California’s Housing Affordability Crisis Has a New Culprit

California’s housing affordability crisis has a new culprit: short-term rental platforms, like Airbnb. Whether it is the 2015 anti-Airbnb San Francisco ballot measure battle or city council votes banning such platforms like the one that occurred last month in Danville, California, there is a belief that if only Airbnb and other similar platforms didn’t exist, […]

Californians Are Still “Meh” About the Economic Recovery

This Thursday, Governor Jerry Brown is set to make his annual State of the State address to a joint session of the State Assembly and State Senate. If last year’s is any measure of what to expect, Brown will likely tout the continued economic recovery California is experiencing. And he has good reason to do […]

Watch Out for the Polling Issue Trap

The world is watching Paris as world leaders and other interested parties (including a delegation from California) gather in France’s capital to negotiate collective (but voluntary) actions to address global climate change. To policy leaders and advocates who are particularly concerned about climate change, the general lack of action both in the United States and […]

California Isn’t Any Better at Reducing CO2 Emissions Than The Rest of the U.S.

The United Nations Conference on Climate Change currently being held in Paris seemingly has everyone focused on this issue. Oddly enough, even though they can’t negotiate for the United States (nor, are the U.S. negotiators likely to listen to them), California has a large delegation in France’s capital, including Governor Jerry Brown, Senate President Pro […]

CA GOP Should Not Give Up on Winnable Senate Seat

Apparently, the California Republican Party is hesitant to support out-going Assembly Minority Leader Kristin Olsen’s possible challenge of Democratic State Senator Cathleen Galgiani (SD 5). The reason being that local and state business groups have determined that Galgiani is a sufficiently pro-business Democrat in an otherwise business-skeptic Democratic caucus. Abandoning one of its legislative leaders is sufficiently ridiculous, but […]

To Be Competitive, the California GOP Must Change Hearts and Minds

In 2014, the California Republican Party – for the first time since November 2006 – had a successful election night. Their Assembly candidates knocked off three sitting Democratic legislators (the first time since 1994 a Democratic incumbent lost re-election) and they picked up a San Francisco Bay-area district. In the Senate, Republicans picked up an […]

Californians See the Housing Affordability Crisis as a Threat to the California Dream

This is an abridged version of an article that appeared in the May/June 2015 Issue 1502 of the Hoover Institution’s Eureka – a bi-monthly publication on relevant California policy topics. To read the full Issue 1502, visit Eureka. To read more about the Golden State Poll, click here. California’s housing prices are the 2nd highest […]

California Transportation: A New Way of Thinking, Not New Taxes

Earlier this month, Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins of San Diego made a bold proposal – add another vehicle fee to the books. Californians typically punish their elected officials for tampering with their vehicle fees. Just ask former Governor Gray Davis, whose tripling of the vehicle license fee became a central argument for his eventual recall. […]

Golden State Poll: Where Brown Should Lead and Where He Should Follow

In the public policy arena, elected officials don’t want to be too far ahead nor too far behind public opinion. The trick is finding that balance of leading versus following. On January 5th, Governor Brown briefly laid out three major policy prescriptions for 2015 and more broadly, his final term as Governor. On January 13th, […]

The California Conundrum

The original unabridged version of this analysis can be found on the Hoover Institution’s online journal, Defining Ideas. To view the survey, please see Hoover’s California blog, Eureka. Jerry Brown is going to win on November 4. Based on the Hoover Institution’s recently released October 2014 Golden State Poll, Brown has a 17 point advantage […]