Forbes
In California, the rule of politics is sometimes “one man, one ballot proposition.”
Pretty much by himself, billionaire George Joseph is financing an initiative governing insurance rates.
As the chairman and largest stockholder of Mercury General Corporation, an insurance company that does most of its business in California, Joseph has deep pockets. Forbes estimated his net worth at $1.1 billion in September.
It’s an embarrassment that California, the state that led the technology revolution in America, is, according to Digital Learning Now, last in the nation in using technology to transform its education system from its current factory-model roots into a student-centric one.
California policy has done its best to create a byzantine””some might say bizarre””set of regulations to frustrate the power of online learning to do just that. From geographic barriers that limit the ability of students in certain locales to access online learning to restricting blended learning in some unfortunate ways, California has created a maze to frustrate would-be innovators.
Backers of a proposed sports arena on the Las Vegas Strip said Monday they have enough signatures to take the matter to the 2011 Legislature - or put it to voters the following year. Former Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury said organizers collected more than 200,000 signatures statewide from voters in each of Nevada’s three congressional districts - more than twice the number needed.
The legal battle over South Dakota’s strengthened smoking ban focuses on a judge’s decision about whether technical errors were substantial enough to toss out more than 25,000 petition signatures calling for a statewide public vote on the issue. Bars and gambling businesses that oppose the ban collected signatures to force a public vote in the November 2010 election, but Secretary of State Chris Nelson eventually rejected the petitions, ruling that too few valid signatures were submitted. The petitions fell 221 signatures short of qualifying for the ballot, he said.
Looking to overturn a bill signed by Governor John Baldacci in May approving same sex marriage, Stand For Marriage Maine announced today that they have collected more than the 55,087 signatures needed to place a People’s Veto on the November ballot and are collecting additional signatures as insurance to meet the deadline to qualify the measure for the 2009 statewide election.
A bill sponsored by Sen. Tupac Hunter, D-Detroit, would put a proposed workplace smoking ban on the November 2010 statewide ballot.