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...
About four months have passed since most local government agencies adopted FY2025‑26 budgets, and roughly four months remain before leaders begin planning FY2026‑27. But waiting to think about budget decisions until the official start of the budget process is a costly mistake. Every day that passes with inaction is a lost opportunity to improve both...
For partisan Democrats and Republicans, deciding how to vote on Proposition 50 is simple, since it is likely to shift five House seats into the Democratic column in what promises to be a closely fought 2026 Congressional election. But for decline-to-state and third-party voters, as well as less passionate major party registrants, the choice will...
Sacramento – The City of Petaluma issued a lengthy press release last week in an attempt to spin its way out of the “F” grade it earned for ranking dead last among California cities on the California Policy Center’s 2024 Local Fiscal Health Dashboard. Petaluma ranked No. 328 out of 328 cities with reported data....
For the most part, California’s farmers grow food, not fuel. But the fuel required to operate farm equipment is diesel fuel, increasingly refined from food grown on America’s great plains. Digging into this reveals a rabbit hole of such depth and complexity that I’ll skip to the conclusion before evaluating just a few critical details....
How it works, how the current system came to be, and what to know about Proposition 50. With Proposition 50 — which would impact congressional redistricting until 2030 — on the November ballot, many Californians are wondering what the ballot measure would do and how redistricting works. This primer outlines California’s current redistricting system, traces...
The 80 school districts in Los Angeles County had something unique happen during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021. Lowell Joint School District, which borders Orange County, moved out from under the authority of the Los Angeles County Department of Education to that of the OC the previous year. Consequently, Orange County went from...
Those of us who prefer smaller, more cost-effective government often applaud privatization. But if private companies can profit by making the public sector bigger and more expensive, they will do so. That’s the case with the private engineering firms that profit from such costly California rail boondoggles as the high-speed rail project. The phenomenon of...
In the wake of devastating setbacks in the 2024 elections, Progressives are deemphasizing identity politics and instead are prioritizing economic issues. Progressives are now embracing an “abundance movement” and claiming they are the party to deliver abundance to working families. The latest iteration of this new strategy was expressed by progressive activist and pundit Donna...
Amicus Brief Filed in Littlejohn v. School Board of Leon County, Florida Washington, DC — The California Justice Center joined the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Policy and Liberty Justice Center in filing an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in support of the parents in Littlejohn v. School Board of Leon...
