Thomas D. Elias

Like flowers blooming in the spring, Republican candidates for governor have begun to pop up during the last few weeks. There is a key difference this time between the folks jumping up and the many who ran in gubernatorial primaries of the last two decades...

No one seriously is suggesting California soon will become another Cyprus, the Greek-speaking Mediterranean island nation whose economic bailout plan includes dunning holders of “large” bank accounts as much as half their holdings while freezing the rest. Since a federal bankruptcy judge gave the go-ahead for the City of Stockton to seek shelter from more than $1 billion in debts via Chapter 9 bankruptcy, alarm bells have been ringing loudly in the heads of municipal bond investors.

Starting with the day in January 1848 when gold flakes and nuggets first turned up at Sutter’s Mill northeast of Sacramento, California has seen plenty of economic miracles, each focused in a different part of the state...Now the Monterey Shale formation, much further south and southeast of San Francisco, promises the next potential miracle...

One reason Gov. Brown’s Prop. 30 tax increases passed so handily last fall was that many voters became convinced that if they didn’t say yes to the new levies, the sky would fall. Schools would suffer, services for the elderly – already devastated by previous budget cuts – might disappear. Police and fire personnel levels could be decimated. And much more.

Spend more than $30 million to pass a temporary tax increase proposition. See a governor put his entire political capital on the line to pass it, airing countless television commercials featuring that man almost begging voters for a yes verdict. Threaten draconian cuts to schools and colleges that already have seen programs pared to the bone. Result...

California’s Parole Board goes by the book, even when it comes to the most heinous murderers. It pretty much has to, or its decisions will be overturned by the courts, which must rule on the letter of the law. Not all cases fit into the letter of the law. Some crimes are so vicious that even if the perpetrators have reformed in prison, earned Ph.D. degrees while incarcerated, led prayer groups for years and otherwise been exemplary convicts, they never should never be freed.

Are you ready for $6/gallon gasoline? Then $7? Premium grades of gasoline already go for more than $5 in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Regular has been above $4.50. There is no promise...

Gov. Brown never has described it quite this way, but the essence of what he wants to do with many of the new tax dollars from last fall’s Prop. 30 victory is finish the job begun in 1971 by the Serrano v. Priest decision of the California Supreme Court. “Equal treatment for children in unequal situations is not justice,” Brown said...

California could have three or more facilities receiving liquefied natural gas (LNG) today, but for massive popular resistance to the prices and possible dangers they might have brought. If those plants had been built, the phenomenon of fracking would mean something very different.

The battle lines over what may become this year’s most contentious, intractable legislative battle began to form within a day or two of when Gov. Brown uttered two key sentences in his mid-January state of the state speech...