If these United States are 50 laboratories of democracy, then California is the mad scientist of far-left policies. That was evident last week as some of the session’s most controversial bills tried to clear the Assembly and continue through the legislative process. From a bill to impose “sector-wide minimum standards” for wages, hours and working […]
We all know what a sore loser is — someone who lacks grace in defeat. But strangely, in California politics, we have sore winners. Last month, Senate Constitutional Amendment 6 was introduced in the California Legislature. If passed, it would substantially weaken the right to recall elected officials. Under current law, voters have the power […]
Regular readers of this column undoubtedly know what Proposition 13 is, but they may not know it does more than set property taxes at 1% of the home’s market value with a 2% cap on annual increases. It also imposed certain vote requirements for other kinds of taxes, including a requirement that local special taxes […]
The governor’s budget is a tale of the good, the bad and the ugly. We won’t see a real state budget until it emerges from the smoke-filled backroom following the May revise, but that didn’t stop Gov. Gavin Newsom from gleefully announcing to reporters how he would like to spend the windfall of other people’s […]
California spends a lot on education. Ever since the passage of Proposition 98 in 1988, which guarantees to education a minimum of 40% of the general fund, per-pupil spending on K-12 has risen faster than any other category of state appropriations. And yet, for all that new money, the state’s education monopoly continues its history […]
Pinned on my office wall is a Zimbabwe $10,000,000,000,000 note. (That’s 10 trillion for those of you tired of counting zeroes). The currency is real, although Zimbabwe’s default currency is now the U.S. dollar. The central bank of Zimbabwe issued these $10T notes during the last days of hyperinflation in 2009, and they barely paid […]
A little-known fact about Howard Jarvis is that, long before achieving fame as the author of Proposition 13, he ran for the United States Senate in 1962. According to those who knew him, he promised that, if elected, he would put a big sign on the door of his Senate office with the single word […]
California’s rate of education spending continues its rapid escalation but expected increases in performance remain lagging. While taxpayers are doing their job, politicians, education bureaucrats, and teacher unions aren’t doing theirs. The 40-year-old myth that Proposition 13 gutted education spending was never true to begin with, despite the progressive narrative, but now it has been […]
Here’s a cautionary tale for California politicians who think voters will forever tolerate rising taxes as Sacramento swims in budget surpluses. In 1978, virtually every political institution in California opposed Proposition 13, including big business, labor, local governments, and education advocates. Then voters stunned the elite political class by enacting the iconic tax-cutting initiative, a […]
If ever voters needed a reason to vote no on every single bond measure that appears on the ballot, here it is: The Court of Appeal for Third Appellate District just ruled that, despite all the lies voters were told about California’s infamous High-Speed Rail project, taxpayers have no remedy, even though the project as […]
