Whoever said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result was probably thinking about the California initiative process. We keep on putting initiatives on the ballot thinking it will solve all our problems and we keep getting the same results: either the initiatives don’t pass […]

To the extent that the immigration debate gets any coverage in the media these days, it seems to be about the way the proponents of human rights are shouting past the xenophobes and vice versa. Meanwhile, Europe and Japan both are giving serious consideration to what it will do for their economies as the number […]

Today, Politico asked, “What does Obama gain by calling bankers ‘fat cats?’” Here was my response:
When I was Deputy Corporations Commissioner for the State of California, I learned that if there was one thing that our licensees wanted from their financial regulator, it was consistency. The number of players and moving parts in the financial […]

Politico has an on-line debate called “The Arena,” a place where they ask political professionals about the day’s news. Today, they asked me and others about the meaning Obama’s declining approval ratings (chart above). Here was my response:
The predictive value of Obama’s declining job performance numbers is not deep. All the numbers say is that […]

A few numbers that jumped out at me from tonight’s election in LA:

Size of the L.A. City Budget: $7 billion
L.A. City Council Salary: $178,789
Population of 2nd City Council District: 277,531
Estimated Vote Eligible Population (VEP): 211,756
Ballots in Tonight’s 2nd City Council Race: 19,170
Mail Ballots: 10,988
Poll Ballots: 8,182
VEP Turnout: 9 percent

The LA Times has a story on the dramatic changes new Disney chairman Rich Ross is bringing to the old way of doing business:
In meetings with producers, filmmakers and agents, Ross attacked the industry custom of spending $40 million on a TV advertising blitz two weeks before a film’s opening, rather than enlisting more targeted […]

I loved the book Moneyball. Not just because it was funny and not just because it was about major league baseball. It also forcefully made an argument that makes a whole lot of sense to a pollster like me, namely that data matters. It’s not enough any more for a crusty old baseball scout to […]

(Originally posted in Facebook on August 21.)
Three days ago, the Pasadena Star-News wrote an article about recent test scores. The lede was:
Pasadena Unified School District students continue to fall further behind their statewide peers in English and math, according to test scores released Tuesday by the California Department of Education. Tuesday Star-News
In part because […]

It’s fitting that I had dinner with Michele Ruiz and our spouses just a few weeks after New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began investigating debt settlement companies. Michele and I met 6 years ago when she was an unstoppable investigative reporter for KNBC and I was Deputy Corporations Commissioner for the State of California. […]

Michael Wines writes in today’s New York Times about the wife of a Chinese dissident who produced a tract so subversive that it got him jailed and her 24-hour surveillance.
Here are the “Fundamental Principles” from Charter 08, the document signed by Liu Xiaobo and 302 others:
OUR FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES
This is a historic moment for China, and […]