Thomas D. Elias

There’s a sense among a lot of Californians that legalizing marijuana and then taxing it is some sort of panacea that would solve many law enforcement problems, make it safer to smoke pot and also produce a tax bonanza of $1 billion or more per year.

Nobody at Anthem Blue Cross, the firm that’s now a poster boy for out-of-control health insurance premiums, likes remembering the company’s days of high anxiety back in 2004, when California’s then-Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi was holding up its $18 billion deal to take over Thousand Oaks-based WellPoint and its California Blue Cross subsidiary.

How far right can California’s Republican candidates move before they’re too far out of this state’s apparent mainstream to be electable?

If the UCLA and USC professors whose studies early this year concluded that allowing illegal immigrants to stay in America would provide a huge boost to the economy thought their findings might end one of this country’s longest-running policy and moral debates, they were sadly mistaken.

Don’t expect any of them to admit it, but it turns out they were wrong – all those politicians who whined for many years that high taxes and lousy business conditions were pushing Californians to leave for other states.

Once again, the self-destructive cry is heard from some parts of California, just has it is been every 10 years when the Census is about to begin: “Don’t count illegal immigrants.”

Something remarkable is happening in California politics, but the leaders of the two major parties don’t seem to get it.

No one in California politics gives 33-year-old Republican Damon Dunn much chance of unseating Democratic Secretary of State Debra Bowen this fall.

The closer it gets, the worse California’s pending sale of state buildings looks, at least for the long-term interests of taxpayers.

At long last, there are signs Californians might become a little inventive in the face of financial crisis.