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.

The talk sounded statesmanlike, but statesmanship is not about spouting words in a manner reminiscent of John F. Kennedy Jr. As a piece in the Art of Manliness summarized, a true statesman “does not make his countrymen’s hearts soar and burn with empty promises; he keeps his word and does what he says he will do.” He or she builds consensus by convincing the public of “the soundness of his philosophy.”

The most glaring problem with Newsom’s words is that they are self-evidently not so, plus he’s not convincing anyone of anything with his cram-down approach to climate policy. Historically, California has indeed been a place that beckoned people from across the world – a blank slatewhere people regardless of their background could build a prosperous life.

Yet our government knows little else beyond stifling regulation and punitive taxation. Across the globe, people tend to flee more-oppressive places (even if they have great scenery and weather) for freer locales. In 2022, 817,000 Californians left for other states – a net loss of 342,000 residents. We’re losing the equivalent of the population of Anaheim every year – and there are few signs that the exodus is slowing.

I regularly document the problems and loss of freedoms here. But Newsom’s hypocritical words jumped out after watching the press coverage of his tour last week of communist China. A true statesman isn’t afraid to speak truth to power. Yet Newsom received well-deserved brickbats for meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping and not mentioning that country’s well-documented human-rights abuses.

The U.S. State Department details the following Chinese policies toward the minority Uyghur population: “Documented human rights abuses include coercive population control methods, forced labor, arbitrary detention in internment camps, torture, physical and sexual abuse, mass surveillance, family separation and repression of cultural and religious expression.”

Instead of even gently raising those freedom issues, Newsom posed with Xi, toured an electric-vehicle factory and talked about climate change. The latter is legitimate. “The world’s most populous country processes the vast majority of rare metals needed for electric car batteries,” CalMatters reported. If human-caused emissions are the root of a warming climate, then China and India – the source of most of those emissions – need to be part of the discussion.

But they needn’t be the only points of discussion. When asked about his refusal to tackle the human-rights issue, Newsom gave reporters a typically glib response: “I can’t be everything to everybody at every moment of every minute of every day.” Newsweek also quoted a Human Rights Watch official who said this strategy abetted Chinese efforts to downplay the human-rights matter.

Newsom’s comments from January were an obvious attempt to needle conservative states about their policies regarding abortion and LGBQT rights. Newsom keeps playing this “I’m not running, but I’m ready” game as he gallivants around the country and world holding events typically held by candidates. He’s even planning a debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for president. The purpose of that debate is anyone’s guess.

It’s nothing new for governors to parade on the international stage, whether or not they are running for president. Former Gov. Jerry Brown went to China on in 2017 to give a keynote address at some energy conference, and made this overwrought pronouncement: “Nothing is more difficult. Nothing is more important. … We’re talking about turning around the whole of modernity.”

Newsom should at least try to make these meetings as substantive as possible. Instead, he’s just serving as a prop for a tyranny because, like Brown, he apparently believes that climate change poses such an existential crisis that nothing else really matters.

Not that Republicans have gotten this statesmanship thing down, either. Donald Trump’s narcissism is the opposite of statesmanship (and he lavished praise on various despots). Perhaps I’m spoiled, because I came of age politically with the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan. I remember his words to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the Brandenburg Gate: “Tear down this wall.”

That’s more moving than Newsom’s words from China: “Addressing climate change can be the bridge we’ve been missing.” Then again, former Gov. Reagan was a statesman and current Gov. Newsom seems like the latest in a long line of “small men in big offices.”

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.

By contrast, state officials seem to delight in how much money they “invest” in different priorities, without worrying too much about outcomes. Sure, they sometimes pay lip service to results – but they don’t care enough about them to actually change the way they provide public services. (They’re not about to annoy the public-sector unions, which represent the people paid to provide those services.)

I’m not the only one to have noticed. Bay Area Democratic Sen. Steve Glazer, in a July column about the $310-billion budget, complained that “we’ve already spent billions of dollars on the same problems — with very little to show for it.” He called on his fellow Democrats to ensure that the spending “actually improving the lives of the people we say we are committed to helping.” What a novel idea.

This dynamic is most pronounced in public education, which consumes more than 40 percent of the state’s general-fund budget – plus local bond measures. Although lawmakers slowed education-funding increases to close a $32-billion budget deficit this year, as of last year – during an unprecedented $97.5-billion budget surplus – they lavished public schools with money.

“The revised budget directs a total of $128.3 billion to education, lifts up the most critical needs including historic funding for school mental health, recruitment and retention of teachers,” boasted Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, following last year’s budget deal.

The state spends nearly $24,000 per student a year (including funding from all sources, including the feds). Consider the educational opportunities we would have if parents could spend that much money on private schools, which would compete for tuition. Each class of 25 students would have a budget of $600,000. The governor likes to blather about a re-imagined school system, but in a competitive system we wouldn’t have to just imagine it.

By contrast, let’s look at what we’ve actually accomplished after a decade of steadily increasing expenditures. The Public Policy Institute of California reported last year that “pandemic disruptions reversed nearly six years of academic progress.” It found only 35 percent of low-income students met the state’s English-language standards and only 21 percent met California’s math-proficiency standards. These are horrifying numbers.

Here’s some other news: EdSource reports that nearly a third of the state’s public-school students are chronically absent. The Independent Institute reports that fewer than half of the state’s students are functioning at their grade level and that 70-percent of incarcerated Californians lack even a high-school diploma. There might be a connection between those dismal statistics.

But no matter how much the state “invests” in education, it’s never enough for the public-school establishment. The California Teachers’ Association complains that California’s per-student school funding lags behind other states – and it of course blames 1978’s tax-limiting Proposition 13 for the problem and bemoans “our faulty tax structure, which is currently benefiting the wealthiest corporations over Californians themselves.”

Does anyone really believe that if California, the highest-taxed state, dramatically increases its property taxes (through a “split roll” that denies Prop. 13 protections to corporations or other erosions of the 1978 tax measure) that California’s education system will suddenly become America’s finest? Name one instance where throwing more money at an encrusted, union-controlled bureaucracy has done anything other than fund the same old, same old.

Another underreported education story: school budgets are soaring even as enrollments are on a downward trajectory. The state’s population is falling and also is aging. Immigration is slowing. Birth rates are declining. As noted above, a lot of students are dropping out or disappearing. Two studies last month from PACE, a research center led by faculty directors at top California universities, found that enrollments have fallen 6 percent since 2007 and are expected to fall more steeply. The impact, it notes, falls hardest on poor and minority students.

Not to be overly harsh, but who cares about the plight of school systems trying to fund their overly costly infrastructure of buildings and employees? But once again, California’s educational establishment is all about spending more money – rather than getting the best educational outcomes for students. Until that attitude improves, don’t expect test scores to improve, either.

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.

This year, however, Gov. Gavin Newsom pulled a few surprises. He insists that he’s not running for president, but his vetoes of the fringiest measures suggest his promises aren’t ironclad. He rejected nearly 20 percent of bills that reached his desk, which is an “unusually large percentage,” per CalMatters. Many veto messages, it noted, include boilerplate language warning that some bills would add to the state’s deficit. He seems to be channeling his predecessor, deficit-weary Jerry Brown.

Here are some of the main examples. Newsom vetoed a measure requiring public schools to provide free, easily available condoms to students. His budgetary argument was a stretch, but any governor with national aspirations wouldn’t want such baggage. Can you see the TV ads from his opponents had he signed it? Likewise, with his veto of Amsterdam-like cannabis cafes and a measure that would have decriminalized some psychedelic drugs.

He also nixed a bill to provide one week of severance to laid-off grocery store workers for every year of work, noting that state law already provides myriad layoff protections. He rejected a cap on insulin co-pays, explaining the state already is working on a plan to lower costs. His veto of a ban on caste discrimination came with the sensible explanation that such discrimination already is illegal.

Newsom rejected a ludicrous bill that would have created a state agency to build and manage government-owned housing. He again raised the cost argument, but anyone who has followed the sordid history of public-housing projects in America would quickly realize that the government can’t fix our state’s housing woes (although it can make them worse) – and would produce terribly managed high-rise slums.

Sure, unions scored expected legislative victories, but Newsom at least vetoed a bill giving striking workers unemployment benefits – something that would have overburdened a system already facing insolvency. The governor rejected cash payments up to $1,900 a month for undocumented seniors – another decision that makes sense in the context of a national political campaign.

Progressives were understandably disappointed, but that should only hearten the rest of us. “While a lot of these bills may not fly in the Deep South, they’re unremarkable in progressive California, and were on Newsom’s desk in the first place because the state Legislature put them there – ostensibly carrying out the will of California voters,” lamentedCNN columnist Jill Filipovic. Yes, legislators put them there, but elected governors have the final say regarding the “will of the people.” That’s how our system works.

Newsom mostly vetoed bills that would have provided immense pushback for little gain. I have nothing against legalizing psychedelics, but critics far outnumbered beneficiaries. Newsom did sign several noxious measures. He OK’d a bill making it harder for landlords to evict troublesome tenants. He required companies to disclose greenhouse-gas emissions. He banned certain food additives. That’s par for the course in progressive California.

Newsom also signed a bill allowing Capitol staffers to join a union beginning in 2026. State workers belong to unions, but legislative workers are unique. Legislators need the flexibility to hire whomever they choose to implement their agenda. These mostly are political positions, with a high churn rate – not career jobs. I chuckle at that one for mischievous reasons, as it might remind union-friendly lawmakers of the burdens they place on other employers. I bet lawmakers will regret this one.

Newsom touted a term I’ve never heard: YIGBY (Yes In God’s Back Yard). That’s weird, but it probably will result in additional new housing. God bless him for that signing. He even signed legislation that clarifies the California Environmental Quality Act, thus making it harder for local NIMBY governments to abuse CEQA to limit housing approvals.

In his statement, Newsom quoted Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who is the driving force behind pro-housing reforms: “The era of saying no to housing is coming to an end. We’ve been planting seeds for years to get California to a brighter housing future, and today we’re continuing strongly down that path.” May it be so.

So it’s been a less-bad legislative session than expected. I still feel relief it’s over.

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.

The crowd in Anaheim cheered heartily when Trump joked about Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who was the victim of a violent attack. He also engaged in his customary nod to state-sponsored violence – including proposing a “solution” to the real shoplifting crisis in cities such as Los Angeles: “We will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft,” Trump declared. “Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store. Shot!”

Trump is just riling people, catering to their ugliest instincts. A sensible rebuttal will no doubt fall on deaf ears, but that doesn’t mean we ought not respond. It’s pretty simple. Police certainly should arrest people who shoplift and take part in organized smash-and-grabs. Then they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But free societies don’t call out federal troops to execute people on the spot.

There are several obvious reasons. For starters, the U.S. Constitution – the same one Trump said he wanted to “terminate” in a Truth Social post after he lost the 2020 election – guarantees due process. Someone, say, steeped in America’s freedom-loving traditions might understand that not every person exiting the store is necessarily a shoplifter.

Perhaps Mrs. Smith and her 8-year-old daughter were shopping and were fleeing the havoc. Maybe Mr. Jones looks like a shoplifter, but didn’t participate in any wrongdoing. Innocent people shouldn’t die in a fusillade of gunfire. It should go without saying, but democratic countries don’t impose the death penalty for even the most anger-inducing property crimes, although that’s a matter of course in the countries run by Trump’s favorite dictators.

Trump, who is facing 91 mostly serious felony charges in four criminal cases for his effort to overturn the election, should appreciate that he gets to present his defense in a series of trials rather than treated to his sort of rough justice. Trump also is having his day(s) in court in his New York civil trial accusing him of fraud. He’s been complaining about its fairness, but it’s not the justice-system’s fault that his legal team didn’t ask for a jury trial.

If Trump defenders still don’t understand, then they should put due process in context of the January 6 riot/insurrection. Obviously, different people did different things. Some orchestrated the event, others attacked Capitol police officers, and still others vandalized property. Then there were those who trespassed or were innocent bystanders. There’s a reason penalties ranged widely from suspended sentences to 22 years in prison.

Some Trump supporters will say I’m belaboring a point and, you know, Trump should be taken seriously but not literally (his supporters apparently are the only ones with the mystical interpretative skills to know which is which). Trump complains about the endless injustices he endures, yet he also routinely calls for the prosecution of his political enemies and worse. There’s no principle – only an attempt to do whatever serves his interests at any given time. His recent comment in Anaheim was no one-off.

In a Truth Social post last month about outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and his communications with a Chinese general (to reportedly assure him that the United States was not planning an attack), Trump unloaded the following: “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”

Perhaps the best take on Trump and his most-zealous backers comes from a column by the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer in 2018, titled: “The cruelty is the point: President Trump and his supporters find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear.” Such examples would fill far more than an 850-word column.

His strangest point in California wasn’t cruel, but delusional: “No way we lose this state in a real election.” Look up state party registration data and election results over the past 20 years if you need the numbers to see why that’s bonkers. Any California political party that entertains such hokum should never wonder about its continued irrelevancy.

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.

These critics claim these new technologies are exactly like narcotics, gambling or alcohol – in that they rewire adolescent brains and lead to depression, self-destructive behaviors, sleep disorders and mood swings. It’s all backed by reams of research and sounds rather alarming. Of course, many social critics want the government to provide solutions.

A headline from The Hill is as chilling as the underlying crisis: “Democrats and Republicans agree: Kids are addicted to social media and government can help.” (You know the scariest words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”) We should all be skeptical that the same government that can’t balance a budget can revamp the dominant form of modern communications and boost young people’s self-esteem.

It’s hard to overstate how overwrought the doomsayers have become. “It took a half century for the first American Surgeon General Report to establish the link between tobacco and lung cancer,” wrote The Conversation’s Beth Daley in a column that likewise implies these tech platforms should be regulated like tobacco because of research linking social media overuse to bad mental-health outcomes.

Complaining that teens have too much social media and too little religion, the conservative Heritage Foundation argued social media “seems to drive them further into themselves or online communities at the expense of their mental health. Social media companies like TikTok must be held accountable.” Despite its unclear call for accountability, the article at least focused on parental strategies rather than regulation.

Moral panics – a widespread fear that some evil force is threatening society – are nothing new. Although I grew up playing Pong rather than Mortal Kombat, I remember when Congress responded in the early 2000s to the fear that violent videogames led to mass shootings by disaffected young men. “According to the most comprehensive statistical analysis yet conducted, violent video games increase aggressive behavior as much as lead exposure decreases children’s IQ scores,” said then-Sen. Hillary Clinton. It led to a pointless videogame rating system.

Most subsequent research has shown that such games – no surprise here – had no connection to violent incidents and anti-social behaviors. My typical response to these concerns has been to suggest that parents take a more active role in their kids’ lives. Anyone who thinks legislators are clever enough to craft meaningful regulations controlling technologies they don’t understand has never paid close attention to the legislative process.

But I recently read a more compelling rebuttal to all the upset about social media. Atlantic writer Derek Thompson posted charts showing the percentage of 12^th graders who had a driver’s license, ever tried alcohol, who have gone out on dates and worked for pay during the school year. In the 1970s and 1980s, those numbers were extraordinarily high – with 85 percent to 90 percent driving and dating, more than 80 percent trying alcohol and around 70 percent or more working. (No one obviously is endorsing underage drinking, but the charts reflect the propensity of teens to experiment with life.)

In 2010 and beyond, those numbers plummeted by 20 percentage points or more. Another chart showed the amount of leisure time middle-schoolers spent alone has soared. “We’re sort of running an experiment on 21st (century) American teens, that’s like: How much physical-world social activity is necessary for well being? So the researchers remove parties, driving around, youth sports, most summer jobs,” Thompson tweeted.

Our society has infantilized its youth out of, perhaps, our generation’s excessive fear of safety. We’ve even seen a recent “free-range kids” movement emerge after parents have been arrested or harassed by child protective services for allowing their kids to play alone in parks or walk to school on their own. We shouldn’t be shocked by adolescent addiction to social media given that we’ve collectively stopped allowing kids to participate in the social activities that were normal when I grew up in the 1970s. Kids need something to do.

I’m not trying to idealize my youth, but as a teen I rode my bike and drove all over (and couldn’t keep in touch with my parents because we had no cellphones). I worked in a store and went on dates, attended parties and roamed free during summer break at the Jersey Shore. Sure, I got into some trouble, but kids of my generation had something to do other than sit around on our computers (which didn’t exist).

Instead of asking the government to regulate social media to improve adolescent mental health, why don’t we look at why we’ve made it so hard for them to participate in real life?

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.

Classical liberals defend property rights, strict limits on government authority and free-market capitalism. They do, however, support a government role in areas such as infrastructure, policing and national defense. At its root, this is an optimistic philosophy that believes the fruits of liberty are available to all humanity. Ronald Reagan – its most-eloquent modern political proponent – often talked about America as a shining city on the hill.

Modern liberals co-opted the word, but their outlook has long been rooted in the progressive tradition, which supports “the subservience of private individuals, social institutions, and firms to a large, complex state characterized by an extensive and powerful administrative apparatus that is powered by so-called neutral experts,” as the Classical Liberal Institute explains.

California has a long progressive tradition going back at least to Gov. Hiram Johnson, which explains the ongoing circus at the state Capitol and the overall dismal state of affairs in every area that its muscular state apparatus touches (education, housing, transportation, resources). Progressivism believes in government – the more the better – because it is a dour philosophy that sees civil institutions as anarchic relics of patriarchy and oppression.

Now many progressives aren’t even progressive in the old parlance, but “democratic socialists.” This philosophy’s most notable champion – Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and onetime Democratic presidential candidate – calls for a re-ordering of the economy. He’s sounds like a scold who rails against capitalism, describes our system as corrupt and has a soft spot for certain despots.

The most significant aspect of Donald Trump’s takeover of the GOP wasn’t his obliteration of norms, but his re-configuring of the conservative brand into something reminiscent of European conservatism. Lacking our classical-liberal revolution, conservatives there try to conserve long-held traditions involving geography, ethnicity and religion.

There’s a reason many U.S. conservatives have made pilgrimages to authoritarian Hungary, where that country’s leader touts a “post-liberal” order. In Europe, conservatives are hostile to capitalism (it disrupts traditional businesses), believe in expanded welfare programs and are fine with a government that controls the media. It’s a pessimistic approach, as it seeks to halt societal change (gay rights, immigration) that threatens the Old Ways.

We see the parallels in American politics, as the surly MAGA-dominated Republican Party jettisons Reagan-style optimism in favor of dark visions of immigrant invaders, dystopian cities and elites who rig the financial system. They’ve identified some genuine problems, but have not reacted in the American tradition. It’s common for conservatives now to argue our nation is on the cusp of oblivion – so we need to beat back the threat by any means necessary.

In terms of economic policy, the populist right embraces tariffs, which are nothing more than massive taxes on American consumers in the name of fighting foreign products. Now even more of the MAGA movement’s economic policy is in view and, predictably, it has more in common with Sanders’ ideals than Reagan’s. It wasn’t a one-off when Trump praised some of Sanders’ economic policies.

Few U.S. senators are more MAGA than Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican best known for his fist pump on January 6. He recently introduced a bill that would cap the interest rates that private credit-card companies can charge as a way to give “the working class a chance.” Such price controls – and rhetoric – are indistinguishable from something from the Left. He’s repeatedly blasted Wall Street and has called to regulate the tech firms.

It’s not just Hawley. In pitching his idea for “common good capitalism,” U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., argues, “The notion that, left unguided, the market will solve our problems will not restore a balance between the obligations and rights of the private sector and working Americans.” If not for quoting two popes, Rubio’s rhetoric could come straight from Sanders.

Expect more of this as the 2024 campaign heats up. Supporters will depict it as part of a populist pro-family agenda, but it’s the same old big government in gussied up attire. We already have a party that’s committed to progressive ideals, so I’d be happy enough if conservatives returned to their Reaganite roots and once again governed like “liberals.”

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.

The political parallels are obvious as the nation braces for a rerun of 2020’s bitter election pitting the most narcissistic and cruel person I’ve seen in public life against a man whose main attribute is he’s not the other guy. “President Joe Biden is ‘old’ and ‘confused,’ and former President Donald Trump is ‘corrupt’ and ‘dishonest,’” according to most respondents in a recent major poll.

Yet here we go again. Whatever Americans tell pollsters, we’re locked in a partisan grudge match that shows signs of escalating rather than abating. This remains one of the freest and most prosperous nations that’s ever existed, and yet Americans are angry, pessimistic and don’t seem to like their fellow Americans very much. We can’t even agree on a basic set of facts – and virtually no one cuts their opponents any slack.

It also reminds me of a TV show – specifically the Seinfeld episode where George Castanza drives his late girlfriend’s parents to his house in the Hamptons. George has no such house. The Rosses know he has no such house. George knows they know he has no such house. Yet they’re going to make the long journey anyway. “All right – we’re taking it up a notch!” George declares as they start the drive.

This week, we learned that Utah Sen. Mitt Romney won’t run for re-election. He sees the writing on the wall. “My wing of the party talks about policy and about issues that will make a difference in the lives of the American people,” he said at a press conference. “The Trump wing of the party talks about resentments of various kinds and getting even and settling scores and revisiting the 2020 election.”

He’s not wrong. Nor is he wrong saying Trump and Biden ought to step aside and let new leaders emerge. Perusing X, I saw GOP friends say they never want the party to go back to where it was 11 years ago when Romney was the nominee. I disagree with Romney on many things, but I’d be thrilled to be back where losing candidates didn’t try to overturn the election or incite mobs to attack the Capitol, or face 91 mostly serious criminal charges or have dinner with

Quite a few state and county officials endured doxing and threats after they certified the 2020 results. One – GOP supervisor Bill Gates from Maricopa County, Ariz. – had publicly announced he won’t seek-re-election. “Gates, who, along with his family, has been the target of threats and attacks during his tenure from those trumpeting false election claims, previously said that he suffers from PTSD,” Politico reported. Is this the world we want to live in?

Regarding Biden, even most Democrats believe he is too old. Vice President Kamala Harris clearly isn’t up to replace him. I covered her as California attorney general, and she seemed remarkably unprincipled and remains unable to articulate her views in a coherent manner. One need not be a Republican to realize inflation is soaring – driven by the administration’s federal spending initiatives. Biden and Harris promote the type of outmoded union policies that have destroyed jobs and opportunities in California.

The Republican presidential debate sums up our problems. Trump didn’t participate and the most-popular alternative candidates are auditioning for the MAGA mantle in case, for some reason (such as a prison sentence) the former president can’t occupy the White House. On the Democratic side, it’s easy to forget that socialist Bernie Sanders came perilously close to gaining the nomination.

As evidence of the Horseshow Theory of Politics (where far left and far right share more similarities than differences, as in a horseshoe rather than a straight line), many populist Bernie Bros. are warming up to a second Trump presidency. So it looks like we’re taking things up a notch. We’re set to continue repeating this nonsense until more Americans have had enough of it – and learn to believe in our nation and our neighbors more than they believe the latest online nonsense.

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.

The state always beckoned me, so much so that when I was offered a job in Orange County in the 1990s I accepted it immediately and then had to break the news to my shell-shocked wife. Even then, the home prices were daunting compared to the rest of the country – an imbalance that only has gotten more pronounced in the ensuing 25 years as slow-growth regulations took hold and led to a consistent underbuilding of new housing units.

I still remember poring over the Orange County Register’s classifieds (remember classified ads?) and finally found a house we could afford. We drove down the street. There were bars on most windows, sketchy characters hanging out and graffiti on buildings. Despite my wife’s fears that we traded our serene Midwestern life for a scene from a crime drama, we eventually bought a home, raised three kids and acclimated to the lifestyle.

And it is a pretty great lifestyle. I’ve since visited every one of the state’s 58 counties and virtually every city and town of any note. My brain understands why so many friends and neighbors have moved to Texas, Arizona and Florida, but my heart doesn’t.

It’s time for state policymakers to recognize what’s going on and cop to their complicity in the continuing outmigration of people who, I suppose, mostly love the state as much as I do. “California has long beckoned with its coastal beauty and bustle – the magnetic pull of Hollywood, the power of Silicon Valley,” explained a recent New York Times article. “That allure helped make it a cultural, economic and political force. For 170 years, growth was constant and expansion felt boundless.”

The article centered on new population figures: By 2020, California officials expected our population to soon reach 40 million – and they expected another 10 million people in the coming decade. When I was born in 1960, California had a population of less than 16 million people. When I moved here, it had more than doubled to 33 million – having gained far more than the current total population of my home state of Pennsylvania.

California’s rapid growth infused every policy discussion. It went hand in hand with the sense of opportunity that built our culture. As recently as 2017, the state had gained 300,000 people year over year, but the numbers were slowing. We were edging closer to the 40-million mark, but the state no longer was a magnet for other Americans. The growth came mostly from births and immigration.

Lawmakers dismissed the impact of the California Exodus, whereby many Californians – tired of the high taxes, unaffordable home prices, in-your-face progressive politics and meddlesome regulations – moved to states with laissez-faire policies. Then after the 2020 Census the slowing growth turned to actual declines. Lawmakers blamed COVID deaths (as if other states hadn’t experienced the same pandemic). Now the decline trend is obvious.

Per the Times, “The state lost more people than it gained in each of the last three years and shrank to less than 39 million people. Recent data released by the state Finance Department now offers a stunning prediction: The population could stagnate for the next four decades.” Endless growth isn’t necessarily a good thing in and of itself, but it toys with our self-esteem. I’ve lived in declining cities in the Midwest, and let’s just say that optimism is in short supply there.

They forget a key point: California’s appeal had always been its blank-slate appeal to people who have new ideas and want to escape the stodgy, encrusted attitudes of the states and countries that they have fled. But you can’t try new ideas in a place where overly powerful bureaucracies crush entrepreneurial ideas and regulate every aspect of our lives.

The population figures show that young, wealthy people are now fleeing California, too. Older people who own homes and are heading toward retirement mostly are staying, but the California Dream was never about turning this place into a giant retirement home. California was a land of boundless opportunity. That’s no longer true. Barring some political disruption, I suspect the Times is right that this means decades of stagnation despite the state’s inherent wonders.

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.

While there are few things I disdain more than conspiratorialists, one need not be given to complex theories about the Trilateral Commission and “dark-money” billionaires to recognize this possibility is not far-fetched. I’ve noticed people wearing masks again in airports. “Already, some U.S. schools and businesses have started bringing back mask mandates,” NBC News reported last week.

I’ve watched enough major events unfold in my life to know the pattern. People spread some possible news prematurely, fail to get the details right – and then the media corrects them. Then, sure enough, something similar to what they predicted unfolds in coming months.

COVID cases are increasing again and the pandemic was a serious deal. We should – as individuals, businesses and governments – learn the right lessons from the previous attempt to protect public health rather than repeat the past policies. That’s obviously hard to do in a nation that’s as polarized as ever.

Because of our system of federalism, we can try to compare the outcomes in states that enacted different policies. Our states vary so much in population size and density that it’s hard to draw too many conclusions between, say, rural Wyoming and urban New Jersey, but a 2022 Wall Street Journal article focused on Florida, which re-opened quickly, and California, which imposed strict lockdown rules:

“The study ranks Florida 28th in mortality, in the middle off the pack and about the same as California, which ranks 27th … . But Florida ranks third for the least education loss and 13th in economic performance. California ranks 47th overall because its shutdowns crushed the economy (40th) and in-person school (50th),” per the Journal’s take on research from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

If you want your head to spin, however, you can find studies that conform to whatever your preconceived notions may be. A Politico study found that states with stringent lockdown rules suffered the lowest rate of deaths and hospitalizations, but the worst economic and educational results. But another study suggested that lockdown states also fared decently on the economic front, comparatively speaking. So much for trusting the “science.”

Rather than fighting over the competing research, some which no doubt is driven by ideological presuppositions, we should try to minimize every type of damage if another pandemic variant rears its ugly head. It’s vital to recognize the many unforeseen consequences of the lockdowns themselves.

For instance, the federal National Institute for Mental Health found, tragically, that youth suicide rates rose significantly during the pandemic. Those rates also rose for adults, although by a lesser degree. Human beings are social creatures and locking us in our homes certainly takes its toll on our mental health.

In terms of education, California’s school kids – especially poor and minority students – suffered grievous educational setbacks because of the stay-at-home orders. It didn’t help that teachers’ unions, who are focused on protecting the interest of school workers rather than students, fought efforts to re-open classroom learning. The state’s private and charter schools did fairly well in adapting to distance learning – but the public schools, not so much.

“Two out of 3 California students did not meet state math standards and more than half did not meet English standards on state assessments taken in the spring, reflecting sizable drops in performance compared with the year before the pandemic,” according to a Los Angeles Times report. “The test results are even more devastating for Black, Latino, low-income and other historically underserved students.” Think of the long-term costs here.

Then there’s the toll on our freedoms. Just as the 9-11 terrorist attacks permanently changed our airline travel, the vast executive powers grabbed by governors have permanently eroded our property rights. At any time, and with little oversight, Gov. Gavin Newsom can become a czar and shut down your business or forbid the eviction of non-paying tenants. Our system of checks and balances is just one bad pandemic outbreak away from suspension. And all for healthcare results that, at best, up for debate.

No wonder so many Americans still have PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and assume the worst following every report of a COVID spike.

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.