This article originally appeared on frontpagemag.com Spurred by the Covid panic, schools have been the recipient of ungodly sums of money. And it’s not as if the beast was starving before. To put things into perspective, the U.S. spends about $800 billion on national defense, more than China, Russia, India, the U.K., France, Saudi...
Borrowing a page from the More Water Now campaign, which unsuccessfully attempted earlier this year to qualify a water funding initiative for the November 2022 ballot, Governor Newsom announced a new water supply strategy on August 11. Perhaps with the presidency in mind, or perhaps because he really means it, Newsom’s remarks were surprisingly accommodating towards those of us who...
Parents are abandoning schools in large numbers, but teachers are not. School reopening time is almost upon us, and large numbers of parents have opted out of government-run schools. Over the past two school years, k-12 enrollment has declined by nearly 3%, or about 1.3 million students nationwide, according to a recent study by the American...
Negotiations between the Manhattan Beach Firefighters Association and the Manhattan Beach City Council have been stalled since May, when an impasse was announced. As reported in a local publication serving Manhattan Beach and nearby cities, firefighters and their supporters packed a July 19 city council meeting to urge the council to alter its stance in labor...
For four days last month, independent truckers blockaded the Port of Oakland, preventing goods from entering or leaving. Threats of arrest, along with the possibility of personal liability stemming from a lawsuit filed against the protesters by the Port of Oakland, were sufficient to bring the blockade to an end. But the reasons for the protest have...
Educators don’t get much for their $1,200 yearly dues. In the aughts, after blindly being a dues-paying National Education Association member for years, I opened my eyes, and discovered that I’d been wasting my money. The teachers unions were primarily about politics, all of which went in a leftward direction. One in-your-face example at the...
Most U.S. cities are experiencing an administrative and financial crisis. This appears to be at odds with the confident tone of recent budget hearings where most of the attention was placed on how to spend remaining 2021 federal relief funds and so called “discretionary funds.” Cities have been able to adopt viable budgets this year...
Many American schools of education are not worthy of existing. On June 29, the California Department of Education, in cooperation with the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and the State Board of Education, announced the first-ever release of statewide teacher assignment data. The report revealed that as of the 2020-21 school year, “83.1 percent of teacher...
Public sector unions have corrupted the ability of California’s governing institutions to serve the interests of the people. The consequences include a failing public education system, catastrophically flawed environmental policies, and an unrelenting attack on the ability of small businesses to survive. In each of these cases, there are plentiful examples of this corruption, and...
Editor’s note: This is the fifteenth and last article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” There are plenty of ways to ration water, and California’s state legislature is pursuing all of...
Fossil fuel powers the economic engine of civilization. With a minor disruption in the supply of fossil fuel, crops wither and supply chains crash. With a major disruption, a humanitarian apocalypse engulfs the world. Events of the past few months have made this clear. Without energy, civilization dies, and in 2020 fossil fuel continued to...
Editor’s note: This is the fourteenth article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” From the inaugural Stanford Digital Economy Lab gathering in April 2022, noted venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson posted the following quote to Facebook:...
Editor’s note: This is the thirteenth article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” One of the farmers who supported our attempt to qualify the Water Infrastructure Funding Act for the November...
Editor’s note: This is the twelfth article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” Scope insensitivity happens whenever a statistic has huge emotional impact but in reality has little relevance to the...