Paul Silver of the Moderate Voice mentioned us last week: California and Arizona are both preparing to vote on redistricting plans aiming to reduce political distortions. The California version focuses on trying to keep cities and counties contiguous, rather than broken up into obscure gerrymandered shapes. Perhaps these new districts can be made more competitive… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Archive
Dr. Pitney on Romney Speaking Spanish
From Eunice Moscoso’s article in the Austin American-Statesman: Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani often garners applause when he says that immigrants must learn to read, write and speak English to become U.S. citizens. Fellow GOP candidate Mitt Romney, is greeted with a similar response when he advocates making English the nation’s official language. *** Romney,… Continue Reading
The Hall of Shame
Thanks to Jeff of Gerrymandering Documentary for the link to our Gerrymandering Hall of Shame. He might also enjoy the first installment of our modern art masterpiece series. Continue Reading
California: Clinton, Obama, McCain, Romney, Giuliani?
In light of all the stories and columns springing up these days about voter opinion and the upcoming presidential primaries in California, many of which are based on recent Field Polls, remember that you can always go check out the latest Field Polls yourself. Continue Reading
Nunez to support Redistricting Measure?
As we’ve mentioned, many people have suggested that the Speaker may endorse the Voters FIRST redistricting reform measure now that the Governor has come out for Proposition 93. As Steve Maviglio said in the recent past: “[t]he Speaker has not said he is opposed to it; he said there’s problems with it.” I missed this… Continue Reading
Redistricting Roundup
From Monday’s Los Angeles Times endorsement of Proposition 93: …we were hoping for something better. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) at least implied that they would join term-limits reform with a measure they don’t like, but that is even more crucial to correcting the state’s broken… Continue Reading
Kosmont-Rose Survey Cited
The Attack Machine blog posts quotes from an article on our annual Kosmont-Rose Cost of Doing Business Survey: Recent business surveys by Kosmont & Associates, a private consulting group, and the Rose Institute at Claremont McKenna College rank the city as the second most expensive in which to do business in California.Larry Kosmont, co-author of… Continue Reading
Welch on Governor Schwarzenegger
Reason’s Matt Welch blogs on the Governor’s recent remarks on term limits, etc.: Arnold has tried and tried to push through much-needed redistricting reforms, but has gotten nowhere. He tied it up with extending term limits in order to finally make it palatable to legislators, but even that fell through. Well, at least the governor… Continue Reading
Dr. Pitney on CA Budget Deal
From Steve Harmon’s January 20th article in the San Jose Mercury News: That leaves Democrats with one other possibility: Offer to agree to a constitutional spending cap on the budget in exchange for Republican support to put a tax package before voters. Such a deal would help Republicans achieve one goal – reducing government –… Continue Reading
Common Cause and Proposition 93 UPDATEDx2
Last Friday, Shane Goldmacher of Capitol Alert reported that Common Cause, one of the sponsors of the Voters FIRST redistricting initiative the Governor has decided to support, has announced it will support Proposition 93. (See also the California Progress Report, the California Majority Report, and Steve Lawrence’s AP report in the San Diego Union Tribune,… Continue Reading