A correctional facility in Salinas operated by The GEO Group. ((Photo: GEO Group website)So you think privately run prisons are a Republican thing? Perhaps in Texas and Tennessee. But in deep blue California, it is the Democrats who take in the most contributions from for-profit correctional corporations, primarily Florida’s The GEO Group and the Tennessee-based CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America.
Tom McClintock takes question at a raucous townhall meeting in March 2017. (Photo: Randall Benton, Sacramento Bee, via Associated Press) Placer County is seen as a bastion of red in a largely blue state — and Republican Congressman Tom McClintock has carried the district easily for the past decade. But this election year, amid the deepening anti-Trump sentiment in California, will things be different for the veteran lawmaker?
A fire truck races to an emergency in downtown Los Angeles, 2016. (Photo Alexandre Moraes, via Shutterstock)FairWarning: November’s presidential contest was bizarre in many ways, but there is one peculiarity that pundits haven’t pounced on: The states with the worst rates of traffic deaths in the country went solidly for Donald Trump while Hillary Clinton swept states with the lowest fatality rates. California was 10th from the bottom in its traffic fatality rate — about 8.11 deaths per 100,000 people. The highest was Wyoming, with 24.74 fatalities per 100,000.
Political strategist Mike Madrid at his Sacramento office. (Photo: Tim Foster)Capitol Weekly chats with veteran GOP strategist Mike Madrid, who offers his thoughts on the impact of the Latino vote in the 2016 election — and how and why the ‘sleeping giant’ failed to deliver for Hillary Clinton. While the numbers this cycle were good nationally for Donald Trump, and for Democrats in California, Madrid has cautionary words for both parties moving forward.
Downtown Davis, population center of the 3rd Senate District. (Photo: Miles530, via Wikipedia)In California’s 3rd Senate District, two colors stand out: blue and green. Blue for water, green for money. The water, because SD3’s southern portion includes a piece of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The money, because in addition to conventional campaign donations, large sums from outside independent expenditure committees are fueling the race.
Calpensions: In a few years CalPERS retirees are expected to outnumber active workers, a national trend among public pension funds that makes them more vulnerable to big employer rate increases. The growing number of retirees, partly due to aging baby boomers, is one reason a staff report last week argues that CalPERS has too much “risk.”
Although U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin serves as poster ogre for anti-Communist crusades of the early 1950s, Congress’ most notorious “Red Scare” investigations took place under the purview of the House Un-American Activities Committee. HUAC, as it was known, pre-dated McCarthy by 14 years and continued for more than a decade after his demise.
It’s been just over 20 years since B. T. Collins died but his integrity, gritty character and good cheer in the face of adversity set an example for all of us. He was a Green Beret captain who lost his right hand and right leg in a grenade attack in Viet Nam and joked about
California’s core environmental protection law, a 43-year-old statute frequently denounced by developers and business interests as a tangle of red tape, is on a Capitol hit list once again.
But the political dynamic this year is unusual: Those pushing hard for change are Democrats, including Gov. Brown, the Senate and Assembly leaders and a
The California Republican Party isn’t dead but there sure are plenty of tubes connected to life support.
That’s pretty much the Number One topic of the November election post mortem: A post mortem on the Golden State’s Grand Old Party.
“Can the party be restored as a viable organization that effectively does what