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
Gavin Newsom’s Misstatement of the State
Gavin Newsom’s Misstatement of the State
The governor’s State of the State address — or rather, his pre-recorded speech spliced throughout with a campaign-style video montage — was filled with fact-spitting errors. Let’s consider just a few: HOMELESSNESS: “No state has done as much as California in addressing the pernicious problem of homelessness that too many politicians have ignored for too long.” During his...
By Will Swaim
Newsom: Conservatives are just like Hitler
Newsom: Conservatives are just like Hitler
Everyone knows the ancient joke about the two exhausted kids walking through a sun-blasted and waterless land. Sunburned and still miles from their destination, they come upon an immense pile of animal manure blocking their path. The boys stop for a moment to consider the obstacle mounded before them – feculent, still (in my telling)...
By Will Swaim
California Supreme Court removes taxpayer-protection measure from November ballot
California Supreme Court removes taxpayer-protection measure from November ballot
There’s much to be ticked off about following the state Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to remove a taxpayer-protection measure from the November ballot. There’s also a solution, one that’s available to every Californian over the age of 17 years and 364 days: Think like the Apple ad campaign and Vote Different. That opportunity will come in November....
By Will Swaim
Judge orders union to halt UC campus strikes
Judge orders union to halt UC campus strikes
As the sun set last Friday, sanity returned briefly to California when a judge told University of California employees to end a strike aimed at disrupting the last few weeks of the school year. In ordering members of United Auto Workers Local 4811 back to work, Orange County Superior Court Judge Randall Sherman sided with...
By Will Swaim
Stalled Labor Pick Julie Su Lets Herself Off the Hook for California’s Missing Billions
Stalled Labor Pick Julie Su Lets Herself Off the Hook for California’s Missing Billions
For years, the state’s auditor had issued warnings about the unemployment office’s vulnerabilities. No one, certainly not Su, acted on that intelligence. Thirteen months after President Biden announced it was his “honor to nominate Julie Su to be our country’s next Secretary of Labor,” there’s good news, bad news, and even worse bad news to report. Among those...
By Will Swaim
California’s Deficit: Bring Your Alibis
California’s Deficit: Bring Your Alibis
Governor Gavin Newsom helped create — and is now faced with — the biggest budget deficit in Golden State history. In the summer of 2022, California governor Gavin Newsom, apparently high on the smell of cash, announced that California had just smashed through the state-budget equivalent of the first four-minute mile: a one-year surplus of $100...
By Will Swaim
Biden Takes a Destructive California Idea National
Biden Takes a Destructive California Idea National
The state’s laboratory of policy chaos has produced another misbegotten experiment for progressives to replicate elsewhere. Gavin Newsom doesn’t need to run for president in order to shape national policy. The Biden administration has made clear it’ll follow California off a cliff, taking Newsom’s campaign against independent contractors national with a March 2024 Department of Labor...
By Will Swaim
California’s Troubled Community-College System Just Got Worse
California’s Troubled Community-College System Just Got Worse
The new chancellor is sure to exacerbate the problems in a network already roiled by progressive administrators. In February, when she was tapped to run California’s troubled community-college system, Sonya Christian had cheerleaders, foremost among them Governor Gavin Newsom. “Dr. Christian is one of our nation’s most dynamic college leaders, with a demonstrated record of collaboration...
By Will Swaim
The Newsom-DeSantis debate was over before it started
The Newsom-DeSantis debate was over before it started
The Thursday night debate between California Governor Gavin Newsom and Florida’s Ron DeSantis was over before the Klieg lights went up. The facts of California’s decline are evident to everyone but the most disingenuous. As the old saying goes, “Facts is facts,” and on the facts, DeSantis had the debate won by Wednesday. All that...
By Will Swaim