News and Commentary on the California Crackup
News and commentary on the world of California politics, policy, and governance, the California Crackup.
KQED is devoting a special edition of “This Week in Northern California” to what it calls “Broken California,” with a discussion among Susan Kennedy, former right-hand woman to both Governors Davis and Schwarzenegger; Dan Schnur, director of the Unruh Institute at USC; Don Perata, former president pro tem of the Senate; and yours truly. The show airs Friday, November 11 at 7:30 p.m.
Or you can watch it online here:
In California Crackup, Joe Mathews and Mark Paul provide clear and informed answers.
Their fast-paced and often humorous narrative deftly exposes the origins of our current political and fiscal problems—from the ugly 1879 constitutional convention to Hiram Johnson’s Progressive reforms to the Prop 13 tax revolt and its legacy of supermajority requirements and voter initiatives.
Mathews and Paul then furnish an uniquely California fix: innovative solutions that allow Californians to debate their choices, settle on the best ones, hold elected officials accountable for results, and choose anew if something doesn’t work.
Concise, lively, and provocative, California Crackup offers something new: a genuinely democratic operating system for the state.
