Numerous California counties, cities, and communities are
built upon a strong tradition of agricultural productivity. Through generations
of farmers and entrepreneurs, that tradition has resulted in substantial
economic activity. In 2009, California farmers produced $34.8 billion in gross
cash receipts. In other words, California’s agriculture communities produced
more economic activity than the entire economies of South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming,
North Dakota, or Vermont.

The future of those communities depends upon their ability to remain
competitive and productive. The security of the United States’ food supply
depends upon the success of California farms.

E-Verify has the potential to decimate California’s agricultural communities by
limiting access to the nation’s highly skilled migrant workers. They represent
essential labor that is necessary to harvest the plethora of crops produced
each season.

The USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll asked how voters
felt about giving more taxing authority to local governments. Curiously,
however, the question asked in the poll did not reflect the proposal being discussed
in Sacramento.

The question dealt with a
number of areas that local governments currently do not have the power to tax
that the state does: alcoholic beverages, sweetened beverages, tobacco products and oil
extraction.

The bill authored by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg granting
new taxing authority to local governments casts a much wider net. The bill
would extend taxing authority over some very big items: transaction and use
tax, vehicle license tax, and personal income tax.

Do you suppose if the poll question included these items – especially
giving local government power to establish a personal income tax – the results
would be the same? Highly unlikely.

Cross-posted at RonKayeLA.

Business and labor, so often posturing as antagonists in a life and death struggle for power, have come solidly together in their nostalgia for the good old days when politicians were bought once and stayed bought.

Ah, the good old days before term limits, how sweet it was — and cheap for special interests.

Back then, political hacks held their Assembly, Senate or other public offices more or less for life unless they got caught up in a bribery or sex scandal. Even then, it was 50-50 whether they would get re-elected as long as they stayed out of prison.

Term limits grew out of the failure of our political leaders to do their jobs as public servants for the best interests of their constituents, an effort to try to break the political gridlock that was running California downhill. Sadly, the slide of the state has continued unabated to the point that we are in endless crisis.

Cross-posted at CalWatchdog.

Never has it been more evident that California is in a downward spiral on the verge of economic, social and political collapse — San Francisco is now pushing to make convicted criminals a protected class so that prospective employers cannot inquire about criminal records.

An already precarious business climate in the state is about to get worse.

The San Francisco Human Rights Commission voted unanimously this week to join the Reentry Council of San Francisco and send a letter to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and Mayor Ed Lee “urging them to develop and enact legislation to prohibit discrimination in San Francisco against people with prior arrest and/or convictions.”

Last week ended with Speaker Boehner "walking out" on
meetings with President Obama, signaling that we are no closer to solving the
rapidly escalating economic crisis of raising our country’s debt ceiling than
we were a while ago – and time is now officially running out.  Meanwhile Europe seems to have agreed upon a
bailout of Greece, and some help for others of the P.I.G.S. countries, although
Moody’s downgrading of Greece’s debt is a bad sign.

We shall all now have time to see whether the Euro really is
like having a first class ticket on the Titanic, as some have now said –
Germany is on the same Euro as the weakest of the EU members – when that plane
crashes, first class passengers as well as those crammed in the back by the
bathrooms and flight attendant kitchens, will all hit the same mountainside
within microseconds of one another.

The mountainside that the US is about to drive headlong into
at full speed on or about August 2 is a whole lot closer.  As this day of reckoning approaches ever
closer, we are now coming dangerously close to doing permanent and lasting
economic harm in ways that those who have irresponsibly said ‘Bring It On,’
when reminded that time has almost run out on the days of our nation’s good
credit rating, cannot even begin to imagine. 
How does 20% unemployment, skyrocketing interest rates, and adding
billions to our national debt for additional interest due to destroying our
nation’s AAA credit rating, all sound, for starters?!?

The result of
the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll on the Amazon tax issue
reminds me of the famous headline when Harvard’s undefeated football team made
an incredible comeback from a huge deficit in the final minute of a game to tie
arch rival and undefeated Yale. The Harvard
Crimson newspaper ran a headline: Harvard Beats Yale
29-29.

The poll has the pubic split at this point on the question whether online
retailers should collect sales tax as in-state retailers do. 46% support the
bill signed by the governor requiring the tax collection while 49% oppose it.

Like the two undefeated Ivy League teams of 1968, powerful opponents will
square off against each other over the referendum if it makes the ballot.
Deep-pocketed online retailers like Amazon will be battling big chain stores
like WalMart.

As state mottos go, California’s "Eureka" just doesn’t cut
it anymore.

What about exchanging it for "We’ll see you in court"? Or
maybe "Of course I’m going to sue." Then there’s always Yogi Berra’s "It ain’t
over till it’s over."

Welcome to California, where nothing is final until the guys
in the black robes sing.

And considering the way the latest state budget guts court
funding, those concerts could be a long time coming.

Once upon a time, California was a place where the Legislature
and the governor could argue out the details of the state budget, with one side
giving a little here and the other side accepting some adjustments there until
everyone agreed on a spending plan that they might not love, but could at least
live with.

While there has been recent grousing in the media regarding the
California Citizen’s Redistricting Commission, let’s not forget the
reasons we voted for the initiatives that that proposed creating the
commission in the first place. Before California passed Prop. 11 and 20,
legislators drew their own district lines, often dividing neighborhoods
or groups of people in ways that benefitted their own electoral needs.

Politicians would neglect the public concerns of their home communities
and make back door deals based on their personal desires to stay in
office. This old practice of political gerrymandering suppressed civic
participation in an important democratic process.

By contrast, the Citizens Commission has already successfully engaged the
public in a manner that has never been done before – with thousands of
people turning out to speak or write to the Commission about their
communities.

California was a place originally known for its opportunities, beauty,
wilderness, open roads, Gold Rush mentality, freedom, and innovation. Eureka,
the state’s motto, means "I have found it!" 
But this place of dreams is now the land of wishful thinking: a
consummate nanny-state of over-regulation, command and control.  From the profoundly and absurdly huge ideas
(saving the planet from climate change while China and India march to a
different tune) to the silly (mandating fitted sheets in hotel rooms).  And we’re so over-regulated, that I
guarantee, right now, you are breaking some California law this very
minute.  (Did you install your CO2
monitor required in every home July 1? No? $200 fine is on its way.)

Where unemployment at over 12% is one of the highest in the nation–two
million people out of work–the state’s bond ratings flirt with junk status,
and private investors are wary of a constantly changing and uncertain
regulatory environment.  Where governors
from other states proactively seek and invite the relocation of our best
businesses.  And what’s to stop business
from leaving? California has ranked 49th or 50th on numerous national lists as
the worse place to do business for the last several years.  According to Dun & Bradstreet, 2,565
businesses with three or more employees have relocated to other states since
January 2007 and 109,000 jobs left with those employers.