Gavin Newsom, the lily white, urbane, coiffured scion of San Francisco’s posh royalty, is California’s highest ranking Democrat. He presides over a party that has taken progressive ideals beyond absurdity to the brink of tyranny. One would think that the party of Gavin Newsom is bent on destroying everything Gavin Newsom represents. So what’s going on?...
Public sector unions should be illegal. They have very little in common with private sector unions, which, properly regulated, play a vital role in society. The differences between public sector and private sector unions are significant. For example: 1 – Private sector unions cannot be unreasonable in the demands they bring to negotiations with management,...
On June 27, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Janus vs AFSCME. An immediate consequence of this ruling was that public sector unions could no longer collect so-called “agency fees” from workers in their bargaining units who had opted out of full union membership. The other main consequence of the Janus ruling was that those...
“I have asked the ULTA repeatedly to stop taking money out of my paycheck, and they simply will not stop”: Thomas Few, left, with attorneys Bucher and Kelsey, and Illinois state social worker Mark Janus, at the U.S. Courthouse in Los Angeles. LOS ANGELES – A federal judge on Dec. 17 will hear teachers union...
Anyone who thinks it’s easy to calculate the total annual revenue of California’s government unions hasn’t tried to do it. And this statistic is vital to understanding one of the most powerful forces – if not the most powerful force – in California’s state and local politics. The problem with getting accurate ground-up revenue numbers...
June 6 marks the 40th anniversary of voters’ overwhelming approval of Proposition 13, which has been protecting all California taxpayers ever since. Some people mistakenly think Prop. 13 protects only homeowners, because it cut the property tax rate statewide to 1 percent and put a stop to uncontrolled increases in assessed value. But it did...
Nobody argues that California’s roads need huge upgrades. But the solution didn’t require the $0.12 per gallon tax hike that goes into effect today. The root cause of these neglected roads – and the reason even more taxes will never be enough to fix them – is the power of public sector unions, whose agenda...
Union dues take a large bite out of the paychecks of California teachers. We estimate that newly hired, full-time teachers will pay $37,000 in dues over a 30-year career. Further, if new teachers could fully opt out of the union and instead save their dues in an Individual Retirement Account, they would each have $228,000...
In the aftermath of one of the most controversial presidential elections in U.S. history, many analysts are commenting on the sharp divide between how urban areas voted vs. how rural areas voted. In a map of the nation segmented by county, it is clear that at least geographically, Trump won overwhelmingly. Obviously this is misleading, since...
Government unions in California collect and spend over $1.0 billion per year. That’s just government unions. That’s just California. They use a small fraction of this money to engage in collective bargaining. They use about a third of it to engage in politics – that’s nearly $700 million per election cycle. The rest, well over...
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