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Relevance: 100% Posted on: July 18, 2014
Though the Democrats who run the failed state of California insist that Governor Jerry Brown is leading them to a new era of prosperity, the results are mixed at best. The state is riddled with public employee pension problems, environmental over-regulation, and high taxes, to list just a few. The…
Relevance: 100% Posted on: April 5, 1999
Ten years ago the partisan bickering in the California Legislature got so out of control that the legislators couldn't even pass a state budget. The gridlock closed the government down forcing the state to give IOUs to its workers and companies it did business with. Today, it's a new ball…
Relevance: 97% Posted on: August 30, 2010
Keeping loans and investments distinct is important not merely for business people, but for governments. Case in point? Mahmoud “Mike” Karkehabadi’s 89 felony counts of securities fraud and grand theft. The Laguna Niguel, California, movie maker is accused of turning his business into a Ponzi scheme. When his film Hotel California…
Relevance: 92% Posted on: November 27, 2003
Many readers have said to me, it's great that California voters kicked Governor Gray Davis out of office. But unless the policies change, California will still end up falling into the sea. Much as I agree with my own argument that it was virtually impossible for Californians to do worse…
Relevance: 90% Posted on: December 8, 2003
Truth is the first casualty of war. In the war against initiative and referendum, we've heard an awful lot that, well, just ain't so. Leon Panetta tells us that California is, quote, "increasingly paralyzed by initiatives." David Broder writes that politicians "have little room to maneuver." Laura Tyson says California…
Relevance: 90% Posted on: July 22, 2009
California is going bankrupt. Behind its economic trouble lies serious political dysfunction. What to do? To hear some Golden State legislators and experts talk, the problem can be blamed squarely on the people and their lawmaking power through the state’s initiative process. While initiatives like Prop 13 and term limits…
Relevance: 88% Posted on: September 23, 2003
The media talks about the California recall as if voters there are the victims of a natural disaster or suffering in some war-torn province. Words like "chaos" and mayhem" are thrown around so regularly that I have to keep reminding myself I'm not watching a retrospective on the LA riots…
Relevance: 87% Posted on: September 2, 2003
We've all been told that the attempt to recall California Governor Gray Davis is wild and crazy. Not so many realize that the state's voters have probably already benefited just from having the recall measure on the ballot. But Michael New of the Cato Institute has noticed. New notes that…
Relevance: 86% Posted on: May 11, 2023
The injustices pile up so thick and fast that one can’t really keep track. Some state governments are especially prolific in producing them. Governments like the Deadbeat State, formerly known as the Golden State. Now businesses in California must pay the price for the state government’s profligacy during the pandemic,…
Relevance: 82% Posted on: December 17, 2008
The California Coastal Commission sought to tear down a fence on private property. The fence, on the property of Martin and Janis Burke in Torrance, California, marks the boundary between public land and private land. This seems like a benign enough purpose. The “private” part of “private property” means you…
Relevance: 82% Posted on: January 14, 2024
Last Thursday, in “The S-Word in California,” the subject was the danger posed to the stability of the Golden State’s medical system by the promise to guarantee service to nearly a million new illegal immigrants. https://thisiscommonsense.org/2024/01/11/the-s-word-in-california-2/ But one mechanism of this instability was not brought up, for reasons of space:…
Relevance: 81% Posted on: August 7, 2012
If I found $54 million I didn’t know I had, I’d be ecstatic. Yet, when California taxpayers discovered $54 million stuck in secret state parks system bank accounts, they were miffed. California parks, constrained by the state’s multi-year budget crunch, were facing closure. Meanwhile, these funds went unreported to the…
Relevance: 79% Posted on: May 7, 2001
It makes you wonder: Don't the politicians want California to recover from its energy crisis? A few years ago, California legislators took power grids away from power companies, told them to buy power in an uncontrolled wholesale market, and slapped controls on the prices they could charge consumers. The result:…
Relevance: 79% Posted on: February 24, 2017
Californians account for more than one of every ten Americans. For now. Three years ago, an initiative sought to split the mega-state up. Had that measure succeeded, the U.S. Congress would have decided whether to permit the Golden State to become six separate states — with ten more U.S. Senators.…
Relevance: 78% Posted on: July 16, 2010
California, increasingly known for its faults, has a major problem. Its politicians have rocks in their heads. As the state teeters on the brink of insolvency, legislators are considering de-listing the mineral serpentine as the state rock. Sponsored by State Senator Gloria Romero, a Democrat hailing from la la L.A.,…
Relevance: 78% Posted on: February 7, 2008
The proliferation of eminent domain abuse is depressing. Fake reforms of eminent domain promoted by fans of that abuse are also depressing. We the people demand positive news on this front. Which I guess means . . . we’ve got to make that news ourselves. As being done in California.…
Relevance: 77% Posted on: May 12, 2021
“Gray Davis was never in a position to play Santa Claus,” said Steve Maviglio, press flack for the former California governor who was recalled by voters in 2003. Maviglio was comparing Davis’ relative misfortune, back then — in not having a pandemic and the resulting economic stimulus — to today’s…
Relevance: 76% Posted on: December 30, 2008
Think twice before you save people about to lose their lives, at least if you live in California. The state supreme court there just ruled that good Samaritans can be held liable if they cause or aggravate an injury while rendering emergency help if that help is not medical. A…
Relevance: 76% Posted on: February 16, 2024
How far will a California lawmaker go to try reverse a validly enacted and also very good citizen initiative? In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, which prohibits the state government from imposing race-based, ethnicity-based, or sex-based preferences. Prop 209 added a section to the…
Relevance: 75% Posted on: December 16, 2021
You guys can have it. Like, we’re ’ceding it to you people, OK? You social justice, lefty, Marxist, communist freaks: you can have California. Have it with all your diversity; and have it with all of your nonsense. And you will destroy it, but have it — but you can’t…
Relevance: 75% Posted on: March 31, 2017
When last we touched upon the strangely over-the-top Californian reaction to the Trump presidency, the secession movement, I took the occasion to bring up the rather less radical separatists in the north. “Already 21 of the 23 northernmost counties,” I wrote, “have made declarations to form the State of Jefferson.”…
Relevance: 75% Posted on: February 4, 2009
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is getting a bum rap. The organization is named after fiery tax-cut advocate Howard Jarvis. Jarvis authored Proposition 13, the California tax limitation measure approved in 1978 by a two-to-one margin. In recent months, like everywhere else, California has suffered economically. And now the Howard…
Relevance: 74% Posted on: October 10, 2011
On this day a century ago — October 10, 1911 — California voters stormed to the polls and overwhelmingly enacted a measure establishing a statewide system of initiative and referendum. Through the years, Californians have used the initiative to enact for themselves many reforms their legislators refused to touch —…
Relevance: 73% Posted on: July 26, 2011
California is wild and crazy, fruity and nutty. Not in Hollywood, but in Sacramento. The state’s enormous prison population — so large that the Feds recently ordered California to release overcrowded prisoners — feeds an otherwise expensive prison system, straining the state’s strapped budget. So what did Golden State solons…
Relevance: 73% Posted on: October 22, 2003
One of my listeners wrote back to say, Hey, enough with the stuff about California! Get back to the national scene! I can understand that. After all, if you're in Michigan or Ohio, why would you want to hear about California all the time? I do try to vary the…
Relevance: 73% Posted on: May 25, 2023
The Democratic Party is a victim of its own success. Nowhere can we see that more clearly than in California. Democrats have succeeded by pushing “victimhood,” gaining power by focusing on special groups, declaring them oppressed and offering compensation — though still never comes the day of full escape from…
Relevance: 72% Posted on: August 20, 2020
Is California a failed state? It has an electric grid problem. And a vagrancy problem. Both of which stem from the bizarre ideological blind spots of a political class “benefiting” from the state’s high legislator/citizen ratio, which insulates politicians from feedback. Driving them power mad. And one form of madness…
Relevance: 72% Posted on: September 18, 2003
Hey, I recall those taxes. And the politicians in California will recall them too. Or at least pretend to, until the recall vote on Governor Davis has safely passed. Okay, let me stop punning for a minute and give you the background. Recently I discussed the California recall effort. I…
Relevance: 72% Posted on: August 30, 2023
The abandoned biolab found last December in Reedley, California, was uncovered by local law enforcement — not the Department of Homeland Security, the CDC, the FBI, or any of the federales’ faker’s dozen of intel agencies. But the locals quickly discovered this was not just an unregistered business, or the…
Relevance: 71% Posted on: October 2, 2020
It’s hard to destroy a state. Or rather, the advanced industrial economy of a state. Mud slides, eco-policy-abetted wildfires, exploding taxes and spending and regulations, riots, pandemics — such things go only so far. After the latest holocausts and catastrophes abate (if they do), survivors can still soldier on. Mow…
Relevance: 71% Posted on: September 26, 2023
California is determined to give us the full bleak picture of totalitarianism, American-style. Anticipating proposed SEC regulations, Newsom’s California is set to impose nonsensical mandates for reporting greenhouse gas emissions and “climate-related financial risk” that target companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more (according to the terms of…
Relevance: 71% Posted on: October 1, 2001
This just in: According to the Los Angeles Times , there's no more back bench in the California Assembly. Apparently they've hauled it away to a garage sale. "New members do not sit meekly and keep quiet while they learn," says the Times . "Even rookies will rebel." Everybody remembers…
Relevance: 71% Posted on: January 23, 2008
It's almost E-Day in California. February 5. Extension Day. â€E-Day†is clunky as monikers go. But that’s appropriate, seeing as how Proposition 93 is such a clunkily devious effort. Prop 93 would double maximum tenure of Assemblymen, increasing it from six years to twelve. And it would boost the tenure…
Relevance: 71% Posted on: September 12, 2008
You might think that there’s nothing a government won’t try. You’d be right. But I was near stupified to learn that the state of California copyrights its laws. And it’s not alone. The state tries to control — through copyright — how you can access its laws, where and how…
Relevance: 70% Posted on: April 2, 2001
Governor Gray Davis of California just wants California taxpayers to know what a swell guy he is. So he's going to send them back some of their own money. But first, he has to collect it from them. Why collect taxes just to send them back to the taxpayers? Why…
Relevance: 70% Posted on: March 27, 2000
It happened. It's hard to believe, but it actually happened. An incumbent was defeated in his party's primary by a challenger. The last time it happened the incumbent was wearing a monitoring bracelet on his ankle so the feds could keep tabs on him. Yes, it is a bit tough…
Relevance: 70% Posted on: October 10, 2003
There is more to an election than just the outcome. The process counts too. The dialogue between candidates and the voters. California voters did a lot more than say "Hasta La Vista" to one governor and "Hola!" to another. For one thing, there was plenty of poetic justice. Schwarzenegger, an…
Relevance: 70% Posted on: June 25, 2001
There's a crisis facing California legislators and they are meeting it head on. Well, not exactly head on, but they're tackling it. Well, they're not quite tackling it, but they're scheming pretty hard to get around it. Think I'm talking about rolling blackouts that terrorize many who depend on electricity…
Relevance: 70% Posted on: February 14, 2008
We won. They lost. I mean the February 5 defeat of Proposition 93 in California. Final tally: 46 percent Yes, 53 percent No. The end game of another huge effort by Golden State politicians, spending $17 million to trash term limits. Most California voters like term limits, like how they…
Relevance: 69% Posted on: September 9, 2021
Golden State labor organizers want to be able to trespass on the property of companies to recruit new workers. But companies don’t want their operations periodically disrupted by trespassers. Typical kind of political disagreement. One party wants its rights to be respected; the other wants to violate those rights. That…
Relevance: 69% Posted on: July 23, 2001
Well, I just got back from California and I can report that it is a real, true fact: The career politicians there really do not like term limits. A recent battle in the California legislature was most revealing on this point. It had to do with whether banks and other…
Relevance: 69% Posted on: September 25, 2009
A government agency practicing extortion . . . who’d’a thunk it? In 1987, the California Coastal Commission lost a Supreme Court case about its attempt to demand beach access from property owners in exchange for building permits. One justice said it was practicing extortion. Nevertheless, the agency still dictates what…
Relevance: 68% Posted on: November 15, 2022
It may take three weeks! The counting of ballots for 2022’s General Election was pretty much wrapped up on election night. In most states. Yet, a week after election day, California election officials have barely counted half the ballots cast in a number of very close congressional districts as well…
Relevance: 68% Posted on: June 11, 2009
You hear it all the time: California’s in such a mess “because of Proposition 13.” You probably wonder how that initiative, passed way back in the ‘70s, could be so key. Well, it was the first of a long line of voter-instigated tax limitation measures, and it made politicians ache…
Relevance: 68% Posted on: May 6, 2009
Kent Drum and I step to the beat of different drummers. At Mother Jones, Mr. Drum decried California’s upcoming May 19th special election, writing, “I loathe the ballot initiative.” Me? I love the ballot initiative. Drum is complaining about California’s upcoming vote on Propositions 1A through 1F. For the record,…
Relevance: 67% Posted on: September 20, 2011
Retail sales taxation became vogue among the states of the union during the Great Depression. When other revenue sources dried up, many states decided to nab potential taxpayers at each transaction. We’re in a depression again, and numerous legislatures are looking to expand their retail sales tax base by targeting…
Relevance: 67% Posted on: September 7, 2021
Proposition 22 was supported by 59 percent of California voters last November. The statutory initiative partly reverses the destructive effects of AB5, a law that forced many California gig workers or freelancers to be treated as regular employees who must receive benefits — whether these gig workers like it or not. One notices…
Relevance: 67% Posted on: September 29, 2011
Jerry Brown has done some good work as California’s governor. When he promised to take on the common practice of pension double-dipping, he spotted a problem and appeared to be on the right track. But if you want to hire well-connected, experienced and (therefore, or presumably, competent) civil servants to…
Relevance: 67% Posted on: July 29, 2011
“As long as unions and business buy our politicians and take every advantage for themselves . . .” writes Ron Kaye at Fox and Hounds Daily, “California will keep declining.” Mr. Kaye notes a rare agreement between business and union lobbies, which have united “to pour millions into a ballot…
Relevance: 67% Posted on: April 22, 2022
“Thank goodness I don’t live in X,” we may say as we follow the news. Billions live in Russia, Ukraine, China, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Cuba, New York, Chicago, Seattle, California, Canada, and other statist hellholes. The rest of us live elsewhere. Perhaps we congratulate ourselves on our wise choices…
Relevance: 67% Posted on: February 1, 2012
Barring drastic action, the Golden State will run out of cash in March. There is no provision in the Constitution for dealing with a bankrupt state. But then, there’s nothing explicit dealing with federal bankruptcy, either. The founding fathers didn’t expect their republic to permanently accumulate debt. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson…
Relevance: 66% Posted on: October 27, 2009
The Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court recently declared the state’s government “dysfunctional.” But Judge Ronald George didn’t bother to tell this to his employers, the people of California. Instead, the judge delivered his speech all the way across the continent, in Massachusetts, at his induction into the American…
Relevance: 65% Posted on: November 3, 2022
They know. They aren’t complete idiots. When enemies of the market routinely try to stop people from earning a living through restrictions like minimum wage laws and arbitrary licensing to thwart such dangerous activities as hair-braiding, few are ignorant of the disastrous consequences. Case in point? The Biden administration is…
Relevance: 64% Posted on: May 5, 2011
In late April, the Institute for Justice won a smashing judicial victory on behalf of the Community Youth Athletic Center, a boxing gym and haven for local kids, as well as for other property owners in the neighborhood. They hope it’s a knockout blow. The California Superior Court ruled that…
Relevance: 64% Posted on: August 4, 2016
On August 4, 2010, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that had passed two years earlier by the state’s voters.
Relevance: 64% Posted on: August 4, 2020
On August 4, 2010, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that had passed two years earlier by the state’s voters.
Relevance: 64% Posted on: August 4, 2017
On August 4, 2010, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that had passed two years earlier by the state’s voters.
Relevance: 64% Posted on: August 4, 2018
On August 4, 2010, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that had passed two years earlier by the state’s voters.
Relevance: 64% Posted on: August 4, 2021
On August 4, 2010, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that had passed two years earlier by the state’s voters.
Relevance: 64% Posted on: August 4, 2022
On August 4, 2010, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that had passed two years earlier by the state’s voters.
Relevance: 64% Posted on: August 4, 2023
On August 4, 2010, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that had passed two years earlier by the state’s voters.
Relevance: 64% Posted on: September 22, 2021
“California recall fails,” The Visalla Times Delta explained. As did KSBY, the NBC affiliate in San Luis Obispo. Not to mention The New York Daily News and The Chicago Sun-Times. FiveThirtyEight analyzed “the failed California recall” at length. Even the South China Morning Post proclaimed the apparent democratic malfunction (reprinting…
Relevance: 64% Posted on: February 6, 2023
A judge has given California doctors a reprieve from an anti-medical-speech law produced by lawmakers and Governor Newsom. The judge has blocked the law until a lawsuit challenging it on First Amendment grounds can be resolved. AB 2098 says that it “shall constitute unprofessional conduct” for doctors to spread “false…
Relevance: 64% Posted on: January 30, 2024
Do politicians understand limits? They seem to have this notion that they may limit us every which way . . . with no natural or civilized limit set upon the limits they may impose. Take California lawmaker Scott Wiener. This state senator (District 11-D.) has introduced a bill to force…
Relevance: 63% Posted on: February 26, 2012
It's getting to become more and more popular to bash initiative rights — even when those rights are not very relevant. I hear rumblings in California that the hopeless Republicans, there, are gearing up for more of such nonsense. But beware, folks: This puts you in very dangerous company, amongst…
Relevance: 63% Posted on: November 6, 2009
Initiative rights are under nonstop assault from the political class. Fortunately, most voters know the value of being able to end-run or reverse the bad decisions of lawmakers. And just a few clear-thinking defenders of initiative rights are enough to expose the murky evasions of the politicians and their pals.…
Relevance: 63% Posted on: September 2, 2020
Should Uber and Lyft abandon California? At issue is the anti-freelancer statute AB 5, passed last year in the Golden State, which outlaws independent contractors in many industries. Including the wildly successful ride-sharing business. Horrified, threatened, Uber and Lyft have declared their willingness to suspend operations in California if they…
Relevance: 63% Posted on: February 4, 2020
California, “the U.S. state most synonymous with all varieties of growth — vegetal, technological, and human — is at the precipice of its first-ever population decline,” writes Derek Thompson of The Atlantic. And folks in other states like Texas and Idaho are none too happy. You see, the Californians fleeing…
Relevance: 62% Posted on: March 21, 2008
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger no longer likes term limits. He explained why in an interview with the LA Times. Says Arnold: “[O]riginally I felt very strongly that it was the greatest thing ever done. Because I despised the idea of guys being so locked in and safe in their positions,…
Relevance: 62% Posted on: January 3, 2014
You know that politicians waste money. You guess that they waste a lot of time. But did you know they deliberately waste our time? Transportation scholar Randal O’Toole regales us with the fix that California’s overlords have put themselves in. Merely assuming that dense city living decreases commuting, California’s legislators…
Relevance: 62% Posted on: April 10, 2020
“California this week declared its independence from the federal government’s feeble efforts to fight Covid-19 — and perhaps from a bit more.” So begins a hyper-partisan, slightly unhinged Bloomberg opinion piece. “Governor Gavin Newsom said that he would use the bulk purchasing power of California ‘as a nation-state’ to acquire the…
Relevance: 62% Posted on: August 4, 2019
On August 4, 2010, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that had passed two years earlier by the state’s voters.
Relevance: 62% Posted on: May 20, 2022
In 2018, Jerry Brown, then California governor, signed a bill requiring corporate boards to include a high percentage of women. Now a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has determined that the state failed to show that “gender-based classification was necessary to boost California’s economy, improve opportunities for women in…
Relevance: 61% Posted on: June 12, 2000
It's all been a big misunderstanding. For some reason, those of us in the term limits movement got the crazy idea that California politicians don't like term limits. How silly of us! Maybe it was the nearly $6 million legislators raised to run ads trashing the 1990 initiative. One could…
Relevance: 61% Posted on: April 22, 2015
Arbitrary governmental pricing of water — as opposed to free-market pricing — provides one major reason why it’s so hard for Californians and others to deal with drought. I’ve talked about it before. And, as before — indeed, as is so often the case when government constricts our freedom to…
Relevance: 60% Posted on: June 17, 2009
The good sense that California voters exhibited at the polls in May has been rewarded with continual attack and derision. Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO and Republican candidate for governor, recently said, “In many ways, the proposition process has worn out its usefulness.” She’s criticizing the initiative, and she’s not…
Relevance: 60% Posted on: July 5, 2022
“Just an accident?” Maybe. But the “accidental” release of the private information of thousands of California gun owners is just the sort of thing that many foes of Second Amendment rights would happily perpetrate. So we can be forgiven if we harbor doubts. On June 27, the California Justice Department’s…
Relevance: 60% Posted on: June 25, 2008
Here's a story about a government board whose members endlessly dish out taxpayer money. And want endless years in power to keep doing so. Recently, members of the Santa Clara water board approved steep salary hikes for two of their staffers, making them the highest-paid for their jobs in all…
Relevance: 60% Posted on: June 28, 2013
You have no right as a voter to defend your interests as a voter. Not in federal court. So decides the Supreme Court in Hollingsworth v. Perry, a case about a controversial California ballot question. The court ruled 5-4 that petitioners “lack standing.” Their interest wasn’t “particularized” enough. Passed in…
Relevance: 60% Posted on: September 19, 2018
“California is the place you oughta be” — or so sang Jerry Scoggins for The Beverly Hillbillies. That may still hold true, if you are an oil millionaire retiring to a pleasant climate. But if you are trying to make your fortune, the direction is outbound. Take, for example, the…
Relevance: 59% Posted on: September 30, 2015
We live in a time when intelligent people expend vital brain power concocting explanations for war that weigh drought as a more significant cause than . . . previous tyranny and warfare. Yes, the President’s friends and acolytes defend the notion, in all seriousness, that it is unregulated capitalism leading…
Relevance: 59% Posted on: September 3, 2008
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that it is constitutionally okay for states and towns to grab property for pretty much any reason at all, citizens have been trying to prevent governments from doing so. The track record is spotty. Officials and private interests who like to…
Relevance: 58% Posted on: July 14, 2008
Give Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal credit for doing the right thing sooner rather than later. Jindal acted faster than, say, former Governor Gray Davis of California. In 2003, Davis tripled California's car tax, provoking widespread anger. Finally, Davis agreed it should be repealed . . . but only after voters…
Relevance: 58% Posted on: April 18, 2023
Thanks to renewable-energy mandates and other regulations, California muddles along with crippled power markets in which rolling blackouts are routine when demand for electricity is high and sun and wind are unavailable. Apparently, this and other burdens on energy usage in the Brownout State are insufficient to fully immobilize everybody…
Relevance: 58% Posted on: October 9, 2009
A humungous national debt. Growing state federal government budget deficits. Social Security and Medicare, running out of funds. All very frightening. But look out: The costs of public employee pensions are walloping city and state budgets — pushing a number of California cities into bankruptcy. Though the stock market tumble…
Relevance: 58% Posted on: October 28, 2003
All the usual suspects came out against the California recall campaign. Not only political partisans. But also folks who distrust the democratic process as such especially when it has teeth. I'm going to leave the topic of the California recall real soon, promise. But let me just get in one…
Relevance: 58% Posted on: January 6, 2023
In 2019, California imposed a law to force many independent contractors to become standard employees if they wanted to keep working for erstwhile clients. AB5 threw many gig workers out of work. Many lost all of their clients, who typically could not afford to simply convert contractors from whom they…
Relevance: 58% Posted on: April 16, 2008
Banned! First alcohol prohibition, then other drugs. Now candy. Yes, candy is now banned on many school campuses. Why? Refined sugar is so bad for you it’s wicked. I’m sure you know many of the major bad guys here. Twinkies. Ho Hos. Nestle’s Crunch. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Maybe you…
Relevance: 58% Posted on: October 24, 2003
I guess this is as good a time as any to hawk the virtues of Instant Runoff Voting. If things had gone a bit different in California, IRV would have really come in handy. Out a field of 135 candidates, Arnold Schwarzenegger won the right to succeed the ousted governor…
Relevance: 57% Posted on: July 6, 2018
“Strip away the absurdity,” writes Scott Shackford at Reason, “and it’s essentially a very technical ruling.” Shackford is explaining a bizarre recent judgment of the California Supreme Court. Politicians in Sacramento had, years ago, passed a gun control measure requiring gun manufacturers to “implement microstamping technology that would imprint identifying…
Relevance: 57% Posted on: September 3, 2015
The SFGate.com headline was clear: “State ballot initiative fee raised to $2,000 to prevent mischief.” It just wasn’t accurate. Assembly Bill 1100, introduced by Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), passed by Democrats in the legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, doesn’t do anything to address “mischief.” Which, incidentally, abounds in…
Relevance: 56% Posted on: March 20, 2015
“Liberty, not communism, is the most contagious force in the world.” Earl Warren, as speech at Columbia University, January 14, 1954
Relevance: 56% Posted on: June 29, 2016
Romanticism. The yearning for greatness; the need for speed. Efficiency! It’s all there in California’s high-speed rail project — hopes and dreams and a sense of the grandeur of progress. And yet the bullet train project, approved by voters in 2008, is a fiasco. One can blame the voters, I…
Relevance: 56% Posted on: December 11, 2010
In vignette after vignette, this mash-up provides a helpful (and amusing) take on California's pension fiasco: It's not easy thinking about government-enacted pensions, I guess. Everyone wants to retire young and well-off, and no one wants to appear stingy. But there has to be responsibility in how these things are…
Relevance: 56% Posted on: July 7, 2009
All tyrants love unlimited government. But do all advocates of unlimited government love tyranny? Well, recently major fans of big government sure have been blurting out their hysterical hatred for normal democratic disagreement. Take Paul Krugman, New York Times rah-rah boy for humungoid government. He recently referred to opposition to…
Relevance: 56% Posted on: January 27, 2015
Coach Michael Anderson and the girls on his team did too well. At least according to officials at Arroyo Valley High School in San Bernardino, who suspended him for “running up” the 161-2 score. Here we go again. Anderson is, alas, apologetic. But there’s nothing morally wrong with winning —…
Relevance: 56% Posted on: January 11, 2024
Frédéric Bastiat called it “spoliation”; California’s Democratic politicians call it social justice. A bill went into effect last week, offering complete medical coverage to an estimated 700,000 undocumented — illegal — immigrants. The price tag? 3.1 billion dollars. Well, not “price tag”: call it a subsidy tag. California taxpayers will…
Relevance: 56% Posted on: August 9, 2011
William Endicott, former deputy managing editor of The Sacramento Bee, thinks the problem with California legislators is their “Let the people decide” attitude. In a recent op-ed, Mr. Endicott argued that the initiative process allows politicians to shirk their responsibilities, to let decisions be made by voters at the ballot…
Relevance: 56% Posted on: November 13, 2000
This was the year for politicians, or so they thought. The economy is strong. So politicians hoped the time was right to roll back these pesky term limits laws voters had passed. We voters were supposed to be so fat, dumb and happy that we wouldn't care how long politicians…
Relevance: 56% Posted on: July 23, 2001
Seems career politicians have found even more problems with term limits. For instance, if you are a longtime incumbent, term limits don't allow you to pick your successor when you leave office. How terrible. That's what California Assemblyman Bill Leonard tells us. He should know. He's been in power since…