Gino
DiCaro of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association calls me out here  for not being understanding enough
about the plight of his bosses in the California manufacturing sector.

His
beef is with a recent piece  in which I pointed out that
employment growth in California last year actually outpaced the nation if you
remove the effect of government layoffs and ongoing problems in the
construction industry, which was particularly hart hit by the collapse of the housing
market in California.

Citizens in Charge strongly opposes any legislation requiring state legislators in California to wear—whenever speaking to members of the public—a large badge on their chests, which must read in no smaller than 30-point type, “Member of the California Assembly” or “Assemblymember” or “State Senator” or “Member of the California Senate.”

We also disagree with making legislators wear a large badge that reads in no smaller than 30-point type, “Paid Member of the California Assembly” or “Paid State Senator.”

In fact, we oppose mandating that any citizen of the United States of America must wear any large badge or sign on their chest in order to participate in public speech—regardless of what the government might require be printed on such a placard. Additionally, we do not favor labels for paid or volunteer door-to-door canvassers or campaign managers or campaign volunteers or even for high-priced advertising gurus.

There’s no shortage of difficult news when it
comes to California schools. But amidst the budget shortfalls and funding
challenges is a tremendous achievement. California students are making history,
introducing America to the future of instruction.

Since last September, over 400 eighth grade
students have been part of a pilot study, using Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt’s award winning Holt McDougal Algebra 1 core curriculum on
an iPad. In Long Beach, San Francisco, Fresno and Riverside Unified School
Districts, students are learning algebra with the fully interactive HMH Fuse^TM: Algebra 1
App for iPad.

"HMH is transforming content delivery and the
overall learning experience to take advantage of the iPad environment as well
as alternate digital device platforms. These apps aren’t just digitized copies
of a textbook," said Mike Lavelle, Education Group President, HMH. "HMH Fuse‘s
interactive format takes students to the cutting edge of innovative 21^st
century instruction. It represents the next era of digital education."

In the Star Trek original series episode "A
Piece of the Action," Captain Kirk invents a complicated and confusing card
game, which he calls Fizbin.  The rules are depressingly similar to
California’s sales tax code.

An excerpt from Wikipedia: "Each
player gets six cards, except for the player on the dealer’s right, who gets
seven. The second card is turned up, except on Tuesdays. Kirk deals one player
two jacks, which are a ‘half-fizbin.’ When the player says he needs another
jack, Kirk warns that a third jack is a "shralk" and is grounds for
disqualification. With two jacks, one wants a king and a deuce, except at
night, when one wants a queen and a four." 
As the game proceeds, the rules keep changing.

Some examples of California’s fizbin tax
code:

Food products in California are exempt from
the sales tax, "unless otherwise specified."

While the legislature is in session, the National Federation
of Independent Business/California will be profiling anti-small business bills
and the adverse effect they would have on California’s job creators.  This is the second column of the 2011 series.

Taxes, taxes, we all scream for
taxes…oh wait, that isn’t right.  That
may be the mantra under the Capitol Dome, but from the small business community
and majority of California voters, the resounding cry is "Enough is enough!"

It seems every time we turn
around, there are more taxes being proposed in Sacramento.  But now, the tax-and-spend legislators have
gone one step further – they are proposing legislation that would expand the
taxing authority of all 58 counties in California.  It isn’t enough that the California State
Legislature has the ability to increase taxes; now they want to give their
friends at the local level the power to do the same. 

Last week the well-regarded Daniel Weintraub wrote an accurate but complacency-inducing everything-will-be-ok Orange County Register article based on 2010 job data. 

He emphasized that California’s job growth, sans the construction and government industries, trended with the rest of the country.  Weintraub looked backward, saw some non-momentous trends either way and concluded that the job "numbers bode well for the state’s economic future."

California’s problems are so big, we can’t afford to wait and hope for a large recovery to come our way.

Given the great news about Osama Bin Laden, we at Public Opinion Strategies have updated our chart that looks at the historical bump Presidents receive from Major National Security Events. The table goes back to Pearl Harbor and President Franklin Roosevelt. This chart is VERY interesting.

On average, the President’s approval rating increases 13 points and a bump lasts an average of 22 weeks. That does not include the 105 week bump that President George W. Bush received after 9/11.

The “bump” on job approval shows the total increase in approval rating from prior to the event. The duration of the increase indicates the number of weeks until the President’s job approval rating returned to the prior level (so, for instance, the 35 point bump that George W. Bush got did not last the entire 105 weeks – the spike was the high, and it took 105 weeks to return to the pre-9/11 level.

Here is the link.

You may have read an article recently about two Los Angeles motorcycle cops who were told to write 18 traffic tickets per shift. They objected. Quotas of that sort are illegal in California. As a result of their failure to fill their quotas, they claimed, they were given poor performance evaluations, threatened with reassignments and otherwise harassed by commanders.

So they sued the Los Angeles Police Department, and two weeks ago a jury awarded them $2 million.
Now, you may be tempted to assume that this is a random, one-off aberration. But you’d be wrong. It’s the latest in a string.

For example, an LAPD officer named Richard Romney had testified for another officer who was having a labor dispute with the department. Afterwards, Romney was fired. He sued. In November, an L.A. jury awarded him $4 million.

In one of its first acts, the new Citizens Redistricting
Commission has decided to ignore the United States and California Constitutions
by in effect repealing the historical "one person one vote" rule that has been
law in America for 47 years.

They did this by telling their staff to draw districts that
will clearly violate constitutional population standards.  This is so their final maps can over
represent liberal areas of California that are losing population, such as Los
Angeles and the Bay Area, and then under represent the more conservative inland
areas of California that are growing.

In his famous "one person – one vote" ruling in 1964, Chief
Justice Earl Warren said this was unconstitutional.  "Legislators represent people, not trees or
acres; legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities."  This is the heart of equal representation,
districts must be equally populated.  No
one questioned this for 47 years until the Commission voted to ignore it last
Thursday night.