Blog
SpaceX Vs. California – Again
It took Elon Musk’s rocket company about a week to challenge the commission in court, arguing in its October filing that it was “egregiously and unlawfully overreaching its authority.” “First, the commission has engaged in naked political discrimination against” SpaceX, reads the complaint, and, second, the agency “is trying to ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Urbanists See Portents of Doom: Will floods, fire or earthquakes wipe out Sacramento?
When Gov. Leland Stanford was inaugurated on Jan. 10, 1862, he didn’t walk to the state Capitol, nor did he take a carriage. Instead, he got into a small boat and rowed from the governor’s mansion to the Capitol steps. The Great Flood of 1862 is something that anyone interested ...
Blog
The Most-Regulated State In The Union
When the Mercatus Center last compiled its Snapshots of State Regulations, California was far ahead, or actually far behind, the next closest state, burdening residents with a combined 420,000 regulations, compared with about 300,000 for New York. Idaho, the least regulated state, imposed around 31,000 on residents. “Jurisdictions that allow regulations to consistently pile ...
Agriculture
County fairs are great opportunities to go meat shopping
Many of California’s county fairs host livestock exhibits giving youth exhibitors an opportunity to sell their livestock during a live auction. Money from the sale of livestock is often saved in college funds, spent on first-car purchases, or funneled into the following years’ project – teaching youth real world money ...
Blog
Cities should forget sport-subsidy hype and focus on basics
Cities should forget sport-subsidy hype and focus on basics By D. Dowd Muska | August 8, 2025 Three years to go. The opening ceremony for the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad is scheduled for July 14, 2028. And the men and women of the organizing committee are working feverishly ...
Blog
Despite ‘pro-housing’ programs, California’s crisis getting worse
Cities including Spokane, Tulsa and Memphis support pre-approved designs to streamline small-scale builds, similar to what California has sought to promote with its Pro-housing Designation Program (PDP). But many question why California’s land entitlement process—getting the zoning, use and building design approval from local governments to comply with state mandates—often ...
Blog
The Gordon Chang Report–China is Making the World Food-Insecure
READ THE PDF China Is Making the World Food-Insecure Of all the countries in the world, only one produces all the food it needs: South America’s Guyana.[1] Does food self-sufficiency matter anymore? In a peaceful and stable period, perhaps not, because the trade in foodstuffs this century led to rising ...
Blog
Read the latest on California's rising gas prices
California Goes Groucho On Gasoline
What did California officials think was going to happen when they decided it was a dazzlingly brilliant idea to hound the oil industry out of the state? That magic would take over and there would be no consequences for their rash decisions? Apparently, they weren’t thinking at all, because, according to reports, the California Energy ...
Blog
The fast food minimum wage hike continues to kill jobs
Governor Newsom Protests Too Much – the Minimum Wage Increase Did Destroy Jobs
As the New York Post reported, Newsom’s deputy director of communications Tara Gallegos disputed the findings of the piece, pointing out to Fox News Digital that the research paper was linked to the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank she claimed has published “false or misleading information” about California’s ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Why are urbanites more likely to embrace zero-sum thinking?
The well-worn stereotypes of urban sophisticates versus country bumpkins took a hit in July when an up-and-coming French economist explained her latest findings in The Economist, a publication with more than 1.2 million subscribers globally and significant influence with policymakers in the English-speaking world. “Some groups are more likely than others to see the world ...
SpaceX Vs. California – Again
It took Elon Musk’s rocket company about a week to challenge the commission in court, arguing in its October filing that it was “egregiously and unlawfully overreaching its authority.” “First, the commission has engaged in naked political discrimination against” SpaceX, reads the complaint, and, second, the agency “is trying to ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Urbanists See Portents of Doom: Will floods, fire or earthquakes wipe out Sacramento?
When Gov. Leland Stanford was inaugurated on Jan. 10, 1862, he didn’t walk to the state Capitol, nor did he take a carriage. Instead, he got into a small boat and rowed from the governor’s mansion to the Capitol steps. The Great Flood of 1862 is something that anyone interested ...
The Most-Regulated State In The Union
When the Mercatus Center last compiled its Snapshots of State Regulations, California was far ahead, or actually far behind, the next closest state, burdening residents with a combined 420,000 regulations, compared with about 300,000 for New York. Idaho, the least regulated state, imposed around 31,000 on residents. “Jurisdictions that allow regulations to consistently pile ...
County fairs are great opportunities to go meat shopping
Many of California’s county fairs host livestock exhibits giving youth exhibitors an opportunity to sell their livestock during a live auction. Money from the sale of livestock is often saved in college funds, spent on first-car purchases, or funneled into the following years’ project – teaching youth real world money ...
Cities should forget sport-subsidy hype and focus on basics
Cities should forget sport-subsidy hype and focus on basics By D. Dowd Muska | August 8, 2025 Three years to go. The opening ceremony for the Games of the XXXIV Olympiad is scheduled for July 14, 2028. And the men and women of the organizing committee are working feverishly ...
Despite ‘pro-housing’ programs, California’s crisis getting worse
Cities including Spokane, Tulsa and Memphis support pre-approved designs to streamline small-scale builds, similar to what California has sought to promote with its Pro-housing Designation Program (PDP). But many question why California’s land entitlement process—getting the zoning, use and building design approval from local governments to comply with state mandates—often ...
The Gordon Chang Report–China is Making the World Food-Insecure
READ THE PDF China Is Making the World Food-Insecure Of all the countries in the world, only one produces all the food it needs: South America’s Guyana.[1] Does food self-sufficiency matter anymore? In a peaceful and stable period, perhaps not, because the trade in foodstuffs this century led to rising ...
Read the latest on California's rising gas prices
California Goes Groucho On Gasoline
What did California officials think was going to happen when they decided it was a dazzlingly brilliant idea to hound the oil industry out of the state? That magic would take over and there would be no consequences for their rash decisions? Apparently, they weren’t thinking at all, because, according to reports, the California Energy ...
The fast food minimum wage hike continues to kill jobs
Governor Newsom Protests Too Much – the Minimum Wage Increase Did Destroy Jobs
As the New York Post reported, Newsom’s deputy director of communications Tara Gallegos disputed the findings of the piece, pointing out to Fox News Digital that the research paper was linked to the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank she claimed has published “false or misleading information” about California’s ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Why are urbanites more likely to embrace zero-sum thinking?
The well-worn stereotypes of urban sophisticates versus country bumpkins took a hit in July when an up-and-coming French economist explained her latest findings in The Economist, a publication with more than 1.2 million subscribers globally and significant influence with policymakers in the English-speaking world. “Some groups are more likely than others to see the world ...
