Reflections on the last 900 years, this last week, elections and the future

By Will Swaim
11/01/2024
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...

TAGS: California, California Policy Center, History

A Golden State Birthday

By Lance Christensen
09/11/2024
Demisemiseptcentennial. Try saying that several times fast. On Sept. 9, we celebrate 174 years since California was admitted to the United States and prepare for its 175th anniversary—or demisemiseptcentennial—in 2025. Despite its over-the-top and often messy politics, I dig its good vibrations. There’s something mystical and magnetic about California. It’s the Olympus of America and...

TAGS: California

Wake Up California: Free Market Energy Solutions Work

By Andrew Davenport
07/18/2024
While California continues to enact draconian climate laws and regulations that hinder the state’s economy, Texas has taken the lead in driving clean energy production.  New data from energy think tank Ember reveals that after trailing the Golden State for years, Texas is now outpacing California as the nation’s leading producer of power generated from...

TAGS: California, energy, free market, Renewable, Texas

Biden Takes a Destructive California Idea National

By Will Swaim
01/29/2024
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...

TAGS: AB 5, Biden Administration, California, contractors, Kevin Kiley, Lyft, Uber

Want to Rule the World? Run for Local Office

By Lance Christensen
01/23/2024
When interviewing for a legislative fellowship in Sacramento, California over two decades ago, the panel asked about my career plans. I worked through a progression I thought was essential for any aspiring politico, concluding confidently that I was eventually going to run for Congress. In my mind, that’s where all the important political action was....

TAGS: California, California local elected officials, California Policy Center, Epoch Times

The Role of Unions in a Perfect World

By Edward Ring
12/13/2023
The optimal public policy regarding unions may not be realistic in states like California, but that shouldn’t prevent us from performing an occasional what-if. For anyone even slightly right-of-center, what unions have done to this state is a catastrophe. And even for those to the left-of-center, many are realizing, for example, that California’s failing system...

TAGS: California, ed ring, government unions, high speed rail, public sector

California Teachers Association is Losing Members

By Chris LaBella
11/27/2023
California’s political landscape is changing, and that’s cause for celebration. In 2018, the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling prohibited the collection of union dues from public employees as a condition of employment. Before that ruling, with few exceptions, no dues meant no job. By protecting a worker’s right to choose to financially support a union, Janus...

TAGS: California, California Teachers Association, government unions, Janus

The Butler Did It

By Chris LaBella
10/03/2023
In appointing Laphonza Butler to take Dianne Feinstein’s still-warm U.S. Senate seat, Gov. Gavin Newsom has picked his twin, someone of Cirque-du-Soleil-level flexible morality and connections to wealthy donors on all sides of most issues. In that regard, at least, she’s a perfect representative of California politics. She is “simply the best person that I...

TAGS: California, Feinstein, Laphonza Butler, seiu, union, Unions

Lone Star Bound

By Sheridan Swanson
02/24/2023
Frisco, Texas — nestled in the north Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex — has been making headlines for the number of companies flocking to the city to take advantage of its business-friendly environment and rapid growth. This month, the Frisco Economic Development Corporation (FEDC) released a statement highlighting the city’s impressive 2022 track record, having welcomed sixteen...

TAGS: book of exoduses, California, California book of exoduses, California business tax climate, California Exodus, regulations, Texas

The Abundance Choice – Part 1: California’s Failing Water Policies

By Edward Ring
05/27/2022
Editor’s note: This is the first article in a series on California’s water crisis. You can read the entire series including recent updates in his new book “The Abundance Choice, Our Fight for More Water in California.” In October and again in December, as the third severe drought this century was entering its third year,...

TAGS: California, California water policy, Edward Ring, water rationing, water storage