If you have not read The Conservative Heart, How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America, by Arthur C. Brooks, buy a copy and read it now. Brooks’ work will be of interest to most as a “how to” primer for election messaging. Conservative candidates, who too often get their clocks cleaned on...
See the complete California Policy Center report For the Kids: California Voters Must Become Wary of Borrowing Billions More from Wealthy Investors for Educational Construction (complete, printable PDF Version, 4 MB, 361 pages) Links to all sections of this study readable online: Executive Summary: “For the Kids” – Comprehensive Review of California School Bonds (1 of 9)...
Editor’s Note: The recent election of John Moorlach as a state senator is one of the best things that has ever happened to California’s legislature. Not because of his party affiliation, or his ideology, but because he has a skill in short supply in Sacramento – he is a Certified Public Accountant. Moorlach is the only...
On January 27th, 2015 Kern County declared a fiscal emergency citing lower tax revenues from oil producers and growing unfunded pension liabilities as the cause. A review of their pension costs and growth of their unfunded liabilities over the past decade indicates the word “growing” is an understatement. A more accurate term would be “soaring”....
April 2015 Update: Here’s a documented comparison of California taxes and economic climate with the rest of the states. The news is bad, and getting worse. But it doesn’t have to be this way! The state and local government policies that created an unaffordable California can be reversed. PERSONAL INCOME TAX: Prior to Prop 30 passing...
You can be forgiven if you think that the government creates jobs. Politicians try to justify almost any policy as creating or protecting jobs. This is usually not true. Also, at what cost? If we bail out a failing company or keep open a government facility or military base that’s no longer needed, we are...
Project TALENT, a government-funded study that tracked the development of 364,000 high school students from 1960-1971, reported significant differences in the academic performance and adult achievement between children who were raised by an unmarried mother in a fatherless home and children who were raised by two biological parents. The results were independent of race and...
This week, Bay Area media have been covering the financial crisis at Doctor’s Medical Center, a public hospital operated by the West Contra County Healthcare District. As I discussed in a recent California Policy Center study, many California health care districts have financial issues, but the problems at WCCHD are especially acute. The district filed...
Have you ever wondered where all the vehicles come from? Stand by the side of a busy road and count the first 100 to 200 vehicles that pass by. One could bet that no two vehicles would be exactly alike. There would be vehicles from more than a dozen various manufacturers, a few domestic and...
Public and private charter schools have emerged as a striking exception to the dismal system of U.S. public education that has performed so poorly on international assessments of student performance such as PISA and TIMMS. Despite the virulent opposition to them by the powerful California Teachers Association, National Education Association and their political allies in...
So many lies were told to convince voters to approve the High Speed Rail project six years ago, that most Californians have soured on it. They are appalled that the estimated cost to build, the time to build, the time between destinations and the price of a ticket have all nearly doubled since voters approved...
Thanks to Proposition 30 with its retroactive tax increase and an improving economy, the state claims that it has balanced its General Fund budget. This may be technically correct but ignores some very unpleasant realities. Claiming to have balanced the budget ignores the growing unfunded liabilities associated with public employee pensions and other unfunded retirement...
On January 12, 2015, the Sacramento Bee reported that “school-construction and home-building groups have launched an effort to qualify a $9 billion school bond for the November 2016 ballot…The last state school bond was in 2006, and the pot of new construction and modernization money is virtually empty.” See California School Builders, Others to Gather Signatures for...
The recent passage by Congress of new legislation favorable to loosening controls on risky Wall Street trading is just the most recent example of the consolidation of plutocratic power in Washington. The new rules, written largely by Citibank lobbyists and embraced by the Obama administration, allow large banks to continue using depositors’ money for high-risk investments, the very...