Our governor is trying to cut public employees wages to the minimum wage, and that is wrong.  What he’s doing is essentially holding the public employees hostage to try to leverage the legislature to act.  It’s not very different from holding a bank teller hostage to get the manager to hand over cash. I have… Read more

I was in Peoria yesterday to give a talk to the City Council. Peoria is a suburb of Phoenix, but it is intent on having its own identity and economy. The City has a population pushing 150,000 spread over an amazing 180 square miles. They like their open space in Peoria. It’s a great looking… Read more

Ventura California’s City Manager, Rick Cole, has had two recent pieces at newgeography.com, here and here, titled “The War for Jobs.” In these pieces, he outlines some important changes in California cities’ environment, and what Ventura is doing to attract or grow jobs, because, as he says, governments don’t create jobs. Rick’s right. Governments don’t… Read more

Two articles today give us an idea of how hard it is for governments to cut back. The first one, in the Los Angeles Times, reports that the city’s Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, is recommending that the city “Slash city services.” In the second article, Dan Walters discusses the politics of California’s Governor’s proposal to cut… Read more

Below are two quotes from this article: “We’ve actually walked through this horrible recession with our economic base unscathed,” said Stephen Levy of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. “The core of the California economy is still in place,” said Chris Thornberg of Beacon Economics in Los Angeles. With all due respect,… Read more

Our governor wants a constitutional amendment to require that 10 percent of state revenues go to higher education. This sounds good, but it really is bad policy in several ways: One of our current problems is that there are so many spending mandates in California that our policy makers have very limited freedom to respond… Read more

Joel Kotkin sent me this link to a Union Tribune editorial. As Arnold would say, it’s fantastic. When asked about the possibility of suspending AB 32 during bad economic times, Arnold asserts that AB 32 is helping economic Growth. Here’s the money quote: “Your question is premised on an unproven assertion that implementation of AB… Read more

The Mysterious Effective Demand tweeted and blogged on a paper by University of Arizona Professor Brent T. White. I haven’t read the full paper, but the portion quoted by Effective Demand presents a pretty simple and predictable argument that “Millions of American homeowners are “underwater” on their mortgages – owing more than the value of… Read more

A couple of months ago, on a flight from Los Angeles to New York, I had the opportunity to sit next to an impressive young woman from New Zealand, and we had the type of conversations that occur on long flights. New Zealand was too small for her, and opportunity was limited. So, right after… Read more

Tim Herdt has a piece today on the politics of legalizing marijuana: “Forget Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom. It says here that the most interesting political issue in California next June might not be the Republican and Democratic nominations for governor, but possibly a ballot proposition with the following title:… Read more