Let’s Unite to Draw Distressed Coastal Residents
Thousands of people on the coasts are pleading for help getting out of the urban enclaves from which they once looked down their noses at us, out in Flyover Country. How should we respond? By taking advantage of an economic-development opportunity for the ages. The reports by now have become too numerous to dispute: People […]
On Lockdowns, At Least One County LA Supervisor Gets It
Two Los Angeles County Supervisors represent the San Fernando Valley area. One of them understands the challenges of business operators. The other doesn’t seem to get it. That became clear recently when the supervisors voted 3-2 to allow the shutdown of outdoor dining for at least three weeks at Los Angeles County restaurants in response […]
California Tops Nation Least Affordable Housing
Nearly all of the nation’s top 20 least affordable housing markets are in California. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and Wells Fargo Bank report that 18 of the country’s most unaffordable regions are in the Golden State, including all of the top 10. As usual, San Francisco and its peninsula communities led the […]
Look to Orange County for How to Turn California Purple
For decades, Orange County was a reliable incubator of conservative politics, and, in the era of Nixon, Goldwater and Reagan, a fairly powerful force in the state and on the national level. More recently, the area has been widely seen as tilting blue, particularly during the Trump era, with the media celebrating the end of […]
Earth to Palmdale
Hello, Palmdale. Planet Earth calling. You ever coming back here? You, a struggling working-class exurb of 160,000, may be located in the Antelope Valley, in north L.A. County’s. But your civic head lives in outer space. Is it your hot desert air, your elevation (2,657 feet), or all your psychedelically orange poppies? I don’t know, […]
The Case for Cristina Garcia for Senator
As all the political world knows, the selection of Senator Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s Vice President will create a vacancy in the US Senate that Governor Gavin Newsom is authorized to fill by either making an “interim” appointment or calling a special election within 100 days. The Governor has indicated he will appoint a […]
Hewlett Packard packs up — Will California ever get fed up with losing to Texas?
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), the California firm that literally kickstarted Silicon Valley in a garage in 1939, is moving to Texas. The low-key announcement was made via an SEC filing on Dec. 1. If California’s anti-jobs policies, its high taxes, capricious regulatory enforcement, and blackout-inducing energy policy can chase out the company that launched Silicon […]
Here’s How Gavin Could Make His Big Four Appointments
The much-discussed contest over who Gov. Newsom names to fill Kamala Harris’ Senate seat—a contest in which I remain the best choice—is about far more than one appointment. In fact, it’s starting to look like the governor will get to make a Big 4 of appointments to elected office. And on top of those, he’s […]
LA Need not Sacrifice Public Safety
Today’s LA Times reports the city is looking at layoffs of police officers because of a budget shortfall. But as we explain here, LA could save nearly $400 million per year by eliminating a rich subsidy for retired city employees that was rendered redundant by subsidies provided by the federally-funded Affordable Care Act in 2010 […]