Hollywood Bigwigs Want to Raise Property Taxes
The ballot initiative to raise property taxes to pay for poverty programs is starting to report donations from influential Hollywood players. Now totaling more than a million dollars in the campaign fund, over the last few days the campaign committee for Making Poverty History has reported large donations from Haim Saban, media entrepreneur who produced […]
Affordable Housing Is Now a Middle-Class Crisis in California
California has a housing crisis. This probably doesn’t sound like news given the recent publicity about disputes over homelessness, rapidly rising rents, and gentrification—and the flurry of policy proposals for everything from rent control to fees on commercial construction and property sales used to support affordable housing programs. Unfortunately, the conversation about housing is largely […]
Don’t Blame Proposition 13 for the Housing Crisis
Notwithstanding California’s leftward drift, Prop 13 remains remarkably popular. Indeed, polling suggests that if Prop 13 were on the ballot today, it would pass by about the same two-thirds margin that it did in 1978. But the enduring embrace of this landmark measure by California homeowners is a huge irritant to those who want ever more […]
In Wildly Overbroad New Investigation, California Telephone Regulators Gasp For Relevance
California’s scandal-plagued Public Utilities Commission is at it again. Just before Thanksgiving, the agency surprised everyone by launching a comprehensive investigation into the state of competition in the increasingly obsolete analog telephone network. The new proceeding re-opens a ten-year old decision that largely deregulated the state’s four incumbent local telephone companies. That decision seemed uncontroversial even at […]