Environment
Agriculture
County fairs are great opportunities to go meat shopping
Many of California’s county fairs host livestock exhibits giving youth exhibitors an opportunity to sell their livestock during a live auction. Money from the sale of livestock is often saved in college funds, spent on first-car purchases, or funneled into the following years’ project – teaching youth real world money ...
Blog
Read the latest on California's rising gas prices
California Goes Groucho On Gasoline
What did California officials think was going to happen when they decided it was a dazzlingly brilliant idea to hound the oil industry out of the state? That magic would take over and there would be no consequences for their rash decisions? Apparently, they weren’t thinking at all, because, according to reports, the California Energy ...
Agriculture
Immigration policy reform, not Medicaid recipients, is the answer to our workforce problem
Some harvests have already started across the country despite farms and ranches facing labor shortages. Where will workers come from to ensure crops don’t go unharvested? U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recently made a suggestion. In a news conference Rollins said, “So, no amnesty under any circumstances, mass deportations continue, ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
California’s obsession with density limits housing growth
Morphing from a once-reasonable requirement that building permit applicants report on the “significant environmental impact” of their construction project and how they intend to mitigate that impact, CEQA is now a process-heavy, bureaucratic beast that delays projects for years and costs developers millions. Of all the ways California’s Legislature and ...
Agriculture
MAHA Report: a failure on several levels
When the MAHA report was released, readers quickly noticed what were later referred to as “formatting errors.” Those errors included footnotes and citations that didn’t exist and were apparently the result of “hallucinations” by report writers relying on AI rather than doing the work to understand existing research. What is ...
Commentary
Now what, California?
President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is a grotesque monster to the renewable energy partisans. It phases out subsidies for wind and solar power, which have been around for decades and were extended by the previous administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. Industry sources have told the media that without taxpayer help, ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Newsom wisely uses political capital to secure CEQA reform
Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t afraid to step into the political fray when it comes to standing up to President Donald Trump over national issues that impact California. He’s not always wrong when he sues the administration or speaks out against, say, ICE raids in Los Angeles. But most of those high-profile actions ...
Blog
Learn how much California's green mandates will cost you
Drivers Will Pay More for State’s “Managed Decline” of Oil and Gas Production
It might be smart for oil and gas industry executives to start planning to pack up for a complete pullout from California. Or to at least notify government officials that their exit is being seriously contemplated. It’s not easy to operate a business that has been declared unofficially, but effectively, an enemy of the ...
Blog
How’s That ‘Accelerated’ Fire Rebuild Going?
The toll from the wildfires is staggering: More than 18,000 structures were burned, 53 square miles were incinerated, 30, maybe more, people were killed, a couple of hundred thousand were evacuated. For the latter, there are pieces to pick up. Some estimates say more than 11,000 homes were destroyed. Politicians, ...
Commentary
California Shouldn’t Set America’s Environmental Policy
For decades, California has made environmental policy as if it were a sovereign nation, not an equal member of the Union. The federal government granted it this privilege on the premise that the Golden State faced uniquely urgent challenges requiring special treatment. Over time, that sense of exceptionalism has only ...
County fairs are great opportunities to go meat shopping
Many of California’s county fairs host livestock exhibits giving youth exhibitors an opportunity to sell their livestock during a live auction. Money from the sale of livestock is often saved in college funds, spent on first-car purchases, or funneled into the following years’ project – teaching youth real world money ...
Read the latest on California's rising gas prices
California Goes Groucho On Gasoline
What did California officials think was going to happen when they decided it was a dazzlingly brilliant idea to hound the oil industry out of the state? That magic would take over and there would be no consequences for their rash decisions? Apparently, they weren’t thinking at all, because, according to reports, the California Energy ...
Immigration policy reform, not Medicaid recipients, is the answer to our workforce problem
Some harvests have already started across the country despite farms and ranches facing labor shortages. Where will workers come from to ensure crops don’t go unharvested? U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recently made a suggestion. In a news conference Rollins said, “So, no amnesty under any circumstances, mass deportations continue, ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
California’s obsession with density limits housing growth
Morphing from a once-reasonable requirement that building permit applicants report on the “significant environmental impact” of their construction project and how they intend to mitigate that impact, CEQA is now a process-heavy, bureaucratic beast that delays projects for years and costs developers millions. Of all the ways California’s Legislature and ...
MAHA Report: a failure on several levels
When the MAHA report was released, readers quickly noticed what were later referred to as “formatting errors.” Those errors included footnotes and citations that didn’t exist and were apparently the result of “hallucinations” by report writers relying on AI rather than doing the work to understand existing research. What is ...
Now what, California?
President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is a grotesque monster to the renewable energy partisans. It phases out subsidies for wind and solar power, which have been around for decades and were extended by the previous administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. Industry sources have told the media that without taxpayer help, ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Newsom wisely uses political capital to secure CEQA reform
Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t afraid to step into the political fray when it comes to standing up to President Donald Trump over national issues that impact California. He’s not always wrong when he sues the administration or speaks out against, say, ICE raids in Los Angeles. But most of those high-profile actions ...
Learn how much California's green mandates will cost you
Drivers Will Pay More for State’s “Managed Decline” of Oil and Gas Production
It might be smart for oil and gas industry executives to start planning to pack up for a complete pullout from California. Or to at least notify government officials that their exit is being seriously contemplated. It’s not easy to operate a business that has been declared unofficially, but effectively, an enemy of the ...
How’s That ‘Accelerated’ Fire Rebuild Going?
The toll from the wildfires is staggering: More than 18,000 structures were burned, 53 square miles were incinerated, 30, maybe more, people were killed, a couple of hundred thousand were evacuated. For the latter, there are pieces to pick up. Some estimates say more than 11,000 homes were destroyed. Politicians, ...
California Shouldn’t Set America’s Environmental Policy
For decades, California has made environmental policy as if it were a sovereign nation, not an equal member of the Union. The federal government granted it this privilege on the premise that the Golden State faced uniquely urgent challenges requiring special treatment. Over time, that sense of exceptionalism has only ...
