Economy

California Seeks To Regulate The Internet In A Drive To Resurrect Net Neutrality

California Democrats have drafted a bill to bar Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon from playing favorites with online content. Mirroring the 2015 net neutrality rule enacted under President Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SB 822 was introduced in January, passed through three committees on strict party line votes with the unanimous support...

May 31, 2018

Economy

New Yorkers and Californians can’t stop moving to Texas

According to a new U.S. Census Bureau report, of the 15 fastest-growing cities larger than 50,000 people, seven are in Texas including the top three: Frisco, New Braunfels, and Pflugerville. Frisco’s growth rate was 8.2 percent, some 11 times faster than the national rate of 0.7 percent. Of the cities with the greatest population gain from July 1,...

May 30, 2018

Economy

Texas Laps California In Job And Population Growth

California’s bigger, population-wise, but Texas delivers the growth. California, with 39.5 million people, is some 40 percent more populous than Texas, at 28.3 million. Yet, in spite of California’s large advantage in residents, the Golden State generated 356,800 new nonfarm jobs in the past 12 months through April, a rate of 2.1 percent, compared to...

May 22, 2018

Taxes & Spending

Seattle’s Unloosed Monsters Will Kill The Progressive Dream

In “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus,” Dr. Frankenstein justified his creation as for the good of humanity. Instead, arrogance drove him to make his destructive monster. Similarly, the modern progressive project sees itself as able to cure humankind’s ills, to set society’s wrongs right—so long as it has enough of other people’s money backing a...

May 16, 2018

Economy

U.S. Liquefied Natural Gas Exports Just Quadrupled – It’s Good For The Economy & National Security

Last year Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned natural gas company, provided some 40 percent of Europe’s gas needs. Gazprom produced 16.6 trillion cubic feet of gas. By comparison, America produced almost 27 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2017 and, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is on track to produce 43 trillion cubic feet of natural...

May 14, 2018

Economy

SALT Deduction Cap Appears To Be Shifting Job Creation To Low Tax States

With President Trump’s signature, a massive tax overhaul and cut became law in late December. With the tax cut came the usual forecasts, with liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writing on March 1 declaring, “You’ve been scammed” referring to American taxpayers, while noting “Yet even before the tax cut, federal tax receipts were looking weak for an...

May 9, 2018

Taxes & Spending

Blue State blues – Trump’s tax cut is supercharging job growth in low tax states

On December 22, 2017, President Trump signed a massive tax cut and reform bill crafted by Republicans without the help of one Democrat vote. One of the bill’s more controversial measures was the limitation of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction to $10,000 through 2026. According to the CPA Journal, taxpayers in California, New York,...

May 7, 2018

Economy

Texas Produces Five Times The Wind Power As California At Almost Half The Price – Blame Regulation

The electricity markets in the two most-populous states couldn’t be more different. California government heavily regulates electricity while Texas allows free market competition in most of the state. Yet, Texas produced about five times the amount of wind power as did California in 2017 while it generated about 29 percent more non-hydroelectric renewable power (California’s strict renewable...

May 7, 2018

Economy

California’s equal pay bill: What’s an extra billion in annual regulatory costs among friends?

Lawmakers in California are at it again. A few months ago, after President Trump signed the Republican tax cut and reform bill into law, there was a flurry of tax hike legislation out of Sacramento, most of it aimed at businesses. While taxes levy a direct claim on a company’s bottom line, other laws and...

May 1, 2018

Economy

California’s crazy one-party liberal politics is why I had to finally leave the state — and I’m not alone

  Twitter’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, infamously tweeted a link in early April to a story calling for a bloodless civil war to solve America’s problems. The piece, “The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War: Why there’s no bipartisan way forward at this juncture in our history — one side must win” was...

April 16, 2018

Economy

This Nazi Parade Will Help You Reassess How Bad Our Time Really Is

  An old photo on my Twitter stream captured my attention. It was of a German military parade in occupied Warsaw in 1940. My interest in history led me to think about the scene and how it represented a reality far removed from the average American’s experience. The Germans were marking the one-year anniversary of...

April 3, 2018

Economy

One Stat Explains Why The California Legislature Is Prone To Pass Outrageous Laws

This commentary was originally featured in The Federalist on March 13, 2018.  A California lawmaker recently came up with the bright idea that waiters who serve unrequested straws should go to jail for six months because … the environment. Another duo of lawmakers have proposed more than doubling California’s business tax under the theory that...

March 13, 2018