How One Professor Helped Kill a Bad Bill
Jelani Nelson drove to Sacramento for months, recruited allies, and won: Academic standards at UCs matter
California's legislature killed two bipartisan bills that would have made lobbyist influence letters publicly visible in real time — a reform already standard in at least ten other states — while the state's nonpartisan analyst confirms spending has outpaced revenue by 10 points, producing structural deficits of $20–30 billion annually. Meanwhile, Sacramento is weighing legislation that could expose journalists covering taxpayer-funded immigration nonprofits to $4,000-per-violation fines, even as auditors' findings of billions in pandemic-era fraud go largely unaddressed. What connects these stories: a pattern of legislators protecting their own operations from scrutiny while the state's finances deteriorate.
Jelani Nelson drove to Sacramento for months, recruited allies, and won: Academic standards at UCs matter
The billionaire claiming to ‘always stand with labor’ made millions from private prisons and other aggressively anti‑union investments
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A billionaire spending $27 million attacks a mayor for having tech support. The irony writes itself.
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