Help small businesses recover by pausing the annual minimum wage hike
Small businesses have suffered a severe setback from the recent, understandable public health actions by state and local leaders to reimpose restrictions on commerce involving public gathering. These small businesses, especially restaurants, hospitality, tourism, entertainment and personal services, also employ many low-skilled, low-wage workers, often in entry-level jobs on the lower rungs of the economic […]
Cut Newsom from “Newsom at Noon”
Dear Governor, Your lunchtime COVID-19 briefings—“Newsom at Noon”—are must-see TV. No California governor has ever had such a regular platform, and you’ve demonstrated a memory, policy knowledge, and verbal facility (especially with long words) that are almost superhuman. You might be California’s greatest polysyllabic performance since Julie Andrews recorded “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” for Disney’s Mary Poppins. Your […]
High living costs make people poor
There’s no question that the COVID-19 pandemic and the severe recession it spawned are widening California’s economic divide. California already had the nation’s highest rate of functional poverty before this year began, as calculated by the Census Bureau using cost-of-living as well as income data, with nearly 20% of the state’s 40 million people impoverished. […]
Bigger Than Politics: The Future of Public Education
As the school semester grows near, we discuss whether to open the schools or rely on home schooling, often in the hands of overworked parents. This is bigger than political campaigns. Each day, the pressure increases on Gov. Gavin Newsom, his good start in handling the pandemic forgotten as the number of coronavirus cases […]