The Progressive’s “Affordability Agenda” is a Fraud
The Progressive’s “Affordability Agenda” is a Fraud
In the wake of devastating setbacks in the 2024 elections, Progressives are deemphasizing identity politics and instead are prioritizing economic issues. Progressives are now embracing an “abundance movement” and claiming they are the party to deliver abundance to working families. The latest iteration of this new strategy was expressed by progressive activist and pundit Donna...
By Edward Ring
Newsom’s Concessions to Oil Industry Will Not Save It
Newsom’s Concessions to Oil Industry Will Not Save It
Access to adequate supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel for Californians is in dire peril, and the signing of SB 237 on September 19 will do very little to change that. To rescue the industry, far more sweeping legislation is required. First, to put this in perspective, note that fully 50 percent of California’s raw energy inputs still...
By Edward Ring
The Cost and the Upside of the “Big Gulp”
The Cost and the Upside of the “Big Gulp”
Of all the possible ways to increase California’s water supply, nothing compares to the potential of the so-called “big gulp,” that is, the ability of new and improved water infrastructure to safely divert millions of acre feet from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta during high winter flows. How much water? A study published by the...
By Edward Ring
How the Federal Government Can Massively Fund Water Supply Infrastructure
How the Federal Government Can Massively Fund Water Supply Infrastructure
A few months ago I had the privilege of speaking directly with some of the top executives at one of California’s largest water agencies. Their primary question for me was explicit, and my attempts to answer were inadequate. They contend, accurately, that during the last century there were periods when massive federal funding to pay...
By Edward Ring
Fact-Checking Newsom’s ‘Clean Energy’ Claims
Fact-Checking Newsom’s ‘Clean Energy’ Claims
In a recent guest op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal, California Governor Newsom claimed that “Clean Energy Powers California’s Economic Growth,” a claim that is transparently false. Aggressive “clean energy” mandates, paired with perpetually escalating restrictions on conventional energy sources, are the reasons Californians pay the highest prices in America for gasoline and electricity, and nearly the highest...
By Edward Ring
Tips to Understand California’s Energy Economy
Tips to Understand California’s Energy Economy
Last month, for the uninitiated, we devoted a newsletter to the topic “Tips to Understand Our Convoluted Yet Obligatory Units of Water.” It attempted to summarize some essential facts and relevant units for anyone who wants to monitor state water policy. Now it’s time for those of us who fancy ourselves members of the energy...
By Edward Ring
The Progressive Government Union War on America
The Progressive Government Union War on America
Public sector unions constitute the bedrock of progressive power in the United States. The estimated total nationwide membership exceeds 7 million, or 32 percent of all public employees. This compares to an equal number of unionized employees in the private sector, 7 million, but that only represents 6 percent of private sector employees. The fact...
By Edward Ring
Will the Sites Reservoir Ever Get Built?
Will the Sites Reservoir Ever Get Built?
The short answer is no. Never. What is happening with the Sites Reservoir is a case study in why, if the people running California today were in charge in the 1950s and 1960s, the California Water Project would never have been built. This reservoir, approved by voters in 2014, could have been built by now....
By Edward Ring
Without Gerrymandering, Would the Dominant Party Run the Table?
Without Gerrymandering, Would the Dominant Party Run the Table?
The argument against gerrymandering begins with visuals. Across the U.S., almost without exception, if you view a map of state and federal electoral districts, they appear as convoluted, obviously contrived jigsaw puzzles, drawn with no regard for geographic features or municipal boundaries. In the face of such obvious manipulation, so the argument goes, the process...
By Edward Ring
How Dredging the Delta Enables Groundwater Recharge
How Dredging the Delta Enables Groundwater Recharge
ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization and winner of multiple Pulitzer prizes, recently published a report “The Drying Planet.” They report that “Moisture lost to evaporation and drought, plus runoff from pumped groundwater, now outpaces the melting of glaciers and the ice sheets of either Antarctica or Greenland as the largest contributor of water to the...
By Edward Ring
Tips to Understand Our Convoluted Yet Obligatory Units of Water
Tips to Understand Our Convoluted Yet Obligatory Units of Water
Those of us following water politics and the water industry have become familiar with the most common units of water volume and water flow. Professionals in the industry make constant use of terms, often reduced to acronyms, forgetting that the rest of us may have no idea what they’re talking about. When it comes to...
By Edward Ring
How to Make Homes Affordable Again
How to Make Homes Affordable Again
A few years ago, former US Senator Phil Gramm published a book that offers important insights into the status of low-income communities in the United States. Titled “The Myth of American Inequality” and scrupulously researched, the book evaluates U.S. household income by quintiles. It concludes that the bottom quintile (the lowest 20 percent) actually has...
By Edward Ring
The Case for Carbon Sequestration via Natural Gas Power Plants
The Case for Carbon Sequestration via Natural Gas Power Plants
In the case Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency can regulate greenhouse gases because they qualify as air pollutants. And ever since, electric power plants using “thermal” fuels have faced escalating regulatory pressure. How this has played out for coal fired power plants in the Western United States is summarized...
By Edward Ring
Redistricting and the Cure to Gerrymandering
Redistricting and the Cure to Gerrymandering
Partisan redistricting rigs elections coast to coast—but a cure may lie in algorithms that draw fairer maps than any politician ever will. Few events in politics are more consequential while being less understood than redistricting. The consequences are obvious. If your party controls a state legislature, then once every ten years, when it comes time...
By Edward Ring