Celebrate National School Choice Week at CPC Parent Union school choice fairs. CPC Parent Union is teaming up with National School Choice Week to host two school choice fairs in Southern California. Join us from 10am-2pm on Saturday, January 20th, 2024 at Vista Charter Middle School in Los Angeles and Saturday, January 27, 2024, at...
When a public policy decision is flawed, and the reasons it is flawed are simple and obvious, and the consequences are huge and costly, the appropriate response for a concerned observer is to call attention to the looming debacle. Not just once, but over and over and over again. An example of an impending economic...
Please join us for a special virtual event, The Free Speech Case against L.A. County, on Tuesday, January 23, 2024 from 12:00-1:00pm. Our special guest is attorney and Palos Verdes School Board trustee Julie Hamill, founder of the Alliance of Los Angeles County Parents. Julie represents the Alliance in their ongoing lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health for its campaign...
The new chancellor is sure to exacerbate the problems in a network already roiled by progressive administrators. In February, when she was tapped to run California’s troubled community-college system, Sonya Christian had cheerleaders, foremost among them Governor Gavin Newsom. “Dr. Christian is one of our nation’s most dynamic college leaders, with a demonstrated record of collaboration...
This week, we return to the topic of water. Along with energy, water abundance is a nonnegotiable prerequisite for conditions we value and aspire to achieve: prosperity, affordability, resilience, and equity. But judging from California’s restrictive policies over the past fifty years, continuously escalating in severity and scope, you would think the opposite is true....
It’s impressive how many different preferences people can have. Although bottled water is ubiquitous today, in the late 1970s, those living a conspicuous lifestyle purchased bottled water, like Perrier, to show off their success and affluence, while emphasizing healthy living practices and hygiene. Most business offices had a water cooler and were willing to pay...
The city of Westminster is pursuing the easy road to address its continuing fiscal mismanagement, again. It’s asking its residents to approve yet another sales tax increase, the second in the last two years. It’s much easier to tell those voting in Westminster that there will be more potholes and less public safety if they...
This month, second-graders at Valencia Elementary in Upland were met with unwelcome news: the Christmas songs that they’d practiced for weeks would be replaced with new-and-improved non-holiday songs. No matter that these children had actually voted for their favorite Christmas tunes, or that they would have to learn an entirely new songbook in a matter...
In so many ways that it almost defies description, California’s lawmakers have relied on obtuse, punitive, flawed logic to justify recently passed laws implementing urban water rationing in California. Rather than undertake the Sisyphean task of enumerating them, let’s just focus on one critical factor: the opportunity cost. California’s urban water consumption is already down...
California has 482 cities and towns. They provide audited financial statements of their fiscal status every year, just like publicly traded companies and most businesses and nonprofits of significant stature. Finance hawks celebrated when the California State Auditor established a dashboard to review the fiscal status of the state’s cities and towns. The cheering subsided...
During an otherwise quiet September morning some years ago, I received a curious call from then-California Gov. Jerry Brown’s legislative team. We had just finished the legislative session, and this junior staffer was deciding on whether to recommend the governor sign or veto a bill sitting on his desk. I knew the drill after working...
After the deluge that inundated California during our most recent water season, there is no chance Californians will confront a water supply crisis this year. Water levels, as reported by the California Data Exchange Center, are above the historical average for this date in every one of California’s major reservoirs. But storms of scarcity remain on...
The optimal public policy regarding unions may not be realistic in states like California, but that shouldn’t prevent us from performing an occasional what-if. For anyone even slightly right-of-center, what unions have done to this state is a catastrophe. And even for those to the left-of-center, many are realizing, for example, that California’s failing system...
The city of Huntington Park, California has finally released its Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) for the year ending June 30, 2020. The audit by external independent auditors was finally completed on Aug. 10, but was not released until Dec. 5. Thus, Huntington Park won the race for dead last in transparency and accountability among...