Secession Fever: Don’t Catch It
Crossposted on CalWatchdog SACRAMENTO — Psychiatrists talk about the progressive stages of grief people experience after suffering a devastating loss in their personal lives, moving from denial to anger to bargaining (i.e., trying to strike a “deal” with a higher power) to depression and, finally, to acceptance. Political scientists ought to come up with a […]
Unions Spend Big, Win Big in California
Crossposted Bloomberg News Efforts to rein in the power of California’s public-employee unions, and to reform out-of- control compensation costs that are eroding services and busting public budgets, came to a crashing halt on Tuesday in California. The idealistic hope that California voters would keep a firm grasp on their wallets, thus forcing the state […]
Desperate Governor Turns to Distortions
Crossposted on CalWatchDog Gov. Jerry Brown has fiddled while Sacramento has burned, squandering his entire governorship on a pointless campaign to massively raise income taxes on the poor, middle class and wealthy Californians through the Prop. 30 sales and income tax hike. Now that the initiative’s support is failing — it’s below 50 percent according […]
Business Groups and Taxpayers Associations
Crossposted CalWatchDog California taxpayers can hardly get a break. The Democrats who have ironclad control of the state government are constantly looking for ways to hike taxes and the state’s business leaders epitomize the crony capitalist model, as they throw average taxpayers under the bus and seek out special privileges for themselves. The California Chamber […]
California Businesses Are Wimps on High Taxes
Crossposted on Bloomberg.com If you listen to the union-financed advertising campaigns, you would think that corporate interests control California’s capital and are bulldozing the interests of “working-class” taxpayers to promote conservative causes. In the minds of union activists, billionaires are conspiring to turn deep-blue California into a red zone. In particular, opponents of a state […]
Unhappy Californians Unwilling to Change
Crossposted on CalWatchDog California residents are depressed about the economy and see little hope for change in the near future, yet they seem more reluctant than ever to change the current high-tax, union-dominated political course that has led to the struggling economy. As the Field Poll revealed in July, “Californians have had an extremely gloomy […]
Lessons from the Badger State for California
SACRAMENTO — During recent travels to Madison and Milwaukee for some research about reform-minded Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s survival of a union-backed recall, I found little residual anger among the friendly folks there, despite seemingly endless pitched political battles that divided families and led to angry water-cooler discussions. Perhaps the central issue — Walker’s […]
Police Shooting Policies Need Rethinking
Crossposted on CalWatchDog While sitting in a restaurant in Philadelphia’s Chinatown during my first visit here in more than a decade, I watched TV news reports of violent protests erupting in normally placid Anaheim after two fatal police shootings the prior weekend. It was shocking. The footage of riot-clad police tussling with and firing nonlethal […]
Schwarzenegger’s Bizarre Analysis
Cross posted on CalWatchDog I love it when politicians have their chance in power, squander their opportunities, then spend the rest of their career lecturing us about how to reform government. Arnold Schwarzenegger was not just a disappointment, he was a fraud — and a particularly embarrassing one at that. Now he is playing martyr, […]
More Proof Dems Manipulated Redistricting
Crossposted on CalWatchdog Over the summer, Calwatchdog published a series of articles documenting the way that the political Left exploited the redistricting process to assure strong gains for the Democratic Party. The report included an exclusive interview with a redistricting commission member who alleged partisan behavior by his supposedly non-partisan commission colleagues, but the series […]