Angelika In the last newsletter, I had reported on the upcoming congressional elections (Rundbrief 10/2010) and by now the results are almost old news. As expected, the Democrats lost their majority in the House of Representatives and were only able to maintain their majority in the Senate by a very narrow margin. Obama is already feeling the consequences, as Congress just extended the tax breaks introduced by Bush, including for the super-rich, which Obama would have liked to prevent.
But in California, a small miracle happened: The former company executives, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, were punished by the voters, and Jerry Brown was catapulted into the office of Governor, while Barbara Boxer also retained her Senate seat. Other liberal democratic figures also managed to secure high offices in California: Our mayor, Gavin Newsom, will take over the office of Lieutenant Governor in January, and the former San Francisco District Attorney, Kamala Harris, who gained fame for her progressive ideas and is against the death penalty, is the new Attorney General of California.