As
taxpayers and businesses consider the political landscape during and after the
coming election year, they might want to think about making a small but
powerful change to the state constitution. Article 2, Section 9 (a) grants the
people referendum power to challenge bills passed by the legislature and signed
into law by the governor. However, the constitution prohibits the use of
referendums for tax levies. Excising that prohibition from the constitution
would add an important taxpayer protection by potentially giving voters the
final say over taxes.

In the next election cycle, a major push will be made to get enough tax
friendly politicians elected to the legislature to scale the two-thirds vote
barrier required to levy taxes. Democrats think that capturing two-thirds of
both houses of the legislature is possible in the next election. They may be
right.

According to Allan Hoffenblum, editor of the respected Target Book,
which follows the California electoral scene, "It appears that redistricting may
be favoring Democratic candidates, which could give the Democrats an
opportunity to capture two-thirds of both houses in 2012."

On top of that, the Service Employees International Union has made
no secret that it plans to use its influence in Republican leaning
districts to elect Republicans who may be more tax friendly.

The Friends of the African American Caucus don’t think highly of California Redistricting Commission Commissioner Connie Galambos Malloy. The Caucus wrote in their most recent posting:

“As millions of Americans put out their flags and fired up the grill to celebrate freedom and democracy over the 4th of July weekend, Commissioner Connie Galambos Malloy of the California Redistricting Commission fired a salvo at African American voters in Los Angeles as she penciled them out of their traditional community districts and hard fought political power.

“Malloy, who is from the San Francisco Bay Area, committed her dastardly deeds with stealth and incredible disrespect for African American electoral participation, creating serpentine, meandering and totally nonsensical districts. This was done while most Californians were enjoying their holiday festivities and not paying attention to political intrigue. Was this intentional?”

US Supreme Courts come and go – some take on names: the
Warren Court; the Burger Court; some are remembered for their role in the 2000
election, some for their more recent role in the Citizens United case, which cleared the way for infinite amounts of
corporate and union money to find its way into political coffers, both large
and small.  Anybody who says they know
where and how all of the loose ends of that last one will tie up, is kidding
you . . .

But, we learned last week, in the process of the Supremes’
announced June decisions – I call them the Supremes with no disrespect
intended; Motown hits still play in my head decades after Diana Ross and the
Girls’ heyday; nor did I make up the name – that the First Amendment has a few
new twists and turns that nobody in particular really contemplated. 

Or, perhaps it is me who was caught napping. 

In reversing a healthy percentage of the Federal Court of
Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s decisions (something over 70% this year;
nothing special, really), the Supremes reminded us all who it is that has the
last word. Including in the reversals was California’s criminal law against
peddling violent and gory video games to children (the under-eighteen crowd).

What cities are best positioned to grow and prosper in the coming decade?

To determine the next boom towns in the U.S., with the help of Mark Schill at the Praxis Strategy Group, we took the 52 largest metro areas in the country (those with populations exceeding 1 million) and ranked them based on various data indicating past, present and future vitality.

We started with job growth, not only looking at performance over the past decade but also focusing on growth in the past two years, to account for the possible long-term effects of the Great Recession. That accounted for roughly one-third of the score.  The other two-thirds were made up of a a broad range of demographic factors, all weighted equally. These included rates of family formation (percentage growth in children 5-17), growth in educated migration, population growth and, finally, a broad measurement of attractiveness to immigrants — as places to settle, make money and start businesses.

We focused on these demographic factors because college-educated migrants (who also tend to be under 30), new families and immigrants will be critical in shaping the future.  Areas that are rapidly losing young families and low rates of migration among educated migrants are the American equivalents of rapidly aging countries like Japan; those with more sprightly demographics are akin to up and coming countries such as Vietnam.

Dear Californians, and especially those Californians who
play in the initiative process,

You might want to plan a working vacation to Europe soon.

I’m spending the week in Brussels, visiting European Union
institutions and talking with people here about a new, EU-wide initiative
process that will launch in April 2012.

The regulations of the process are still being drafted, both
here in Brussels and in the member states – which, like California counties,
will handle the verification of signatures. But the good news for Californians
is this: you can draft your own initiative and take it to Europe.

All you have to do is create a committee that has at least
seven European citizens from seven different EU member states. You can fund the
thing with foreign money – you’ll have to disclose it – whether that money
comes from individuals, multinational corporations, unions, or, heck, even
foreign governments. (Personally, just out of a spectator’s affection for
chutzpah, I’d love to see, say, a Chinese company owned and operated by the
People’s Liberation Army try to use this tool of democracy).

Democrats in Sacramento are still operating from the point of view that if government raises taxes, more revenue will ensue. If members of the majority party would simply check empirical evidence, they would see that California has gone past the point of peak revenue generation and not only will fail to generate increased revenue, but will in fact greatly hinder California’s economic recovery, causing more businesses to pull out of the state or to close their doors altogether.

Case in point: the “Amazon” tax (Assembly Bill 28x) recently passed as part of the partisan majority vote budget deal.

According to business and finance experts, due to Governor Brown’s signing of AB 28x, approved by Democrat legislators on a party-line vote, small web-based businesses’ revenue will drop by 20% to 30%. Why? As a direct result of the enactment of AB 28x, larger internet retailers, such as Amazon.com and Overstock.com, have already sent notices to over 20,000 California affiliates business terminating their contracts for advertising services.

California has long been thought to be the land of fruits and nuts. The actions of its state government too often support that characterization. In recent years, government has deprived the breadbasket of America, California’s San Joaquin Valley, of much needed water to save a three-inch bait fish. Not to be out done, an agency is now seeking to displace prime dairy land to accommodate rail tracks for an utterly unneeded high-speed train. Why punish dairy farmers you ask? Because they don’t want to harm a bird sanctuary. In that way, and sundry others, California government deliberately destroys its own economy and literally is for the birds.

Not long ago, a major CEO from California’s tech industry said, “The killer factor in California for a manufacturer to create . . . a thousand blue-collar jobs is a hostile government that doesn’t want you there and demonstrates it in thousands of ways.” Of course, Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers was talking about one of California’s leading industries. His conclusion, however, is not limited to California’s tech industry. It certainly applies to California’s #1 industry: agriculture.

Earlier this year a documentary movie titled Hot Coffee was released to little fanfare. The other day it premiered on HBO to even less fanfare. So instead of wasting your time watching this trial lawyer public relations piece, I thought I might cut to the chase and give you my review.

First of all, Susan Saladoff, the producer and director, is a former trial lawyer. So that should clearly tell you that she is going to pursue a certain angle, as many documentarians do. However, when you peel back the layers on this documentary you can easily see Hot Coffee is simply a platform for the trial lawyer agenda.

I am not even going to get into the individual cases discussed in the movie, but each drives one of the key reforms the trial bar continuously fights against: caps on punitive damages, medical malpractice caps and arbitration agreements.

Here’s a telling sentence by Michael Mishak and Anthony York
from an LA
Times recap of the last minute budget dealings:

"In his cabinet room,
Brown was negotiating with Democratic leaders and members of the state teachers
union…"

What do we make of this? That the teachers union just
happened to be taking their turn discussing the budget at that moment, or that
members of the most powerful public union in the state were in with the
governor and Democratic leaders when final budget decisions were being made?

I suspect the latter.

The Times’ account gives even more credence to the argument
that unions played a decisive role in budget negotiations. In the end, tax
extensions and spending and pension reforms did not end up on a ballot. It was
clear that the unions did not want the reforms on the ballot, and, watching the
poll numbers for taxes slip, they were not eager about a tax vote, either.