Debate fire: California figured prominently in Tuesday night’s contentious presidential debate. President Trump highlighted how bad forest management is driving the state’s historic forest fires. He also pointed out that Gov. Newsom’s recently announced ban on internal combustion engines could have the unintended consequence of worsening emissions because it makes new cars more expensive, keeping more people in their older less-efficient models. The tinderification of California’s forests and the unintended consequences of California’s environmental regulations have been expertly explained by CPC cofounder Edward Ring.
“What they’re doing out in California is crazy”: That was Trump’s assessment of Newsom’s plan to ban gas-powered cars, but he could have been referencing a litany of Golden State policies. Exhibit A is the near-absolute control that public-sector unions exercise over California government. This week, Gov. Newsom reiterated the importance of passing the pending multi-trillion-dollar federal stimulus bill, which would bail out profligate union pension funds like those in California. A new Truth in Accounting study demonstrates that the epidemic of public union fiscal problems in California will continue long after the Covid-19 pandemic ends. As The Center Square reports in its piece on the study:
California’s elected officials have made repeated financial decisions that left the state with a debt burden of $275 billion well before the coronavirus hit this year, an analysis of the state’s finances shows, financial problems stem mostly from unfunded retirement obligations that have accumulated over the years.
Why should federal taxpayers in California and across the country pick up the tab for government unions’ largesse?
AB 5 is also California crazy: CPC President Will Swaim’s op-ed in Sunday's OC Register and its affiliates all over Southern California explained why voters must pass Prop 22 to override the legislature’s AB 5 madness:
Proposition 22 offers workers an escape hatch from the state’s anti-worker legislation known as Assembly Bill 5, which outlaws many contracting jobs in the state. Even though gig workers can set their schedules, work in chosen geographic locations, decline jobs, work for competitors, and often set their rates, California bureaucrats claim they are employees of the software platforms they use to find clients. Voters must pass Prop. 22 to override this state power grab.
Yet government union-backed special interest groups are spending millions of dollars to defeat Prop. 22 and ban on-demand work like using Lyft or Uber.
Why? Because gig work threatens government union power and revenues. The more people can get around using rideshare, for example, the fewer high-priced government union public transit jobs are needed. The growth of fast, flexible, and efficient on-demand jobs comes partially at the expense of the sclerotic and expensive government union powerhouse.
The other side of the story: No surprise, The Los Angeles Times recently editorialized against Prop 22. But look how weak its argument is: “Voters should reject the measure — even if doing so might wreak havoc on these services and their drivers, as Uber and Lyft say. Rather than accepting the bad bargain Proposition 22 presents, voters should demand a better, broader answer from Sacramento.” Aside from the Times admitting the carnage caused by a Prop 22 defeat, the whole point of California’s direct democracy ballot measure system is so voters can indeed “demand a better, broader answer” to the bad legislation from Sacramento.
The Saddest Place on Earth: This week, Disney announced that it is laying off 28,000 employees because it hasn’t been allowed to reopen its California theme park. Given the science on the lack of outdoor Covid-19 transmission, especially when people are masked and socially distanced, the park should immediately reopen at reduced capacity for non-vulnerable age groups. The OC Register makes the case for reopening theme parks in an editorial this week – just days before Disney chairman Bob Iger announced that he’s hitting the eject button on his high-profile role in the governor’s Covid-19 reopening task force.
California shifts the goalposts yet again on business reopenings: This week, the state also announced new, harsher reopening rules, requiring Covid-19 cases to fall not only in the county but also specifically in minority neighborhoods. With Covid-19 positive tests, hospitalizations, and deaths falling dramatically in the state, now is the time to further relax restrictions so that Californians can get back to work and life in a safe manner. California has successfully flattened the curve, but state bureaucrats ignore this success and continue to crush the economy.
A small victory better late than never: California reopened playgrounds this week, giving parents – especially those living in apartments -- some sweet relief. Based on how rare child transmission outdoors is, this decision is months late. But I guess not many state officials live in apartments.
New study tells us what we already know: In his latest piece, CPC contributor Larry Sand features research by Corey DeAngelis and Christos Makridis, who find that “school districts in places with stronger teachers’ unions are much less likely to offer full-time, in-person instruction this fall.” No surprise there. Teachers unions have exploited Covid-19 to work from home, work less, and improve their bargaining position.
Lady Thatcher would love this: Larry also exposes one union boss who not only admits to students’ learning loss as a result of closed classrooms but also unwittingly reveals unions’ deeper philosophical premise: “Washington Education Association president Larry Delaney said in a TV interview (at 29:00 here), ‘Across the country everyone has missed certain learning. So if everyone is ‘behind,’ I guess no one is behind….’” This reminds me of Margaret Thatcher’s famous admonition, that socialists would rather have the poor poorer so long as the gap between the poor and rich is smaller.
The silver lining of classroom closures. Larry points out: “As a result of COVID-19 and the responses to it, parents are quickly catching on to the public-private disparity. Just last week, a RealClear Opinion Research survey showed a strong uptick in support for school choice since their last poll in May. For parents with kids in public schools, there has been a ten-point jump in support for the concept of school choice, from 67% to 77%.”
A person’s sex life is now company business: This week, Gov. Newsom signed a new law requiring companies to have racial and sexual minorities on their boards. Since when do liberals want businesses nosing in on the sex lives of those who work for them? “Well, Alex, you’re qualified for the director position, but I must ask for compliance with California’s new law: Do you sleep with women or men?”
This law seems in direct violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act which holds that employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is illegal. The law follows a 2018 command to require women on boards. As the AP reports:
The measure requires at least two such directors by the end of 2022 on boards with four to nine directors. Three directors are required for boards with nine or more directors. Firms that don’t comply would face fines of $100,00 for first violations and $300,000 for repeated violations.
Another Atlas shrugs: On this week’s episode of National Review’s Radio Free California, CPC board member David Bahnsen and Will discuss investor Jeffrey Gundlach’s threat to exit California, the state’s multiple appearances in the first presidential debate, and Governor Newsom’s latest foray into corporate board diversity and slave reparations. On this latter point, Will notes that government has often been the problem – not the solution – in rectifying racial disparities – from Great Society programs that led to the destruction of poor families, to teachers union practices that lock poor kids in lousy schools and the subprime mortgage scandal that obliterated black homeownership. “Please, government” black Californians might say, “stop helping so much.”
Remote work revolution frees workers from CA: Marc Joffe, former CPC research analyst, now at the Reason Foundation, has an op-ed this week in the OC Register warning California officials that tax increases could push an increasingly mobile workforce out of the state: “With the world adapting, and in-person interactions increasingly giving way to Zoom calls and video conferences, there may be some upper-income tech workers who are free to permanently work remotely and may revisit their place of residence if the state pursues further tax increases.”
Challenging California’s governing status quo: In his latest piece, CPC contributor Edward Ring attacks the conventional wisdom that has led to California’s bad schools, high housing costs, and inflated energy prices.
The Los Angeles Times abases itself before the gods of political correctness: This week, the Times gained plaudits from the mainstream media for a 7,000-word editorial apologizing for its racist history: “On behalf of this institution,” it wrote, “we apologize for The Times’ history of racism.”
Given California’s fraught racial history, a daily newspaper is bound to have misstepped at times on this landmine issue. The paper’s support for the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent during WWII is one prime example. Yet the editorial criticizes the paper for ignoring the "modern notion that journalism’s core precepts include uncovering hard truths and exposing inequity.”
And here I thought a newspaper should simply report the facts and let readers come to their own conclusions about if – and how – truths are “hard” and if inequality should color the narrative.
Putting its past aside, the far bigger problem at the Times – and most of mainstream media today -- is that it has moved too far in the direction of social activism. Many reporters now appear to see the world through a postmodern, neo-Marxist, and critical race theory/intersectionality prism that obfuscates more than elucidates.
(I’m not talking here about the paper’s opinion section, which – for lack of good argument – runs variations of the argument that Trump is a historic threat to the nation multiple times each day. These pieces are mostly nothing more than activist Tweets fattened up to feed Times readers who suffer from TDS – Trump Derangement Syndrome.)
The Times promises to fix its historic racism by increasing newsroom diversity. According to its bean counters, “Today, 38% of the journalists on our staff are people of color. We know that is not nearly good enough, in a county that is 48% Latino and in a state where Latinos are the largest ethnic group.”
But how about some ideological diversity as well?
The headline example the editorial gives for the paper’s past racist coverage is a 1981 story highlighting how “marauders from the inner-city” were increasingly burglarizing LA’s middle- and upper-class neighborhoods.
This clipping had another interesting detail: Circulation in 1981 was 1,043,026 and 1,289,314 on Sundays. Today’s circulation is about 400,000 plus a couple hundred thousand online subscribers.
It seems the Times owes an apology to its former moderate, conservative, and libertarian readers as well.
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