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Imagine yourself entering a shopping mall: you walk into a store, select an item that you like and head to the counter. It doesn’t matter whether you came to the store from across the street or from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the cashier simply charges you for your purchase and includes the local sales tax rate.

If the cashier were instead required to ask for each customer’s home address and charge sales tax at that rate, he could be faced with more than 9,500 different sales tax jurisdictions in 45 states, plus Washington, D.C. The storeowner would be forced to comply with each state’s complex sales tax rules, wasting precious time and money that could be better spent running her business.

If such a system were proposed, brick-and-mortar retailers would be outraged. No politicians could support such a plan because the local businesses that they rely on for support would turn against them in a flash. Yet that’s exactly what the federal government has in store for Internet retailers, if the U.S. House of Representatives follows the Senate in passing the “Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013.”

The act – which is inherently unfair – claims to… Read More

As the Grateful Dead would say: “What a long strange trip it has been.” Just when I think it can’t get any stranger, I’m wrong…again and again and again.

It was recently announced San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore will be setting up a “hotline” for anyone that wants to make a complaint of sexual harassment against Filner. This is unprecedented. But it does make a little sense. It wouldn’t be appropriate for it to be under the San Diego Police Chief since he reports directly to the mayor. And the Sheriff does have some of the best investigators around. Filner’s response to this… Read More

So today Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) proposed an amendment to the big Defense Omnibus spending bill that would basically preclude the NSA from grabbing up the cell phone data of American citizens without some actual justification.

The amendment failed 205-217.

As we are busy telling the American people that the Republican Party is about liberty, freedom and a limited role for the federal government, only 94 Republicans vote for this common-sense amendment and 134 Republicans vote against it. For those curious about the Dems, they voted 111 in favor, and 83 against.

Here is the roll call vote so you can see how your Member of Congress voted.

House Leadership in BOTH parties opposed this amendment. If only seven more Republicans had voted for the amendment it would have passed. Again we manage to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

In case you are curious about California GOP members — of the 15 Republicans, four voted yes – La Malfa, McClintock, Miller, and Rohrabacher. Ten voted no Calvert,… Read More

Is “Open Government” Such a Hard Concept to Grasp?

There was an article online yesterday about the woeful state of public access to California’s database of lobbyists and their influence in state government. It was sad but not surprising. The Fresno Bee calls the system the “secrecy lobby,” and that pretty much sums things up.

By law, the people of California have the right to know who contributes to political campaigns, how much money lobbyists give to politicians, and who gives gifts to government officials. There’s a reason for the limits on those contributions and gifts, and we the people deserve to judge for… Read More

“Robots will steal your job, but that’s ok.” Federico Pistono

Anyone who has recently driven through Mountain View, in the heart of Silicon Valley, is likely to have had the memorable experience of sharing the road with a car that has nobody inside. Google’s “autonomous cars” are being tested there, and apparently they drive better than people do – they are smart, safe, sober, and tireless. They have the potential to eliminate 3.6 million full-time jobs in the United States.

Anyone purchasing materials at a Home Depot store, or their local grocery chain store, without interacting with a human cashier, has seen the future of retail employment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 3.4 million people working as retail cashiers in the United States. Most of those jobs are also at risk.

What about agriculture? New robots are coming that can do anything a farm worker can do. As noted in this report, “Robot harvests on the horizon; farm owners predict machines will revolutionize costs,” a machine… Read More

With the birth of a new royal heir in Great Britain, it is a good time to remind ourselves that our ancestors put everything at risk and fought a revolutionary war to cast off the idea of a “Divine Right of Kings” — the foundation of our country is no better expressed than in the very first words of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

And there you have it. God did not give Kings or Queens a “divine right” to Lord over others. God created us all as equals.

Near the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson penned a letter to be read on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In it, he said in part, “All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man… The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God.”

So happy birthday to royal baby x, the newest symbol of a dynasty… Read More

I rarely find myself smiling at anything Senator Darrell Steinberg says these days. But his recent comments to the Capitol Press Corps that he wants to see legislation to erode California’s Medical Injury Reform Act, or MICRA in Sacramento parlance, brought a big grin to my face.

To be sure, I’m a strong supporter of MICRA, which limits speculative “non-economic” damages in medical liability lawsuits. And I strongly oppose efforts by the trial lawyer lobby to erode MICRA so lawyers can file more frivolous lawsuits against doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers and generate big fees for themselves.

But the… Read More

After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the replacement span for the Bay Bridge was originally expected to be completed by 1994 and cost less than a billion dollars. To say that those responsible for this project missed their targets would be a gross understatement. With broken bolts and all, the bridge still isn’t open and now its projected cost is over $6 billion.

So who is responsible? As for the delay, political meddling by then Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown insisting on a “world class” bridge and SF Mayor Willie Brown’s leveraging the SF-owned Treasure Island anchorage point as a bargaining chip has to assume some share of blame for the ten-year delay.

Add to that CalTrans’ bureaucratic incompetence. CalTrans, simply put, wanted to show that it could take on a huge public works project. This resulted in a bureaucratic turf war with the vested interests… Read More