Meet the Not-At-All-Human Multi-Billionaire Who Is Supposed to Save California

The State’s Rainy Day Fund Has Never Been Tapped—But That’s About to Change

I’m ready for my close-up, Ms. Gerwig!

OK, as a budget fund without acting credits, I shouldn’t expect Greta Gerwig to put me in her next film—even if both she and I are Sacramento natives. But the time is coming—quite quickly—when I, California’s humble Rainy Day Fund, will stand at the center of our state’s civic stage, and my fellow Californians will finally have to pay me the attention I deserve.

I’ve had to stand on the sidelines for the past decade, like the kid ignored on the edge of the …

by The Rainy Day Fund, as told to Joe Mathews | March 17, 2020

Why Does the 2020 Presidential Campaign Feel So Loud and Angry?

In an Age of ‘Post-Rhetorical’ Politics, Candidates Now Compete, Rather Than Cooperate, With the Media

by Jennifer Mercieca | March 15, 2020

Presidential candidates have long found ways to take their messages directly to the voters, by avoiding the filter of press coverage. But today, candidates have gone steps further, turning themselves …

Auto Draft | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

An Architect of L.A. Government Looks Forward and Back

Zev Yaroslavsky on How Politics Have Changed in Los Angeles in the Last 40 Years

by Jackie Mansky | February 12, 2020

Los Angeles has changed, declared Zev Yaroslavsky, a man who has played a major role in shaping the city’s politics in the last 40 years, during a Zócalo Public Square …

The Horrifying Hollywood Movie About Thermonuclear War That Determined U.S. | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The Horrifying Hollywood Movie That Determined U.S. Nuclear Policy

Operation Ivy Provoked Such Controversy That Future Nuclear Test Films Were Kept Secret From the Public

by Kevin Hamilton and Ned O’Gorman | February 2, 2020

On a hot June day in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sat down in the cool confines of a White House screening room to watch a horrifying movie. Produced by …

Why Fresno Is on the Leading Edge of a ‘Wave’ of Political Change

A Progressive, Technocratic, and Majority-Latino City Council Points to a Larger Transformation in California

by Joe Mathews | January 28, 2020

Looking for the biggest wave in California? Go to Fresno.

It’s not just that fast-growing Fresno is emerging as the Golden State’s next great city. Fresno is also undergoing dramatic—and overdue—changes …

America’s Racial Progress Is Real. So Is the White Supremacy That Threatens It

Sociologist Lawrence D. Bobo Calls for a ‘Multi-Dimensional’ Way Forward

by Joe Mathews | January 24, 2020

While race relations in the United States have improved dramatically since World War II, the recent resurgence of white supremacy and more openly racist politics represent serious threats to that …

What Amnesiac California Needs Is a Museum of the Great Recession

The State Invented This Worldwide Downturn, So Why Not Memorialize It?

Why the State General Fund Is Mad at You

California’s Fiscal Backstop Breaks Its Silence to Lash Out at Special and Rainy Day Funds, Reforms, and Reports of Its Own Volatility

How California (Might Have) Learned to Stop Worrying and Love a Big, Unbalanced Budget

COVID Is Helping the State Get Over Its Misguided Obsession With Staying in the Black at the Expense of Solving Its Costly Problems

Are California’s Strongman Governors Bullying the State?

With a Weakling Legislature and Few Checks on Power, Our Chief Executives Are Big-Footing Politics

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