Daily Business Report: Friday, May 2, 2025
The Amazing Gavin Newsom and CA’s 4th Largest Economy in the World
By Katy Grimes | California Globe
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is bragging that California owns the 4th largest economy in the world. But he leaves out some important details, like poverty, homelessness, crime, taxes, gas prices, housing costs, illegal aliens, welfare recipients, and a $1.3 trillion total budget deficit, just for starters. And, California is the 1st most regulated state in the U.S.
California reached this position not because of Newsom’s great leadership or brilliant economic policy, but because Japan’s economy is faltering.
“California’s nominal GDP grew by 6.0%. Japan’s fell by 4.4%.”
And, as jobs remain weak, unemployment remains high, the California Center for Jobs and the Economy reports. “California has produced an average of 15.6% of the nation’s unemployed, or a third higher than the state’s overall share of US population.”
Unprecedented vote shows Dems fractured over housing policy
By Ben Christopher | CalMatters
One of the most controversial housing bills of the year has lived to be voted upon another day, but only by surviving the Legislative equivalent of two back-to-back prison breaks.
Last week, Senate Bill 79, a bill by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener to boost apartment and commercial construction around major public transportation hubs, passed the Senate Housing Committee over the strenuous objections of its chair, Sen. Aisha Wahab, a fellow Democrat from Fremont.
That was a notable development in its own right. Chairs tend to get their way on the bills that pass through their committees. When a majority of a committee’s members decide to buck legislative decorum and tradition and steamroll that committee’s chair, it’s often taken as a sign that California’s dominant Democrats are unusually divided over an issue; that the issue at hand is especially contentious; that the legislators either aren’t receiving clear guidance from legislative leadership or are willing to ignore that advice; or some combination of all of the above.
Fast forward to this week and it happened again.
Welcome to U.S.’s first fire-resistant neighborhood – in Escondido
By Ben Christopher | CalMatters
The homes in the half-built subdivision look a lot like all the others nestled up against the parched, shrubby hills of Escondido, north San Diego County.
But look a little closer. The gutters and vents are enclosed in a thin, wire mesh. Each window is double-paned, the glass tempered to withstand the heat of a wildfire, the stucco around the shutters resistant to flame. The privacy fences, a suburban staple, look like wood, but are actually brown-tinted steel. Every foundation sits behind a moat of gravel.
National mega-developer KB Home is marketing Dixon Trail as the first purpose-built “wildfire resilient neighborhood” in the United States. The next time fire rips through the chaparral in surrounding hills (a question of when, not if) this cluster of homes is being built to keep the flames at the subdivision’s edge.
