By Steven Greenhut at The American Spectator

June 23, 2016

When asked whether he wanted to have dinner at a particular restaurant, Yogi Berra famously quipped, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” It’s easy to apply that contradictory concept to a recent poll showing more than a third of San Francisco Bay Area residents want to move outof the area in the next few years. They told pollsters traffic is so congested and housing prices so high no one wants to live there anymore.

On the surface, the Bay Area seems to be booming. California’s Democratic policymakers point to it as an example of everything right about California. It’s a hub of entrepreneurship and jobs creation. It’s a gorgeous place with a temperate climate, a quirky and easygoing culture, and home to almost any amenity anyone could want. During a recent visit to Palo Alto, I saw small tract houses for sale for $2 million-plus. Obviously, demand is pushing those prices to stratospheric levels. It seems like everyone wants to live there. And yet interviews with people plotting an exit to Nevada, Texas, or North Carolina tell a much different story.

Read more at The American Spectator

By Larry Salzman in The San Diego Union-Tribune

June 23, 2016

One of the few good things to come out of the nation’s recent financial crisis was an end to wasteful “redevelopment” agencies in California that had for decades been violating property rights by abusing the power of eminent domain. Unfortunately, step-by-step, California legislators are intent on rolling back that victory.

Eminent domain is the government’s power to take land, homes, businesses or other property for public use, when the government pays the owner “just compensation.” In California, until 2012, the power was frequently used by local governments and state-subsidized “redevelopment agencies” to take property not to build a school, or a road or a firehouse — but merely to transfer the property from one owner to another private owner in the hope that the new owner would use the property in a way that would generate more taxes or jobs.

Read more at The San Diego Union-Tribune

By George Avalos in The Mercury News

June 20, 2016

Living in San Jose, Kathleen Eaton seemingly had it all: a well-paying job, a home in a gated community, even the Bay Area’s temperate weather.

But enduring a daily grind that made her feel like a “gerbil on a wheel,” Eaton reached her limit.

Read more at The Mercury News

By Gregory D. Totten in Ventura County Star

February 20, 2016

Gov. Brown has introduced a voter initiative that would allow tens of thousands of dangerous criminals to be released early from prison. A Feb. 14 editorial in The Star urges rejection of this measure. As district attorney, I strongly agree with The Star’s recommendation. I am particularly troubled by the process the governor is using to place the measure before voters and the sweeping changes it contemplates.

At first blush, the so-called Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016 sounds good. After all, everyone is in favor of public safety. But in truth, this artfully crafted title is misleading because the proposal actually jeopardizes our safety.

Read more at Ventura County Star

By Jeffrey Dorfman at Forbes

June 16, 2016

Residents of many U.S. cities will be quick to tell you that rents are too high and rising too fast. If you want to buy rather than rent, the story, if anything, gets worse. In Manhattan, prices of $1000 per square foot are becoming normal for ordinary apartments, with luxury units costing far, far more. Given the difficulty buying in many cities, rental options have been rising in importance even for households with incomes well above average. And because of this demand, rental prices in many desirable locations have reached the point where cries, protests, and petitions for rent control are spreading rapidly. More local rent control ordinances, however, would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Rent control masks the symptom of the problem, but can actually make the lack of affordable housing worse.

Read more at Forbes

By Jon Ortiz in The Sacramento Bee

June 19, 2016

Despite earlier suggesting otherwise, state Board of Equalization member Jerome Horton now says that he and his staff were involved in selecting designer furniture for his Sacramento high-rise office that cost taxpayers $118,000 to purchase and $12,000 to install.

Internal Board of Equalization emails and other documents turned over to The Sacramento Bee under the state’s public records law indicate the same, contradicting Horton’s public and private attempts to blame agency bureaucrats outside of his office for handling the matter without his guidance. His chief of staff, Kari Hammond, also denied knowledge of the matter during an interview in April.

By Julia Baum in The Mercury News

June 14, 2016

If and when bullet trains make it to San Jose, they should either come on elevated tracks, inside a tunnel or at ground level along existing rails.

Those differing opinions were expressed during a June 6 meeting at the Gardner Community Center in Willow Glen attended by about 100 residents, who came to learn how high-speed rail could affect their neighborhood.

Read more at The Mercury News

By John Phillips in The Orange County Register

June 13, 2016

Did you know that assault with a deadly weapon isn’t a violent crime? How about injuring a police officer? Brutal child abuse or elder abuse? Or even killing someone?

If California Gov. Jerry Brown gets his way, I guess we will have to redefine the word “violent” in the dictionary, because thousands of people convicted of those crimes, which he calls “nonviolent,” will be eligible for parole.

Read more at The Orange County Register

By Tim Worstall at Forbes

June 12, 2016

Or at least a number of activist groups are trying to carry out a bombing campaign on the housing market in Silicon Valley by bringing in a system of rent control. For it is a standard jest among economists that rent control is the worst thing you can do to an urban housing market short of aerial bombing. It’s one of those things which is definitely contra-indicated as a public policy therefore. The solution to housing being too expensive is to go build some more housing. On the grounds that this supply and demand thing really does work and it is prices which make it do so.

Read more at Forbes

By David Siders in The Sacramento Bee

June 6, 2016

The California Supreme Court, siding with Gov. Jerry Brown in a major prison case, on Monday overturned a lower court ruling blocking his initiative to make some nonviolent felons eligible for early parole.

In a 6-1 ruling, the court found Brown acted within his discretion when he filed the November ballot initiative as an amendment to a narrower measure concerning juvenile justice.