SACRAMENTO — President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was mostly about political posturing (and proving that he was still alive and kicking) rather than policy, but one of the few granular policy areas he touched on involved something…
SACRAMENTO — The best way to avoid a life of poverty is to develop work skills that are marketable. That seems pretty obvious. Although I’m financially dependent on the companies that pay me, my job security stems not from whatever…
SACRAMENTO — Thanks to the wonders of social media, it’s easy to find large communities of car-loathing, bicycle-riding, transit-loving urbanists who view cars as “death machines” and insist they are the cause of every woe known to mankind. Many of these…
SACRAMENTO — California’s environmental-friendly lawmakers were quite proud of themselves when, in 2014, they passed a first-in-the-nation ban on stores from handing out so-called single-use plastic bags as a means to turn back the tide, so to speak, on an ocean-pollution…
SACRAMENTO — A Washington state Senate committee last week passed legislation designed to bolster democratic engagement by requiring eligible Washington voters to not only register to vote but to turn in a ballot for every primary and general election. Nothing…
SACRAMENTO — One of my favorite Soviet-era jokes involved a man who was admiring a shiny American car on a Moscow street. Another man approached and also admired it. The first man said: “What a beautiful Russian car. What magnificent,…
A week before the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan closed his debate with President Jimmy Carter with some of the most memorable questions in campaign history: “Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go…
SACRAMENTO — A front-page Washington Post investigation provides, as reporter Kyle Swenson promotes it in an X post, “an inside look at a well-funded effort on the political right to target, vilify, and defund a key piece of the social safety net, the ‘housing…
SACRAMENTO — After Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1228, raising the minimum wage for fast-food workers and creating a council to regulate working conditions, the bill’s author issued a typical highfalutin statement. “We did not just raise the minimum…
SACRAMENTO — Those of us who know and love San Francisco have a pretty good idea why the city continues to become less livable as rampant crime and homelessness turn its streets into (literal) cesspools of public disorder. Despite a…