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Patrick Stewart, el capitán Jean-Luc Picard de la saga Star Trek y el profesor Charles Xavier en la saga de Marvel X-Men, falleció el miércoles 28 de octubre en Los Ángeles (California), aunque su familia lo ha comunicado un día después. Tenía 86 años.
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Nuevo capítulo en la agria batalla entre Olivier Martinez y Halle Berry por la custodia de su hijo Maceo. Este jueves, 29 de octubre, el exmatrimonio de actores se ha visto las caras en los juzgados de Los Ángeles para retomar el caso legal por el que ambos se disputan la potestad del adolescente, de 13 años. Y ambos han salido vencedores, o perdedores, según quién cuente la historia.
La lucha de Paris Jackson por proteger el legado que su padre, Michael Jackson, les dejó a ella y a sus dos hermanos sigue imparable. La hija del cantante y megaestrella del pop, de 28 años, se ha plantado contra el administrador del legado de su padre, acusándole de no cumplir con sus obligaciones y de querer únicamente dinero. Y ahora pretende bajar su remuneración económica y hacer que el caso llegue hasta los tribunales.
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Californians facing not one but two wealth-tax initiatives on next week's ballot may well be asking themselves how all these tens of billions of forcibly extracted dollars will be spent.
The answer, based on new studies and weary observation: horribly.
Take the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the country's second largest. In July, L.A. County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo designated the LAUSD as a "lack of going concern," due to its ongoing operating deficits, exacerbated by fresh salary increases for unionized workers. The state's longstanding school Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCAMT) then issued a damning report in September, placing the district at a "high risk" for fiscal insolvency. Why? Because payroll was expanding while enrollment was collapsing.
"From 2019-20 through 2024-25," the report found, "noncharter school enrollment declined from 440,365 to 369,830 students, a decrease of approximately 16.0%. Over the same period, total [full-time equivalent jobs] increased from 60,344 to 64,148, or approximately 6.3%. As a result, the number of students per total FTE declined from 7.3 to 5.8."
This incongruent math is a feature, not a bug, of Californian education spending.
"From 2002 to 2023," Reason Foundation Managing Director of Education Reform Aaron Garth Smith and Managing Director of Government Finance Jordan Campbell wrote in a study this June, "California led the nation in K-12 spending growth." And when exactly did K-12 enrollment peak in the LAUSD? 2002!
Between fiscal years 2013 and 2023, Smith and Campbell found, LAUSD enrollment fell by 34.7%, yet "inflation-adjusted expenditure on employee compensation—including salaries, benefits, and other wages—grew by…27%." In a city, county, and state dominated by public sector unions (the California Teachers Association has already spent more than $65.5 million this election cycle), collective bargainers sit across the table from the politicians they helped elect, leaving only taxpayers and public-school families on the outside looking in.
United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), one of the most radical teachers unions in the country, reacted to the FCAMT "high risk" report with an innumerate defiance redolent of President Donald Trump.
"This fake independent analysis disparages the school board for rightfully addressing the needs of working people who face some of the worst housing and childcare costs in the country," UTLA Vice President Julie Van Winkle told the Los Angeles Times. The union's website called the report "a so-called 'analysis'" that used "a rigged scoring system with a predetermined outcome."
The UTLA broke with the statewide California Teachers Association in backing Proposition 40, the retroactive 5 percent tax on billionaires' paper wealth that would send 90 percent of the proceeds toward healthcare spending. ("California's schools, hospitals, and clinics need funding. Billionaires do not," Van Winkle explained.) But while the controversial Prop. 40 is looking wobbly at the polls, amid caterwauls over big money in politics, the much less ballyhooed Prop. 3, which makes permanent some wealth taxes that were sold as temporary in 2012, looks set to sail through without much resistance. Literally.
Spending on Prop. 3, L.A. Times education reporter Howard Blume concluded this week, "adds up to more than $81 million for and about $5,500 against." For those keeping score at home, that's a ratio of more than 14,700 to 1, brought to you primarily by teachers unions, who incidentally are lying about the initiative.
"Strict accountability [will] ensure every dollar gets to classrooms, not Sacramento politicians," vows the Yes on 3 website. Nonsense: The higher income-tax brackets, which begin at $371,479 for individuals and $742,958 for couples filing jointly, just feed into California's general fund, of which 40 percent goes to transitional kindergarten through community college.
Californians who routinely support such tax hikes and spending increases may flatter themselves that they're taking the side of children over rapacious billionaires, as well as the odd hundred-thousandaire. But the results produced by these massive money transfers have stubbornly failed to adhere to the alleged beneficiaries.
In 2024–25, the California Policy Center noted in July, "approximately 54 percent of tested LAUSD students did not meet or exceed the state standard in English language arts, 63 percent did not meet it in mathematics, and 73 percent did not meet it in science." With results deflation has come grade inflation, meaning that Los Angeles public schools are increasingly passing students who don't meet grade-level standards.
Far from acting as a bulwark against heartless spending cuts, California's never-ending won't-you-think-of-the-children tax-and-spend cycles are blunting economic growth and creating hollowed-out monuments to the folly of central planning. Just as the LAUSD was beginning its dizzying enrollment descent, the district launched a $20 billion, eminent domain–abusing school-construction program that was routinely characterized as "the largest public works project in the western United States."
More than a thousand homes, plus such landmarks as the Ambassador Hotel and Hollywood Star Lanes (from The Big Lebowski) were plowed over, only to create an overall building stock that now stands half-empty, incurring massive sunk costs.
As Blume detailed this week in the L.A. Times, "A modern, vacant and vandalized $34-million public school sits next to Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters — a campus paid for with taxpayer-financed bond money, but so burdened with debt and damage that it's not clear that anyone can afford to move in. The compact, aesthetically striking campus is marred by widespread graffiti. Vandals have punched holes in floors, walls and ceilings over the last five years. Recent photos of the inside appear to show puddles and stains from water damage and char marks from fire. The district is paying at least $20,000 a month in security and maintenance, and last year calculated having spent more than $1 million to secure and maintain the building."
Good luck, California!
The post L.A. Teachers Union Flunks Math, Blames Billionaires appeared first on Reason Magazine.
È diventato una delle stelle più chiacchierate della televisione e, nello stesso anno, padre per la prima volta. Paul Anthony Kelly, il volto di John F. Kennedy Jr. nella serie tv “Love Story“, vive un 2026 che definisce una corsa a “giri di motore che non sapevo nemmeno di avere”. Ad accogliere la figlia, all’inizio dell’anno, insieme alla moglie Syd Widziszewski-Kelly, è stato un attore che fino a pochi mesi prima era sul punto di rinunciare.
L’attore a People (che lo ha incoronato “uomo più sexy” accanto al collega Noah Wyle) ha ammesso che, senza la moglie, avrebbe lasciato la recitazione prima di ottenere il ruolo che lo ha lanciato. Dopo dieci anni di audizioni senza risultati di rilievo, circa due settimane prima della convocazione per il provino della serie “Love Story” i due erano seduti sul divano della loro nuova casa a Portland, in Oregon, dove si erano trasferiti dopo l’evacuazione causata dagli incendi che nel gennaio 2025 avevano colpito il loro quartiere di Los Angeles.
“Stavamo pensando al futuro, a mettere su famiglia, a quali sarebbero stati i passi successivi- ha ricordato l’attore – Le dissi: ‘Non credo che succederà. È passato tanto tempo. Non so se questa strada fa per me'”. La risposta della moglie è stata semplicemente: “Siamo qui, quindi continua a provarci”.
A complicare il percorso c’era anche un ostacolo burocratico. Kelly, originario dell’Ontario, in Canada, non aveva ancora la green card: “C’erano molti ostacoli da superare anche solo per ottenere qualcosa“. La chiamata per il provino è arrivata nel giorno del secondo anniversario di matrimonio della coppia. Due giorni dopo è arrivata la green card e poi la notizia di aver ottenuto la parte di John F. Kennedy Jr.
“Da quel momento la mia vita è cambiata- ha detto -. Ancora oggi sono sbalordito che sia successo davvero e che stia vivendo il mio sogno”.
L'articolo “Stavo per mollare la recitazione, ma mia moglie mi ha bloccato. Poi è arrivato il ‘mio’ John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. che mi ha stravolto la vita”: parla Paul Anthony Kelly, “l’uomo più sexy” proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.
In the race for the mayoralty of Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the United States, two things are certain: a woman will win, and she will be a Democrat. But with a high share of undecided voters and only days remaining before the election, it is still unclear whether Karen Bass will win another term or whether the progressive challenger Nithya Raman will take the post.
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Three numbers and a letter opened the negotiations in a private message: 135K. That was the $135,000 that Silvia Zhang, a Los Angeles businesswoman, offered Tronderrica James, a Nevada woman, in 2023 to carry a child she claimed she was unable to have by any means. Later, an assistant at a surrogacy agency provided more details: “They are a Chinese couple looking for their miracle baby.” A contract sealed the arrangement.
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Is there an exception to the 5th Amendment's promise that government cannot take private property without "just compensation"? The Supreme Court declined to address that question this past Monday when it rejected a trio of petitions asking the justices to consider whether people should be compensated when law enforcement seizes or destroys their property.
Two of the cases concerned individuals who were not accused of a crime but whose property nevertheless became collateral damage as police pursued a suspect. In June 2022, police fired 30 tear gas canisters into Amy Hadley's home in South Bend, Indiana. Officers smashed windows, tore down security cameras, ransacked furniture, ripped down a panel and a fan, and punched holes in the walls as they searched for a fugitive named John Parnell Thomas, who had never been there. The police had erroneously concluded that Thomas accessed the internet via the IP address at Hadley's home. According to Hadley, the police caused at least $16,000 in damages, which insurance only partially covered.
About two months later, a SWAT team in Los Angeles arrived at Carlos Pena's North Hollywood printing business and destroyed it, along with his equipment inside, crippling his livelihood after a fugitive broke in and barricaded himself in the shop. (The suspect ultimately escaped.) Pena alleged approximately $60,000 in damages in his suit against the city, which declined to compensate him for his losses. His insurance also refused to step in—as is common in such cases, as policies often exclude damage caused by the government.
The third petition concerned Chicago drivers whose vehicles were seized by the city over modest unpaid parking tickets. Ryan O'Donnell's vehicle was impounded and sold for scrap because of about $524 in debt. Michael Goree's was seized and relinquished to the lienholder over a debt that did not belong to him; the $560 in unpaid tickets were for a different vehicle owned by his co-signer.
In all of these cases the lower courts' reasoning came from a similar place. Hadley, O'Donnell, and Goree's petitions were heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, which has adopted a categorical rule: Property destroyed in the exercise of "police power" is immune to claims under the Takings Clause, the U.S. Constitution's pledge that government cannot usurp private property without fairly compensating the owner. Pena's case went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, where the judges have declined to issue such a sweeping exception but have instead ruled that governments are exempt from paying out claims when the police actions in question were "necessary."
In a statement, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, outlined the many inconsistencies between the circuits on the topic. "It is still an 'open question' whether these or any other approaches are consistent with this Court's precedents. Few of these decisions likewise explain the source of any such police-power exception to the Takings Clause—whether the common law, the Constitution, or elsewhere," she wrote. "Such questions thus continue to 'benefit from further percolation' in the lower courts before this Court chooses to intervene."
Sotomayor was quoting herself. In 2024, she released similar remarks in response to a petition from Texas woman Vicki Baker, whose house in McKinney had been hollowed by a SWAT team attempting to capture a fugitive. The high court declined to hear Baker's case, although she finally found relief under the Texas state constitution this year.
"It's possible that the Court sincerely doesn't think the lower courts have done enough thinking on this important but novel issue," Patrick Jaicomo, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice who represented Hadley, tells me. "Still, we've brought them 5 cases from 5 circuits. How much more percolation is needed?…The Court is going to have to address this important issue, and it's not clear what another circuit decision or 6 might do to aid that consideration."
Though Sotomayor's statement ran in parallel to the one two years ago, its slightly sharper warning intimated that we may be inching closer to a resolution. "I again encourage courts considering this issue to take care," she wrote, "that due deference to state police powers does not eclipse constitutional rights."
The post Police Destroyed Their Homes and Businesses. The Supreme Court Won't Say Who Should Pay. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Lidia Sánchez, a Nicaraguan immigrant who arrived in California as a child, had two items on her agenda on a warm October morning: a routine doctor’s appointment and personally dropping off her ballot at an election office drop box in Los Angeles. She had always voted by mail, but this time she feared her ballot might not reach its destination and that her vote would not be counted.
Citadel is one of the most visited shopping centers in Los Angeles. But in these lean times, few customers browse its clothing, bag and shoe stores. On this hot October afternoon, Rocío López is here, treating herself to “a luxury” amid the cuts her family has made to blunt the impact every time they fill the car’s tank or do the grocery shopping. The pressure on her finances became clearer with her latest tax return: she and her husband were shocked to find they owed $8,000 to the IRS.
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Google Maps still shows a prosperous image of Pacific Place, a business center on the busy Valley boulevard in a suburb east of Los Angeles, California. But that picture no longer matches reality. The windows of a mental health clinic and a real estate agency have been boarded up to protect the premises from vandalism. One by one, shops pulled down their shutters until the mall was almost deserted. Several businesses belonging to an enigmatic figure also closed: Guojun Xuan, a wealthy Chinese immigrant who is at the center of a chilling case involving the alleged mistreatment of 21 children at his Arcadia mansion.
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