The American Conservative recently laid an egg. They published a misanthropic, pessimistically aggressive Malthusian screed, written by James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler’s “Why America’s Urban Dreams Went Wrong” attacks pretty much every urban amenity Americans have built since the invention of the automobile. And his reasoning, all of it, reflects a dismal lack of faith in human...
This is the fifth in a series of missives to the president of the American Federation of Teachers. (The first four can be accessed here.) Hey Randi! Can you believe it! Next Monday will be our tenth anniversary! Yup, a whole decade has passed since Terry Moe, Rod Paige and I devoured you and two...
Anyone unfamiliar with what is really going on in California would have listened to Governor Newsom’s State of the State address on February 12 and gotten the impression that things have never been better. Newsom’s opening set the tone for the rest of his 4,400 word monologue: “By every traditional measure, the state of our state is...
“It’s not enough. We’re still 41st in the nation in per pupil funding. Something needs to change. We need to have an honest conversation about how we fund our schools at a state and local level,” – California Governor Gavin Newsom, State of the State Address, February 12, 2020 It should come as no surprise that Governor...
As the political exhibition season ends, here’s a brief look at where the candidates stand on school choice, and the Green Mountain State’s 150-year-old parental choice program. In 2015, the American Federation of Teachers anointed Hillary Clinton as its 2016 presidential preference, with no input from its rank-and-file. This did not sit well with the...
When Gov. Jerry Brown left office in January 2019, most of the reviews of his second eight-year stint as leader of the nation’s richest, most populous state were effusive. Citing his restoration of fiscal stability after the Capitol chaos seen in the last three years of the Schwarzenegger administration, Brown biographer Narda Zacchino declared he...
The conventional wisdom about Proposition 13 — the only ballot measure before California voters in the March 3 election — is that the $15 billion construction bond benefitting public schools, state universities and community colleges is of relatively little importance to the average voter. While there are concerns that local districts will have to raise...
Public sector unions are by far the most powerful special interest in California. And they are united in their goal to pay themselves as much or more than public agencies can afford, which shields unionized public servants from the worst effects of the laws (which they almost always support) that have made California’s cost-of-living the...
On Feb. 3, state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill that would transfer to California taxpayers responsibility for the state’s largest and most troubled utility, Pacific Gas & Electric. The bill would give a new government agency, the California Consumer Energy and Conservation Financing Authority, the power to buy the assets and pay...
A little-known lawsuit in Orange County has important implications for each of California’s 58 county departments of education, and chances are you’ve heard nothing about it. On November 18, 2019, the Orange County Board of Education sued the Orange County Superintendent of Schools, Al Mijares, because Mijares refused to recognize that the board had any...
Wisconsin parents fight the transgender lobby, while California is going in the other direction. Fourteen Wisconsin parents represented by Alliance Defending Freedom and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, public interest legal firms, have filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop a policy they say “instructs teachers to assist and encourage children in...
Tustin – February 24, 2020 CPC, CIR FILE CHALLENGE TO CALIFORNIA GAG RULE The Center for Individual Rights and the California Policy Center have filed suit challenging a California law that prohibits public employers (including elected officials) from making statements that might “deter or discourage” public employees or applicants from membership in a public employee union....
For three years in a row, California’s progressive lawmakers have attempted to legislate high density housing by taking away the ability of cities and counties to enforce local zoning laws. And for the third year in a row, the proposed law, Senate Bill 50, was narrowly defeated. But eventually something like SB 50 is going to...
A decade ago, when the U.S. Census Bureau began issuing a measure of poverty that included the cost of living, Californians found out something that had somehow eluded the thousands of journalists, authors and academics who chronicled life here. Because of the cost of housing, California — not West Virginia or Mississippi — had the...