Gavin Newsom’s Shameless Dodge on the Homeless Crisis
Gavin Newsom’s Shameless Dodge on the Homeless Crisis
California’s governor tries — and fails — to blame the state’s homelessness epidemic on someone, anyone else. Confronting yet another calamitous state budget deficit, California Governor Gavin Newsom took time last week to blast the real public enemies: Donald Trump and someone called Amy Bublak. You know Trump. His tariffs have indeed produced volatility in the stock...
By Will Swaim
Charter School Emerges as Financial Lifeline for Struggling Orange County District
Charter School Emerges as Financial Lifeline for Struggling Orange County District
Times are tough in Orange Unified, Orange County’s fourth-largest school district. Already facing a years-long decline in state funding that followed the district’s plummeting enrollment, school officials in June 2024 nevertheless agreed to a teachers union demand for a 10 percent pay hike. Union officials celebrated – but only briefly. In September, internal documents show,...
By Will Swaim
Trump’s First 100 Days Have Shattered California’s Left-Wing Illusions
Trump’s First 100 Days Have Shattered California’s Left-Wing Illusions
President Trump has pushed aside Governor Gavin Newsom and driven the nation’s most populous state toward something approaching sanity. President Trump’s (second) first 100 days have generated some amount of horse excrement. It’s hard to see how it serves Trump’s interests to anger allies in advance of a trade war with China, to drive the economy into...
By Will Swaim
Can Republicans Undo the Damage of Julie Su?
Can Republicans Undo the Damage of Julie Su?
Biden’s wannabe labor secretary brought one of California’s worst workforce ideas to the entire country. There’s much harrumphing in the media about President Donald Trump’s penchant for norm-busting, but he’s hardly the first to engage in it. Under President Joe Biden, the media generally cheered student loan forgiveness, talk of packing or ignoring the Supreme Court,...
By Will Swaim
California Fires Don’t Justify an Energy Industry Shakedown
California Fires Don’t Justify an Energy Industry Shakedown
A bill that would allow state residents to sue private companies for restitution is only the latest front in California’s ongoing war on oil producers. L.A.’s wildfires are still burning, but that hasn’t stopped anyone with eyeballs from identifying the likely causes: America’s costliest natural disaster isn’t “natural,” really, or not entirely. It is, in fact, the...
By Will Swaim
Julie Su Again and Again
Julie Su Again and Again
History repeats itself, Karl Marx wrote, “First as tragedy, then as farce.” But he didn’t say what happens the third time, when tragic farce strikes again and the whole benighted process repeats itself. Take the case of Julie Su, President Joe Biden’s acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor. In the past four years,...
By Will Swaim
Teacher union swindle in Orange Unified serves as a lesson for all of California
Teacher union swindle in Orange Unified serves as a lesson for all of California
They may not care much about education, but give teacher union leaders in the city of Orange, California, credit for speed and political ingenuity. Shortly after a successful March recall campaign in which leaders of the Orange Unified Education Association replaced two conservatives with two union-backed trustees, the newly configured board promptly awarded teachers a...
By Will Swaim
Unions Give Thanks for Trump’s Labor Pick
Unions Give Thanks for Trump’s Labor Pick
We don’t generally discuss national politics here at CPC World HQ – we’ve got our hands full dealing with Gov. Gavin Newsom and his confederacy of dunces in the state capitol. But let’s acknowledge some of President-elect Donald Trump’s great choices for key administration positions – including Scott Bessent at Treasury, Chris Wright at Energy,...
By Will Swaim
Reflections on the last 900 years, this last week, elections and the future
Reflections on the last 900 years, this last week, elections and the future
Early this week I was in Menlo Park, “The Capital of Venture Capital.” It’s a place so lovely, leafy and wealthy, so obviously preserved in amber by anti-growth regulation, that it might have been created by Walt Disney. It’s America’s real California Adventure. Coming down the elevator of my jewel-box hotel in the city’s Tiffany...
By Will Swaim
Those Who Can’t Teach become real estate developers
Those Who Can’t Teach become real estate developers
Presiding over the decline of California’s public schools ain’t enough, so California schools chief Tony Thurmond wants to enter the real estate game, building 2.3 million homes on public land for the benefit of teachers. He’ll fail in that endeavor. But building millions of homes for teachers isn’t really Thurmond’s goal. His real purpose in...
By Will Swaim
Beyond Musk’s Departure, More Grim California News
Beyond Musk’s Departure, More Grim California News
There’s been much speculation about the financial damage to California following Elon Musk’s high-profile exit from the Golden State announced Tuesday. But there’s more — and more deeply — unsettling news about California: A state auditor tells National Review that California’s economic fundamentals are so unstable that he’s unable to predict repayment of a key federal loan. “Our earlier...
By Will Swaim
California’s Regulatory Empire Is Unscathed by the Court’s Chevron Reversal
California’s Regulatory Empire Is Unscathed by the Court’s Chevron Reversal
The state will continue to operate as an island in the land. The Supreme Court’s 6–2 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which ended the Chevron precedent, sparked something like hysterical vomiting among California reporters and columnists and progressive legal scholars. “An earthquake in U.S. law,” attorney Michael Wara, director of Stanford University’s Climate and Energy Policy Program, called it....
By Will Swaim
‘Read My Lips: I Lied’
‘Read My Lips: I Lied’
Gavin Newsom promised Californians there’d be no new taxes to fix the state’s historic deficit. One new tax is already squeezing the state’s businesses. Confronting the nation’s largest-ever state budget deficit, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has been throwing overboard almost every government program not tied to a legal mandate. Despite progressive demands, he’s sounding for once...
By Will Swaim