California manufacturers are among the best friends the state’s economy can have.  The sector pays an annual average of $74,000 in wages and traditionally is one of the best providers of health insurance for employees.

You would think, then, that everyone on Team California would be pulling for this vital sector to remain healthy and growing.  After all, over the last two years, our state has lagged behind the rest of the country in manufacturing job growth and new investments. 

Like the last minute of a close NBA basketball game, California’s senate supermajority called timeout before making its big play against Proposition 13.  The senate considered four constitutional amendments that would raise taxes with a 55 percent vote instead of the two-thirds vote requirement that Proposition 13 imposes on special taxes for specific purposes. The senate has a whole slew of special purposes for which they would like to make it easier to raise taxes: schools, libraries, economic development projects, special district activities.

“Waiter and Waitress Nation” is the title of a recent  posting by American Enterprise Institute economist James Pethokoukis.  Of the 175,000 net payroll jobs added nationwide in May 2013, more than half were created by three sectors associated with lower wage jobs, the restaurant sector  (38,100 jobs), retail trade (27,700) and temporary employment  (25,600 jobs) .

Is there a similar distribution in California? Are the jobs being created in California in recent years  mainly in lower wage sectors? Will we  all be food service workers soon?

I will be honest: the title of this blog was a little hard to type. But I was reading an article in Reuters and it made me wonder: does the President believe in legal reform? On one level it would seem that he does. Just last week, he took steps intended to curb lawsuits brought by companies called “patent trolls.” These companies do not make or sell anything; they specialize in suing others for patent infringement. He asked for new federal regulations and action from Congress.

In a letter sent yesterday to members of Congress, I joined with more than 20 local chamber of commerce executives from throughout California urging action on national immigration reform.

Four significant issues critical to our citizens and employers are why immigration reform is more important to California than any other state.  These issues include H-1B visas, the temporary worker program, enhancing border security in a way that does not hamper trade with Mexico, and resolving uncertainty over the legal status of the largest undocumented population in the country.

The only thing worse than the budget trailer bill SB 71, a rather naked attempt to gut the California Public Records Act, are the disingenuous defenses of the bill being offered by the administration, legislative Democrats, and local governments.

We are told that local governments will continue to follow the provisions of the public records act because it represents best practices, that making key provisions of the act into public options is good policy.

The problem is that the bill turns what are now requirements into rules that are at the discretion of local agencies.

Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an interview conducted by editorial writer Allysia Finley with Andy Puzder, president of CKE Restaurants, headquartered in California. CKE operates Carl’s Jr. restaurants and other establishments. While the entire interview can be found here, below are a number of paragraphs detailing Puzder’s eye-opening view of conducting business in California.

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These days, California is one of the few states where the company isn’t looking to expand. “Like many businesses, we love California and would love to build more restaurants,” he says. But “California is not interested in having businesses grow,” even though many multinational companies, including CKE, have headquarters there.

Nanny state politics has ruled California for many years. If it moves, the California legislature wants to tax it, regulate it, or mandate it. Schools have also been under the thumb of teachers union bureaucracies and with that comes behavior that is one-size-fits-all – dictated by a nanny state bureaucracy that is rigid and unbending.

Strobridge Elementary in Hayward, California held what they called a “toy gun exchange” which offered students a book in exchange for turning in their Nerf guns, squirt guns, and other neon-plastic playtime firearms. They were even entered into a raffle to win a free bicycle.

Recently, Governor Jerry Brown reached a new labor agreement with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1000 that gives 95,000 state employees a 4.5% pay raise beginning in mid-2014. This comes on the heels of a budget compromise between the Governor and Legislative Democrats that is being touted as “conservative” and “balanced”.  Under the compromise, State General Fund spending for the 2013-14 budget is $96.4 billion, $1.4 billion more than the 2012-13 budget.  Also, total spending from all revenue sources is nearly $5 billion greater than the $228 billion last year, setting a new spending record of $233 billion.

It’s been only two weeks since the statewide effort to ban plastic bags in California failed miserably in the California State Senate and already the Golden State environmentalists are at it again. A newly proposed ordinance in the City of Los Angeles would outlaw plastic bags across the city, while levying a heavy 10-cent usage fee on all paper bags.

They’re certainly a persistent and passionate bunch, this band of green activists. But some might be surprised to learn that the measure’s most vocal booster is actually a newcomer to the California environmental scene.