Is “Open Government” Such a Hard Concept to Grasp?

There was an article online yesterday about the woeful state of public access to California’s database of lobbyists and their influence in state government. It was sad but not surprising. The Fresno Bee calls the system the “secrecy lobby,” and that pretty much sums things up.

By law, the people of California have the right to know who contributes to political campaigns, how much money lobbyists give to politicians, and who gives gifts to government officials. There’s a reason for the limits on those contributions and gifts, and we the people deserve to judge for… Read More

“Robots will steal your job, but that’s ok.” Federico Pistono

Anyone who has recently driven through Mountain View, in the heart of Silicon Valley, is likely to have had the memorable experience of sharing the road with a car that has nobody inside. Google’s “autonomous cars” are being tested there, and apparently they drive better than people do – they are smart, safe, sober, and tireless. They have the potential to eliminate 3.6 million full-time jobs in the United States.

Anyone purchasing materials at a Home Depot store, or their local grocery chain store, without interacting with a human cashier, has seen the future of retail employment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 3.4 million people working as retail cashiers in the United States. Most of those jobs are also at risk.

What about agriculture? New robots are coming that can do anything a farm worker can do. As noted in this report, “Robot harvests on the horizon; farm owners predict machines will revolutionize costs,” a machine… Read More

With the birth of a new royal heir in Great Britain, it is a good time to remind ourselves that our ancestors put everything at risk and fought a revolutionary war to cast off the idea of a “Divine Right of Kings” — the foundation of our country is no better expressed than in the very first words of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

And there you have it. God did not give Kings or Queens a “divine right” to Lord over others. God created us all as equals.

Near the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson penned a letter to be read on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In it, he said in part, “All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man… The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of God.”

So happy birthday to royal baby x, the newest symbol of a dynasty… Read More

I rarely find myself smiling at anything Senator Darrell Steinberg says these days. But his recent comments to the Capitol Press Corps that he wants to see legislation to erode California’s Medical Injury Reform Act, or MICRA in Sacramento parlance, brought a big grin to my face.

To be sure, I’m a strong supporter of MICRA, which limits speculative “non-economic” damages in medical liability lawsuits. And I strongly oppose efforts by the trial lawyer lobby to erode MICRA so lawyers can file more frivolous lawsuits against doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers and generate big fees for themselves.

But the… Read More

After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, the replacement span for the Bay Bridge was originally expected to be completed by 1994 and cost less than a billion dollars. To say that those responsible for this project missed their targets would be a gross understatement. With broken bolts and all, the bridge still isn’t open and now its projected cost is over $6 billion.

So who is responsible? As for the delay, political meddling by then Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown insisting on a “world class” bridge and SF Mayor Willie Brown’s leveraging the SF-owned Treasure Island anchorage point as a bargaining chip has to assume some share of blame for the ten-year delay.

Add to that CalTrans’ bureaucratic incompetence. CalTrans, simply put, wanted to show that it could take on a huge public works project. This resulted in a bureaucratic turf war with the vested interests… Read More

As the California Republican Party struggles to find a winning formula, it is abundantly clear that we are omitting something – attracting Asian Pacific American voters, 11% of registered voters. Finally, the RNC is putting its time and money into California AP communities.

Have the recent defeats of Meg Whitman and Governor Mitt Romney evoked enough pain for the party to consider fundamental changes? Specifically, is the party capable of attracting, recruiting and promoting APAs into the leadership and core of the California Republican Party?

Republican political consultants should have learned that the dinosaurs that ‘ran’ the Whitman and Romney electoral disasters are to be avoided like cancerous pathogens. Romney/Whitman politicos willfully and knowledgeably ignored APA voters. [See my piece in the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone’s response to it, and the Wall Street Journal – all warning Romney, Inc., Aug. 2012] In California, 11% of voters are of Asian or Pacific Islander heritage and in battleground Nevada and Virginia… Read More

I wrote about this topic before on 27 June. Assemblyman Rocky Chavez (nominally ‘R’) is pushing a new subsidy for CA state college students, using incorrect figures to hype his case.

Aside from it being a bad idea, he’s using false percentages to justify this new giveaway, AB 159. Specifically, he claimed that CSU tuition has risen 217% in 5 years — the correct figure is 117%, the result of a common math error involving percentages above 100%. Here’s the link my article:

http://riderrants.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-rocky-chavez-its-for-children-mantra.html

I posted this on a number of websites, including at least one I KNOW his staff monitors — they post for Rocky on such websites. I also emailed the Chavez office, asking that they correct their stats.

… Read More

This is a column where I split my column inches on two totally different topics. I tried to intermingle my points on the two topics – didn’t work. So first some random thoughts on the egregious House “Farm Bill” passed with 216 Republicans votes, followed by some random thoughts on the travails of scandal-laden San Diego Mayor Bob Filner…

FARM BILL

— Republicans in Congress often decry taxpayer subsidies, price controls, government manipulation of free markets, and using the power of government to pick winners and losers. Yet 216 House GOPers suspended their convictions long enough to vote out an egregious $200 billion spending bill (called the “Farm Bill”) that does all of these things and more. It’s both embarrassing and disheartening.

— For those curious about how California’s 15 Republicans voted on the so-called “Farm Bill” — Voting yes: Ken Calvert, Jeff Denham, Darrell Issa, Doug LaMalfa, Kevin McCarthy, Buck McKeon, Gary Miller, Devin Nunes, Dana Rohrabacher,… Read More