“Tesla fired hundreds of workers this week, including engineers, managers and factory workers,” reported Louis Hansen of the San Jose Mercury News. “Little or no warning preceded the dismissals,” which came after performance reviews, as the company struggles to produce its Model 3 sedan, for which 450,000 customers are waiting. Overall, Tesla showed the…
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As Lawrence McQuillan notes in California Dreaming: Lessons on How to Resolve America’s Public Pension Crisis, outlandish pensions for government employees have put state budgets in crisis and threaten the services taxpayers receive. In California, government employees could retire at age 55 with two percent of their salary for each year of state employment….
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As we noted, even with a single tunnel, Jerry Brown’s massive $16 billion “WaterFix” for the delta is a financial bust. According to Benefit-Cost Analysis of The California WaterFix, by Jeffrey Michael of the Center for Business and Policy Research at the University of the Pacific, construction costs, estimated at $16 billion, are still more than…
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With 59 dead and more than 500 injured, the Las Vegas massacre is beyond horrific. Even so, it could have been worse in several ways. Suppose gunman Stephen Paddock had been giving off clear warnings of his deadly intentions, which police ignored. Suppose police had intercepted communications of his mass-murder plan, then did nothing…
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The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is about to give $7.9 million to UC Davis, already the recipient of $131 million from CIRM, which David Jensen of the California Stem Cell Report describes as an “Oakland-based stem cell agency.” Near the end of his report, he helpfully notes CIRM was created by the 2004…
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Back in 2001, terrorists flew U.S. airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing some 3,000 people and causing countless billions in damage. According to an investigation by Kelly Carr and Jaimi Dowdell of the Boston Globe, the Federal Aviation Administration listed two of those airliners still active four years later in…
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Last year Senate Democrats launched a crusade against independent think tanks including the Cato Institute, Reason Foundation, Heartland Institute, the Hoover Institution, John Locke Foundation, Manhattan Institute and many others. This “web of climate denial,” charged Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democrat, casts “a grim shadow over democracy” and a “filthy grip on our…
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“I think this year’s higher tuition is just the beginning of bailouts by students and their parents. The students had nothing to do with creating this, but they are going to be the piggy bank to solve the problem in the long term.” That is Lawrence McQuillan, author of California Dreaming: Lessons on How…
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California’s Board of Equalization does not equalize anything, so even its name is misleading. It’s a tax agency, with a budget of more than $650 million, so no surprise that the BOE has misallocated $50 million in tax revenue and members use BOE events to promote their own careers, at taxpayer expense. State government…
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As hurricanes assail the nation, President Trump is tweeting up a storm on a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to cut taxes and simplify the tax code. So far, the president is short on details, but he did say, “It’s your money, not the government’s money,” and tax reform should start with that reality. The money that…
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