Tag: Governor of California

This week, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, signed an executive order issuing a reprieve to all seven hundred and thirty-seven prisoners on the state’s death row, effectively nullifying California’s policy of capital punishment for the near future. Response to Newsom’s moratorium was mixed even among the families of victims. “I will not oversee execution of any person,” his order said. He was challenging death-penalty justifications in the “emotional” place where they live. A truly bold move would challenge not only the death penalty but its de facto fallback, life imprisonment. Today, it costs an average of eighty-one thousand dollars a year to keep a prisoner incarcerated in California. The cost of life imprisonment is relatively less than the cost of death row, according to a Florida investigation, from 2000, but it’s not peanuts, and long punishment may not help the public in proportion. Many countries of the European Union favor shorter sentences combined with intensive resocialization and rehabilitation programs; a study of the Dutch and German systems, in 2013, suggested that they were more effective in reducing crime than the United States’ mass-incarceration model. If we were serious about threats to society, we would support the most effective punishments, not the most severe. As it is, Newsom’s reprieve is a gesture of limited reform and a gesture of intractable executive power, too.

(CNN)Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger shared his frustrations about how "nothing is getting done" in American politics on CNN's "The Axe Files," airing Saturday at 7p.m. ET on CNN. "I'm very little interested in politics, because it sucks," he said when asked about President Trump's choice to focus his midterm platform on the economy, the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and the northward march of migrants in Central America. Schwarzenegger said he found America's lack of immigration policy reform and crumbling infrastructure particularly embarrassing. "To me, it's more important to get the job done rather than ... worry about a caravan coming or not." Schwarzenegger recently campaigned for redistricting initiatives in Colorado and Michigan. "People wanted someone from the outside, people were sick and tired of what was going on in Washington," he said. "How long can you talk about building more infrastructure in America ... all those kind of things, and nothing is happening? While he compared the "outsider" dynamic of President Trump's campaign to that of his gubernatorial runs in 2003 and 2006, Schwarzenegger, who was born in Austria, cannot make a presidential bid.

Antonio Villaraigosa, whose meteoric rise in California politics was viewed as the embodiment of burgeoning Latino political power, is now having to defend his own turf in the city he once led in hopes of advancing in next week’s gubernatorial primary. Villaraigosa said the polls don’t reflect the views of those voters. “What I understand very clearly from the last 25 years or so of elections is that the south votes later, they don’t vote absentee, and they vote in great numbers on election day,” Villaraigosa told reporters before visiting the Original Farmers Market in Los Angeles. If our vote comes out, we’re going to do very well.” Villaraigosa planned to headline more than a dozen events at iconic Los Angeles locations during a 24-hour campaign sprint. “He needs to over-perform with his base, and that would be Los Angeles voters and Latinos. He is clearly behind [though] it is possible to see movement over the next five days.” Newsom is putting in significant time in the area as well — if he can maintain such support in the region, he will almost certainly face Cox in the general election. On Thursday, he visited a barbershop in South Los Angeles with Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. Wealthy charter-school backers who have spent millions of dollars boosting Villaraigosa’s bid changed tack by going on the offensive against Newsom for the first time this week, buying at least $2.3 million of airtime to attack the lieutenant governor in new ads. Newsom scoffed at the ads, calling the claims “nonsense.” He added that the attacks were an indication that the group recognized that Villaraigosa was in trouble. Newsom has been on his own weeklong bus tour, where he cautioned his supporters against getting complacent because of his position in the polls.