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Speaking at the annual Air Force Association conference on September 20, Defense Secretary James Mattis engaged in the time-honored tradition of complaining about the defense budget. While many would say that with defense making up the largest expenditure in the federal budget there couldn’t possibly be a problem, Mattis may actually have been correct in his comments, according to the Congressional Budget Office. “If we don’t get budgetary predictability, if we don’t remove the defense caps, th

With the stroke of a pen, Governor Jerry Brown has reformed the power structure at the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG). For many, including organized labor, it was a huge victory that now begins a massive change at the agency that's seen huge turmoil the last 12 months. WHAT IT MEANS FOR LABOR SANDAG will now be required to hire from state-approved groups for large construction projects, unless it signs union-friendly PLA's or project labor agreements. This was the crux of Meas

A woman I know sent me a note the other day. I was surprised, but happy to hear from her as we don’t know each other well. In the note, she explained that she had woken up last Monday morning to the news of the Las Vegas shootings. While preparing lunches for her boys to take to school, she wondered whether to tell them what had happened before they started their day. She decided to tell them — better to hear it from her than in the school hallways. Her note touched me, in part because she'd w

We, the People are wiser than warfare. Acting on that wisdom requires specific, coordinated action. Our choice as a nation and for our shared planet starkly confronts us with a future of eternal warfare or an age of peacebuilding. I approach the topic of conflict resolution as The Government Mechanic -- a strategic planner diving into complex problems to find the vision and strategies for a solution, the roadmap and timelines for change, enduring mechanisms of coordination, and the right measur

Where do we even begin after Las Vegas? The shooting was so calculatingly evil, so tragic for the victims, and so sad for our nation. And yet we have been here before: after Sandy Hook, after the Orlando night club shooting, after Louisiana GOP Rep. Steve Scalise was shot in the capital this summer. Our reaction is always shock and sorrow – followed almost immediately by the same predictable partisan debate on guns. I fervently believe that electing more centrist independents can help break thr

It is tragic that it has taken a mass murder of historic proportion to remind us that the vast, vast majority of people are fundamentally good. In the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, we have witnessed and learned of countless acts of heroism, courage, kindness and generosity. Strangers helping strangers, even at the risk of their own lives. Thousands standing in line for hours to give blood. Funds for the victims and their families being established and receiving millions in donations virt

The statement "all politicians are corrupt" has as much truth to it as "all Muslims are terrorists" and "all Christians are ignorant bigots." But here’s the trap in American politics: there’s one political party that makes nearly no attempt to disguise its duplicity. Many of them lie so badly and so often most of us are numb to it. The other political party does only a slightly better job representing the people. The trouble is, the average voter can no longer tell which is which. As a result

We have witnessed another senseless tragedy: the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Desperate cries for gun control almost immediately surfaced. While the motivation for such pleas cannot be questioned, their timing and impact can be. Gun-related homicides take place every day in the United States with New Orleans, Detroit, Baltimore, Miami, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta leading the way on a per capita basis. Chicago barely makes the top ten (#9). These major cities roughly parall

The voting method is extremely important and affects all parts of the election from who wins, how seriously candidates’ ideas are taken, and who you see on your ballot. Specifically, the choose-one plurality voting method that we use now is really bad. Fortunately, there are alternatives. One that works really well and is also very easy is called approval voting. This method lets you choose as many candidates as you want. Whoever has the most votes wins. Approval voting works with our current

This column poses a question for which I have only a tentative answer. I am interested to learn what answers readers have. How do you deal with friends who are so intolerant of political views different from their own that they consider anyone who disagrees with them evil? Those of you who follow this blog know that I have been hosting a series of political discussion threads on my Facebook page. (I wrote a book about the initial experiment, because I found the response so interesting.) Two fr