Genevieve Shiroma, long time member of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, as well as a board member for the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District, is the subject of a legal brief to disqualify her from the ALRB for bias and conflicts of interest.

How could the SMUD board and the Ag labor board be tied together in a conflict?

ALRB board member Shiroma hired UFW lobbyist Richie Ross for her personal campaign the same year he successfully lobbied passage of the ALRB’s California Mandatory Mediation and Conciliation Statute. The MMC law empowers the board to write and force contracts on employers and workers.

In September 2002, then-Gov. Gray Davis signed into law SB 1156 and AB 2596, the first major amendments to the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which was signed into law by then-Gov. Jerry Brown. The MMC law would compel Gerawan and its workers into a state-imposed “contract” that would saddle the employees with the UFW as their exclusive representative.

The UFW won an election to represent Gerawan Farming’s workers 25 years ago. But after only one bargaining session, the union disappeared and wasn’t… Read More

California state budgets no longer require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to be passed, butthere are still budget games, deals and hinky promises that happen in the process.. However, tax increases do still require two-thirds vote.

This year, Gov. Jerry Brown had proposed tax increases – a gas tax hike, a road tax for miles driven, a car registration hike, and a health plan tax… to name a few.

In order to get these tax increases approved, Brown and his administration use arm-twisting and extortive tactics on lawmakers who show resistance.

In… 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

In a provocative and electrifying legal move, Gerawan Farming Company employee Silvia Lopez filed a legal brief to disqualify ALRB Board Member Genevieve Shiroma from the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, for bias and conflicts of interest.

Lopez cites evidence of Shiroma’s close political ties with the United Farm Workers union, and long time Democrat political operative Richie Ross. Silvia Lopez, a San Joaquin Valley farm worker, filed legal documents detailing payments over $120,000 from Shiroma to United Farm Workers’ Lobbyist Richie Ross, and documented Shiroma’s financial support of the author of a bill designed to help the UFW force itself on workers. UFW is the same union trying to force itself on the employees where Lopez works, as Lopez has fought for two years for her co-workers right to vote. Shiroma made the payments to the UFW’s lobbyist while she sat in judgment of issues directly involving that union, and while the workers ballots remain uncounted in a government vault

In 2013, I did an investigation of Shiroma and found some startling conflicts.

“In 1998, voters… Read More

As the Black Lives Matter protest in the San Francisco Bay Area on Martin Luther King Day blocked traffic on the Bay Bridge backing commuters up for nearly 45 minutes, Sacramento had its own Martin Luther King Day Parade hijacked.

The annual MLK Parade passes by my house, and through my downtown neighborhood every year. This year, a very large group marching behind the high school marching bands loudly chanted, “Hands up, Don’t shoot.” Led by a woman on a megaphone, they also chanted, “Black lives matter,” and “Hey hey, ho… Read More

I’ve written several times since 2009 about the ridiculous hassles I’ve had with the manypress credential hold-ups at the hands of the Capitol Correspondents Association and Assembly Speaker’s press office.

“Statehouse leaders affirmed a committee of journalists’ recommendation to reject press credentials for Watchdog.org, raising questions about both journalistic ethics and the First Amendment in the state’s vetting process, ethics experts say,” a recent Watchdog.org story reported. It could be my story.

I’ve been in a battle once again with the Capitol Correspondents Association of California media cartel over my annual request for Capitolpresscredentials renewal. I was informed at the end of the legislative session that the CCAC denied my request. Their reason this time is because the publisher of the Flash Report, one of the websites where I post my articles and columns, has a political consulting business, and the CCAC board feels payments to him violate the CCAC bylaws.

I… Read More

Hoping to bring back citizen representation, Tony “The Tiger” Lopezis running for Mayor of Sacramento. Lopez, a 3-Time WorldBoxingChampion, is a native of Sacramento, CA. Always a fan favorite in Sacramento, Lopez won the IBF junior lightweight title twice and the WBA lightweight title once.

“During his 16-year career, Lopez faced the gauntlet at 130-135 pounds, squaring off with the likes of Julio Cesar Chavez Sr., Joey Gamache, John John Molina, Jorge Paez, Brian Mitchell, Greg Haugen and Freddie Pendleton,” Ring TV wrote.

Since his retirement from the ring, Lopez has been serving the Northern California community for more than 16 years atTony “The Tiger” Bail Bonds. I sat down with Tony recently at his downtown Sacramento office and talked about his desire to be Mayor, his fighting career, the importance of his bail bonds business, and his philosophy of life and politics.

The History of the World

Lopez is instantly a warm and engaging… Read More