Views from the Governor’s Office Raises Questions
The Public Policy Institute of California’s Speaker Series kicked off yesterday’s session with a conversation between Gov. Jerry Brown’s Executive Secretary (read: Chief of Staff) Nancy McFadden and PPIC President Mark Baldassare. Following are a few items from that short 10-minute conversation and questions that popped into my head while listening to the discussion. McFadden […]
The Unintended Consequences of Extending Proposition 30
In 2012 voters passed Proposition 30—an initiative to raise taxes and take state government finances out of crisis mode. However, the new taxes, primarily falling on the top income earners in California, did not purport to be a cure for the underlying problem. Rather, the rationale was to give the state some breathing room. And […]
Tom Steyer’s Corn Ethanol Politics Are Bad for California
San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer and other national political figures have sold out California’s economy by supporting a federal mandate that forces billions of gallons of corn ethanol to be mixed into gasoline every year. The mandate, also known as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), has already imposed $13.1 billion in higher fuel costs on […]
Should We Kill the Hanford-Visalia Station?
In a recent column for Zocalo, I wrote about the importance of designing stations that connect lots of people and institutions if California is going to make high-speed rail successful enough to be worth the massive investment. I wrote about Fresno and Bakersfield in the column, but there was one station I wanted to talk […]