Sacramento “Never give the bastards more money,” a friend always says when discussing proposed tax increases. “They’ll only squander it.” That also epitomizes my philosophy over decades of voting and writing about ballot initiatives and bonds. I always recommend a…
Sacramento California progressives claim to be the champions of the poor and downtrodden, but their vocal support for legislation that obliterates the state’s charter schools reinforces that they mainly are the cat’s paw for the state’s powerful public-employee unions. If…
California’s economy is slowing, and it couldn’t come at a better time. Don’t get me wrong — as a worker, investor, and property investor, I’d love to see the economic good times go on forever. But as someone who has…
Sacramento We can’t accuse “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders of lacking a sense of optics. His new housing plan, which would spend $2.5 trillion on housing projects and impose draconian rent caps on private landlords, is a 10-year plan. The Soviets…
Underage drinking remains a nationwide problem, but there’s one approach that policymakers never consider: banning the sale of most types of alcoholic beverages to adults to keep it out of the hands of youth. That’s true even though virtually all…
Sacramento The last week of the legislative session always is a wild ride, but this year’s proceedings take on an urgency that we haven’t seen in the past several years given the stridently more progressive tilt of the state government. It’s…
This California Watch column ought to be renamed Crisis Watch, given the number of public-policy crises that have engulfed the Golden State. There’s a common thread in all of them. They all are the result of government agencies or policies. There’s…
Sacramento California’s housing crisis has such an obvious cause that even many of the state’s Democratic lawmakers now acknowledge it. Local and county governments have for decades discouraged the construction of housing tracts through slow-growth ordinances, global-warming policies, environmental laws…
Sacramento On a trip back from the rugged Mendocino coast, we were fortunate enough to reach California State Route 37, which meanders along the north side of San Pablo Bay from Marin County to the Interstate 80 intersection at Vallejo,…