California as a harbinger for the nation

Aug 28, 2020
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John,

California burnin’: Forest fires are raging through California. The Left claims that these fires are a consequence of climate change, which necessitates further energy taxes to restrict energy use, and regulations to force the shift to solar and wind energy. Yet as environmentalist Michael Shellenberger writes ([link removed]) in Forbes this week, forest mismanagement also plays a significant role: “For much of the 20th Century, U.S. agencies and private landowners suppressed fires as a matter of policy. The results were disastrous: the accumulation of wood fuel resulting in fires that burn so hot they sometimes kill the forest, turning it into shrubland.”

California is a harbinger for the nation: At the Republican National Convention this week, speakers pointed to California as a warning of what will come nationwide under a Biden administration. Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson furthers this theme in a lengthy National Review treatment titled ([link removed]) , “California Apocalypto.” He writes, “California, as some of the Democratic primary candidates bragged last year, is the progressive model of the future: a once-innovative rich state that is now a civilization in near ruins. The nation should watch us this election year and learn of its possible future.”

A failed resistance: On the latest episode ([link removed]) of National Review’s Radio Free California, CPC President Will Swaim and board member David Bahnsen, also discuss how California's brand of far-Left governance fails ordinary residents. They point out that nearly four years into operation, the California Resistance has produced schools that won’t educate, an ineffective (when not destructive) response to COVID-19, million-acre wildfires, and government-imposed blackouts as a sacrificial offering to Mother Earth.

California’s feudal model: Joel Kotkin, Urban Studies Fellow at Chapman University, joined City Journal's podcast ([link removed]) this week to discuss California’s “increasingly feudal” political and economic order and the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown on the state's lower- and middle-class residents.

Markets are up, but pension funding is down: Pew is out with a new report ([link removed]) this week on the pension implications of Covid-19. While the stock market has regained its losses, the report explains that government funding remains depressed, burdening pension funds. “California has redirected state pension debt payments to support school districts and local governments,” the report highlights. “These actions will ease budget pressures in the near term but boost pension costs in the future.”

The definitive resource on Prop. 16: In his latest piece ([link removed]) , CPC contributor Edward Ring lays out the exhaustive case for why Prop. 16, which would reinstate affirmative action in California, is immoral and counterproductive. He argues that Prop. 16 seeks to restore racism in the name of fighting it and explains in detail how Asian-Americans would be its biggest victim.

Will a wealth tax drive job creators out of the state? In another contribution ([link removed]) this week, Ed analyzes the union-backed wealth tax and highlights how it will hurt almost everyone except, ironically, the rich, who won't notice new tax costs. "Backers of new taxes never have problems putting initiatives onto California’s state ballot ([link removed]) ," notes Ed. "If the tax-hungry legislature doesn’t do it, the cash-rich public-sector unions will pay for professional signature gathering, and in either case, they’ll fund the subsequent campaign." The middle class will pay the biggest costs of cash-hungry public unions' tax crusades in terms of less economic opportunity. Also, as Ed points out, new taxes on the rich are often just the foot in the door for unions and their political puppets to increase the tax burden on the middle class.

Public school or indoctrination? In his latest piece ([link removed]) , CPC contributor Larry Sand discusses the new woke guidelines for public schools that call on every student to receive an ethnic studies education. Teachers unions have spent decades failing to educate students on the basics like math and English, leaving generations unprepared to compete in the 21st-century economy. Now they're focusing on teaching political correctness?Outrageous! Larry points out that while the proposed guidelines are somewhat better than the version that was roundly criticized last year, this iteration is still fatally flawed. For instance, the curriculum portrays capitalism, not as a system that rewards people to the extent they make lives better for others, but rather a system “controlled by those in power” that ultimately “determines how society is organized and functions.”

Teaching victimology: California’s new ethnic-studies school curriculum also favors some ethnicities over others. As Independent Institute Senior Fellow Will Evers writes ([link removed]) in the Wall Street Journal this week: “This curriculum teaches… moral opprobrium to success by instructing teachers and students that the Jews and Irish in America have secured white “racial privilege.” Welcome to 'critical ethnic studies,' which boils down to vulgar Marxism, identity politics and victimology.”

Fairly fund charter schools – or give money to parents: The OC Register editorialized ([link removed]) this week against SB 98, California’s budget bill that holds school funding constant at last year’s attendance levels. The law punishes growing charter schools and those looking to safely reopen, and it rewards failing district schools that are losing students. As the Register writes:

This is more of the picking-winners-and-losers lawmaking that characterizes so much of California’s governance under the COVID-19 state of emergency, which has been in effect since March 4. The party in power sought to protect public employee union members, not students. SB98 contained a provision that barred K-12 and community college districts from layoffs or releases of any school employees through June 2021, even if school buildings are closed.

In protecting school employees from financial harm caused by the imposition of safety protocols, the state is depriving students who are enrolled in distance-learning programs of the funding that their schools need – and to which they are legally entitled – during this period of upheaval and disruption. Thousands of students across the state are on waiting lists for online charter programs. These schools cannot enroll new students without funding.

Better yet, just cut out the middleman and return education tax dollars directly to parents to let them choose the best education for their kids.

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Jordan Bruneau
Communications Director
[email protected] (mailto:[email protected])


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