Will Swaim is president of the California Policy Center. A journalist for nearly three decades, he began by covering international business in 1990, was founding editor and publisher of Village Voice Media’s OC (Orange County) Weekly, and editor of Watchdog.org, a national network of investigative reporters. Will graduated summa cum laude (in journalism and with honors in theology) from the University of Southern California. He earned an MA in history from UC Irvine where he was a California Regents Fellow. A seventh-generation Californian, he has written extensively about California business, media, politics and religion, and is the winner of several print journalism awards and a Southern California Broadcasters Golden Mike award for public affairs commentary. With CPC board member David Bahnsen, he hosts National Review’s Radio Free California podcast. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, LA Daily News, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Orange County Register, the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and National Review.
Will Swaim is president of the California Policy Center. To contact Will, email him at will@calpolicycenter.org. You can also follow him on Twitter @WillSwaim.
Welcome to your weekly roundup of news from the state that put the “weird” back in “weirdos.” If you like this, donate to and thank your friends at California Policy Center. If you hate it, please blame only me (your faithful scribe, Will Swaim) and check back in when our new communications director takes over...
By Will Swaim
Forgive my typos – but by all means send in your favorite Stories from Weird California, samples of which we offer you here. Newsom announces reopening plan to union criticism: In his latest analysis of that King of Covidial Concern, Governor Gavin Newsom, CPC policy analyst Brandon Ristoff notes that Newsom keeps moving the goalposts...
By Will Swaim
COVID-19 has throat-punched the American transportation industry. United, Delta and American airlines are cutting staff through furloughs, layoffs and buyouts. Aircraft manufacturer Boeing is pursuing voluntary layoffs so aggressively that business reporters are starting to put quotes around the word “voluntary.” The company that provides school bus service to the San Francisco Unified School District furloughed its 260 drivers until classrooms...
By Will Swaim
Yorba Linda measure a rebuke to cronyism – Orange County Register
By Will Swaim
With Friends Like These: How Local Officials can end corporate welfare and unleash markets to create prosperity in California communities
By Will Swaim
If you’re suffering a bad-news hangover, I have a cure — and it’s not a shot of tomato juice and some equally bad or worse news. It’s actual great news: In just one year, a historically failing elementary school in a tough part of Anaheim has produced an educational turnaround that would be called a...
By Will Swaim
As parents of students in failing schools attempted to move their children to better districts nearby, a top official in one district lobbied his colleagues to block all the exits. His reason: a decline in enrollment equals a drop in district revenue. “As we’ve shared with you, we are denying most transfer requests,” Jaron Fried,...
By Will Swaim
Few: “Teachers shouldn’t have to make a federal case out of this.” This article first appeared on FlashReport.org. Just in time for Christmas, the Los Angeles teachers union gave Thomas Few some good news: a refund of $433.31 dues he paid and the union’s promise to stop taking $80 per month from his paycheck. Few...
By Will Swaim
Santa Ana Unified’s Monte Vista Elementary: Everybody graduates, only 15% read at grade level. (Source: California School Acountability Report Card) On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the 40-year practice of requiring public employees to join a union. But a day later, union leaders in California’s sixth-largest school district were hard at work – blocking...
By Will Swaim
STEAL MY ORDINANCE: Newport’s O’Neill For two years beginning in 2014, Stanton, California, residents were pounded by half a million dollars in advertising calling for a hike in the city’s sales tax. They surrendered to the wall-to-wall messaging, voting once for the tax hike and then against a repeal effort. In a painful irony, the...
By Will Swaim
Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, sits at the Capitol. For four years, Melendez has authored a bill to enshrine whistleblower protections into law for those legislative staff members who come forward with allegations of sexual assault and harassment, only to have the bills killed in the Senate Appropriations Committee. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, file) You know...
By Will Swaim
U CalPERS has quietly removed the controversial “Myths vs. Facts” page from its website, abruptly ending one of the agency’s efforts to soothe public anxiety about the cost of rising pension benefits to public employees. The page disappeared March 7. A spokesperson for CalPERS, the state agency that manages public employee retirement funds, said “Myths...
By Will Swaim
In a case that will cheer education reformers, four Pennsylvania teachers today sued their unions, school districts and district officials for making union membership a condition of their employment. “Teaching is my calling, but I fundamentally disagree with many teachers’ union stances on personnel and political issues,” said lead plaintiff Gregory J. Hartnett, an art...
By Will Swaim
Comedian Bill Maher landed an interview with President Barack Obama last week, and the interaction felt like something out of a movie about hobbits – two grown men basking in the warm glow of a be-flagged White House office with a Frederick Remington buffalo sculpture in the background. ANTIBIOTIC: President Obama on Bill Maher’s “Real...
By Will Swaim
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