Debunking the Allegedly Prohibitive Cost of Desalination

Governor Signs CPC-Sponsored Local Government Transparency Bill

Governor Newsom has signed Senate Bill 1126, a California Policy Center-sponsored bill authored by Senator Steven Choi, Ph.D. (R-Irvine) that will make it easier for taxpayers to access the audited financial records of their local governments online. The new law will help residents hold local leaders accountable and identify financial problems before they become crises. Taxpayers...

By California Policy Center

Some Unions Actually Have the Power to Save California

There is no special interest in California more powerful than unions. While they aren’t significantly represented in the private sector, where they are present, they have disproportionate influence over what public works are prioritized by the state. And in the public sector, union members dominate the public workforce in almost every agency and department, from...

By Edward Ring

Without Sediment Removal in the Delta, California Risks Winter Flooding

In the cities and farms immediately south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the worst flooding of the 20th century happened in 1997. Several days of unrelenting rain pummeled the slopes of the Sierras, and with the snow line unusually high at 10,000 feet, nearly all of it poured into the San Joaquin River and other tributaries. Reservoirs...

By Edward Ring

AB 1383 is a costly pension mistake in the making

California lawmakers are once again advancing a familiar and costly mistake — one that risks leaving future generations to pay the price. Assembly Bill 1383, introduced by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, D-Inglewood, would increase pension benefits for public safety employees — allowing earlier retirement with higher payouts — while reducing the contributions those employees are required to make....

By John Moorlach

AI Is Amplifying an Unexamined Government

AI—The Gamechanger For decades, cities and counties operated on an understanding rarely discussed: municipal codes would never be fully enforced. I watched city councils adopt multi-family rental smoking bans and plastic utensil bans in response to zero public outcry, while staff confirmed there was no compelling local justification for the ordinance and no capacity to...

By Mark Moses

Iron Air Batteries—Niche, or Next Big Thing?

Iron air batteries appear poised to play, at the least, an important niche role in the emerging electric age. A very recent example of this is the $750 million equity financing that Form Energy secured this week, raising the total investment in that iron air battery manufacturer to over $2 billion. Iron air batteries offer...

By Edward Ring

California’s Neglected Infrastructure is Harming America

California attracts a lot of criticism, with perhaps the most bipartisan criticism focusing on its punitive cost of living. And this bipartisan criticism even extends to agreement on the reason California is too expensive. In their bestselling 2025 book Abundance, authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argued that liberal governance has become too legalistic, bureaucratic,...

By Edward Ring

CalSTRS is 79% Funded—Well, Maybe

CalSTRS earned 13.9% on investments for the year ended June 30, 2026, up from 8.5%, and called it a significant step toward full funding. The National Association of State Retirement Administrators said this is “a marathon, not a sprint.”[1] Thirty years in local government finance taught me to distrust a figure that measures the wrong...

By Mark Moses

Is Covering California’s Aqueducts and Canals with Solar Panels Economical?

Earlier this week, a respected YouTube channel covering the future of technology and energy released a video exploring the viability of solar panels covering California’s canals and aqueducts. The videos are hosted by Ricky Roy, a California-based mechanical engineer whose channel is called “Two Bit Da Vinci.” Reviewing his findings is an opportunity to offer some updates...

By Edward Ring

The Delusional Premises of Woke Greens

While the burgeoning democratic socialist movement is getting a lot of attention in advance of the 2026 midterm elections, a parallel dimension of wokeism quietly continues to advance. For now, the Trump administration has attenuated its most extreme threats, but its institutional support is unwavering, and its slow progress is unrelenting. The woke greens are...

By Edward Ring

California Could Use Some Allegedly “Zany Ideas”

Veteran political strategist Garry South has just published a guest commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle in which he asks the question, “Is Steve Hilton a serious candidate?” South then launches a series of attacks to make clear he doesn’t think Hilton is gubernatorial material. But only a serious contender could have survived California’s so-called “jungle primary,” where...

By Edward Ring

Underwriting Stagnation: Taxpayers Pay for Schools to Stand Still

California Teachers Can Now Veto AI The Union Gets the Final Say California’s largest school districts have done something unheard of in American management: they have given a labor union veto power over whether a promising technology may ever be used to reorganize work. On January 22, 2026, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD)...

By Mark Moses

California schools turn to child sacrifice

Archaeological evidence and 16th-century Spanish accounts show that the Aztecs of Central Mexico sacrificed children to appease the rain god Tlaloc. Appalled by the ritual, one of those Spaniards, the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún, reported that Aztec priests regarded the terrified children’s tears as a favorable omen, believing their abundant weeping foretold abundant rainfall and...

By Will Swaim

Debunking the Allegedly Prohibitive Cost of Desalination

Earlier this summer a guest op-ed appeared in the Orange County Register, “Learning the right lesson from San Diego’s desal water surplus.” But the “lesson” presented was only partly accurate. What the authors, both affiliated with the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), got right was the need to change regulations that restrict the ability for farmers to...

By Edward Ring