Republican skepticism of big government bureaucracies has been proven right once again with this week’s revelation that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is performing more like the DMV and the Postal Service than, say, Israeli airport security.

When the DMV or the Postal Service screw up, you wait in line longer or your letter gets delayed. When the TSA screws up, lives are potentially on the line.

For all of the changes ushered in after 9/11, bureaucratic ineptitude and political correctness appear to be forces that have proven too powerful to overcome.

Whenever I travel out of Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv – Israeli’s only International airport – I get flagged for special screening. It’s the Pakistan and Qatar visa stamps in my passport – revealing how Israeli airport security focuses on screening for dangerous people, not merely dangerous objects. … Read More

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A few months back my wife received one of those annoying letters in the mail stating she had run a stop light (she missed the cut off by a fraction of a second). She received a photo and a stunning bill for $500. She made the mistake of acknowledging the citation; apparently just ignoring it helps to defeat these electronic tickets. Then she said to me, “How do working-class people afford these things.” We now know they don’t – they don’t pay them and Governor Brown has a plan to rid them of the burden and stick it to the Middle Class.

Brown made headlines by calling the California court system a “hellhole of desperation” for the poor. Brown then proposed an amnesty program which would restructure the program so that “drivers with lesser infractions would pay half of what they owe, and administrative fees would be slashed from $300 to $50.” These outsized fines for traffic tickets have resulted in 4.8 million people having their licenses suspended since 2006.

This is all well and good since California’s employees have started a war with the residents of the state to collect more revenues, thereby maintaining their jobs and their immense… Read More

A woman’s right to choose is a rallying cry for women across the country. But they are talking about choice over abortions, and not vaccinations.

Parental choice and decision making over childhood vaccinations was removed in California thanks to a state law passed in 2012. Assembly Bill 2109 by then-Assemblyman Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, orders that children will not be allowed to attend public school without proof that parents have been counseled, and children vaccinated in accordance with the vaccination schedule of the federal Center for Disease Control. The only exception to the law is a personal belief or religious exemption – the only way Pan could get the bill passed. However, now-Sen. Richard Pan is back with another bill, Senate Bill 277, to remove even the personal belief/religious exemption, following the measles outbreak at Disneyland in January. “We are in a situation where there are not enough people being vaccinated to contain these… Read More

Sacramento is about to launch a new attack in its ongoing war on drivers.

California’s 48.6 cent gas tax already ranks second out of 50 states – the feds take another 18.4 cents — and when the hidden carbon tax, part of the cap-and-trade program, is factored in, our state leads the pack by a wide margin. But this is not nearly enough, according to the political class.

Sen. Jim Beall is building a coalition of both Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature to hike gas taxes along with vehicle license fees and registration.

The San Jose lawmaker’s Senate Bill 16 slams taxpayers in three ways. First, it would raise at least $3 billion annually by increasing the gas tax by another 10 cents a gallon. Second, it would hike the vehicle license fee, which is based on value, by more than 50 percent over 5 years. Third, it would increase the cost to register a vehicle by over 80 percent.

To read the entire column click here: http://www.hjta.org/california-commentary/more-pain-at-the-pump/… Read More

Flexing Republican muscle, the Irvine City Council is making headway on repealing years of heavy-handed Democrat policies, which are bad for business, and worse for taxpayers.

On the heels of passage of the new Los Angeles minimum wage of $15.00 per hour by 2020, the new GOP supermajority in Irvine just repealed its “living wage” ordinance. While the rest of the state seems to be pushing for mandatory minimum wage laws, or higher minimum wage laws under Democrat majorities, killing free market principles, as well as driving up the cost of city contracts, and preventing many employable students from getting important work experience, Irvine is doing things differently.

The Irvine City Council voted last week to repeal its Living Wage Ordinance, the only of its kind in all of Orange County.Where Republicans are governing, ridiculous and burdensome top-down mandates get cut.

The City of Irvine website explains the living wage:

… Read More

Being female, I am reasonably qualified to speak on the subject of feminism and how feminists have been bullying other women for more than 40 years. I was born in the early 1960’s and lived during a time when women were burning their bras, demanding equal pay, and aborting their babies on demand. Young women were told that we had been oppressed by men for too long and women’s rights were our legacy: Men had been manipulating us for years in order to get what they wanted – they always got what they wanted, and we women got nothing. We deserved equality; it was our entitlement.

Sen. Hanna Beth Jackson To The… Read More

Just as a cook’s creation is only as good as the ingredients she uses, so too is public policy only as good as the premises that undergird it.

That’s why, when it comes to judging food or policy, it’s best to have someone other than the creator evaluate the end product. Aristotle encapsulated this sentiment in 350 B.C.E. in his work Politics, and the old Greek was on to something.

It’s through that prism that one should judge the latest attempt to quash California’s ridesharing industry, this time by state Assemblyman Adrin Nazarian, D–Sherman Oaks. His rotten premise is that transportation network companies engage in “high-tech hitchhiking.” This betrays a… Read More

Like the Creature of the Walking Dead, a diabolical scientist with an unquenchable thirst for blood, California redevelopment agencies are also back from the dead. Redevelopment was developed in the 1970’s to fight urban blight, but quickly transformed into a corrupt scheme to divert county and state taxes to cities. What could possibly be wrong with “urban-renewal agencies” which float massive debt and routinely misuse eminent domain to seize private property? Ahem. But I digress.

… Read More