In the 1990s, when Jerry Brown ran for president against Bill Clinton, his whole persona had a populist streak. He crashed with supporters instead of staying in fancy hotels; he raised money with an 800 number (the precursor to netroots fundraising); he railed against big-money interests. He even once put the future president of the United States on hold while he took another phone call. (Clinton gave up after waiting about ten minutes and disconnected.) Read more »

There's a great piece on Calitics about the fate of public education. It's not alarminst or conspiratorial, just an accurate assessment of how the radical right wants to destroy public schools (and has ever since the 1950s and the era of desegregation) and how the other arm of the Republican Party, big business, is playing its role. A key passage:Read more »

Joel Kotkin, the author and urban scholar, was on KQED's Forum this morning talking about what he called "the war on the suburbs." He's got a new book out, called The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, and he's arguing, among other things, that the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts signals that the Democratic Party and progressives in America have lost touch with the suburbs and are being mean to the poor suburbanites.Read more »

When the state Legislature approved the law allowing cities to create local public power co-ops, the bill specifically barred private utilities from interfering. So it's easy to argue that Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s ballot initiative to squash public power is, in fact, direct interference.

After all, the measure would create an almost insurmountable obstacle to creating community choice aggregation.Read more »