California Voices

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 […]

When two New York baseball teams, the Dodgers and the Giants, moved west six decades ago, their ancient cross-town rivalry merged into the equally intense – and equally long – competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco for economic, cultural and, of course, political dominance of California. As the second half of this year’s baseball […]

With all the recent hoopla about California’s record-low unemployment rate and the heady prospect of its becoming No. 5 in global economic rankings, it is easy to lose sight of another salient fact: It is the nation’s most poverty-stricken state. So says the U.S. Census Bureau in its “supplemental measure” of poverty that is a […]

California dodged a big financial bullet when congressional Republicans deadlocked on overhauling or repealing the Affordable Care Act. The state had vigorously embraced the ACA, or Obamacare, and reduced its medically uninsured population by millions of persons, mostly via expansion of Medi-Cal, the state’s program for the poor, with billions of federal dollars. Had the […]

Geographically, San Diego County is a microcosm of California – a coastline as its western edge, giving way to tree-covered mountains and a searing desert to the east. By happenstance, the county is also a self-contained reflection of California’s cultural and political dynamics. Its urban core, around picturesque San Diego Bay, is multicultural and liberal/Democratic […]

The business, civic and political elites of Los Angeles are understandably stoked that their city was chosen last week to host the 2028 Olympic Games. They see nothing but upside from having hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world come to Los Angeles and spend money on hotels, meals and personal services, and […]

What’s not to like about California’s economy this summer? The state’s’s $2.6 trillion economy would be the sixth largest in the world were it a nation, and many politicians are already crowing that it may move into the No. 5 spot due to economic turmoil in Great Britain. California’s unemployment rate, which topped 12 percent […]

The late Glenn Frey’s song about the international drug trade, “Smuggler’s Blues,” contains a phrase that resonates in politics as well: “It’s the lure of easy money, it’s got a very strong appeal.” Politicians are habitually lured by easy money, which is defined as money they can spend without directly taxing their constituents, but somebody […]