Connecting California

Do you want your ham and eggs, California?
It is one of the oldest and most enduring ideas in our state: Government should provide everyone with a minimum amount of money on a regular basis. It goes back to the 1930s, when Californians narrowly rejected the so-called “Ham and Eggs” proposals to give Californians a $30 check every Thursday.
Now, this notion is back, a subject …

My fellow Californians, the state of our state is nuttier than ever.
In saying that, I do not meant to judge the sanity of individual Californians—to the contrary, national surveys show we have lower rates of mental illness than the country as a whole. And, to be clear, I am referring to more than the agricultural fact that our state’s almond and walnut production has increased …

On a Saturday night after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, a plastic replica hand grenade was left in the driveway of Baitus Salaam Mosque in Hawthorne, a municipality near the Los Angeles airport. Someone also spray-painted “Jesus” on the mosque’s front gate and crosses on the windows.
It would have been understandable if the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community mosque (Ahmadiyya is an international revival movement within …

How many state champions does California need?
There’s a new answer to this question: 13. That’s how many state football champions California will crown this weekend during five state bowl games at Sacramento State’s Hornet Stadium and eight other games around the state. And that’s a big increase from the five state champions we had in 2014—and 13 more than California had before the state’s governing …

Do the good citizens of New Orleans skip town during Mardi Gras? Do proper New Englanders take tropical cruises when their trees display their most glorious fall colors? Would New Yorkers dare sneak out of Times Square 10 minutes before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve?
Of course not. So why must I leave California this coming Christmas week? Because too many Scrooges—including my wife, …

You can’t define an entire state by its borders. And that’s a good thing for California. We wouldn’t much like what our borders say about us.
Take the California-Oregon border. When you drive over the Siskiyou Pass on Interstate 5 and cross from Oregon into California, you will not be greeted by any welcoming party, grand gate, or museum that extols the glories of the Golden …

The University of Southern California football team is likely to lose to archrival UCLA this Thanksgiving weekend. But away from the gridiron, USC is on a decades-long winning streak that has become one of the most important stories in our state.
Over the past generation, USC has transformed itself from an easily mocked regional school for rich kids (“University of Spoiled Children”) into a global powerhouse. …

California-based companies like Uber and Airbnb claim to be remaking the world according to the values of sharing and the Silicon Valley magic of leveraging empowering networks. They even say they are transforming government and politics, by organizing their users and workers into a lobbying force.
Oh, please.
So far, this new force has confined itself to narrow lobbying for favorable regulation of Uber and Airbnb. The …

Don’t tell my kids I said this, but it really is OK for Californians to skip homework assignments—if they come from Sacramento.
If you’ve lived in California for the past two years, you’ve probably been invited by your local school district—by letter, email, or advertisement—to participate in developing a plan for your local schools and how they spend state money. Created out of 2013 legislation, these …

Will California’s high-speed rail system be German enough?
That question is not a joke, as I learned last month while riding Germany’s popular high-speed rail. In fact, it’s a more important question than the ones Californians have been myopically asking for years about the costs, funding, and construction deadlines of the state’s controversial project.
The value of high-speed rail does not lie in the cost or speed …