The Battle for California is the Battle for America

Billions in Local Taxes and Borrowing & The Dangers of Direct Democracy – CPC Newsletter

California voters approve billions in local taxes and borrowing: In his latest analysis, CPC contributor Edward Ring summarizes the results of California’s local tax and bond proposals on last week’s ballot. He highlights how the broad support for local tax and bond measures contrasts with the opposition to similar measures in the March 2020 election, which...

By Jordan Bruneau

California Voters Approve Billions in Local Taxes and Borrowing

In March 2020, for the first time in a generation, Californians did not approve the overwhelming majority of new tax and bond proposals that were put before them. Out of 125 proposed local bonds, only 31 percent passed; out of 111 proposed local tax increases, only 41 percent passed. Early returns from the November 2020 ballot show Californians...

By Edward Ring

Pandemic Pod Pushback

The education establishment is losing customers, and it isn’t happy. Teacher union honchos don’t like homeschoolers for obvious reasons. When kids learn at home, it means less control, money, and power for them. Over the years, the National Education Association has adopted resolutions at its yearly convention which stipulate that homeschooling families “cannot provide the...

By Larry Sand

Will the Prop 15 Victory Survive the Ballot Harvest? – CPC’s Weekly Newsletter

Will California’s Election Day victories survive the ballot harvest? Californians seem to have rejected Proposition 15, a massive property tax increase on Golden State employers that would make many low-margin small businesses unprofitable, reduce job opportunities when they’re needed most, and raise consumer prices when so many are struggling to get by. The tax would force...

By Jordan Bruneau

California’s One-Party State, the Blue Wave Machine

As the electorates in political battlegrounds across America endure what may be weeks of turmoil, in California the post-election environment is that of a mature one-party state. The population is quiescent, having at last count rejected President Trump by a more than two-to-one margin. In California, it doesn’t matter that only 11.5 million votes have been reported, when 21 million...

By Edward Ring

How Much do California’s State Workers Make?

Californians pay the highest overall taxes in the United States, with more to come. The Democratic supermajority in the state legislature is considering AB 1253 that would raise the top income tax rate to 16.8 percent, and AB 2088 that would impose an annual 0.4 percent tax on any California resident’s net worth in excess of $30 million. On...

By Edward Ring

Schools for Scandal

As shown by the 2019 NAEP, most of our students are being badly shortchanged. The latest bad education news comes to us courtesy of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The most recent exam was administered to high school seniors in early 2019, a full year before the COVID-19 lockdowns. The so-called “Nation’s Report...

By Larry Sand

Firefighters Union Backs Prop 15 Instead of Forestry Reform

Thousands of firefighters continue to battle blazes across California. In Orange County, two firefighters are in critical condition after suffering major injuries battling the Silverado Fire. Every year around this time, firefighters risk their lives, and some of them lose their lives, protecting the rest of us from these catastrophic fires. Deep respect for what firefighters do,...

By Edward Ring

School Reopenings Are Being Determined by Politics and Unions

School lockdowns have little if anything to do with “science.” A working paper released this month by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform reveals that local politics – not the severity of COVID-19 – is the most important factor in determining whether k-12 public school districts opened for in-person learning in the fall. Political...

By Larry Sand

Pension Costs Are Not the Reason California’s Schools Fail the Disadvantaged

A recent guest editorial published by Bakersfield.com entitled “California’s defunding of public education” makes the case that a “pension contribution maneuver” has left school districts up and down the state with shrinking budgets. The author, Shaohua Yang, gets many of his facts right. For example, he writes that “California 2019 per-capita income tax ranks the fifth highest...

By Edward Ring

Open Letter to Gov. Newsom: ‘Don’t Make it Easy to Leave the State We Love’

Editor’s note: A Southern California businessman copied us on his open letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Given his reasonable fear of political retribution – from state tax investigators, for instance, or regulators – we honored his request to remain anonymous. Dear Gov. Newsom, I am writing as a lifelong resident of California. I was born...

By California Policy Center

How to Save California’s Forests

For about twenty million years, California’s forests endured countless droughts, some lasting over a century. Natural fires, started by lightning and very frequent in the Sierras, were essential to keep forest ecosystems healthy. In Yosemite, for example, meadows used to cover most of the valley floor, because while forests constantly encroached, fires would periodically wipe...

By Edward Ring

Bugging the Proselytizers

If cops are expected to wear body cameras, teachers’ lessons should be recorded. In Texas, a 9th grade English teacher adorns her virtual classroom with posters professing support for Black Lives Matter and the LGBT lifestyle. In southern California, a teacher regularly tells her students how stupid President Trump is, and that conservatives are destroying...

By Larry Sand

The Battle for California is the Battle for America

By now, this is a familiar story. California is a failed state. Thanks to years of progressive mismanagement and neglect, the cities are lawless and the forests are burning. Residents pay the highest prices in America for unreliable electricity. Water is rationed. Homes are unaffordable. The public schools are a joke. Freeways are congested and...

By Edward Ring