Opinion: The celebrity factor in recall elections
Many Californians laughed out loud back in 1998, when Minnesota voters by a wide margin elected longtime professional wrestler and sometime talk show host Jesse Ventura their governor. But almost exactly five years later, those same Californians by a wide margin made longtime movie muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger their “governator,” and then kept him and his […]
Opinion: Debunking of ‘exodus’ bodes well for Newsom
The entire recall campaign targeting Gov. Gavin Newsom has been built for months on the presumption that many, if not most, Californians are unhappy with how things are going, dissatisfied with their own lives and losing hope for a solid future here. This, goes the premise, will make them leap to change leaders barely a […]
Opinion: Covid surge boosts case for vaccine passports
While cowardly politicians run as fast as they can from the concept of requiring vaccine passports to enter most public spaces, the midsummer surge of COVID-19 spurred by the disease’s Delta variant here and around the nation strongly boosts the argument for such passports. Around largely reopened California, where masks until very recently were officially […]
Opinion: Critical ethnic studies using back door into public schools
Critical Ethnic Studies couldn’t get in the front door of California’s public schools, so now adherents of the historical perspective that’s considered by many to be both anti-white American and anti-Semitic are trying to enter through the rear. Grappling with the prospect of developing new ethnic studies programs for middle and high schools, districts in […]
Opinion: The credibility problems on both sides in recall
From their first day of circulating petitions targeting Gov. Gavin Newsom, backers of the upcoming recall election attacked his credibility. They make some strong points, but those same organizers also suffer credibility problems of their own. Their favorite target all along has been Newsom’s notorious dinner party last fall with lobbyist pals at Yountville’s super-pricey, […]
Opinion: Housing bill redux — when will true believers learn?
Sign outside the Water Garden, a sprawling Santa Monica office complex: Space available — 360,000 square feet. That’s a lot of vacant space in a prime location just blocks from the Pacific Ocean which features 17 acres of modern six-story buildings, fountains and basketball courts, a luxury gym, hallways of Italian and Brazilian marble, restaurant […]
Opinion: Rash of anti-Semitism now alleged to infect Stanford
A national rise in anti-Jewish bigotry has allegedly spread to this state’s most prestigious university after earlier infecting the process of creating California’s new ethnic studies curriculum and spurring record amounts of anti-Semitic vandalism and violence over the last year. The strongest reaction to what’s happening at Stanford University, perpetually ranked among the world’s five […]
Opinion: How vaccinations became a political football
It began with a press conference at the White House in early February 2020. The President took the podium and announced the coronavirus was about to disappear. Not just from public consciousness, he meant, but from his radar. This might have been Donald Trump’s seminal error. For COVID-19 went on to kill more than 600,000 […]
Opinion: Newsom attacks a cause of homelessness
Maybe it was because of the constant harping by Republican candidates to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in the upcoming recall election. Or maybe he would have done it anyway. But Newsom and the state government he heads are at long last moving to relieve one of the major causes of the homelessness that plagues almost […]
Opinion: Low-cost housing? California keeps ignoring the new realities
From Sacramento comes word that the median price for a single-family home in California skyrocketed by 24 percent over less than one year, topping $810,000 in May, a rise of almost 30 percent from the previous year. At the same time, one developer of “affordable” housing in Southern California revealed that the average cost of […]