About one-sixth of California's general fund is spent on Medi-Cal coverage. A federal report issued last Thursday projected that public spending on healthcare would outstrip individual spending in just two years. On top of this, the state will witness the largest private individual insurance premium increase in its history as Anthem Blue Cross plans dramatic rate hikes this Spring. These are all indicators of an underlying problem, a sharp rise in treatment costs.

Dear Tea Party,

This is an open letter to all my conservative friends out there in the resurgent liberty movement taking this country by storm: Please throw your support behind the legalization of marijuana. It actually makes a lot more sense than you might think.

Progressive Democrat, Marcy Winograd, is offering a novel solution for jump-starting job creation.  Her ideas can be more closely examined in her campaign's latest press release, which we have copied here for readers:

When things were rough, people depended on their families and local community to help them through.  When things are not going your way, who will you call? Family? Friends? Church? Local Non-Profit? State or Federal Government?

What’s your favorite state in the nation? The answer is California! That is the message Governor Schwarzenegger has been trying to send out to potential business owners and investors this month. In the last week alone, Schwarzenegger has spoken to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and has co-hosted a press conference with Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania… among other ambitious endeavors.

For all the rancor in Washington over health insurance reform, our elected officials are still not taking the necessary steps to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health insurance coverage so they receive the care they need to live healthy and productive lives.  On one side, the solutions being offered are a continuation of the status quo, where for-profit health insurance companies determine what kind of care a person receives and has the ability to drop coverage when a person gets sick.  On the other side, while there are sincere efforts to control costs a

Comprehensive immigration reform is the right thing to do economically, politically, and morally, said Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) and Sonia Manzano (of Sesame Street fame). Honda and Manzano put forth their message in a Feb. 5, 2010 op-ed for Roll Call, a premier publication on Capitol Hill. "The tide seems to be turning," said the op-ed, "despite populist trends that might suggest otherwise."

Long before the Tea Party movement sprang up in the early days of President Obama, the liberty movement was catching fire.  Dedicated to a pro-constitution, fiscally conservative, and anti-war GOP presidential candidate, the liberty movement barnstormed the nation with an explosion of grassroots enthusiasm.  When Texas Congressman, Dr.

This Sunday, the Los Angeles Times released an article confirming precisely what election and budget analysts have known for ages – that most voters know very little about the budget, and that this fact has absolutely no bearing on their confidence that they could do a better job managing it than the politicians in Sacramento. Given the current state of the state’s capitol, this latter fact may be understandable, but even so, the confirmation that California’s electorate is dismally uninformed should provoke serious thought about why the state is similarly dismally underfunded.

In a blog posted February 2 at The Educated Guess, journalist John Fensterwald of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation posits that baby boomers need to be convinced that spending money on higher education is in their own best interest. 

Why?