Results like those from this week’s primary cause detractors to call California’s four-year-old “top two” election system the “jungle primary” because it often features races with a dozen or more contestants and outcomes that can […]

No candidate campaigned harder this spring that Neel Kashkari, the former federal Treasury Department official and ex-Goldman Sachs executive who just become the first Asian-American ever nominated to for governor of California. He was someplace […]

Santa Monicans take elections seriously. Usually it’s the top of the ticket that brings people out to vote. But the top of the ticket was a no contest race with Governor Jerry Brown, Lieutenant Governor […]

There’s a huge political implication in the big difference between 13.7 billion barrels of oil and 600 million. Similarly, there’s meaning in the gigantic difference between 15 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 6.4 […]

As expected, it’s now late spring and water rationing is upon California. Despite the heavy mid-February rains that briefly drenched Northern California and the respectable ensuing snowfall in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, drought remains. It […]

In contemplating the observation that less growth is a growing idea here in Santa Monica, I found myself wondering aloud not only about towns and cities, such as our own, but possibly any enterprise: One […]

Architecture has been in the news in Santa Monica, but not in a good way. Now, in the midst of all the noise of development, comes another project. Located on Arizona Ave between 4th and […]

With polls showing Californians distrust their state government more than citizens of almost any other state, it’s high time legislators at least began taking small steps toward earning back some of the public faith they […]

California voters created tectonic changes in state politics four years ago, when they approved the “top two” primary election system that takes effect in races for statewide offices next month. There is no longer any […]