California’s Transportation Future, Part Three – Next Generation Vehicles
California’s Transportation Future, Part Three – Next Generation Vehicles
The next generation of vehicles will transform transportation in several fundamental ways. What is coming will be as revolutionary in our time as the transition from horses to horseless carriages was over a century ago. Some increments of this dawning revolution are already here in realized products. Electric drivetrains. Collision avoidance systems. Self-driving cars. Cars...
By Edward Ring
CalPERS board’s antics highlight political nature of nation’s largest pension fund
CalPERS board’s antics highlight political nature of nation’s largest pension fund
Sacramento — In its argument in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus case, which challenges the right of unions to collect union dues for collective-bargaining purposes, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees argues that collective bargaining is not inherently political. But the plaintiff Mark Janus, an Illinois state employee, argues that everything a...
By Steven Greenhut
California’s Transportation Future, Part Two – The Hyperloop Option
California’s Transportation Future, Part Two – The Hyperloop Option
In July 2012, Elon Musk sat down for a “fireside chat” with Sara Lacy, founder of the PandoDaily website. In between discussions of Paypal, Tesla, and SpaceX, 43 minutes in, Musk unveiled his idea for the “Hyperloop,” a new transportation technology that “incorporates reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on air bearings driven by...
By Edward Ring
Under guise of ‘affordable housing,’ abusive agencies might be making a comeback
Under guise of ‘affordable housing,’ abusive agencies might be making a comeback
Sacramento – In the seven years since Gov. Jerry Brown shut down California’s redevelopment agencies, their defenders have managed to resuscitate their image. Never mind that these controversial agencies ladled out corporate welfare, wantonly abused eminent domain on behalf of developers and diverted $5 billion annually from public services. A new bill would bring them...
By Steven Greenhut
California’s Transportation Future, Part One – The Fatally Flawed Centerpiece
California’s Transportation Future, Part One – The Fatally Flawed Centerpiece
California’s transportation future is bright. In every area of transportation innovation, California-based companies are leading the way. Consortiums of major global companies have offices throughout the San Francisco Bay area, pioneering self-driving cars that consolidate technologies from not just automakers, but cell phone manufacturers, chip designers, PC makers, telecoms, and software companies. In Southern California...
By Edward Ring
Pension bills are common sense – yet have little chance of passage in Capitol
Pension bills are common sense – yet have little chance of passage in Capitol
Sacramento The California Public Employees’ Retirement System’s report released last week touts all of the pension fund’s good news, which it says “has built a solid path forward for the long-term future of the fund.” But as longtime pension reporter Ed Mendel pointed out in his recent blog, the pension fund’s future is still quite...
By Steven Greenhut
Undisrupted Education
Undisrupted Education
The world has progressed in amazing ways since 1983, but for the most part, public education has stagnated. In 1983, the first mobile telephones intended for public use were released, ARPANET became the technical foundation of the internet, and A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform was released. The latter was a report...
By Larry Sand
Local Voters Uphold Utility Tax in Sierra Madre
Local Voters Uphold Utility Tax in Sierra Madre
Voters in tiny, affluent Sierra Madre, three square miles of leafy neighborhoods nestled at the foot of the majestic San Gabriel mountains, had an opportunity earlier this week to repeal their utility tax. As reported in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, by a margin of more than four-to-one, they decided to keep their tax. Opponents...
By Edward Ring
Support our troops? Support education choice for their kids
Support our troops? Support education choice for their kids
MOVE OUT: U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton, California, preparing for deployment, Oct. 24, 2017. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by LCpl Anabel Abreu Rodriguez) Among the many burdens we place on military families, there’s frequent re-location from one military duty station to another – one year you’re in North Carolina, the next in Southern California or...
By Craig Alexander
California should copy New Jersey’s union fund takeover, but with one caveat
California should copy New Jersey’s union fund takeover, but with one caveat
New Jersey’s police and fire unions have demanded that the state give them control over their own pension destiny, and have convinced the Legislature to transfer management of their pension fund to a union-controlled board of trustees. Some Garden State residents have denounced the plan as the equivalent of giving unions a “blank check,” given...
By Steven Greenhut
Will the California Supreme Court Reform the “California Rule?” – Latest Update
Will the California Supreme Court Reform the “California Rule?” – Latest Update
Most pension experts believe that without additional reform, pension payments are destined to put an unsustainable burden on California’s state and local governments. Even if pension fund investments meet their performance objectives over the next several years, California’s major pension funds have already announced that payments required from participating agencies are going to roughly double...
By Edward Ring
Gas-tax repeal gets closer to vote as train spotlights state’s misplaced priorities
Gas-tax repeal gets closer to vote as train spotlights state’s misplaced priorities
Sacramento Almost everyone agrees that California’s infrastructure is shockingly decrepit, yet public anger over a 12-cent-a-gallon gas tax to address that problem has not subsided. Although an effort by GOP gubernatorial candidate Travis Allen to repeal the tax never got traction, a separate effort led by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, former San Diego Councilman...
By Steven Greenhut
Is your city using taxpayer dollars to campaign for higher taxes?
Is your city using taxpayer dollars to campaign for higher taxes?
STEAL MY ORDINANCE: Newport’s O’Neill For two years beginning in 2014, Stanton, California, residents were pounded by half a million dollars in advertising calling for a hike in the city’s sales tax. They surrendered to the wall-to-wall messaging, voting once for the tax hike and then against a repeal effort. In a painful irony, the...
By Will Swaim
Resources for California’s Pension Reformers
Resources for California’s Pension Reformers
Stampede: a mass movement of people at a common impulse. – Merriam Webster dictionary The pension reform stampede is about to finally overrun California’s political status-quo for three reasons. (1) Pension debt is out of control. While official estimates are slightly lower, most reasonable estimates put California’s total unfunded liabilities for state and local pensions at...
By Edward Ring