California Legislators Propose Wealth Tax
On the morning of August 13, Assembly Bill 2088 was gutted-and-amended an elections bill into a wealth tax. AB 2088 is jointly authored by Assembly Members Bonta, Carrillo, Chiu, Gonzalez, Kalra, Santiago, Stone, Ting, and Wicks. Assembly coauthors include Chu and Jones-Sawyer and Senate coauthors include Skinner, Durazo and Lena Gonzalez. In the new bill […]
Kamala! Kamala! Kamala!
We take a close look at Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Joe Biden’s choice for the Democratic vice presidential nomination. What does she bring to the ticket? Will the Democratic left, which opposed her presidential run, turn out en masse for her. And we examine where President Donald Trump and his supporters will attack her. […]
Will Prop 22 Get Full Support from All AB 5 Critics?
Many industries and individual workers have a problem with Assembly Bill 5, California’s high-profile labor law that intends to classify many workers as employees with full benefits afforded by California law. But will these individuals and groups come to the aid of Proposition 22 on the November ballot, which takes Uber, Lyft and other app-driver […]
Sacramento Pension Spin
When I started focusing on California pension matters in 2005 I quickly learned that Sacramento is a company town. The company is government and in place of shareholders are government employees who spin financial and legal fictions about pensions to journalists living inside the same beltway. Journalists at that time generally bought the spin but […]
State tech failures hit home again
While marking time as lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom wrote a book about how technology could transform government. “I want to make government as smart as Google,” Newsom told an interviewer after the book, “Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square and Reinvent Government,” was published in 2013. While technology “is flattening major institutions” and transforming […]
Biden-Harris Ticket No Surprise
Go back to last year, the beginning of this presidential contest. Before the primaries, before Joe Biden stumbled out of gate and then recovered in South Carolina. Before any debates, back when Biden was considered a solid front runner in the Democratic Party to take on President Donald Trump. Many pundits and observers expressed the […]
How Life Narrows In The Unemployment Insurance Economy
(Latest in a series since March on the pandemic’s employment impacts, and rebuilding America’s job base. The previous ones are here.) We’re now living in the unemployment insurance economy in California—an economy sustained in good part by unemployment insurance payments. By last Thursday, over 9 million unemployment claims had been filed in California since the […]
Ditch School, California, and Refocus Education on COVID
Let’s stop pretending that California will educate its children this fall—and instead transfer our educational resources into COVID-19 control. As the pandemic worsens, California parents, teachers, and students have been distracted by a bitter war over how to reopen education. But as a combatant—I’m father to three public-school students—I’ve learned that this war can’t be […]
“Come back, Taxpayers!”
I couldn’t help but think of the well-known ending to the classic movie western, Shane, when I heard New York Governor Andrew Cuomo plead for rich New Yorkers to return to the Big Apple. Brandon De Wilde plays the young boy who idolizes Alan Ladd’s Shane. As the wounded gunfighter rides away for good, De […]