SACRAMENTO — After Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1228, raising the minimum wage for fast-food workers and creating a council to regulate working conditions, the bill’s author issued a typical highfalutin statement. “We did not just raise the minimum…
SACRAMENTO — Several years ago, I was shopping in a Santa Ana big-box store when a nondescript young man asked the clerk to show him a video game system — probably a $200-to-$300 item — that was kept in a…
How could 6,000 shelter beds be unoccupied in Los Angeles County? It’s a number, reported in LAist in July, that makes no sense given the miles of homeless encampments that occupy area streets and sidewalks. Looking for an answer, I…
SACRAMENTO — It didn’t take long for my predications of an insurance crisis to come true. In my American Spectator column in January, I predicted that California’s “rigged” insurance market was careening toward a crisis and leading “some companies to pull out…
California lost 500,000 people between 2020 and 2022, which is nearly the equivalent of the entire population of Sacramento, the state’s sixth-largest city. Actually, California didn’t lose these people. We know where they went. People die and give birth, and immigrants still…
Sacramento It was one of the most absurd stories of California’s lunacy. In the midst of one of the worst droughts in the state’s history, state and federal wildlife officials were depleting a large reservoir in the Sierra foothills to save…
Sacramento California’s state budget is flush with cash and spending levels have hit record highs. After last decade’s recession, state lawmakers talked about making up for spending “cutbacks,” but those days of slowed spending growth are long-distant memories. Nevertheless, every…
Sacramento The concept of black markets is simple enough even for a California lawmaker to grasp. Most people would prefer to buy products in a legal marketplace, and generally are willing to pay higher prices to do so. Legal products…
Sacramento The award for the most ridiculous opening paragraph in a news story, this week anyway, goes to CBS Sacramento for its coverage of a 2020 ballot measure that the secretary of state has recently approved for signature gathering: “A ballot…