News

All too often, rent-seekers and other special interests push polls to influence elected officials. One antidote is community-based polling that provides a clear signal of what the public actually wants. Recently Oakland got such a signal in a poll of its residents by the East Bay Polling Institute (EBPI).

While Hollywood is aflutter about who will win Academy Awards next Sunday, everyone in Sacramento is talking about which candidates for CA governor will win the endorsements of the state’s Top Rent-Seekers.

In fiscal year 2024-25, state and local governments in California spent $240 billion on public employees and $161 billion on healthcare enterprises. The government in California is big business, and the public employee unions, healthcare corporations and healthcare employee unions that captured those billions are among the biggest businesses in California.

Last night’s CA gubernatorial debate hosted by Jewish California reminded me of Li’l Abner, a comic strip I read as a kid in which the residents of a town lived in a state of perpetual war with tax agents whom they called “Revenooers.”

Yesterday’s post was about rent-seekers such as hospitals and public employees who receive cash from the California governments they seek to influence. Today’s post is about rent-seekers who receive benefits in other forms.

Below is a screenshot of California’s major rent-seekers ranked in descending order of dollars they currently capture from state spending…

My day job is CA state politics and policy but often I’m asked for my view of federal politics. Usually I decline to answer but occasionally it can be fun to research a question. Most recently I’ve been asked about Gavin Newsom’s presidential prospects.

Endorsements of gubernatorial candidates by Sacramento’s establishment are ramping up. Below is an updated list of the major Sacramento political organizations engaged in “rent-seeking,” which means they seek to manipulate public policy to boost their wealth without creating new wealth, and the candidates they have endorsed…

The race for CA governor is in full swing as the rent-seeking unions and corporations that capture the lion’s share of $500 billion per year of state spending are starting to announce their endorsements. I’m keeping a spreadsheet. Here’s a screenshot of endorsements so far by some of Sacramento’s leading rent-seekers.

Yesterday my SFMuni bus ride took me past a protest led by SFUSD teachers striking for better pay. You cannot blame the teachers. You also can’t blame the students whose schools are closed or the taxpayers who have been providing record revenues to schools. All are victims of a deception that started 27 years ago.