Year: 2017

The California Housing Crisis

While the U.S. Congress is setting records for futility in passing important measures, the California legislature just completed one of the most productive sessions in its history. Immigration, transportation, climate control, medical and recreational marijuana, public safety, health care and much more got attention as Governor Jerry Brown, riding a popularity wave most governors can […]

Optometrists eye government to shut down app-based competition

Here we go again. Every time an innovative new industry pops up to take advantage of the boundless opportunities offered by phone applications and the internet, some threatened old-line profession responds with lobbyists and political donations. Those who can’t keep up with the upstarts turn to government to shut down the competition. The brick-and-mortar firms […]

Is California polarizing America?

America is terribly polarized. And it’s all on account of California. The trouble is not merely that California itself is such a politically polarized place. Or that California contributes to the many causes of polarization: partisan media, ideological movements, cultural atomization, big-money politics, technological change, economic anxiety, and income inequality. No, the artichoke heart of […]

Go-It-Alone CA Healthcare Plan Won’t Fly

Go-it-alone California has staged daily dramas of opposing the new president and even talking about separating from the union. But the issue that will test whether California can indeed stand on its own is healthcare. The demand from the left grows that California go single payer. Even leading gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom is on board. […]

Graham-Cassidy Is An Act of Anti-California Aggression

It’s not health care policy. It’s revenge. U.S. Senators Lindsay Graham and Bill Cassidy have hardly hidden one big impact of their Obamacare repeal bill: that it punishes California. To the contrary, they’ve used the anti-California nature of the bill as a talking point. Cassidy has suggested that California is getting too much revenue from […]

California Legislative Session Ends With Higher Taxes, Anti-Trump and Union Priorities

California’s legislative session, which completed its work in the wee hours Saturday morning, was one of the more controversial ones in years, given the degree to which the Democratic majority was able to secure various tax and fee increases. It was also one of the more divisive recent sessions from a partisan standpoint. The most significant […]

How San Diego’s Blue Economy could help elevate state’s jobs and economy

Everyone can agree that California needs more great jobs. What if some of those jobs are blue jobs? Great jobs come from strong socially responsible companies that locate or grow in California. Lawmakers often talk about the importance of pro-economic development incentives to create job growth, such as recent legislation that granted tax breaks to […]

The Title & Summary Ballot Test

There seems only one way to remove from the attorney general the power of writing ballot measure titles and summaries–through an initiative. The obvious problem—the attorney general gets to write the title and summary for such an initiative. You can imagine the result. Back in July, I wrote that new California Attorney General Xavier Becerra would […]