In January of this year, the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) released a poll that measured the approval rating of the State Legislature, and the results were interesting, to be sure.

According to the survey, voters were evenly divided on the question, with 44 percent siding with approval and the same number saying they disapprove. If the voters take a good look at Sacramento’s recent performance, however, I predict the Legislature’s approval rating won’t be evenly divided for long.

Just to cite one example, I believe that the recently introduced Senate Bill… Read More

You might have heard some news lately about legislative transparency, referring to efforts to subject what goes on in the California Legislature to meaningful public scrutiny. One headline actually read “California Senate Approves Measure Requiring More Transparency.” While an average citizen might rejoice at this news, they should be cognizant of what Paul Harvey used to characterize as “the rest of the story.”

Fact is, the California Legislature has absolutely no interest in exposing to public scrutiny how it does business. Indeed, the only reason lawmakers have introduced Senate Constitutional Amendment 14 (SCA 14) is to try to force the proponents of a much stronger ballot measure to the bargaining table in an effort to dilute the impact of this genuine reform. It is our hope that the proponents of the real transparency measure, the California Legislature Transparency Act (CLTA), decline the invitation.

On the surface, lawmakers’ SCA 12 doesn’t look too bad. It would require that bills be publicly available for 72 hours before they can be taken up for a vote and that visual recordings of all legislative proceedings be posted online. These… Read More

Thousands of voters in the June 7th California Primary election showed up at the polls across the state to discover their political party registrations had been changed.

Hundreds of “dead voters” were recently uncovered in Southern California, the majority of them in Los Angeles County. Some of these deceased voters have even been voting for years, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Fraudulent dead voters are concerning, but voter fraud is an even bigger problem in close races where election outcomes are decided by only a handful of votes, says Linda Paine, founder of the Election Integrity Project.

But after the June… Read More

There’s been a lot of hype this month about CA now having the world’s sixth largest economy. And the state DID do well in 2015 compared to the other states, after lagging for several years.

Impressive! Well, actually, not. California has 39 million people — 43% larger than the 2nd largest state (Texas). Such GDP comparisons don’t tell us much in terms of the PROSPERITY of a nation. Or a state. The proper comparison is PER CAPITA GDP. Using that more meaningful figure, CA is the 10th most prosperous state. But an even MORE accurate comparison is to take the per capital GDP and adjust it for COL. Because of California’s high taxes, crazy utility laws, stifling regulations (paid by consumers) and sky-high housing costs, CA in 2014 ranked WAY down in 37th place. Only 13 states were worse. BTW, using the per capita GDP, as a nation CA in 2014 ranked 19th when compared with other nations. And that fails to consider California’s super-high COL, which is 34.3% … Read More

The terrorist attack on Orlando should bring into sharp focus the growing threat our nation faces from Islamic terrorism. Although Islam is a religion, it is often accompanied by a poisonous political ideology that is antithetical to everything our country stands for. That ideology now poses a direct threat to the liberty and safety of our people, and we have every right to defend ourselves against it.

We knew for years that the terrorist’s father was broadcasting pro-Taliban and anti-American rhetoric aimed principally at a large and growing Afghan Islamic population within the United States. We knew that the terrorist himself had travelled repeatedly to Saudi Arabia under mysterious circumstances; that he associated with known terrorists and Islamic radicals in the United States; and that he had expressed the most virulent anti-American views. And we took no action because there are far more instances of such threats than we can begin to assess or address.

This administration has drastically increased the admission of refugees from regions where overwhelming majorities believe in imposing Sharia Law. Those who are fleeing Islamist… Read More

This year, state officials across the country are required to come clean about state pension debt. But there’s one problem: many states are still hiding pension debt from taxpayers and California is one of them.

Truth in Accounting (TIA), a Chicago-based think tank that analyzes government financials, recently released a report on California’s finances.The Financial State of Californiareport reveals that while California state officials are being more transparent about their financial information, they are still hiding a massive amount of debt from taxpayers and ignoring a new rule. To give you an idea of the current plights of California’s financial reporting, let’s break down the numbers.

According to TIA’s calculations, California has $78.9 billion of pension debt – not $74.5 billion like California state officials report. This means $4.4 billion of… Read More

The modern history of the Silicon Valley arguably began in 1957, when eight young PhD graduates left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories to launch the first high-volume chip manufacturer, Fairchild Semiconductor.Fairchild and its spinoffs, including Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), were the early participants in what became the most fervid ecosystem of fiercely competitive innovators the world has ever seen. Inspired by the mantra “better, faster, cheaper,” and fueled by billions in venture capital, the Silicon Valley is now the epicenter of the information age that has transformed ourlives.

With power, however, comes corruption. The Silicon Valley’s inspirational mantra has become challenged in recent years. High-tech products that used to sell because they were better are now sold because they are mandated by law. They sell not because they are faster, but because they are engineered to operate according to asocial or environmentalist agenda. And they are most definitely not cheaper, but instead cost far more than they should. And across the product spectrum from high-tech to low-tech, Silicon Valley leadership increasingly uses their… Read More

Two weeks ago, using information supplied by theCalifornia Taxpayers Association, we called attention to “$6.2 Billion in New Borrowing on June 7th Primary Ballot.” As noted, “Next week voters will be asked to approve 46 local bond measures totaling $6.18 billion in new debt, along with 52 local tax proposals. If history is any indication, more than 80% of them will pass.”

So how did they do?

The following table shows the results so far. With bonds, the trend is clear – they nearly all still pass. That’s partly because school bonds only require a 55% majority to pass, whereas with most tax increases, passage still requires a two-thirds vote.And while the rate of passage is lower for tax increases, the latest election shows two out of three passing.

Local Tax and Bond Ballot Propositions – June 7th 2016 Status of passage as of June 14th, 2016 … Read More