Suppose you have been scrimping for years so that you and your family could finally enjoy a Hawaiian vacation. Winging your way high over the Pacific, visions of palm trees, white sandy beaches, crystal clear water and maybe even hula dancers pass through your head.

Disembarking at Honolulu International Airport what do you see? Politicians. Lots of politicians. Lots of California politicians.

The California politicians are making their annual pilgrimage to paradise. And while you are paying for your own accommodations, the California lawmakers scheduled to attend the Independent Voter Project (IVP) conference scheduled to begin November 17, will have most of the bill for their suites at the 5-star Fairmont Kea Lani picked up by others. Among the dozens of interests providing hospitality to legislators are a host of corporations and even one of the most powerful public employee unions in California.

However, not to worry. No lobbying will take place according to Dan Howle, a Lilly USA executive who helped organize the event. “It gives the sponsoring companies an opportunity to talk about what their business is like in California,” Howle told the Los… Read More

Last week gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly was warned he was about to receive a cease and desist notice from Assembly administrator Jon Waldie, telling him he was not allowed to use Assembly video footage in his political campaign.

Yet the video footage in question,of Assembly floor sessions, is available to the public on theCalifornia Channelonline, and on Comcast cable television. It is in fact, paid for by the public.

Donnelly’s campaign has a video posted on YouTube.
”Patriot, Not Politician,”features many clips of the Assemblyman Donnelly speaking on the Assembly floor, which Waldie says isnot allowed “for any political or commercial purpose.”

However, Assembly… Read More

[Updated at 2:30 pm, at bottom…]

Exactly one week ago today, literally out of the blue, moderate Republican State Senator Bill Emmerson announced that he had tendered his resignation from office, effective December 1st of this year.

In his short public statement, Emmerson declared, “I have always felt that one had to be passionate about their work. In these past few months, my passion has waned and my constituents deserve a Senator with the level of commitment that I once had.”

The Senator made it clear he was in good health.

Politics being what it is, all eyes have now focused on the 23rd State Senate District, with everyone wondering who will succeed Emmerson.

While a special election will not formally be called until Emmerson is actually out of office, peeking at the calendar one can assume that it is likely that a special election will be held in April of next year, and that a probable runoff election would then be consolidated with the June statewide… Read More

I received my notice of cancellation from Anthem Blue Cross October 14, stating my company’s health insurance plan will no longer be available Jan. 1, 2014. But as a 20-year former Human Resource professional, panic did not set in.

Instead, I was angry.

I have a really good PPO plan. My annual out-of-pocket is high, but my coverage is good. It makes doctors smile when they see I have a PPO. Cha-ching $$.

I like my insurance plan. I like my family doctor — we have a 23 year relationship. Skin cancer and San Joaquin Valley allergies have plagued me for years, so my two favorite docs are my dermatologist of 25 years, and my ear, nose, throat doctor of nearly 28 years.

The cancellation of my plan means Anthem Blue Cross agreed to what Covered California forced on them, to cancel all employer plans by December 31, 2013.

Tuesday, Anthem Blue Cross of California announced it has agreed to a two-month extension of more than 100,000 individual policies. This was supposedly after they failed to give the required 90-day cancellation notice, state Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones announced this week.

The policies had been set to expire on Dec.… Read More

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[Editor’s Note: We are pleased to share this original commentary from Doug Lasken on the Tea Party.]

Unlike the journey in the Jules Verne fantasy, where explorers find specific forms at the center of the earth (e.g. a twelve foot tall prehistoric human shepherding mastodons), my experience traveling into the Tea Party center has been more like that of a particle physicist, where the clear forms of the larger world become increasingly blurred and elusive the closer one looks.

In the first foray of my quest to get a close look at the Tea Party, I discovered, at a rally of the Tea Party California Caucus (TPCC) at the state GOP convention on Oct. 4, that there is no clear identification among Tea Party members with the Republican Party. In fact, keynote speakers told the story of TPCC attendance at the convention as if it were the tale of a clandestine invasion of the Party, and a number of speakers proudly told that they had quit the GOP when it “lost its way.”

I had been invited to attend the TPCC rally because of my… Read More

Everyone knows that our nation’s tax laws are a mess, and the specific rules in the tax code that apply to political activities are no exception. While they are very complicated, they aren’t to blame for secret money in the funding of ballot measures. John Myers’ article “Ballot measure money not political under IRS loophole” confuses two separate and distinct legal issues, and credits the wrong one for the supposed problem.

The 501(c)(4) status under the federal tax code is not a loophole and has very little to do with campaign (candidate or ballot measure related) disclosure laws in California. The fact that ballot measure advocacy isn’t defined as “political intervention” in the tax code (it’s actually part of the definition of “lobbying”) doesn’t mean that state campaign finance rules don’t apply to such activity when engaged in by 501(c)(4)s. Just the opposite is true.

Since ballot measures are creatures of state law, state campaign finance laws, not the federal tax code, define the parameters for disclosable ballot… Read More

During the most recent year for which there is publicly available data, the fiscal-year-ended 6-30-2012, the California State Teachers Retirement System contributed a $1.1 billion paymenttowards paying off an unfunded liability of $71.0 billion. This fact, and much more, came out in a California Public Policy Center study released last week “Are Annual Contributions Into CalSTRS Adequate?”

Now let’s suppose you have borrowed $71,000, and you are paying a 7.5% interest rate on this borrowed money. Do you think you would ever have this debt paid off, if you only paid $1,100 per year? How would that work? Isn’t 7.5% interest on $71,000 equal to $5,300? Wouldn’t a mere $1,100 payment put you further in the hole by $4,200? Wouldn’t you owe $75,200 by the end of the year, more than the $71,000 debt you started with?

Multiply by a billion and you’ve got CalSTRS.

And this same disastrous, wishful thinking is playing out in nearly every “professionally managed” public sector pension fund in California. Every year, the combined unfunded liability… Read More

Riddle me this: Why do government projects never seem to be completed efficiently, on budget and on time?

Currently, national attention is focused on the failure of the ObamaCare website. Not since the launch of the Titanic has so much gone so wrong. After three and a half years and a $1 billion investment, most of those visiting the site found it non-functional – reports are that on the first day, only six individuals were able to sign up on a website intended to serve millions. However, this is only the latest IT project to be bungled by government officials.

A September $62 million systems “upgrade” by the California Employment Development Department triggered a backlog of 100,000 jobless claims and thousands of unemployed were still waiting for their benefits more than a month later.

An isolated occurrence? Hardly. In February, state officials jettisoned a flawed overhaul of the state’s payroll system that was $250 million over budget and four years behind schedule.

Earlier this year, the Sacramento Business Journal reviewed some of California’s biggest technological boondoggles and concluded that canceled projects, cost overruns and… Read More