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California Doesn’t Need Another Water Bond
It feels every election Californians are voting on another water bond — and passing them. This November Proposition 3 is on the ballot, placed there through the initiative process. The state has plenty of unspent water related bonds. Shouldn’t we use the billions authorized for past water bonds yet expended before adding more billions to […]
Locals Governments Seek New Levies Despite $4 Billion Property Tax Surge
Local government officials throughout the state got some very good financial news when county tax assessors toted up changes in taxable property values for their 2018-19 budgets. The state’s uber-strong real estate market generated a 6.51 percent increase in those values, adding another $374 billion to the property tax rolls and pushing the total to […]
Bring Back Blight, Sprawl; evict CDBG to Fix Affordable Housing
When you were a child did you ever try walking down the upward side of an escalator at a mall? It can be dangerous and often results in bringing you back to where you started. Howard Husock’s recent “How to build a Housing Ladder: Lessons From, and For, Silicon Valley” (Oct. 3, 2018) is an […]
How Big Tech Will Swing the 2018 Elections, Then Take Over the World
Facebook is a menace to grassroots political organizing — and to free and fair elections generally. The social media giant this week announced it would ban “misinformation” about the upcoming midterm elections. According to a Reuters story about the new policy, “Facebook Inc. will ban false information about voting requirements and fact-check fake reports of violence or […]
Once again, California Prop. 13 is ‘on the table’
In the contest to see who will be California’s next governor, political pollsters haven’t given Republican John Cox much of a chance of prevailing over former San Francisco mayor and current Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. After all, California remains a fairly progressive state and the Newsom campaign has more money. Cox, to his credit, has […]
CPR Blog
Is Anything Off-Limits for California’s Police Unions?
A few weeks ago the Costa Mesa Police Association (read: Police Union) and their former law firm agreed to pay $607,000 to settle a lawsuit after their scheme against two Costa Mesa city councilmen came to light. As I wrote in my book, this settlement represents a small but important victory in the broader philosophical war between California’s […]
Towards a Grand Bargain on California Water Policy
When it comes to water policy in California, perhaps the people are more savvy than the special interests. Because the people, or more precisely, the voters, by huge majorities, have approved nine water bonds in the past 25 years, totaling $27.1 billion. It is likely they’re going to approve another one this November for another […]
Silicon Valley’s Leftists and the Night of the Slap Drones
Some of them, the big ones, will intrude the old fashioned way, beating down the door. Maybe others will look like insects, crawling innocuously across your property to come inside through your drains and A/C ducts. Or they’ll find an open window. Across America, they’ll come by the millions, having manufactured themselves. They’ll be several generations smarter than the […]
Publisher’s Corner
Jim Lacy on Trump/Kim Summit; G-7 Trade Debate, Australian Broadcasting’s “Weekend Breakfast”
In this video, California Political Review publisher and author Jim Lacy comments on questions about Donald Trump’s highly anticipated summit with Kim Jung Un on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and on the Trump Administration’s trade policies coming out of the recent G-7 meeting in Canada.
Cali-Culture
In Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, only six GOP appointees of twenty-nine seats
As the Trump Administration focuses on its important Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, we are also reminded that of the twenty-nine members of the important U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, only six of the members were appointed by Republican presidents, resulting in the most liberal and highly […]
Trending News
California unemployment rate at record low 4.1%
California’s unemployment rate dropped to 4.1 percent in September, a record low since it started tracking the number this way in 1976, the Employment Development Department reported Friday. The Bay Area boasted the state’s lowest unemployment rates, falling below 3 percent in eight of the nine counties, all but Solano, where it was still under the […]
California cities top list of towns with worst roads in U.S.
Congratulations, California. The top three cities with the worst roads are all from the Golden State. The nonprofit organization TRIP, which researches transportation issues, released a report on Wednesday listing the country’s roughest roads. California drivers probably are not surprised by the findings, which state that the top three worst areas in the nation for rough […]
Emails show California transportation agency’s cozy ties to gas tax backers
SACRAMENTO — As the political battle to overturn California’s gas tax increase intensified, the state transportation agency coordinated frequently with the public affairs firm working to block the repeal on behalf of unions, construction companies and local government groups, emails obtained by The Associated Press show. The California State Transportation Agency and Sacramento-based Bicker, Castillo […]
Time to hit the pause button on high-speed rail
Jerry Brown did not invent the idea of a high-speed rail system to connect Northern and Southern California. It was voted on by the state Legislature and ratified by voters years before he returned to the governor’s office in 2011. But for the last eight years, as cost estimates have skyrocketed and federal and private sector funding […]
California state worker union accepts contract with 10 percent pay hike
A small California state employee union decided on Thursday that a contract with two more consecutive years of 5 percent raises was too good to pass up in the waning months of Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration. The California Association of Professional Scientists approved the contract by a vote of 802 to 339. It will give about 3,400 […]
