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 […]
A Perspective on Police Reform
The way to achieve police reform is to have the rank-and-file officer core buy into reforms. That was the message during a panel discussion at Cal State LA’s Pat Brown Institute’s annual conference looking post-election, “Where do we go from here?” But it will take not only the police to accept reforms but for the […]
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 […]
Proposed Drastic Cuts to LAPD Could Settle the Defund the Police Debate
When Los Angeles City Administrative Officer Rich Llewellyn suggested that the LAPD might have to cut 10% of its force, or 951 officers, due to a pandemic induced budget crunch the defund the police advocates cheered. If this cut actually happens—and cutting police is an old “cry wolf” strategy to secure new funds that is […]
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 […]