Search Results for: California

Results 1 - 50 of 498 Page 1 of 10
Results per-page: 10 | 20 | 50 | 100

Six Flags Over California

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…

A Brand New Day in California

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…

Ponzi in California

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…

California Post-Davis

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…

Those Pesky Facts

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…

My Favorite Fix

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…

Thank You, California

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…

Recall Terminates Taxes

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…

Deadbeat California

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,…

Good Property Rights Make Good Neighbors

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…

Update: California’s Hospitals

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:…

Hidden Taxpayer Treasure

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…

Lights Out!

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:…

Adios, California?

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.…

Serpentine, Indeed

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.,…

Core Value for All

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.…

Christmas 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…

Help Is Not on the Way

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…

Discrimination, California-Style

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…

Dave Rubin

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…

From Brexit to Calexit

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.”…

Howard Jarvis Must Be Growling In His Grave

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…

Happy 100th, California

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 —…

Creating a New Crime

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…

Davis Bad, Recall Good

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…

Apocalypse California

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…

California Schemin’

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…

Taxes Recalled

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…

The Chinese Biolab in California

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…

How Quickly Can California Be Destroyed?

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…

The California Experiment

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…

No Back Bench

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…

E-Day in California

Relevance: 71%      Posted on: January 23, 2008

It's almost E-Day in California. February 5. Extension Day. ”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…

© Is for California

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…

Who Loves You, Baby?

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…

California Miracle

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…

Lessons to Recall

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…

California Scheming

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…

How the Lying Liars Lost

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…

Unions Must Stop

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…

California Politicians Dreaming

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…

California Crackdowns

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…

Democracy by Tortoise

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…

Prop 13 Declared Innocent

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…

A Different Drum

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,…

Excise Excitement Exorcizes E-Biz

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…

The Ultimate Legislature

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…

Pension Reforms Un-Ravel?

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…

How Not to Fix a Failed State

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…

Four of Five Doctors Disagree

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…