Is This the Most Dysfunctional City Council in California?

Santa Clara’s Conflicts Include Letterhead Battles, Midnight Meetings, and a Threatening Reading of a Picture Book

During a Santa Clara City Council meeting last year, Councilmember Kevin Park gestured to a local business owner in the audience and started reading aloud from the illustrated book All My Friends Are Dead, about a dinosaur who’s still around, even though the other dinosaurs are extinct.

But Park altered the text to read “All My Friends Are Termed Out.” The message was menacing. The business owner was deeply engaged with the city and once had many allies on the council. But Park was reminding this man …

More In: Connecting California

California’s Ballot Measures Don’t Need to Be a Hot Mess

A Swiss-Style Model of Counterproposals Could Make for Smarter Voting and Better Public Policy

No man is happy but by comparison.

– Thomas Shadwell, poet laureate, United Kingdom (1689-1692)

If you want to better understand the true nature of a proposal, consider a …

A Water Rights Storm Is Brewing in the Foothills Above Glendale | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

A Water Rights Storm Is Brewing in the Foothills Above Glendale

Too Bad the City of L.A. Won’t Let Its Neighbors Capture the Rain and Reuse It

The Verdugo Wash is a small flood control channel that takes rainwater from the foothills above Glendale to the L.A. River, and 30 miles out to the Pacific Ocean.

When you …

California Has Got This, America

Kamala Harris Survived San Francisco and the Golden State. She’s Ready for Three Months Against Trump

Don’t worry, America.

We got this.

By “we,” I mean California.

By “this,” I mean this presidential election.

And by “got,” I mean that we are sending you the best possible candidate to weather …

Dump Biden. Run Snoop

If the American People (and the Supreme Court) Want a Convicted Felon-in-Chief, Let it Be a Multi-Talented Rapper from Long Beach

President Biden should drop out of the presidential race, but not because he is too old or too infirm.

He should drop out because he is not criminal enough to win.

The …

California Democrats Need Real Opposition | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Why Is Gavin Newsom Invoking a Failed World War Two-Era Governor?

Culbert Olson Talked A Good Game About Democracy, But He Failed to Protect Californians’ Civil Liberties

If you’re ever inside the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale and hear laughter ringing through the hallways, it’s probably me visiting the tomb of Culbert …