Yesterday, to no one’s surprise, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court decision striking down Proposition 8 as violating the Fourteenth Amendment. The opinion can be found here courtesy of How Appealing. Similar to retired District Judge Vaughn Walker, the Ninth Circuit found that there was no legitimate reason for the...
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To think as a young man I longed to live in southern California. Today, the state is one big caricature of Political Correctness. News item: The Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance requiring porn actors to wear condoms. Presumably, they can perform their on-air sex acts outside Los Angeles. What is the point?...
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Those hoping ObamaCare will soon lead to a “Single-payer” plan such as Canada’s might want to look through the most recent annual report on wait times for health care in Canada just released by the Fraser Institute. Among other findings in “Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada, 2011 Report:” Specialist...
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On December 29th, the world-renowned economist Ronald H. Coase celebrated in Chicago his 101st birthday. Professor Coase received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1991, and he is the Clifton R. Musser Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and the former, highly influential editor of the prestigious Journal...
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In the face of substantial budgetary problems, California’s legislature voted to shut down its more than 400 redevelopment agencies that used tax dollars to partner with developers to redevelop blighted areas. Governor Jerry Brown proposed shutting down those agencies, saying the $5 billion they spent annually could be better spent elsewhere. One reason this...
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The New York Times reports in “A Gold Rush of Subsidies in Clean Energy Search” that NRG Energy is receiving nearly $1.6 billion in government subsidies for its new compound in California of almost one million solar panels. The Times further notes that: Similar subsidy packages have been given to 15 other solar- and...
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The Washington, D.C., metropolitan area has edged out San Jose’s silicon valley as the highest-income metropolitan area in the United States, this story notes. People’s incomes can come from one of two sources. People can engage in productive activity and voluntary exchange, or they can forcibly take income from others. Silicon Valley gets its...
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As did many, former Mayor Willie Brown wrote a tribute of Steve Jobs in his San Francisco Chronicle column this week. Except, in inimitable Willie Brown fashion, his was rather more a tribute to himself—an accolade to Brown’s magnanimous use of his discretionary power to make a San Francisco Apple store possible. It seems...
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From the Republican presidential primary debate, April 23, 1980, excerpted in today’s Wall Street Journal: Ronald Reagan: Can I add to that? I think the time has come that the United States and our neighbors, particularly our neighbor to the south, should have a better understanding and a better relationship than we’ve ever had.......
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Senator Barbara Boxer came to town yesterday to make political hay at the expense of her fellow super-privileged and the economically illiterate. She is reported to have called to “make millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share” nearly a dozen times in the course of her public appearance. That’s all very nice and fine,...
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