The lightest and most abundant substance in the universe, the simplest possible molecule, hydrogen (H2), is touted as the clean burning fuel of the future. Zero pollution. But how can hydrogen be extracted or manufactured in its pure form, and how can hydrogen be stored, distributed, and converted into practical applications? If you’re following the...
Returning readers are accustomed to reading an array of policy suggestions or commentary on the myriad policy failures that lead to tragedies like this week’s devastating wildfires. But today we want to tell you how you can help. As we write, nearly 12,000 structures — homes, businesses, churches and schools — have been destroyed, and...
SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM PRESIDENT WILL SWAIM Before we get to our regularly scheduled programming — in which we discuss the myriad policy failures that led to this week’s devastating wildfires — we want to tell you how you can help. As we write, nearly 10,000 structures — homes, businesses, churches and schools — have been...
Pushing back against the winds of change in Washington, DC, California Governor Newsom reiterated his commitment to the state’s high-speed rail (HSR) boondoggle while tacitly lending support to a new effort to incinerate taxpayer funds: a 54-mile high-speed connector line that would join HSR with Brightline West service planned for the I-15 corridor. Newsom participated...
After a period of municipal financial stability, California local governments are once again facing fiscal distress. A robust system of municipal financial reporting and monitoring can provide early warnings of fiscal trouble and allow policymakers at the state and local level to proactively address them. Join California Policy Center and XBRL US for a half-day conference, Modernizing Municipal Reporting, featuring keynote speaker California...
The Speaker of the Assembly in the California state legislature, Robert Rivas, recently said that “California must not fixate on Trump and forget about affordability.” Fat chance. California has been under the absolute control of “progressive liberals” for a generation. It’s their policies that have made the state unaffordable. By now, the only people who deny that...
History repeats itself, Karl Marx wrote, “First as tragedy, then as farce.” But he didn’t say what happens the third time, when tragic farce strikes again and the whole benighted process repeats itself. Take the case of Julie Su, President Joe Biden’s acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor. In the past four years,...
Earlier this month, California Assemblyman Isaac Bryan of Los Angeles introduced a bill, Assembly Bill 7, which would affect admissions for the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems. The legislation would require the state’s public colleges to “consider providing a preference in admissions to an applicant who is a descendant of...
They may not care much about education, but give teacher union leaders in the city of Orange, California, credit for speed and political ingenuity. Shortly after a successful March recall campaign in which leaders of the Orange Unified Education Association replaced two conservatives with two union-backed trustees, the newly configured board promptly awarded teachers a...
Leadership in the California Legislature claim they’re aware of the cost of living and doing business in the state. In the special session called by Governor Newsom to “Trump proof” the state, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D, Salinas) said “We must chart a new path forward and renew the California Dream by focusing on affordability.” We welcome...
California Policy Center has filed an amicus brief supporting the City of Huntington Beach’s petition for rehearing en banc in the City’s challenge to California’s unconstitutional housing mandates. A three-judge panel denied relief to Huntington Beach due to the South Lake Tahoe rule, a Ninth Circuit precedent that prohibits local governments like cities and school...
As reported in Politico on 10/29, “Westlands Water District, which supplies some of California’s driest farmland in the Central Valley, is making plans to convert some 200 square miles of it — an area roughly the size of Detroit — into what would be the largest solar installation in the world.” The motivation for this is understandable enough....
By Truman Angell for the California Policy Center The California legislature has a habit of giving away its own power to regulatory agencies and ABX2-1 is another in a long line of such abdications. The new law, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in October after he called a special legislative session, is generally understood as...
Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley require roughly 15 million acre feet of water per year to irrigate their crops. In return they produce more than half of all California’s agricultural output. But everything is changing. Since 2000 the amount of water the farmers receive from the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project has...