It’s been a successful week for supporters of cannabis taxation: the recent news of strong support for an initiative (09-0024, or the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010) to tax and regulate marijuana has spread quickly.

You won’t believe this until you see it.  In a stunning admission, former Governor of Kentucky and current State Senator Julian Carroll admitted, “I could care less what want…we operate democracy in this country with a two-party system.”  These comments were expressed following an interview with independent activist Michael Lewis, where the Senator suggested that if independents don’t like the way the political system is run, they should “leave the country”, and by pushing for open primaries, independents were trying to “destroy the two-party system.”

The New York Times recently cited rancorous partisanship as one of the chief causes of America's skyrocketing national debt.  Running $1.4 trillion budget deficits and having increased the debt ceiling to approximately $14 trillion, our nation is headed toward certain fiscal disaster unless a major policy shift is enacted.  And while Republicans and Democrats continue to point fingers at one another, the debt spirals out of control.

Stung by public disapproval and worries over the speed of economic recovery, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers have introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation they claim will add or preserve as much as 140,000 jobs.  In December, there were 14.1 million non-farm jobs in California, according to the state Employment Development Department.

The 1969 oil spill off of Santa Barbara that killed nearly 4,000 birds and ruined some of the state’s finest beaches is about to take one more victim:  the offshore drilling proposal by the Plains Exploration and Production Company (also known as PXP). 

Having faced some of the most agonizing budget decisions a State can make since the fairly mundane 2008 election, this November is the first time that Californians will have the opportunity to confront the wide array of proposed remedies and decide for themselves which of those remedies bears merit. This is a highly interesting moment, but also a highly dangerous one, for with it, as always, comes the potential for radical figures to overhaul key components of the Californian economy in arguably overambitious plans which throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Fed up with the two-party system, independents scored a huge victory for more open primaries in the Kentucky state senate.  Despite strong opposition from Democrats, the Kentucky Senate voted to allow registered independents the opportunity to participate in the primary elections.  The vote moves to the Kentucky House where Democrats comprise a majority, putting passage in jeopardy.

California is in an economic state of emergency.  With a punishing budget deficit, spending cuts and policy reform have become a necessity.  In Governor Schwarzenegger’s amended budget plan, the governor and his administration have proposed drastic fiscal reductions to social welfare programs such as CALWORKs, Medi-Cal, and Child Care Assistance.  These proposed cuts offer immediate relief to an ailing California economy.  However, this temporary relief comes at the expense of thousands of struggling families trying to make it through the worst economic fiasco they’ve seen in their lif

Governor Schwarzenegger is proposing the implementation of Automated Speed Enforcement, or ASE, systems across the state to offset proposed budget cuts to state trial courts. Not only does the proposed legislation to snag speeders in California lack any fiscal sense, it represents a direct assault on privacy rights as well as a severe conflict of interests for those prosecuting alleged offenders.