Achieving California’s goal of net zero by 2045 requires rapidly transitioning away from combustible fuel. It’s a risky strategy. If the transition happens too fast, Californians confront energy shortages and high prices. When it comes to electricity, Newsom has so far managed to avoid an acute crisis by sensibly prolonging that transition. In 2023, he delayed the...
To paraphrase and utterly subvert one of Karl Marx’s best-known quotes, a “spectre” is haunting Silicon Valley—the spectre of authentic abundance. All the powers of woke California have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this spectre: public sector unions, the environmentalist lobby, the crony capitalists, Antifa radicals, and Reddit trolls. They’re going to lose....
One would think that a few years after the COVID-19 lockdowns in California, things would settle down for school districts. But in Los Angeles County, for the fiscal year ending on June 30, 2024, 10 of the districts moved up or down the annual fiscal rankings by double digits. It’s a time-consuming chore to go...
Out of the 79 school districts in Los Angeles County, 11 made double-digit moves in the fiscal rankings for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023, over 2022. Was your district one of them? It is important for you to know the fiscal standing of your school district and where it stands among its peers....
Why is it axiomatic among California’s water agencies and policymakers that large scale desalination is inconceivable in California? That certainly isn’t the case in other arid locales. In 2024, an estimated 30 million acre feet of fresh water was produced by desalination plants worldwide. On the coast of the Red Sea, about 60 miles south of the...
As California wallows in continued low student performance, a new study shows that school choice is making a positive difference in student outcomes in Arkansas. Recently released scores on California’s state tests in English and math show huge proportions of students failing to achieve proficiency in the basic subjects. More than half of California students...
A federal judge has certified a landmark class action lawsuit that could finally bring an end to California’s state-sanctioned “Parental Exclusion Policies” that order teachers to hide a child’s gender transition at school from their own parents. U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of the Southern District of California issued the October 15 order in Mirabelli v. Olson, a lawsuit...
Preparing school budgets is a monumental task. Julie Hamill, former trustee on the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District Board, recently recommended a great book on the subject. I’m sure most school trustees in California have heard of it. “Smarter Budgets, Smarter Schools” (2022) is by Nathan Levenson, and it was a great read. Levenson...
SEIU (the Service Employees International Union) is at it again. After failing three times to use California ballot initiatives to shake down dialysis providers, the union is now turning its ballot warfare to a new target: California’s 200 or so billionaires. SEIU is sponsoring the “2026 Billionaires Tax Act”. The measure, recently listed on the...
An opinion piece in the Santa Barbara Independent, published last week, heralded the decision by the Santa Barbara County board of supervisors to phase out oil drilling, which as the authors put it, “will save lives, reduce air pollution, and help meet our climate goals.” Meanwhile, a study about to be publicly released by James Rector,...
During this month’s government shutdown, Bernie Sanders has been repeating the standard Progressive shibboleth: “Healthcare is a Right!” While this slogan appears to be sufficient to silence opposition, it does not receive sufficient examination. But as this month’s strike at Kaiser Permanente shows, union rights, another major Progressive cause, can and does trump the alleged...
While the progressive candidates in America rely on millions of college-educated liberals as its base, it depends on two additional sources of political power. The loss of either one could be fatal to the party’s ability to win elections. The first is America’s financial elites, providing money and institutional support. The second is America’s low-income...
Earlier this month a letter was sent to Governor Newsom from the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 water agencies that together deliver water to nearly 30 million Californians and irrigate nearly one million acres of farmland. This letter is a document of extraordinary importance to the future of California’s water supply. It summarizes several significant reasons...
The California High-Speed Rail Authority has finally recognized the obvious: there is no path to connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco with trains running at 220mph. With state rail officials now accepting reality, the question is whether northern California transit planners will do so as well by cancelling their plan to extend California High-Speed Rail...