Commentary
Commentary
We Know Which Teachers to Fire
A study of 2.5 million students by Harvard and Columbia researchers strongly indicates that individual teacher quality based on student test scores significantly impacts students life outcomes. While that should be enough evidence for school districts to consider using testing data to help inform firing, tenure and pay policies, the ...
Commentary
Where to start in repealing Obamacare
On March 23, 2010, President Obama forever altered the American health care system by signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. Its advocates promised that the measure would reinvent American health care and reinvigorate the American economy. As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., put it, “This ...
California
California voters have a choice: taxes or education?
An education analyst says the governor of California is allowing voters to make the tough choices in light of the state’s economic woes. Governor Jerry Brown (D) is giving voters in The Golden State the option of either raising taxes or having funding cut from the state’s education system. The ...
California
Another Way California Wastes Taxpayer Dollars
California legislators never have enough time, and always lack the vision, to deal appropriately with the state’s pressing budget and infrastructure problems. But they are great at self-aggrandizement and at catering to the special-interest groups that assure their re-election. One would think, for instance, the Assembly Transportation Committee would be ...
Commentary
Hi, Doc. I’m from the government
Officials in California just announced that they were working with Harvard University doctors Jerry Avorn and Michael Fischer to overhaul how painkillers are prescribed to disabled workers in the state. The federal health reform law aims to take this so-called “academic detailing” crusade nationwide. Proponents say it’s an effective way ...
California
Don’t trust the locals yet
California’s redevelopment agencies were corrupt and had to go. But it’s hardly obvious that re-empowering local officials with “new and improved” economic development authority is a wise idea. Don’t misunderstand. It wasn’t that city officials who served on state redevelopment agency boards received bribes and kickbacks, or engaged in what ...
California
A Victory for Property Rights in California
I’m still giddy after the California Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 29 that the state had every right to shut down those noxious enemies of property rights and fiscal responsibility known as redevelopment agencies. Better yet, the state’s high court ruled that another law that allowed those agencies to come ...
Commentary
Forget The Doctor Fix, We Need A Medicare Fix
Just before they jetted off for the holidays, Congress and the president brokered a $33-billion deal that extends the payroll tax cut, provides additional unemployment benefits, and spares physicians from steep cuts in Medicare reimbursements. Unfortunately, the compromise simply postpones the day of reckoning for all three issues until March. ...
Commentary
Private schools make changes to stay afloat
Private schools in Orange County are struggling to maintain and boost student enrollment in the down economy but are reporting that the steep enrollment slides they endured a few years ago are reversing as parents become increasingly frustrated by class sizes and budget cuts in public schools. At the annual ...
California
More proof of redistricting manipulation by Democrats
Over the summer, the website I edit, CalWatchdog, published a series of articles documenting the way that the political Left exploited the redistricting process in California to assure strong gains for the Democratic Party. The report included an exclusive interview with a redistricting commission member who alleged partisan behavior by ...
We Know Which Teachers to Fire
A study of 2.5 million students by Harvard and Columbia researchers strongly indicates that individual teacher quality based on student test scores significantly impacts students life outcomes. While that should be enough evidence for school districts to consider using testing data to help inform firing, tenure and pay policies, the ...
Where to start in repealing Obamacare
On March 23, 2010, President Obama forever altered the American health care system by signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. Its advocates promised that the measure would reinvent American health care and reinvigorate the American economy. As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., put it, “This ...
California voters have a choice: taxes or education?
An education analyst says the governor of California is allowing voters to make the tough choices in light of the state’s economic woes. Governor Jerry Brown (D) is giving voters in The Golden State the option of either raising taxes or having funding cut from the state’s education system. The ...
Another Way California Wastes Taxpayer Dollars
California legislators never have enough time, and always lack the vision, to deal appropriately with the state’s pressing budget and infrastructure problems. But they are great at self-aggrandizement and at catering to the special-interest groups that assure their re-election. One would think, for instance, the Assembly Transportation Committee would be ...
Hi, Doc. I’m from the government
Officials in California just announced that they were working with Harvard University doctors Jerry Avorn and Michael Fischer to overhaul how painkillers are prescribed to disabled workers in the state. The federal health reform law aims to take this so-called “academic detailing” crusade nationwide. Proponents say it’s an effective way ...
Don’t trust the locals yet
California’s redevelopment agencies were corrupt and had to go. But it’s hardly obvious that re-empowering local officials with “new and improved” economic development authority is a wise idea. Don’t misunderstand. It wasn’t that city officials who served on state redevelopment agency boards received bribes and kickbacks, or engaged in what ...
A Victory for Property Rights in California
I’m still giddy after the California Supreme Court ruled on Dec. 29 that the state had every right to shut down those noxious enemies of property rights and fiscal responsibility known as redevelopment agencies. Better yet, the state’s high court ruled that another law that allowed those agencies to come ...
Forget The Doctor Fix, We Need A Medicare Fix
Just before they jetted off for the holidays, Congress and the president brokered a $33-billion deal that extends the payroll tax cut, provides additional unemployment benefits, and spares physicians from steep cuts in Medicare reimbursements. Unfortunately, the compromise simply postpones the day of reckoning for all three issues until March. ...
Private schools make changes to stay afloat
Private schools in Orange County are struggling to maintain and boost student enrollment in the down economy but are reporting that the steep enrollment slides they endured a few years ago are reversing as parents become increasingly frustrated by class sizes and budget cuts in public schools. At the annual ...
More proof of redistricting manipulation by Democrats
Over the summer, the website I edit, CalWatchdog, published a series of articles documenting the way that the political Left exploited the redistricting process in California to assure strong gains for the Democratic Party. The report included an exclusive interview with a redistricting commission member who alleged partisan behavior by ...
