One has to look no further than Senate Bill 1474 (Steinberg; D-Sacramento) to grasp why each year the California Chamber of Commerce finds it necessary to issue our annual "job killers" list of legislation that threatens our state’s business climate.

A notable bill on this year’s list is SB 1474, a dangerous proposal that does many things but, most importantly, seeks to expand unionization by creating a back door for "card check" in California.

Under a recently amended version of this bill that is awaiting action by the Governor, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) has the power to take a card signed by an employee with the purpose of merely holding an election and creating a certification for the union.  Employees sign authorization cards for a number of reasons including to call for an election, to stop a union organizer from continuing to pester them for their cards or because they were tricked by misrepresentation as to the consequence of signing a card.  Ultimately, under the process outlined in SB 1474, the ALRB can convert these signatures into a card check election without the employee’s knowledge.  The union never has to disclose to the employee that the result of their signature appearing on this card for another purpose ended up generating a vote for unionization.  This is unfair to the employee. 

Prop 23 = temporarily postponing AB 32 until economy improves
Meg Whitman = one-year delay of AB 32
Jerry Brown = Immediate AB 32 implementation and increased costs

Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman agrees that AB 32 will be a job
killer and hopes that as Governor she would be able to delay it until
it can be fixed. But to make sure AB 32 is delayed, voters must support
Prop 23. We can’t leave this to chance.

California’s economy already looks like this:

Beware of Proposition 27 – the most cynical, anti-voter initiative on
this November’s ballot. This power grab by the State’s politicians
would be a quantum leap backwards at a time when Californians are
hungry for true political reform. Don’t be fooled.

Gerrymandered legislative districts are one of the roots of political
dysfunctions in California, Washington, D.C. and in other states across
our nation. Following each decade’s census, states are charged with
redrawing their legislative boundaries to account for changing
demographics and population shifts. Problems arise when elected
officials are the ones in charge of drawing the new district
boundaries. They relish this opportunity to choose their voters rather
than the other way around.

In 2001 when the districts were redrawn by the California Legislature,
the result was oddly-shaped districts that protected incumbents and
killed any possibility for electoral competition or pragmatic
bipartisanship. Flash forward 10 years and we can see how that played
out in Sacramento.

Looking at the polls on the governor’s race, the candidate that can motivate their voters to go to the polls will determine the next governor of California. There is little enthusiasm for the election, which will likely limit voter participation and, in turn, determine the outcome.

The USC/Los Angeles Times poll came out over the weekend and like other recent surveys, it indicates the race is close, pretty much within the margin of error.

Jerry Brown had a five point lead in this poll, but the Whitman campaign said the poll skewered too hard to the left, noting that 55% of the self-identified respondents labeled themselves leaning the Democratic way to 35% offering up a Republican label. The 20-point spread is larger than is expected election day.

I’d been trying to track down the most-talked-about player in the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, but I didn’t have a phone number and I’d heard he’s too old to have email or a cell. I’d just about given up when the phone rang yesterday.

"It’s me, the Surplus," the voice said.

"You mean, Jerry Brown’s Obscene Surplus, from before Prop 13?" I asked.

The California economy is often  described  today as stagnant. The latest state unemployment numbers covering  August 2010 showed unemployment  changed  only slightly to  12.4% and minimal movement in net payroll jobs-a loss of 33,500 payroll jobs over the month out of 13,827,900 payroll jobs overall in California.

Of course, below the surface of these numbers , there is enormous movement of jobs and workers.  I have posted several times of the enormous job creation and destruction going on each month in California (roughly 220,000-250,000 jobs continue to be created each month and an equal number destroyed, even during the Recession).  Data recently released in the federal  Department of Labor’s Job Openings  and Labor Turnover (JOLTS) report indicate the Brownian motion of workers among existing jobs. Even in the Recession, workers are moving in and out of jobs at a rapid pace. Some of this movement reflects voluntary separations ("quits") , a greater amount of the movement is due to   involuntary separations ( "layoffs/discharges")

The chart below, taken from this JOLTS report, indicates nationwide the number of Separations-quits and layoffs/discharges-both before and during the current Recession, through July of this year. 

Cross-posted with Newgeography.com

The good news? Like
most rock or movie stars, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with
California. It’s still talented, and retains great physical gifts. Our
climate, fertility and location remain without parallel. The state
remains pre-eminent in a host of critical fields from agriculture to
technology, entertainment to Pacific Rim trade.

California can come back only if it takes a 12-step program to jettison
its delusions. This requires, perhaps more than anything, a return to
adult supervision. Most legislators, in both parties, appear to be
hacks, ideologues and time-servers. This time, when the danger is even
greater, we see no such sense of urgency. Instead we have a government
that reminds one more of the brutally childish anarchy of William
Golding’s 1954 novel "Lord of the Flies."

Arnold Schwarzenegger has not turned out to be that supervision. Rather
than the "post-partisan" leader hailed by the East Coast press, he has
proven to be the political equivalent of the multi-personality Sybil.
One day he’s a tough pro-business fiscal conservative; next he’s the
Jolly Green Giant who seems determined to push the green agenda to a
point of making California ever more uncompetitive.

Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman have the same problem when it comes to offering solutions to California’s budget crisis:

His name is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Whatever you think of the current governor, Schwarzenegger made many, many attempts to deal with the state’s budget problems. In fact, the governor has tried so many different tactics that he succeeded – not in balancing the budget but in showing that there’s really no way to balance the budget under the current budget system.

The campaign to bring congress under the independent redistricting commission (Yes on Prop 20), and at the same time defeat the effort to do away with the redistricting commission all together (No on Prop 27), has taken a look at the efforts of Congressman Howard Berman to get legislators to fund Prop 27 and has suggested the money raised to pass 27 will eventually end up being used to defeat Prop 20.

Here’s the deal: Berman is encouraging legislators to donate to a campaign to pass Proposition 27, which will get rid of the independent redistricting commission the people set up by passing Proposition 11 a couple of years ago. The commission takes over the power once jealously guarded by legislators to draw legislative districts. Legislators would prefer to create their own safe legislative districts than see independent commissioners drawing the lines.

However, Proposition 11 did not apply to redistricting congressional districts. Proposition 20 was put on the ballot so that congressional redistricting would become part of the new commission’s portfolio.