Author: Aubry Stone

While operating a business in the United States can be a very lucrative, rewarding and an honorable way to make a living it can also

All across California’s African American communities, issues of equality and fairness should not only be thought of as civil rights issues, but also as economic

Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, recently reintroduced legislation California Senate Bill 27 (SBX2-7) during the second extraordinary session that will again aim to raise the minimum

Special interests pushing for oil extraction taxes seem to falsely think the oil and gas industry does not pay its fair share.   Let’s set

One of the selling points of the bullet train was that the California High Speed Rail Project would result in contracts and jobs desperately needed

One of the frustrating aspects of politics is that the right
hand doesn’t always seem to know what the left hand is doing, often to the
detriment of the very citizens that lawmakers and public agencies are
attempting to serve. A classic example of this is SB 535 (DeLeon), a bill
currently working its way through the Legislature.

SB 535 proposes to allocate a portion of greenhouse gas
(GHG) emitter fees collected as part of the cap-and-trade program under AB 32,
the state’s global warming law, to a trust intended to offset the impacts of
climate change on disadvantaged communities. 
On the surface this sounds like a good idea, and it would be but for the
fine print.  SB 535 does nothing to
address the impact on small and minority-owned businesses and the communities
they serve of the significantly higher electricity and natural gas rates
associated with cap-and-trade.  These
costs have recently been estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars.