Laguna Bluebelt, San Juan Capistrano Equestrian Center honored at OC Coastkeeper’s ‘Toast of the Coast’

• September 26, 2026

Orange County Coastkeeper honored a Laguna Beach nonprofit and a San Juan Capistrano business at its recent Toast of the Coast for their work helping to keep the local shoreline a special place.

At Thursday’s fundraising gala, Michael Beanan and Jinger Wallace of the Laguna Bluebelt Coalition received Coastkeeper’s Outstanding Activist Award — for nearly 20 years, the two have built support and traveled the coast to advocate for Marine Protected Areas, which, within their first decade in California, had already helped large swaths of the underwater world rebound. They co-founded the coalition in 2008.

Tim Marshall and Denise Haunert-Marshall of the San Juan Capistrano Equestrian Center received the Coastkeeper’s Business Leadership in Water Award.

Sarah Spinuzzi, Coastkeeper’s legal director, nominated the equestrian center for its commitment to sustainable stormwater management practices.

OC Coastkeeper, based in Costa Mesa, is a nonprofit clean water organization with a mission to protect and restore marine habitats, watersheds, and fresh- and saltwater ecosystems.

California created Marine Protected Areas up and down the state in 2012, with Laguna Beach’s MPA covering 70% of the city’s coast. To help highlight the benefits of the MPAs, Laguna Bluebelt hosts an annual photo contest that showcases pictures taken in the local MPA.

Its organizers say the images are more than something nice to look at, they are documenting the success of now 14 years of coastal protections.

Ray Hiemstra, Coastkeeper’s associate director of policy and projects, who nominated Beanan and Wallace, credits them for the attention on sealife the photo contest, which draws in photographers from across Southern California, creates.

He also noted the coalition’s involvement in funding the Aliso Beach Berm Buddies Program. Together with Coastkeeper researchers, the berm program monitors wildlife, human activity, and the natural sand barrier at Aliso Beach and Treasure Island in Laguna Beach.

“Coastkeeper is proud to present them with our Toast the Coast award,” Hiemstra said. “We expect that this recognition will help with their continuing efforts to protect the marine environment for all Orange County residents.”

Beanan said, “OC Coastkeeper has been a great partner for decades, helping to elevate Laguna’s Marine Protected Areas as a statewide model of stewardship and community collaboration.”

Because Coastkeeper’s mission focuses on restoring fresh- and saltwater ecosystems, he said winning an award from the organization will help highlight the coalition’s various efforts, such as reducing and eliminating the discharge of urban runoff and secondary sewage to the ocean at Aliso Beach and creating awareness of the impacts of berm breaching at the mouth of the Aliso Creek.

Hiemstra said the Bluebelt’s recognition is not Coastkeeper’s first. He also selected Laguna Bluebelt for Coastkeeper’s “My Hero Project” award in 2017 and again this year. The award recognizes education efforts in watershed protection.

Toast of the Coast was held at the Balboa Pavilion in Newport Beach. In its 27-year history, Coastkeeper has awarded numerous organizations, individuals, and businesses for their efforts to promote clean water.

​ Orange County Register 

Why I object to ‘hitting a number’ for retirement

• September 26, 2026

By CHRISTINE BENZ of Morningstar

When someone says they’re retiring because they “hit their number,” my alarm bells go off because it’s often a signal that the retirement plan isn’t as holistic or risk-conscious as it should be.

Here are my major objections.

Back-of-the-envelope planning

Too often, people use a simple heuristic like the 4% guideline to determine their portfolios’ viability. Or worse, they’re using their gut reaction to the number. A $1 million portfolio seems like it should be plenty, but it might not be if your tax-adjusted, inflation-adjusted spending is too high.

Dividing your number by your planned withdrawal amount is a good starting point to evaluate whether your plan is on track — for example, if you’re 10 or so years from retirement. But if you’re getting closer, it’s worthwhile to create a more encompassing plan. Consider your:

1. Retirement spending versus spending while working

2. Nonportfolio income, like Social Security, a pension, or working income

3. Planned spending rate and portfolio positioning

4. Taxes, inflation, and investment costs

If your assertion that you have enough to retire rests on a single variable—your portfolio’s value—that’s your cue to develop a comprehensive plan.

Market highs invite risk

Risk also factors into my reflexive aversion to “hitting a number,” especially if someone hits their number in the stock market. Stocks go up more than they go down, and it simply feels better to switch from savings to spending mode when your portfolio is looking robust. Counterintuitively, if you plan to retire with a heavy complement of stocks, it’s actually better to retire after the market has been pummeled than to go out on a high note.

Valuations are the main reason. Even as your portfolio has gotten plumper, it’s also more susceptible to  sequence risk, the possibility of big portfolio losses at the beginning of retirement. In our research on safe spending rates, we found that nearly two-thirds of all-equity portfolios that experienced losses within the first five years of retirement ran out of money before year 30.

Our research on historical safe withdrawal rates also points to the value of retiring when conditions look crummy rather than retiring when your portfolio is riding high. In the mid-1980s, most investors probably weren’t excited about the prospects for the major asset classes. Not only had stocks endured a punishing rout in 1973-74, but they also posted losses in 1977 and 1981. Bonds performed abysmally, too, thanks to the Federal Reserve’s successful campaign to tamp down inflation. But the mid-1980s were actually one of the best periods in modern history to have retired into. An all-equity portfolio would have supported a starting withdrawal rate of nearly 13%! That’s right, a $1 million portfolio would have supported a $130,000 withdrawal in year one of retirement, with annual inflation adjustments thereafter, for 30 years. Those rich withdrawal rates were owed to low equity valuations coming into the period, supporting strong stock market gains over the ensuing 30 years. Bond yields were high and trended lower, boosting bond prices, and inflation was generally quite mild.

That’s not to suggest that new retirees and would-be retirees should assume that their prospects are dire today simply because equity valuations are high. As Amy Arnott noted in this article, “lost decades” for stocks, like the one that prevailed in the 2000s, have been quite rare. Moreover, investors can make their plans more resilient by building in a complement of safe assets (cash and bonds) and spending less if their portfolios experience losses. In fact, the best thing that prospective retirees can do if they think they’ve hit their number is to lock down a portion of their gains in safer assets, like Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities.

Lifestyle considerations

My most significant objection to “hitting a number” is that it suggests that deciding when to retire revolves around money and numbers. Of course, financial wherewithal is inextricably linked to whether you can reasonably retire. And if your job is a miserable slog or you’re just plain exhausted, by all means concentrate on making the numbers work as soon as possible.

But it’s not all about the numbers. As Maria Bruno, head of US wealth planning research for Vanguard, shares in my book “How to Retire,” you need to be able to answer “the three haves.” Do you have enough? (That’s the money piece.) Have you had enough? (Are you done with work, either because you’re exasperated or, better yet, because you’ve achieved everything you hoped to?)

The final “have” is the most important: Will you have enough? Do you know what you are retiring “to” and will it fulfill you? The most successful retirees put more weight on those questions than they do on money matters.

This article was provided to The Associated Press by Morningstar. For more retirement content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/retirement.

Christine Benz is director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar and co-host of The Long View podcast. Subscribe to her free newsletter, Improving Your Finances.

Related Links:

Retirement Planning for Real Life

https://www.morningstar.com/retirement/retirement-planning-real-life-with-christine-benz

Our Best Investment Portfolio Examples for Savers and Retirees

https://www.morningstar.com/portfolios/best-investment-portfolio-examples-savers-retirees

TIPS Look Tempting. Should You Buy?

https://www.morningstar.com/funds/tips-look-tempting-should-you-buy

​ Orange County Register 

Adding mini clover to grass seed creates a green, hardy, drought-tolerant lawn

• September 26, 2026

By JESSICA DAMIANO | The Associated Press

Would you like a lawn that grows well in full sun or part shade, requires little or no watering, chokes out weeds, never needs fertilizer and stays green all summer, even when exposed to dog urine?

Have I got a lawn for you! Simply mixing clover seeds with your chosen grass seeds will do all of that while keeping pests in check and attracting beneficial insects to pollinate your other plants — things ordinary turfgrasses never do.

If children or allergies have you concerned about attracting bees, mow your hybrid lawn when the clover is in flower to lessen the threat.

Caring for Kentucky bluegrass, tall and fine fescues, St. Augustine, Bermudagrass, zoysia and their grassy cousins risks damaging the ecosystem while providing little benefit — aside, perhaps, from the satisfaction of those who find beauty in a flawless emerald-green carpet outside their door.

The good news is that green is green, and when mowed, your clover will fit right in.

Here are more good reasons for a grass-clover hybrid

Planting straight clover would require removing all the existing grass to allow its seeds to fully contact the soil. And on its own, clover doesn’t stand up well to foot traffic. The plant is also short-lived, so it would require reseeding every few years. In addition, straight clover wouldn’t fill in as densely as a grass-clover combination lawn would.

When mixed with grass seed, however, clover becomes a rock star, reseeding well enough that you never have to replenish it. And, as it grows, it outcompetes most common weeds.

What kind of clover should you buy?

When shopping for seeds, look for “micro” or “mini” clover, which grows to about 4 inches (10 centimeters) tall after some initial repeated low-mowing to “train” it to remain short and more lawn-like. When mixed with grass, mini clover crowds out weeds more effectively than Dutch white clover does.

Packaged clover seeds are often precoated with inoculant; if they aren’t, buy a packet of inoculant separately and apply it to the seeds by following the label directions. Clover, like other legumes, is “nitrogen-fixing,” which means it relies on certain bacterial strains to colonize its roots and supply nitrogen; the inoculant feeds the seeds without nourishing weed seeds that may be lurking in the soil.

Inoculant loses its effectiveness over time, so wait until you are ready to sow coated seeds before you buy them, and check dates to ensure they were packaged within the past six months.

How do you switch to a clover-hybrid lawn?

Remove thatch, if present, from your existing lawn before incorporating clover seeds.

Mix seeds with sand or loose soil before spreading to facilitate an even application, then gently rake it in.

Water very lightly every day (unless it rains) to keep the soil slightly moist until the clover fills in.

If planting in part-shade conditions, sow twice as many seeds as indicated for the area.

In temperate areas, sow the seeds in fall. In areas with colder winters, sow them around the beginning of April. Clover isn’t recommended for the Deep South because it doesn’t withstand extreme heat well.

Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for The Associated Press. She publishes the Weekly Dirt Newsletter.

​ Orange County Register 

Proposition 2 isn’t about saving money — it’s another Sacramento shell game

• September 26, 2026

Here’s a riddle for you. What’s the difference between Proposition 2 on the November ballot and Bonnie and Clyde?

Bonnie and Clyde never tried to pretend they were making a deposit.

Proposition 2 makes changes to the rules and requirements for moving money into or out of the state’s Budget Stabilization Account, also known as the “Rainy Day Fund.” On the surface, it appears to be a pious attempt to save more money during the good times so it will be there during the bad times.

Look deeper and it’s a lot of optics to create the illusion of fiscal responsibility, while in reality it’s enabling more spending and making taxpayer rebates under the Gann Spending Limit even less likely than they already are.

The state’s tax revenues have been growing, but the politicians’ spending is growing even faster.

California’s state budget was $119.6 billion in 2005-06. Ten years later, in 2015-16, it was $160.2 billion. Ten years after that, in 2025-26, it was $346.9 billion. For 2026-27, it has grown to $351.7 billion.

The state budget needs more than a rainy day fund. It needs a steroid test.

For many years, California has dealt with the problem of revenue volatility. During good economic times, the state hauls in tax revenue from stock market gains and high income tax rates, even higher on the highest earners. During grim economic times, not so much.

However, the state’s spending obligations continue in good times or bad, and they typically increase in bad times as more people need assistance. The solution has been to put money in reserve accounts of one kind or another. The problem with that solution is that an account full of money in Sacramento is a lamb chop at a wolves’ convention.

In 2014, the Legislature placed a measure on the ballot, also called Proposition 2, to put tougher rules in place for the “Rainy Day Fund.” Voters loved the idea. It passed with 69% approval.

Proposition 2 (2014) required the Legislature to set aside 1.5% of General Fund revenue every year. Through 2030, half the set-aside was to be deposited into the Budget Stabilization Account (BSA) and half used to pay specified debts, especially unfunded pension and retiree benefit obligations. In good years, when revenue from capital gains taxes was above a certain level, the Legislature was required to deposit even more money in the BSA.

According to Proposition  2 (2014), when the balance in the Budget Stabilization Account reached 10% of General Fund revenues, the “set-aside” deposit would have to be spent on infrastructure instead.

But the 10% cap was never really a cap, because the Legislature could also make unlimited discretionary deposits into the BSA. 

And the required deposit was not really a required deposit. All that was needed to reduce or suspend it was a declaration of “budget emergency” by the governor and a majority vote of the Legislature. “Budget emergency” was defined to include insufficient funds to maintain spending at the highest level in the previous three years, adjusted upward for population growth and inflation.

The Legislature skipped or reduced the required deposit into the BSA in fiscal years 2024-25 and 2025-26, but what was the emergency? 

There was no recession. There was no pandemic. There was no tsunami. The “emergency” was an estimate that tax revenues were not growing fast enough to support government spending that was roughly double what it had been ten years earlier.

The California constitution requires a balanced budget, but the courts have held that a balanced budget is whatever the Legislature says it is. As a result, insane overspending is paid for by dropping an IOU into a future budget year.

For example, throwing fiscal caution to the winds, the Legislature and governor decided to expand full-scope Medi-Cal eligibility to every low-income undocumented immigrant in California. The cost has turned out to be about $11 billion per year, so much more than expected that the governor reluctantly closed the expansion program to new enrollments this year, imposed a premium charge, and dialed back the dental coverage.

How did the state pay for the extra Medi-Cal costs? With “budget borrowing,” the all-purpose IOU sent forward into the future, where it will be somebody else’s problem.

The new Proposition 2 on the November ballot would allow the debt repayment portion of the 1.5% set-aside to be used to repay “budget borrowing,” and instead of the debt repayment obligation expiring in 2030, it’s extended for another ten years. 

This effectively relieves the state’s General Fund of these IOU payment obligations, freeing up billions of dollars of General Fund revenue for more spending.

Proposition 2 also revises the rules for calculating the Gann Spending Limit, a 1979 constitutional amendment that limits the growth of government spending, or tries to. The Gann Limit requires rebates to taxpayers if more revenue is collected than the government can legally spend.

The new rules make it even less likely that taxpayers will ever see a refund, because excess revenue can be stuffed into the Budget Stabilization Account, with the 10% cap doubled to 20% to accommodate the Gann-evading maneuver. From there it can be used to “pay debt,” in other words, to cover previous overspending.

Proposition 2 (2026) isn’t about saving money for a rainy day. It’s a new framework to allow lawmakers to more easily spend money that the state doesn’t have, what the Legislative Analyst’s Office called a “solution” to “funding shortfalls.”

Bonnie and Clyde would have called it a clean getaway.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley

​ Orange County Register 

‘Please Don’t Touch the Body’ author Emily Doyle hated zombies. Until now.

• September 26, 2026

Emily Doyle, who received her MFA from UC Riverside, is the Los Angeles-based author of the short story collection, “Please Don’t Touch the Body.”

Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?

On its surface, “Please Don’t Touch the Body” is a book of short stories concerning what’s wonderful and horrifying about being a woman. But the secret way I think about this book is that it’s for the sickos who understand that womanhood is like starring in a movie that’s flickering unpredictably between romance and horror. You fall in love with someone. You fall in love with yourself. You appreciate your body. You hate your body. Your body appreciates you back, and then it betrays you. The world holds you up as an ideal, and then it tries to destroy you. And all of this is as terrifying as it is beautiful, and it never ends.

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Q. What’s the most memorable question or comment you’ve gotten at a book event?

At my book launch, my dear friend Corey Spanner asked, “If someone encountered your book while stranded on a desert island, what’s the one thing you would want them to know before they read the first page?” A philosophically dense question that brought to mind the slightly silly image of Tom Hanks crawling toward the volleyball in “Cast Away.”

My answer was that I would want them to know that “Please Don’t Touch the Body” is meant to make them feel less alone, even while stranded on a desert island.

Q. Is there a book or type of book you’re reluctant to read?

One of the absolute best things about being a writer is that you befriend other writers, and you fall for them as people. Then you read their work, and you realize you’re into so many more genres than you expected.

So it’s not that I’m reluctant to read anything; it’s that through my friends, I’ve realized I have a near-bottomless desire for variety. For example, Chloe Lauter’s visceral “The Flayed Man” and Zefyr Lisowski’s revelatory “Uncanny Valley Girls” revealed I need more horror, and writing about horror, in my life. Claire Jia’s brilliant “Wanting” further increased my interest in books set in China. And Amanda Rizkalla’s beautiful and heartbreaking debut “Hungered” prompted me to search for more adult novels centering the very young.

22 new books coming in October 2026 to add to your reading list

Q. Is there a book that tapped into an emotion you didn’t expect?

Stay with me here, because I’ll get to the point eventually: I don’t like zombies. Actually, I hate zombies. The idea of a corpse walking around and eating people disgusts me on a visceral, instinctual level and fills me with existential dread. Now, you might think, Emily, that’s the point of zombies. But I promise that while zombies might strike you with fear, they overwhelm me with panic. When I was a child, I was plagued (hah) by nightmares about zombie apocalypses, and I would wake up from them nauseated and soaked in cold sweat. So when I started to read Anne de Marcken’s zombie novel, “It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over,” I braced myself for my typical zombie-related bad feelings.

Rather than filling me with disgust, though, Marcken’s zombies knocked me off my axis and rendered me vulnerable to the hope and tenderness and aching sense of beauty at the center of her story. Also, her writing made me laugh. Hard. This book was, to me, a joyful surprise.

Q. What’s a memorable book experience – good or bad – you’re willing to share?

N.K. Jemisin’s “The Fifth Season” made me sick—sick with jealousy over the controlled prose and intricately layered plot, yes. But also sick with the depiction of people living in a world already wrecked by climate crises, with no ready way out of disaster and still pressing forward. I didn’t like what this book suggested about what might come for my own world—and I pray that as a species we manage to choose a better path. Still, I needed to hear its message, a message that speaks simultaneously to humanity’s potential for ugliness and glory.

Q. If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?

Who hurt you? Just kidding. What I’d really like to ask is this: has my book made you feel a little more connected to yourself and the world?

Because this is my hope.

Map: 100 Southern California independent bookstores to visit in 2026

​ Orange County Register 

5 takeaways from Bookish guest Harlan Coben’s memoir

• September 26, 2026

Harlan Coben says he always thought his fiction had nothing to do with his real life as a suburban dad. ”I make stuff up; what do I know about murder and mayhem and all these things?”

And then he wrote “Plot Twist: Life, Craft, and the Messy First Draft,” and realized how deeply his life and his writing are intertwined.

Funny enough, for him to even write something that isn’t a novel was a plot twist.

“Every time I say I’m not going to do something, I end up doing it. I said I would never collaborate with anybody; I ended up collaborating on a novel with Reese Witherspoon,” said Coben, referencing the 2025 thriller “Gone Before Goodbye.”

“And I would never write nonfiction or a memoir…and now I have with ‘Plot Twist,’ so I’m going to stop saying that.”

Coben was speaking via Zoom from his book-lined office at his New Jersey home, as part of the September episode of Bookish, the free monthly virtual program about books and authors produced by the Southern California News Group.

The author of “Tell No One,” “Fool No One,” “Missing You,” and more than 35 other international bestsellers, as well as the creator and executive producer of many streaming series adapted from his books, including “Runaway,” “Stay Close,” “The Stranger,” “Hold Tight” and “I Will Find You,” Coben said he initially set out merely to offer writing advice, but realized it was something more.

“I had just written two straight novels back-to-back, and I was just, like, I didn’t want to dive into another one,” he said. But then he thought about a master class he’d taught for a company called BBC Maestro, and started to contemplate all the things about writing that he “got wrong.”

“I thought that might make kind of a cool book, if I could combine a memoir about my childhood, because it relates to what I do creatively,” he said. “For one, it could teach people who want to write about writing. But what I’ve heard from my friends who are musicians or painters, or sculptors, or even entrepreneurs, is that it’s a creating guide, a book that I hope will encourage you to look at the world a little differently and to be a little more creative in your day-to-day life, no matter where it takes you.”

To that end, here are five takeaways from Coben’s “Plot Twist,’ condensed from our interview and edited for clarity:

1) Learn to write by…writing. “You could have physical basketball skill like LeBron James, but if you’ve never played basketball before… You could put LeBron James on a court and he would be terrible if he had never had a basketball in his hand. So, I don’t know why we think writing has to be different.”

2) Be obsessed. “You have to love story, you have to have that passion for it; you have to be a little bit obsessed,” said Coben. In the course of contemplating his childhood for the memoir, he writes that he realized his habit of playing with baseball cards alone in his room and inventing stories about them for hours was evidence he’d always been a storyteller at heart.

3) Get curious. “There’s a whole writer’s mind frame that I kind of go into in the book, about how to walk through the world with a creative mind frame. ‘How can I use this in a story? How can I figure out what’s going on underneath that engine?’ I’ve raised my kids to say this: Whenever you see someone on the street, [imagine] what are their hopes and dreams? Be it the richest, the poorest, the healthiest, the sickest – everybody has hopes and dreams. It’s a very simple thing to think about. Did they come true? Did they not come true? Do they still have them? When the dreams came true, did they end up being nightmares? All of these questions keep your brain engaged and make you more creative. I just think it makes you a happier and more self-satisfied person in many ways. And you make yourself more empathetic.”

4) Your life provides material. “I hope when you read [‘Plot Twist ‘], you’ll realize something that happened in your life, even small things, can, by asking ‘what if’ enough, and wondering different things and combining them, become a story, or some way of creating,” he said. “When I looked back on it, almost every moment, every important moment, every story idea, didn’t come from some grand search or something like that. It came from something that I sort of stumbled across. And by leaving my brain always open to asking, ‘What if?’

“And what I find is, like, every entrepreneur I know who’s been successful, it was always something in their life, a need that they had, or something that happened that led to [their ideas]. It wasn’t done in a vacuum; it wasn’t done when somebody said, ‘I’ve got to figure out something that would be a good product.’ It was usually something that they stumbled across in their life. So by examining your own life, by having some self-awareness, I think you can really help yourself be creative in everything that you do. And we all, you know, want to be more creative in everything we do. It just makes you a little bit more alive.”

5) Let yourself be bored. “I whine a lot about social media, like most people my age do – and we should, because social media is a terrible thing,” he said. “When I was a child, you were allowed to be bored, and you were bored quite frequently, and I don’t know if I would have been a writer if I wasn’t bored, because the moments…where I would make up stories in my own head, or I would take my baseball cards and invent worlds, or I would walk through the woods and sort of make up adventures, I would be scrolling on my phone like an idiot, which I do now! Which we all do now. I think it’s a really bad thing for creativity in many ways, that we have these sort of, these tools that make us a little lazier of mind.”

To see the full interview with Coben, click here. Also featured on the September episode is mystery writer Lee Goldberg. To sign up for future episodes of Bookish, go to SCNG Virtual Events.

​ Orange County Register 

Big Government: Born in crisis and built to last

• September 26, 2026

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously said, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” Friedman’s statement, clear and to the point, is supported by a mountain of evidence. From extended unemployment and crop insurance to deposit insurance and mass income tax withholding, these are but a few “temporary” programs that traded their provisional status for permanency. 

Each of these examples, as well as many others, has something else in common. That is, each was born because of crisis. From economic recessions to war, policies and programs begun in the name of combating today’s threats have a unique way of staying long after the crisis has passed.

This phenomenon is not a relic of centuries past, but one that remains wholly relevant today. 

President George W. Bush, for example, authorized the use of military commissions for certain terrorism suspects in the wake of 9/11. These emergency-born commissions created a parallel system in which military officers—not civilian judges and juries—would prosecute and adjudicate under rules that gave government officials significant latitude over evidence, information, courtroom procedure, and defendant participation in their own trials. 

Other contemporary examples are readily apparent—particularly in the context of the war on terror. Consider Congress’s Authorizations for Use of Military Force, or AUMFs, that established a statutory basis for counterterrorism military operations outside of conventional warfare. Though initially used to support the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, these emergency institutions continue to be used a full quarter century later. Other examples abound, including many emergency surveillance provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act. 

Whether the Great Depression, World War II, or the Global War on Terror, the creation of these and other policies invoked the need for extraordinary measures in the face of an “extraordinary emergency.” Though the emergencies that birthed them are long in the past, the programs and system persist. 

This raises an important question: why are emergency programs so easy to create and yet so difficult to dismantle? The question of expansion is easy. In a crisis, citizens often call for elected officials to “do something.” This leads to the expansion of government’s size and authority. 

But why are “emergency” government measures so likely to become permanent? The answer is threefold. 

First is the set of incentives policymakers face. Economics teaches us that elected officials are motivated by three goals: political survival, reelection, and legacy. They evaluate policy alternatives according to their expected payoffs along these margins. With many policies, the payoffs point directly toward expansion. Politicians are likely to be substantially blamed if they roll back security policies and then another attack occurs, or if they fail to act in a recession and economic conditions worsen. At the same time, maintaining the status quo carries little to no cost. Elected officials can also claim credit for effective policies or frame their support for expansion as a commitment to being on “the cutting edge” of security.

The second reason why emergency changes tend toward permanency relates to the economics of bureaucracy. Once created, bureaucracies face strong incentives to expand their budgets, personnel, and perceived importance. Elected officials who oversee these agencies face severe impediments. This is partly because, although bureaucrats are experts in their fields, the overseers are not. As a result, Congress or other oversight bodies must often rely on the bureaucrats themselves for information about the efficacy and relative success of programs. Moreover, bureaucrats often have significant discretion over what, when, and how they report to policymakers. 

The third factor that transforms “temporary” measures into permanent fixtures relates to special interests. With the creation of emergency measures, private contractors come to have a stake in maintaining them. Examples abound. In the context of counterterrorism in the post-9/11 period, for example, scholars have highlighted how an entire “terrorism industry” grew up around the U.S. government’s post-9/11 policies. We find similarly strong interests in banking, agriculture, and a host of other contexts. 

Independently, these factors point toward the long life expectancy of emergency changes. Taken together, they represent a profound force for continuity and expansion. 

So, what can be done? The solution is tough, but necessary: don’t create the measures in the first place. While crises prompt calls for immediate government action, we should do the exact opposite. As Nobel laureate economist F.A. Hayek noted, crises are precisely when constraints on government matter most. 

Abigail R. Hall is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, and a professor of economics at the University of Tampa.

​ Orange County Register 

Why you should work out loud

• September 26, 2026

In a land far away but not so long ago, my wife encouraged me to “work out loud.” A foreign concept at first, but brilliant in its simplicity.

You see, in 2009, Carla was introduced to social media marketing while earning an advanced degree in apparel manufacturing from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, better known as FIDM. Her advice was prescient. Take what I do in commercial real estate brokerage every day, the work, and digitize it — the out loud.

The Location Advice blog was born shortly thereafter, and 17 years later, it’s still published every week. Here, I provide advice to owners and occupants of industrial real estate throughout Southern California.

What started as an experiment became a habit. That habit became a body of work. And somewhere along the way, working out loud became one of the most important business development lessons of my career.

So, what exactly does it mean to work out loud?

Simply put, don’t invent content. Document your work.

Commercial real estate brokers spend their days solving problems. We tour buildings, negotiate leases, advise owners, analyze alternatives, track market activity, uncover opportunities and occasionally talk clients off the proverbial ledge.

Each encounter contains a story.

Years ago, the challenge was finding a way to tell those stories. Today, the challenge is choosing among the countless ways to do so.

A blog was my starting point. Then came LinkedIn, YouTube and other social platforms. In August 2013, I recorded my first Tuesday Traffic Tips video. The premise was ridiculously simple. I was already driving to work, so why not use those few minutes to discuss something I had encountered in my brokerage practice?

Once again, the work became the content.

Now artificial intelligence has added another dimension.

I can take notes from a client meeting and organize the important themes. I can research a topic I encountered during the day. I can analyze a complicated issue from several angles. I can turn an idea into an outline, challenge my assumptions and identify questions I haven’t considered.

But there is an important distinction.

AI can help me create content. It cannot give me 42 years of experiences from which to draw.

That distinction matters.

Spend 5 minutes scrolling through LinkedIn and you’ll encounter plenty of content that sounds polished but says very little. Artificial intelligence has made producing words incredibly easy. Producing something worth reading remains difficult.

Which brings me back to Carla’s advice.

Work first. Out loud second.

If you own a manufacturing company, perhaps you just wrestled with whether to renew your lease or buy a building. There’s a story there.

If you operate a logistics company, maybe rising rents forced you to reconsider your distribution network. There’s a story there.

If you own an industrial building and your tenant suddenly announced plans to leave, you learned something about leasing, timing and risk. There’s a story there too.

The most compelling content generally comes from experience, not imagination.

Certainly, confidentiality matters. I don’t identify clients or disclose information that should remain private. But the lessons surrounding a transaction can often be shared without revealing the parties involved.

What happened? What did we learn? What might another owner or occupant do differently?

Answer those three questions and you probably have something useful to say.

There is another benefit to working out loud that I didn’t appreciate in 2009.

You create a digital record of your expertise.

One blog becomes 10. Ten become 100. A weekly column becomes hundreds. A short video recorded every Tuesday becomes years of conversations about your craft.

Individually, none seems particularly significant. Collectively, they tell the market what you know, how you think and whom you help.

And now, with artificial intelligence able to search, organize and repurpose that body of work, those years of accumulated knowledge become even more valuable.

The technology will continue to change. Blogs gave way to social media. Video became ubiquitous. Podcasts exploded. Artificial intelligence arrived. Something else will surely follow.

But I suspect Carla’s advice will survive all of them.

Do good work.

Pay attention to what the work teaches you.

Then work out loud.

Allen C. Buchanan, SIOR, is a principal with Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services in Orange. He can be reached at abuchanan@lee-associates.com or 714.564.7104.

​ Orange County Register