Public employee unions own Sacramento.

To be more specific — public employee unions spent vast sums of money in political campaigns, almost exclusively for Democrats — and in doing so have succeeded in electing super-majorities in the State Senate and the State Assembly who will do their bidding. Oh yes, they also are the biggest funders of statewide officeholders — most notably Governor Jerry Brown.

The iron-lock that the unions have on the legislature, from time to time, is highlighted when the unions issue a death sentence for legislation that is just common sense, but not in their world where they can order bills… Read More

Several months ago my brother-in-law, a High School History teacher, was explaining to me the frustrations he has felt over the past few years dealing with the teachers union. Like many Republican teachers he and my sister, also a high school teacher, routinely saw money deducted from their pay and given to political causes with which they disagreed. Since our casual conversation he found the California Teacher Freedom Project through the California Public Policy Center and was asked to describe his experience in a column. The California Teacher Freedom Project has become a great resource for teachers who find themselves in a similar situation.

Below is the column that was published in the Ventura County Star by my brother-in-law Gabriel Enriquez on January 5th:

Teachers Pay to Protect Sex Offenders over Child Safety

In 2012 the California Assembly rejected a bill to give school boards the final authority to dismiss teachers accused of “serious and egregious” conduct, including abusing a child with sex, drugs, or violence. This proposal came after LAUSD agreed to pay teacher,… Read More

Governor Jerry Brown’s new budget proposes an additional $10 billion for K-14 education, but he also wants public school districts to increase and improve services for low-income students, foster youth, and other at-risk children. While commendable, there is bill in the State Assembly that seeks to address the needs of some of these same students in a much different and more innovative way.

AB 943, the Education Investment Incentives Act authored by Assembly Member Brian Nestande (R-Palm Desert), would increase educational opportunities for at-risk children by giving parents greater school choice and by improving the quality of education in low-income areas. Under the bill, corporations would be allowed to claim a tax credit for charitable contributions to education scholarship organizations (ESOs) that fund scholarships for school children. The scholarships would provide tuition or fee assistance for children with special needs and for foster youth to attend private schools that address their specific learning situations. These scholarships could also be used to cover transportation costs to attend a qualified public, charter or private school.

Arizona enacted… Read More

Shortly after Jerry Brown was first elected governor, nearly 40 years ago, he famously said, “This is an era of limits and we all had better get used to it.”

In keeping with this theme, it is now taxpayers who look at Governor Brown’s proposed 2014-15 budget with reduced expectations. In fairness, there are aspects of the budget plan that taxpayers can endorse. The budget reflects at least some measure of fiscal restraint and austerity. Brown’s desire for no new taxes,… Read More

I would characterize my relationship with longtime newspaper columnist and now Sacramento Bee Editorial Page Editor Dan Morain as a good one. I appreciate him for his willingness to take on anyone or anything if he smells a rat. He is also an exceptional writer. I think he appreciates me for my candor and my consistency. We disagree mightily on a number of policy areas — but that is to be expected since he part of the media’s liberal elite (Dan LOVES it when I generalize about him – not). Yesterday he had a column in the Bee entitled, Missteps on candidate questionnaires can cost elections, in which Dan offers up a shellacking of special interest groups, especially public employee unions, for their lengthy and specific candidate questionnaires, and takes a big issue with the fact that they are all filled out in secret — the public has no idea about what commitments or promises have been made by the people before them on the ballot. He does note an exception, which is the Americans for Tax Reform No Tax Pledge. In the second paragraph of his column… Read More

The prevailing challenge facing humanity when confronted with resource constraints is not that we are running out of resources, but how we will adapt and create new and better solutions to meet the needs that currently are being met by what are arguably scarce or finite resources. If one accepts this premise, that we are not threatened by diminishing resources, but rather by the possibility that we won’t successfully adapt and innovate to create new resources, a completely different perspective on resource scarcity and resource policies may emerge.

Across every fundamental area of human needs, history demonstrates that as technology and freedom is advanced, new solutions evolve to meet them. Despite tragic setbacks of war or famine that provide examples to contradict this optimistic claim, overall the lifestyle of the average human being has inexorably improved across the centuries. While it is easy to examine specific consumption patterns today and suggest we now face a tipping point wherein shortages of key resources will overwhelm us, if one examines key resources one at a time, there is a strong argument that such a catastrophe, if it does occur, will be the result… Read More

Here’s a new link to my latest and greatest “CA vs. the Other States” fact sheet. This just-updated version is MUCH better formatted and organized than my clunky effort — posted up by the California Public Policy Center. As many of you know, it’s a dreary compendium of facts concerning California’s tax, spending, regulatory and litigation climate.

I’m told that yesterday on the CPPC Facebook post on this got 3,000 reads in two hours.

http://californiapublicpolicycenter.org/unaffordable-california-january-2014-update/

Share this with friends. And enemies!… Read More

This week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was presented with an unexpected opportunity to show people how he responds to a crisis. News that some of his top aides were involved with creating traffic problems in Ft. Lee in retaliation for its mayor not endorsing the governor’s re-election bid contained all the ingredients for a serious scandal for a national figure.

While even the worst details of the “bridgegate” scandal don’t come anywhere close to Watergate, Iran-Contra, or Whitewater, history shows that how a leader responds to a crisis can have a bigger impact than the crisis itself. Recall that in Watergate, it wasn’t the June 17, 1972 break-in… Read More