California Voices

There’s something of a feeding frenzy underway in the Capitol during the final weeks of the 2017 legislative session. August’s quarterly auction of carbon dioxide emission allowances under the state’s cap-and-trade program was a sellout after more than a year of lackluster results. Not only did it generate more than $600 million for the state, but […]

California’s housing crisis has spawned several other socioeconomic dilemmas, the most important being a transportation crunch. The state’s most plentiful, best-paying jobs are concentrated in coastal urban areas, but they also have the state’s worst housing shortages and therefore its highest housing costs. Ergo, even relatively well-paid workers cannot find affordable housing and are forced […]

The California Public Utilities Commission must, by its nature, straddle the fine line between providing consumers with dependable electric power, natural gas and other utility services at fair prices and protecting the financial health of the huge corporations that supply those services. Over the past few years, however, two natural gas disasters and a scandal […]

California’s Democratic state government is exerting “resistance” to the Republican federal government on issues such as immigration and climate change. California insists, under the doctrine of “states’ rights,” that President Donald Trump and a Republican Congress should not interfere with state policies on those and other issues that reflect Californians’ views. Meanwhile, however, the state […]

In the main, issues that dominate any session of the California Legislature reflect what the public and news media consider at the time to be the most burning. That’s why, for instance, the state’s acute housing shortage will receive much attention during the final month of this year’s session. During Jerry Brown’s first governorship four […]

The Josh Newman recall drive is one of those petty, self-serving political exercises that feed the public’s cynicism. All of those involved – save, perhaps, Newman himself – should be ashamed of themselves for wasting the public’s time and money. To recap: Democrat Newman very narrowly won an Orange County-centered state Senate seat last year, […]

Tension between the federal government and its states has permeated American history from the earliest moments of the nation’s founding 241 years ago. Drafting the U.S. Constitution was an exercise in balancing federal authority against “states’ rights.” The Constitution’s “supremacy clause” defined federal authority, for instance, while its 10th amendment guaranteed that states could exercise […]

California obviously has a severe shortage of housing, but the crisis is felt most acutely by low- and moderate-income families. “Approximately half of all California households are spending more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs, and nearly one‑third of all California households are spending more than 50 percent of income on housing […]

The California Public Employees Retirement System has been hammered by poor investment earnings in recent years, but got some good news last month. CalPERS reported an 11.2 percent gain on its investment portfolio in the fiscal year that ended June 30, following a couple of years of near-zero earnings that sharply boosted its pension debt, […]

Travis Allen, a Republican assemblyman from Orange County and self-anointed candidate for governor, dropped this Twitter bomb the other day: “11 counties in California have more total registered voters than citizens over the age of 18. How is this possible?” As a matter of fact, it isn’t possible. Allen’s tweet just parrots a subtle falsehood […]