Last Wednesday, California passed a new bill that will force “gig workers” for companies like Uber and Lyft to be reclassified as permanent employees rather than independent contractors. Proponents of the bill see the gig economy through a moralistic lens in which…
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 When I moved to Orange County in the mid-1990s, it was still the most Republican county, in raw numbers, in the United States. Virtually anyone with serious political ambition there ran as a Republican, although changes were starting to…
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) on Monday tweeted a graphic containing the names and occupations of 44 San Antonio residents who donated the maximum legal amount ($2800) to President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign. Castro, who chairs his brother Julián Castro’s campaign…
We shouldn’t visit the sins of parents on their children. In the Hebrew Bible God does it, to the “third and fourth generation,” but our Constitution rightly forbids “corruption of blood.” When children want to impose their parents’ dangerous views…
Why does California suffer such a scourge of homelessness and poverty? Why do Californians allow it to go on? Where is the outrage that their fellow citizens are living in filth and squalor, being stripped of their human dignity while…
Sacramento California’s cities, counties, and public agencies have secured a record tax windfall in recent years, as property tax collections soar, yet they continue to cry poor-mouth. There’s not enough money, they say, to provide adequate public services. Government officials and…
Friends call. Acquaintances email. (I don’t text, Facebook, or tweet.) (But my students still are shocked that I know what’s what.) The message of concern: “Dov, I heard about the earthquake. Are you OK?” Yes, I’m OK. It was a…