Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines a “price war” as, “commercial competition characterized by the repeated cutting of prices below those of competitors.”

So it would be fair to say that right now, in California, there is a reverse-price war taking place in the narrow niche of hiring people to collect signatures on initiative petition forms. There is a deadline looming in just a few weeks to turn in signatures in order for there to be time for them to be counted and verified by local County Registrars of Voters and still make it onto the ballot this November. And there are a limited number of professional signature gatherers available, as well as a limit to the number of really excellent spots in which to gather signatures — that means that the demand for signatures overall exceeds the available of signatures that can be obtained in a short window of time. And so because of it the… Read More

If you are someone who stays on top of the politics of Orange County, you might have missed the brief headline about former long-time OC GOP County Chairman and former Assembly GOP Leader Scott Baugh opening a campaign committee for Congress. For those who did not, there was some head-scratching, because Baugh – a strong conservative – is a constituent of U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a fellow conservative, and a fixture in Congress having been elected in 1988. In fact only Nancy Pelosi has more seniority on the entire 53-member California delegation, and only 19 members out of 435 have served longer than Dana.

Of course filing opened and closed in the coastal 48th District and Rohrabacher filed for re-election and Baugh never even pulled papers. Which would have been surprising to anyone who had talked to either Rohrabacher or Baugh.

I think it is important to walk people through why Baugh has opened a Congressional campaign committee and is actively raising money into it. And why he is not on the ballot this year, but will be in 2018. As a preliminary matter, the 48th CD is one of the wealthiest districts in the nation. There are likely to be many… Read More

“Equal Pay Day” — the day in April when women supposedly have to work before reaching parity with men’s pay — is perhaps the biggest hoax in progressive economics. And that’s saying something!

Yet the press seldom looks at the bogus math behind the claim that women make only 77% of what a man makes doing the same job. Even President Obama’s official White House website repeats the same canard, and it seems the press never questions the administration about this false claim. https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/equal-pay

That “77 cents vs. a $1” claim is arrived at by taking ALL pay for ALL occupations and comparing the AVERAGE pay by gender in the aggregate. Any cursory review of this figure makes clear that this is NOT comparing “equal pay for equal work.”

Below is perhaps the best overall succinct debunking of this nonsense. Would that the press would provide this information to the public. Not gonna happen.

BTW, one factor NOT included in this article is my observation on compensation: Since women live… Read More

In a move of breathtaking hypocrisy, California’s legislators have unveiled a financially sustainable retirement security program for private workers, while keeping financially unsustainable pensions forpublic workers.

What private sector employers and private sector workers need to ask, more than anything, is if this new retirement security scheme is so great, why aren’t public employees going to also adopt it?

That’s a really good question. And the answer is simple: The pensions they’re already getting, paid for by taxpayers, are far. far better. Way better. Out of this world better. Crazy better. Goofy better.

Take a look at theofficial recommendationsmade on March 28, 2016 to the California Legislature. In this document, on page 53, there is a table showing “income replacement” based on years paying into the system at various contribution rates. At a contribution rate of 5%, after working 30 years, a participant can expect income replacement in retirement of 13.8%. That is, if they made $100,000 per year in… Read More

Part ll – California’s Political Water Wars Heating Up. Part l is HERE.

Despite some nice rainfall this year, the more than two dozenState Water Contractorsthroughout the state have been told to expect 45 percent water allocations.

A recent Daily… Read More

An earlier edition of this column focused on government waste due to gross mismanagement and fraud on the part of California state and local governments. The argument then, as it is now, is that elected representatives should be spending much more of their time and energy on oversight of existing programs, rather than posture for a photo op or press release announcing a “new” program that, in all likelihood, is redundant with a dozen or more existing programs covering the same subject matter.

The problem, of course, is that elected officials and bureaucrats have no incentive to be cautious regarding how they spend our tax dollars. Here, the observations of Nobel winning economist Milton Friedman are instructive. He noted that there are four ways people can spend money:

To read the entire column click here http://www.hjta.org/california-commentary/new-ways-to-spend-opm-other-peoples-money/… Read More

The bill opposing boycotts of Israel has been pigeonholed in California’s Democratically controlled state legislature for nearly three months. AB 1552, by Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach, prohibits state entities from contracting with parties that engage in commercial discrimination, and boycotts on the basis of national origin.

The international “Boycott, Divest and Sanctions” movement is a growing authoritarian movement created and funded by a global alliance of the Regressive-Left and Islamists, whichcalls for a political, academic and… Read More

Despite all the evidence that increasing the minimum wage does little or nothing to reduce poverty, California Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrats in the State Legislature just passed another minimum wage increase. Not one Republican in the Assembly or Senate voted for the bill, and all Democrats, save two, voted for the minimum wage increase.

The minimum wage has always been an arbitrary figure. If the arbitrary minimum wage is inflated, this also inflates prices, leaving low-wage workers spending more on everything.

This political decision by Brown will likely come back to haunt California, much as the 1999 political pension deal signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis… Read More