Fixing California- Part four: The transportation revolution
Fixing California- Part four: The transportation revolution
Editor’s note: This is the fourth article in a nine-part series on how to fix California. Read the first article in the series here, the second here, and the third here. Reading California’s “Transportation Plan 2050” is a depressing journey into groupthink. Like everything coming out of the one-party bureaucracy, it is the bland product of...
By Edward Ring
Fixing California – Part three: Achieving water abundance
Fixing California – Part three: Achieving water abundance
Editor’s note: This is the third article in a nine-part series on how to fix California. Read the first article in the series here, and the second here. As Californians face another drought, the official consensus response is more rationing. Buy washers that don’t work very well. Install more flow restrictors. Move down from a 50 gallon per...
By Edward Ring
Fixing California- Part two: The electric age
Fixing California- Part two: The electric age
Editor’s note: This is the second article in a nine-part series on how to fix California. Read the first article in the series here. If energy were abundant, clean, and sustainable, nearly every other daunting challenge facing humanity would be much easier to solve. Insufficient water? No problem. Pump more water around via inter-basin transfers...
By Edward Ring
Fixing California – Part One: The Themes That Make Anything Possible
Fixing California – Part One: The Themes That Make Anything Possible
Editor’s note: This is the first article in a nine-part series on how to fix California For conservatives across America, California has become the cautionary tale for the rest of the country. Anyone who actually lives in the Golden State, and enjoys the best weather and the most beautiful, diverse scenery on earth, knows there...
By Edward Ring
How to squander the grassroots
How to squander the grassroots
From the beginning, political insiders questioned the wisdom of supporting a Governor Newsom recall campaign. But when Orrin Heatlie was picking up the pieces after the first recall effort, he recognized something that eluded most experts: From scratch, with absolutely no professional or financial support, a volunteer army had formed and gathered 352,271 signed petitions. This accomplishment...
By Edward Ring
Dams and desalination
Dams and desalination
California needs both When Californians can take showers, without flow restrictors, for as long as they want, and when Californians can have lawns again instead of rocks and cacti in their front yards, water infrastructure in California will once again be adequate. When California’s farmers can get enough water to grow food, instead of watching...
By Edward Ring
How the people can fix California
How the people can fix California
The deadline to file citizens initiatives for the November 2022 state ballot is this August, and not nearly enough has been done so far. Active measures submitted to the California Attorney General include the highly necessary proposition to “prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude,” along with one to “require earth sustainability training in public schools.” Because apparently we’re...
By Edward Ring
Newsom’s Education Spending Binge
Newsom’s Education Spending Binge
“It is our hope that all schools will be able to physically open for five days per week in the fall but local conditions will determine whether that is possible.” – Cecily Myart-Cruz, President, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA Update 5/14/2021) It’s impossible to know what “local conditions” are going to look like when...
By Edward Ring
Biden’s union agenda betrays American workers
Biden’s union agenda betrays American workers
The consequences of Democrat control of Congress and the White House are just beginning to be felt, as one of the most disruptive pieces of legislation in American history quietly moves from the House of Representatives to the Senate, where only a successful filibuster may prevent its passage. The “Protect the Right to Organize,” or “PRO...
By Edward Ring
California’s gubernatorial candidates need to show true grit
California’s gubernatorial candidates need to show true grit
In a recent Facebook post, one of the many Republican candidates hoping to replace Governor Newsom had this to say: “Californians can’t afford to make ends meet because Gavin Newsom and his allies keep raising taxes. We need to make our state more affordable for our middle class. I spoke to @EvieFordham about lowering the...
By Edward Ring
AB 1316 aims to destroy charter schools
AB 1316 aims to destroy charter schools
Back in 2019, facing a barrage of legislation that threatened to destroy their institutions, advocates for charter schools reached a “compromise” agreement with lawmakers. The results were sweeping changes, expressed in SB 126, AB 1505 and AB 1507, that mingled common sense reforms with measures that have made it harder than ever for charters to...
By Edward Ring
Fixing K-12 education in California
Fixing K-12 education in California
Supporters of education reform in California have never had a bigger opportunity than they do right now. In the past year, more parents than ever witnessed the selfish overreach of the teachers’ unions, at the same time millions of them experienced creative educational solutions that bypass the traditional public school system. Meanwhile, an activist army...
By Edward Ring
The key to affordable housing? More suburbs
The key to affordable housing? More suburbs
An article just published in City Journal, “Is Texas’s Affordable Housing Endangered,” describes how housing prices in Texas are becoming unaffordable. The article notes how the average home price in the Austin metropolitan area has doubled in just 10 years. In the Dallas suburbs a decade ago, more than 50 percent of homes sold for...
By Edward Ring
Solving California’s urban water scarcity
Solving California’s urban water scarcity
A study by the Public Policy Institute of California in 2019 found that per capita urban water use in the state has dropped consistently over the years, from 231 gallons per day in 1990 to 180 gallons per day in 2010. It dropped again to 146 gallons per day during the drought in 2015. This...
By Edward Ring