Chiang’s Pay-to-Play Troubles Remind Us: California Has Too Many Statewide Elected Officials
Given his reputation for fiscal probity, a Sacramento Bee report showing that John Chiang has a pay-to-play approach to this job – steering tax breaks to his political donors – might seem surprising. It isn’t. Statewide elected posts like the two Chiang has held – controller and treasurer – have long been used for pay-to-play […]
Pension and Other Retirement Costs Are Crowding Out SF School Teachers
School starts today in San Francisco but according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle not all classrooms may have teachers because of “a rash of departures over the summer.” Perhaps the departed teachers observed this depressing mismatch in spending priorities over the past five years: Sources: First Interim Reports, San Francisco Unified School District, FY2012 […]
Could uptick in California crime make it a political issue again?
In the main, issues that dominate any session of the California Legislature reflect what the public and news media consider at the time to be the most burning. That’s why, for instance, the state’s acute housing shortage will receive much attention during the final month of this year’s session. During Jerry Brown’s first governorship four […]
There’s No Business Like Trump Business
It appears that President Donald Trump’s faux “bro-mance” with the country’s corporate business leadership has pretty much come to an end. The President craves respect, especially from the business elite. But, to paraphrase comedian Rodney Dangerfield, Trump doesn’t get much respect these days. After decades of being excluded from the elite “club” in New York, […]
Bail Reform Restores Basic American Values of Freedom and Justice
Bail reform is not a partisan issue. It’s not an urban or rural issue. It should be everyone’s issue. It’s an American issue. The United States is one of only two nations on planet Earth that use a commercial bail system. And across the country, from big cities, such as Washington, D.C., to rural counties […]
Milton Friedman Lives On
Milton Friedman was a world-class economist, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976, and passed away in 2006. Friedman championed repeal of the death tax (estate tax) for years. In 2001 he wrote an open letter on the subject and convinced 276 economists to sign on. This week the national Family Business Coalition, of […]
Take Me Out to the California League
Take me out to the ballgame this summer? Sure, as long as you’re taking me to San Jose or Visalia or Lake Elsinore. Yep, I know those cities don’t have major league teams—that’s the point. In California these days, Major League Baseball is miserable. But the California League—our very own minor league—is a little-known jewel, […]
Building a Better Answer to L.A.’s Affordable-Housing Crisis
Los Angeles residents are being squeezed by one of the country’s most unforgiving housing markets. A majority of the City’s lowest-income residents pay more than half of their income toward rent, live in severely inadequate conditions, or both, according to a new federal study. Many are one rent increase away from homelessness. Angelenos are looking […]
Real Reforms Needed to Stop Abusive Business-Killing Lawsuits
California is one of the most expensive states for businesses to operate in–in large part due to lawsuit abuses that unfairly target businesses–earning the state the unflattering distinction of being the worst “judicial hellhole” in the nation. Making this even worse is the fact that the targets of these frivolous lawsuits are often the 3 […]