Kerry Jackson
California
Congress Takes an Important Step to Prevent Future Droughts
Thanks to a stormy winter, California’s long drought is over says state government. But California’s man-made drought will continue as long as Sacramento misallocates our water supply. Maybe it’s time to appeal to a higher but distant authority. When Gov. Jerry Brown declared in April that the six-year “drought emergency ...
California
Is Cap-and-Trade Really A Free Market Solution To Climate Change?
The mood was reportedly celebratory on the evening of July 17 after legislators approved a decade-long extension of the state’s carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program. But that’s not to say everyone was happy, or should be. Assembly Bill 398 will continue the current cap-and-trade system through 2030. It places a cap ...
California
CAPITAL IDEAS: Brown Plays on World Stage While Ignoring State’s Many Other Challenges
Gov. Jerry Brown is inviting “the whole world” to a climate summit in San Francisco next year. Evidently Sacramento has solved the state’s housing crisis, defused the public-employee pension bomb, eradicated poverty, overhauled the creaky tax regime and taken care of all of California’s other problems and can now move ...
California
Unless Legislature Embraces Free Market Energy Future, California Faces Next Solyndra
California’s solar power system generated such a glut of electricity for two weeks in March that some of it had to be sent out of state. Supporters of solar energy might believe this is evidence that it works. But it actually highlights solar energy’s biggest flaw. In late June, the ...
Business & Economics
Despite Budget Action, Much Work Remains to Solve State’s Pension Crisis
Anyone worried about an earthquake plunging California into the sea should be more concerned about what is really sinking the state: the cost of public-employee pensions. In the just-enacted 2017-18 state budget, about $8 billion of the state government’s $183 billion spending package will go to the California Public Employees’ Retirement ...
California
CAPITAL IDEAS: Majority Party’s War on Trump Is Really War on California’s Middle Class
Download the Brief KUSI television reported on June 12 that “Gov. Brown and the Democrats in Sacramento are in open revolt against President Trump.” While not a new development, it seems to indicate that California is seceding from the Union as it had threatened without providing official notice. Yes, it’s ...
Business & Economics
Policymakers Ignore Long-Term Consequences Of California Minimum Wage Hike
They were warned and they knew better but they did it nonetheless. It’s become the California Way. Continually legislate, never bother to contemplate. In 1992, economists David Card and Alan B. Krueger published a National Bureau of Economic Research paper that claimed, “Relative to stores in Pennsylvania, fast food restaurants ...
Business & Economics
New PRI Issue Brief Finds Government Policies Have Strangled State’s Housing Market, Made Housing Unaffordable
Big government policies and political constraints are the primary causes for rising California home prices and lack of supply, according to the findings of a new “California Ideas in Action” issue brief released today by the non-partisan Pacific Research Institute. Reforms to open California’s housing market are recommended as the ...
California
Would Single Payer Violate The Gann Limit?
The California Senate voted late on June 1 to create a single-payer health-care system that will cover every resident in the state with no money out of their pockets. But this “free” health care would be anything but. Its costs are going to be steep, painful, probably deadly – and ...
Business & Economics
Lack Of Transparency In Public Contract Negotiations Would Lead To Higher Taxpayer Costs
No state needs to reform the relationship that governments have with public-employee unions more than California. Yet lawmakers keep going in the wrong direction. Contract negotiations between government and the labor unions who represent the public employees should be transparent. Too often, both sides are working toward a common goal ...
Congress Takes an Important Step to Prevent Future Droughts
Thanks to a stormy winter, California’s long drought is over says state government. But California’s man-made drought will continue as long as Sacramento misallocates our water supply. Maybe it’s time to appeal to a higher but distant authority. When Gov. Jerry Brown declared in April that the six-year “drought emergency ...
Is Cap-and-Trade Really A Free Market Solution To Climate Change?
The mood was reportedly celebratory on the evening of July 17 after legislators approved a decade-long extension of the state’s carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program. But that’s not to say everyone was happy, or should be. Assembly Bill 398 will continue the current cap-and-trade system through 2030. It places a cap ...
CAPITAL IDEAS: Brown Plays on World Stage While Ignoring State’s Many Other Challenges
Gov. Jerry Brown is inviting “the whole world” to a climate summit in San Francisco next year. Evidently Sacramento has solved the state’s housing crisis, defused the public-employee pension bomb, eradicated poverty, overhauled the creaky tax regime and taken care of all of California’s other problems and can now move ...
Unless Legislature Embraces Free Market Energy Future, California Faces Next Solyndra
California’s solar power system generated such a glut of electricity for two weeks in March that some of it had to be sent out of state. Supporters of solar energy might believe this is evidence that it works. But it actually highlights solar energy’s biggest flaw. In late June, the ...
Despite Budget Action, Much Work Remains to Solve State’s Pension Crisis
Anyone worried about an earthquake plunging California into the sea should be more concerned about what is really sinking the state: the cost of public-employee pensions. In the just-enacted 2017-18 state budget, about $8 billion of the state government’s $183 billion spending package will go to the California Public Employees’ Retirement ...
CAPITAL IDEAS: Majority Party’s War on Trump Is Really War on California’s Middle Class
Download the Brief KUSI television reported on June 12 that “Gov. Brown and the Democrats in Sacramento are in open revolt against President Trump.” While not a new development, it seems to indicate that California is seceding from the Union as it had threatened without providing official notice. Yes, it’s ...
Policymakers Ignore Long-Term Consequences Of California Minimum Wage Hike
They were warned and they knew better but they did it nonetheless. It’s become the California Way. Continually legislate, never bother to contemplate. In 1992, economists David Card and Alan B. Krueger published a National Bureau of Economic Research paper that claimed, “Relative to stores in Pennsylvania, fast food restaurants ...
New PRI Issue Brief Finds Government Policies Have Strangled State’s Housing Market, Made Housing Unaffordable
Big government policies and political constraints are the primary causes for rising California home prices and lack of supply, according to the findings of a new “California Ideas in Action” issue brief released today by the non-partisan Pacific Research Institute. Reforms to open California’s housing market are recommended as the ...
Would Single Payer Violate The Gann Limit?
The California Senate voted late on June 1 to create a single-payer health-care system that will cover every resident in the state with no money out of their pockets. But this “free” health care would be anything but. Its costs are going to be steep, painful, probably deadly – and ...
Lack Of Transparency In Public Contract Negotiations Would Lead To Higher Taxpayer Costs
No state needs to reform the relationship that governments have with public-employee unions more than California. Yet lawmakers keep going in the wrong direction. Contract negotiations between government and the labor unions who represent the public employees should be transparent. Too often, both sides are working toward a common goal ...
