Nervous “Trigger” Finger On State Budget
Remember way back five weeks ago when the California budget
was declared balanced because $4 billion in higher revenues was expected in the
treasury? If the $4 billion didn’t appear, an automatic trigger would add additional
budget cuts of $2.5 billion.
Five weeks ago was before the federal debt-ceiling bill
passed with its promise of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending cuts.
Those cuts could mean a loss of billions of dollars for California. George
Skelton has a rundown of the federal money earmarked for California in his L.A.
Times column yesterday.
Five weeks ago there was no referendum circulating against
the Amazon tax measure. If the referendum achieves enough signatures, collection
of the estimated $300 million expected from the tax could be temporarily stopped
or even eliminated if the measure makes the ballot and the voters overturn the
law.
Five weeks ago there was no referendum against the bill to
end redevelopment that added over $1
billion to state government’s depository.
Good Riddance to the Early Primary
California has finally ended its 16-year pursuit of the
white whale of presidential primary relevance.
When Gov. Jerry Brown last week signed the bill to move the
state’s 2012 primary election back to its traditional home in June, it was
recognition that California was never going to be Iowa or New Hampshire.
More than that, though, the choice was a reminder that while
the presidential race gets the flashy headlines, those too-often-ignored state
legislative and congressional races can be even more important to California.
It seemed like such an easy call back in 1996. Since
California’s June election was at the end of the presidential primary season,
moving the primary to March 26 would make the nation’s biggest state a real
player in the race to pick the presidential candidates, bringing in the big
names to actually campaign up and down the state and not just raise money to spend
elsewhere in the country.
A Victory for California’s Small Businesses
It’s not every day a government program becomes less burdensome for small business owners and entrepreneurs, but it can happen.
In my recent op-ed “A Qualified Mess,” I described the many problems plaguing the “Qualified Purchaser Program” — a use tax collection program targeting small business owners. I invited impacted business owners to send me their feedback via a survey on my website, and I shared this feedback with my colleagues and BOE staff.
I also joined small business owners and taxpayer advocates at a press conference urging reforms to this program. This NFIB-sponsored event was well-attended and led to stories by CalWatchDog, Capital Public Radio, The Orange County Register, The Sacramento Business Journal and others.
Shutting Down Our Supplies of Energy
The energy we use as a society is an interrelated function of technology, availability and price. In essence, we use the most affordable, most abundant and least technologically challenging forms of energy, primarily oil, gas, coal, nuclear and hydroelectric.
However, environmental groups empowered by government mandates and regulatory obfuscation, driven in part by junk science and fear-mongering, have pushed us toward new experimental and alternative forms of energy.
This, despite the fact these alternatives are not altogether cost effective, technologically feasible, or even readily available.
The more technologically difficult energy is to develop, convert and transport or transmit, the higher the price. In an economy based upon free-market competition, it becomes virtually impossible to get consumers to buy much of anything if it costs several times more than something else that works just as well for them.
Parole system’s fatal flaws exposed again by a double murder
Originally published at LAPD.com.
Computers are a
marvelous thing. They store information, churn data and generally make
us all more productive. Often, though, there’s a need for human judgment
and common sense to interpret a computer’s output.
A case in point is the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s computer program, Parole Violation Decision Making Instrument
(PVDMI). It’s a blatant cost-cutting measure touted as a reliable way
to predict which inmates are "low risk" and "non-violent," and thus
eligible for early release from prison with no parole supervision and no
notification to local law enforcement.
PVDMI determined that Zachariah Timothy Lehnen fit that category despite
a history of arrests for robbery, domestic violence and drugs. As a
result, he was released from prison long before his sentence was to end
in November 2013. Back on the streets with no parole supervision, Lehnen
is accused of murdering Lucien Bergez, 89, and Erica Evelyn Escobar, 27, on May 3, 2011 in Culver City.