San Francisco Chronicle

In his speech Wednesday announcing his new Iraq strategy, President Bush assured Americans that the Iraqi government had promised to cooperate, but some experts are deeply skeptical that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki can deliver the things Bush is demanding: cracking down on militias, writing new laws on oil wealth distribution and the political process, and eliminating sectarian factions within Iraq's security forces. "The track record up to this point has certainly not been encouraging," said Flynt Leverett, a… more

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is looking to redirect billions of dollars now spent to treat people without health insurance to purchase coverage for the uninsured, according to sources who have seen a recent version of the governor's health care plan expected to be released Monday. The governor's plan, which continues to be revised and reconsidered, would move up to $2 billion in tax money that now goes to hospitals to help cover indigent care and use it… more

Below the surface of all the big issues facing California -- education, prisons, transportation, immigration, political reform -- lies the disturbing reality that the grassroots of citizen political involvement are drying up. In recent years, alienation between Californians and their government leaders has burned like a wildfire across the state, melting voter turnout and heating up cynicism toward the political establishment in Sacramento...

Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger touted a new study Monday that shows the average family pays a $1,200 "hidden tax" to subsidize health care for the uninsured.

But the governor, who is in the process of developing plans for reforming the state's health care system, once again rejected the idea that taxes should be raised to pay for coverage of the estimated 6.5 million uninsured Californians...

Analysis from the New American Foundation shows that the average California family of four with… more

As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger renews his call for an independent redistricting commission, a new opinion poll finds that California voters overwhelmingly support improvements in the election process, but there's a catch -- it depends on who is proposing them.

A statewide survey commissioned by the nonpartisan New America Foundation found that 70 percent of voters are more likely to support recommendations made by a panel of average citizens than they are to support the ideas of a government committee or… more

For generations, being a big-city mayor was akin to being confined to the political equivalent of Devil’s Island. Even if you escaped imprisonment, it was only with the shirt on your back.

But today, mayors across America are riding an unprecedented wave of upward mobility. Here in California, for example, the men most widely touted to become governor once the Terminator terminates are not any of the myriad of statewide Democratic officeholders, but two high-profile mayors, San Francisco’s Gavin Newsom… more

Fifteen years after the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia behaves as though it still calls the shots in the former Soviet republics. This fall, Russia severed diplomatic ties and transport links with Georgia and deported hundreds of Georgians when the former Soviet republic, which is looking to join NATO, expelled four Russians it accused of spying in September. Earlier this year, the Kremlin looked set to cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine over a pricing dispute before howls of protest… more

Imagine that the transportation bond measure on Tuesday’s ballot, Proposition 1B, signifies a return to the golden era of California, when the state’s future was on the drawing board.

This is the dream the measure’s backers, including legislators, local officials and the coterie around Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, would like us to believe. In its endorsement of the proposition, one newspaper crowed that "for the first time in nearly 50 years, California is on the brink of building for the future."… more

Deficits of hundreds of billions of dollars a year are projected to last for decades; efforts to reform Social Security have fallen flat; and no one is talking about the elephant in the room -- how to fix the nation's health-care system. We do not know what the makeup of Congress will be following the November elections, but there is one thing we know for sure: the state of fiscal affairs will still be a disaster.

Leaders of both major parties… more

If you're a liberal, here's what you can do to make Karl Rove a very happy man: Get yourself a labradoodle. Or any other kind of dog, for that matter. Even a cat will do.

Just don't have children.

That way you'll maintain a fertility gap that already is invisibly working to guarantee the political right will outnumber the left by an ever-growing margin.

Over the past three decades, conservatives have been procreating more than liberals -- continuing to seed… more