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Airheads
Capital Ideas
By: K. Lloyd Billingsley
10.26.1999
During the heyday of Stalinism, George Orwell noted that some ideas were so stupid only an intellectual could believe them, a fitting summation of this century. California now offers its own variation, ideas so stupid only a politician could believe them. But politicians have the power to take stupid ideas and make them into stupid laws. That is especially true when the politician’s party controls the assembly, the senate, and the governor’s office.
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A Pro-Women Presidency
The Contrarian
By: Naomi Lopez
10.20.1999
The prospect of the first female president of the United States is fascinating to all, regardless of age or gender, and Elizabeth Dole’s entrance and rapid departure from the race made headlines.
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Mau-Mauing the GAO
Capital Ideas
By: Steven F. Hayward, Ph.D
10.19.1999
One of the great arguments of the urban sprawl controversy concerns the alleged subsidies that low density suburban growth receives. Suburban growth, it is said, does not pay its way. Maybe not, but this claim brings to mind the old saw about wife-beating: if suburban growth doesn’t pay for itself, when did it stop paying for itself? How did all the suburbs of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s get built if they weren’t paying their way?
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Court Upholds Integrity of Prop. 227
Capital Ideas
By: Lance T. Izumi, J.D.
10.12.1999
Proposition 227, the anti-bilingual-education initiative, passed in a landslide last year. The public-education establishment unsurprisingly responded with a lawsuit to protect a failed system that was advancing barely seven percent of California’s 1.4 million limited English proficiency (LEP) students to English fluency each year. In September, a state appellate court, thankfully, quashed these efforts.
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Ipso Fatso
Capital Ideas
By: K. Lloyd Billingsley
10.5.1999
In the film Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood is chasing a murderer across Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. But the detective’s rather hefty partner can’t climb the fence, so Eastwood tells him to "take a walk, fatso." That message applies to California’s ruling class, for similar reasons.
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Gambling Prohibitionists Target the Internet
ePolicy
By: Justin Matlick*
10.1.1999
Congress is scheduled to vote this fall on whether to ban gambling sites from cyberspace. Before making this decision, legislators should remember that such a prohibition would be ineffective and damaging to the Internet. Contrary to regulation advocates’ claims, a gambling ban would harm the Internet’s moral character, not help it.
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Turning Teachers into Agents of Big Brother
Action Alerts
By: Gwynne Coburn
10.1.1999
While politicians proclaim that the era of big government is over, a California Assembly bill, currently awaiting the governor’s signature, will turn California school teachers into Big Brother’s home snoops.
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Unraveling Welfare Reform in California
By: Naomi Lopez
10.1.1999
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s most recent statistics, the nationwide welfare recipient caseload dropped by 48 percent, from about 14 million in 1993 to about 7.3 million this year (see Figure 1). Unfortunately, California does not have much to celebrate. Despite some progress in reducing the state’s caseload, California is near the bottom when compared to the rest of the nation.
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California’s Mental Health Parity Insanity
Action Alerts
By: Mark Schiller, M.D.
10.1.1999
This week, California Governor Gray Davis signed legislation which declares that "mental illness is real." As a psychiatrist I’d have to say that the legislators got this part correct. But the new law also mandates parity in coverage for mental illness—bad medicine for all Californians.
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Charter Schools and the Long Road to Education Reform
PRI Study
By: Thomas Dawson
10.1.1999
Charter schools are deregulated public schools, free from most district and state oversight in exchange for meeting specific academic and financial standards over a fixed time period. The schools operate at public expense, and parents are free to choose them instead of sending their children to a standard public school
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