In the wee hours of the night, at the end of the last legislative session, language was added into a bill to push forward reforms to California’s 40-year old environmental policy, the California Environmental Quality Act.

The reforms were sponsored by the CEQA Working Group, a business-labor-government coalition. Intended to reduce frivolous environmental litigation and duplicative government oversight, the reforms ended up being part of a smoggy deal.

Before anyone could stop them, the Democratic leadership swooped in on the bill and changed it.

SB 317

Because of California’s stringent environmental laws and project-killing local planning requirements, nearly all public and private projects in the state are legally challenged under CEQA, even when a project meets all other environmental standards of state law.

SB 317, co-authored by Sen. Michael Rubio, D-Shafter, a gut-and-amend bill, would not have actually changed CEQA, but instead would have introduced a companion law to dictate how CEQA is enforced. The new legislation would have restricted certain types of lawsuits, and would have exempted some projects from CEQA… Read More

Here’s a story suitable for the Bizarro comic strip. The U.S. government has spent $368 million on a lavish new federal courthouse addition in San Diego, largely to increase the number of courtrooms to handle the increasing workload. Butthe geniuses in DC decided that the spending was too lavish (it was), so they deduced that the solution was to require FEWER courtrooms than BEFORE the project was built.

We had 24 courtrooms BEFORE the $368 million was spent, and now the feds limit our district operations to 22 courtrooms AFTER construction is completed. Our courts are badly backed up, and this is how government solves the problem. http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/dec/02/feds-spend-368m-to-expand-court-get-2-fewer/

You can’t make this stuff up.

But that’s… Read More

The President’s “”Offer””: That is not a typo. I intended to have two sets of quotation marks around the word “offer”. That’s because it is unspeakably absurd to call what the president proposed on the fiscal cliff an offer. It was more like a liberal wish list. There was literally nothing in this proposal for Republicans to like and a liberal (pun intended) sprinkling of elements that most Republicans absolutely hate. For example, the proposal (I will no longer flatter this monstrosity with the label “offer”) raises taxes on families making over $250,000 ($200k for individuals) by more than would result from going over the “fiscal cliff”. On top of that, Obama threw in some stimulus spending, an extension of the 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, and an extension of the payroll tax “holiday” – which means more and more Social Security benefits are borrowed. This package actually both increases taxes and increases the deficit because there is so much additional spending. As a false gesture towards something reasonable, the president says they will make some… Read More

The swearing-in of new legislators is usually a party atmosphere. Lawmakers feel celebratory after long campaigns. Yesterday’s swearing-in was not a disappointment however, along with the celebratory mood, there was an air of fantasy and fairy tale.

This is the largest freshman class, with 39 newly elected lawmakers, since 1966.

Perhaps the party mood was because of the new Democratic supermajority. While Democratic Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg insists that Democrats will not go hog wild with their unobstructed power, not everyone believes that. “I just don’t think we should come hurtling out of the gates talking about a bunch of new taxes,” Steinberg told media Monday.

“It’s in their DNA,” one Capitol staffer told me, but asked to remain anonymous. “It would go completely against everything they stand for. They can’t help themselves.”

Fractured fairy tales

When it came time to nominate the Assembly Speaker, the Capitol sergeants should have handed out airsick bags.

Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro, D-Humbolt, nominated current Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles. Chesbro said Perez… Read More

Californians okayed Governor Brown (and the labor unions’) plea for 30% higher taxes on the rich — making the “Golden State” BY FAR the highest income tax state in the nation. Perhaps voters should have first looked “across the pond” at England’s similar “soak the rich measure” recently put in place.

Britain raised its income tax rate on the wealthy from 40% to 50%. According to the WALL ST JOURNAL editorial below, the following year the number of millionaire tax returns dropped more than 60%. Just a coincidence, I suppose.

Some of the wealthy left the country, others rearranged their finances to avoid the new 10% tax increase — which resulted in less of the OLD 40% tax being collected.

The year before the tax passed, millionaires paid“about £13.4 billion to the public coffers, or just under 9% of the total tax liability of all taxpayers that year. At the 50% rate, the shrunken pool yielded £6.5 billion, or about 4.4%.”

The 10% tax increase wassupposedto raise an additional£2.5 billion. Yeah, THAT went well!

California’s experience… Read More

It’s a somber day for Republicans, and a foreboding one for California taxpayers. Today is the official swearing-in day for the California legislature. When the final counts were all done, Democrats now have a whopping 29 members of the California State Senate — while only ten Republicans will occupy the upper chamber, with reinforcements on the way when one more Republican wins a runoff in a special election. Let’s call this a super-duper majority for Democrats. In the Assembly, Democrats will control more than two-thirds of the chamber with 55 members, leaving the GOP with only 25 members. With the backdrop of a pretty lousy day nationally for Republicans including the loss of the White House, and a pretty dismal showing in U.S. Senate races, it’s not good. (Republicans did keep the House, though half of the GOP’s losses nationally were California seats). I won’t even get into the results of ballot propositions.

We’ve all heard that expression, “Through adversity comes opportunity.”

Well, the 36 Republican legislators in the State Capitol are going to have to figure out the opportunity that has been… Read More

When a business closes it’s doors forever, the impacts are far-reaching.

The announcement of the upcoming closure of the Campbell’s Soup plant in Sacramento will have regional and statewide impact.

Econ. 101

I may have been a political science student, but my husband is a longtime Sacramento manufacturer. For many years I lived and worked Econ. 101 lessons alongside 250 employees.

My businessman husband was an economics major in college and frequently reminds me that economics education in college has seen a dramatic shift. There weren’t many Keynesian economists in universities back then. Unfortunately, today, Keynesian economics seems to be the only economic theory coming out of universities.

Keynesian economics is an economic theory stating that aggressive government interventions in the marketplace and monetary policy are the best way to ensure economic growth and stability.

Economist Walter Williams has explained for many years the reality of the free market economy in which businesses must make a profit in order to survive: ”In the market, when a firm fails to please its customers and fails to earn a… Read More

Much has been said about the defeat of Proposition 32 in California. Much of that has focused on the GOTV operation of the labor unions, the Democrats and the Obama campaign. Not sure the difference between the but they trulydid a stupendous job. It was do or die and they did it.

The Proposition 32 campaign lost the election over year ago when a decision was made not the place a referendum on the ballot challenging Governor Brown’s signing of Senate Bill 202. SB 202 moved all initiatives to November ballot. As a side note it broke a previous budget deal with Republican squishes and moved a “rainy day” fund measure to 2014.

Clearly, if you look at the results of the June primary it was a much more conservative electorate.

Duh! That’s why the Democrats wanted to move all initiatives to November.

Had the referendum qualified In June we would have voted on Proposition 32 language, of course a different number.