As Gov. Jerry Brown seeks funding for California’s high-speed rail system in China, it is remarkable that the state’s train project is still alive.

California’s past legislatures have continued to fund the California High-Speed Rail Authority in a business-as-usual manner despite the plethora of findings demonstrating the quality of CHSRA’s work is below par, that the high-speed train’s project risks have been under-estimated, and that the statutory requirements of AB3034 and Proposition 1A are being violated.

The CHSRA’s excuses about program flaws are similar to rationalizations used on other similar boondoggles in which costs had been unrealistically minimized and benefits exaggerated, inducing public officials and the electorate to proceed, usually after cancellation is no longer feasible. If realistic, genuine projections had been made from the start, the California train project would likely have been cancelled long ago.

Our new Reason Foundation study concludes that the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s 2012 Business Plan has no more credibility than did… Read More

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In the past few weeks United States Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon (CA-26), Chairman of the powerful House Armed Services Committee, has been talking with prominent political leaders in his district, informing them that he may be retiring at the end of his current term. I’ve personally spoken to several of the folks who spoke with McKeon, who confirmed for me that they had spoken with the senior Republican who was first elected in 1992, and is currently serving in his 11th term in the House.

I spoke with Congressman McKeon last evening in advance of publishing this story, and the Congressman would only say on the record that he has not yet made a decision about whether he would seek re-election in 2014.

Because of “committee term limits” within the House Republican Conference, the 74-year-old McKeon is in his last two year stint as Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. McKeon is the senior member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and has served on top GOP spot on that committee for a term, but would be allowed, if chosen to do so, to serve two… Read More

For your edification, here’s your media bias story of the day. The national media made a story out of a nonstory — a mini-rally of tiny proportions. Typical was NPR’s piece describing the rally as the “counterweight to the Tea Party” — a protest outside the White House. Backed by numerous heavyweight leftist groups such as the AFL-CIO,MoveOn.org, the National Organization for Women, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America, and National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, the story got great media play, as all such political mega-rallies in DC deserve.

But there were only 100 people at this heavily sponsored rally. And that’s the “counterweight to the Tea Party”????

SUURRREEEEE.

BTW, the photo below is a TEA PARTY rally, tens of thousands strong — not the media-ballyhooed pathetic gathering of 100 — mostly paid staffers of the sponsoring left wing outfits.

——… Read More

The American Republic was and is a “Grand Experiment”. Before and after the Constitution was written and adopted, some of the Founding Fathers were overtly concerned about the rise of factions or political parties. One of the more famous quotes from John Adams ran “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” However, once electoral reality set in, many of the Founding Fathers became intimately involved in the formation of the primeval American party system.

I believe that political parties are an important ‘check and balance’ in the American Republic, and that the intellectual movement that advocates a system largely based on independent officeholders is idealistic – well meaning but misguided. Please note that when I refer to “independent candidates” I am referring to candidates without a political party, who are truly independent, not to candidates who run as part of some… Read More

“Forget about logic,” Jack advised. My analytics instructor says that all logic is mere tautology. She says it is impossible to learn anything through logic that you did not already know.” Robert A. Heinlein, Tunnel in the Sky

What about facts? There are certainly facts we don’t already know. According to the logic of the labor union spokespersons who relentlessly lobby and negotiate for higher wages and benefits for public sector workers, they are still underpaid because they have higher levels of education than the average worker. According to the logic ofAFSCME Local 3336, the only reason anyone might think public sector employees are overpaid is because of right wing propaganda. Yet it seems the many studies that fund their own analyses come from taxpayer supported institutions staffed with unionized faculty, or think tanks funded by grants from public employee unions.

But why impugn the sources? Why consider their logic? Why not just present the facts and let journalists, policymakers, and voters employ their own logic to form an opinion?

That is… Read More

Democrats in Sacramento are not being shy about using their supra-majority clout in both chambers of the state Legislature, and they are offering a host of bad new bills to change the election process. Here are just a few of them:

-AB 530, by Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva, Orange County’s newest Democrat lawmaker, would allow counties to accept absentee ballot applications over the phone;

-SB 29, by Senator Lou Correa, would allow counting of mail-in ballots received as long as three days after the election;

-AB 400, Assemblyman Fong, would require content in initiative petitions to name top donors paying to circulate the petitions;

-SB 756, Senator Galgiani, allows Election Day voter registration to begin immediately in 2014, instead of waiting for an online voter registration system in development;

-AB 938, by Assemblymember Shirley Weber, would allow some felons, such as postrelease felons under supervision (a type of parole) to vote;

-AB 149, also by Assemblymember Weber, which would require that voter information packages and registration cards be provided to all inmates at county jails and state prisons.

There… Read More

On April 1, the Democrats running Sacramento took a perfectly good bill and – in the spirit of April Fools’ Day – made fools of California’s voters and college students.

Voters approved the Proposition 30 tax increase on last year’s ballot in order to protect education. For too long, politicians in the legislature have been wasting dollars that should have been spent on our schools and colleges by giving them away to their own special interests. But with Proposition 30, voters said no to continuing that waste.

That’s why the Republicans proposed Assembly Bill 67. As originally written before the Democrats pulled their April Fools prank, AB 67 would have prohibited California’s colleges and universities from increasing tuition during the seven years that Proposition 30 raises taxes. Voters were promised that those taxes would go to education. A tuition freeze honors that promise. AB 67 assured that Sacramento won’t spend the extra money on lower priority things. It assured that our colleges and universities won’t be starved for cash again, and forced to raise tuition on hard working California families. And it assured that promises made by… Read More

Readers of this column are fully aware that the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is the leading voice for California’s beleaguered homeowners and citizen taxpayers. For that reason, we have frequently confronted situations where California’s political elites attempt to silence our voice or limit the access conferred to others in communicating our message to the public at large.

Just last year, you may recall, Senate Pro Tem, Darrell Steinberg, intentionally shut off the camera which was airing what was specifically designated as a “public hearing” at the Capitol just as HJTA’s representative was about to testify on the horrible impacts of Proposition 30. Agree with us or not, we had an important message to share with all California voters as to why imposing the highest income tax and sales tax rates in America was a bad idea. Pulling the plug on the public access channel was such an unwarranted act of censorship that even the usually liberal media was outraged.

Well, here we go again.

Today, April 8, 2013, the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation is holding a 3 hour hearing on Proposition 13. And yet the organization which is… Read More