Brown’s “Who’s the Boss?” Moment
In vetoing the budget bill, Governor Brown criticized Republicans for stymieing his proposed election to extend temporary taxes. But the real message was delivered to Democratic leadership in the Legislature: "I’m in charge here."
Pressured by a deadline to play-or-not-get-paid, Democratic majorities passed a gimmicky budget, described by the Governor https:> as "not a balanced solution." He further said the budget "continues big deficits for years to come and adds billions of dollars in new debt. It also contains legally questionable maneuvers, costly borrowing and unrealistic savings. Finally, it is not financeable and therefore will not allow us to meet our obligations as they occur."
Calif. Business Departures Increasing — Now Five Times Higher Than In 2009
Since the beginning of this year, California has experienced 129 disinvestment events, an average of 5.4 per week. Comparing this year thus far with 2009, when the total was 51 events, essentially averaging 1 per week, our rate today is more than 5 times what it was then.
Hence, California is experiencing the fastest rate of disinvestment events based on public domain information, closure notices to the state, and information from affected employees in the three years since a specialized tracking system was put into place.
No one knows the real level of activity because smaller companies are not required to file layoff notices with the state. A conservative estimate is that only 1 out of 5 company departures becomes public knowledge, which means California may suffer more than 1,000 disinvestment events this year. The capital directed to out-of-state or out-of-country, while difficult to calculate, is nonetheless in the billions of dollars.
Pirates of the Internet
Pirates aren’t what they used to be. No longer content with sailing the seven seas, they’re now entering the open waters of the Internet, searching for new sources of stolen treasure. With a few clicks of a mouse or taps on an iPad, one can find thousands of movies, song recordings and full-featured video games available to download at little to no cost. Sadly, many computer users downloading copyrighted content aren’t even aware that they are trafficking in stolen property.