Blog
Newsom says, “AVOID Chevron.” Californians may want to avoid Sacramento’s gas policies
Chevron controls 19% of California’s gas market with more than 1,600 stations, making it the state’s largest branded gasoline retailer according to a joint report prepared in part by the California Energy Commission. The company operates two of the eleven remaining refineries in California, one in Richmond and one in El Segundo. ...
Blog
Environmentalists Vs. Renewable Energy
Virginia-based power firm AES has plans to build a 40-acre battery facility in the Coyote Valley hard up against a conservation area not far off U.S. 101. The valley is “a key wildlife corridor,” says the Sierra Club, that features “open space, trees, and agricultural fields.” The project would be sited on ...
Blog
Broken Promises: The California High-Speed Rail Might End Up Being Little More Than A Regular Train — A Particularly Expensive One
Newsom denied that the cost — once a paltry, in comparison, $33 billion — had soared to $231 billion. “We’re actually making this project work,” he claimed. Newsom told Maher that the train “goes back three administrations” and he “inherited a mess” — both of which are true. It’s also true that the want-to-be-president governor ...
Blog
Facing a housing crisis, Boise focuses on incentives, not mandates
Facing a housing crisis, Boise focuses on incentives, not mandates By Sarah Downey | June 12, 2026 The familiar adage of the carrot and the stick helps sum up what Boise is doing to manage a fast-growing population mixed with a housing crunch. Instead of employing a regulation-heavy stick approach, ...
Blog
Is California Coastal Commission finally getting its comeuppance?
California has one of the world’s most spectacular coastlines, which meanders 1,100 miles from Imperial Beach to Crescent City. And, of course, everyone wants to “Save Our Coast” and assure public access to beaches, which is why Californians voted 55% to 45% in 1972 for Proposition 20. It promised to protect ...
Blog
On The David Lucero Case: The Victims Left Behind
When David Lucero went to work one night in June 2013, he wasn’t thinking about criminal justice reform. He was thinking about his son. The single father had picked up a shift as a bouncer outside a Sunnyvale nightclub to help pay for his son’s Pop Warner football fees and ...
Blog
Is There A Limit To The Abuse California Businesses Will Tolerate?
This isn’t the sort of insanity of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, but the type of insanity that doesn’t care what the outcome is. California’s Cartwright Act is the state’s primary antitrust law. It allows both government and private actors to make antitrust claims against businesses. A California Supreme ...
Blog
The Gordon Chang Report–Trump and Xi: Is This ‘Reagan-Gorbachev No. 2’?
READ THE PDF Trump and Xi: Is This ‘Reagan-Gorbachev No. 2’? “We were already in Cold War 2.0 with China,” Charles Payne, the Fox Business anchor, told Jesse Watters, immediately after President Donald Trump’s Beijing summit in May. “I think it’s thawing out tremendously. I don’t think a lot of ...
Blog
SMART bomb: Wine country’s commuter-rail catastrophe
SMART bomb: Wine country’s commuter-rail catastrophe By D. Dowd Muska | June 5, 2026 BOOK REVIEW: “The Great Train Heist: The California SMART Taxpayer Rip-off” They tried in 1990. It didn’t work. They tried in 1998. Nothing doing. They tried in 2000. Voters declined. They tried in 2006. No dice. ...
Blog
Newsom’s May budget portends future crises for local governments
Gov. Jerry Brown’s last budget spent $140.4 billion in the general fund for fiscal year 2018-19. Newsom’s May Revision to his 2026-27 budget exploded that to $246.6 billion. That’s a 76% increase in eight years at a time the state’s population didn’t grow and the Consumer Price Index rose just ...
Newsom says, “AVOID Chevron.” Californians may want to avoid Sacramento’s gas policies
Chevron controls 19% of California’s gas market with more than 1,600 stations, making it the state’s largest branded gasoline retailer according to a joint report prepared in part by the California Energy Commission. The company operates two of the eleven remaining refineries in California, one in Richmond and one in El Segundo. ...
Environmentalists Vs. Renewable Energy
Virginia-based power firm AES has plans to build a 40-acre battery facility in the Coyote Valley hard up against a conservation area not far off U.S. 101. The valley is “a key wildlife corridor,” says the Sierra Club, that features “open space, trees, and agricultural fields.” The project would be sited on ...
Broken Promises: The California High-Speed Rail Might End Up Being Little More Than A Regular Train — A Particularly Expensive One
Newsom denied that the cost — once a paltry, in comparison, $33 billion — had soared to $231 billion. “We’re actually making this project work,” he claimed. Newsom told Maher that the train “goes back three administrations” and he “inherited a mess” — both of which are true. It’s also true that the want-to-be-president governor ...
Facing a housing crisis, Boise focuses on incentives, not mandates
Facing a housing crisis, Boise focuses on incentives, not mandates By Sarah Downey | June 12, 2026 The familiar adage of the carrot and the stick helps sum up what Boise is doing to manage a fast-growing population mixed with a housing crunch. Instead of employing a regulation-heavy stick approach, ...
Is California Coastal Commission finally getting its comeuppance?
California has one of the world’s most spectacular coastlines, which meanders 1,100 miles from Imperial Beach to Crescent City. And, of course, everyone wants to “Save Our Coast” and assure public access to beaches, which is why Californians voted 55% to 45% in 1972 for Proposition 20. It promised to protect ...
On The David Lucero Case: The Victims Left Behind
When David Lucero went to work one night in June 2013, he wasn’t thinking about criminal justice reform. He was thinking about his son. The single father had picked up a shift as a bouncer outside a Sunnyvale nightclub to help pay for his son’s Pop Warner football fees and ...
Is There A Limit To The Abuse California Businesses Will Tolerate?
This isn’t the sort of insanity of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, but the type of insanity that doesn’t care what the outcome is. California’s Cartwright Act is the state’s primary antitrust law. It allows both government and private actors to make antitrust claims against businesses. A California Supreme ...
The Gordon Chang Report–Trump and Xi: Is This ‘Reagan-Gorbachev No. 2’?
READ THE PDF Trump and Xi: Is This ‘Reagan-Gorbachev No. 2’? “We were already in Cold War 2.0 with China,” Charles Payne, the Fox Business anchor, told Jesse Watters, immediately after President Donald Trump’s Beijing summit in May. “I think it’s thawing out tremendously. I don’t think a lot of ...
SMART bomb: Wine country’s commuter-rail catastrophe
SMART bomb: Wine country’s commuter-rail catastrophe By D. Dowd Muska | June 5, 2026 BOOK REVIEW: “The Great Train Heist: The California SMART Taxpayer Rip-off” They tried in 1990. It didn’t work. They tried in 1998. Nothing doing. They tried in 2000. Voters declined. They tried in 2006. No dice. ...
Newsom’s May budget portends future crises for local governments
Gov. Jerry Brown’s last budget spent $140.4 billion in the general fund for fiscal year 2018-19. Newsom’s May Revision to his 2026-27 budget exploded that to $246.6 billion. That’s a 76% increase in eight years at a time the state’s population didn’t grow and the Consumer Price Index rose just ...