Commentary
California
CEQA: The high cost of good intentions
By Chris Carr and Ken Broad California is in a quagmire due in no small part to the weaponization of CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. We are not providing the physical infrastructure befitting the world’s 5th-largest economy and leading crucible of innovation. Too often, critical projects don’t get built, ...
Commentary
High Healthcare Spending Doesn’t Bolster Case for Single-Payer
Does the United States spend too much on healthcare? A look at the lower levels of healthcare spending in peer countries like Canada and the United Kingdom would seem to indicate as much. But a closer look at those numbers reveals a far more complex story. Take the matter of ...
Commentary
PRI Lance Izumi Discusses SF School Board Recall in Northern California Record
Sarah Downey With last week’s overwhelming vote to recall three San Francisco school board members, it’s raising questions about how the referendum could impact public education and politics across California as parents go to the polls in year three of the COVID-19 pandemic. The recall results (72 percent to 79 percent in ...
Commentary
Plan to Expand Medi-Cal is a Costly Step Towards Single-Payer
It’s budget season in Sacramento. Governor Gavin Newsom’s spending proposal is the largest in the Golden State’s history. There’s no shortage of expensive and misguided policies in his budget. Chief among them is his push to expand Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, to cover all undocumented immigrants. Doing so would ...
Commentary
COVID-19 tests come too late
Last week, the Biden administration announced that 67 million U.S. households ordered at-home COVID-19 tests through a government website in January. Ten million have yet to receive their tests — more than a month after the site launched. In many parts of the country, the omicron wave has already receded. Daily cases ...
Commentary
Stalled in D.C., the Single-Payer Fantasy Makes Its Way to Blue States
Despite the best efforts of progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.) and Representative Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.), Medicare for All is off the table in Congress — for now, at least. But that doesn’t mean single-payer health care is dead. Like a zombie, the idea is being revived ...
Commentary
Failing Public Schools Motivate More Black Families to Homeschool
As the United States observes Black History Month, African-American families are making history by leaving failing public schools and homeschooling their children in record numbers. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, parents, and especially black parents, found public schools incapable of handling the crisis. Even prior to the pandemic, public schools were ...
Commentary
What science says about the future of COVID-19
There are possible ‘unknown unknowns’ that should concern us With pandemic fatigue becoming more intense, there is increasing speculation about when the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, might become “endemic” – a time when outbreaks will be more modest and manageable and we can “coexist” with the virus. A recent article in ...
Charter Schools
Blue state parents turn to home schooling
Closed public schools. COVID-19 mandates. Woke curricula. For these reasons and more, parents in blue states are turning to home schooling in droves. Nationally, home schooling has boomed. According to Census Bureau data, the proportion of households home-schooling their children skyrocketed from 5% in spring 2020 to 20% in spring ...
Commentary
California Single-Payer Has Gone Up In Flames – For Now. Will Progressives Escape The Firestorm?
On January 31, the campaign for single-payer health care in California suffered its latest defeat. Progressive Democrats in the Assembly were unable to line up enough support for AB 1400, which would’ve launched a state takeover of private health insurance, Medicare, and Medi-Cal. So Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, the bill’s ...
CEQA: The high cost of good intentions
By Chris Carr and Ken Broad California is in a quagmire due in no small part to the weaponization of CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. We are not providing the physical infrastructure befitting the world’s 5th-largest economy and leading crucible of innovation. Too often, critical projects don’t get built, ...
High Healthcare Spending Doesn’t Bolster Case for Single-Payer
Does the United States spend too much on healthcare? A look at the lower levels of healthcare spending in peer countries like Canada and the United Kingdom would seem to indicate as much. But a closer look at those numbers reveals a far more complex story. Take the matter of ...
PRI Lance Izumi Discusses SF School Board Recall in Northern California Record
Sarah Downey With last week’s overwhelming vote to recall three San Francisco school board members, it’s raising questions about how the referendum could impact public education and politics across California as parents go to the polls in year three of the COVID-19 pandemic. The recall results (72 percent to 79 percent in ...
Plan to Expand Medi-Cal is a Costly Step Towards Single-Payer
It’s budget season in Sacramento. Governor Gavin Newsom’s spending proposal is the largest in the Golden State’s history. There’s no shortage of expensive and misguided policies in his budget. Chief among them is his push to expand Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, to cover all undocumented immigrants. Doing so would ...
COVID-19 tests come too late
Last week, the Biden administration announced that 67 million U.S. households ordered at-home COVID-19 tests through a government website in January. Ten million have yet to receive their tests — more than a month after the site launched. In many parts of the country, the omicron wave has already receded. Daily cases ...
Stalled in D.C., the Single-Payer Fantasy Makes Its Way to Blue States
Despite the best efforts of progressives such as Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.) and Representative Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.), Medicare for All is off the table in Congress — for now, at least. But that doesn’t mean single-payer health care is dead. Like a zombie, the idea is being revived ...
Failing Public Schools Motivate More Black Families to Homeschool
As the United States observes Black History Month, African-American families are making history by leaving failing public schools and homeschooling their children in record numbers. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, parents, and especially black parents, found public schools incapable of handling the crisis. Even prior to the pandemic, public schools were ...
What science says about the future of COVID-19
There are possible ‘unknown unknowns’ that should concern us With pandemic fatigue becoming more intense, there is increasing speculation about when the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, might become “endemic” – a time when outbreaks will be more modest and manageable and we can “coexist” with the virus. A recent article in ...
Blue state parents turn to home schooling
Closed public schools. COVID-19 mandates. Woke curricula. For these reasons and more, parents in blue states are turning to home schooling in droves. Nationally, home schooling has boomed. According to Census Bureau data, the proportion of households home-schooling their children skyrocketed from 5% in spring 2020 to 20% in spring ...
California Single-Payer Has Gone Up In Flames – For Now. Will Progressives Escape The Firestorm?
On January 31, the campaign for single-payer health care in California suffered its latest defeat. Progressive Democrats in the Assembly were unable to line up enough support for AB 1400, which would’ve launched a state takeover of private health insurance, Medicare, and Medi-Cal. So Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, the bill’s ...
