Why it Makes Sense to Plan the Budget Around Potential Downturns
“The state Senate’s Budget chairman, Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), said it doesn’t make sense to plan the state’s budget around potential financial catastrophe. California could absorb mild downturns, he said, with such steps as reducing debt repayments,” the LA Times reported this week. As the state budget deadline approaches, Senator Leno’s statement is short-sighted and clearly runs counter […]
An Outsider’s Guide to Running—and Losing—a California Election
Though Ted White’s classic, The Making of the President, is far better known, the best book I’ve read about what it’s like to run for political office is To Be a Politician by Stimson Bullitt. In the 1950s, Bullitt ran twice as a Democratic Congressional candidate in his home district of Seattle—and lost both times. “Men and women […]
California Water Management Dilemma
We are witnessing the dismantling of the California water conveyance system that supplies drinking water for 25 million California residents and four million acres of prime farmland in the San Joaquin Valley. Our water resources are being “Withheld” from the very people of this state who have shown what “Free Enterprise” can do not only […]
Celebrating Small Business
Wednesday was Small Business Day in Sacramento acknowledged by many of the legislature’s members who attended the event put together by the California Small Business Association headed by Betty Jo Toccoli. Members of the legislature recognized a small business in their districts from immigrants who started as dishwashers to owning their own restaurants; a bakery […]
Retiree with $183,690 Annual Pension Attacks Pension Critics
“Critics of public employee retirement benefits are engaging in hyperbole and pointing to potholes as evidence that millions of elderly Californians should be stripped of their retirement savings.” — Brian Rice, president, Sacramento Area Fire Fighters, Sacramento Bee, June 2, 2015 Notwithstanding the possibility that saying pension reformers want to see “millions of elderly Californians stripped of […]