Download or read book Money and Politics in the Golden State written by and published by . This book was released on with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Report from the California Commission on Campaign Financing.

Download or read book Money and Politics in the Golden State A summary of the report and recommendations of the California Commission on Campaign Financing written by California Commission on Campaign Financing and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Money and Politics in the Golden State Report and recommendations of the California Commission on Campaign Financing written by California Commission on Campaign Financing and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Money and Politics in the Golden State written by California Commission on Campaign Financing and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book California Crackup written by Joe Mathews and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "California Crackup is brilliant. It cuts through the familiar tangle of diagnoses and quick-fix solutions to provide a comprehensive and persuasive analysis of California's dysfunctional governmental system. Paul and Mathews have coolly laid out a complicated story, made it readable, sometimes even comedic. It is the best discussion of the issue I've seen in over three decades."--Peter Schrag, author of California: America's High-Stakes Experiment "I know of no other work that combines so succinctly and enjoyably a historical summary of California's existing problems with such a sweeping and provocative program of reform."--Ethan Rarick, University of California, Berkeley "Mark Paul and Joe Mathews have produced an indispensable guide to California's crisis of governance--and they have done so with humor, scholarship, fairness and storytelling verve. Every Californian should read this book."--Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars "Mark Paul... has a talent for presenting California Big Think stuff in an easily accessible and always readable way...[offering] clear and creative insights on the subject of California's collapse."--CalBuzz "Joe Mathews has done an artful, fascinating, and convincing job of connecting the California of today's Schwarzenegger era to the long history that made his rise possible.--James Fallows,The Atlantic Monthly on Mathews' book, The People's Machine

Download or read book Golden Rule written by Thomas Ferguson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-08-15 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To discover who rules, follow the gold." This is the argument of Golden Rule, a provocative, pungent history of modern American politics. Although the role big money plays in defining political outcomes has long been obvious to ordinary Americans, most pundits and scholars have virtually dismissed this assumption. Even in light of skyrocketing campaign costs, the belief that major financial interests primarily determine who parties nominate and where they stand on the issues—that, in effect, Democrats and Republicans are merely the left and right wings of the "Property Party"—has been ignored by most political scientists. Offering evidence ranging from the nineteenth century to the 1994 mid-term elections, Golden Rule shows that voters are "right on the money." Thomas Ferguson breaks completely with traditional voter centered accounts of party politics. In its place he outlines an "investment approach," in which powerful investors, not unorganized voters, dominate campaigns and elections. Because businesses "invest" in political parties and their candidates, changes in industrial structures—between large firms and sectors—can alter the agenda of party politics and the shape of public policy. Golden Rule presents revised versions of widely read essays in which Ferguson advanced and tested his theory, including his seminal study of the role played by capital intensive multinationals and international financiers in the New Deal. The chapter "Studies in Money Driven Politics" brings this aspect of American politics into better focus, along with other studies of Federal Reserve policy making and campaign finance in the 1936 election. Ferguson analyzes how a changing world economy and other social developments broke up the New Deal system in our own time, through careful studies of the 1988 and 1992 elections. The essay on 1992 contains an extended analysis of the emergence of the Clinton coalition and Ross Perot's dramatic independent insurgency. A postscript on the 1994 elections demonstrates the controlling impact of money on several key campaigns. This controversial work by a theorist of money and politics in the U.S. relates to issues in campaign finance reform, PACs, policymaking, public financing, and how today's elections work.

Download or read book Golden Rule written by Thomas Ferguson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1995-06-15 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To discover who rules, follow the gold." This is the argument of Golden Rule, a provocative, pungent history of modern American politics. Although the role big money plays in defining political outcomes has long been obvious to ordinary Americans, most pundits and scholars have virtually dismissed this assumption. Even in light of skyrocketing campaign costs, the belief that major financial interests primarily determine who parties nominate and where they stand on the issues—that, in effect, Democrats and Republicans are merely the left and right wings of the "Property Party"—has been ignored by most political scientists. Offering evidence ranging from the nineteenth century to the 1994 mid-term elections, Golden Rule shows that voters are "right on the money." Thomas Ferguson breaks completely with traditional voter centered accounts of party politics. In its place he outlines an "investment approach," in which powerful investors, not unorganized voters, dominate campaigns and elections. Because businesses "invest" in political parties and their candidates, changes in industrial structures—between large firms and sectors—can alter the agenda of party politics and the shape of public policy. Golden Rule presents revised versions of widely read essays in which Ferguson advanced and tested his theory, including his seminal study of the role played by capital intensive multinationals and international financiers in the New Deal. The chapter "Studies in Money Driven Politics" brings this aspect of American politics into better focus, along with other studies of Federal Reserve policy making and campaign finance in the 1936 election. Ferguson analyzes how a changing world economy and other social developments broke up the New Deal system in our own time, through careful studies of the 1988 and 1992 elections. The essay on 1992 contains an extended analysis of the emergence of the Clinton coalition and Ross Perot's dramatic independent insurgency. A postscript on the 1994 elections demonstrates the controlling impact of money on several key campaigns. This controversial work by a theorist of money and politics in the U.S. relates to issues in campaign finance reform, PACs, policymaking, public financing, and how today's elections work.

Download or read book Not So Golden After All written by Larry N. Gerston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quality public education, modern highway systems, and reasonably priced housing—these are just some of the qualities that once made California one of the most desirable places to live. Just a few decades later, the state finds itself with an education system that is failing its citizens, one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, and a quickly evaporating dream of home ownership. Illustrating each step of the breakdown that led to its current state of dysfunction, Not So Golden After All: The Rise and Fall of California provides insight into a system gone amuck. It addresses complicated topics in an engaging manner to help the public and leaders alike understand how to make policies that balance expectations with outcomes. Key political themes covered include disconnected institutions, perpetually unbalanced budgets, immigration, voter ignorance, interest group influence, and dysfunctional institutions. Investigating the gridlock that has become all too common within the state’s legislature, the book: Demonstrates the impact of the state’s inability to generate sufficient revenue, particularly for public education and an under-trained workforce Highlights the problems created by poor land use planning —from suburban sprawl and government waste to inefficient use of agricultural land Examines how interest groups have been able to wrest control of the processes that were created to keep them in line Identifies the duplication of efforts and other inefficiencies at the state and local levels Author Larry Gerston leaves no stone unturned in his discussion of California's economy, position on the Pacific Rim, cultural diversity, land and water issues, and its relationship with the federal government. He examines the state’s infrastructure, natural resources, immigration issues, education, finance, healthcare, civil rights, planning and development, security, laws, political parties, and power structures to provide civic leaders and policy makers with the understanding required to restore the sheen to this once glistening paradise. The Contra Costa Times discussed Larry Gerston's recent Commonwealth Club lecture in a May 17, 2012 article. Read an interview with Larry Gerston in The Mercury News.

Download or read book The Golden State written by Lydia Kiesling and published by MCD. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 PICK. LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION'S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE. Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by NPR, Bookforum and Bustle. One of Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Debut Novels of 2018. An Amazon Best Book of the Month and named a fall read by Buzzfeed, Nylon, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Refinery29 and Mind Body Green A gorgeous, raw debut novel about a young woman braving the ups and downs of motherhood in a fractured America In Lydia Kiesling’s razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent—her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a “processing error”—Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity. But clarity proves elusive. Over the next ten days Daphne is anxious, she behaves a little erratically, she drinks too much. She wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby. Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbor who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world. Keenly observed, bristling with humor, and set against the beauty of a little-known part of California, The Golden State is about class and cultural breakdowns, and desperate attempts to bridge old and new worlds. But more than anything, it is about motherhood: its voracious worry, frequent tedium, and enthralling, wondrous love.

Download or read book Costs of Democracy written by Devesh Kapur and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-13 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most troubling critiques of contemporary democracy is the inability of representative governments to regulate the deluge of money in politics. If it is impossible to conceive of democracies without elections, it is equally impractical to imagine elections without money. Costs of Democracy is an exhaustive, ground-breaking study of money in Indian politics that opens readers’ eyes to the opaque and enigmatic ways in which money flows through the political veins of the world’s largest democracy. Through original, in-depth investigation—drawing from extensive fieldwork on political campaigns, pioneering surveys, and innovative data analysis—the contributors in this volume uncover the institutional and regulatory contexts governing the torrent of money in politics; the sources of political finance; the reasons for such large spending; and how money flows, influences, and interacts with different tiers of government. The book raises uncomfortable questions about whether the flood of money risks washing away electoral democracy itself.

Download or read book A Golden State written by Marlene Smith-Baranzini and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays on mining and economic development in California from the Gold Rush through the end of the 19th century. This is the second in a series of four volumes comemmorating the state's sesquicentennial.

Download or read book When Crime Pays written by Milan Vaishnav and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first thorough study of the co-existence of crime and democratic processes in Indian politics In India, the world's largest democracy, the symbiotic relationship between crime and politics raises complex questions. For instance, how can free and fair democratic processes exist alongside rampant criminality? Why do political parties recruit candidates with reputations for wrongdoing? Why are one-third of state and national legislators elected--and often re-elected--in spite of criminal charges pending against them? In this eye-opening study, political scientist Milan Vaishnav mines a rich array of sources, including fieldwork on political campaigns and interviews with candidates, party workers, and voters, large surveys, and an original database on politicians' backgrounds to offer the first comprehensive study of an issue that has implications for the study of democracy both within and beyond India's borders.

Download or read book China s Gilded Age written by Yuen Yuen Ang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has China grown so fast for so long despite vast corruption? In China's Gilded Age, Yuen Yuen Ang maintains that all corruption is harmful, but not all types of corruption hurt growth. Ang unbundles corruption into four varieties: petty theft, grand theft, speed money, and access money. While the first three types impede growth, access money - elite exchanges of power and profit - cuts both ways: it stimulates investment and growth but produces serious risks for the economy and political system. Since market opening, corruption in China has evolved toward access money. Using a range of data sources, the author explains the evolution of Chinese corruption, how it differs from the West and other developing countries, and how Xi's anti-corruption campaign could affect growth and governance. In this formidable yet accessible book, Ang challenges one-dimensional measures of corruption. By unbundling the problem and adopting a comparative-historical lens, she reveals that the rise of capitalism was not accompanied by the eradication of corruption, but rather by its evolution from thuggery and theft to access money. In doing so, she changes the way we think about corruption and capitalism, not only in China but around the world.

Download or read book Not So Golden State written by Char Miller and published by Trinity University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-22 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Not So Golden State, leading environmental historian Char Miller looks below the surface of California's ecological history to expose some of its less glittering conundrums. In this necessary work, Miller asks tough questions as we stand at the edge of a human-induced natural disaster in the region and beyond. He details policy steps and missteps in public land management and examines the impact of recreation on national forests, parks, and refuges, assessing efforts to restore wild land habitat, riparian ecosystems, and endangered species. Why, during a devastating five-year drought, is the Central Valley’s agribusiness still irrigating its fields as if it were business as usual? What’s unusual, Miller reveals, is that northern counties rich in groundwater sell it off to make millions while draining their aquifers toward eventual mud. Why, when contemporary debate over oil and gas drilling questions reasonable practices, are extractive industries targeting Chaco Canyon National Historic Park and its ancient sites, which are of inestimable value to Native Americans? How do we begin to understand “local,” a concept of hope for modern environmentalism? After all, Miller says, what we define as local determines how we might act in its defense. To inhabit a place requires placed-based analyses, whatever the geographic scope—examinations rooted in a precise, physical reality. To make a conscientious life in a suburb, floodplain, fire zone, or coastline requires a heightened awareness of these landscapes’ past so that we can develop an intensified responsibility for their present condition and future prospects. Building a more robust sense of justice is the key to creating resilient, habitable, and equitable communities. Miller turns to Aldo Leopold’s insight that “all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting point,” a location humans return to "again and again to organize another search for a durable scale of values.” This quest, a reflection of our ambition to know ourselves in relation to time and space, to organize our energy and structure our insights, is as inevitable as it is unending. Turning his focus to the tensions along the California coastline, Miller ponders the activities of whale watching and gazing at sea otters, thinking about the implications of the human desire to protect endangered flora and fauna, which makes the shoreline a fraught landscape and a source of endless stories about the past and present. In the Los Angeles region these connections are more obvious, given its geography. The San Gabriel Mountains rise sharply above the valleys below, offering some of the steepest relief on the planet. Three major river systems—the Santa Ana, San Gabriel, and Los Angeles—cut through the range’s sheer canyons, carrying an astonishing amount of debris that once crashed into low-lying areas with churning force. Today the rivers are constrained by flood-control dams and channels. Major wildfires, sparked by annual drought, high heat, and fierce Santa Ana winds, move at lightning speed and force thousands to flee. The city’s legendary smog, whose origins lie in car culture, was fueled in part by oil brought to the region's surface in the late nineteenth century. It left Angelenos gasping for breath as climatic conditions turned exhaust into a toxic ozone layer trapped by the mountains that back in the day were hard to see. Clearing the befouled skies took decades. Every bit as complex is the enduring effort to regenerate riparian health and restore wildlife habitat in a concrete-hardened landscape. The emerging tensions are similar to those threading through the U.S. Forest Service’s management of the Angeles National Forest, exacerbated whenever a black bear ambles into a nearby subdivision. How we build ourselves into these spaces depends on the removal of competing users or uses: a historic strawberry patch gives way to a housing development, a memorial forest goes up in smoke, a small creek tells a larger tale of the human impress, and struggles over water—a perennial issue in this dry land—remind us we're not as free of the past as we'd like to think. Neither are we removed from the downwind consequences of our choice to live in fire’s path. The West does not burn every summer; it just seems that way. And not every fire is a smoke signal of distress. Picking through the region’s fiery terrain is as tricky as trying to extinguish a roaring blaze in the August heat. There are lessons to be had by examining how we respond to the annual conflagrations. The Wallow Fire, which in 2011 burned hundreds of thousands of acres in remote Arizona, sparked equal amounts of political grandstanding and hand-wringing about wildfire-fighting strategies. Beyond the headlines and flashy, smoke-filled images lay another reality. The creation of defensible space and the thinning of forests communities—signs of homeowners' and state and federal agencies' proactive intervention—meant few structures burned during the monthlong firestorm. That such good news is rarely reported is part and parcel of another ethical dilemma too rarely acknowledged: the decision to live in fire zones should come coupled with homeowners’ responsibility to do all they can to ensure their homes don't go up in smoke. How they build their homes and landscape its environs are essential steps in defending their space. That obligation comes with another, made clear in the 2013 Yarnell Hill, which took the lives of nineteen firefighters. To make our houses fire-safe is to give firefighters a fighting chance. This reciprocity and the social compact it depends on require us to believe we inhabit common ground with our neighbors, a realization that should build a stronger sense of community. But it's a tough concept to promote in a bewilderingly antisocial political environment, when budgets for fire prevention are slashed as part of larger efforts to defund the nation-state. Or when the very reasons some seek to live in isolated, mountainous environs clash with the larger need to act in concert with their communities. Fires illuminate many things, not least the ties that bind and those that are frayed. Miller develops his argument from a variety of places and perspectives. Most of the pieces ask a series of questions about a particular landscape—Gila National Forest, Death Valley, Zion, Arches, and Rocky Mountain National Parks, and a host of other iconic western scenic spots. Why do we conceive of wilderness as a preserve, separate and inviolate? Who benefits—or does not—from the idea that such landscapes are, or ought to be, untrammeled? Why has this intellectual construction, and the preservationist ethos it depends on, come to dominate contemporary environmentalism? Related queries bubble up after Miller spends time in the newest national park, Pinnacles in central California, or one of the most venerable, the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona. What impact has the long history of tourism and recreation had on these public lands? Maintaining trails that weave through the Yosemite Valley is an arduous, incessant task made more difficult by the visitors pouring in to John Muir’s favorite terrain or rushing to rock climb in Minerva Hoyt’s beloved Joshua Tree. Still more daunting is the prospect of sustained ecological restoration and habitat regeneration under current conditions and those that climate change is generating across the West. Once again Aldo Leopold can be a guide. “A member of a biotic team is shown by an ecological interpretation of history,” he once observed, adding that many “historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land.” Only when “the concept of land as a community really penetrates our intellectual life” will history, as a subject and methodology, become fully realized. Not So Golden State contributes powerfully toward the realization of this enduring cross-generational endeavor.

Download or read book Winner Take All Politics written by Jacob S. Hacker and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes the growing divide between the incomes of the wealthy class and those of middle-income Americans, exonerating popular suspects to argue that the nation's political system promotes greed and under-representation.

Download or read book Super PACs written by Louise I. Gerdes and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The passage of Citizens United by the Supreme Court in 2010 sparked a renewed debate about campaign spending by large political action committees, or Super PACs. Its ruling said that it is okay for corporations and labor unions to spend as much as they want in advertising and other methods to convince people to vote for or against a candidate. This book provides a wide range of opinions on the issue. Includes primary and secondary sources from a variety of perspectives; eyewitnesses, scientific journals, government officials, and many others.

Download or read book Golden Days written by Carolyn See and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available again in paperback, Golden Days is a major novel from one of the most provocative voices on the American literary scene. Linking the recent past with an imagined future, Carolyn See captures life in Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s. This marvelously imaginative, hilarious, and original work offers fresh insights into the way we were, the way we are, and the way we could end up.