“With California’s very late publication last month, all 50 states have now produced audited financial reports for their 2022 fiscal year,” writes Cato’s Marc Joffe. The news for California is not good: despite the nation’s highest marginal income tax rate and punishing business taxes and fees, the Golden State ranks 43 in financial health. Joffe...
In the midst of my annual spring cleaning regimen, I came across a cardboard box of old charging cables and adapters taking up scarce space in my garage. Cords of various sizes from computers, printers, cell phones, televisions, and other devices I’ve discarded over the years were all clumped together, kept for the remote chance...
Last month, the California Teachers Association posted on Instagram: “This #WomensHistoryMonth, let’s fix a broken system that leaves educators without any paid disability related to pregnancy!” The fix, California’s largest teachers union says, is Assembly Bill 2901 (Aguiar-Curry). If passed, the state would require school districts and community colleges to provide up to 14 weeks...
A liberal program must also be a responsible program, a reasonable, rational, realistic program. We must know how much it will cost and where the money is coming from. Benefits must be measured against burdens. A program which pampers the people or threatens our solvency is as irresponsible as the one which ignores a vital...
Prepared by Golden Together, a Movement to Restore the California Dream Lead Author, Edward Ring, California Policy Center Author Steve Hilton, Founder of Golden Together Published April 4, 2024.
For years, the state’s auditor had issued warnings about the unemployment office’s vulnerabilities. No one, certainly not Su, acted on that intelligence. Thirteen months after President Biden announced it was his “honor to nominate Julie Su to be our country’s next Secretary of Labor,” there’s good news, bad news, and even worse bad news to report. Among those...
Gavin Newsom once bragged of a surplus, but California is underwater. While finalizing the upcoming fiscal year’s state budget back in May 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom boasted of an extraordinary projected surplus: $97 billion. The governor immediately collaborated with an enthusiastic state legislature to spend it all. Of course, new spending on new programs...
Governor Gavin Newsom helped create — and is now faced with — the biggest budget deficit in Golden State history. In the summer of 2022, California governor Gavin Newsom, apparently high on the smell of cash, announced that California had just smashed through the state-budget equivalent of the first four-minute mile: a one-year surplus of $100...
It’s easy to understand why California’s public schools are seeing a mass exodus of students and families. The once-Golden State continues to have some of the worst student math and reading scores in the nation. Yet schools chief Tony Thurmond and Gov. Gavin Newsom seem more concerned about bogus “book bans” and helping kids secretly change their gender at...
with minor leagues and pre-election financial support networks Elected officials start out on financial support, long before they’re elected. Here’s one example to show how it works. In 2018, the ACLU of Southern California filed a class action lawsuit against Riverside County, alleging that a county program to intervene in the lives of at-risk youth was oppressive...
The California State Controller released the audit of California’s financial statements, performed by the State Auditor for the year ending June 30, 2022, on March 15. The annual comprehensive financial report should have been issued some 15 months sooner. Looking at the document, we are immediately informed on the first page of the Report Overview...
When it comes to the reporting of the accounting of our 50 states, two main concerns can be observed. The first is the delinquency rate of several states. For the fiscal year June 30, 2022, 20 states released their audited financial statements within six months. There are four states that deviate from the norm, with...
The logical extension of California’s environmentalist policies is to end civilization as we know it. But California’s progressive elites are not crazy or stupid. So what is their actual motivation? The destruction of dams on the Klamath River provides an encouraging precedent for progressives throughout California. As was breathlessly reported in the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere, indigenous...
Executive Summary In Lindke v. Freed, the United States Supreme Court adopted a two-part test to determine whether a public official’s conduct on social media rises to state action for purposes of 42 U.S.C. Section 1983 (“Section 1983”). The Court evaluated the question of when social media use crosses the line from private action to...