Category: Politics

I don’t have a well thought out view of Afghanistan. But General McChrystal’s counter-insurgency plan never made much sense to me. The plan by definition requires a government which the people can trust. But all reports are that Hamid Karzai is not trusted by the people in Afghanistan. The election last year was a total…

California’s proposition 16, which will be voted on next Tuesday, is an interesting use of California’s bizarre ballot initiative process. The proposition says that if a local government wants to start a municipal electrical utility, it must get a 2/3 majority of votes. The proposition was initiated and almost entirely funded by PG&E, a California…

Today is the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma, the second worst terrorist attack in U.S. history to date. 168 people died. I’ve tried to write something about what happened and the government response, but it keeps getting more political than I really want, so I’ve given up. Terrorists are…

Lawrence Lessig is pushing for a constitutional amendment to change the campaign financing system. You can sign his petition over at http://action.change-congress.org/amendment. I think Lessig is right that campaign financing is broken. Elections for national office are very expensive. Politicians spend a lot of their time fund-raising. Jesse Unruh was probably reasonably accurate when he…

California is very fond of the ballot initiative. Coming from a different state with a different political culture, this baffles me. This biggest, most obvious problem with democracy is that the majority will vote themselves benefits at the expense of the minority. The authors of the U.S. constitution were aware of this, and they created…