Do recessions make people sicker? Some studies say yes, some say no. The better question might be, "How is this recession affecting health?" Not in a good way, comes the answer. This recession -- depression? -- seems different. This recession is messing with our heads.
I have known Rush Limbaugh since his old radio days in Sacramento, before he became a GOP god. I've disagreed with him over the years. Last year I took on his bashing of Republican moderates and criticized Limbaugh and other talk-radio hosts when they were too harsh on not-yet GOP nominee John McCain. I've never apologized and we're still friends.
California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ron George looked none too comfortable Thursday morning as he heard oral arguments for and against California's ban on same-sex marriage.
"Animal spirits," said John Maynard Keynes, are the essential spring of capitalism. We depend on the animal spirits of investors, high earners and entrepreneurs for a growing economy.
In an ideal world, gay marriage would be won at the ballot box. Voters would recognize that they have absolutely nothing to lose by allowing their fellow citizens the same rights to marry that heterosexual men and women now enjoy. Even many prominent conservatives (say, Sarah Palin) have come to recognize that it is wrong, heartless even, to deny gay couples the right to sign up for health benefits or to make critical medical decisions for their partners.
Twenty-five years after 1984, Doublespeak lives. Last week, President Obama released "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise" -- a 10-year, $3.55 trillion spending plan that represented anything but fiscal maturity.
Amid pleas to spare the rich, the right is accusing the Obama administration of waging vile class warfare. They envision wooden carts carrying the wealthiest 2 percent to the guillotine. Are the critics right? Only in the tumbrels of their mind.
I am trying to capture the spirit of bipartisanship as practiced by the Democratic Party over the past eight years. Thus, I have chosen as my lead this proposition: Obama lied; the economy died. Obviously, I am borrowing this from the Democratic theme of 2003-08: "Bush lied, people died." There are, of course, two differences between the slogans.
He talks for hours every day. He gets paid to talk. Just talk. Doing it well is no small thing; witness the number of people who have tried to be him, or be the NOT-him, and failed. But he doesn't have to build a coalition.
A Sunday New York Times story described an expected sea change in international global warming policy. The story noted that President George W. Bush, "pressed by the Senate, rejected" the Kyoto global warming protocol in 2001, but now President Obama is eager to negotiate a robust international global warming treaty to be signed in Copenhagen in December.
When a pizzeria closes, the pizzeria down the block usually sees a surge in business. That principle applies to commerce in the larger North American neighborhood. Whenever the United States locks the gate on a plausible economic activity, Canadians move in and profit.
When he worked as a legislative liaison in 1982 for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, B.T. Collins -- an unlikely Brown hire, as Collins was a Republican and double-amputee Vietnam War veteran who joked that he threw grenades "like a girl" -- had choice words for the California Legislature. He used to call the Assembly "an adult day care center."
Let me be very clear on the economics of President Obama’s State of the Union speech and his budget. He is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds.
On the last day of her trip to East Asia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke briefly of the place of human rights in American policy toward China. "Our pressing on those issues" -- issues she didn't identify any more fully -- "can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis."
Two weeks ago we discussed the basic framework for 2010's thirty-six Senate elections. Last week we reviewed the seventeen Democratic Senate seats that are on the ballot in the midterm year.
One of my favorite federal judges used to laugh whenever I began a sentence "with all due respect," because he knew I was about to tell him I thought he was wrong.
A couple of years ago, when speaking to a local group, I mentioned that The Chronicle was losing money.
At the brink of global ruin, many Americans suddenly seem willing to consider sensible ideas that were always deemed unthinkable, and to reject foolish notions that were once deemed brilliant. Soon we may be mature enough to observe how other developed countries address problems that have baffled us for generations.
How big should government be? The answer is: As big as it has to be -- and for small-government types, no bigger than it has to be.
The president deserves the high marks he is getting from the public for his first month in office. Most presidents get to spend their first month putting up the draperies.
