Blog
Agriculture
Balance between farms, fish needs to be found for food production
“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. California’s farmers are feeling a similar sentiment this year with water allotments cut shorter than expected after a winter with abundant rain and snow. California is the produce basket of ...
Blog
For Third Year in a Row, PRI Survey Finds Vast Majority of Americans Are Satisfied with their Health Coverage
For Third Year in a Row, PRI Survey Finds Vast Majority of Americans Are Satisfied with their Health Coverage Just 37% Support Government Health Care Takeover SACRAMENTO – For the third year in a row, an overwhelming majority of Americans say they are satisfied with their current health coverage, based ...
Agriculture
Wildfires need more than money thrown at them to put the flames out
It has been an extraordinary year for California fires. The Park Fire currently raging as of this writing in Butte and Tehama Counties has destroyed nearly 300 homes and businesses and remains just 18 percent contained. More than 200,000 acres of have burned so far, well above the five-year average ...
Blog
Don’t expect housing fixes from the federal government
The heat of a presidential election – especially one that’s seen highly unusual and disruptive events, from an attempted assassination attempt the late-stage replacement of a candidate – is rarely a good time to discuss nuanced policy. Less than 100 days from the vote, both candidates mainly toss out vague ...
Blog
Boom town or bust? Developers postpone new-city plan
The developers apparently ran into bad polling and a negative report from Solano County questioning funding sources for related infrastructure. Taking more time and getting the bureaucratic papers and all the infrastructure funding and governance details in order will address some of the arguments the NIMBYs (Not In My Back ...
Blog
Read about the proposed tax on link clicks
Free Markets, Not a New “Link Tax” Best Way to Preserve California Journalism
One of the most contentious issues at the end of the legislative session is the so-called “California Journalism Preservation Act” (Assembly Bill 886, by Asm. Buffy Wicks, D-Berkeley), which would require online platforms like Google and Meta (parent of Facebook) to pay for digital news content. Payments could be made ...
Blog
The Prop 47 Budgetary Shell Game – Who you Gonna Believe? Them, or your Lying Eyes?
In 2014, Californians voted overwhelmingly to pass Proposition 47, known by its supporters title the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.” Prop 47’s advocates made a strong case, promising that both crime and incarceration rates would decline. At the same time, supporters argued that “massive” savings from ending the practice of ...
Blog
The good, bad and ugly: Lessons from India’s private city
The good, bad and ugly: Lessons from India’s private city Gurgaon, the large satellite city outside New Delhi, shows the tremendous upside, and a few pitfalls, of privatization. by Scott Beyer | July 24, 2024 Urban privatization – via “startup cities,” “competitive governance” and the like – has risen these ...
Blog
Why Dallas permits more housing than all of California
In April, the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area permitted more housing than all of California, meaning that on a per-capita basis, DFW permitted five times as much housing as the Golden State. Given that interest rates are the same nationwide, how is one metro area permitting more new housing than the largest state in the ...
Blog
Learn about the high costs of California's green mandates
Los Angeles’ Costly Path to an All “Clean Power” Future
California’s energy transition is moving along about as smoothly as Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. Both are incoherent, have encountered hurdles they can’t scale and have made promises that can’t be kept. California’s race to produce greenhouse-gas emission-free power by 2045, for instance, has hit a snag in Los Angeles, where ...
Balance between farms, fish needs to be found for food production
“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. California’s farmers are feeling a similar sentiment this year with water allotments cut shorter than expected after a winter with abundant rain and snow. California is the produce basket of ...
For Third Year in a Row, PRI Survey Finds Vast Majority of Americans Are Satisfied with their Health Coverage
For Third Year in a Row, PRI Survey Finds Vast Majority of Americans Are Satisfied with their Health Coverage Just 37% Support Government Health Care Takeover SACRAMENTO – For the third year in a row, an overwhelming majority of Americans say they are satisfied with their current health coverage, based ...
Wildfires need more than money thrown at them to put the flames out
It has been an extraordinary year for California fires. The Park Fire currently raging as of this writing in Butte and Tehama Counties has destroyed nearly 300 homes and businesses and remains just 18 percent contained. More than 200,000 acres of have burned so far, well above the five-year average ...
Don’t expect housing fixes from the federal government
The heat of a presidential election – especially one that’s seen highly unusual and disruptive events, from an attempted assassination attempt the late-stage replacement of a candidate – is rarely a good time to discuss nuanced policy. Less than 100 days from the vote, both candidates mainly toss out vague ...
Boom town or bust? Developers postpone new-city plan
The developers apparently ran into bad polling and a negative report from Solano County questioning funding sources for related infrastructure. Taking more time and getting the bureaucratic papers and all the infrastructure funding and governance details in order will address some of the arguments the NIMBYs (Not In My Back ...
Read about the proposed tax on link clicks
Free Markets, Not a New “Link Tax” Best Way to Preserve California Journalism
One of the most contentious issues at the end of the legislative session is the so-called “California Journalism Preservation Act” (Assembly Bill 886, by Asm. Buffy Wicks, D-Berkeley), which would require online platforms like Google and Meta (parent of Facebook) to pay for digital news content. Payments could be made ...
The Prop 47 Budgetary Shell Game – Who you Gonna Believe? Them, or your Lying Eyes?
In 2014, Californians voted overwhelmingly to pass Proposition 47, known by its supporters title the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.” Prop 47’s advocates made a strong case, promising that both crime and incarceration rates would decline. At the same time, supporters argued that “massive” savings from ending the practice of ...
The good, bad and ugly: Lessons from India’s private city
The good, bad and ugly: Lessons from India’s private city Gurgaon, the large satellite city outside New Delhi, shows the tremendous upside, and a few pitfalls, of privatization. by Scott Beyer | July 24, 2024 Urban privatization – via “startup cities,” “competitive governance” and the like – has risen these ...
Why Dallas permits more housing than all of California
In April, the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area permitted more housing than all of California, meaning that on a per-capita basis, DFW permitted five times as much housing as the Golden State. Given that interest rates are the same nationwide, how is one metro area permitting more new housing than the largest state in the ...
Learn about the high costs of California's green mandates
Los Angeles’ Costly Path to an All “Clean Power” Future
California’s energy transition is moving along about as smoothly as Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. Both are incoherent, have encountered hurdles they can’t scale and have made promises that can’t be kept. California’s race to produce greenhouse-gas emission-free power by 2045, for instance, has hit a snag in Los Angeles, where ...
