California truck and business owners initiated a lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board because of exploding trucks and roadside fires, due to the CARB’s mandatory, faulty diesel particulate filters, they say. Ironically, the filters even fail at cleaning the air.

The Alliance for California Business, a voluntary group whose purpose is to protect and promote business interests throughout California, says Diesel Particulate Filters have started more than 31 fires in the last two years, including several in areas of the state parched by the drought. The Diesel Particulate Filters are the result of environmental regulations created by the California Air Resources Board, and were based on a… Read More

Regardless what a punk Carolina Panthers’ quarterback Cam Newton may or may not be, the ugly news that he will owe $137,900 in taxes — for losing the Super Bowl – shouldn’t be the thanks he gets.

The thanks is courtesy of California’s highest-in-the-nation tax rate of 13.3 percent, known as the “jock tax” – the nonresident income taxes that states and cities enforce on athletes performing in their jurisdictions.

As Kurt Bedenhausen explained in Forbes last week, “Newton will pay California 86.3% of his Super Bowl earnings if the Panthers win. Losing means his effective tax rate will be a whopping 172.2%. Oh yeah, he will also pay the IRS 40.5% on his… Read More

“If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

~Ronald Reagan

Despite California’s highest-in-the-nation taxes, a couple of Assembly Republicans have allegedly agreed to vote for Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax on health plans in the State of California.

Even if Brown is able to convince health insurers, he needs a two-thirds majority vote from the Legislature. And this is where Republican votes come in. Currently, Democrats do not have a supermajority, and need to peel off a couple of Republican votes for tax increases.

Predictably, Brown has been trying to convince Republicans his health plan tax is really “tax reform.”

“This is not a tax increase, no matter what anyone tells you,” he said during his State of the State address.

“It will be pretty easy to tell if this is a tax increase, or some sort of revenue neutral swapping of one tax for another,” said Jon Fleischman, publisher of the Flash… Read More

From the State of California’s Department of Business Prevention comes another random minimum wage hike to help kill off more businesses.

The final phase of the 2013 Assembly Bill 10 went into effect Jan. 1, bumping the minimum wage to $10-per-hour statewide. AB 10 is the final step of a two-stage increase. California and Massachusetts are now the states with the highest minimum wage. Only California is also home to the highest income taxes, sales taxes, and high property taxes.

Bureaucrats Interfere

Work should be valued only… Read More

After years ofintense government and union harassment by theAgricultural Labor Relations Board and the United Farm Workers labor union,Gerawan Farming Inc. notified its workers that effective February 25, 2016, the company will fully close its entire table grape operation, in the County of Fresno. Pursuant to the Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, known as the WARN Act, Gerawan has been forced into a position of closing an entire arm of its farming operations because of California government assisting a labor union attempt to take over a large company.And Gov. Jerry Brown has not once intervened to stop the unlawful harassment by the union or his own state agency.

The table grape operation closure does not affect any of the employees’ employment in other Gerawan farming operations, but now thousands of farm workers will lose well-paying farm jobs because of California’s corrupt state government. Gerawan always exceeds industry average wages and are the first to increase wages. Gerawan’s website shows their hourly wage for grape packline as $16.27, and upwards of $20.00 per… Read More

What’s missing in most government representation these days is actual representation of the citizens. The city of Fresno, CA is fortunate to have a councilman who works on behalf of its residents. And now, Councilman Clint Olivier, a Republican, is running for State Assembly. But what makes his race so interesting is he announced his Assembly run early to replace Assemblyman Henry Perea, D-Fresno. However, complicating issues, Perea just announced last week he is resigning office effective December 31.

There will be a Special Election to fill out the remaining months of Perea’s term, likely to be held in early April, if all goes well.

“If Olivier’s name isn’t familiar, be thankful,” I wrote in June. “He’s not the son of a politician. He’s not from Hollywood. He didn’t get independently wealthy as a hedge-fund manager on oil and coal investments. He hasn’t sold rocket launchers to Filipino Muslim separatists, or offered bribes to FBI agents.”

Assemblyman Perea shook up the race for his seat as he announced his resignation last week to head for a lucrative lobbying job. The two previously announced contenders for the Assembly seat… Read More

California’s Political Climate Needs to Be Cleaned of Polluted Politicians

Tuesday’s Sacramento Bee has an op ed from Senate President pro Tem Kevin de Leon, a Democrat from Los Angeles, on full attack of the Bee’s own Dan Walters for daring to point out that California is not booming economically, despite what de Leon and Gov. Jerry Brown tell us.

Fuzzy Math

De Leon claims in his op ed (‘Climate Change Policies Will Help Poorest Californians’), “California’s job growth outpaced all other states in 2014 and unemployment is 5.8 percent, the lowest since October 2007.”

This is only true if like de Leon, Gov. Brown, and the Obama administration, an employed Californian is defined as a worker who performs at a job one hour a week, and therefore can be counted as “employed.”

A full time “job” used to be defined by the government and Bureau of Labor Statistics as 30 or more hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Labor Law attorneys still consider 30+ hours of work… Read More

California Governor Jerry Brown inherited the Golden State, the land of opportunity. However, everything he touches turns Brown.

Climate change has been the top priority of his governorship… not the flailing economy, or California’s largest-in-the-country-and-growing poverty class, or the 47th in school performance issue, or the $600 Billion in unfunded public employee pension and health liability, or the desperate need for water storage, or even the illegal immigrant problem.

For Brown who has said “Latin makes you smarter than everybody,” Climate change is his ignis fatuus – his fata… Read More