Earlier this year Californians were saved from huge increases in their grocery bills when the state legislature failed to approve AB 1998, legislation that would have banned plastic bags and charged a fee for paper bags. AB 1998 was ill-conceived legislation about which I wrote when it was before the legislature. Residents of unincorporated areas of Los Angeles weren’t so lucky. Just two weeks ago the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a ban on plastic bags.

Banning plastic bags is the latest crusade for environmentalists hell-bent on saving the planet—even if the science behind their cause is questionable and the consequences are far worse than the minimal plastic bag waste they think is destroying the environment.

In fact, the day before the Board of Supervisors passed their ban, New York U.S. Senator Chuck… Read More

Attached are the raw notes of my law clerk, who attended the 11/17/10 Fair Political Practices Commission Task Force meeting on the 12 areas of proposed reforms and changes to election regulation in California. Please understand these are raw notes, not legal advice, and I am offering them simply to be sure the information is circulated to any readers who are interested.… Read More

With appropriate deference and thanks to those candidates and volunteers who worked hard in the last election, there are really no “silver linings” for the California Republican Party in the aftermath of the recent blowout, resulting in a loss of all statewide offices and even a seat in the state assembly, just as a GOP sweep (except in New York) ran across the nation. Our “rainbow coalition” of statewide candidates made one of the collectively poorest showings in the history of California politics, probably the worst for the statewide GOP ever. The fact is California Republicans have now embarked on an era which I have dubbed “permanent super minority status,” statewide, where relevance of the GOP in Sacramento will rest only with the tenious possibility of holding the line on future tax and fee increases, that require a 2/3rds vote of the Legislature and just a couple of Republican votes. Our ability to do that will be complicated by the advent of the open primary system in 2012, which will allow Democrats to vote in Republican primaries, and the added unpredictable result of the coming reapportionment of districts. None of this bodes… Read More

Here it is, in under 500 words:

1. Have every Republican voter reregister as "decline to state"; 2. Run "independent candidates" for every State level office; 3. Change the name of the California Republican Party to the Fiscally Conservative Party;

If we don’t fix our finances, we’re Greece on steroids.… Read More

Recently re-elected Dana Point Councilwoman Lisa Bartlett promised four years ago she wouldn’t raise taxes. Then after she won her first election, she pushed thru a new annual one million dollar a year bureaucracy of new city staff and added pension liability for a “tourism district” in the six square mile city. This new City bureaucracy is funded by a $3 a night tax that is added to the 18.75% in taxes tourists already pay to visit Dana Point. When combined, all the taxes and fees tourists pay in Dana Point exceed those imposed even in New York City hotels. CRA volunteer Craig Alexander helped sweep Bartlett’s tax raising past under the rug and she ended up endorsed by the county GOP for re-election. But county GOP chair Scott Baugh caught wind of that ruse, and asked Bartlett about her record, a few months ago, and the understanding is that she promised to never raise taxes again. Well, Bartlett promptly tarnished her GOP credibility again week before last, when she walked out on a City Council vote to extend the same hotel tax and city staff bureaucracy to serve the “tourism district”. She did not address the agenda item and did not… Read More

Given the results of this last election, this may be just me spitting into the wind, but it needs to be said. Given their votes in this last election, it appears that a majority of Californians like endless, unaccountable bureaucracies, and are willing to give bureaucrats more power. History shows that the dynasties of Chinese empires collapsed under the weight of unaccountable bureaucracy. California appears to be headed for the same fate, and the only way to stop it is to educate Californians with anecdotes about bureaucracies out of control.

I started this story a few months ago, when I told of my personal story about the FPPC (who, as I said, should be called the Kommittee to Grow Bureaucracy, or the KGB for short). Yes, they have filed charges against me, and yes, they are asking for $15,000.00 in fines for three supposed violations of campaign finance law. My violations? I missed filing some campaign finance reports in 2008 (long after I left office) for a committee that collected no money, and I failed to terminate the committee. I happened to be out of the country that year, trying to earn money so I could pay more… Read More

In California, voters just ensured the continuation of 4 years of public policy work on creating a low carbon economy by voting “No” on Prop 23. Apparently, Californians want to lower our carbon footprint, and yet, on any given day I can sit at the Starbucks near my house in Pleasanton, and watch enumerable garbage trucks carrying waste from San Francisco down the 580 east, emitting carbon and all kinds of air pollution throughout the Bay. For a city that touts its recycling rate as one of the highest in the nation, they are still sending a lot of garbage and greenhouse gas emissions to their neighbors. It makes me wonder how San Francisco, and other urban areas in the state will comply with AB32. Will the carbon they emit by outsourcing their trash be transferred to rural areas of the state? I certainly hope not. … Read More

No matter who you talk to everyone agrees — California’s finances are totally screwed up. Whether you are on the ideological left, fretting over what the sour economy means for social spending, or on the right, concerned about how the private sector will recover without regulatory relief from onerous state regulations and taxes –there is consensus around the idea that state government is in turmoil.

In the private sector, unemployment in California is in double-digits. A lot of people are out of work, and many others are taking big pay cuts. In the public sector, we are seeing workers furloughed and increasing pressure to reduce the size of the state workforce.

So you have to wonder, with this as the backdrop, what decision-making process goes through the mind of dozens of legislators who have gone off to Kauai and Maui for a pair of "conferences" at resort hotels, with their expenses being paid for by either "non-profits" funded by big… Read More