They have done this notwithstanding the prohibition against taking life, liberty or property from any person — not just any American, but any person — in the Constitution each has sworn to uphold, and they have done so pursuant to secret rules that they themselves have established for these killings.

Last year, 11 senators and 39 members of the House of Representatives sent a harshly worded letter to President Joe Biden asking him to stop the secret, but not the public, killings. As of this writing, he has not publicly replied.

Here is the backstory.

The purpose of the Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments to the Constitution — is to protect personal liberty by restraining the government.

The Fifth Amendment prohibits killing persons, restraining liberty and taking property without due process; that means a jury trial at which the government must prove criminal behavior or fault, depending upon its goal.

If the country is at war — lawfully and constitutionally declared by Congress — obviously the president can use the U.S. military to kill the military of the opposing country. And if an attack on the U.S. is imminent, the president can strike the first blow against the military of the entity whose attack is just about to occur.

There are no other constitutional circumstances under which a president may kill.

When President Harry Truman targeted Japanese civilians as the Japanese government was within days of surrendering in World War II, he murdered them. Notwithstanding his unprosecuted war crimes, and with the government’s version of Pearl Harbor still fresh in many Americans’ minds, Truman was regarded as heroic for using nuclear bombs to cause the profoundly immoral, militarily useless and plainly criminal mass killings of the hated Japanese.

Fast-forward to the 9/11 era, and Bush had precedent to begin his own presidential killings of people the government wanted Americans to hate. While Congress did authorize him to use force against those who caused or aided the 9/11 attacks, we all know that his thirst for Middle Eastern blood knew no regard for the Constitution, evidence, proportionality, civilian lives, morality or human decency. Thus, $3 trillion spent and 1 million dead in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Julian Assange sits in a British dungeon awaiting decisions on his extradition to the U.S. because he courageously, lawfully and constitutionally published documents and videos demonstrating conclusively that Bush’s use of drones targeted and murdered Afghan and Iraqi civilians, and his administration covered it up.

Obama took this to another level when he targeted and killed Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in the U.S. Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, advised Obama that the killing was lawful, as al-Awlaki had encouraged folks in the Middle East to fight against American soldiers there. Holder likened killing al-Awlaki to police shooting at a bank robber whom they are chasing while he is shooting at them.

Holder forgot that al-Awlaki was unarmed, was not charged or indicted for any crime, was never accused of violence, and was not even the subject of an arrest warrant when a drone evaporated him while sitting at an outdoor cafe in Yemen.

The exercise of power by the federal government is largely based on precedent and politics. Whenever a president wants to kill, he need only find an example of a predecessor having killed with impunity — without due process, without a declaration of war and without an imminent attack. And then he needs only to calculate what he thinks he can politically get away with.

Joe Biden — whose drones in 2021 destroyed a dam in Syria, killing thousands, and who targeted civilians in Afghanistan, killing dozens, and whose shipments of guns to Ukraine and Israel are killing tens of thousands of folks he wants us to hate — is using unlawful powers that his modern predecessors used and got away with to target and kill unsympathetic persons. But the U.S. has not declared war on Russia or Gaza.

The nature of political power is to expand so that it fills a perceived need, unless there are mechanisms in place to restrain its expansion.

The founding generation believed that British monarchs had no limits on their powers and that was a good enough reason for the 13 colonies to secede violently. They also believed that they had crafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to impose sufficient restraints on the federal government. And they believed that the states could peacefully leave a federal government they had voluntarily joined when it exceeded its constitutional powers.

Sadly, the Founders were wrong.

Every president takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as it was written, not as he may wish it to be.

Yet, today, the president writes laws and rules that let him restrain personal liberty and kill with impunity, and Congress and the American people let him get away with it. Formally, we still have a Constitution. Functionally, it has utterly failed to restrain the government.

Ultimately, we have ourselves to blame for these killings and undeclared wars. Why do we repose the Constitution for safekeeping into the hands of those who subvert it? If a future president uses Bush’s lust and Obama’s logic and Biden’s hatreds to kill Americans in America, then no one’s life, liberty or property will be secure.

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

Great. But that shouldn’t obscure the fact that a commission would be the result of our legislators constantly acting like children by refusing to be good stewards of taxpayers’ dollars, which is their No. 1 job. There are also a few important things needed to make such a commission successful.

In the last 50 years, when the budget process has been in place, Congress has managed only four times to pass a budget on time and through the regular process. Seventeen times, members of Congress haven’t bothered to pass a budget at all. That hasn’t stopped them from spending money they didn’t have, or from making promises to voters they wouldn’t be able to fulfill. I doubt I need to remind you that it’s gotten worse. In the last half-decade, Congress added $5 trillion to the already elevated and growing federal debt with no plan for repayment.

Nor should I need to remind this column’s readers that government interest payments are growing quickly, propelled by higher interest rates applied to an expanding debt level. That’s the result of years of excuses that interest rates would remain historically low.

While you might see how legislators chose to believe that inflation and high interest rates were things of the past, there’s no excuse for ignoring the upcoming insolvency of programs like Medicare and Social Security. This looming calamity has been warned of for decades in government reports and scholarly publications.

To be sure, the insolvency dates might change with new projections, but what has been constant is the knowledge that around the 2030s, Social Security’s trust fund will dry out, triggering a reduction in benefits across the board of about 20%. To avoid cutting benefits, Congress could decide to borrow the money — at least $116 trillion of it — over the next 30 years. That option has been right there, written in all its red-ink glory, in the tables of reports produced by the Congressional Budget Office.

So, yes, Congress knew this was coming. And yet it did nothing. Making matters worse, Republicans have abandoned the mantle of at least paying lip service to fiscal responsibility by refusing to talk about entitlement reform.

Now that we are clear about a bunch of delinquents who don’t want to do their jobs, let’s consider a fiscal commission.

At the heart of the commission’s charge must be a commitment not just to reduce some deficits, but to put the government back on a sustainable track. As my colleague and former CBO Director Keith Hall convinced me, the commission will fail if it doesn’t have a clear target from the start. Then it will need to be both transparent and accountable by operating in the open, making its findings and deliberations available to the public, and thereby fostering an informed debate about the choices facing the nation.

The commission could be established through legislation mandating that Congress consider any resulting proposals on a fast-track basis, with limited opportunities for amendment and delay. Such mechanisms have been used successfully in the past with military-base closure commissions and trade agreements, and they could be adapted to the task of fiscal reform.

In short, a fiscal commission represents a pragmatic approach to a problem that has for too long been mired in politics and short-term thinking. It offers a pathway out of the fiscal morass, provided it is empowered to act, and its recommendations are taken seriously.

For Congress, which has shirked its responsibilities, the commission offers a chance to redeem itself by enabling reforms that might otherwise never see the light of day. In this way, the commission does not usurp Congress’s role but rather complements it, providing the impetus needed for genuine fiscal reform.

Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

When Joe Biden was briefed about Beirut, he said, “Yeah, Beirut was good in his day, but Mickey Mantle was a better home run hitter.”

With the incompetence and corruption of this Biden administration, and Trump not speaking a lot because the courts have him under various gag orders, “The Donald” has risen in the polls. Some pollsters say he is winning in five key swing states.  Although results in Virginia’s elections Tuesday still point to abortion hurting Republicans.

I guess it reminds us that the more we see of a politician, the less we like. Biden won the presidency from his basement; Trump might win it back from the witness stand of three trials.

Donald Trump is particularly popular in the South. It seems odd that a brash, obnoxious New Yorker like Trump would resonate in the South. We do not like the personality of Trump, but we really, really, really do not like how big, expensive, arrogant and corrupt the federal government has become. He is a proxy for our anger.

We are also tired of the arrogant, leftist, coastal elite narrative that we are racist rubes, and they know better than we do. Lefties paint a narrative that every Southern state’s state bird is Jim Crow. Trump’s policies and results represent what we want. It takes a bombastic outsider to change Washington.

All this racist finger pointing at the South is the deflection of the racism of the North. There are no more racist cities than Boston or New York.  Remember Martha’s Vineyard as its denizens clutched their pearls when illegal immigrants arrived, and turned them away? The reality is that the races get along better in the South, especially in smaller towns, than up North.

The South and Republicans take a dim view of government. We believe it should be minimal and should serve the people.  Democrats believe government should be big and serve them.

Barack Obama traffics in woke race baiting like no one else. He is probably the puppeteer running the Biden administration. Obama pops into campaigns in states like Virginia and Kentucky with robo-calls to help Democrats and to keep the machine going. He is pro-Palestine and hides behind his woke rhetoric. He does not even make light or joke about himself, because that would be racist.

Everyone knows Biden is a total disaster. But if they dump him, they get the lightweight affirmative action product, Kamala Harris. She is Biden’s safety net. You move him out, you get her. Checkmate and stalemate.

The Dems have party discipline that the GOP does not have. They destroyed Robert Kennedy Jr. as a primary challenger to Biden. Even when Kennedy was polling at 20%, they refused to let him debate Biden or to provide him Secret Service protection. Even worse, when he asked for security, Biden offered Hillary Clinton.

Although he invites criticism, Trump continues to take the slings and arrows of the outrageous left. CNN repeats the Democrat’s confusing mantra “democracy is at risk,” whatever that means. They somehow reason that Trump views himself as some all-powerful Roman emperor. It’s too bad Orange Julius is trademarked; it would be a great campaign moniker for Trump.

Democrats use the brute force of government to prosecute their political opponents. Donald Trump is prosecuted by three very Democrat prosecutors, which only made him soar in the polls. Then he was ceremoniously arrested in Georgia. The Dems were excited that day. Elizabeth Warren showed up for the booking in full tribal warpaint.

Democrats want to disqualify Trump from running for President under some archaic treason law that kept Confederates from office during Reconstruction.  Trump is now the first president arrested since Jefferson Davis. And that is why there will always be a Trump merchandise aisle at every Dollar General, Stuckey’s, Cracker Barrel, and roadside fireworks stand in the South.

A libertarian op-ed humorist and award-winning author, Ron does commentary on radio and TV. He can be contacted at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.

To be sure, Haley faces a number of formidable obstacles that make it unlikely for her to succeed. First and foremost, Iowa Republicans tend to be Evangelical, and as we’ve seen in the past, prefer the most conservative, right-wing candidate. 

Whether it be Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012, or Ted Cruz in 2016, the winner of the Iowa GOP caucuses in recent times has not fit Haley’s mainstream Republican mold. It seems former President Donald Trump holds the mantle of most conservative this time around, especially given his appointment of the Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe v. Wade.

Secondly, while 16% in the latest polling in Iowa is impressive for Haley, she still remains tied with DeSantis, the oft-scrutinized Florida governor. Although she has risen ten points since the previous Des Moines Register poll and has the momentum, it is highly unlikely DeSantis will cede to Haley and drop out, especially given the deep pockets of his allied Super PAC, Never Back Down.

Furthermore, with 8 major candidates still in the GOP primary field, the opposition to Trump is seemingly more divided than might otherwise be needed to present an opening for Haley. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who Haley appointed to the Senate, is well funded and seems insistent on remaining in the race at least through Iowa and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appears intent on competing in the New Hampshire primary. 

For Haley to make a legitimate run at the nomination, she needs to consolidate the field so it becomes a two-person contest between herself and Trump, something that looks unlikely to happen given the current dynamics of the race. Positively for Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence dropped his presidential bid this past weekend.

A third barrier for Haley is Trump’s continued strength among the GOP electorate. The Des Moines Register poll shows that he has a favorability of almost two to one positive among Iowa Republicans, giving him a rating that is as high as any other Republican, indicating, as the polls show, that roughly two-thirds of Iowa Republican caucusgoers are considering supporting the former president.

A final obstacle for Haley, who is the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is her strong vocal support of Ukraine and Israel in their wars against authoritarians and terrorists. Conservative Republicans, particularly those in the House and the base of the GOP electorate, have been skeptical of American support for Ukraine, despite being vocally supportive of Israel at the same time.

There is a growing isolationist movement within the Republican Party which is pulling its foreign policy away from Ronald Reagan’s doctrine of peace through strength abroad. Put another way, Haley’s hawkish stance on foreign policy is most likely out of sync with that of many, if not most, Iowa Republican primary voters.

Furthermore, as alluded to above, over 35%, of Iowa GOP primary voters categorize themselves as Evangelical Christians, making them a crucial bloc in the caucuses. Based on her career and the tact of her current campaign, Haley has not positioned herself as a candidate who appeals to Evangelicals. 

Going back to the first debate, Haley was arguing for a 15-week compromise on abortion and ruled out the possibility of a national ban. Her recommendations are at variance with those in the Evangelical community specifically, and conservative Republican community more generally, who philosophically and emotionally, are deeply committed to an outright ban on abortion.

If Haley can pull off a massive swing in the Republican primary and win the nomination, she will be in a strong position for the general election. In fact, she outperforms Trump against Biden in four of the six battleground states included in the recent New York Times/Siena College poll.

Even if everything swings Haley’s way and she continues to ride the current momentum into the new year, the success of the Haley presidential campaign will still be predicated upon whether the rest of the field coalesces around her to defeat Trump. If this consolidation does not materialize prior to the February primary in Haley’s home state of South Carolina, it is very likely Donald Trump will walk his way to a third straight GOP presidential nomination.

Douglas Schoen is a longtime Democratic political consultant.

The purpose of TPA is to restore key provisions of Prop 13 and other voter-approved ballot measures that gave taxpayers, not politicians, more say over when and how new tax revenue is raised. TPA is necessary because, over the past decade, the California courts have created massive loopholes and confusion in long-established tax law and policy. TPA closes those loopholes and provides new safeguards to increase accountability and transparency over how politicians spend our tax dollars. It is the only long term check and balance on a permanent two thirds supermajority progressive Legislature.

The reaction of California’s tax-and-spend progressives to the qualification of TPA is, as one would expect, shrill and hyperbolic. A massive misinformation campaign by the League of California Cities predicts that the passage of TPA would be an “end times” event. Of course, the League predicted the same thing in 1978 over Prop 13.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the voters of California don’t share the concerns of government bureaucrats and politicians over TPA. In fact, the more they hear about it, the more they are inclined to support it. (Given California’s outrageous tax burden, that shouldn’t be a surprise).

As support for TPA grows, so does the desperation of its detractors, which explains the effort by the governor and the Legislature to use the courts to knock TPA off the ballot. But as frequently happens in politics, groundless attacks on taxpayer rights tend to backfire. Now voters will hear even more about the measure’s key provisions, such as requiring all new state taxes passed by the Legislature to go on the ballot for voter approval. Voters will be happy to hear that TPA restores the two-thirds vote threshold for local special taxes, and that it clears up muddy definitions that allow taxes to be mislabeled as “fees.” Voters will also like TPA’s transparency requirement that ballot labels must not only state clearly that a tax increase is a tax increase, but also disclose how the money will be spent.

Last week, the campaign in support of TPA submitted their brief in response to the lawsuit. The Executive Committee of Californians for Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability consists of the leaders of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the California Business Roundtable, and the California Business Properties Association. The campaign’s co-chairs, Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and Matthew Hargrove, president and CEO of the California Business Properties Association, issued the following statement:

“It is disheartening to see the legislature use taxpayer dollars to stifle the voice of the very people they are supposed to represent. Such actions contradict the foundational tenets of our democracy, where ‘all political power is inherent in the people,’ as stated in the California Constitution. The Court should reject this unprecedented and undemocratic action that is an insult to the voters of California.”

At its core, the lawsuit is nothing more than the latest politically motivated attempt to keep the highly popular TPA off the ballot by taking the extreme action of denying voters their lawful right to amend the California Constitution. The legislature has already gone so far as to pass—ACA 13—which would, for the first time, take initiative power away from voters by demanding voter-backed measures play by a different set of rules at the ballot box. Not satisfied with that effort, this groundless lawsuit now asks the California Supreme Court to take the near-unprecedented act of removing a ballot measure before voters have their say.

For anyone who thinks that progressive politicians are truly concerned with “protecting democracy,” this lawsuit proves otherwise.

Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

The conviction that the state can and should dictate virtually all policy on land use and development – an area that was previously the purview of local government as long as California has been a state – lurks behind all the major new housing laws California has adopted over the last three years.

These measures make denials of building permits almost impossible in most places even when proposed projects far exceed local plans approved by city councils, county boards and voters. So the character of many cities is changing rapidly, but vacancy signs proliferate more than ever as most persons who badly need housing can’t afford even supposedly affordable rents or purchase prices in the dense new developments.

Now the same “we know what’s best for everyone” notion has spread to schools, where some social issues spur responses even more emotional than neighborhood-changing high-rise buildings.

It’s too early in the school disputes for a statewide rebellion to develop, but if disagreements on how to approach gender-identity issues remain as wide as they are now, expect a ballot initiative to appear, just as an initiative to override most of the new housing laws is now seeking signatures statewide.

The state’s conflict with some school districts began in mid-summer when the Chino Valley Unified district in western San Bernardino County adopted a “parents’ rights” policy on children’s gender identity. A court order at least temporarily delayed its effective date.

That policy would require written notice to parents within three days if a child identifies as trans-gender, becomes violent or mentions possible suicide. Under these rules, identifying as trans-gender can be as innocuous as children seeking to change the pronouns by which they refer to themselves or using bathrooms and changing rooms not matching their apparent birth gender.

Similar rules have since been adopted by the Murrieta Valley Unified district in southern Riverside County and a few others that also sought to reject a state-mandated social studies curriculum discussing the assassinated gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk,

The legal holdup stems from direct intervention via a lawsuit by state Attorney General Rob Bonta.

Meanwhile, Newsom said he is working with legislators to develop language for a new law to negate or mitigate policies like those adopted for Chino.

The fear of LGBTQ+ leaders and their allies like Newsom is that some children exhibiting transgender tendencies would become victims of extreme parental violence if they were “outed.”

Opponents of the recent school district rule changes believe children only hide their trans-gender tendencies and wishes from parents if they fear such violence. They believe schools should protect children’s interests over parental authority. Meanwhile, lower court judges have differed on whether the state or local districts have ultimate authority on these issues.

This is not a unique California situation. Florida, for example, has adopted a statewide policy almost identical to the Chino/Murietta models.

It’s no surprise that the moves by California districts come largely in Republican areas where the GOP has stressed electing local officials like school board members, since the party has been unable to dent Democratic super-majorities in the Legislature.

So far, Bonta has not filed more lawsuits or tried to block state funding for districts involved, as he has with several cities resisting the statewide housing laws.

But it’s plain that the effort to create new laws prohibiting policies like those adopted for Chino and Murietta schools is a function of the same one-size-fits-all notion that dominates state housing policy.

The issues in schools are, however, more complex and emotional than even housing, itself a hot-button issue. Right now, it’s uncertain who will eventually prevail or what will be the next conflict between state and local authority.

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.

Ballots can determine whether you’re safe walking the streets and how much of your paycheck is taken by the government. Ballots can even determine whether children will be taken from their parents, and parents from their children, in a military draft.

Given the stakes, ballots should be carefully watched.

On Wednesday, Connecticut Superior Court Judge William F. Clark cited evidence of mail ballot fraud to overturn the recent Democratic primary election for mayor of Bridgeport, the state’s largest city. The evidence included hundreds of hours of video surveillance. “The videos are shocking to the court and should be shocking to all of the parties,” he said.

Maybe not so shocking. A city employee affiliated with the incumbent mayor’s campaign was recorded apparently stuffing ballot boxes to help the mayor to a come-from-behind win, and just weeks earlier, Connecticut’s State Elections Enforcement Commission had recommended criminal charges for the same city employee in connection with the handling of absentee ballots in the 2019 mayoral primary, which of course was won by the now-incumbent mayor.

What’s shocking, at least to some of us in California, is that there was an investigation at all.

That’s not the way we do it here.

In California, we have barreled through changes to voting equipment and procedures, adopting electronic voting technology, automatic voter registration, mail ballots sent to all voters, unattended ballot drop boxes, ballot harvesting and a requirement for counties to accept mail ballots up to seven days after the polls close, even without a postmark.

In February 2020, voters were assured by then-Secretary of State Alex Padilla that electronic voting technology would still include a paper ballot for verification, but things turned a little sketchy when voters asked to see those ballots.

In March 2020, a Long Beach group sought a recount of a city tax increase measure that had squeaked to a suspiciously late-breaking 16-vote victory. Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan informed the group that it would have to pay more than $100,000 just to have county workers retrieve the paper ballots, and then pay for the recount. Even a full recount of the ballot scans would potentially cost about $200,000 because of the need for tech workers and electronic viewing stations.

After a partial recount of the scans found numerous “variances,” meaning the machine read the ballots incorrectly, the Long Beach group asked the county for a cost adjustment to complete the recount, but Logan refused. And when the group sued over the prohibitive costs, Logan responded that it’s not his problem if changes to the law and technology made recounts unaffordable. L.A. Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff agreed with Logan.

When Los Angeles County residents who were outraged over violent crime in their communities collected more than 715,000 signatures to force an election to recall District Attorney George Gascón, Logan’s office rejected nearly 200,000 signatures, enough to declare that the recall effort had failed.

It’s the law in California that proponents of a failed initiative, referendum or recall petition have the right to see all the rejected signatures and the reason for the rejection. Voters might reasonably expect election officials to carry out this responsibility promptly.

But in L.A. County, Logan’s office sharply limited the time and facilities available for viewing the rejected signatures. The recall proponents had to go to court for relief, and Logan was ordered to provide more access.

The recall proponents went back to court after they accumulated evidence that Logan’s office had improperly rejected tens of thousands of valid voter signatures. They also demonstrated, through a public records request, that Logan had overstated the number of registered voters in L.A. County by hundreds of thousands in a report to the Secretary of State. Because the signature threshold to qualify a county recall is 10% of the number of registered voters, the threshold for qualification was set improperly high. Given the new numbers, it appears likely that the recall proponents actually did collect enough valid signatures to put the Gascón recall before the voters.

But instead of announcing an internal investigation or review, Logan fought the lawsuit, just as he did when the Long Beach Reform Coalition sought a reasonable cost for a recount. Using your tax dollars to pay for lawyers, Logan was able to stall and delay, running up withering legal bills for the voters who were exercising their rights under the law.

However, last week there was a significant development in Case Number 23STCP02365, Committee to Support the Recall of District Attorney George Gascón v. Logan.

L.A. Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff, the same judge who ruled for Logan in the Long Beach case, denied Logan’s motion to strike any challenge to the accuracy of the voter rolls. Instead, Beckloff invited recall proponents to amend their petition to the court, writing that the allegations related to the voter rolls “are not ‘irrelevant, false or improper’ and therefore cannot be struck.”

The case is proceeding to trial, probably in March. Gascón potentially could face a recall election before his term is up.

And, if the recall proponents can sustain their funding for the lawsuit through all the stalling, attorneys will be able to conduct discovery, extracting documents and testimony from Dean Logan’s office. Perhaps they can do what the Board of Supervisors and Secretary of State Shirley Weber refuse to do — end Logan’s arrogant practice of battling to prevent voters from simply checking the accuracy of election results, signature verification and voter registration records.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_shelley

Currently, 13.2% of California’s nearly 40 million residents live in families which fall below the $39,000 annual income mark deemed the minimum for a family of four to meet its needs. The rate climbs to 31.1% if those in near-poverty (incomes up to $60,000) are included.

The California Poverty Measure, or CPM, is derived from the federal Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, or SPM, which was devised to cure the deficiencies of the official poverty rate, a one-size-fits-all data point that measures just some income but is not adjusted for the cost of living.

Both the California and the census rates use wider arrays of income and measures them against what it costs to live. The SPM varies by state while the California measure is calculated for counties as well as the state.

Although the methodology varies a bit, the Census Bureau’s SPM rate for California, 13.2%, is identical to the California measure rate and is the highest of any state. Within California, Los Angeles County has the highest CPM rate at 15.5%, followed by San Diego County at 15%.

While California’s SPM rate is the nation’s highest because of its costs of living vis-à-vis its income levels, Los Angeles and San Diego rates are the state’s highest because their housing costs outstrip incomes for their many low-income service workers and their families.

About three-quarters of California’s poor families have at least one working adult. Latino Californians have the highest poverty rate at 16.9%, followed by Black Californians at 13.6%.

So there are the numbers. California has the nation’s highest functional poverty rate and Los Angeles County, which has about a quarter of the state’s population, leads the state. The natural question is what, if anything, could be done to lower those rates?

To date, federal and state authorities have concentrated on directly or indirectly raising incomes of the poor through subsidies – such as CalFresh food assistance – rather than lowering their living costs. While the state has policies aimed at fostering more construction of housing for low-income families, the success rate has so far been minimal at best.

The income supplements do have an effect, the PPIC-Stanford study has found. Without CalFresh, earned income tax credits and other subsidies California’s poverty rate would top 20%.

The holy grail of anti-poverty groups in California is a guaranteed income – cash payments sufficient to lift people out of poverty. There are some local cash assistance programs underway around the state to test the theory’s viability.

It’s not an outlandish figure when placed in context. Were California to consider such a step, it would make even more sense to put all of the federal and state funds now being spent on subsidies in the pot to eliminate the management costs and the hassle they entail.

There would be some potential downsides to such an effort – not the mention the politics of taking such a radical step. Landlords and stores might raise prices to peel off some of the extra incomes and some recipients might quit working, thus exacerbating California’s labor shortage.

However, it’s worth considering.

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.

“‘No way to prevent this,’ says only nation where this ever happens” was The Onion’s headline Oct. 26.

Its editors have used the same headline over many dozens of stories since it first ran above an article on the Isla Vista mass-murder gun riot of 2014.

The godawful repetition, back yet again, adds up to a morbidly apt description of what one critic calls our country’s “reverberation of despair.”

I’ve mentioned The Onion’s hed before. I still know no better indictment of what ails us.

There will be people who say, because they always do, that it’s not the guns, it’s the mental illness — lots of the same people who say of homelessness that it’s not the lack of housing, it’s the mental illness.

To which I say, are we the only country in the world with crazy people?

Because in France this year, there have been zero mass shootings. Have you ever been to France? Suffice it to say that there are crazy people there.

The United Kingdom: zero mass shootings in 2023. I love the place so much I’ve been there six out of the last seven summers. Brits are as crackers as the rest of us. More so.

South Korea: zero mass shootings this year. And, look, I don’t want to indict half of an entire peninsula, with its artists, writers, designers and entrepreneurs who right now are in a cultural moment that is remaking the world. So let’s just say that plenty of Koreans in my experience are … personality-plus.

Germany: One mass shooting this year. Because, Germany.

In the United States, including Lewiston, there have been over 560 mass shootings this year, using the definition of four or more people killed or injured.

That isn’t just an order of magnitude difference from those other affluent countries in the world.

We’re not another country compared to them — we’re in another galaxy, a guns-blazing, insanity-epidemic one.

International firearms statistics are as slippery as that solution you use to keep the barrel of your Beretta shotgun blued, so that some Second Amendment professionals have enough time on their hands between clay-pigeon sessions to cook the numbers to show that per capita Americans really don’t shoot each other as much as it seems that we do.

That’s because they aren’t really talking about statistics on mass shootings — unloading on a bunch of fellow Americans out of sheer cussedness — but rather about gun deaths in a few crime-ridden Central American countries, or war-ridden central African ones.

But they can’t deny that we have a squillion times more mass shootings than anywhere else; that it’s getting worse, year by year — 273 in 2014 to 417 in 2019 to 647 in 2022.

And they ought not deny, though they will, that the real reason we have so many more mass shootings is the supply issue — more guns than people — and that the laws that are supposed to regulate crazy people’s access to said guns are either struck down or not enforced, as they weren’t when this Maine guy spent weeks in a mental hospital and then went out and bought an arsenal to add to the one he already had.

Local sheriff’s deputies knew about it, knew he was a walking mental breakdown who had talked about shooting up the place, and didn’t do anything.

What, America, will it take to find a way to prevent this?

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com

I’ve called out conservatives, who have often fought housing deregulation measures even as they vow support for property rights and freedom. For example, Huntington Beach’s conservative council majority, in its lawsuit challenging state housing reforms, has trotted out every NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) and environmentalist platitude one expects from the Left.

But it’s time to call out my erstwhile YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) allies for their hypocrisy and sanctimony. The solution to the housing crunch is to reduce government interference and allow the market to provide the housing projects that people want. YIMBYs totally get that point – but only when it involves high-density projects they prefer. Beyond that, they seem to want to re-engineer our society to meet their aesthetic sensibilities.

In the urbanist worldview, densely packed cities – where people depend on public transit and bicycles to get around – are not only ideal, but the only land-use pattern that will save the world from climate change. They blather endlessly about walkable communities. But one quickly finds a disdain for suburbia, dislike of automobiles and snarky dismissal of families who want a yard, decent schools and neighborhoods free of public disorder.

I’ve spent time on X (Twitter) and the urbanist posts often are hilarious. One pro-transit writer posted what he viewed as a terrifying scene – a busy Buc-ee’s (a Southern mega-convenience store). To most of us, that’s a normal scene of people filling up their tanks with gasoline, grabbing snacks and going on with their day. To urbanist scolds, this is – and my language isn’t much of an exaggeration – a sign of the collapse of civilization.

“The private car is, by far, the most wasteful of urban space,” wrote another poster. “Because we have apparently decided that the car has a sacred right to go anywhere, halt anywhere, and remain anywhere as long as its owner chooses, we have neglected other means of transportation.” Well, our society hasn’t decided that cars have sacred rights – but that individuals have the right to come and go as they please. Big difference.

Urbanists really don’t like automobiles and even slam Uber for destroying transit. It’s easy to blame potential customers, but maybe they ought to look at the performance of their beloved transit systems – almost all of which face plummeting ridership. They’re dingy, plagued by crime, operate limited hours and don’t go many places. Here in Sacramento, it apparently never dawned on planners to route light rail to one place most people would take it: the airport.

If the goal is to make our existing neighborhoods – including suburban ones – more walkable, safer for pedestrians and accessible to a few appealing transit options, then sign me up. Those are noble goals. But if the goal is to change our entire nation’s development patterns and make it cost-prohibitive to own a house with a yard, then no thanks.

My sense is many urbanists spent a college semester in Europe and have devoted themselves to re-fashioning our society in that model. Big cities are exciting, but not everyone wants to live in a small apartment on a crowded street. People want different living situations at different stages in their lives. There’s a reason hip cities such as San Francisco are virtually child-less. It’s too difficult and costly to raise a family. Hectoring suburbanites is elitist and condescending.

Someone with the term “walkable” in his moniker posted a photo of elderly people sitting in an alley at picnic tables by a Manhattan high rise with this comment: “Retiring-in-place in (a) NYC skyscraper is easy. There’s parks, young neighbors, an elevator to the grocery store, and world class hospitals nearby. Retiring in place in the suburbs is isolating, sedentary, and – if forced to drive a car with cataracts or heath issues – deadly.”

If urbanists really want to solve California’s housing shortages they need to support deregulation of all types of construction, even in the suburbs. But methinks the movement is more about foisting their personal tastes on everybody else. That movement needs to grow up if it wants to have a lasting impact on housing policy.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.