Steven Greenhut
California
Scrooge-like predictions for the New Year
The United States and California in particular are continuing down a dangerous path where more decisions about almost everything in life are made by government officials rather than by individual citizens. That’s a fancy way of saying that we are losing our freedoms, slowly but surely. Maybe it’s not so ...
California
Fixing California’s Broken Legislation
The approval rating for the job the California Legislature is doing remains pitiful, ranging in the past year or so from a record-low 9 percent to 16 percent. That percentage of Californians will no doubt support any possible idea you place before them on a public opinion poll, which should ...
California
Could more lawmakers do less harm?
The approval rating for the job done by the California Legislature remains pitiful, ranging in the past year or so from a record-low 9 percent to 16 percent. That percentage of Californians would no doubt support any possible idea you place before them on a public opinion poll, which should ...
California
Real meaning of Brown’s ‘open letter’
Gov. Jerry Brown last Monday released “An Open Letter to the People of California,” in which he called for the state’s taxpayers to approve tax-raising initiatives to “fix” the state’s structural deficit. Here is the letter and my interpretation of what Brown really meant to say: Brown: When I became ...
California
California ‘The Big State that Can’t’ (or won’t)
As the public employee pension and health care benefit crisis sweeps across the nation, some states are dealing seriously with these multibillion-dollar threats to public services and treasuries. And other states remain in deep denial. California, to no one’s surprise, is moving stridently in the wrong direction. The tiny state ...
Agriculture
Can’t Live by Scenery Alone
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike,” wrote John Muir, in one of his many celebrations of the majesty of the Yosemite Valley. The Scottish-born founder of the Sierra Club recognized ...
Business & Economics
Getting Serious About Ron Paul
I can’t forgive myself for voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor during the 2003 recall. I selected a “winnable” loser rather than Tom McClintock, a principled conservative who knew what policies to pursue to right California’s sinking fiscal ship. If everyone who voted for Schwarzenegger under the belief that McClintock ...
California
‘Think Long’ report short on serious ideas
Would California be in better shape if former governors Arnold Schwarzenegger or Gray Davis, or former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, were back in power? That’s an odd question given the fiscal mess that those politicians helped create, or at least were powerless to fix. These politicos had their chance at ...
California
A pension head fake
California Republicans did a fine job playing the pension-reform hand that Gov. Jerry Brown handed them. On Nov. 9, Senate Republican leader Bob Dutton and three of his GOP colleagues held a news conference calling for the Democrat-controlled Legislature to hold a special session to deal with the governor’s 12-point ...
California
Corporate Welfare and the California GOP
We all know that California’s Democratic Party is running the state into the fiscal ground, given how beholden its members are to public sector unions and how devoted they are to expanding government and raising taxes. The state needs some political competition, but a major court case reminds us why ...
Scrooge-like predictions for the New Year
The United States and California in particular are continuing down a dangerous path where more decisions about almost everything in life are made by government officials rather than by individual citizens. That’s a fancy way of saying that we are losing our freedoms, slowly but surely. Maybe it’s not so ...
Fixing California’s Broken Legislation
The approval rating for the job the California Legislature is doing remains pitiful, ranging in the past year or so from a record-low 9 percent to 16 percent. That percentage of Californians will no doubt support any possible idea you place before them on a public opinion poll, which should ...
Could more lawmakers do less harm?
The approval rating for the job done by the California Legislature remains pitiful, ranging in the past year or so from a record-low 9 percent to 16 percent. That percentage of Californians would no doubt support any possible idea you place before them on a public opinion poll, which should ...
Real meaning of Brown’s ‘open letter’
Gov. Jerry Brown last Monday released “An Open Letter to the People of California,” in which he called for the state’s taxpayers to approve tax-raising initiatives to “fix” the state’s structural deficit. Here is the letter and my interpretation of what Brown really meant to say: Brown: When I became ...
California ‘The Big State that Can’t’ (or won’t)
As the public employee pension and health care benefit crisis sweeps across the nation, some states are dealing seriously with these multibillion-dollar threats to public services and treasuries. And other states remain in deep denial. California, to no one’s surprise, is moving stridently in the wrong direction. The tiny state ...
Can’t Live by Scenery Alone
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike,” wrote John Muir, in one of his many celebrations of the majesty of the Yosemite Valley. The Scottish-born founder of the Sierra Club recognized ...
Getting Serious About Ron Paul
I can’t forgive myself for voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger for governor during the 2003 recall. I selected a “winnable” loser rather than Tom McClintock, a principled conservative who knew what policies to pursue to right California’s sinking fiscal ship. If everyone who voted for Schwarzenegger under the belief that McClintock ...
‘Think Long’ report short on serious ideas
Would California be in better shape if former governors Arnold Schwarzenegger or Gray Davis, or former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, were back in power? That’s an odd question given the fiscal mess that those politicians helped create, or at least were powerless to fix. These politicos had their chance at ...
A pension head fake
California Republicans did a fine job playing the pension-reform hand that Gov. Jerry Brown handed them. On Nov. 9, Senate Republican leader Bob Dutton and three of his GOP colleagues held a news conference calling for the Democrat-controlled Legislature to hold a special session to deal with the governor’s 12-point ...
Corporate Welfare and the California GOP
We all know that California’s Democratic Party is running the state into the fiscal ground, given how beholden its members are to public sector unions and how devoted they are to expanding government and raising taxes. The state needs some political competition, but a major court case reminds us why ...
