Blog
Blog
Winners and Losers in 2019’s State Budget
This year’s state budget debate is in the history books. On Thursday, the Legislature’s liberal supermajority passed the main budget bill and some of the trailer bills required to implement the budget. The 2019-20 state budget is also Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first opportunity to put his stamp on the state’s ...
Blog
What We’re Watching – June 14
Tim Anaya – Cancer Treatments and Financial Returns This week, PRI’s new Center for Medical Economics and Innovation released a new issue brief on the issue of cancer treatments and financial returns. It analyzes an oft-quoted study by the World Health Organization that has been used to argue cancer treatment ...
Agriculture
PRI’s Summer Reading List
What’s a summer without a reading list? And what’s a think tank without ideas? So, we just couldn’t help ourselves and came up with the list below compiled from PRI’s staff. Lest you stop reading now because you think that all the books are wonky — not true. To my ...
Blog
Voters Give Legislature Low Marks for Failing to Act on Housing, Homelessness
Last week, the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California released their latest survey of Californians stand on a host of issues. Writing about the poll results, veteran Los Angeles Times political columnist George Skelton summed up the survey’s shock findings with a banner headline – “California’s Legislature is less popular ...
Blog
Yet Another Bad Policy Idea for California: San Francisco Proposes An ‘IPO’ Tax
Anyone thinking that California can’t become more anti-business or add another punitive tax hasn’t seen the recent news out of San Francisco. Political leaders there are campaigning for an increase in the city’s “IPO tax,” which is both unnecessary and counterproductive. The proposal, sponsored by Supervisor Gordon Mar, would hike ...
Blog
What We’re Watching – June 7
Rowena Itchon – Remembering D-Day, 75 Years Later Perhaps the most moving D-Day celebration speech of all time: Ronald Reagan at Pointe du Hoc, 1984. Tim Anaya – Living in Fear in California PRI’s Kerry Jackson has just published a very interesting new book on rising crime in California. Watch ...
Blog
Teacher Unions’ Agenda Derailed by LA Parcel Tax Defeat
A funny thing happened on the way to teacher-union political hegemony: common sense kicked in and the people threw the unions for a huge loss with the defeat of the proposed parcel-tax increase in Los Angeles. In fight after fight across the country, and especially here in California, the teacher ...
Blog
Words Mean A Different Thing When It Comes to Socialism, Says America’s Top Pollster
In the classic work Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, the character Humpty Dumpty says that “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Responding, Alice (of Wonderland fame) says, “The question is whether you can make works ...
Agriculture
Issue Brief: Dishonest Propaganda Sprouts from Organic Agriculture
In The Wealth of Nations, the 18th century economist and philosopher Adam Smith observed about the chicanery of some businessmen, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” ...
Blog
Union Membership Doesn’t Mean a Job Forever
PRI has a helpful calculator that shows how much a union member could save throughout his or her working years from not paying union dues. In California, the average fee-paying teacher owes $650 a year while the average worker owes $1,000. A 45-year old teacher who leaves the union and ...
Winners and Losers in 2019’s State Budget
This year’s state budget debate is in the history books. On Thursday, the Legislature’s liberal supermajority passed the main budget bill and some of the trailer bills required to implement the budget. The 2019-20 state budget is also Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first opportunity to put his stamp on the state’s ...
What We’re Watching – June 14
Tim Anaya – Cancer Treatments and Financial Returns This week, PRI’s new Center for Medical Economics and Innovation released a new issue brief on the issue of cancer treatments and financial returns. It analyzes an oft-quoted study by the World Health Organization that has been used to argue cancer treatment ...
PRI’s Summer Reading List
What’s a summer without a reading list? And what’s a think tank without ideas? So, we just couldn’t help ourselves and came up with the list below compiled from PRI’s staff. Lest you stop reading now because you think that all the books are wonky — not true. To my ...
Voters Give Legislature Low Marks for Failing to Act on Housing, Homelessness
Last week, the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California released their latest survey of Californians stand on a host of issues. Writing about the poll results, veteran Los Angeles Times political columnist George Skelton summed up the survey’s shock findings with a banner headline – “California’s Legislature is less popular ...
Yet Another Bad Policy Idea for California: San Francisco Proposes An ‘IPO’ Tax
Anyone thinking that California can’t become more anti-business or add another punitive tax hasn’t seen the recent news out of San Francisco. Political leaders there are campaigning for an increase in the city’s “IPO tax,” which is both unnecessary and counterproductive. The proposal, sponsored by Supervisor Gordon Mar, would hike ...
What We’re Watching – June 7
Rowena Itchon – Remembering D-Day, 75 Years Later Perhaps the most moving D-Day celebration speech of all time: Ronald Reagan at Pointe du Hoc, 1984. Tim Anaya – Living in Fear in California PRI’s Kerry Jackson has just published a very interesting new book on rising crime in California. Watch ...
Teacher Unions’ Agenda Derailed by LA Parcel Tax Defeat
A funny thing happened on the way to teacher-union political hegemony: common sense kicked in and the people threw the unions for a huge loss with the defeat of the proposed parcel-tax increase in Los Angeles. In fight after fight across the country, and especially here in California, the teacher ...
Words Mean A Different Thing When It Comes to Socialism, Says America’s Top Pollster
In the classic work Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, the character Humpty Dumpty says that “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Responding, Alice (of Wonderland fame) says, “The question is whether you can make works ...
Issue Brief: Dishonest Propaganda Sprouts from Organic Agriculture
In The Wealth of Nations, the 18th century economist and philosopher Adam Smith observed about the chicanery of some businessmen, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” ...
Union Membership Doesn’t Mean a Job Forever
PRI has a helpful calculator that shows how much a union member could save throughout his or her working years from not paying union dues. In California, the average fee-paying teacher owes $650 a year while the average worker owes $1,000. A 45-year old teacher who leaves the union and ...
