Small Businesses Offer Key Fiscal Support for Government
The recent flurry of stories about small business woes often miss an important part of the picture: Small businesses’ role in helping fund government’s important responsibilities. Consider the City of Placerville. Located in El Dorado County with the original colorful Gold Rush era monikers, the sometimes controversial Hangtown and the more staid Dry Diggings, the […]
California Is the State with the Most Coronavirus Restrictions; Third Worst in Taxpayers Getting What They Pay For – WalletHub Studies
(Editor’s Note: The following releases from WalletHub offers a look at state rankings with the fewest coronavirus restrictions to the most. The study found California has the most. A second study revealed Return on Investment on taxes. California was ranked third worse in this category.) With some states pausing their reopening processes due to spikes […]
How the Virus Is Pushing America Toward a Better Future
Pessimism is the mood of the day, with 80 percent of Americans saying the country is generally out of control. Even before civil unrest and pestilence, most Americans believed our country was in decline, Pew reported, with a shrinking middle class, increased indebtedness and growing polarization. It’s a dark hour, but the United States has […]
Will Defund the Police Movement Revive Thoughts of LA Secession?
An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times over the weekend by Jon Wiener looked back at the Los Angeles beach community of Venice attempting to secede from the City of Los Angeles 50 years ago over LAPD actions that secession organizers said terrorized the community. The article rekindled a thought I had when the movement […]
Corruption in Government
The Los Angeles Times recently wrote a timely editorial about “Ending City Hall Corruption” in the city of Los Angeles. Written in response to the recent arrest of City Councilman Jose Huizar for taking payoffs from developers to get their projects approved, the Times stated that the city’s development review process “…just invites corruption.” Their […]
California Needs Fossil Fuels
With the world reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, California, the U.S. and world is using more energy than ever, and growing, according to the British Petroleum (BP) Statistical Review of World Energy 2020 (SRWE2020). What abundant energy and electricity offers is a way to grow California’s economy, and recover from the coronavirus simultaneously. Additionally, abundant […]
Six Curious Takeaways from California’s Small Business Loans
Organic farms, the governor’s winery group, a scooter startup and … Burning Man? The new list of California recipients of federal Paycheck Protection Program loans to ease economic fallout from the coronavirus is long, varied and sometimes bizarre. The Small Business Administration effort “to provide a direct incentive for small businesses to keep their workers […]
California and the Need for “Order”
In the current political environment, the phrase “law and order” has been entangled with the President Donald Trump’s campaign to clamp down on protestors and its implied racial overtones. But focusing on the second half of the equation, “order,” and what it represents, is becoming a problem for Governor Gavin Newsom and California authorities when […]
Before Calexit, A Final Push to Fix America
“Go to my website or use the hashtag #LetsGetTheCalOuttaHere!” shouts Gwyneth Paltrow in the Netflix series The Politician. Running for governor on a platform of leading California’s secession from the United States, Paltrow’s character wins 98 percent of the vote. This may be fiction, but California independence, is gaining cultural currency and real-world urgency. Our […]
Newsom now owns the COVID-19 pandemic
Just a few weeks ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom was boasting about California’s apparent success in suppressing COVID-19 infections in implicit contrast to other states, such as New York, that were being clobbered by the pandemic. He called it “bending the curve” of the infection rate and decided to reopen vast sections of the economy that […]