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).
Bryan is also sponsoring a bill to gut California’s 112-year-old initiative and referendum process so voters no longer have veto power over California’s Democrat-controlled legislature. It isn’t hard to figure out who controls everything Assemblyman Isaac Bryan does in the California State Legislature. In the November 2022 election, every single one of the first 29 of...
By Edward Ring
On February 21, the California State Water Resources Control Board waived environmental regulations in order to permit more storage in Central Valley reservoirs. This came a week after Governor Gavin Newsom temporarily suspended environmental laws that prevent reservoir storage if flow through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta falls below 58,000 acre feet per day. A guest opinion piece...
By Edward Ring
Last week, I attended an event in downtown Sacramento produced by an industry trade association. One of the highlights of this event was a plenary session where a high ranking state politician addressed the crowd. The participants shall remain anonymous, because who they were doesn’t matter. What was said, and how it was received, was...
By Edward Ring
Behind any popular mass movement there are often good ideas and noble objectives. Public sector unions—including teachers’ unions—are no exception. Organized labor, ideally, offers collective power to ordinary workers and provides a counterweight whenever business interests become exploitative. How to regulate that balance is a topic that deserves vigorous and ongoing debate, but most of...
By Edward Ring
If at first you don’t succeed, try again. This adage applies well to ideas for new ways to tax Californians. Every election cycle we see new ways to be taxed, and higher tax rates, but rarely will we see a tax get repealed. So it is that Assemblyman Alex Lee (D, San Jose) has introduced Assembly...
By Edward Ring
California’s state government is spending twice as much as it did a decade ago, and by every metric that matters to ordinary Californians, things have only gotten worse. Even without further analysis, this is an incredible fact. California’s state government, in constant dollars, is spending nearly twice as much per resident as it did a...
By Edward Ring
When state ballot initiatives propose new taxes, it’s big news. But while every election features a handful of state tax and bond proposals that get statewide attention, additional hundreds of local state and bond proposals fly under the radar. Fortunately, after each election cycle and once all the votes are certified – something that in...
By Edward Ring
California is considering paying “reparations” to Black Californians who are directly descended from enslaved people, which may surprise most Californians. After all, slavery was never legal in the Golden State. Governor Newsom, heedless of the fiasco he’s inviting, formed a “Reparations Task Force,” no doubt with his future presidential aspirations in mind. The task force...
By Edward Ring
Just a few months ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom was bragging about California’s “$100 billion budget surplus.” At the same time, the California Policy Center was pointing out that the governor’s “surplus” was fantasy – that state and local governments owed about $1.6 trillion. In those heady days, however, with obliging media cheering him on, Newsom...
By Edward Ring
About 20 years ago, I read an ad in a local Sacramento newspaper that said “Get a government job and become an instant millionaire.” The ad went on to describe how public bureaucrats in California enjoyed benefits private sector employees can only dream of, including a guaranteed retirement pension worth the equivalent of millions of...
By Edward Ring
Successfully coping with severe droughts in California and the Southwest requires tough choices, all of them expensive and none of them perfect. But taking millions of acres out of cultivation and replacing them with solar farms is not the answer. California produces over one-third of America’s vegetables and three quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts –...
By Edward Ring
With the November 8 election already ten days ago, we are now conditioned to accept that some final results will not be known until December 16, five weeks later. Counting proceeds at a crawl in counties up and down the state, and those among us with housebroken political sentiments are expected to be impressed at...
By Edward Ring
With a rough top-down analysis, it’s easy enough to estimate how much government unions collect and spend every year in California. They have roughly a million members, paying roughly $1,000 per year in dues. That would be one billion dollars per year. They spend about a third of that to fund political campaigns for candidates and ballot...
By Edward Ring
The following conversation never happened. It is for the reader to decide to what extent, however, this conversation reflects political reality in California today. Candidate (C): It’s a surprise that you contacted me. I never thought I would run for office, I don’t know how to run a campaign, and I’m not well informed...
By Edward Ring
a new form will got here
a new form will got here