The Assembly Budget Committee heard from the governor’s office last week in defense of the proposed 2014-15 budget. I thought I’d share the bizarre and surprising answer I got to a question I asked about that budget.

By way of background, the governor proposes to spend 30% of the state’s receipts from the Cap and Trade auction on high speed rail. Now, Cap and Trade is a neat little scam the government runs under the AB32 scheme to supposedly reduce greenhouse gasses. Under AB32, businesses that emit greenhouse gas are limited in the amount of such gasses they can put out. However, in a significant loophole, the government has set up a “market” by which gas emitters can purchase the right to discharge excess gas. The effect, of course, is to increase the amount of greenhouse gasses that would otherwise be produced, by allowing companies to buy their way out of the limits. But since the government gets the money, it overlooks this gaping logical hole in AB32.

One use to which the budget proposes to put some of this Cap and Trade money is the governor’s misguided high speed rail project. Specifically, a… Read More

It appears the local news experiment run at a huge corporate level, called Patch, is now dead, or at least being “significantly realigned,” following its sale. I wondered aloud a few years ago how long AOL would continue to subsidize a revenue negative experiment.

Despite my occasional angst at what I saw very locally in San Diego as “Jimmy-Olsen-boy-reporter” style journalism, fewer news sources in the community is never good news.

See Romenesko for the news.

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The state budget has a $5 billion surplus and Governor Jerry Brown proposed paying down $11 billion in state debt and stashing away revenue in a “rainy day” fund as a buffer against future emergencies. The existence of a surplus and sufficient state funds to reduce debt and establish a rainy day fund would seem to obviate any rationale for imposing yet another tax increase on one of the most intensely-taxed states in the Union.

But this is California, where an inexhaustible supply of rationales for raising taxes is one of the state’s great unnatural resources.

If proponents get their way, there will be an initiative to slap an additional $2 tax on tobacco products, with the money to be spent on cancer research and fund programs to discourage people from buying the products that fund the cancer research.

Wherein lays the irony of this type of taxation. The revenues are always dedicated to fund a worthy cause. Who can argue against funding cancer research? The initiative implicitly acknowledges that enough people will continue to purchase tobacco… Read More

State Senator Roderick Wright should immediately resign from the State Senate. He should not vote on any more bills, he should not take another dime of pay, and the way should be paved for the Governor to call a special election to fill his seat.

For those who may have missed the news, yesterday, after two days of deliberations, a jury of Wright’s peers found him guilty on eight felony counts of perjury and voter fraud. After hearing both sides presented to them, it was found that Wright did not actually establish… Read More

Across the United States there is an escalating political conflict over the role of labor unions in society. But it is inaccurate to characterize this conflict as one between Republicans and Democrats. There are members of both major political parties, as well as independents of widely diverse ideologies, who are concerned about civil liberties, the growth of authoritarian government, inadequate investment in infrastructure, and poorly funded social programs. Explaining to these diverse groups that public sector unions are a threat to civil liberties, impel authoritarian government, and preclude investment in infrastructure and social programs – and that by and large, private sector unions do not – is the key to successful public sector union reform.

While reformers who are immersed in the topic may consider this obvious, the fact that public sector unions are fundamentally different from private sector unions is still a relatively new concept to the general public. Some of these differences might be summarized as follows:

(1) Public unions elect their own bosses, private unions have minimal role in selecting their management.

(2) Unlike private… Read More

California Governor Jerry Brown delivered his annual state of the state address on January 22. According to Gov. Brown, California has staged a “comeback” with, “A million new jobs since 2010, a budgetary surplus in the billions and a minimum wage rising to $10 an hour!”

But, the picture in the Golden State isn’t as rosy as Gov. Brown’s verbal palette suggests.

California may have added a million nonfarm jobs since… Read More

Neel Kashkari for governor?

Another day, another L.A. Times report of GOP anxiety: “GOP fears fallout from a Brown victory,” which forecasts statewide GOP losses if Governor Brown wins a third term. Flashreport editor Jon Fleischman is quoted as saying that at least half a dozen Congressional seats could be determined by the race for governor.

As the article notes, the GOP front-runner had been Abel Maldonado, but he pulled out last week, leaving only Tea Party favorite Tim Donnelly as the presumptive candidate. Donnelly is pro-life and pro-fracking, anti-gun control and anti-gay marriage, which means that he will not be the next governor of California. That might have been the end of the story, but there was a surprise in the article: a prospective GOP candidate with some potential to win.… Read More

Meningitis type B (MenB) is a highly contagious, often fatal bacterial disease, and when the infection strikes a high-density area like a college campus,a quick response can be the difference between a minor outbreak and a full-on epidemic. Countries throughout the industrialized world use a vaccine to rapidly respond to and contain MenB outbreaks.

But when the infection struck UC-Santa Barbara last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sat on its hands for months, responding to the healthcrisis with a brand of inefficiency and incompetence that would make the architects ofhealthcare.gov beam with approval.

By the time the FDA decided to… Read More