Posts From Chris Reed
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Why Arnold owes U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars (non-bullet train edition)
Two interesting pieces published recently make a strong case that government can be made far more efficient if we actually tried empirically to evaluate what worked and what didn't. On the Zocalo Public Square website, Pepperdine academic Pete Peterson takes
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NSA scandal could take huge toll on CA capital-gains revenue
Will the ever-burgeoning NSA spying scandal come back to haunt Jerry Brown and other state leaders when they craft the next budget? Given how much they are counting on capital-gains revenue from executives who cash in their stock holdings in
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A dramatic illustration of teacher unions’ grip on Sacramento
The Obama administration has had enough of the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers and how they use their clout to undercut education reform. “Hours before a key vote in the Legislature, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
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Why CA carbon auction and overall AB 32 approach are doomed
This month marks the seventh anniversary of Arnold Schwarzenegger signing AB 32 amid an orgy of self-congratulation over this alleged environmental landmark. Ever since then, I’ve written regularly about the basic flaw of AB 32: reducing the emissions believed to
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Underappreciated Prop. 13 fact: It protects vulnerable in housing bubbles
As the push builds in Sacramento to undercut Proposition 13 by weakening its limits on how fast business property taxes can increase, it’s worth making two basic points in defense of the 1978 initiative — one of which doesn’t get
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Unreal: CA transit workers permanently protected from pension reductions
Californians are used to suffering the consequences from state laws drafted by unions and forced through by their allies/puppets in the state Legislature. But now we see the same phenomenon afflicting the Golden State thanks to a union payoff made
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Racial manipulation of UC admissions can’t help but go haywire
Want an exceptionally shrewd look at University of California admissions policies that lays out how the nominally race-neutral system is skewed by administrators desperately trying to prop up enrollment of some — but not all — minorities? Check out this
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Rare candor on CA joblessness — but not in Times or Bee, of course
With nearly one in five California adults who want to work full-time unable to find such a job, it should be obvious that unemployment is the biggest issue in the state. It explains why California has the highest poverty rate
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Federal union just like CA’s: Government role is to provide well-paying jobs
As I wrote here last week, part of Port Hueneme’s oceanfront could face devastation in coming months because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it doesn’t have the money to do remedial work on the coast that it has
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Dishonesty of bullet-train camp is striking
Robert Cruickshank’s California High Speed Rail Blog, which gets thousands of hits a month, always amazes me when I look at it because of how he uses MSNBC/national media talking points about opposition to President Obama’s policies to describe critics
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