People don”t associate California with the oil business nowadays, but anyone who has ever driven through Huntington Beach, Brea, Bakersfield, or a host of other places should know better. There was a time in the early 20th century when California”s […]
California
Why Do They Think Pennsylvania is a Swing State and We’re Not?
I have seen it said that Pennsylvania is a ‘swing state’ in this election. Nobody maintains that California is. But I looked at the presidential electoral maps of the past, and I found that Dukakis, against Bush Senior, lost ten […]
‘Streetcars’ vs. Light Rail
Samuel L. Scheib, editor of Trip Planner magazine, argues here that so-called ‘streetcars’, trams which actually run in the street with the cars, are not so much ‘public transit’ in the manner of light rail as a tourist amenity and […]
L.A. vs San Francisco: Who Runs California?
Zócalo wonders why the Bay Area, with half the population of the Los Angeles Basin, tends to dominate the state politically. I don’t have a theory about that, but I have several suggestions. 1. A lot of Southern Californians are immigrants, […]
How The Tobacco Companies Should Spend Their Money
Once again, in the debate over California’s Proposition 29, the tobacco companies seem to have all the money in the world, even though relatively few people smoke nowadays. Under the circumstances, I don’t shed much of a tear for them. […]
Three Californias? Integrating a Couple of Recent Proposals
It has often been proposed to split California into two states. In the past, these proposals generally agreed on dividing Northern California from Southern California; the cultural differential between the two was strong in the Kennedy years. The reader may […]
The Migrations of California
We have been accustomed recently to think of California as a place people migrate out of to the rest of the United States and that receives immigrants from abroad. But apparently there are levels. The Bay Area is so much […]
Observations on California’s Political Geography
A recent series of political maps from PPIC, Public Policy Institute of California, provides some fascinating information. One of the maps inflates or shrinks the various regions according to population; it makes clear why the Democratic Party dominates the state, […]
Peter Schrag’s Disillusionment
Peter Schrag is very much a man of the left, so it is nice to see him getting disillusioned with the teachers’ union establishment. Related: “AWOL At The Kvetching” by Peter Schrag at California Progress Report
Proposition 13 — The Good and Bad
As I’ve said before, the famous part of Proposition 13 – the part that protected existing homeowners from being gouged by their own rising home values – should be kept. Large cash taxes, when cash or liquid assets are not […]