Oil Extraction Reduces Methane Seepage

CPC board promotes Will Swaim to CEO, Jackson Reese to President

The California Policy Center is pleased to announce that Will Swaim has been named Chief Executive Officer of the organization, and longtime Executive Vice President Jackson Reese has been promoted to President. The board approved the promotions to ensure CPC’s continued growth and long-term mission. Swaim will continue leading CPC as CEO, advancing the organization’s...

By California Policy Center

The Regulatory Burden that Prevents Abundance

The cost-of-living has become a national issue, a favored topic of partisan debate. The debate is governed by emotions, ideology, and widely divergent economic theories, probably in that order. Our contribution to this debate, drawing on all three of those influences, is simple: Abundance lowers prices, and deregulation enables abundance. Conversely, scarcity increases prices, and...

By Edward Ring

You Don’t Make Housing More Affordable by Making It More Expensive

Let me tell you something that shouldn’t need to be said: If you want housing to be affordable, you shouldn’t start by making it more expensive. Nationally, approximately 5% of the cost of building a new home is attributed to regulatory costs. That includes permits, compliance with zoning rules, environmental reviews, fees, studies, and the...

By Dagny

Boring Company May Have a Viable Alternative for California Urban Transit

Las Vegas is pioneering a new form of underground transportation that could one day benefit congested California cities at low cost. The Boring Company, founded by Elon Musk, is digging a series of narrow tunnels and transporting passengers through them in Tesla sedans. Ultimately, the Boring Company’s Vegas Loop can evolve into a viable alternative...

By Marc Joffe

Lines for Gas Coming to California

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...

By Edward Ring

Silicon Valley’s Growing Anti-Woke, Pro-Abundance Rebellion

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....

By Edward Ring

10 Los Angeles County School Districts Make Big Changes in Fiscal Rankings in 2024

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...

By John Moorlach

Post COVID Lockdowns, Los Angeles County School Districts Improved Financially in 2023

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....

By John Moorlach

Large Scale Desalination Could Transform California

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...

By Edward Ring

New Study Shows Success of School Choice in Action

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...

By Lance Izumi, J.D.

Judge Certifies Class Action for Parents and Teachers in Lawsuit Challenging California’s Gender Secrecy Rules

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...

By California Policy Center

A Review of Budget and Financial Results for Los Angeles County’s School Districts

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...

By John Moorlach

California Union Goes to the Ballot to Shakedown Billionaires

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...

By Marc Joffe

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,...

By Edward Ring