Blog

Top lawyer for controller benefits from much-criticized state perk

The state government’s practice of letting workers defy official state policy and pile up unused vacation days and cash them in upon retirement has been criticized on and off for years. California government watchdogs and journalists have outlined the budget

Auditor: CA courts not spending money judiciously

John Seiler January 14, 2015

California’s state and local courts commonly complain they don’t get enough funds to do their jobs. And if there’s one area where I would want more government spending, it would be to make the courts more efficient. Having to deal

Kamala Harris to run for U.S. Senate

John Seiler January 13, 2015

Today California Attorney General Kamala Harris will announce her candidacy for U.S. Senate. She seeks to replace Sen. Barbara Boxer, who last week announced her retirement. Both are Democrats. Even though the election is more than 21 months away, it’s

Harry Jaffa, RIP

John Seiler January 12, 2015

Harry Jaffa, 96, died on Saturday. He was one of the rare persons who combined an influential academic career with activism in politics, in particular the Goldwater Movement of 1964. Professor Emeritus at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University

Some crucial context on Brown’s new energy policy and AB 32

Chris Reed January 12, 2015

Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision to seek to extend the state of California’s push against global warming to 2030 with a further embrace of costlier-but-cleaner energy got a positive response from many environmental groups and journalists. The idea that California would

Martin Anderson, RIP

John Seiler January 11, 2015

One of the architects of American prosperity died last week, economist Martin Anderson. He was a key architect of Reaganomics in the early 1980s, which provided the foundation of prosperity in America, and worldwide, until the 2008 Great Recession. Anderson long was

Oxy CA energy spinoff has bumpy launch

Chris Reed January 11, 2015

When energy giant Occidental launched a spinoff to focus on California energy exploration on Dec. 1, the circumstances facing California Resources Corp. were daunting. The plunging price of oil made unconventional energy extraction methods, which cost more, less attractive. And

State in use-it-or-lose-it mode with $4B in bullet-train funds

Chris Reed January 10, 2015

The California bullet-train project — stalled for years by legal fights over land acquisition and the state’s business plan, uneven progress in planning and Gov. Jerry Brown’s abrupt downsizing of the scale of the project in 2013 — had its symbolic

College kids read at 7th-grade level

John Seiler January 9, 2015

This is shocking. After 13 years in U.S. public schools, our college kids read only at a 7th-grade level, on average. Reported Breitbart Texas: The premise behind the Common Core State Standards is that all public school students will be college

Sen. Boxer to retire

John Seiler January 8, 2015

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., today announced her retirement. In office since her 1992 election, she has been considered one of the country’s most liberal senators. Elected the same year as the more moderate Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the two were