Partisan redistricting rigs elections coast to coast—but a cure may lie in algorithms that draw fairer maps than any politician ever will. Few events in politics are more consequential while being less understood than redistricting. The consequences are obvious. If your party controls a state legislature, then once every ten years, when it comes time...
There are at least two massive opportunities to engage in cost-effective carbon sequestration. Neither would require subsidies and both could be performed exclusively by the private sector. They are controversial, but for different reasons. This week, building on last week’s report on the topic, we focus on the opportunity to responsibly manage every degraded forest...
A deregulatory agenda designed to revive the Democratic Party is already floundering With great fanfare, California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed “historic” legislative package designed to “advance an abundance agenda.” It’s a nod to the recent (and fashionable) book Abundance by the liberal bloggers Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and it’s supposed to reform a state best known for...
Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has issued a report identifying wasteful federally funded construction projects, and California’s rail projects are prominently featured. In addition to High-Speed Rail, Ernst’s “Off the Rails” report correctly singles out three transit projects in Northern California. While Californians may discount criticisms from a Red State Senator, Ernst’s report might ultimately benefit...
There are obvious benefits to logging, grazing, prescribed burns, and mechanical thinning of California’s forests. When you suppress wildfires for what is now over a century, then overregulate and suppress any other means to thin the forest, you get overcrowded and unhealthy forests. California’s trees now have 5 to 10 times more than a historically normal...
With many California classrooms set to reopen in August, California Policy Center took a closer look at school enrollment patterns, and what they signal for the year ahead. Looking at public school enrollment data from 2014-15 to 2024-25, broken down by county, CPC conducted an analysis of the 10-year trend in California. The data revealed...
Daniel Lurie’s moderate promises clash with a city drowning in ideological dysfunction. Can he deliver, or will the status quo swallow him up? A City Choking on Its Own Excess San Francisco has always fancied itself a laboratory for progressive ideas. This is a place where progressive theory gets its field test, often with little...
Gavin Newsom has floated the idea of redistricting California between Censuses. The goal would be to offset potential Republican gains from a mid-decade redistricting plan being discussed in Texas. While there are valid political arguments for and against Newsom’s plan, the fiscal case is clear: mid-decade redistricting will cost California about a quarter of a...
California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a “landmark package of bills” to overhaul the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). He took the unusual step of holding up the budget until the Legislature passed them. For the blissfully uninitiated, CEQA, signed in 1970 by Gov. Ronald Reagan, is California’s gift to litigators, bureaucrats and every special interest that...
California’s “disaster recovery” plan isn’t about rebuilding homes—it’s about replacing homeowners with tenants and handing their land to corporate-government cartels. Remember Gavin Newsom’s first visit to the sites of devastating fires last January in Los Angeles, when he vowed to streamline California’s paralytic regulations so people could quickly rebuild their homes? In that interview, while...
It’s time to review our collective fascination with perpetuating mandatory government school attendance. Since the beginning of statehood, Californians have pursued education at a steep cost to produce a free society in the frontier along the Pacific Ocean. During the height of the Mexican–American War, women like Olive Mann Isbell established the first school in...
Silicon Valley veterans view Sacramento’s obsession with renewables mandates with pragmatic detachment. Blessed with disposable income sufficient to make them indifferent to the price of gasoline or electricity, they view life on the bleeding edge as an opportunity for California to lead the world into the electric age. They’re not wrong. Heartless, perhaps. But not...
Unrestrained public employee union power drives up costs, erodes accountability, and holds taxpayer’s hostage, especially in California. The Power Imbalance at the Heart of Governance Public employee unions consistently put their interests ahead of what serves the broader public, creating a dynamic fundamentally different from private-sector unions that must run within market constraints. These public...
Conservative criticism of California focuses, with good reason, on the perils of progressive ideology. The dysfunction caused by progressives in power is evident in the state’s dismal system of public education, its ongoing challenges maintaining law and order, and chronic, escalating state and local government budget deficits that threaten to entirely collapse services that are...