Brian and John KabateckBrian and John Kabateck visit the podcast to answer the question on everyone’s lips: what is Thanksgiving like for two brothers who are on opposing sides of nearly every political fight in the state? John Kabateck is a lifelong Republican and longtime spokesperson for the NFIB; Brian Kabateck is a lifelong Democrat and the former head of the Consumer Attorneys Association.
Demonstrators urging Preident Trump to make his tax retyurns public, 2017. <(Photo: Christopher Penler, via Shutterstock)The state Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a new law that would have forced presidential candidates — including Donald Trump — to disclose their tax returns in order to get on California’s primary election ballot. The Legislature cannot bar a legally certified contender from the primary election, “even if that candidate fails to disclose five years worth of federal tax returns,” the court said.
A PG&E worker checks power lines during a San Jose grass fire in July. (Photo: Geartooth Productions, via Shutterstock) Things are not going well for PG&E. Amid massive blackouts that PG&E has put in place to avoid liability in the event of a wildfire, millions of Californians were left without power — for days at a time in some cases. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo has called for a public takeover of PG&E — a move backed by at least two dozen cities — that would reclassify the company as a nonprofit electric and gas cooperative instead of an investor-owned company.
Elizabeth Warren addresses Democrats earlier this year at a state party convention in San Francisco. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)Our November tracking poll for California’s 2020 presidential primary election shows some significant changes in the field, with the national field gelling around four major candidates and the potential havoc of new candidates entering the race. The poll, in the field since April, has now surveyed over 7,500 likely voters, utilizing data supplied by Political Data Inc. It uses an online survey emailed directly to voters deemed likely to vote in the March Democratic primary.
Illustration of the road to the California's 2020 elections. (Image: karenfoleyphotography, via Shtuterstock)Believe it or not, California’s much-anticipated primary election is right around the corner. Sure, we’ve got Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and Super Bowl Weekend intervening. And all the air is about to sucked out of our news cycles with the impeachment inquiry and, yes, we could have a government shutdown in a few weeks.
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez addressing lawmakers about her labor bill, AB 5. (Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/APAssemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez wrapped up this legislative year feeling pretty good about her accomplishments. Despite often fierce opposition, the San Diego Democrat was able to pass 11 pieces of legislation, including those that protect child sexual abuse survivors and workers.
The Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles at rush hour. (Photo: Joseph SohmToyota, Chrysler, GM, Nissan, Subaru and Hyundai sided with the Trump administration in its efforts to ease mileage efficiency on rules imposed by the Obama administration. But earlier, California signed an agreement with Ford, Honda, BMW and Volkswagen that assures more stringent rules – a move that the Trump administration denounced as illegal.
1919 photo of four Humboldt County women and a touring car bearing a Save the Redwoods banner has become an iconic image of the early save the redwoods movement. The women are, from left to right, Lucretia Anna Huntington Monroe, Kate Harpst, Mary Anne Atkinson, and Ella Georgeson. All were members of the newly-formed Humboldt County Women’s Save the Redwoods League and pillars of the Humboldt County establishment. The driver is Eureka chauffeur Frank Silence. The photograph originally appeared in The Humboldt Standard on September 6, 1919. Photo courtesy of The Humboldt County Historical Society Archives.California’s Redwood forests are celebrated worldwide for their beauty and wonder – but few realize that the Redwoods came close to being logged out of existence. The first reports of California’s giant trees made it back to the US in the mid 1800s, before statehood. It wasn’t long afterward that loggers began harvesting the redwoods,
Voters in their booths casting ballots in a Los Angeles election. (Photo: Joseph Sohm, via Shutterstock)One constant in California elections is change. In the past 20 years, we’ve seen changes to when the primary is held, then changed back, then back again. We’ve seen an open primary, then another version of the open primary. We shook up the Legislature with term limits, then imposed different term limits. We have moved increasingly to vote by mail, shifting the timeline of our elections.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif, chair of the House Intelligence Committee. (Image: Screen capture, ABC This Week)Throughout most of his political career, Adam Schiff has been low-key, laboring mostly in the background in the California Senate and then in Congress. Now, at age 59, he finds himself in the national spotlight as a major target of Donald Trump amid the hot glare of presidential impeachment.