Edward Ring is the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for American Greatness, and a regular contributor to the California Globe. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, National Review, City Journal, and other media outlets. Ring’s undergraduate degree is in Political Science from UC Davis, and he has an MBA in Finance from USC. Ring is the author of several books, including “Fixing California – Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism” (2021), “The Abundance Choice – Our Fight for More Water in California” (2022), and “Solutions – Innovative Public Policy for California” (2024).
Joel Kotkin’s writing is not easily pigeonholed. Alienated from California’s Democrat and Republican parties, both of which he believes are dysfunctional, Kotkin focuses on the interests and aspirations of California’s disappearing middle class. With positions on energy and land development that challenge the conventional wisdom of Democrats, and positions on infrastructure development and other public...
By Edward Ring
A few months ago we published an editorial entitled “Social Security is Healthy Compared to Public Sector Pensions.” The highlights offer compelling evidence of two very distinct categories of “middle class workers” in America: “According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2030, when Social Security will be supposedly approaching insolvency, there will be 99.4 million citizens...
By Edward Ring
Back in 2011 a California state legislator told me, off the record, that for years, a secret 7:00 a.m. meeting is held once per week in Sacramento. At this meeting are a handful of top officials representing the major public sector unions active in California. They discuss current legislation, political trends, opposition groups, emerging issues,...
By Edward Ring
While today’s municipal bankruptcy news focuses on Detroit, where a judge has just ruled the city can proceed with its bankruptcy filing, tonight a small California city holds a council meeting to try to avoid the same fate. Desert Hot Springs isn’t on the national radar, but its situation is hardly unique. With only 27,000...
By Edward Ring
One of the biggest unreported, blockbuster stories in modern America is the alliance between public sector unions and the speculative banking industry. It is a story saturated in greed, drowning in delusion, smothered and marginalized by an avalanche of propaganda – paid for by taxpayers who fund both the public sector unions and the public...
By Edward Ring
Shame on You! I am appalled to see your “quick facts” focus almost exclusively on public pensions. This is not the stuff of an independent, non-profit think tank. It is clear to me that you are pursuing an “agenda includes opposing … health-care and climate-change regulations, reducing union protections and minimum wages, cutting taxes and...
By Edward Ring
During the most recent year for which there is publicly available data, the fiscal-year-ended 6-30-2012, the California State Teachers Retirement System contributed a $1.1 billion payment towards paying off an unfunded liability of $71.0 billion. This fact, and much more, came out in a California Public Policy Center study released last week “Are Annual Contributions Into...
By Edward Ring
Preface: Earlier this year the California Policy Center published a study evaluating the Orange County Employee Retirement System (OCERS) to explore this same question: Are Annual Contributions into OCERS Adequate? That study adopted a unique focus, evaluating contributions into OCERS not based on percent of payroll, but by looking at the actual amount of cash being contributed...
By Edward Ring
“I believe there is a different way – and that is to work with the Republican members of every labor union and help empower those Republican union members to put additional pressure on their union leadership to spend Republican dues money on Republican causes.” – Jim Brulte, Chairman, California State Republican Party Well that’s one...
By Edward Ring
Whenever anyone suggests that public sector unions are forcing their members to make political contributions, the unions retort that the contributions are strictly voluntary. Technically speaking, this is true, but the tedious process of opting out of making political contributions is a powerful deterrent. The California Teachers Association, for example, allow their members to become...
By Edward Ring
When examining policy options that might help restore a financially sustainable public sector, reformers tend to focus on what may be politely referred to as austerity programs. And no effective package of reforms can ignore austerity measures; cutting government programs, cutting government staff, and cutting government employee compensation. At the same time, an essential element...
By Edward Ring
Reactions from the press and public to the BART strikes this year have been overwhelmingly negative. In one of the safest Democratic strongholds in the U.S., there is serious talk of outlawing future BART strikes. As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on October 19th, “That discussion has already begun, in letters from California lawmakers...
By Edward Ring
“Public employees have a private interest in taking more and more of the taxpayer-generated revenue for themselves. In other words, public employees have a private interest in diverting public funds from public services to their wages and pensions. In this sense, the increasing numbers of public employees and their increasing wages and benefits threaten to...
By Edward Ring
One of the overwhelming challenges facing fiscal conservatives is how to cut government spending without harming economic recovery. It may seem obvious that governments eventually have to stop relying on borrowing to finance their deficits, but eliminating government spending deficits can only partly rely on spending cuts. Economic growth is the other essential element. To...
By Edward Ring
a new form will got here