Here’s an upbeat (if rather bizarre) story from a California jail. When faced with an inmate security problem in the jail, there was the $20,000,000, two year government solution, and then there was the $761.24, one week Costco solution. Kudos to the sheriff for making the right call, and putting it on her own credit card!

But sadly, this story has a dark side. The prison guard union president decried the sheriff’s purchase because “it hurts morale.” Not clear why. Never mind that the guards recently had beaten a mentally ill inmate to death under questionable circumstances and away from cameras.

Perhaps even worse, the county is STILL going to install the $20,000,000 “Cadillac” surveillance system! After all, the money is already budgeted. And what government bureaucrat would rethink this spending — perhaps putting in a comprehensive camera monitoring network for one-tenth the cost (a “paltry” $2 million dollars).

NOTE: I first saw this story in the free weekly blog “This Is True.” But for copyright reasons, I’ve changed the reference to the… Read More

Part ll ofAg Labor Board Orders Employees’ Ballots Destroyed To Silences Farm Workers. Part l is HERE

Friday April 15, 2016 the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board voted to set aside the November 5, 2013 decertification election petitioned by the farm employees at Gerawan Farming, and allow the ALRB to destroy the Gerawan employees’ ballots.

ALRB Administrative Law Judge Mark R. Soble, ordered… Read More

On Friday April 15, 2016 the three-member California Agricultural Labor Relations Board voted to set aside the November 5, 2013 decertification election of the United Farm Workersat Gerawan Farming, and destroy the Gerawan employees’ ballots.

In other words, the ALRB is saying, “We will protect employee’s rights by destroying their ballots?”

Acting as an arm of the union, the ALRB did this to not to protect the farm workers – as is the ARLB mission – but to protect the flailing United Farm Workers labor union. Against every bit of evidence to the contrary, in doing so, the ALRB has declared by default that the employer has somehow violated the law. But in reality, the ALRB has violated the law, as I’ve chronicled in hundreds of stories, for nearly four years now.

This decision punishes the Gerawan workers, and demonstrates just how… Read More

Former Speaker Willie Brown once said, “In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment.” The strategy, he noted, was to start construction of a project quickly so it would be hard to stop once people learned of the real cost which, in many cases, could be many multiples of the initial price represented to citizens.

Constant cost overruns and a lack of unaccountability plague California’s infrastructure projects. Politicians casually throw “millions” and “billions” around like a game of monopoly, leaving hard-working families and future generations to pay the debt they so flippantly create.

Over the last 20 years, $50 billion in revenue bond debt has been issued without voter approval. A loophole in state law allows politicians to commit taxpayers to repaying enormous revenue bond debt without voter oversight.

To read the entire column click here http://www.hjta.org/california-commentary/billions-in-new-bonds-should-not-escape-voter-approval/… Read More

Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines a “price war” as, “commercial competition characterized by the repeated cutting of prices below those of competitors.”

So it would be fair to say that right now, in California, there is a reverse-price war taking place in the narrow niche of hiring people to collect signatures on initiative petition forms. There is a deadline looming in just a few weeks to turn in signatures in order for there to be time for them to be counted and verified by local County Registrars of Voters and still make it onto the ballot this November. And there are a limited number of professional signature gatherers available, as well as a limit to the number of really excellent spots in which to gather signatures — that means that the demand for signatures overall exceeds the available of signatures that can be obtained in a short window of time. And so because of it the… Read More

If you are someone who stays on top of the politics of Orange County, you might have missed the brief headline about former long-time OC GOP County Chairman and former Assembly GOP Leader Scott Baugh opening a campaign committee for Congress. For those who did not, there was some head-scratching, because Baugh – a strong conservative – is a constituent of U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a fellow conservative, and a fixture in Congress having been elected in 1988. In fact only Nancy Pelosi has more seniority on the entire 53-member California delegation, and only 19 members out of 435 have served longer than Dana.

Of course filing opened and closed in the coastal 48th District and Rohrabacher filed for re-election and Baugh never even pulled papers. Which would have been surprising to anyone who had talked to either Rohrabacher or Baugh.

I think it is important to walk people through why Baugh has opened a Congressional campaign committee and is actively raising money into it. And why he is not on the ballot this year, but will be in 2018. As a preliminary matter, the 48th CD is one of the wealthiest districts in the nation. There are likely to be many… Read More

“Equal Pay Day” — the day in April when women supposedly have to work before reaching parity with men’s pay — is perhaps the biggest hoax in progressive economics. And that’s saying something!

Yet the press seldom looks at the bogus math behind the claim that women make only 77% of what a man makes doing the same job. Even President Obama’s official White House website repeats the same canard, and it seems the press never questions the administration about this false claim. https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/equal-pay

That “77 cents vs. a $1” claim is arrived at by taking ALL pay for ALL occupations and comparing the AVERAGE pay by gender in the aggregate. Any cursory review of this figure makes clear that this is NOT comparing “equal pay for equal work.”

Below is perhaps the best overall succinct debunking of this nonsense. Would that the press would provide this information to the public. Not gonna happen.

BTW, one factor NOT included in this article is my observation on compensation: Since women live… Read More

In a move of breathtaking hypocrisy, California’s legislators have unveiled a financially sustainable retirement security program for private workers, while keeping financially unsustainable pensions forpublic workers.

What private sector employers and private sector workers need to ask, more than anything, is if this new retirement security scheme is so great, why aren’t public employees going to also adopt it?

That’s a really good question. And the answer is simple: The pensions they’re already getting, paid for by taxpayers, are far. far better. Way better. Out of this world better. Crazy better. Goofy better.

Take a look at theofficial recommendationsmade on March 28, 2016 to the California Legislature. In this document, on page 53, there is a table showing “income replacement” based on years paying into the system at various contribution rates. At a contribution rate of 5%, after working 30 years, a participant can expect income replacement in retirement of 13.8%. That is, if they made $100,000 per year in… Read More