Rowena Itchon
Blog
Single-Payer Health Care Will Cost $12,250 per California Household
When Inside California Politics host Frank Buckley asked California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon whether he feels differently about the new attempt to bring single-payer health care to California (AB 1400) versus the last bill in 2017 (SB 562), Rendon replied, “that was really you know a cynical attempt I think ...
Blog
America’s Cities in Decline
Go Downtown Things will be great when you’re — Downtown No finer place for sure — Downtown Everything’s waiting for you – Petula Clark, 1964 Perhaps I date myself, but I can still remember this 1960s song that captured the allure of the city. Back then, downtown, the proverbial “engine ...
Agriculture
Farmers and Ranchers – The Unsung Heroes of 2021
What do evergreen trees, ham, turkey, eggnog, and champagne all have in common? The holidays, yes, but also America’s agriculture — most notably the great agricultural states of the West. Let’s start with Thanksgiving dinner. Our colleague Pam Lewison of the Washington Policy Center, and a farmer herself, recalls growing ...
Blog
Time to Cut Gas Taxes?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced earlier this month that energy prices in the U.S. rose 33 percent for the 12 months ending November. In many regions of California, prices rose even higher. In the L.A.-Long Beach-Anaheim region, energy prices jumped 35 percent. In the Inland Empire, prices shot up ...
Agriculture
How well do you know your federal government? Take the Deep State Quiz
Our colleagues at Open The Books did a deep dive into the deep state with their outstanding new report: Mapping the Swamp: A Study of the Administrative State, FY 2020. This eye-popping report shows just how big and bloated — not to mention costly — the federal government has become. ...
Blog
Millionaire Migration: Exhibit A – California
Some years ago — not long after the debt crisis in Greece – I took a cruise around the Greek Isles. As we drove past rows of villas and yachts outside of Athens, our tour guide made this snarky comment: according to the country’s tax rolls, there was only one ...
Blog
Biden’s 15% Corporate Minimum Tax Hurts Workers
The latest scheme to fund Pres. Biden’s multi-trillion social spending plan is to impose a 15 percent corporate minimum tax. Taxpayers might be wondering why it matters, since former Pres. Trump already lowered the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent in 2018. The devil, as they say, ...
Blog
How California Laws are Stealing Christmas
We’ve all heard about it by now – the supply chain crisis and the bottlenecks at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Last month, the “dwell time” – the time a container stays on a terminal between unloading from a ship and removal by a truck was six ...
Blog
Gallup Survey: Americans Push Back on Government Activism
It was 35 years ago when Ronald Reagan said at a press conference, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” And for most of the last three decades, a majority of Americans agreed with the Gipper. Last year marked only ...
Blog
The Untold Story of the Unspent Covid Dollars
It was recently uncovered that back in July, Sen. Joe Manchin outlined his views on the $3.5 trillion social spending package in a memo to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. In that document, Manchin specified that no funds should be distributed until after all the money from the $1.9 trillion ...
Single-Payer Health Care Will Cost $12,250 per California Household
When Inside California Politics host Frank Buckley asked California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon whether he feels differently about the new attempt to bring single-payer health care to California (AB 1400) versus the last bill in 2017 (SB 562), Rendon replied, “that was really you know a cynical attempt I think ...
America’s Cities in Decline
Go Downtown Things will be great when you’re — Downtown No finer place for sure — Downtown Everything’s waiting for you – Petula Clark, 1964 Perhaps I date myself, but I can still remember this 1960s song that captured the allure of the city. Back then, downtown, the proverbial “engine ...
Farmers and Ranchers – The Unsung Heroes of 2021
What do evergreen trees, ham, turkey, eggnog, and champagne all have in common? The holidays, yes, but also America’s agriculture — most notably the great agricultural states of the West. Let’s start with Thanksgiving dinner. Our colleague Pam Lewison of the Washington Policy Center, and a farmer herself, recalls growing ...
Time to Cut Gas Taxes?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced earlier this month that energy prices in the U.S. rose 33 percent for the 12 months ending November. In many regions of California, prices rose even higher. In the L.A.-Long Beach-Anaheim region, energy prices jumped 35 percent. In the Inland Empire, prices shot up ...
How well do you know your federal government? Take the Deep State Quiz
Our colleagues at Open The Books did a deep dive into the deep state with their outstanding new report: Mapping the Swamp: A Study of the Administrative State, FY 2020. This eye-popping report shows just how big and bloated — not to mention costly — the federal government has become. ...
Millionaire Migration: Exhibit A – California
Some years ago — not long after the debt crisis in Greece – I took a cruise around the Greek Isles. As we drove past rows of villas and yachts outside of Athens, our tour guide made this snarky comment: according to the country’s tax rolls, there was only one ...
Biden’s 15% Corporate Minimum Tax Hurts Workers
The latest scheme to fund Pres. Biden’s multi-trillion social spending plan is to impose a 15 percent corporate minimum tax. Taxpayers might be wondering why it matters, since former Pres. Trump already lowered the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent in 2018. The devil, as they say, ...
How California Laws are Stealing Christmas
We’ve all heard about it by now – the supply chain crisis and the bottlenecks at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Last month, the “dwell time” – the time a container stays on a terminal between unloading from a ship and removal by a truck was six ...
Gallup Survey: Americans Push Back on Government Activism
It was 35 years ago when Ronald Reagan said at a press conference, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” And for most of the last three decades, a majority of Americans agreed with the Gipper. Last year marked only ...
The Untold Story of the Unspent Covid Dollars
It was recently uncovered that back in July, Sen. Joe Manchin outlined his views on the $3.5 trillion social spending package in a memo to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. In that document, Manchin specified that no funds should be distributed until after all the money from the $1.9 trillion ...
