Steven Greenhut
California
Pensions are S.F.’s other golden gate
SACRAMENTO – I’d been starting to wonder about whether there are any true progressives left in California, until I heard about Jeff Adachi, San Francisco’s public defender. Many people describe themselves as progressive, mind you, but few seem to embody the core principles of a movement that is supposed to ...
Business & Economics
Can GOP quit weed whacking?
Sacramento – If the California Republican Party were serious about its oft-stated calls for limiting government, then it should be championing an initiative on the November ballot that would reduce government interference in our lives, increase the efficiency of law-enforcement, protect property rights and help fill the gaping hole in ...
Business & Economics
Police budget cuts won’t spike crime
SACRAMENTO – “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,” observed the journalist, critic and satirist H.L. Mencken. Mencken perhaps would not have envisioned the ...
California
Boxer, Fiorina mostly MIA on war
SACRAMENTO – As usual, American policy-makers, the media and California’s political candidates avoid the big issues while they make a huge deal out of the small stuff. The latest example is Afghanistan, where Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and coalition commander, got booted from his post by the president Wednesday ...
Business & Economics
It’s not easy being nonunion green
SACRAMENTO – The state’s Democratic legislators have an inordinate hostility to the free marketplace, as evidenced by their endless push for new business regulations and for higher taxes for corporations and wealthy Californians. Yet there is one form of business development that the California Left has embraced with particular gusto ...
Business & Economics
Public Employee Unions: On the Defensive?
Public Employee Unions: On the Defensive? Four big California public employee unions — including firefighters and highway patrol officers — would roll back their pensions under a deal struck this week with the governor. The compromise comes at a time when public sector unions are increasingly under pressure to make ...
Business & Economics
No pension fix from Capitol
“One cannot be both a progressive and be opposed to pension reform,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s top pension adviser, David Crane, said during a pension-reform hearing May 10. “The math is irrefutable that the losers from excessive and unfunded pensions are precisely the programs progressive Democrats tend to applaud. Those programs ...
Business & Economics
Taking On The Unions In Calif. — And Winning
A political candidate can take on the public-employee unions in a nasty street rumble and emerge bloodied but victorious. That’s the message from Tuesday’s election to fill a board of supervisors seat in Orange County, Calif. It was a race that could have statewide and even national implications because of ...
Business & Economics
Will California’s ‘Top Two’ Primary Work?
California voters on Tuesday approved Proposition 14, which replaces traditional partisan primaries in state and Congressional races. Starting in 2011, candidates for an office would be on a single ballot, regardless of political affiliation, and the top two vote-getters (even if from the same party) would advance to the general ...
Business & Economics
Election wish: Do no more harm
SACRAMENTO – A dozen years ago, I put my wife and kids on a flight from Dayton, Ohio, to John Wayne Airport and then headed out on the road West, driving with my cranky old cat and big furry dog. I’ll never forget that drive, which mirrored the old Route ...
Pensions are S.F.’s other golden gate
SACRAMENTO – I’d been starting to wonder about whether there are any true progressives left in California, until I heard about Jeff Adachi, San Francisco’s public defender. Many people describe themselves as progressive, mind you, but few seem to embody the core principles of a movement that is supposed to ...
Can GOP quit weed whacking?
Sacramento – If the California Republican Party were serious about its oft-stated calls for limiting government, then it should be championing an initiative on the November ballot that would reduce government interference in our lives, increase the efficiency of law-enforcement, protect property rights and help fill the gaping hole in ...
Police budget cuts won’t spike crime
SACRAMENTO – “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary,” observed the journalist, critic and satirist H.L. Mencken. Mencken perhaps would not have envisioned the ...
Boxer, Fiorina mostly MIA on war
SACRAMENTO – As usual, American policy-makers, the media and California’s political candidates avoid the big issues while they make a huge deal out of the small stuff. The latest example is Afghanistan, where Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and coalition commander, got booted from his post by the president Wednesday ...
It’s not easy being nonunion green
SACRAMENTO – The state’s Democratic legislators have an inordinate hostility to the free marketplace, as evidenced by their endless push for new business regulations and for higher taxes for corporations and wealthy Californians. Yet there is one form of business development that the California Left has embraced with particular gusto ...
Public Employee Unions: On the Defensive?
Public Employee Unions: On the Defensive? Four big California public employee unions — including firefighters and highway patrol officers — would roll back their pensions under a deal struck this week with the governor. The compromise comes at a time when public sector unions are increasingly under pressure to make ...
No pension fix from Capitol
“One cannot be both a progressive and be opposed to pension reform,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s top pension adviser, David Crane, said during a pension-reform hearing May 10. “The math is irrefutable that the losers from excessive and unfunded pensions are precisely the programs progressive Democrats tend to applaud. Those programs ...
Taking On The Unions In Calif. — And Winning
A political candidate can take on the public-employee unions in a nasty street rumble and emerge bloodied but victorious. That’s the message from Tuesday’s election to fill a board of supervisors seat in Orange County, Calif. It was a race that could have statewide and even national implications because of ...
Will California’s ‘Top Two’ Primary Work?
California voters on Tuesday approved Proposition 14, which replaces traditional partisan primaries in state and Congressional races. Starting in 2011, candidates for an office would be on a single ballot, regardless of political affiliation, and the top two vote-getters (even if from the same party) would advance to the general ...
Election wish: Do no more harm
SACRAMENTO – A dozen years ago, I put my wife and kids on a flight from Dayton, Ohio, to John Wayne Airport and then headed out on the road West, driving with my cranky old cat and big furry dog. I’ll never forget that drive, which mirrored the old Route ...
