California’s hospitals recorded $11.3 billion in total net income in 2024 — 10% above pre-pandemic levels. The average hospital CEO in the state earns roughly $920,000 a year. And the largest union representing healthcare workers collected $114.5 million in dues in 2024 alone, according to its federal LM-2 filing — spending just 16 cents of...
When Permission Replaces Property Rights, the California Dream Becomes a Dream Deferred For over a century, California stood as a frontier of first resort for the ambitious, attracting those eager to escape old-world constraints in exchange for a promise of radical autonomy. This California Dream was not a byproduct of luck; it was forged by...
When it comes to the water supply in California for cities and farms, nothing matters more than how we manage the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. As of 2/09 we were 132 days into the 2025-26 rainfall season which began on 10/01/2025. That’s enough time to get an idea of how delta management is shaping up this...
Public sector unions collect nearly $1 billion a year to control Sacramento. Normal citizens? A trickle against a torrent. TL;DR California’s public sector unions rake in $921 million annually and spend hundreds of millions controlling elections—but there’s a legal pathway to break their grip. California’s public-sector unions are the Colorado River of political spending. Normal...
In debates over water policy in California, a common argument is that if only we managed the systems we’ve already got, there would be plenty of water for everyone. Agricultural and urban use would not have to be rationed, taxpayers and ratepayers would not have to be unnecessarily burdened, and we wouldn’t have to wait...
February 12, 2026 Authored By: Edward Ring, Director, Water and Energy Policy, CPC & Tim Paone, Partner, Cox, Castle & Nicholson LLP
Even confirmed skeptics should be impressed at the rapid improvement in the price and performance of EVs. A new 2026 Nissan Leaf sells for just under $30,000, and can charge in 30 minutes. That’s still not competitive with affordable gasoline powered vehicles, but the gap is closing fast. But while we may be sanguine about the...
The U.S. Department of Education announced this week that its investigation into the California Department of Education found that state policies that pressure schools to keep secrets from parents violate federal law. Specifically, the DOE said the “California Department of Education (CDE) is in continued violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)—a federal law...
For the last 25 years, the US Drought Monitor (USDM), a collaborative effort by the University of Nebraska, NOAA, the USDA, and other experts throughout the country, has released a weekly map that shows the location and intensity of drought across the United States. On January 8, for the first time ever, USDM’s weekly map showed the...
Study Finds U.S. Drought Monitor Has Overstated Drought Conditions in California for 25 Years IRVINE, CA — For 25 years, the U.S. Drought Monitor has significantly exaggerated drought conditions in California, providing state officials with the pretext for a range of climate-change policies that have crippled the state’s water infrastructure, devastated farming, and punished its 39...
Earlier this month, Governor Gavin Newsom submitted his proposed 2026-27 budget to the legislature, weighing in at nearly $349 billion. His budget plan came one day after he gave the last State of the State address of his term, in which he touted California’s “record-breaking” education spending. Newsom painted California as a model for “nation-leading...
America’s schools won’t recover through more spending or slogans, but through a return to proven basics—clear instruction, firm discipline, accountable teaching, and classrooms focused on learning. As someone who attended public school in the 1950s and 1960s, taught in elementary and middle schools in the early 1970s, and then from 1984 until I retired in...
The Statistical Review of Global Energy, has been published every year since 2023 by The Energy Institute. For nearly 75 years before that it was published by British Petroleum. It is one of the most authoritative sources available for energy statistics. It is a terrific place, if not the place, to develop a deeper understanding of our global...
California’s scandal dwarfs Minnesota’s. Tim Walz perp-walked himself out of the Minnesota governor’s race this past week, beset by evidence that fraudsters have plundered his state’s federally funded food, housing, daycare, and Medicaid programs. It’s “what has been described as the nation’s largest COVID-era scheme,” says Fox News, with the U.S. attorney in Minnesota estimating “the fraud...