Blog
Blog
Another attempt to hike taxes to prop up failing transit
Another attempt to hike taxes to prop up failing transit By Steven Greenhut | April 4, 2025 When it comes to the Bay Area’s multiple transit systems, the numbers tell the story. As the San Francisco Chroniclereported last week, ridership at one suburban BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) stop (North ...
Blog
Even liberal cities are taking steps to boost housing construction
The very liberal city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, just accepted the reality that excessive government regulations prevent adequate housing production. The city imposed what is being hailed as “one of the most ambitious changes to any city’s zoning in decades” by eliminating exclusionary zoning (permitting only single family homes) and allowing residential buildings ...
Blog
Read the latest on California's water wars
California Water Works
The company “plans to anchor about two dozen 40-foot-long devices, called pods, to the seafloor several miles offshore and use them to take in saltwater and pump purified fresh water to shore in a pipeline,” the Times reports. Before that, though, the concept has to be proved, which is why ...
Blog
Read the latest on the Southern California wildfires
State Budget Watch: Lawmakers Should Heavily Scrutinize LA’s Wildfire Funding Ask
Included in the city’s requests are expected relief items, such as a $291 million state loan to help the city pay for debris removal and repairs to damaged city property pending FEMA repayment. But some of LA’s funding list shows city leaders haven’t yet learned their lessons from decades of ...
Blog
Counting the Cost of Single-Payer
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is back on the road promoting Medicare for All. “We are the only major nation on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a human right,” he complained in a recent speech in Nevada. But the Vermont senator failed to explain how ...
Blog
Single-Family Homes Don’t Fulfill Everyone’s Dreams – Or Budgets
Single-Family Homes Don’t Fulfill Everyone’s Dreams – Or Budgets By Thomas Irwin | March 28, 2025 As the father of two young children, one of my primary roles is to be a sounding board for all kinds of desires from my children. These run the gambit from the ordinary and ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Freedom v. efficiency: Hangzhou’s City Brain Can Improve Efficiency, But Raises Many Questions
Editor’s Note: In Part 3 of the Free Cities Center series, Serlet looks at an AI program that offers some benefits, but raises much more serious questions. Hangzhou’s City Brain In 2020, the city of Hangzhou in China announced that it had developed a “City Brain.” Hangzhou is an ancient ...
Blog
Should the Dodgers Have to Cancel their Phillips 66 Sponsorship? A Lawmaker Says Yes.
In a March 11 letter, Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez, a Long Beach Democrat, asked owner and Chairman Mark Walter “to end the Los Angeles Dodgers’ sponsorship deals with fossil fuel companies.” “Ending the sponsorship with Phillips 66,” which owns the 76 brand (formerly Union 76) that partners with the ...
Blog
Will Trump’s Anti-DEI Order Cure the Woke Flu Infecting U.S. Medical Schools?
More than two decades ago, I co-authored a Pacific Research Institute report entitled “Facing the Classroom Challenge,” which analyzed the teacher-training curricula at schools of education in the California State University system. Many of these schools openly stated their left-wing bias. At California State University Dominguez Hills in the Los ...
Blog
Imposing Price Controls on U.S. Drugs Won’t Level the Playing Field
The cost of capital for developing a new drug is $2.9 billion, including post approval research and development costs. Meanwhile, the process to develop a drug takes 10 years and only 12 percent of drugs make it to market. These costs do not change simply because governments impose price controls ...
Another attempt to hike taxes to prop up failing transit
Another attempt to hike taxes to prop up failing transit By Steven Greenhut | April 4, 2025 When it comes to the Bay Area’s multiple transit systems, the numbers tell the story. As the San Francisco Chroniclereported last week, ridership at one suburban BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) stop (North ...
Even liberal cities are taking steps to boost housing construction
The very liberal city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, just accepted the reality that excessive government regulations prevent adequate housing production. The city imposed what is being hailed as “one of the most ambitious changes to any city’s zoning in decades” by eliminating exclusionary zoning (permitting only single family homes) and allowing residential buildings ...
Read the latest on California's water wars
California Water Works
The company “plans to anchor about two dozen 40-foot-long devices, called pods, to the seafloor several miles offshore and use them to take in saltwater and pump purified fresh water to shore in a pipeline,” the Times reports. Before that, though, the concept has to be proved, which is why ...
Read the latest on the Southern California wildfires
State Budget Watch: Lawmakers Should Heavily Scrutinize LA’s Wildfire Funding Ask
Included in the city’s requests are expected relief items, such as a $291 million state loan to help the city pay for debris removal and repairs to damaged city property pending FEMA repayment. But some of LA’s funding list shows city leaders haven’t yet learned their lessons from decades of ...
Counting the Cost of Single-Payer
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is back on the road promoting Medicare for All. “We are the only major nation on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a human right,” he complained in a recent speech in Nevada. But the Vermont senator failed to explain how ...
Single-Family Homes Don’t Fulfill Everyone’s Dreams – Or Budgets
Single-Family Homes Don’t Fulfill Everyone’s Dreams – Or Budgets By Thomas Irwin | March 28, 2025 As the father of two young children, one of my primary roles is to be a sounding board for all kinds of desires from my children. These run the gambit from the ordinary and ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Freedom v. efficiency: Hangzhou’s City Brain Can Improve Efficiency, But Raises Many Questions
Editor’s Note: In Part 3 of the Free Cities Center series, Serlet looks at an AI program that offers some benefits, but raises much more serious questions. Hangzhou’s City Brain In 2020, the city of Hangzhou in China announced that it had developed a “City Brain.” Hangzhou is an ancient ...
Should the Dodgers Have to Cancel their Phillips 66 Sponsorship? A Lawmaker Says Yes.
In a March 11 letter, Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez, a Long Beach Democrat, asked owner and Chairman Mark Walter “to end the Los Angeles Dodgers’ sponsorship deals with fossil fuel companies.” “Ending the sponsorship with Phillips 66,” which owns the 76 brand (formerly Union 76) that partners with the ...
Will Trump’s Anti-DEI Order Cure the Woke Flu Infecting U.S. Medical Schools?
More than two decades ago, I co-authored a Pacific Research Institute report entitled “Facing the Classroom Challenge,” which analyzed the teacher-training curricula at schools of education in the California State University system. Many of these schools openly stated their left-wing bias. At California State University Dominguez Hills in the Los ...
Imposing Price Controls on U.S. Drugs Won’t Level the Playing Field
The cost of capital for developing a new drug is $2.9 billion, including post approval research and development costs. Meanwhile, the process to develop a drug takes 10 years and only 12 percent of drugs make it to market. These costs do not change simply because governments impose price controls ...
