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It’s nearly unanimous in Sacramento to punish the three corrupt Democratic State Senators, Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, Ronald Calderon, D-Montebello, and Roderick Wright, D-Inglewood, identified as corrupt. So, Governor Jerry Brown called for their resignations. The State Senate actually suspended them.

Former Senator and Congressman John Burton, Chairman of the California Democratic Party, did not see a pattern of Democratic criminal acts. He was quoted in the Los Angeles Times attributing the arrest of the three Democratic Senators, “to the personal failings of those accused, rather than to any culture of corruption festering in Sacramento’s ruling party.” Even if he pretends not to know how Sacramento “payola” or “pay-to-play” works, he must have read them in newspaper stories.

Unfortunately, it is also almost unanimous that Sacramento’s bi-partisan corrupt system of awarding special interest laws in exchange for campaign donations continues and there is no call by our elected officials, not by Brown, not by Burton, not even by Republican leaders of the Senate or Assembly to try to permanently fix our failing legislative… Read More

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California needs a change in leadership. We face tremendous challenges in this state, from hundreds of billions in unfunded pension liabilities, to businesses that are fleeing the state due to a business climate that is over-taxed and over-regulated. Today, I am proud to endorse Neel Kashkari for Governor of California because we need a leader with the courage to address these challenges head on – not another four years of Jerry Brown as a caretaker governor who is content to kick the can down the road.

Neel has proven that he can lead and deliver in tough situations. As Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush, Neel helped steer the nation through the worst recession since the Great Depression. In times of crisis – especially like California’s current jobs crisis – I want someone like Neel in my corner.

For far too long Sacramento has been a place of misspent money and misplaced priorities. Governor Brown thinks that California has made a comeback, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The truth is that millions of Californians are still struggling. The numbers don’t lie. California ranks 47th for highest… Read More

This is Part ll of my series on California’s dubious drought and water policies

National media coverage has largely confused reasons for the current drought. We are now being told that global warming has caused the drought.

Perhaps a more realistic cause for the drought can be found in natural climate change, agricultural inefficiency, poor water storage planning, and urban development in arid regions.

Most of the media and public officials paint California farmers and ranchers as the biggest water wasters in the state. Yet they have made huge strides in improving efficient water management over the years — it’s in their best interest to do so, not only economically, but to save and conserve natural resources. Farmers and ranchers are some of the best, most efficient and effective conservationists California has.

North Korean-style water… Read More

The SAN DIEGO U-T story (below) concerning San Diego’s improving employment numbers (higher than just prior to the start of the 2007 national recession) offers good information to consider, but leaves some aspects unanswered — and some information appears to be outright misleading. Consider:

1. How many of our employed are part-time in 2014 vs. 2007? Remember, to be counted as “employed” by the government, you need work only one hour a week. If two full-time employees are replaced by three part-time employees (thanks, Obamacare), is that an improvement?

2. Professor Gin (the region’s big government academic cheerleader) asserts in the article that “35,000 people moved to San Diego” last year (keeping our unemployment rate higher than it would be otherwise). But is that GROSS or NET… Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today obliterating the Federal Election Campaign Act’s 40 year-old restriction on total contributions to Federal candidates by individuals is a stroke for free speech and a long time coming. After the FEC was created in the wake of Watergate, the restrictive new Federal campaign statute was tested in the landmark case of Buckley vs. Valeo, and the Court made significant changes to the law, ruling restrictions on so called “independent expenditures” to be unconstitutional stifling of free speech and not sufficiently related to the statute’s intention to root out “quid pro quo” corruption of the election campaign process.

Campaigns adapted under the new rules and legal precedents, which affected many state campaign finance systems as well. But the FEC law continued to contain unaddressed issues. After enactment of the sweeping “McCain-Feingold” campaign finance reform amendments to the FEC Act about ten years ago, the Supreme Court had reason to become re-engaged in looking not only at those gruesome amendments (from a free speech standpoint) but to re-think its approach to the… Read More

For public officials, generosity can be the mother of invention – and not in a good way.

This is certainly so when it comes to generous pension promises to government employees. Up and down California, politicians have had to scramble for inventive ways to pay for their munificence to public-sector retirees.

Too often the funding strategies are more reckless than resourceful.

As the pothole-pocked streets in many communities show, “delayed maintenance” is one formula for freeing up money for pension costs.

Scores of California localities have also turned to risky finance in the form of “pension obligation bonds.” Either they’ve sold bonds in order to pay near-term pension bills with long-term borrowing (essentially off-loading today’s financial woes onto the next generation), or they’ve tried to master the arcane Wall Street art of… Read More

As one talks about the “culture of corruption” in the State Legislature, there is still an unbelievable sense of entitlement and living “above the law” that permeates the building.It was once again on full display as Senate President Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg, flanked by his chosen successor Senator Kevin DeLeon, spoke in the Capitol, capturedin this short video clip from the Sacramento Bee.All you need to do is go to the 30 second point on the video to find Steinberg saying, “While the Senate itself and its members are not responsible for the alleged abhorrent behavior of two members, we are going to take … Read More

One primary reason California has the highest cost-of-living (and cost of doing business) in America, combined with a crumbling infrastructure, is because California’s construction unions have allied themselves with environmental extremists and crony “green” capitalists, instead of fighting for what might actually help their state.

California’s construction unions ought to take a look around the rest of the country, where thousands of jobs are being created in the energy industries – really good jobs – doing something that actually helps ordinary people. Because the natural gas revolution unleashed inNorth Dakota, Texas, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio is creating thousands of jobs in those states at the same time as it lowers the cost of energy for consumers who struggle to make ends meet.

More generally, construction unions should remember that it is not only how much their own members earn that matters, but how much things cost everyone. If things cost less, you can make less yet enjoy the same standard of living. When unions fight for high paying jobs on projects that are useless, they only help… Read More