The new Shoulder Cuff, Ski Slope ring, and Bridge ring add architectural depth to the collection.

This lightweight Mac from Private White V.C. is a sharp alternative to your go-to bomber jacket.

When built, the new Fast Displacement XL-300 will be 20 percent longer than other yachts in its class.

Laphroaig’s new Cairdeas Quarter Cask whisky is robust with smoke and Islay peat.

California is in a housing crisis. The cost of housing — both for purchase and rental housing — is too expensive. Ineffective public housing policies and anti-growth policies that impede even reasonable development projects have choked supply in a high-demand market. California needs to start building homes and apartments as soon as possible. Recent estimates show that California must build 180,000 units of housing a year over the next 10 years simply to keep pace with demand. Currently, only about half of that amount is being constructed.

But in the meantime, a quick and effective way to provide financial relief to everyone in California with a roof over their head is to increase the homeowners exemption which has been stuck at $7,000 since 1972. A lot has changed since then. Mark Spitz won a then-record seven gold medals in the 1972 Munich Olympics. Atari released the PONG computer game and a gallon of gas sold for 36 cents. California’s population has nearly doubled from 21 million residents to 39 million residents today. And according to the California Association of Realtors, the median price of homes in California is well over $500,000 compared to $28,000 in 1972.

Because the average Californian earns $61,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, most are knocked out of the market before they even start. Only one-third of California residents can afford a median priced home.

In February, Assembly members Phil Chen and Matthew Harper introduced Assembly Bill 1100, the “American Dream Act,” which would increase the existing homeowners’ exemption on their property tax from $7,000 to $25,000, as well as raising the renter’s credit by using the mandated California Franchise Tax Board inflation adjustment. This will not only help current homeowners but this will help those aspiring to own a home. One-third of renters in the state spend at least half their take-home pay in rent, a statistic driving California’s record high 20 percent poverty rate.

Californians are paying some of the highest taxes in the nation, exacerbating the ability of ordinary citizens to afford a home. Even with Proposition 13, which has proven effective in limiting the growth of homeowners’ property tax bills, California still ranks in the top third of all states in per capita property tax revenue.

Moreover, high taxes and unaffordable housing are taking their toll on the California economy. In the last decade, California has lost more than 1 million people in net domestic out migration to other states. We all know at least a few people who have moved to Nevada, Texas, Oregon, Florida or Arizona to find a less expensive place to live.

In some welcome good news, in May, AB1100 passed a major hurdle by passing the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee with notable bipartisan support. This was the first time legislation of this nature got out of a legislative policy committee. Many had been attempted in years past but had failed.

When the Legislature returns from its summer recess later this month, affordable housing will be the leading topic of discussion. While there are many ideas being considered, including more bonds and taxes, ideas that provide direct relief for middle-class property owners have yet to rise to the forefront. They need to. Beyond the homeowners exemption, liberalizing the rules about taking one’s Proposition 13 base-year value to a new residence, the so-called “portability” issue, should also be part of a legislative proposal.

Any reform package must articulate that government can’t tax and bond its way out of a problem where it costs over $300,000 to build one unit of affordable housing. Addressing these regulatory burdens as well as providing tax relief for homeowners and renters will not only lead to future economic prosperity for California. It is also the right thing to do.

Jon Coupal is the president of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and Phillip Chen is a member of the California Assembly from the 55th Assembly District.

Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the United Teachers Los Angeles, hasn’t learned anything from the trouncing of union-backed candidates in the Los Angeles Unified school board races this year. Speaking at UTLA’s annual conference July 28, Caputo-Pearl made clear the teachers union will continue to fight school choice and push for new taxes on L.A. residents.

In May, voters elected newcomers Kelly Gonez and Nick Melvoin to the LAUSD school board, giving the nation’s second-largest school district its first pro-charter majority.

Despite repeated efforts by UTLA to smear Gonez and Melvoin as puppets of the so-called Trump/DeVos agenda, voters made clear their support for school choice and board members untethered to the narrow ideological and financial interests of the union.

The UTLA has tried to delegitimize the election by claiming, as they did the day after the election, “The billionaires bought this election.”

As out-of-touch an approach as it is, Caputo-Pearl remained committed to this narrative in his July 28 speech, asserting, “The billionaires buying the school board races was the second punch in their counter-attack,” against teachers unions.

He cited $27 million that six pro-charter political action committees spent influencing elections last year as evidence of billionaire influence. While it is true that charter school proponents have begun to spend heavily in elections, Caputo-Pearl conveniently left out that teachers unions also spent big, as they’ve done for a long time.

Last year, the California Teachers Association’s Issues PAC alone made over $23 million in political contributions. CTA, of which UTLA is an affiliate, made an additional $4.6 million in contributions through other PACs, while the California Federation of Teachers contributed $3 million.

This is merely a continuation of a trend going back many years. In the first decade of the 2000s, CTA alone spent over $200 million on campaigns and lobbying.

Contrary to the wishes of the teachers unions, it turns out not everyone is pleased with the way California’s education policies have turned out.

After years of substandard educational outcomes from traditional public schools, where bad teachers are shielded from accountability and for whatever reason receive tenure, it turns out people like having choices.

With vouchers off the table, for now, despite 60 percent of respondents to an April survey of the Public Policy Institute of California favoring them, charter schools are a fast growing alternative to traditional schools.

The results speak for themselves. Studies from the Stanford-based Center for Research on Education Outcomes and the University of California, Berkeley have found that students in Los Angeles charter schools experience greater achievement gains than students in traditional public schools.

Yet in all this, Caputo-Pearl just sees “billionaires buying the school board races.”

Caputo-Pearl also seemed especially bothered by the defeat of Steve Zimmer, the union-backed school board president whose defeat he attributed to “the billionaires … vigorously suppress[ing] the vote among working-class people,” apparently by pointing out all the faults in Zimmer’s record.

Zimmer was voted out for good reason. His solution to low graduation rates in LAUSD was to lower the standards for graduating, diminishing the value of a diploma for years to come. And just weeks before election day, he voted to put union interests before the interests of students and voted with other union-favored school board members to throw the district’s support behind anti-charter bills in Sacramento.

Refusing to acknowledge any of this, Caputo-Pearl instead argued Zimmer’s loss was just “yet another reminder that the war over public schools is a class war.” Considering L.A. charter students in poverty perform significantly better than their counterparts in traditional schools, it is more likely working-class people aren’t the pawns Caputo-Pearl wants them to be.

After more faux progressive rambling about sinister billionaires and backing moratoriums on charters, Caputo-Pearl got to his real interest: money.

Facing a deficit of $422 million in 2019-20, the district isn’t in a position to be especially generous to the union.

Caputo-Pearl’s solution: “We must shake everything we can out of the district financially to meet our priorities,” “going after” the district’s reserves, raise commercial property taxes and explore a new income tax on millionaires in L.A. County. And, of course, blame charter schools for dwindling resources.

Caputo-Pearl and the UTLA envision a district where school choice is limited to what the union tolerates and where policy and budgeting decisions are made to benefit the union first and foremost.

Taxpayers, parents and teachers who value fiscal responsibility, accountability and choice should be wary of continued union efforts to undermine choice and raise taxes.

Sal Rodriguez may be reached at: salrodriguez@scng.com

In 2017’s first six months, the housing market in the South County foothills ZIP code 92679 looked strong.

CoreLogic statistics for the first half of 2017, compared with the same period a year earlier, show these trends for the area that stretches from Portola Hills through Trabuco Canyon and Coto de Caza to Wagon Wheel …

1. 83 homes sold this year vs. 48 a year ago.

2. That’s a sales gain of 73 percent vs. a homebuying gain of 2.2 percent countywide.

3. Median selling price this year of $1,004,500 vs. $816,250 in 2016.

4. That’s a price gain of 23.1 percent. Countywide median was $675,000, up 3.1 percent vs. first-half 2016.

Here are six countywide trends to ponder, first half 2017 vs. first half 2016 …

1. Prices rose in 70 of 83 Orange County ZIPs. Sales rose in 50 of the 83.

2. In the 27 least expensive ZIPs — median price at $597,500 and below -– 5,258 homes sold. That’s up 0.8 percent.

3. In the 27 priciest ZIPs — median price of $755,000-plus -– 6,431 homes sold. That’s up 5.7 percent.

4. In nine ZIPs with medians above $1 million, sales totaled 1,256 homes, up 7.8 percent.

5. In 16 beach-close ZIPs, 3,158 homes sold, up 3.27 percent.

6. There were 10 ZIPs with median prices under $500,000 with total sales of 1,799 homes. A year ago, 18 ZIPs had medians under $500,000 with 2,793 sales.

DID YOU SEE? It’s been 10 years since Orange County’s housing bubble … or … Half of us rent: L.A.-Orange County homeownership rate 2nd lowest in U.S.

The challenge posed to the United States by Iran is so difficult and complex a problem that even the Trump administration is somewhat divided on how to proceed. While some officials are inclined to treat Tehran as if it is in compliance with the terms of the nuclear “deal” struck under Obama and still in effect, others, including Trump himself, believe the spirit of the agreement has been cast aside, and doubt it ever should have been put in place to begin with.

No matter the gravity of the situation within Iran, however, an even more immediate concern is what the mullahs are doing to worsen America’s strategic situation through conventional, not nuclear, arms. As our Mideast allies have warned in the past, the progressive destruction of ISIS has opened a potentially powerful power vacuum into which Iran and its own allies, including top international terror group Hezbollah, can quickly flow. Despite disagreement over how best to tackle the nuclear dimension of Iran’s aims, officials ought to agree on a concerted response to events on the ground.

Iran has long coveted a land bridge to Lebanese Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria. Not only would the connection instantly elevate its strategic position against its Arab rivals, driving a wedge between them and Turkey. It would also provide a secure and capacious corridor for flowing arms and materiel against Israel — making life more difficult for cornerstone Sunni states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that have moved toward greater reconciliation with the Jewish state. Finally, the geopolitical change would at last remove one of Iran’s old threats from the chessboard: Iraq, the majority-Shiite Arab nation that has flipped since Saddam from implacable enemy to tacit, or more than tacit, ally.

In sum, across the Mideast, wherever the United States wants to preserve the status quo, Iran wants to upset it, and wherever the United States wants something to change, Iran wants it to deepen.

There is, of course, the lone exception of the destruction of ISIS.

“Most non-ISIS powers — including Shia Iran and the leading Sunni states — agree on the need to destroy it,” as Henry Kissinger recently wrote in a sort of public memo to the White House. “But which entity is supposed to inherit its territory? A coalition of Sunnis? Or a sphere of influence dominated by Iran? The answer is elusive because Russia and the NATO countries support opposing factions. If the ISIS territory is occupied by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or Shia forces trained and directed by it, the result could be a territorial belt reaching from Tehran to Beirut, which could mark the emergence of an Iranian radical empire.”

Such an imperial arrangement would hark back to the polyglot entities that have traded supremacy over the course of Mideast history, from the Ottoman Empire back to the Romans, with various weaker groups and movements exercising some degree of local autonomy and control, but all, in effect, willingly taking orders from Tehran.

In fact, this pattern has already begun taking shape to a sobering extent. Several regional militias under the supervision of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard militias are currently designated by the United States as terror organizations.

“But there at least 40 militias that are not,” as the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has observed. “Many are Iraqi-based groups, and include Afghans, Pakistanis, and Syrians. The numbers are in the tens of thousands.” It’s believed that over 60,000 Iraqis, and 10,000 foreign nationals in Syria, are supplied, supported or controlled by the Guard. Without countervailing force of some kind, those numbers will steeply rise.

There’s also little doubt as to what sort of missions Iran’s satellite armies will be tasked with: doing Iran’s dirty work in ways that save Tehran itself from having to bear the risks and costs of a formal conventional war with the United States and its allies.

“The Guard Corps may attempt to expand its asymmetric strategy while falling below the threshold of a direct attack,” as FDD surmised. “During the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Revolutionary Guard provided material assistance to militants targeting American soldiers and in Iraq directly oversaw attacks. It continues to harass the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf on a frequent basis. Between May and June, Guard-led militants and Iranian drones challenged a U.S. deconfliction zone near Tanf, Syria, triggering American strikes.”

To be clear, the United States also rightly wants to avoid striking up a conventional regional war with Iran, which would promise even greater cost and devastation than a creeping Shiite empire. There is some hope of working outside angles with greater powers that also hold a stake in Mideast outcomes.

Kissinger, for his part, suggests that “Russia’s attitude” toward the fate of formerly ISIS-held lands “will be a key test” of which way the sands will shift. But even that notion quietly reminds us that the United States must worry about how to proceed in the absence of sufficient diplomatic leverage over Moscow.

The options are few. Turkey, despite its harrowing turn into anti-democratic autocracy, remains a NATO ally with a large army and a tradition of acting as a bulwark against revisionist powers to its southeast. The Kurds, though longtime enemies of the Turks, remain stout American allies capable of taking and holding contested territory. Iraq may be too cozy with Iran, but its leaders still do not wish to rule a mere puppet state.

For the United States, the best, most likely outcome is an uneasy patchwork quilt of influence and ambition — where Iran’s sphere of strength has grown, but its terror network is hamstrung, its proxy armies are bottled up, and the destiny of the Mideast remains in the hands of the Arab peoples.

James Poulos is a columnist for the Southern California News Group.

Is it over for affirmative action?

The Trump administration’s Justice Department is hiring lawyers to look into a civil rights complaint filed by 64 Asian-American groups back in 2015. The department will investigate and perhaps sue colleges and universities that engage in intentional race-based discrimination in admissions.

You don’t need a telescope to see where this is going. The project is a hothouse to grow test cases, at least one of which will eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

It has always been fiercely disputed whether affirmative action — the practice of achieving diversity by considering race and gender in admissions, hiring and contracting — was constitutional. The Fourteenth Amendment states, “No state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

But it’s a fact of U.S. history that the Constitution has never actually been amended to ban discrimination on the basis of race. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the state legislatures that ratified it in 1868, were very vocal in their desire to preserve segregation and other racially discriminatory laws and practices.

It was during the 20th century, after everyone who debated and voted on the Fourteenth Amendment was safely dead, that the U.S. Supreme Court began to apply the Equal Protection Clause to get rid of the discriminatory laws and practices which the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment had left in place.

This created the legal ground for affirmative action policies to take root. On one hand, discrimination on the basis of race is unconstitutional. On the other hand, nothing in the Constitution actually says that.

The Supreme Court’s first decision on affirmative action was in 1978: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. The justices divided 5-4, and the majority divided on its reasoning. The court held that affirmative action was permissible but rigid quotas were not.

In Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003, the justices divided 5-4 again, with the majority upholding the use of race in student admissions at the University of Michigan Law School. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote that the court expected “all race-conscious admissions programs” to have “a termination point” and hoped it would be within 25 years.

Affirmative action could meet its end in a pending lawsuit filed by Asian-American students against Harvard University. The lawsuit alleges that Harvard effectively set a quota for the number of Asians who will be admitted to the elite school’s undergraduate program.

College degrees took on an importance beyond their educational value as a result of another Supreme Court decision, Griggs v. Duke Power Co., in 1971. Duke had a policy of requiring applicants for any job to have a high school diploma or pass an aptitude test. The court ruled that the requirement had a discriminatory effect, a “disparate impact” on minority groups, and was therefore illegal under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

That decision effectively ended the use of aptitude and IQ tests in hiring. The college degree became the primary screening tool for employment.

This is how we got to the point where toddlers are pressured to do well on tests to get on track for admission to a top university, and parents suffer debilitating anxiety over grade-school report cards.

One day, someone will file a lawsuit arguing that the use of a college degree as a screening tool in hiring has a disparate impact and is discriminatory.

But by then, robots will have replaced us all.

Susan Shelley is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. Reach her at Susan@SusanShelley.com.

Chrissy Teigen isn’t one to hold back when it comes to indulging in her favorite foods, so the model and her pal, stylist-turned-designer Andrea Lieberman, chose trendy Los Angeles eatery Jon & Vinny’s as the venue for a dinner to launch A.L.C.’s new collection for Intermix, titled “On Duty.”

Andrea Lieberman 
Getty Images for INTERMIX x A.L.

The 16-piece contemporary line, for which Teigen was the muse, includes Lieberman’s takes on the classic white shirt, black trousers, track suit and other wardrobe staples, and ranges in price from $128 to $895 retail.
Lieberman started the collection with the track pant. “Since my days as a stylist, traveling around the world, I’ve wanted to find a pant that could take you from city to city, day to night. Pair it with a sneaker, pair it with a heel, it is equally cool and totally effortless,” she said. “My good friend Jen Atkin puts it best, ‘Life is hard, looking good should be easy.’”
The collection is available exclusively at the retailer’s web site and brick-and-mortar boutiques. Guests, including Teigen’s stylist Monica Rose, singer Kacy Hill and Justin Bieber’s stylist Karla Welch, all got the dress code memo, arriving in white shirts and black pants.
Teigen wore a

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