Editor’s note: This is the fourth article in a nine-part series on how to fix California. Read the first article in the series here, the second here, and the third here. Reading California’s “Transportation Plan 2050” is a depressing journey into groupthink. Like everything coming out of the one-party bureaucracy, it is the bland product of...
A new episode of the Radio Free California podcast is out! The latest episode of National Review’s Radio Free California podcast is out, featuring CPC’s Will Swaim and David Bahnsen. In this week’s episode, they discuss Governor Gavin Newsom’s game-show theatrics aimed at increasing vaccination rates across the state, Joe Biden’s weird affection for California’s...
When Gov. Jerry Brown left office in January 2019, most of the reviews of his second eight-year stint as leader of the nation’s richest, most populous state were effusive. Citing his restoration of fiscal stability after the Capitol chaos seen in the last three years of the Schwarzenegger administration, Brown biographer Narda Zacchino declared he...
After being discussed for decades, a privately funded 170-mile high-speed rail link through the desert between Las Vegas and Victorville — 90 miles east-northeast of Los Angeles — could get final approval in coming weeks from the Federal Railroad Administration. After that happens, the California and Nevada state governments are expected to give final approval...
Back in 2008, voters in California approved Prop. 1, a statewide initiative to spend, “$9 billion for building a new high-speed railroad between San Francisco and Los Angeles.” Total cost, $9.5 billion. Remember that? Quoting further from the original initiative’s ballot language: “Bond Costs. The costs of these bonds would depend on interest rates in effect...
Current policy solutions enacted to address California’s water crisis provide an object lesson in how corruption masquerading as virtue is impoverishing the general population to enrich a handful of elites. Instead of building freeways, expanding ports, restoring bridges and aqueducts, and constructing dams, desalination plants, and power stations, California’s taxpayers are pouring tens of billions...
Humorist Will Rogers observed, “This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.” If Rogers were a Californian today, he would say the same thing about the state Legislature. Fortunately, for average citizens, the Legislature adjourned a few weeks ago so its...
Prepared by Golden Together, a Movement to Restore the California Dream Edward Ring, California Policy Center Steve Hilton, Founder of Golden Together Published March 20, 2025