Historically Japanese executives and their companies has been much more comfortable concentrating in California on the Pacific Rim rather than the “inland” and East Coast states. We have a small but successful Japanese population dating back generations. CA is not considered a prejudiced state for Asians. The Japanese have surely felt particularly out of place in the South.

Apparently that undeniable Golden State preference has given way to economic reality. Texas (among other states) is FAR better for a company’s bottom line than Taxifornia.

EXCERPT: “At least 175 Japanese projects have translated into $19 billion in direct investments in Texas since 2003, according to the Texas governor’s office. Some recent investments include:

* Toyota is relocating its U.S. headquarters from California to Plano, building a $300 million campus that will employ nearly 40,000 in 2017.

* Tractor maker Kubota Corp. is investing $51 million to move its headquarters and about 350 jobs from California to Grapevine.

* Mitsubishi Heavy Industries plans to build a $100… Read More

Labor unions target many non-union businesses across the country for takeover; some businesses successfully fend off the unions, and others succumb. But in California, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, a state agency, works in cahoots with the United Farm Workers labor union, intimidating, fear-mongering, threatening, and uses legal actions filed against farming employers to force them into submission to the United Farm Workers labor union.

But recently, the ALRB has been dealt several legal blows to its efforts to malign Gerawan Farming, and force its farm workers into unionization.

The Agricultural Labor Relations Board was created following the signing of the Agriculture Labor Relations Act in 1975 by then-Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, to restore peace in the fields. The California Labor Act states:

It is hereby stated to be the policy of the State of California to encourage and protect the right of agricultural employees to full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, to negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment, and to be free from the… Read More

On a variety of issues Americans in general, and Californians in particular, are increasingly saying what we do is really no one else’s business. That libertarian argument appeals to right-of-center voters because they don’t like government control, and it appeals to left-of-center voters because they are more likely to agree with the social goal, e.g. legalized marijuana, for example.

But is it always the right answer to leave controversial social policies up to individual choice? Nowhere is that question more relevant than in the current debate in the California Legislature to allow doctors to help patients kill themselves, an idea embodied in Senate Bill 128 by Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis). The argument goes something like this;

“When someone is diagnosed as having less than six months to live, why shouldn’t they be given the choice to end their life on their own terms instead of enduring months of pain and suffering?”

That’s a straightforward question, and it deserves an answer. After all, whose life is it anyway?

The problem, of course, is that once the issue is reduced to a subjective personal choice we are, for all intents… Read More

Vida Wright and Cheryl Bly-Chester, two minority owned, small business owners, bid a contract with Caltrans to administer the education and mentoring program for the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program. They complied with the rules of the process, spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars preparing their Request For Proposal, and they qualify as a DBE. But they lost the contract by tenths of a point after Caltrans employees changed the documents of the incumbent contractor, as well as the scoring on the incumbent contractor bid, so Caltrans could award it to the incumbent.

… Read More

Sorry but you would all be crying like a little b**** if the cops and firefighters that earn every penny they get in retirement were not there when your perfect make believe world falls apart so shut the f*** up. Until you do the job you have no idea what you are talking about. – Comment onFacebook.com/CalPolicyCenterpost, June 3, 2015

This comment, made by a California police supervisor onto the Facebook page of our organization, graphically encapsulateswhat is entirely understandable resentment on the part of public servants to a new reality – their pay and benefits are being exposed to public debate. It would be easy to dismiss this comment as inappropriate, or to merely characterize it as an example of public sector arrogance. But that would be a huge mistake.

Compared to the lives most of us are privileged to lead, public safety employees endure unrelenting stress. While it is important to be honest about rates of police and firefighter mortality and job related disabilities, the fact that many other jobs carrygreaterrisk of death or injury does not… Read More

Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown said California has an overpopulation problem. He said the ongoing drought is a sure sign that the explosion of population in California has reached the limit of what Nature can provide.

“We are altering this planet with this incredible power of science, technology and economic advance,” Brown said during a discussion with Austin Beutner, publisher and chief executive of the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune.“If California is going to have 50 million people, they’re not going to live the same way the native people lived, much less the way people do today.… You have to find a more elegant way of relating to material things. You have to use… Read More

Last Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown’s State Water Resources Control Board ordered junior water right holders to stop diversions of water in order to protect more senior water rights and “releases of previously stored water.” Friday’s announcement only targets those whose rights have been held since 1903. Senior water right holders in the affected watersheds who staked their claims earlier than that year can continue to divert water. And so can environmentalists who together with the Bureau of Reclamation, have been letting millions of gallons of water out of dams so a few fish can migrate to the Pacific Ocean.

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In its more than 160 plus year history, few things have remained constant in California. However, since the 1800’s California has taxed all classes of property the same.

Thus, when the iconic Prop 13 passed in 1978, it did not differentiate between different kinds of property. All real property – whether residential or commercial – was bestowed with the benefits of a reasonable one percent tax rate cap and, just as importantly, a two percent limit in the annual increase in taxable value.

In 1978, the predominant fear permeating California was an exploding tax burden that was forcing people out of their homes. The one percent rate cap was important, of course, but a rate cap by itself does nothing to control a property tax bill that is based on the “market value” of one’s home. If market values double – as they frequently do in an overheated real estate market – then property owners remain vulnerable to wild fluctuations when tax time comes around.

To read the entire column click here… Read More