, big names have not had much influence over voters. The most classic … Read More

Memo to Loretta Sanchez and Kamala Harris, the two Democrats now vying for the U.S. Senate seat long held by retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer: Each of you could get a whole lot of traction and voter support by going after the apparent continuing practice of gasoline price gouging engaged in by California’s major oil refiners. You, especially, Ms. Harris, ought … Read More

On a cloudy Sacramento day in 2001, a low-level aide to Gov. Gray Davis secretly met a representative of the Oracle Corp. software company, accepting a $25,000 check for Mr. Davis’s reelection fund. A few days earlier, Oracle had received a $95 million software contract to update state computers. The sequence later became emblematic of the “pay-to-play” phenomenon allegedly common … Read More

As the school year begins, one thing is certain: There will be anti-Semitic outbursts and incidents at campuses of the University of California. We know this because of a long history of such episodes at campuses like Berkeley, Irvine and UCLA, where Jewish students have been subjected to everything from physical obstruction and attempted intimidation to questions by Palestinian students … Read More

Strong evidence shows several arms of California government are in urgent need of major ethical fixes, beginning with the Public Utilities Commission, the Energy Commission and the Coastal Commission, to name three powerful agencies. But even the smallest and most obvious reforms are consistently met with vetoes, legislative detours and other obfuscation despite the pious rhetoric of powerful politicians from … Read More

As schools begin opening around California, the state’s new vaccinate-or-stay-out-of-school policy ought to be taking effect at last, 18 months after the December 2014 measles outbreak at Disneyland that propelled it. Under the new law, all students entering kindergarten this fall must have had two measles shots, a mumps and rubella vaccination, their final doses of polio vaccine and a … Read More

Here’s the one thing Democratic politicians should fear more than any other potential California event: Latinos stay home from the polls in droves on Election Day in November. It went almost unnoticed beyond Orange County in early 2015, but the events in one contest for a spot on the County Board of Supervisors should be most instructive. The virtually unknown … Read More