Thomas D. Elias

For years since the 2008 passage of Prop.1A gave planners of high speed rail in California the prospect of spending $9.9 billion in state bond money, they have seemed bent on a single path: spending as much as possible.

Any week now, the state Dept. of Education will issue its annual report on the number of school dropouts in California. Note, the term is no longer “high school dropouts” – that’s because a lot of kids today leave the education system long before they ever arrive in high school.

Eliseo Medina is one prominent Democrat who wasn’t much upset by last year’s midterm election outcome, in general a Republican rout of Democrats.

City redevelopment agencies by the slimmest of margins — one vote — survived an initial legislative effort to kill them earlier this spring, but it’s now clear their practices will most likely never be the same again.

Critics have called the springtime Jerry Brown road show — mostly staged in schools in Republican legislative districts and interrupted briefly when he needed a small growth removed from his nose — little more than a tactic aiming to pressure GOP lawmakers into allowing a special election on the tax extensions sought by the Democratic governor.

These are times of high anxiety for California politicians of all stripes who hold state or federal office anywhere below the statewide level. Even some city council members and county supervisors now quiver as they await possible grand opportunities.

There were a lot of questionable actions and policies during the seven years Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California, many at least bordering on outright corruption. All the suspicions about one of the last of those acts have now been confirmed by the man who once gleefully adopted the sobriquet “governator.” This move came only moments before Schwarzenegger was termed out of office, departing with a legacy of failure in his avowed aims of restoring both fiscal integrity and public faith in state government.

It’s only fairness. Democrats ought to let California Republicans have a voice in picking their party’s presidential candidate next year. It really doesn’t matter who the GOP might choose. No one expects Democrats to like or vote for that choice. But letting this state’s millions of Republican voters have the same voice in their party’s affairs that Democrats have enjoyed for the last decade-plus is good for California. Denying them that voice could not only be bad for California but would surely engender more of the same kind of inter-party rancor that so often handcuffs state government at critical junctures.

The best two things that could happen in American politics would be cutting or removing altogether the corporate and labor union campaign contributions that are the most significant sources of corruption in both national and state government.

Few documents have ever been more misleading than a 116-page U.S. Chamber of Commerce report this spring on how state employment laws affect job growth, a study that can be read as a direct attack on California and its employment laws.