Would California be in better shape if former governors Arnold Schwarzenegger or Gray Davis, or former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, were back in power? That’s an odd question given the fiscal mess that those politicians helped create, or at least were powerless to fix.
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The Great Recession, as some call it, has a double-barreled impact on California retailers — especially those who sell non-necessity goods.The collapse of the housing market hit retailers of building materials and home-related goods, such as furniture. And, as many Californians lost their jobs, they and traumatized jobholders cut consumer purchases sharply. For instance, new-car sales, which had once topped 2 million vehicles a year, were cut in half.
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By:
Ken Klukowski
11/25/11 5:00 AM
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s idea for checking judicial activism is a textbook case of historical revisionism that is strikingly similar to the court-packing scheme of liberal icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Gingrich said Congress should just pass a law eliminating specific judgeships, presumably immediately ousting the activist judges currently filling those seats.
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Should Mitt Romney be the nominee of the Republican party for president in 2012? Perhaps. Should voters support him because he’s the “inevitable” nominee? No.
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California’s political dysfunction has evolved from a theory first advanced by a few jaundiced observers a generation ago — including yours truly — to a widely embraced axiom that has spawned endless journalistic, academic and civic discourse.While there’s broad agreement on symptoms of California’s malaise, such as chronic budget deficits, there’s wide disagreement on its causes and what might be done to correct it.
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It is encouraging news that the Supreme Court has decided to consider the constitutionality of key provisions in Obamacare. By the end of next summer we will probably know whether the federal government can require individuals to buy health insurance and if it can force states to comply with a newly expanded Medicaid program.
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‘All he’s got left is to take all the anxiety that is building in America and try and tap into it and channel it toward class resentment,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., recently said about President Barack Obama.“These are powerful emotions — fear, envy, anxiety, resentment — very powerful emotions, but dark emotions,” Ryan said. “They are extremely divisive. But it seems to me that’s the plan.”
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On Nov. 11, two European Union countries ceased to be democracies in any meaningful sense — and the EU orchestrated this outrage. Greece and Italy installed new prime ministers. Neither had ever held elected office. And neither holds a democratic mandate.
In Greece, the former academic and EU central banker Lucas Papademos was appointed after a deal was reached between the fractious parties of Greece’s parliament, which had rejected calls for early elections.
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Jerry Brown sought his second stint as governor last year by promising to balance California’s deficit-riddled budget without gimmicks.
“Our state is in a real mess, and I’m not going to give you any phony plans or snappy slogans that don’t go anywhere,” Brown said in one ad. “We have to make some tough decisions.”
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The politics of workers’ compensation, which provides aid to those with job-related illnesses and injuries, resemble medieval Europe’s perpetual wars.
Employers, labor unions, insurers, medical care providers and attorneys who specialize in compensation claims continuously plot strategy to capture greater shares of the multibillion-dollar system.
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