Income Inequality

Mercury-News report on mass CA poverty may change coverage

The pack mentality of the Sacramento beat reporters is striking. No one wants to point out that the Obama administration says fracking is safe. No one wants to point out that the Local Control Funding Formula turned out to be

Biden due in L.A. to tout minimum-wage hike — commuters, beware

Chris Reed October 7, 2014

Monday, Joe Biden was in Nevada touting a hike in the minimum wage as the key to fighting income inequality. Today, the vice president will be in Los Angeles with Mayor Eric Garcetti offering the same spiel before heading to

AB 32 revenue: Some for bullet train, some for pork, none for poor

Chris Reed September 27, 2014

Before and after AB 32’s passage in 2006, a whole lot of promises and guarantees were made. Some are remembered. Many aren’t. One of those was the pledge to use a portion of cap-and-trade funds to directly help poor people

CA on sidelines as brown energy revolution unfolds

Chris Reed August 6, 2014

In the 41 years since the OPEC cartel begin throwing its weight around, U.S. consumers have gotten used to fluctuations in the price of gasoline. The dynamics have gotten pretty stable in recent decades as OPEC has deradicalized. In the

McClintock: Border mess shows government can’t be trusted

Chris Reed July 24, 2014

The current influx of illegal immigrants along the Texas border has ramped up the immigration debate and sharply increased media coverage of the issue. But that coverage has mostly been on human interest angles relating to the kids coming from

In Silicon Valley, liberal pols look to drive up cost of housing

Chris Reed July 21, 2014

The emergence of Silicon Valley as one of the wealthiest places in the world has led to plenty of media coverage that points out how it has become a poster child for income inequality. This is from a March Associated

Parallels between Australia, Assembly AB 32 revolt are obvious

Chris Reed July 18, 2014

One of the most universal findings in the social sciences has been the uniform way that humans at all stages of history have been for something that they think reflects well on them until they perceive that it costs them

Prager: Here’s why CA left is indifferent to economic misery

Chris Reed July 9, 2014

The news that the U.S. is now the world’s no. 1 oil and no. 1 natural gas producer is almost unbelievable, given the decades of America fretting about its energy dependence. And the reason is fracking. Yet here in California,

Is pro-business faction emerging among CA Dem lawmakers?

Chris Reed July 7, 2014

For years, both the California Air Resources Board and the California Democratic Party have peddled the absurd fiction that there is no economic downside to AB 32 forcing the entire state to shift to cleaner but much costlier forms of

CA left’s absurd new dogma: Regulations have no downside

Chris Reed June 29, 2014

Businesses like to make money. Smart business owners are happy to change their ways in search of how to increase or maximize profits. The hostility to change that one sees in a bureaucracy with no vested interest in making things