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With less than three weeks until Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveils his revised budget plan for the fiscal year starting July 1, he and the Democratic majority Legislature have done little to reduce the state’s projected $18.8 billion budget shortfall. Almost the only thing they have accomplished is agree that increasing taxes won’t be part of whatever solution they stitch together over the next 10 weeks.  “In this budget I refuse to raise taxes because there are so many other areas where Sacr

The most heated debate in Sacramento during the past two years hasn’t been budget cuts depriving poor children of health care or awarding billion-dollar tax breaks to corporations.  It hasn’t even been California’s massive multi-billion dollar budget shortfalls. Generating far more public outcry is the mandatory spaying and neutering of cats and dogs. In 2008, unsuccessful spay/neuter legislation logged some 32,000 letters and e-mails either in support or opposition -- many thousands more th

On Sunday night, a historic health care reform bill was passed by a rather cloak-and-dagger procedure in the House. Before the actual computerized vote was taken, a lot was said about the state of health care and those seen as running it. Some of the criticism was fair.  A few insurance companies do operate monopolies within certain states (one suggestion to amend this, which was not included in the final form of the legislation, was to allow individuals to purchase health insurance from across

It is generally agreed upon, even by the staunchest proponents of progressive taxation, that expecting people to pay more than they can is an injustice which ought to be remedied in whatever manner possible. Yet, it is precisely this vision of progressivity which gave rise to one of the most steeply regressive policies in the country – a policy which afflicts states just as deleteriously as it does individuals, and sometimes with even more regressive effects. That tax is the infamous Alternative

The series of firestorms currently underway at California’s public colleges and universities appears not to have burnt itself out yet. Just today, a group of students from the state's elite University of California schools gathered in Sacramento at the state capitol to protest increased budget cuts and what San Francisco Chronicle contributor Daniel Sargent calls “divestment from public education.”  Faced with this phenomenon, the Chronicle asks a sobering question whose potential answers should

Apparently, Mitt Romney and many conservatives haven't learned their lesson.  During CPAC, the former Massachusetts governor devoted a segment of his well-delivered speech to extolling President George W. Bush.  He praised Bush for pulling the nation out of recession after 9/11, taking on the teachers' unions, taking down the Taliban, waging war against jihadists, and keeping America safe.  Unfortunately, Romney neglected a pool of contradictory data and the powerful lessons of 2006 and 2008.

Many in this nation are growing increasingly concerned about the national debt and foreign policy of the United States.  As a result, CAIVN would like to share a portion of Marcy Winograd's recent press release in order to stimulate debate and discussion.  Here is the abridged version: "Now, more than ever before, we need  progressives in Congress who will challenge bloated military budgets which bleed our treasury of  money better spent on jobs in mass transit, renewable energy,  infrastructur

First, it was GOP victories in the gubernatorial elections of Virginia and New Jersey.  Just last month, it was the senatorial election of Scott Brown who claimed a historic Republican victory in the bluest of blue states, Massachusetts.  Finally, it was Sarah Palin speaking before the Tea Party convention in Tennessee, claiming the time had come for a revolution and that the GOP would be ready to deliver this revolution to the people.  With these electoral victories and Palin’s efforts to conso

“If you get breast cancer, I’m sorry honey; you have less chance of survival than before this bill passed.” Those words were declared by Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers six months ago during his opening statements regarding health care reform. Since Mr. Roger’s statement, Republican Scott Brown won a Massachusetts special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s vacant seat.  Americans across the nation focused on the campaign in hopes that Brown would win in order to break the democrat majority needed

California, a Republican bastion?!  Don’t act so shocked, it’s happened before. Remember a certain two-term, incredibly popular Republican President of the United States, whose name is still so powerful that anyone who wants to move up in Republican Party ranks, must align themselves with his vision? He was the former chief executive of the state of California! Ronald Reagan, the 33rd governor of the normally very blue California, served  from 1966 to 1974. California flourished under the man w