A liberal program must also be a responsible program, a reasonable, rational, realistic program. We must know how much it will cost and where the money is coming from. Benefits must be measured against burdens. A program which pampers the people or threatens our solvency is as irresponsible as the one which ignores a vital...
Governor Gavin Newsom helped create — and is now faced with — the biggest budget deficit in Golden State history. In the summer of 2022, California governor Gavin Newsom, apparently high on the smell of cash, announced that California had just smashed through the state-budget equivalent of the first four-minute mile: a one-year surplus of $100...
It’s easy to understand why California’s public schools are seeing a mass exodus of students and families. The once-Golden State continues to have some of the worst student math and reading scores in the nation. Yet schools chief Tony Thurmond and Gov. Gavin Newsom seem more concerned about bogus “book bans” and helping kids secretly change their gender at...
California Policy Center (CPC) is thrilled to announce that Los Angeles attorney and child advocate Julie Hamill has joined CPC as the organization’s first full-time attorney. Hamill has come on board to build CPC’s justice center focused on dismantling government barriers to freedom and prosperity in California. “Julie is a top-notch attorney who has been...
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...
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...
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...
The Thursday night debate between California Governor Gavin Newsom and Florida’s Ron DeSantis was over before the Klieg lights went up. The facts of California’s decline are evident to everyone but the most disingenuous. As the old saying goes, “Facts is facts,” and on the facts, DeSantis had the debate won by Wednesday. All that...
Parents are abandoning schools in large numbers, but teachers are not. School reopening time is almost upon us, and large numbers of parents have opted out of government-run schools. Over the past two school years, k-12 enrollment has declined by nearly 3%, or about 1.3 million students nationwide, according to a recent study by the American...
Educators don’t get much for their $1,200 yearly dues. In the aughts, after blindly being a dues-paying National Education Association member for years, I opened my eyes, and discovered that I’d been wasting my money. The teachers unions were primarily about politics, all of which went in a leftward direction. One in-your-face example at the...
Most U.S. cities are experiencing an administrative and financial crisis. This appears to be at odds with the confident tone of recent budget hearings where most of the attention was placed on how to spend remaining 2021 federal relief funds and so called “discretionary funds.” Cities have been able to adopt viable budgets this year...
Many American schools of education are not worthy of existing. On June 29, the California Department of Education, in cooperation with the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and the State Board of Education, announced the first-ever release of statewide teacher assignment data. The report revealed that as of the 2020-21 school year, “83.1 percent of teacher...
Fossil fuel powers the economic engine of civilization. With a minor disruption in the supply of fossil fuel, crops wither and supply chains crash. With a major disruption, a humanitarian apocalypse engulfs the world. Events of the past few months have made this clear. Without energy, civilization dies, and in 2020 fossil fuel continued to...
SCOTUS declares that if a state subsidizes private education, it cannot disqualify religious schools. The latter case revolves around Maine’s town tuitioning law, which allows parents living in districts that do not own and operate elementary or secondary schools to send their children to public or private schools in other areas of the state, or even...