LAUSD and UTLA leaders are leading us down the road to financial ruin. A few weeks ago, I wrote that tax-grabbing state bureaucrats were pushing hard-working Californians to the brink. Incompetence, mismanaged money and union greed have turned the formerly Golden State into a failing enterprise. Here, I will focus on the Los Angeles Unified...
When Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in January 2019 — aware that 10 of California’s 20 most destructive wildfires had occurred since 2015 — he promised an “all of the above” approach to reducing the threat that fires poised to public safety and property in a hot, dry era. In his first full day on...
There is a mass delusion afflicting millions of Californians. They endure a cost-of-living nearly twice the national average, high taxes, the highest incidence of poverty, the most hostile business climate, some of the worst K-12 schools, well over a $1.0 trillion in bond and pension debt, unaffordable homes, among the highest prices in the nation for gasoline and electricity, water rationing, and they drive on congested and decaying...
Gavin Newsom, the lily white, urbane, coiffured scion of San Francisco’s posh royalty, is California’s highest ranking Democrat. He presides over a party that has taken progressive ideals beyond absurdity to the brink of tyranny. One would think that the party of Gavin Newsom is bent on destroying everything Gavin Newsom represents. So what’s going on?...
Hollywood gives school choice a fair, positive representation. Inspired by a true story, Miss Virginia is the saga of Virginia Walden Ford, the force behind the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a voucher program that lets low-income parents use public funding to send their children to private schools. Set in 2003, the film portrays Virginia,...
After being discussed for decades, a privately funded 170-mile high-speed rail link through the desert between Las Vegas and Victorville — 90 miles east-northeast of Los Angeles — could get final approval in coming weeks from the Federal Railroad Administration. After that happens, the California and Nevada state governments are expected to give final approval...
There is now a $300,000 club for California’s firefighters. In the City of Manhattan Beach during 2018, the average pay and benefits for a full time firefighter were $300,242. While the Manhattan Beach firefighters, at least through 2018, belong to an exclusive club, twelve California cities pay their firefighters over $250,000 per year, and 69...
The abusive education monopoly must go. Having retired as a teacher over ten years ago, I often look back on some of the great educators that I worked with during my 28-year career, and how lucky their students were to have them. I also think about the stinkers I encountered, and how sad it is...
If you’re searching for an organizing principle that unites the Left, density ideology should be at or near the top of your list. Far from being a sideshow, density ideology is behind the leftist drive to cram America’s rising population into the footprint of existing cities. It fulfills the agenda of every big player on...
Governor Newsom has unveiled his budget proposal for the fiscal year 2020-21, and it comes in at a whopping $222 billion. That’s up from $209 billion last year, and sharply up from a few years ago. Backing up a decade, the 2010-11 budget totaled $130 billion. What on earth could justify a 70 percent increase...
On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom presented a 2020-21 state budget that includes more money for K-12 public schools than ever before. But even as metrics-driven education reforms over the past quarter-century have paid major dividends in both union states (Massachusetts, New Jersey) and non-union states (Florida, Texas), California lawmakers have never seriously considered trying to...
Union leaders grumble when non-members get union perks; here’s a way out. As a result of the Janus decision in June 2018, workers are no longer forced to pay any money whatsoever to a public employee union as a condition of employment. While teachers and other government workers were freed from paying union dues or...
One of the most financially mismanaged school districts in California has found a solution to their financial challenges – borrow more money, and let the voters pay more in property taxes. Scheduled to appear on the March 2020 local ballot for voters living within the West Contra Costa Unified School District, Measure R, a “classroom modernization...
In 2004, following decades of poor student performance and gang crime, parents at San Diego’s Gompers Middle School and the school’s principal used a little-known state law to convert their campus into a public charter school. The new school, called Gompers Preparatory Academy, thrived. Campus safety improved, test scores rose, and students and teachers lined...