High Speed Rail at the Movies
Yesterday, Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) testified before the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and said of California’s High Speed Rail project, “I know Hollywood happens to be in California, but this is not a Kevin Costner movie. If we built it, I don’t know if they will come.” To which Governor Jerry Brown might answer, […]
Democrats Are Still the Minority Party – If the Other Parties Come Together
You wouldn’t know it to listen to Democrats talk triumphantly about their legislative supermajorities. But the Democratic Party remains very much a minority party. That’s a hard numerical fact. Fewer than 44 percent of California’s registered voters are Democrats. Which is to say that there’s a 56 percent majority out there of people who aren’t […]
Controller Chiang’s Public Pay Site: A First Step towards Transparency
In a rather disturbing essay on the left-leaning website Slate—disturbing, at least for those of us supporting greater public sector transparency on issues ranging from budgets to transportation—government technology expert David Eaves notes that while “governments are releasing more information than ever,” these early efforts appear to demonstrate that “open data will not depoliticize debate. […]
The Blue-State Suicide Pact
With their enthusiastic backing of President Obama and the Democratic Party on Election Day, the bluest parts of America may have embraced a program utterly at odds with their economic self-interest. The almost uniform support of blue states’ congressional representatives for the administration’s campaign for tax “fairness” represents a kind of bizarre economic suicide pact. […]