California is known as the world capital of the car culture. The automobile played a central role in creating the California Dream, giving people the freedom to travel, to live where they choose and to experience the exhilaration of the open road.

Now, if Senator Mark DeSaulnier gets his way, you’ll have to pay a new tax for every mile you drive. His Senate Bill 1077 would begin with a “pilot program” in one unfortunate yet-to-be-determined city where motorists would pay taxes based on… Read More

After New York City’s close call with bankruptcy in 1975. the state required the city to balance its budget in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles rather than continuing to use “creative-accounting practices.” According to Richard Ravitch, writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, the city has not had a fiscal crisis since.

The city’s new mayor,Bill de Blasio, released his first budget last week, beginning the slippery slide back into questionable accounting: Many are questioning whether the deferral of payments contractually due city employees was properly accounted for.

Ravitch’s article describesexactly what most California cities are doing: usingdeceptive cash-basisaccounting to hide real costs and… Read More

Should women in the workplace receive paid menstruation leave?

HuffPost Live held a discussion about an actual current topic in employment entitlements: whether women deserve paid “menstrual leave.”

“Do women deserve paid ‘menstrual leave’ for the days when cramps, irritability or more complicated issues like endometriosis distract from the day’s tasks?” HuffPost Live asked. “Menstrual leave is a part of the employee experience in several Asian countries, prompting think pieces on the topic from… Read More

With the 2012 passage of Proposition 30, voters were assured the significant tax increase would go entirely to education. However, less than 50 percent actually does.

Now, a new bill is moving through the Legislature, claiming to tax oil and gas production for – ahem, you guessed it — education.

SB 1017, an urgency measure, would impose a severance tax on the extraction of oil and natural gas, effective immediately after being signed into law.

Pay attention to the taxman behind the curtain who wants to add more taxes onto oil and gas production.

However, if the California legislature doesn’t pass an oil severance tax this year, billionaire hedge fund manager, Tom Steyer, is preparing a ballot initiative for 2016.

Because Gov. Jerry Brown vowed that all new tax increase proposals would go before the voters, there are reports which say he’s largely rejected the oil tax this year. But NextGenClimate Action, Steyer’s political action committee, can do it for Brown instead, with the… Read More

One of the core barriers to economic prosperity in California is the price of housing. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Policies designed to stifle the ability to develop land are based on flawed premises. These policies prevail because they are backed by environmentalists, and, most importantly, because they have played into the agenda of crony capitalists, Wall Street financiers, and public sector unions. But while the elites have benefit, ordinary working families have been condemned to pay extreme prices in mortgages, property taxes, or rents, to live in confined, unhealthy, ultra high-density neighborhoods. It is reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, but instead of racial superiority as the supposed moral justification, environmentalism is the religion of the day. The result is identical.

Earlier this month an economist writing for the American Enterprise Institute, Mark J. Perry, published a chart proving that over the past four years, more new homes were built in one city, Houston Texas, than in the entire state of California. We republished Perry’s article earlier this week, “… Read More

California Governor Jerry Brown told a group of scientists in a speech on Monday that California is at the “epicenter” of global warming.

Only a few days prior, Brown blamed climate change for the rash of major wildfires in San Diego County.

Last week, Brown said that within a couple hundred years the seas could rise up to four feet, and put the Los Angeles International Airport under water. Brown’s statements brought back to mind George Kastanza from the Jerry Seinfeld show who famously said,“It’s not a lie if… Read More

Consumer advocate and left-wing activist Ralph Nader has just written a book entitled“Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.”In aSalon interviewpublished on May 2, Nader lists five areas where the left and right can agree on policy goals: (1) controlling security state overreach, (2) eliminating corporate welfare, (3) fighting military overspending and waste, (4) cracking down on Wall Street financial fraud, and (5) revisiting international agreements that undermine American sovereignty.

Populist right-wing commentator Patrick Buchanan has taken notice. In a column published on May 19th entitled “A Left-Right Convergence?,” Buchanan identifies the rift within conservative ranks that provides an opening for convergence with the left. He writes:

“Undeniably, there has been a growing gap and a deepening alienation between traditional conservatives and those Ralph calls the ‘corporate… Read More

Readers of my posts in Flashreport know that I am not a social conservative: I am in favor of gun control, basic abortion rights, and gay marriage. In this essay, however, I do not endorse Neel Kashkari for California governor because I agree with him on these issues (which I do) but because he is the pragmatic candidate, meaning that, unlike his main opponent Tim Donnelly, Kashkari, because of these positions, has some chance to win. This assertion may strike some Republicans as odd, but here are the facts:

1. Per a new Politico poll , 71% of Republicans support stricter checks on gun purchasers.

2. Regarding abortion, the Public Policy Institute of California finds that, “Large majorities (70 percent adults, 79 percent likely voters) say the government should not interfere with a woman’s access to abortion. This view is held by majorities across parties, regions and demographic groups.”

3. Regarding gay marriage, the Public… Read More