Before the champagne turns flat, while the legislators’
backs are still red from all the back slapping and before the newspaper
headlines declaring success are placed in the bottom of bird cages, where they
more appropriately belong, let’s take a hard look at what actually happened the
last two weeks:

Nothing.

Does the budget signed Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown differ in any meaningful way from the hypothetical budget the Gov. Meg Whitman might have signed, had her $177 million campaign convinced voters to elect her instead? In a Fox & Hounds post that asked “Do Elections Matter?” Joel Fox argued persuasively that the budget deal violates the spirit and perhaps the letter of a pair of initiatives (Prop. 22 and Prop. 26). But it’s also important to ask whether or not the governor’s race mattered either, whether Jerry Brown’s double-digit win significantly changed the eventual outcome of the key policy debate in that campaign — how to solve California’s budget crisis.

Ask yourself what the budget would have looked like under a Gov. Whitman. My guess is that we would have seen another all-cuts budget, with Republican legislators standing even firmer in their no tax pledge and Democratic legislators bowing to the inevitable (perhaps by June 15, but certainly before the start of the fiscal year). The cuts might have been spread around differently — with public employees taking a big hit and universities being spared — to allow Gov. Whitman to keep her campaign pledges, but the basic outlines would be the same as we saw with Gov. Brown. Would an electoral mandate have given Whitman the power to win major pension changes or a tight spending cap, victories that eluded Republicans ? Not likely. Democrats would use their legislative power to block such proposals, leading us right to where we ended up.

Originally published in the Orange County Register

California legislators – who seem unable to come up with an honest balanced budget, who always pursue tax increases and who won’t pass even modest reforms to the state’s unfunded pension system or to anything else, for that matter – want to blame the government’s problems on voters, rather than themselves.

Several bills, some of which are likely to pass, would gut the initiative and referendum process, or at least make that process far more burdensome. The ultimate goal: eliminating the main vehicle Californians have to reform a government that will not be reformed by elected officials, thus leaving us completely at the mercy of legislators and the liberal interest groups that control them.

In this June 10, 2010 file photo, Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D- Los Angeles, center, receives congratulations from Assemblyman Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, left, after he was sworn-in to the state Assembly at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. Gatto was critical of Controller John Chiang’s decision to not pay members of the Legislature for not approving a balanced budget by the June 15 deadline.

As the month of June comes to a
close and thousands of highs school seniors move on to the next chapter of
their lives, NFIB wants to salute those who have stepped up and taken the baton
as the next generation of young entrepreneurs. 
This is the ninth year that NFIB has awarded scholarships to high school
seniors through the NFIB Young Entrepreneur Foundation, a scholarship
program designed to reward and encourage entrepreneurial talents among high
school students.

Owning and operating a small business is one of the most
profound ways for people to make a difference in their communities.  By starting a small
business, young people can look forward to the rewards that come with being
your own boss and creating jobs for others. 
The benefits of entrepreneurship are endless.  The statistics about small business owners
are impressive:

• Fifty-two (52) percent
  of small employers have a college degree.
• Thirteen (13) percent
  of small employers hold at least one copyright.
• Forty-six (46) percent of small-business owners
  obtain 95 percent or more of their entire household income from a business. The
  median income of a household headed by a small-business owner is about
  $100,000.

(Source is the NFIB National
Small Business Poll Series.)

In an era when more and more Californians are demanding accountability and transparency in government, our budgeting process has slid back into the cloaked era of the past.

Fifty years ago, the California budget was put together in a back room. Those in attendance included the Department of Finance representing the Governor; the budget committee chairs and vices chairs representing the legislative leadership; and the legislative analyst. The budget they created was then handed the legislature for approval and finally sent to the governor. These budgets usually garnered 2/3 of the legislative vote, and nobody knew what deals went into the process until after the governor signed the budget in question.

In the early 1970’s, a group of lawmakers revolted and pushed for a more open process. This led to more transparent and later televised legislative discussions that included the administration and legislative analyst.

Californians are such amateurs when it comes to
bureaucratic-speak. The pros are overseas.

Visiting
the European Union, as I did this week, is disorienting for an American.
Everyone appears to be speaking English, or at least using English words for
everything. But you can’t understand what they’re saying. It’s European
bureaucratese, spoken by people using English at once as a second language and
as a defense mechanism. Actual words spoken to me in Brussels: "We are
conventioning for human rights to conversation."

I sort of
think I know what that means.

And then there’s EU’s reliance on
"non-paper."

The
non-paper isn’t a European invention. The term has long been used in diplomacy
to refer to an unofficial message. But in Brussels, non-papers are everywhere
and appear to be the default mode of communication, used for messages and
policies that go beyond anything sensitive or diplomatic.

If Congress is looking forward to their annual Summer Recess,
they had better think twice, and then a third time.  We are told that we shall hit the National
Debt Ceiling in early August.  The closer
we get, the more nervous we are making international investors. 

Want to see our interest rates rise?  Do nothing. 
Want to risk international fiscal chaos? Do nothing.

The IMF has released a statement urging the most expeditious
raising of the National Debt Ceiling. 
Confronting the unthinkable – our government will be unable to pay its
bills – why are we playing this insane game of Chicken?  Half a Billion dollars of our Debt has to be
rolled over in early August – how do we expect to borrow more money if we
default, or, and here’s the critically important part, if we even make
investors think that we even could
default on our National Debt.

We are in trouble. National unemployment is over 9 percent. When we count the underemployed, and those who have quit looking for jobs, we reach the devastating reality that 1 in 5 is out of productive work. Labor force participation for blacks, Hispanics, youth, and middle aged Americans all lag even further behind.

1 in 4 Americans owes more on their mortgage than their home is worth. Entire towns and rural areas display blight. Home foreclosures and for-sale signs are common even in the most well-to-do neighborhoods. The Central Valley of California is now the new dust bowl, owing to federal water regulations which prize a one-inch delta smelt fish over the livelihoods of agriculture families.

Worker wages are not going up. Business capital is being invested abroad in no small part due to federal and state bureaucrats that have been over-regulating and pouring “sand in the gears” of the free enterprise system. Can anyone name a city in any state (save Texas) where one may get a construction permit in less than 8 months?

In the film "Tombstone," lawman Wyatt
Earp, his brothers, and his friend Doc Holliday confront a
violent outlaw gang. But Doc has tuberculosis – of which he will die at age 36
– and should be resting. A member of the posse asks Holliday why he’s doing
this. Doc replies, "Wyatt’s my friend." The man says, "Hell, I’ve got lots of
friends." Doc replies, "I don’t." Here we have the first part of the Doc
Holliday Principle:

When
trouble comes, it’s not how many friends you have that counts – it’s what kind
of friends they are.