Political Reform Program: Latest Articles

This year, California state and local governments will spend close to $10 million on at least three elections we do not need. That makes no sense amidst California’s and our nation’s brutal recession.

A constitutional convention has been proposed by some California business leaders as a vehicle to fix the Golden State's deeply entrenched political and economic woes. While a convention offers the hope of a new beginning, it also inspires understandable fear that hard won rights may get trampled in the horse-trading.

The state's leadership in recent years has hardly inspired confidence.

Why should we imagine that it could match the brilliance of James Madison, George Washington and the other Founders, and chart a new course for our state?

Madison Nguyen shouldn't be the only one breathing a sigh a relief.

When San Jose District 7 voters rejected a recall of the city councilwoman Tuesday, they spared the entire city the cost of holding two additional special elections.

Imagine a place where doctors still do house calls. When I was visiting my friend Meredith, living in the small rural town of Lautrec about an hour's drive outside Toulouse, France, one day she was stung badly by a wasp, causing a sizable and painful swelling on her hand.

She called her doctor, and to my great surprise within 15 minutes he had shown up at her door -- the famous French doctor's house call. I couldn't get over it. "House calls in the United States… more

State Sen. Abel Maldonado, a Republican legislator from the Central Coast, had the Democrats over a budget barrel and extracted from them the ultimate insider's deal -- they would put three of his pet ideas on the 2010 ballot (as constitutional amendments) in return for his deciding vote on the budget. You have to admire Maldonado's moxie even as you're appalled at this latest example of how broken the legislative process in Sacramento has become.