As the first director of the Department of Consumer Affairs in California, appointed by then-Governor Ronald Reagan, I see a growing trend in the ticket industry that I believe raises serious consumer concerns. I’m talking about restricted ticketing.

California is the home to dozens of professional sports teams, popular Division I college sports and major concert venues. The live event industry is critical to our state’s economy. However, event producers and ticket companies have put in place – and in a rather sneaky way – anti-consumer restricted ticketing policies that strip ticket owners of their property rights, undermine the free market and needlessly restrict consumer choice.

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I got to re-live an old childhood memory this week.

Growing up in the Soviet Union, all three TV channels would cease regular programming from time to time to breathlessly announce a new five-year plan of government-imposed price controls, production quotas and intricate regulations.

Despite the promises of plenty, only poverty followed, until national bankruptcy forced the five-year plan onto the ash heap of history, saving its future TV mentions only for late-night comedy shows.

Or so I thought, until the House of Representatives took up the Farm Bill, in which it tied a reauthorization of the… Read More

It would be redundant to summarize recent revelations concerning just how big America’s national security state has become. Two reports, both written in the last two days, do a really good job: “The Making of a Global Security State,” by Tom Engelhardt, published by The Nation Institute, and “5 Alarming Things We Should Have Already Known About the NSA, Surveillance, and Privacy Before Ed Snowden,” by Brian Doherty, published by the Reason Foundation.

It is encouraging that both of these articles address the same topic and summon the same moral concerns, despite being published by top-tier think tanks – the Reason Foundation and the Nation Institute – that occupy opposite positions on the right/left continuum. What is discouraging is neither of these articles explore the connection between unionized government and the alarming police state trends they describe so thoroughly.

The centrality of patriotism and law-and-order priorities blinds many on the… Read More

[Publisher’s Note: We are pleased to feature this exclusive column from freshman Assemblyman Eric Linder (R-Corona) – Flash]

Show of hands: Who out there would like a pay raise?

Thought so. Too bad you don’t work in the State Legislature, where you can get an “independent” commission to vote you a pay raise and gain a higher salary just for the asking.

This is the Capitol’s land of confusion, where the state’s perilous fiscal condition is, apparently, someone else’s problem. Doing this, and doing it now reveals more about Sacramento and the way it thinks than all the material in the state archives.

Like millions of California couples, my wife and I both work. We want to, but we also have to. In addition to serving as an Assemblyman, I still own and run my company. When I’m home on the weekends, my wife works at a restaurant, and I get to watch our two small kids. My oldest daughter is heading to college, so you can be sure we are budgeting every dollar… Read More

[Publisher’s Note: This week the House of Representatives is set to vote on a massive so-called “Farm Bill” which represents over a trillion dollars in spending over the next decade. It’s atrocious legislation that is antithetical to a political party that is rooted in liberty, freedom and limited government. Yet many House Republicans intend on supporting the bill. Those that do will be exposed as faux-conservatives. Below is a fun column by Diane Katz and Daren Bakst of the Heritage Foundation, which has been leading the charge against this terrible legislation – Flash]

By Diane Katz and Daren Bakst, The Heritage Foundation

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For those who have been trying to get mainstream attention focused on the vast pork (and resulting harm to CA schools) inherent in President Obama’s Common Core Standards (CCS), today’s L.A. Times editorial, “Was adopting Common Core a mistake?” is a bittersweet victory.

It’s sweet because it has been rare for a major CA newspaper to point out anything wrong with CCS. To its credit, the Times piece deals at length with the chaos which CA’s public schools are about to experience, caused by a hasty CCS implementation with an almost total lack of planning. To summarize the problem: Next school year there will be no set curriculum, noapproved textbooks, no approved testing procedures or indeed tests for fall standardized testing- an unprecedented situation and highly disruptive of the educational process. Parents, teachers, administrators and students will be up in arms.

The Times piece is bitter because it makes no mention of CA’s current standards, considered world-class by professionals not in the pay of textbook… Read More

For millions of California homeowners, Saturday was a day that will live in infamy. Without a single public hearing, the California Assembly passed Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 8 (ACA 8), the most egregious attack on Prop. 13 ever to come out of the Legislature.

ACA 8 would repeal Prop. 13’s requirement that local “special taxes” (taxes intended for a specific purpose or purposes) be approved by a two-thirds vote. Instead, special taxes imposed for the repayment of local bonded indebtedness would be reduced to 55%. The ostensible justification for ACA 8 is to make it easier to finance local “infrastructure.”

There are several reasons why ACA 8 will inevitably inflict severe harm on California homeowners. First, while state bonds are repaid out of the state’s general fund – into which most Californians contribute through income or sales taxes – the same is not true for local bonds. Local bonds, usually referred to as “general obligation” bonds, are repaid exclusively by property owners. That means that voters who do not own property can vote to raise taxes on those who do.

Second, making it easier to pass local bonds… Read More

Late last week the California Public Safety Voter Guide (managed by Landslide Communications) commissioned a brief survey in the 52nd Congressional District. The poll was conducted by the respected firm NSON out of Utah with calls made to 606 district voters who cast ballots in the last general election, This district includes some of downtown San Diego and takes the coast West and North before jutting inland east of La Jolla. You can see a map here.

Last year wealthy former San Diego City Councilman Scott Peters, a Democrat, defeated incumbent Congressman Brian Bilbray in this seat, by a very narrow margin. Recently former San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio, apparently rested up after his marathon campaign for Mayor, announced his candidacy for this seat. As of now he is the only announced GOP candidate.

The survey really only asked a few key questions, and directly tested the issues both of DeMaio being gay, and his support for same-sex marriage. I thought the responses were telling…

Q1. If the… Read More