California

The Pangloss-Pétain Governor

Featured image In his debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, California Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed, “We’ve already established that more people are moving from Florida to California.” That caught the attention of Lee Ohanian, research fellow at the Independent Institute, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and professor of economics at UCLA. “The rate of California’s population outflow to Florida has in fact accelerated,” professor Ohanian explains. “In 2022, California had a »

Rolling Brownout

Featured image “Reporters want to fan the flames of conflict leading to war because they’re so damn stupid. That is my belief of your profession.” As Sir Bedivere (Terry Jones) might say, who is this who is so wise in the ways of the media and world peace?  Why, it’s Jerry Brown, billed by the allegedly damn stupid reporter as a former governor of California. That is true, but there’s so much »

The compleat Democrat

Featured image You can see why California Governor Gavin Newsom had to go beyond California to find a fitting replacement for the late Dianne Feinstein in the United States Senate. He put a lot of thought into it. He conducted an extensive search. Before Feinstein’s body was cold, Newsom was ready with his announcement. He had found the compleat Democrat: Laphonza Butler of Silver Spring, Maryland. It’s almost funny. But consider, to »

Newsom jumps the shark

Featured image California Governor Gavin Newsom promised to appoint a black woman to replace the late Dianne Feinstein in the Senate, so you know this is a man who has his priorities in order. Politico reveals that Newsom will appoint Laphonza Butler to fill Feinstein’s seat. Butler apparently does not reside in California — Politico reports that she is registered to vote in Maryland. However, Butler owns a home in California. When »

Blue Cities: Getting It Good and Hard

Featured image Why does anyone still live in San Francisco? Why would any group hold a convention or similar event there? Why would a tourist set foot there? That city has been so badly governed for so long that the question is no longer whether it will thrive, but rather, whether it will survive. Many San Francisco businesses have closed their doors, while others are barely hanging on. Gump’s is an upscale »

“I’ve never seen anything like this”

Featured image Local authorities in Reedley, California uncovered a warehouse lab that “they suspect was home to an illegal, unlicensed laboratory full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials.” NBC News covers the story here. The CDC tested substances on hand and detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes. The NBC News story buries this nugget and leaves it hanging: Officials were unable to get »

Bonus Daily Chart: California’s Crazy Grid

Featured image We’re finally having a summer heat wave out in California, after, it should be noted, an extremely cold summer so far, but that won’t slow down the climatistas. The chart below of California electricity sources as of 7:30 pm this evening is a little hard to de-cypher, but if you study it a bit you can see how crazy California’s fetish for wind and solar power is. First, the inverted »

Life & times of VDH

Featured image Victor Davis Hanson is probably my favorite living historian and observer of the current scene. Peter Robinson caught up with him at his family farm in central California for his most recent installment of Uncommon Knowledge. This installment is the first of two parts: “In part one of this two-part interview, we cover Hanson’s rich and fascinating family history and the sweeping changes he’s lived through in terms of both »

This Week in San Francisco’s Doom Loop

Featured image Last week we passed along the stunning news that two of the largest hotels in San Francisco have decided to walk away from their investment entirely, defaulting on $725 million in debt on the properties. Today the Wall Street Journal follows up with some comparisons with other cities. Short version: hotel traffic in other major cities has recovered, while hotel traffic in San Francisco has not: Hotel owners in New »

San Francisco’s ‘Doom Loop’ Has Accelerated

Featured image Last week the Hoover Institution’s Lee Ohanian noted that residential homeowners in San Francisco lost $260 billion in value on their homes as home sales prices in “Detroit by the Sea” have fallen 17 percent, while nationwide home prices have fallen by only about 3 percent: San Francisco’s housing price decline reflects the fact that the city has lost more than 65,000 residents, roughly 7.5% of its population. San Francisco’s »

CA Gov, AG Incensed After 16 Illegals Dropped off at Sacramento Church

Featured image California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta were not too happy on Saturday to hear that 16 illegal immigrants from Texas had been dropped off, “without warning,” at a Sacramento church. Newsom has ordered the state’s Department of Justice to investigate. Specifically, he wants to determine “who paid for the travel of the migrants and whether they were misled, given false promises or kidnapped,” according to KCRA News. »

The Beach Boys Do Renewable Energy

Featured image Jon Reisman, Professor of Economics & Public Policy Emeritus at the University of Maine, devoted Power Line reader, and self-described “Statler and Waldorf Intern,” passes along this update of the Beach Boys classic tune everyone will recognize from the opening line: California’s Grid With apologies to Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Greta Thunberg Well, East Coast grids are hip I really dig wind mills they wear And the Southern grid, »

CA Reparations Committee Approves Recommendations Costing Nearly 3X State’s Annual Budget

Featured image On Saturday, a California reparations task force approved a package that, if passed by the legislature, would cost $800 billion, or nearly three times the state’s annual budget. Although the new proposal did not state the size of the payments, an earlier version called for eligible blacks in the state to receive cash (or its equivalent) reparation payments of a minimum of $360,000 each to make up for “health harms, »

How Crazy is San Francisco?

Featured image Just when you think San Francisco can’t get any more insane, you come across this 50 seconds of public comment before the SF Board of Supervisors earlier this week: This is one of the most eloquent and powerful speeches I’ve ever heard. 🥲pic.twitter.com/ANIefLbTui — Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) May 4, 2023 To be sure, at first it is hard to tell if this is a crazy whacked out lefty, or a »

Using Electricity to Redistribute Income

Featured image One of the many problems with “green” energy is that it is ridiculously expensive. Millions of Americans, if they have to pay the cost of wind or solar energy to power their homes, will not be able to afford it, and will have to sell out. Liberals know this, despite their absurd propaganda about wind energy being “cheap.” So what can they do? Follow the usual liberal playbook: make upper-income »

San Francisco, RIP?

Featured image My introduction to San Francisco came in the late 1970s, when I spent a lot of time there as a young lawyer. For a Midwestern guy, the San Francisco of that era was a revelation: great restaurants, famous hotels on Nob Hill, fog drifting in off the Bay. But today’s San Francisco is, sadly, something else. The San Francisco Chronicle has a long, long article about the city’s demise: “Downtown »

After the Deluge (or, Joys of Living in the West)

Featured image So I taunted John this morning about his snowbound existence, and threatened to fly my drone over the wildflowers starting to bloom not far from where I reside. I now I make good on my threat! (One of the grudging lessons here is how it is California can get away with bad government or a high “cover charge” for living here.) By the way, the water levels seen in the »