Sacramento was witness to a rarified event on May 11th.

According
to at least one reporter, she had never seen a press conference where
each of California’s political parties stood together – literally and
figuratively – and so it was at the "No on Prop 14" press conference.
The Republican Party, the Democrat Party, the Green Party, the Peace
& Freedom Party, the American Independent Party and the Libertarian
Party all came to together in opposition to Prop 14.  Here are the Top
3 facts and the fantasies that came out of the press conference.

Fantasy #1:  It is only the major parties that are opposed to Prop 14 according to Prop 14’s proponents.

The illegal immigration issue is driving this primary election; the tax and spend concern not so much. How else to interpret the results of the Survey USA poll this week?

Steve Poizner has pounded on the illegal immigration issue relentlessly and has seen his polls numbers close on Meg Whitman.

Meanwhile, Whitman has tried to push the tax and spend issue. While Whitman has battered Poizner on Proposition 13 and corralled the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association endorsement, Poizner has countered with Representative Tom McClintock’s endorsement and a tax cut message of his own confounding many Republican voters.

Not only have the rates of unemployment and underemployment (particularly involuntary part-time work) increased dramatically in California since 2007, but so also has the average duration of unemployment. In fact, as the chart below illustrates, long term unemployment (employment for 27 weeks or over), has increased more rapidly than other unemployment measures both in total numbers of Californians and percent of the unemployed .

Unemployment by Duration: California,  March 2006-March 2010

California Is Still No. 1 … as the worst place in America to do business, a ranking it’s held since CEO magazine
began surveying CEOs in 2005.

Not only does California’s business
climate rank worse than every other state, but California ranks far
below the national average in every category tested, from taxes to
regulations, to workplace quality to Living environment.  In only one
sub-category, Arts & Culture (ranked lowest in importance to CEOs),
California surpasses the national average.

This is not new information, every few weeks we see a new poll or
survey ranking California’s business climate at or near the bottom. 
Texas, on the other hand has consistently been ranked as the best place
to do business by CEO magazine.  One CEO’s comment was particularly
revealing, "Texas is pro-business with reasonable regulations while
California is anti-business with anti-business regulations." 

The Los Angeles County Business Federation is a grassroots alliance of more than 70 existing business organizations with over 100,000 businesses whose goal is to effectively mobilize the collective voice of the Los Angeles County business community.

The public pension crisis that threatens to financially bury California municipalities, counties and the state itself has ignited a belated flurry of political vows, rhetoric and a good deal of babble in recent weeks aimed at staving off an economic Katrina.

Meanwhile, billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities for promised public-employee pension plans are pushing dozens of municipalities toward the same fate as the city of Vallejo, which filed for bankruptcy two years ago, overwhelmed by massive public debt in unfunded pension and employee health care obligations.

Looking at the Controller’s report on revenues coming into the state you have to wonder what the Democrats on the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee were thinking as they embraced new business tax proposals yesterday. Revenue collection is below estimates in most tax categories. One of the few exceptions is the Corporation Tax.

The Democrats’ solution? Let’s kill that golden goose, too.

On a party line vote, the Democrats on the committee supported raising property taxes on business property and eliminating business tax breaks that were passed in last year’s budget negotiations.

There’s an unsettling, ongoing effort to dismantle California’s roadmap
to a clean energy future – one that will create uncertainty for
California businesses.

Since AB 32 was passed four years ago, California businesses have been
busily planning and participating in the implementation process by the
Air Resources Board. Many have invested in technology and products to
make their businesses more efficient and reduce pollution.

These
investments are part of the reason California is home to seven of the
top 10 clean tech businesses in America, and five California cities are
on the top 10 list of the best places for clean-tech businesses in our
nation.

Reprinted here is David Crane’s testimony yesterday before the Senate Public Employees and Retirement Committee on pension reform, SB 919, (Hollingsworth, R- Murrieta)

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for allowing me to appear before the committee today on this important matter.

I will divide my remarks into five categories:

• The nature of pension promises
• The rising costs of meeting those promises
• The consequences of those costs
• The causes behind those costs
• What the state can do about it
  

In standing up in public and denouncing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as irrelevant and calling out the corruption at City Hall that leaves Los Angeles teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, Former Mayor Dick Riordan has assumed a role that no other prominent person has shown the courage to take on.

He has heard the cry of the people and is speaking in their voice. It is the voice City Hall has ignored for a long time but they can’t ignore Riordan. So they attack him with all the artillery at their disposal to prevent him from becoming a rallying point for public anger and discontent.

They accuse him when he was mayor of making many of the same mistakes as they are making today, of giving into the blackmail of city unions and too often doing city business for the benefit of special interests. And so they ask, what right does he have to criticize?