Hoh boy.

It appears that the California state legislature, the governor and the labor unions have “struck a deal” that will raise the state’s minimum wage to $15. No stinkin’ proposition will be required to enact this requirement into law, with a simple (Democrat) legislative majority easily attainable.

The minimum wage (now $10 an hour) will rise in stages, hitting the cherished $15 mark in 2022, and rising to match inflation after that. Very small businesses will have an extra year to comply. http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article68497532.html

Doubtless automation firms are wildly cheering this step towards the Workers’ Paradise so long sought by progressives. State economic development departments around the nation will also be “popping the bubbly,” delighted with California’s relentless efforts to drive businesses out of the state. This $15 minimum wage pretty much ensures we will expand and deepen our permanent underclass of unemployed in California — with heightened… Read More

Everyone supports public safety, but conservatives are a special case. In modern times, it was conservatives, reactingagainst the rebellious sixties and the lawless seventies, who supported law enforcement when it was fashionable for liberals to see them as pawns of a discredited establishment. It was also during the 1960’s and ’70’s that we saw public safety unions acquire far more political power and influence,a rise fueled in part by an entirely justifiable resentment they felt at how theyweretreated by the media and in popular culture.

It’s a different world now. The riots of the sixties and the crime waves of the seventies have been replaced by new threats. Now we have global terrorist groups with access to new technologies that can unleash destruction at a scale unimaginable a generation ago. We have organized crime of unprecedented sophistication; drug cartels, cyber criminals, modern-day slavery networks. The United States, statistically, is a safer place than it’s ever been, but it doesn’t feel that way, and continual reminders at home and abroad reinforce these feelings of insecurity.

Conservatives have traditionally focused on… Read More

The Agricultural Labor Relations Board has spent$10.8 million to prevent Gerawan Farming Workers 2013 votes from being counted – more than $4,100 per vote to deny farmworkers their legal rights to be heard.

The Agricultural Labor Relations Board is also being sued for bias and conflicts of interest, and has been found actively and openly working on behalf of the United Farm Workers Labor union, rather than farm workers. And this takes money… a lot of money.

Growing the ALRB

Who says jobs are hard to come by? There have been significant… Read More

Three recent news stories illustrate why, to those not drawing a check from taxpayers, government has become about as popular of a swarm of mosquitos carrying the Zika virus.

Story number one tells how a firm owned by the late Alfred Villalobos will pay the state of California $20 million to settle charges of bribing officials of the California Public Employees Retirement System.

Before his death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Villalobos pled guilty to bribing CalPERS officials to make investments through him, which allowed him to earn about $50 million in commissions. The former CalPERS CEO Fred Buenrostro also pleaded guilty to criminal charges for accepting bribes. For Villalobos, the “fix” was literally in.

To read the entire column click here http://www.hjta.org/california-commentary/three-ways-to-fix-government/… Read More

On Wednesday, CNBC released this interview with North Dakota Republican National Committeeman Curly Haugland regarding the Republican presidential nomination process. The interview has been making the rounds on the Internet these last couple days.

A few have taken these comments as an indication of some sort of foul play on the part of the RNC or suggested a conspiracy is at work to steal the nomination from its legitimate winner. I feel compelled to address a few of these misconceptions and explain why Mr. Haugland’s comments describe the way that the nomination process was designed to work, well before the identities of the 2016 candidates for the nomination were known.

The Republican Party is a private organization that operates according to a set of rules adopted by its national committee and national convention. As the governing body of a political party, the RNC has the right under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution to choose its own process of determining party nominees for president, and no federal or state… Read More

Every so often the California Policy Center takes my turgid, wonky, POORLY formatted “California Is Doomed” fact sheet and converts it into a thing of beauty — reformatted and posted online. The ONLY advantage for my tiny print, narrow-margin Word file is that is squeezed onto a two page handout — a handout that few can bring themselves to read.

THIS CPC online version IS readable. Not a FUN read, but very readable. And “shareable.”

It’s been I think a year since CPC has done this with my constantly updating fact sheet, but last week they put up the latest version (see below). Enjoy.

Well, “enjoy” is the wrong word — unless you work in the business development department of just about any other state in America. http://californiapolicycenter.org/unaffordable-california-it-doesnt-have-to-be-this-way-6/… Read More

During the industrial age, labor unions played a vital role in protecting the rights of workers. Skeptics may argue that enlightened management played an equally if not greater role, such as when Henry Ford famously raised the wages of his workers so they could afford to buy the cars they made, but few would argue that labor unions were of no benefit. Today, in the private sector, the labor movement still has a vital role to play. There may be vigorous debate regarding how private sector unions should be regulated and what restrictions should be placed on their activity, but again, few people would argue they should not exist.

Public sector unions are a completely different story.

The differences between public and private sector unions are well documented. They operate in monopolistic environments, in organizations that are funded through compulsory taxes. They elect their bosses. They operate the machinery of government and can use that power to intimidate their political opponents.

Despite these fundamental differences in how they operate, public unions benefit from the still common perception that they areindistinguishable from private unions, that… Read More

California political observers are understandably fixated on the goings-on in the state Legislature, which is the living embodiment of what New York Judge Gideon Tucker wrote in an 1866 ruling: “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” Reporters and commentators also focus on major legal cases, which can at times pose an even greater danger to our liberty and property.

But unless they do something particularly egregious, the state’s myriad regulatory agencies rarely get much notice. Sure, the little-known California Agricultural Labor Relations Board became the subject of much debate recently after its union-friendly officials refused to count the ballots of farm workers who were trying to decertify a union. That was the exception that proved the rule. How often are “rulemakings” the subject of… Read More