Is The LA Economy Heading For Trouble? Recent Consumer Confidence Survey Provides Some Clues
A decline in the confidence of Los Angeles County consumers continues–raising concern about where the local economy is heading, since consumer spending accounts for about 70% of economic activity in our communities. According to the index recently released by the Lowe Institute of Political Economy at Claremont McKenna College, Los Angeles consumer sentiment declined by […]
Legislation touted as pro-transparency will eliminate basic services
The fundamental purpose for a city or county is to serve its residents. If government is doing its job, then your streets are clean and safe, your public parks and buildings are maintained and the like. Taxpayers should be able to expect that government is spending their hard-earned dollars on critical services that improve their […]
California’s next election will be a tug-of-war on education
Sandra Lowe reminisced about the good old days as she addressed a roomful of Democratic activists at the California party’s annual convention last week in Sacramento. It used to be, the teachers union leader told the crowd, that it didn’t take much to win a school board race: a short statement in the election handbook, […]
How to Solve CA Problems? Why Obligate/Tax/Regulate Business, Of Course!
With the revelation that the cost of a single payer health care system in California at $400 billion would dwarf the state budget, an analysis of the bill suggested some of the money could be captured with a 15% payroll tax. All of a sudden the Fight for 15 has a new meaning. Those minimum […]
Budget Anorexia: Feds Soon Will Cut Payments to California
“President Trump’s proposed budget would likely result in billions of dollars of cuts to vital health and human services programs in California, state Democratic lawmakers and advocates for the poor said Tuesday,” reported the Los Angeles Times, “It’s unconscionable and un-American,” blasted Gov. Jerry Brown, who himself slashed state social spending to balance the budget. In […]
Trump Provides California Water Solutions as Gov. Brown Focuses on his Legacy
On May 13, 2017, Governor Brown outlined his revised budget proposal focusing the state’s financial resources on his High Speed Rail legacy project and renewing its efforts to fight the Trump Administration on multiple fronts. While he may have dropped the mic with an antagonistic $183 billion budget, points on the scorecard went to the […]
Can You Still Really Run Against San Francisco From Georgia?
If you haven’t seen this independent expenditure attack ad against the Democratic candidate for Congress in an Atlanta-area district, Jon Ossoff, you should take a look. Yes, it’s fake—fake people saying that San Francisco loves Ossoff and is funding him. It’s a century-old technique (employed famously in the 30s by Hollywood types who had phony […]
Fixing the housing problem: leave the state out of it.
On these pages recently, Joe Matthews penned an essay advocating more state intervention in local housing markets. Matthews should be forgiven for endorsing such an absurd proposition. After all, it’s true that in California, as Matthews writes, housing approvals are left up to locals, who regularly play havoc with their land-use and permitting power. Local […]
End Run Around Spending Limit Likely Headed for the Courts
The state’s nearly 40-year-old spending limit law is on the fast track to a date in court. While the state senate budget committee yesterday agreed with the governor’s framework for the budget, which excludes $22 billion from the spending limit, a number of lawyers have concerns or outright disagree. I expect the courts will be […]